Microsoft BU and TellMe Exploring iPhone SDK Options

[RiCEADDiCTBOY]

This is standard the Microsoft MO with Apple. Become a developer, get the tools, learn all you can about the system, then release your own copy. That's exactly how Windows was developed in the 80s.

Alright, I am not partial to EITHER company - I use both and enjoy both. However, I am sick and tired of hearing people whine and complain about Microsoft. Yea yea, Microsoft released Windows based on Apples operating system. But, where did Apple get theirs? Oh YEA! Thats right...they blatantly ripped it off from Xerox. Ouch.

Oh and btw - I own several media players including an iPod Touch and I will say that the sound quality on the iPod Touch and the either iPods for that matter is by far the worse compared to a second gen Zune and a Sony MP3/Video Walkman. iPod has elegance but poor output. The second gen Zune is in fact a GREAT alternative to the iPod. Don't even start to compare it against a "touch" device because thats not even the market its going for - a fair comparision would be the Classic iPod. The video on a Zune has by far a better constrat ratio and superb sound quality...plus the headphones are not lame. Pay 500 bucks for a "premier" iPod product and get craptastic headphones? Sony beats them all with audio quality and headphone packaging. I love my iPods but, too many Apple users seem to be drinking something odd from their tap water whenever it comes to "outside" products.

Oh and btw...you guys wanna blast Microsoft for this and that? Apple is no different in their business practice. Justify a new person paying only retail price for a the same model with a new firmware and 3-4 additional "functions" that current owners of the same model have to spend an additional fee. Do we get charged for service packs, patches, and upgrades in most normal circumstances? No. This is just Apple suckering more money out of honest and loyal fanbase...And no - my iPod Touch came with the upgrade. I just feel sorry for those that have to pay for something they should be entitled to. And what about the promise of upgradablility for the Mac Pros for past owners? ...yea...good one Apple.

 

[gmon750]

Did hell freeze over?

I for one thinks it's a good thing that Micro$oft wants in on the iPhone market. In a way, it legitimizes the iPhone as an enterprise-level tool.

However, I do find something ironic about it. Didn't Ballmer squeal like a greased-pig during the iPhone introduction that no one would ever by a $599 phone?

I wonder what furniture (if it's not bolted down) Ballmer is throwing in his office on this?

 

[andy721]

To Microsoft

I want Microsoft out of business & Bill Gates to attend my wishes. He's evil just like the oil guy from There will be blood which was a good movie by the way.

 

[Rot'nApple]

Alright, I am not partial to EITHER company - I use both and enjoy both. However, I am sick and tired of hearing people whine and complain about Microsoft. Yea yea, Microsoft released Windows based on Apples operating system. But, where did Apple get theirs? Oh YEA! Thats right...they blatantly ripped it off from Xerox. Ouch.

Just don't forget that Xerox's work was preceded by the great works of earlier engineers and their pioneering efforts!

But regarding Xerox...

"Xerox upper management, fearing the inevitable demise of their paper-based company in the "paperless" future, decided that they had better make sure they controlled this new technology. They formed the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, in 1970."

"Eventually, a stripped-down version of the Alto, the Xerox Star 8010 Document Processor, was released to the public in 1981 for US$17,000. The Star had some differences from the Alto, most significantly the ability to overlap windows was removed as it was thought too confusing for the general public. Instead, the Star used tiled windows. As significant as the Star's release was, it was too little and too late for Xerox, who had by that time lost most of its top researchers to other companies."

"The most important of these GUI pioneers was a small startup founded in a garage in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, called Apple Computer. Apple had built its fortune on the wildly popular Apple ][, which displayed both text and graphics but had a traditional command line interface. Apple was a young company that found itself flush with money, and was more willing to take risks. Many former Xerox PARC engineers found new jobs with Apple, and set about to recreate their work on the Alto and Smalltalk but on a product that would actually see commercial release and potentially become very popular."

"Work on Lisa started in 1979 but the computer was not released until 1983. Despite its advanced features, the price tag of US$10,000 and the difficulty of writing software for the new machine limited sales. A low-cost, stripped down version of the Lisa was needed, and this task fell to Steve Jobs himself. His Macintosh project achieved the goal of a lower-cost graphical computer by shipping with a small 9-inch monochrome screen (512 by 384 pixels), a mere 128 kilobytes of memory, no multitasking or even the ability to task switch between more than one program, and a single floppy drive. This was introduced to the world in dramatic fashion in 1984, selling for US$2,495. It retained most of the GUI features of the Lisa, and even shared some of its low-level code, but the operating software itself was written from scratch to fit in the small memory footprint."

