Steve Ballmer – Page 2 – Hans Hoffmann's Blog

CES 2012

Published on January 13, 2012 by hansh51Leave a comment

Well this has been the week of the big Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the glamorous city of Las Vegas. It is a show, sad to say, I have never been to but would love to go someday. Still with today’s interactive technologies it is pretty easy to follow from far away. The great thing about CES is that it gives consumers a window n how they might spend their money in the upcoming year. Or not. Last year was a big year for 3-D TV’s, but I don’t think consumers were ready to give up their new LCD or Plasma screens just yet to experience 3-D at home. This year promises a whole host of new gadgets and who knows what will be the biggest. But it is always fun to hear what the big industry players are planning. Even more exciting can be the young start-ups.

This year, as always, CES started with the keynote from Steve Ballmer, the loud and proud CEO of Microsoft. Of course the big news had already broke, this would be Microsoft’s last CES. This was the last chance to see Steve. It was a draw and then Steve went on to present, uh, well, nothing really at all. Most of which he talked about had already been announced in previous talks about Windows 8 and Windows Phone. The biggest announcement was really that Nokia was coming back to America with the Lumia 900. It is sad to see Microsoft leave the event. I am not thrilled that they have chosen to do big releases via internal style events and over the web. My preference is in person events but I may be a bit old school in that thinking. The problem I have with over the web is it usually means at a desk at work where there are many distractions. Such as Bob’s vacation or Steve i snot happy at work or..well you get the picture. You may see higher numbers but how many people are really engaged in what they are hearing and seeing? In any case we bid Microsoft a fond farewell.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt participated in a “pseudo” panel. Not sure what kind of panel this was intended to be as it sounded like a group of Google partners just nodding their heads to everything Eric said. But there were some valid discussion points, mainly the idea of ubiquity between connected devices. Just think of it this way..walk around your home and see how many devices, appliances etc have digital displays. You would find dishwashers, washer and dryer, clocks, stereo’s, etc..They should all be talking to one another and to the cloud. And according to Eric they should be built on a foundations of, drum roll please…Android. To be clear this idea is nothing new. Microsoft had this idea of Microsoft @Home over ten years ago. Novell had its embedded systems technology(NEST). But like so many things in technology it is not predicting the future, it is timing the future. As Eric points out with mobility and wireless pretty much everywhere making this “connected” home is much closer to reality. Google is taking the lead. Lets see how soon others begin to follow.

The term Gorilla Glass was new to me but it made a splash as Sony showed a Viao made out of Gorilla Glass v2. First question o I want a laptop made of glass? It will be a little bit heavier, but the environmentalist in me asks the second question: Is it recyclable? IN any case they did show hat this glass could withstand 120 pounds of pressure making it fairly durable. Given how often I drop things this is a good thing. From a pure aesthetics standpoint it would seem you would be able to do some pretty fancy stuff with color. I think more than anything this highlights advances being made in the materials that make up our technology toys. A good thing and though not “sexy” now it will be in the future.

When we look at the best in show winners there, as usual is some interesting stuff. Kudos to Nokia for coming through with the best smartphone of the show the Nokia Lumia 900. The Asus Memo 370T Tablet running Android and priced for $250. It has 16bg storage, oh how far we have come. The features are nice and with those low price points it makes total sense. I found the best software app, Bluestack interesting. It brings all 400,000 Android apps to Windows 8. It used to be the other way around, with competing platforms looking to run Windows Apps. Remember Apple had dual OS capabilities. If you want to be a real old-timer who remembers IBM OS/2 v2.0 with the Windows Subsystem? To be fair these type of subsystems traditionally ran slow and were painful. I would hope that Bluestack brings something new to the table and is…fast. Which it should be ok at since Android Apps for phones and Tablets are not like running Microsoft Office. Size matters. One thing to note Bluestack is not yet in beta. Murmur.

