Maybe that should read, Microsoft sees the writing on the wall. In any case, as reported by PC World and just about everybody else, Microsoft announced today that it would continue to sell Windows XP through the end of June, five months longer than previously announced. CMP Channelweb reports that OEMs have six months more than before to ship PCs with XP instead of Vista.

It's clear that even some of the most MicroSkeptic of power users and home users are warming to Vista, but this news shows that the business PC making and business PC buying communities are just not ready to drink this particular Kool-aid.

Businesses thrive on innovation, but also on continuty. Switching to a new platform is disruptive, and if the benefits are not clear, people won't make the jump. The uncertain picture for application compatibility and the plain old hassle are too much for many businesses that see IT as a utility, not a strategic advantage. This grassroots resistance to the wintel campaign of planned obsolescence is encouraging, but it will only slow, not stop, the giants.

In a not very apt analogy, Toyota announced the redesigned 2008 Scion xB this summer. It's now 600 pounds heavier, 12" longer, 3" wider and somewhat less square is shape. The engine has grown from 1.5 to 2.4 liters with 44% more horsepower and a 15% drop in fuel economy. Some people are going to want the new features and appreciate the larger size, but I bet a lot of the people who bought the xB before liked it the way it was. In a comment that might apply as well to XP and Vista, the San Francisco Chronicle says, "...take heart, xB devotees: It's still ugly. And that's a beautiful thing."

Posted by David Karp | Permalink Comments (162)
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I recently returned from a few weeks in Asia, doing seminars, meeting press, hanging out with our local distribution partners and resellers, and of course, observing (and ingesting) the cultural differences. The one that's always interesting to me, especially in Japan, is the packaging of products. I mean the literal box or carton or bag that things come in, and the importance that people seem to attach to it.

In Japan, my hotel room had separate waste and recycle bins under the desk, and the typical cards encouraging me to re-use towels rather than waste water washing them or to change the bed linens less than daily. That all fits with the typical Western image of the Japanese being very environmentally conscious. But then, I picked up some Kit Kat bars, as I often do, and found that they are absolutely overwhelmed with packaging. In order to enjoy the chocolate and wafers, I had to peel off the cellphane, open a cardboard box and remove the two plastic packages each containing two fingers of candy. I guess freshness is important in candy.

Back on the software front, I'm spending a lot of time today on the copy and screenshots for the package for one of our products. Years ago, I remember Ipswitch shipping out 3.5" disks and later CDs in plain white cardboard mailers with a license agreement and sometimes a manual. When we first started doing business in Japan, they printed cardboard boxes the size of ceral boxes in full color for us. And now, we ship worldwide in DVD-style packages.

So why do software makers who don't sell in retail still pay attention to packaging these days? Not all do, of course. Many have 100% ecommerce/ESD models. Many ship nearly naked CDs like Ipswitch used to. But many, and I'd guess more and more as a function of the cost of the software, pay designers and printers to make elaborate (and disposable) housings for their entirely digital products. Why?

The arguments for software packaging are of two flavors, value and marketing. The value line says, customers who pay a couple thousand dollars want to get something in their hands with heft. The marketing line says that even if you don't sell in retail, the software packaging helps set customer expectations and might be displayed or shown to colleagues and get to act as a form of referral marketing.

The arguments against are pragmatic - why spend the money (or waste the customer's money) on something that adds shipping cost and gets thrown away or stowed as soon as the software is installed - or environmental - why add more plastic and cardboard to the landfills?

It's a bit reminiscent of music CDs moving from the long box to the jewel case (with occasional mavericks using cardboard versions instead of plastic) to Amazon (still ships a disc) and iTunes (doesn't). But software buyers are not the same as music buyers and (thank heavens) sofware makers are not the same as record companies. We'll have to figure out what's best for our customers, but I hope we'll consider the environmental angles, too.

Posted by David Karp | Permalink Comments (1494)
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In his blog, Marginal Revolutions, economist Tyler Cowen opined yesterday that meetings are not in fact entirely useless, boring, time-wasting and soul-destroying, quoting his piece in the October 1 issues of Forbes (free registration required)

Meetings also confer a sense of control. Attendees feel like insiders who have a real voice in decisions. This boosts their motivation to implement ideas discussed as a group. For this reason it is especially important to listen to the blowhards and the obstructionists, who otherwise would pursue their own agendas rather than support a common plan. ...meetings reaffirm the value of the individual to the company. When the time comes for the boss to offer criticism or dock a bonus, a worker who has been to many meetings is more likely to take the feedback in a constructive spirit and respond with improvement rather than resentment.