And the rest is history...

Above quotes attributed to "A History of the GUI" by Jeremy Reimer

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gui.ars

 

[goodcow]

How about they make Entourage not suck complete ass first and port over Access?

 

[God^Cent]

the more bugs the less merrier!

^Fixed!

JK, Office apps on the iPhone or Touch would own. I'm happy for you today, M$.

Edit: this also shows that M$ isn't looking to run the iPhone and Touch into the dirt, like they tried with the Zune toward the iPod.

 

[walnuts]

The MS offerings might not be totally localized MS Office, rather apps from the Live stable customized for iPhone with file storage on Sky Drive.

In that case, no super-preferential treatment would be required.

Or possibly, "iPhone Bob".......

That's a good point; particularly with the Sky Drive thing. I'm not so sure what Sky Drive is, but I could see Apple opening up iDisk read/write access for the iPhone. Great way to get more .mac customers; even if potential customers don't own macs.

 

[TheSpecialist]

AMEN. Screw Microsoft, this would be a great opportunity to get iWork to the masses and more switchers. BOOOO Office, YAAAAYYY iWork

Indeed, it would be such a great way to let people show iWork, it's not widely as much used as iLife because it is not installed standard

 

[72930]

So it takes them ~4 years to get a new Office suite out, they can't get Messenger with video released (even though third parties have had it for ages) and now they're looking at iPhone voice-to-text. MS, get your head together!

 

[impierced]

How about they make Entourage not suck complete ass first and port over Access?

Entrourage suckage and thereby lack of Outlook on the Mac is well within Microsoft's business model. They would certainly lose Windows business customers if they did that.

 

[BongoBanger]

I want Microsoft out of business & Bill Gates to attend my wishes. He's evil just like the oil guy from There will be blood which was a good movie by the way.

Having looked at Apple's business practices I feel like the animals at the end of Animal Farm.

 

[jbernie]

I for one thinks it's a good thing that Micro$oft wants in on the iPhone market. In a way, it legitimizes the iPhone as an enterprise-level tool.

However, I do find something ironic about it. Didn't Ballmer squeal like a greased-pig during the iPhone introduction that no one would ever by a $599 phone?

I wonder what furniture (if it's not bolted down) Ballmer is throwing in his office on this?

And you can probably get 4 or 5 Blackberry's through a corporate account for the cost of one 16GB iPhone. With the way the economy is at the moment IT departments will be looking for way to cut costs. iPhone is a luxury, Blackberry is a tool.

 

[shen]

Alright, I am not partial to EITHER company - I use both and enjoy both. However, I am sick and tired of hearing people whine and complain about Microsoft. Yea yea, Microsoft released Windows based on Apples operating system

blahblahblah, whinebitchmoanblah

before you go explaining everything to us, learn your history. several "facts" in your little diatribe are flat out wrong. STFUkthxbi.

 

[thefourthpope]

If MS can get over their time troubles and getting the bugs out first release, the voice recognition could be fabulous. The more than improves, the more it makes the keyboard--like iPhone's little non-tactile one--seem hopelessly awkward.
Typing up a note, on my phone, in my car, with my voice? I'll buy it.

 

[Cavalier]

The big question here is will Apple let a company as large as Microsoft slide with the no storage rule- as far as I can tell, any microsoft app (word, excel, ppt docs creation or editing) requires some sort of file system. ...

I doubt this would be an issue if Tellme is the division behind the move.

Microsoft has already developed a large-footprint speech application (10 MB), which is bundled in with the mobile operating system. It's pretty good, but it's large, doesn't tune well, and is integrated with the OS.

Microsft also runs a web-hosted network speech engine, which is what Tellme is moving to. If MSFT plans to offer this to iPhone users, then I assume it would be a distributed model, where you would only have a thin-client application on the phone (50 kilobytes), which would do minimal pre-processing, and send the digital sound over the AT&T or wi-fi data line to Tell me for processing, interpretation and action.

Nuance (the kind of speech) already does this through Mobi. It's a combo speech application and service, offered through the carrier. But all of the storage and speech processing is done on back-end servers.

Generally, back-end, distributed approaches like Mobi or Tellme are more powerful and more accurate, but they are slower and you have to be in service range. It also gives the service provider a chance to host yoru contats, calendar, etc, so it can do fancier things.