My summary of what I have read and followed about CES is there was a lot of focus on Tablets. A lot of new and upcoming releases tied to Windows 8 and Android. The one thing I am interested to see when Windows 8 Tablets roll out is cost. It seems like Apple has staked out the high ground and Android the low ground, and both have lots of applications. Is the middle ground a viable place to be? On the TV front I think we are waiting for the next big revolution. Google did some talk about interactive television, however we are not there yet. Apple has been strangely silent of lat in this topic. But I expect them to bet big on Television. I do expect in the next 2-3 years for this to be a huge focus of CES. The interesting question and one of great anticipation is who will lead. Overall though this was not a great year at CES as there was no break through announcements. No technology that came out and said this is what will be big in 2012, right or wrong (think 3-D TV). Looking at the products it was more claims of, “This will be a big improvement on what currently exists”. Take your pick, Tablets, Smartphones, mobile gaming etc…Next year will be bigger with Windows 8, though I don’t hear of anything ground breaking coming from Redmond…yet. But what we want from CES is not an upgrade but something that changes how we experience life.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann January 13, 2012

Windows 8

Published on September 20, 2011 by hansh51Leave a comment

Why do I feel like I have been here before? Probably because I was when Microsoft launched Windows 95 16 years ago. It was the biggest release of an operating system ever. It was really the first technology release with a massive amount of hype prior to its release to the public. It ushered in the famous “Start” button, that is still with us today. Has it been there that long? Hard to believe how time flies. Now 16 years later Microsoft is ushering in a new era of Windows with the developer release of Windows 8 at the Microsoft Build Conference in Anaheim this past week. So far the reviews have been very positive, yes some concerns, but overall it sounds like Microsoft is getting the picture. Windows 8 uses the Metro interface, found today on the Windows Phone. But more importantly it’s about touch and enabling a better user experience across multiple device from factors. Lets take a look at the good and the bad.

What I found interesting and exciting was what they were able to do with new hardware designs that include the ARM chip and stateless hard drives. It was noticeable with faster boot times, which for Windows in particular has been a holy grail. And though Steve Ballmer claimed Windows 7 did this, Windows 7 did not deliver. It’s a simple request (though not trivial to build) that had to be done. It’s amazing what the push of a button can do to your market share. The other area is power consumption, who is not tired of a 2-3 hour battery life? Though battery technology has not yet solved this problem, changes in the hardware that make up your PC have improved that allow us to reducing the amount of moving parts hidden in your PC thus reducing the heat omitted from your PC or Tablet. We have not reached paradise for battery life and power consumption but we are getting closer.

Back to my opening comment the user interface has been completely revamped adopting the Metro interface, from Windows Phone 7. My one dig at MS is having basically the same UI for over 15 years is rather unacceptable. We have had the same Start button all these years. But this is a more than welcome change. The Metro interface provides the “touch” experience with its sexy panels. It is very important with the rise of the tablet. The explosion of new and exciting designs in hardware coupled with the need to have a great touch experience will make Windows 8 competitive in the space currently being owned by the iPad and Android. It will be new for developers, in particular those targeting ARM, as it’s required.

Another positive is it may make Google and Apple pause and look at what Microsoft is doing. I know that may sound odd, but right now in the area of mobility Microsoft is non – existent. With Windows 8 it gives Microsoft a chance to be relevant and feared once again. To date Apple and Google have not really paid much attention to Microsoft as Microsoft has been viewed as yesterday’s news and a company that lacks imagination. The reinvention of Windows and the fact that it is able to go across device form factors will be a huge plus for Microsoft and help it gain traction in the tablet space. Tablets will not be as easy to gain market share as Netbooks, beyond technology it will take a strong marketing campaign to reach the appeal level that Apple and to a lesser extent that Android has.

There will be challenges. One I thought of right off the bat as I read Jay Greene’s live blog was that the Build event lasted over 2 hrs was there is so much new stuff in Windows 8. This goes to a Microsoft issue, which they cannot not adhere to the old grade school acronym KISS (Keep it simple stupid). They put so much stuff in the product that they overwhelm developers and consumers as they simply cannot consume all that is being given to them. We buy technology products that makes us happy and improve our lives, we do not want them to confuse and frustrate us. But over the years Microsoft has developed a habit of trying to show cool features, no matter how geeky they may be.

