Drool

Macformat:

Sexy mockup. Whether its real is another question entirely.

Give Sanjay Jha another $104 million

Motorola’s Cellphone Business Still Sucking Wind

Goodbye local TV

Following the same trajectory as local newspapers:

Disney to Take Stake in Video Site Hulu.

Will new Microsoft products boost their stock price

No.

The spin out game

Someone’s making money. It’s probably not the shareholders:

Their owners don’t want them, but no other company seems ready to buy them for enough money to prevent further embarrassment to their parents’ management. The solution chosen by eBay, the owner of Skype, and Time Warner, the parent of AOL, is a spin-out.

Dean Takahashi doesn’t understand what “hail mary” is

A hail mary is what you use when you are losing to another team and desperate because you have run out of plays. I don’t think it applies here:

Apple is believed to have a license from ARM Ltd. to make low-power microprocessors based on the ARM architecture. In using ARM as the foundation, Apple’s engineers don’t have to reinvent a lot of chip design, testing and software creation tools.

If Apple pulls this off, it could declare independence from Intel, Samsung, and other chip makers in a way that no system vendor has been able to do so in many years. It will, essentially, reverse the trend, allowing Apple to become more vertically integrated when the rest of the industry is moving toward horizontal integration (i.e. Intel supplies chips, Microsoft provides operating system, HP assembles the PC).

Apple fortunately has the cash to do this, with $29 billion in the bank. It’s certainly going to be expensive. You could call it the Hail Mary play of the century.

As usual, over the top. Intel is not a player in the devices market. No one has a monopoly or a product specifically designed for net ready mobile devices. Without its own chip, it’ll be tough for Apple to solve power consumption and advanced video processing in new mobile devices. The old desktop/laptop market is set in Intel stone – nothing is going to change that in the near future.

Netbooks v. Apple’s whatever

Wouldn’t you know: Atom isn’t cutting it. “It” being whatever Apple wants to do that the crap Netbooks are doing (which is shrinking a Hummer into a smaller factor without anything to do with the “net”).

In interviews both with me and the Journal, Steve Jobs has said that Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch were so vastly ahead of the rest of the industry, that conventional, off-the-shelf microprocessors simply weren’t fitting Apple’s needs. And rather than contract out custom chips, the company felt it would be more cost-effective to design and build their own. That was the reason for the PA Semi purchase.

Commodity v. Differentiated. This is the time to do this – talent is plentiful and they want to work on challenging stuff instead of building 140 character web services.

Strategic perspective versus resting on your laurels

Another Jobsian approach: trying to be where the puck in going to be instead of playing goalie.

An Apple spokesman confirmed the company has hired both Bob Drebin, former chief technology office of the graphics products group at chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.N) and Raja Koduri, who previously held the same position.

This is a key difference between Apple and Microsoft. Apple is constantly pushing the envelope in design – design of everything: UI, packaging, delivery, service, software, industrial design, hardware, and chip design! Microsoft is working on Office 2010 with an atrocious UI and a flailing OS system – the same shit it worked on 20 years ago.

Can’t wait to see what’ll come out of it. Low power systems? Multi-core processors? New graphic chip subsystems? Video processing sub-units for HD?

Microsoft misses why WriteRoom is popular

What a monstrosity:

Microsoft is clearly not kicking on all cylinders these days. Via DF:

This is impenetrable. It’s UI salad. I realize this is not (yet) shipping software, but my god. If you sat me down in front of this, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to begin.

Salad is healthy. Office 2010 is not salad.

Psst. Microsoft, this is not innovation.

Microsoft’s core competence is negotiating deals, not innovation

The company can’t suddenly decide that it wants to innovate and get going:

Microsoft desperately needs to innovate.  If not for the money, they should for innovation’s sake.  What’s strange is that people desperately WANT Microsoft to innovate, and get angry when they don’t.   They identify with the technology they use and they are for the most part “stuck” with Microsoft, that they want to at least feel a little Mac when they’re PC.

Starting with Bill Gates’ deal with IBM to license DOS to the recent search deal with Verizon, Microsoft excels in negotiating partnerships and distribution, not in delivering high quality products. Never in their history. They are not going to get up suddenly and find an innovative bone in their body and start today.

Talk is easy. Innovating is hard.