Cowen sums this up on his blog by saying, "In other words, meetings are fundamentally a form of 'social theater' and should be analyzed as such."

Most of the comments on Marginal Revolutions really let Cowen have it over this one, calling him out of touch or worse, but Forbes did publish it - what gives? In business, we love to complain about meetings - except the ones we call and run. Most people agree that there are too many or that they're too long or too many people are invited, but few people are willing to cancel their own meetings, cut them short or butt out. Maybe we do like our limelight.

Organizational Processes or Organizational Behavior is the course at business school that gets no respect, but those who actually took the shrinkwrap off the reading packet will see a germ of truth in Cowen's heretical hypothesis. Inclusion (or as cynics say, the perception of inclusion) is an important motivator for many people, and a great lubricant for organizational progress. If only it didn't take to much time to include everybody in all those meetings.

So Tyler, you go and "analyze" meetings as theater all you want, but remember, some of us have to live in this theater for hours and hours every day - got any advice on how to make it to the next act?

Posted by David Karp | Permalink Comments (3)
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In business school, they used to lecture us a lot about the "Network Effect" and "Network Externalities" which meant, more or less, that some things are more valuable because of the number of people using them, rather than because of any of the thing's intrinsic merits. Or, as the wise wikipedia puts it:

A network effect is a characteristic that causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer which depends on the number of other customers who own the good or are users of the service. In other words, the number of prior adopters is a term in the value available to the next adopter.

One consequence of a network effect is that the purchase of a good by one individual indirectly benefits others who own the good — for example by purchasing a telephone a person makes other telephones more useful. This type of side-effect in a transaction is known as an externality in economics, and externalities arising from network effects are known as network externalities. The resulting bandwagon effect is an example of a positive feedback loop.

I bring this up as a required background reading for this bit from today's New York Times, entitled "I.B.M. to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft’s Line" which says, in part...

Any inroads I.B.M. and its allies make against Microsoft, analysts say, will not come easily. “Three major players — I.B.M., Google and Sun — are now solidly behind a potential competing standard to Office,” said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Forrester Research. “But it’s a tough road. Office is very entrenched.”

So the NYT is reporting that IBM has joined Google and Sun in support of a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, and devotes a lot of time to the discussion of the competing XML standards promulgated by MSFT and by this triumverate.

Make no mistake, this little XML jig is the pivot point on which the future of the business end of desktop computing rests. Who that controls the XML standard of office documents controls... well, a heck of a lot, actually. This network effect thing says that a big part of the value of office software is its ability to exchange files with other users, so the more users on a particular bit of office software, the more valuable it is. Unless, of course, the document formats are compatible across several different office softwares. Look how much more valuable Macintosh PCs have become since getting Intel chips and quality Windows emulation capabilities.

IBM and their buddies don't have to make better office software to beat Microsoft - that would almost certainly not help - they have to make more compatible office software. Hence the standards push.

But when has Microsoft really cared about official standards? The millions of MS office users don't seem to care if their .DOC .XLS and .PPT files are standards, as long as they can send them around (usually as unsecured email attachemnts) and expect that they'll be readible on the other end. And largely, they can. Sounds like a de facto standard, doesn't it?

So, is there hope for Open Office? Unless they can somehow win the file format battle, I think IBM, Sun and Google will find themselves on the losing end of an open and shut case of network effect.

Posted by David Karp | Permalink Comments (2)
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This blog is more or less about business and technology, so when we write about Apple, it's usually more of a business case type thing and not about the possible use of Apple technology in mainstream businesses. But a recent article in the New York Times suggests that Apple's Mac OS has been given a brief window of opportunity to gain business customers by Microsoft's missteps with Vista. Will fear of Vista plus the wild popularity of iphones and ipods equal more Macs on business desktops? Will the black MacBook Pro become the new ThinkPad?

A big shift seems unlikely. Apple's 3% share in computers today is unlikely to get to its 1984 peak of 14% despite increases in browser-based, platform-agnostic business software, virtualization and Apple's adoption of Intel chips, all of which reduce the gulf between Mac and PC (and other) hardware platforms. On top of that, Apple might turn out to be its own worst enemy, with product and market decisions that come off as arrogant in a way that recalls the worst of Apple's past and many a Microsoft misstep: the iPhone price drop angered many of the company's biggest fans; fortunately Jobs apologized and handed out some store credit; some see recent ipod releases as more tired than wired, and apparently, Apple has been slipping lower-color displays into their products, much to the annoyance of their key constituency in the graphic arts market.

Could Apple blow their big chance at competing with Microsoft by acting like Microsoft on their worst days? Does irony come in five brushed-aluminum colors?

Posted by David Karp | Permalink Comments (12)
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