Another challenge is legacy. Microsoft and the Windows empire has been a partner driven model throughout its entire existence. The partner model has created over thousands of peripheral devices from printers to scanners to mice. You have tp go back a certain amount of years to make sure all those investments by consumers and businesses are protected. This is no small task. There is also the question of the user interface, which they did show at the conference, but you just can’t tell everyone that Metro is the new UI. So you build in a mode that allows you to switch to the old interface (this was showed at Build). This to me, takes away some of the sexiness that Metro provides. Rather than saying we are new. You end up saying we are old and new. A subtle but big difference

Then another negative was Steve Ballmer. On day two of the conference he made a surprise guest appearance. Unfortunately he for got what decade it was. He went on and on about how many desktops were deployed and going to be deployed with Windows 8 and that developers should all write applications for Windows 8. It would have sounded great in 1995. The problem is it made it sound like he is not following what’s going on in the world. That developer are not writing desktop based applications, pretty much everything is being written to the internet and it needs to support Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome. This is not new news. I was having drinks with the Microsoft C++ Program Manger a few years ago in San Jose and he brought up a statistic that stated 75% of all app development today is done on the web. Maybe Steve should talk to him. I heard from several people his keynote was a negative on the week. He even went so far as to ask developers to “stay with us”. Apparently there is concern they may be going somewhere else.

Steve did talk about re imaging Microsoft, I find this both a negative and a plus. It’s a negative because you have to do it. It’s a positive because you are doing it. To change the image of a company is not easy. Especially one that has had the impact on society both economically and culturally like Microsoft. But there is no question it needs to be done and the changes and progress that have been made with Windows 8 offer up a great time to do that. It is all about execution now and delivering Windows 8 before the holidays in 2012. In addition the right “buzz” is going to need to be generated, coming off of Build a good start was made.

Over the next 12 months it should be a very exciting and stressful time in Redmond. The pending launch and release of Windows 8 can be and will be one of those defining moments in technology. Not just for Microsoft but the industry. We have grown up in a Windows world where over 90% of all PC’s, Laptops, and Netbooks were Windows-based. However withe rapid evolution of new form factors like the tablet this world is increasingly under a dark cloud as the storm is upon us. With the possibilities in emerging markets, it does not seem clear that they will follow or want to follow the same path of North America or Europe. Nor will they have to as it’s apparent they will have alternate choices. With the increased competition in the global market for technology a resurgent Microsoft can only benefit the competitive landscape, but we will have to wait until Windows 8.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann Sept 20, 2011

Dear Tim Cook – Learn from Steve Ballmer

Published on September 7, 2011 by hansh51Leave a comment

Dear Mr. Cook

I am sure you are settling into your new role as Apple CEO, wondering how do you succeed a legend? I can only imagine it is a daunting task. Speaking from experience though I can say I have witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly of what can happen. I was at Microsoft when Bill Gates decided to step down as CEO of Microsoft and handed over the reigns to his self-appointed successor, Steve Ballmer. At the time things seemed to go so swimmingly as it was never in question who would be the successor to Steve Ballmer. Things have worked out far differently than those of us who were around would have predicted.

I have been a witness to greatness as I had the opportunity to listen to BillG speak many times. His ideas and vision for Microsoft and the industry always so crystal clear. As if they had been freely floating around in his mind since the day he was born. As change took place in the industry, Bill always seemed to understand it, to grasp it and to be ahead of it. This is not much different then Bill’s chief competitor for the top spot in tech history, your former boss Steve Jobs. Steve seemed to understand the impact technology could have on day-to-day life and what it emotionally meant to people, and most importantly how to get there. But these chapters are now closing and it’s time for your chapter, but let’s hope it is better than Steve’s.

