Update: Microsoft and iPhones

Dead Money

Readers in the MSBA Estate & Trust Law Section Newsletter just saw it in print a month or so ago, but in October I wrote a column in the online blog version of Realtity Bytes entitled Where Are We Going? (Part I): The PC is Dead! (Or Is It?)  [Click Online Link Here].  In part, the article took Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to task for lack of vision and lackluster leadership in Microsoft's battle to compete with Apple and Google.  One of my favorite tech commentators (and all around curmudgeon) John Dvorak has come to much the same conclusion in his Second Opinion column on The Wall Street Journal's Marketwatch website.  Entitled Microsoft is Dead Money for Investors. Dvorak notes a string of "failures to launch", such as:

• Microsoft's indecisiveness over smart-phone operating systems (late to enter the field, then letting the Windows Phone 7 wither (even though it appears to be a strong product) (a deja vu of The Zune).
• Microsoft's dismal efforts in the tablet computer wars (despite the fact that Microsoft was a pioneer in tablet computing long before was an iPad).

Dvorak adds another example of stumbling indecisiveness:

Somewhere along the line, Redmond has gotten gun-shy.  . . .The most telling example of this was the short-lived Kin phone, which Microsoft released then killed just about six weeks later, before it could even attempt to get traction. 

Dvorak concludes that Microsoft is so worried about failure that it is paralyzed and investors should take note, because an investment in Microsoft is "dead money".  Read his full comments at this Online Link.

iPhones

While rest of the world was swooning this week over Steve Jobs' re-appearance from another medical leave of absence to announce the second generation iPad, I was celebrating the third week of my very own iPhone. As you probably know by now, Apple finally struck a deal with Verizon and has released a version of the iPhone on America's largest cellular network.  As our family has a Verizon wireless plan, this was the perfect opportunity to replace my aged, but trusty Palm Treo.  (A nice follow up to the Microsoft comments above would be to note that Palm's Treo appeared to have been the leading rival to RIM's Blackberry smart-phone at one point, and Palm failed badly in bring out succeeding generations that could compete.)

I was aided in my acquisition of an iPhone by my daughter's boyfriend, who wanted to surprise her with one for Valentine's Day.  So he stayed up into the earlier hours of the morning when the iPhone first became available to Verizon customers and placed an order for two iPhones.  After about a week of gingerly getting to know the iPhone, I was ready to try to duplicate what I had on the Treo.  On my Treo, I could synchronize by calender, contacts and other information from the Palm Desktop program on my office computer.  I did this for years with a cable wired to the the computer.  I could only do it when I was in the office.

After about an hour or so on the telephone with our firm's IT support, I am please to say that I can synchronize that information from TimeMatters, where most of it is stored, to Mircosoft Outlook.  This is still a manual sync, but once completed, I can access Outlook remotely from my iPhone by going through Microsoft Exchange.  Whatever I change in Exchange, synchronizes into TimeMatters the next time I manually synchronize the programs.  I also get my office email through Exchange, as Outlook is our office email program.  (Until now, I have not used Outlook much, but I now see its true potential and must say that it works rather well as a integrated email, contacts, and calendaring program.  It also works well with the iPhone.  So Microsoft can still make good products.  Outlook demonstrates what it can do in the changing technological environment.  Microsoft has the money and the talent to compete in this new environment; it just needs better leadership before its too late.)

I am quite pleased now this remote access  pretty much everywhere there is Verizon service.  And, that is a lot of places.  Verizon has a much better network than ATT, the iPhone's exclusive home network until now.  The Verizon network seems to be holding up to the influx of new iPhone users.  Partly that may be because Verizon has not been overwhelmed yet by a tidal wave of new iPhone customers.  New iPhone customers may come more gradually to the Verizon, but I suspect they will come eventually.

The best part of having an iPhone is that it is a mini iPad.  So now I am ready to start checking out the new generation of iPads.