| Monday, January 22, 2007 |
12:18 - Cat-wrangling is a thankless job
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/110653.asp
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Don't miss the 2003-era Jim Allchin e-mails—correspondence from the head of Windows design at Microsoft—regarding the iPod and how competitors like the Creative Zen and the late Dell one stacked up (hint: they didn't).
What's rather eye-opening is just how flat-footed Microsoft appeared to have been caught—even in 2003, two years after its introduction (and shortly after iTunes for Windows appeared), they were flabbergasted that anybody would be buying iPods, or that the PlaysForSure partners (like Creative) would not be producing stuff every bit as good. Microsoft clearly didn't want to do the Zune—they pretty much had to, because Creative wasn't going to.
Second fiddle is a galling part to suddenly find yourself playing, when your whole world is based on the assumption that you're the Man; and when you're not accustomed to it, getting back on top is not an easy task. Sometimes just acknowledging the reality of the problem is what takes all the effort.
But if there's one lesson to take from all this, it's that at least for the digital music world, the whole-widget model beats the symbiotic-partnership model like a rented mule.
And as John Gruber notes, Allchin managed to come up with a capitalization of "iPOD" that I hadn't even seen before.
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Brian Tiemann
