If you while away the time waiting for a subway train by browsing the display ads on the wall opposite the platform, you may have been struck by some recent Microsoft advertisements. They show office workers wearing dinosaur-head masks engaging in laboured banter in which one worker berates the other for his or her obsolete work practices.
My first reaction was that Microsoft had picked a turkey of an advertising agency because the ads and the dialogue are so entirely devoid of the creativity large advertising budgets are supposed to command. But this rapidly gave way to puzzlement. You see, it's clear that the people in the ads are users of Microsoft software: they have to be, because most office workers are. So why is Microsoft insulting its users by portraying them as dinosaurs?
Daft ads
Treating your customers as idiots is not generally a sustainable business strategy, though the record and movie industries haven't quite twigged that yet.
But Microsoft isn't a brain-dead organization, so what's with these daft ads?
The answer, as it happens, was staring me in the face, but it took a ramble through the blogosphere to realize it. I came on a marvellous essay by John Gruber, a well-known Apple nerd, in which he pondered the malaise that is currently gripping Microsoft.
He begins with the paradox that the company's financial results are still staggeringly good -- US$3.89 billion in profit last quarter. Yet Microsoft's share price dipped when the figures were released -- and indeed the price has been essentially flat since 2002 and hasn't really moved much since 1998.
Now you might say that if a profit of a billion dollars a month constitutes a malaise, we all should be so unwell. But Gruber is right; something is definitely wrong with Microsoft.
In the past, people have put this down to a corporate mid-life crisis: the company (founded in 1975) is moving into middle age and is having a difficult menopause.
Gruber, however, has a different interpretation. He thinks that Microsoft's problem is that it has run out of enemies.
The company, Gruber writes, "is clearly a victim of its own staggering success. What they've done best, historically, is kill and/or neuter their competitors. That's why they're gearing up for a fight against Google; Microsoft, as a company, defines itself by its rivalries.
They relegated early PC peers like WordPerfect, Lotus, and Borland to relative obscurity; then, famously, they outright obliterated Netscape. In the 1990s, to sell copies of Word, they needed to beat Word Perfect, and they did; to sell Excel, they needed to beat Lotus 1-2-3." And did.
But now there's nobody left to beat. Or, at any rate, nobody left to beat at the old game.
Google refuses to play ball by releasing operating systems or office software, preferring to do everything via the Web. Open Source software refuses to play by not belonging to a company that can be intimidated, purchased or exterminated in the old way. And although Apple is a company, it's not a satisfactory enemy because it primarily sells hardware, whereas Microsoft sells only software.
For most companies, the absence of competition would represent a kind of nirvana. But Microsoft is a corporate extension of Bill Gates' personality.
As Gruber says, it defines itself by its enemies. Which brings us neatly back to those baffling ads on the subway. Their hidden subtext is this: Microsoft has discovered a new enemy -- its users. Or, more precisely, those who use older versions of its software.
Why? Because, for good or ill, they have become accustomed to older versions of Windows and Office.
They may not love them, but broadly speaking, the software does what they want. Office is already overloaded with exotic "features" that 95 per cent of its users never bother to even try. These refuseniks know that upgrading to the forthcoming versions of Windows and Office will bring pain, uncertainty and expense and an awful lot of them are likely to say "no, thank you very much."
Coup
And while all of this has been going on, Google's weevils have been gnawing away at the foundations of the Microsoft empire. In a surprisingly under-reported coup, the search engine paid Dell an unspecified sum to have its browser toolbar and desktop-search software pre-installed on the company's PCs and their homepages set to a co-branded portal site.
Last year, Dell shipped more than 37 million PCs and servers. That means Google could conceivably put its search box in front of 100 million new PC owners over the life of the deal. And because most computer users never change the default settings on their PCs, that means they will never see a search engine other than Google. Who said computers were boring?
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Wednesday said that a new chip manufacturing technology called “A16” is to enter production in the second half of 2026, setting up a showdown with longtime rival Intel over who can make the fastest chips. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of advanced computing chips and a key supplier to Nvidia and Apple, announced the news at a conference in Santa Clara, California, where TSMC executives said that makers of artificial intelligence (AI) chips will likely be the first adopters of the technology rather than a smartphone maker. Analysts said that the technologies announced on
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
CALL FOR DIALOGUE: The president-elect urged Beijing to engage with Taiwan’s ‘democratically elected and legitimate government’ to promote peace President-elect William Lai (賴清德) yesterday named the new heads of security and cross-strait affairs to take office after his inauguration on May 20, including National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to be the new defense minister and former Taichung mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) as minister of foreign affairs. While Koo is to head the Ministry of National Defense and presidential aide Lin is to take over as minister of foreign affairs, Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) would be retained as the nation’s intelligence chief, continuing to serve as director-general of the National Security Bureau, Lai told a news conference in Taipei. Koo,
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues