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Archive for January 5th, 2007
SanDisk’s 32Gb Flash Drive
January 5, 2007Lower power consumption, faster access, and less prone to failure. Just a brief list of advantages over mechanical drives:
What does this mean to the average notebook user? SanDisk’s drive boasts considerably faster data access, slightly longer battery life, and higher reliability. Unfortunately, the cost for such a drive is somewhat prohibitive at $600. It would seem that SanDisk’s target market is currently the enterprise user, but naturally as flash memory prices continue to come down and more flash manufacturers get into the hard drive business, we should expect to see them in consumer-grade laptops in the proverbial three to five years.
The public battle over who will save Microsoft
January 5, 2007A few weeks back BW suggested that J. Allard was going to save Microsoft:
The soul of the new Microsoft, though–its Geek 2.0–may just be Allard, the vice-president for design and development at its Entertainment & Devices unit. Allard looks and acts nothing like the prototypical Microsofty.
NYT nominated Steve Berkowitz:
“I’m used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar in the water to change direction,” said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run its online services unit. “Now I’m in a cruise ship and I have to call down, ‘Hello, engine room!’ ” he adds with an echo in his voice. “Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren’t there.”
The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft’s online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course
Today, WSJ recommends Robbie Bach:
Robbie Bach is the Microsoft Corp. executive who challenged Bill Gates’s dogma by pushing the software company into making videogame machines. Now he’s putting his stamp on Microsoft far beyond its game business.
So what’s first new bold move? Imitating Apple!
The battle could soon move to cellphones. At its MacWorld show in San Francisco next week, Apple is expected to unveil a consumer-oriented cellphone that merges the iPod with phone service. …
That could force Mr. Bach to rethink plans at his cellular unit, which currently supplies mobile-phone software to a host of phone makers but doesn’t make its own device. In a recent interview, Mr. Gates expressed confidence in Microsoft’s current strategy, saying that it’s the best way to have a “broad impact” on the phone business. Still, “it will be interesting to see what they do in phones,” he said of Apple.
New players, same old strategy.
Not that again
January 5, 2007BW tries its hand at some Google-Apple predictions and misses:
Google will strengthen its relationship with Apple Computer . Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt was named to Apple’s board in 2006, and we believe that portends greater collaboration between the two companies in 2007. We expect new joint initiatives to include efforts related to search advertising and YouTube content.
People keep forgetting that Steve Jobs hates ads. Please avoid predictions that connect Apple with ads. Of any sort. On any of its properties. Same goes for YouTube. Na gonna happen.
If anything, the Google-Apple relationship will mean that .Mac infrastructure is outsourced to Google and Apple keeps the front-end tools (iDisk, iWeb, Webmail etc.) to maintain its unique identity.