When SteveB took over from Bill he was the golden boy. He was much revered and loved in the field sales force. Many of us considered him one of us. Unlike you he even had the benefit that Bill would hang around for a while as Chief Software Architect. And for a while things seemed to look like they would work out ok, or so we thought. He was being given the opportunity to lead the future, not just of the industry but of a company that had made changes in the world, in the way we live.. But cracks in the armor were starting to show. And that is my first bit of advice to you which is old advice, big things start small. Both the positive and the negative. We started to see some of the tech guru’s leave the company, most notably Paul Maritz. Even though I revere BillG he had a circle of people around him that was his think tank. People he could turn to and have those deep discussions on the state of the industry and where it was headed. Today I don’t know who Steve listens to these days for advice and guidance, but he has become an increasingly isolated figure.

Point two, remember the core of who you are and what makes you great. It’s easy to look at others success and think it may be a good idea to emulate, but don’t do it at the cost of what got you to where you are. As Microsoft grew managing growth became a paramount obsession for Steve, He really fell under the guise of Jack Welch and the GE model, trying to apply those ideas to Microsoft. The problem was that though it worked for GE that does not necessarily mean it was a good fit for Microsoft. Over time the passion that was so core to Microsoft seems to have dissipated and been replaced by big corporate politics from the top to the bottom. It has created an environment where people are more interested or fearful in doing the politically wrong things versus doing what’s right for the company.

Point three is drive the industry and don’t let it drive you. This to me was a direct result of point two. When I first started at Microsoft, the idea of standards and specifications were something that Microsoft was directly involved in and trying to drive a major influence in bending them to what Microsoft saw as the right direction for the industry. It was important that Microsoft be viewed in the lead on technology. As new start-ups and technologies have come forward Microsoft has chased these new opportunities, thinking they could catch up like they did in the past and taking their eyes off the core standards. A case in point was HTML5. While Microsoft was pursuing Adobe with their Silverlight Player and Smooth Streaming, Apple rightly saw that the right thing to do was support the new standards being developed for playing media files, HTML5. Thus causing Microsoft to do yet another about-face. This type of mistake can be blamed on product groups, but ultimately these type of visions start at the top. Which is why your mentor was on record as saying the future is HTML5, Microsoft has seemed to stutter and fail with each new change in the industry and ultimately be viewed as a laggard.

Microsoft back in the day was always fearful of falling prey to a company that was smaller and hungrier than they were, Steve was certainly involved in a lot of those discussions. It was an obsession of the executive teams. However today that does seem to be exactly what is happening to them. It has everything to do with that they forgot all about those fears and took their eye off the globe shaped ball predicting the future. Nothing has changed in the industry. This remains an industry where small start-ups innovate and create the next generation shifts in the technology industry. You and I have both seen companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flickr, Pandora, Linkedin, Dropbox etc. emerge within the last 10 years. Some of these will grow very large and some already have, some will fail. The only guarantee is that there are more to come, so pay close attention to who they are and where that are taking the market place. And most importantly capitalize on it.

In conclusion Mr. Cook you have been granted an exciting challenge and opportunity at what today is the most admired company in tech. The pipeline is solid for product delivery over the next five years. Be true to who you are, but more importantly be true to who Apple is. I don’t want to see you become a Steve Ballmer, it has been painful to watch. At the same time as I have outlined there is a lot you can learn. The one guarantee I can make to you is history always repeats itself, but you do not need to be the one to repeat it.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann September 7, 2011

Where is the Microsoft Tablet?

Published on March 25, 2011 by hansh51Leave a comment

It has been nearly 2 years since the release of the iPad and during that time we have seen a titanic shift in technology and the market’s expectation of what technology can provide. It seem every week companies are coming out with a new iPad application. If you watch local news or national programs they all seem to have a iPad application. The good news for the market is it is not just the Apple iPad. Not far behind and rapidly growing its user base are the Google Android tablets. The Android provides a greater range of choices while still providing access to thousands of cool and useful applications. Soon there will be other entrants like the HP tablet based on the Palm OS. The interesting thing is not what is coming out, but where is the 800lb gorilla? It seems very hard to hide a beast of that size, but yet the gorilla has remained hidden. You cannot even hear it whisper.

