Why Steve Jobs Still Being Involved In Apple Is Bad News

The Wall Street Journal reported some great news for Apple fans, Steve Jobs is still making the big decisions.

Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook runs the day-to-day operations at Apple, these people say. But Mr. Jobs has continued to work on the company's most important strategies and products from home, they say. He regularly reviews products and product plans, and was particularly involved in the user interface of the new iPhone operating system that Apple unveiled last month, these people say.

This sounds like great news doesn’t it? Steve may not be well enough yet to return to the day-to-day operations of the company but he’s certainly well enough to stay involved. Even if he never returns to the day-to-day operations he can still take on a roll of Chairman with oversight of product, or something like that. This news story prepares us nicely in fact for such an announcement in a couple of months in WWDC.

As with every story though there is another way to look at this one. I got a feeling that a lot of the current good feeling towards Apple was extending from the fact that the company was managing to produce well rounded products without the need for input from Mr Jobs. If he could not return then Apple would be OK because the management team were proving that they could more than handle things on their own. Even the argument that the products being released now were conceived and developed in Mr Jobs’s time could be countered with the fact that the product had to be brought successfully to market by the rest of the team only.

That’s no longer the case. Apple were not being lead by their management team minus Mr Jobs. Steve was still in control of the company the whole time. The article even pointed out how involved he was in the new iPhone OS. If I was an Apple investor I’d be worried about Steve’s apparent lack of ability to let the others take credit. He should’ve left the situation as it was and then appear at WWDC and announce his return to Apple in a full time roll, even if it’s not as CEO. I feel that this was a mistake. I now don’t think we’ve any proof that Apple can grow post-Jobs anymore.

Is This The New Zune?

Engadget has published this picture of what they are reporting to be the new Zune from Microsoft. Even though these devices are not available in the UK I did own one of the older devices and I really didn't see any reason for it getting the abuse that many have thrown it's way. Let's face it, it played music and let you watch videos on a good quality screen and using stable and easy to use software. If the device had been smaller there really was very few negative things you could say about it.

This new Zune looks excellent. Very stylish and hopefully as easy to use as it's older siblings. The similarities to the iPod Touch are obvious but that's not a bad thing and not a new thing. To compete in this market though Microsoft need to offer the ability to play the DRM free iTunes tracks on the player and the media software. I believe that this is the only way they can hope of getting converters. It's impossible to move to a new player if your songs won't play and you paid hard earned money for them.

In the music player business, and also in many ways in the browser industry, Microsoft really should be offering Mac integration. Internet Explorer on the Mac and a way to send music to your Zune either through iTunes or through the a Mac version of the Desktop software. Apple offered Windows integration so that the iPod would take off initially now Microsoft need to do the same to hav any chance in the media player market.

The Missing Windows Mobile Component

I’ve been looking into developing on mobile platforms recently and after looking at Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm I’ve come to an unusual conclusion regarding the Microsoft offering. Everyone knows the UI is weak in comparison to other devices so I’m not going to look at that. I’m actually talking about the developer tools for Windows Mobile.

Downloading the SDK for version 6.1 is nice and easy from Microsoft.com but the problem emerges when you start looking for a supported environment. Android and BlackBerry use Eclipse plug-ins which are free to download as is Eclipse itself. If you own a Mac you will get Xcode when you download the iPhone SDK and once again these are free. Microsoft’s free Visual Studio Express environments are not actually supported for mobile development. You have to go out and purchase a copy of Visual Studio before you can develop for the Windows Mobile platform. To me this is a massive flaw in the Microsoft model. Google, RIM and Apple are making the most of innovative developers who might think twice if they had to purchase the development environments.

Microsoft may be able to boast about the number of applications they have for Windows Mobile but many of them are pretty awful. I do feel that if Microsoft doesn’t want to get left behind in this field and lose developer support they must offer a Visual Studio Express version that hooks into the 6.1 SDK and allows developers to play and build apps for free. After that they can charge for distribution because everyone else basically does.

Image from msdn blogs

Bing? Windows Live? MSN!

Microsoft have been attempting to brand their online experience for months and years now and things appear to be getting worse. I am personally a fan of the Windows Live brand. I think it completely captures the one product Microsoft is best known for and conjures the image of Windows being online and available. So why not stick with it?

The fact is that they do not seem keen on sticking with this brand and there are many rumours about rebranding of Live Search. So what about simply going back to the best known online brand Microsoft have, MSN. I was on a call with Microsoft today and while I was on hold I was listening to an ad for spaces.msn.com. That sounds much better than anything Microsoft have managed to come up with lately and the portal that is currently in place is very well known and developed.

So my question to Microsoft and Softies everywhere is this, why not bring back and support MSN? Or if you don’t want it then give it to me.

Another Nice Microsoft Ad

Microsoft have released their second ad and it’s another good one. Nice to see the Redmond guys starting to take good jabs at Apple at last.

Microsoft Ad 2