The interesting thing is that Apple already has its own patents for speech recognition, but they are sitting on them, in favor of the multi-touch interface. I'll bet they are holding back on speech recognition until it improves 100 fold.

 

[GregA]

"It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone," Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told Fortune on Monday. "To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now."

Interesting they don't talk about Windows users and their iPhones.... are they presuming every iPhone user owns a Mac? (and what are the actual stats?)

ie:
They're looking at the iPhone only to the extent that MAC OFFICE customers have the functionality they need on the iPhone.

 

[MacFly123]

Indeed, it would be such a great way to let people show iWork, it's not widely as much used as iLife because it is not installed standard

Apple would for sure do a better job implementing something like this, so as long as they make it fully Office compatible both ways I think it would be a HUGE success. Don't let Microsoft screw you over again Apple!!!!!

 

[SandynJosh]

I can't see any reason to store files on the iPhone if you think outside the box.

For example, you need a document to read and edit, you click on the icon and the phone retrieves it from .MAC for you to read. You make your changes and hit save. The edited portion of the file is sent to .MAC when it is saved into the existing file... meaning no files on the phone to sync the later. Then, if you decide to send the file to a third party. The email is sent in the normal fashion and the attached files are sent immediately afterwards out of .MAC

I'm sure someone could even think up a more elegant way to do this and still not have file storage on the iPhone.

Taking this one step further, the whole argument that the iPhone needs Microsoft Office to appeal to the enterprise market may be totally bogus. I remember when secretaries (remember them?) felt that they really needed an IBM Selectric typewriter in addition to their desk PC. They were reluctant to let go of the old to embrace something much better.

Maybe with the advent of the iPhone we are poised for something much better for communicating and number crunching than MS Office. Imagine how cheap an iPhone might seem if you didn't have to shell out several C notes for MS Office in the first place.

 

[Stridder44]

i guess this is good news.

How would it be bad news? Because "evil Micro$oft" is involved?

And for all you screaming that they have a secret plan to steal the iPhone's layout, well...give me a second to grab my tin foil hat...

 

[bigpics]

That's a good point; particularly with the Sky Drive thing. I'm not so sure what Sky Drive is, but I could see Apple opening up iDisk read/write access for the iPhone. Great way to get more .mac customers; even if potential customers don't own macs.

Sky Drive is MS's online file storage offering. More or less like Carbonite and, well, iDisk.

 

[techne]

Fortune's Big Tech blog reveals that Microsoft is taking a serious look into the iPhone SDK for the possibility of launching their own iPhone-specific applications.
As the article points out, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is one of the largest 3rd party developers for the Mac and brings millions in annual profit to Microsoft. Besides the Mac BU, Voice recognition unit TellMe (now part of Microsoft) is also interested.

TellMe is a voice-driven application for mobile phones.

Article Link

what
about
an
updated
MSN Live Whatever
Official
Updated
Up-to-date
Compatible with the rest
Updated
Webcam enabled
Non-crappy
New
Messenger

 

[andy721]

Having looked at Apple's business practices I feel like the animals at the end of Animal Farm.

So is that a good thing or bad? When the pig says all the animals are freeee and the geese start flying for freedom or whatever, then it starts raining IDK I only youtube that to see what the ending was like. I don't think I can sit through a movie with talking animals.

 

[Cloudsurfer]

The Mac BU is considering the SDK? Oh, please.

 

[chedda]

Balmer backpeddaling

The Mac BU is considering the SDK? Oh, please.

Ha it wasn't long ago Steve Balmer non-sensed the iphone as expensive and not for business users. He really is a gimp now the mac business unit is interested in it ? pulease microshaft and the crappy winblows mobile have clearly been sucker punched while thinking they owned the mobile market. Sure it's expensive but there is no comparison as yet, yeah HTC touch whatever. Balmer watch your words next time, your credibility is now in the minus.

 

[BongoBanger]

Ha it wasn't long ago Steve Balmer non-sensed the iphone as expensive and not for business users. He really is a gimp now the mac business unit is interested in it ? pulease microshaft and the crappy winblows mobile have clearly been sucker punched while thinking they owned the mobile market. Sure it's expensive but there is no comparison as yet, yeah HTC touch whatever. Balmer watch your words next time, your credibility is now in the minus.

You know, you may actually want to wait and see how much business adoption there is before saying things like that.