At the recent Consumer and Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was on stage delivering the keynote address. What I guess was interesting about the whole presentation was not what he said but what he did not say. At a trade show where everything was focused on tablets, Ballmer talked about everything but a tablet. His big thing was Microsoft’s foray into engineering and developing for ARM (for you non-techies who read my blog it’s a microprocessor like Intel). This should not be trivialized, this could have benefits. However it is short on sex appeal. Unlike some tech shows where new things are touted at CES, tablets were new, but there were sales to back it up. So it was not just another gizmo.

Since CES we have seen launches of new Tablets like the Samsung Galaxy and iPad 2. We see them developing channels for resale through the service providers. Companies like AT&T and Verizon are eager to have these devices on their network as they can drive data plans. Microsoft for years has been trying to build a resale channel with the Telco’s. An old boss of mine is in charge of creating the worldwide reseller channel with the telecommunications carriers. What does he tell them when they ask, “what’s your tablet strategy?” He also used to tell me in sales, “You are what your numbers say you are”. In its first weekend of sales the Apple iPad 2 sold over 500,000 tablets. Now we can have positive adjectives to describe our numbers, which is fun or we can have negative adjectives to describe our numbers, which is pro fain. Apple and Google would both have very colorful adjectives. Microsoft, well lets just say they may need to spend time in the confessional booth .

One thing that seems to be holding Microsoft back and seems to fuel a lot of speculation and gossip is what operating system will they use, when they do come out with a tablet (I gotta admit I am guessing on this one as I have seen nothing in the press or heard from old friends about this one)? The debate is between Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7. Do you mimic what Apple did with the iPhone and simply enlarge to the iPad or do you go with your bread and butter, your flagship product, Windows. I can say from a historical point of view when push comes to shove, the big boys at Microsoft always win, with that in mind it would seem Windows 7 will come out on top. All I know is while the debate rages on the market does not stop.

When thinking about what is going on can history really repeat itself again? Microsoft was in the Smartphone business for quite some time before Apple joined the party with the iPhone, and before they could respond out the gates and off to the races came Google’s Android platform. By the time Windows Phone 7 came out the market was in a mature phase, so the Windows Phone was just another player trying to be heard. The Tablet business is similar in many ways. Microsoft has been in the Tablet business even longer than the phone business, as the vision of a more interactive device had long been a pet project of Bill Gate’s. Yet as I sit in my office it seems as if history has already repeated itself. Apple came out withe iPad but not far behind, once again, was Google with their Android based Tablets. To be honest this is all eerily similar to the early days of the PC industry where Apple made the expensive high-end computers and Microsoft did the cheaper low-end computers, except now we can replace Windows with Android. One area of my theory can be brought into doubt by one single question, “Where is the Microsoft Tablet”?

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann March 24th 2011

The Return of Steve Jobs and the Rise of Apple (updated)

Published on February 25, 2011 by hansh512 Comments

This is an update to one of my more popular posts that I wrote a year ago, but worth revisiting. A lot has happened in that time. With Steve Jobs in ailing health and the iPad now a huge success Apple continues to roll, but with a bit of uncertainty in its leadership ranks – namely how do you replace a Steve Jobs? Still one thing has not changed Apple continues to succeed.

When I first started at Microsoft back in 1991 Apple was more or less a relic of what it used to be. Keep in mind it was still a cash cow for Microsoft as we owned the core application set for Apple, Microsoft Office for the Mac. However it was a company seriously lost in what it wanted to be and where it was going. the one thing Apple did have going for it was a fiercely loyal user base. Even though Microsoft was 90% of the market, Apple had 10% and it was going nowhere.

