Microsoft and Apple in tough new world; Management shake-up at Apple; Smartpen gets smarter

1 Microsoft and Apple in tough new world (Jason Pontin in The Financial Times) There is a smug maxim in Silicon Valley and the places that imitate it: “To survive, you must destroy your company every x years” (where x varies according to how much the speaker wants to stress the pace of technological change). Sometimes attributed to Intel’s former chief executive Andy Grove, it is a maxim more often repeated than observed. But it can be a lovely and startling thing when a large, publicly traded company takes a big bet by replacing its core product.

Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system, which went on sale last Friday, is the most dramatic gamble by a technology company since Intel abandoned the memory market to make semiconductors in the 1980s. Windows is a civilisational tool; there are more than 1bn Windows users around the world but when, after being given a new personal computer by their IT manager or buying a new device for themselves, those users boot up the new OS, they will recognise nothing.

 

Gone is the familiar “Start” button and user interface Microsoft has used since it launched Windows 95, 17 years ago. In its place, users will find a screen of shifting colourful tiles. To its new users, Windows 8 will seem as personal – and as non-corporate – as their smartphone or tablet computers. That is the whole idea. The operating system works best with a touchscreen, where users can swipe tiles and icons. To show off the new functionality, Microsoft is selling its first computer, the Surface – a $499 touchscreen tablet whose cover is a small keyboard, so that the device can also function as a small laptop.

It is instructive to compare the launch of Windows 8 and Surface with Apple’s most recent release, the iPad mini. There’s nothing wrong with the mini: for Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, it must seem to fill an important niche – the market for tablets that can be held comfortably in one hand, where Amazon’s Kindle and devices based on Android now dominate. But there’s nothing innovative about Apple’s small tablet. It’s just more of the same. One cannot imagine the late Steve Jobs, Apple’s departed CEO, taking any pride in the thing.

It is an interesting historical moment for the two founding companies of the personal computing revolution. Microsoft knows it is slowly dying but declines to accept its fate. Apple, flush with cash, does not yet have to admit that with the death of its tutelary genius, it has lost its way. But secretly, its executives, designers and developers must fear that something is badly wrong. Jobs always said that technology companies began to die when salespeople and bean counters started making the decisions.

2 Apple’s management shake-up (BBC) Apple has announced a major shake-up of its management, with two senior executives to leave the company. The announcement follows embarrassing problems with its new mapping software and disappointing quarterly results. Scott Forstall, head of its iOS software, will leave next year. He will serve as an adviser to chief executive Tim Cook in the interim. Head of retail John Browett, the former Dixons boss, is also leaving after just six months in the job.

Apple said the moves were a way to increase collaboration across its hardware, software and services businesses. The company faced a barrage of criticism after its new mapping software, introduced last month, showed inaccuracies and misplaced towns and cities. The debacle led to Mr Cook issuing an apology to customers, while some critics called for Mr Forstall's head as he was the executive behind the panned app. No specific reasons were given for either man's departure.

Apple's fourth quarter profits of $8.2bn reported last week, also missed Wall Street forecasts, while the 14 million iPads it sold in the quarter fell short of analysts' expectations. The management changes come a little over a year into Mr Cook's reign as chief executive.

3 Smartpen gets smarter (Benny Evangelista in San Francisco Chronicle) Writing meeting or classroom notes on paper with an ink pen might seem anachronistic these days when there are easier digital alternatives, such as typing on a laptop. But an Oakland company called Livescribe is trying to bridge the gap between analog and digital with what it bills as the first Wi-Fi-enabled pen that automatically stores paper notes and drawings in the cloud.

Livescribe  is selling the Sky Wifi Smartpen, which automatically uploads notes, drawings and graphs written by hand on paper, along with the audio it records, to the user's online Evernote account. Those paper notes and audio recordings then become accessible over the Internet by desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet computer. "We've completely broken down the walls between pen and paper and the digital world," said Gilles Bouchard, Livescribe chairman and chief executive officer.

The Sky costs $169.95 for a model with 2 GB of audio storage capacity, $199.95 for a 4 GB model and $249.95 for an 8 GB model.