At the time the original founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were not to be found. Jobs had been forced out by then CEO John Scully and was off trying to do the next big thing at NeXT computer. In addition he bought a small company from Lucas that became Pixar (it did pretty well). On the other hand Wozniak nearly was killed in a plane crash and not too long after would walk away from Apple (though he still is on the Apple payroll). In a lot of ways you can parallel Woz with Microsoft Co-founder, Paul Allen. John Scully grew Apple significantly after the release of the Mac, however, he was never able to generate the buzz and excitement around Apple that it deserved. Scully came from a successful career at Pepsi and was no doubt a talented marketer. However after 18 years in technology one thing I firmly believe in is if you are going to be a cutting edge technology company you need someone from the industry to guide you and set the vision for the future, to generate buzz, to generate excitement. I have always said the tech sector is more Hollywood than Wall Street. Technology leaders who cater too much to Wall Street, will ultimately doom the company.

For the next 5 years at Microsoft I watched as Apple went through various CEO’s and considered licensing the Mac OS similar to what Microsoft was doing with its OEM channel. I watched as they launched a Windows Virtual Machine so they could run Windows Applications. It always seemed like Apple was throwing darts at the board trying to find someway that something would stick. At one point Microsoft even made an investment in Apple, just to show we were good guys. Things would start to change in 1996 when Apple purchased NeXT Computer, bringing back Steve Jobs to the company he helped found. It ushered in one of the great comeback stories in the history of high-tech.

It used to be said in the industry that you can have a PC any color you want as long as it is beige. It was sadly very true. In addition to the giant CRT screens we had in the day it made for a very ugly desktop. One of the first things that was noticeable when Steve came back to Apple was the launch of Mac’s in color. The orange and lime green seemed to be favorites. Some of the best ideas in the tech industry are the simplest. In 1999 I remember Bill Gates showing off some new Dell PC’s that had some color to them and he mockingly said “We can do color to”. It is and will always be a challenge for Bill to understand the “hollywood” side of technology. Color was important because the beige was so ugly.

For those who remember around this time in the late 90′s a company called Napster became very popular. Napster did some things that Microsoft liked a whole lot. Mainly it allowed end-users to share music files over the internet. Thus promoting the power of the PC and leveraging the value of the internet. Now at this point I can only guess, but my feeling is that someone at Apple could see the real value here – which was that these PC’s had large hard drives that enabled you to store a lot of music, would it not be cool if it was mobile? You could put a hard drive in a little plastic case with ear phones and carry it with you. In October 2001 Apple launched something called the iPod and later a music service called iTunes. As we all know these have gone on to be gigantic success. Microsoft has partners doing their own MP3 players and I remember going into the Best Buy looking at some of them, then I picked up a iPod. At first I was not impressed with its DOS like interface than I started touching and trying to click the wheel, at first it did not seem that responsive. Then I took my thumb and made a semi-circular motion..cool! After that those other MP3 players were dust. The iPod was huge for Apple in the sense they were no longer the niche player the Mac, they were now the darlings of the every day end-user. As momentum continues Microsoft finally scrapped the partner model and came out with the Zune (I have had several). These devices work well, are cool and have the “wheel” like feel (apparently Apple forgot about the patent process). The challenge for any company is once a competitor has established a huge market lead, can you ever catch up? Not to mention on the advertising front I see Apple iPod ads everywhere, on TV, on Billboards. I cannot recall seeing one Zune ad. Another area that always has concerned me is what our response at Microsoft, while I was there, was to Apple. the typical, it is very proprietary. They really don’t work that well. As Steve B would say, “blah, blah, blah..” I would say, “who cares?” If end users like the experience and are happy with the $.99 price tag, they will continue to download songs from iTunes. As of this writing more than 10 billion songs have been downloaded from iTunes.

Then came the iPhone. At a time when the smartphone had yet to “realize its potential”. As the story goes Randall Stephenson, CEO of ATT Wireless (then Cingular Wireless) was in a meeting with Steve Jobs. Steve had just shown him a new mobile phone Apple had been developing. Randall just kept playing with the phone, fixated on its beautiful and responsive touch screen user interface. Steve Jobs is known as one of the toughest negotiators in the business. Randall was a long time telco guy who had net and negotiated withe th best. He also knew that what he was holding represented something bit, something that could turn the tables against some of ATT’s biggest competitors Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Unlike most phones carried in a store which are in many cases subsidized by the manufacturer, Steve wanted it sold and all the revenue. ATT could get the voice and date plan revenue, but Steve wanted everything else. In the end the device was too good to pass up. Steve Jobs had just got an unprecedented deal in the wireless industry. This launched the march towards the delivery of one of the most “revolutionary” hand-held devices in the mobile phone industry, the Apple iPhone. I had a friend contracting at ATT at the time working on getting the online payment for mobility set up and all he would say was everything being done in Atlanta was geared towards the launch of the iPhone. This was a device with a serious amount of weight being thrown behind it.

The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007. As Bill Gates would say later on, “Microsoft did not set the bar high enough”. The iPhone was a huge success and that is an under statement. It did a number of things better than had ever done before. First was the touch screen. It was responsive. Very responsive. You could be up and doing something within seconds. Second the mobile browser experience was easy and the content you got back was readable. Every device I have ever had the mobile browse experience has been different with each device and very painful. Third it created a market for mobile applications. Prior to the iPhone making money on mobile applications was a dream more than a reality. Competitors will argue, again, Apple is a closed environment (for you non-technical folks – it’s Apple’s way or the highway). I will say again and again, that is the argument of technical people, if end users like the experience they support with their wallets and do not care about open environments versus closed. The iPhone will go down in history as a major technology milestone and another big hit for Apple and Steve Jobs.

Apple about a year ago launched yet a new device, the iPad. The orders are built up and Apple has done it again. Now the iPad was yet another attempt at the Tablet. Does anyone remember the Apple Newton? Microsoft Pen for Windows? The Microsoft TabletPC? I wrote a year ago “Will this time the idea of a usable tablet finally become reality? My view initially is that Apple is riding its wave of success to create yet another blockbuster in the industry”. THey did create a blockbuster. Then I wrote the following: In the latest issue of Wired Magazine they do raise the question of interaction with computers. If you think about how we as people interact with our technology it has not changed on over 20 years. We have a monitor, keyboard and mouse. I will say having been at Microsoft 18 years there were many efforts from the top down to drive the success of tablets. To change the interaction of user and technology. If Apple succeeds with the iPad it will be a huge psychological blow to Microsoft. Apples first attempt in over 15 years after the many attempts by Microsoft and it is a huge success? The success Apple has had with the iPad has led to a huge change in how people want to interact with technology and spurred a new wave of innovation. Not far behind has been Android which was quick to respond with their own Tablets. I cannot count the amount of emotional responses I hear from people with iPads “I Love”, “I adore”, “I treasure” . Not far behind are business ideas for their iPad. It is really quite amazing what can happen with success. It creates a force of gravity that cannot be stopped. A Wall Street dream.

Bill Gates has left Microsoft. Today Steve Jobs is the poster child of the technology industry. He is the rock star pumping out hit after hit. The movie star who cannot make a bad film. He is in the zone. From when I started to when I was let go at Microsoft the journey of Apple has been an interesting and amazing story to watch unfold. All tech stars rise and fall. The list is long WordPerfect, Lotus, Borland, Netscape, AOL, etc Apple certainly did this, but then to rise again bigger then what they were before has been a spectacle to behold. What they are doing now is not so much about how they are influencing technical innovation, but how they are impacting the global culture. The future can still be bright despite the illness that has removed Steve Jobs from day-to-day operations. In my view the next holy grail will be television and how we interact with our oldest of friends. AppleTV is a start but it is not there yet. GoogleTV is on their heals. But given their track record it’s dangerous to bet against Apple right now.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann, Whistler, BC February 25, 2011