Opinion

Microsoft is Surface ..ing?

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This week Microsoft and Apple launched their new products, just in time for Christmas … , the Surface with Windows 8 and the iPad mini.
Up until June this year I would have denied ever considering buying a Microsoft product, because it’s incredibly innovative and intuitional. But that changed in June when the
Surface surfaced on the tablet market with its new operating system Windows 8. Somehow one knows when something is really innovative and game changing and that’s what I felt when I saw the Surface tablet and its user interface. Already the design of the tablet with built in stand and click on keyboard, the colors and the whole feel about it. Then the user interface of Windows 8 with its entirely intuitive approach of the colored tiles, ready to touch to go to the application you want to work with and you can create the user interface that suits you, completely personalized. This is so much what the a creative user wants, fast, intuitive, personal, direct and easy, a real innovation to support creative workflow. That’s how I would have described an Apple laptop two years ago, but not anymore.
The Apple software has become counter-intuitive, slow, disturbing and annoying. The design of features like address book and calendar is hurting the eye and using them has become entirely counter-intuitive and irritating. It was perfect until OSX Snow Leopard, but it is not anymore. The new iPad mini is nice, but it is not innovative and it is expensive. Apple didn’t come with something really new, it followed the competitors to have also a smaller tablet and to cash in this market segment.
Apple the leader in innovation for decades has turned into the follower … for decades? Is
Microsoft surfacing from the depth of being the heavy weight giant to become the innovative leader? The first queues for the Surface are already lining up in front of the Microsoft shops.

Innovation will always win.


Ute Sonnenberg for
www.rohoyachui.com




Facebook: It's free and always will be. … really?

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Earlier blog posts shed already a light on the changes in Facebook and how it affects access to your friends and fans. It was going on for a while, but since Facebook became a public company it started jumping into your face, that they have only one goal, as much money for the investors as possible.
It was quite from the beginning an issue to get access to the people who signed up for your events when you had a Facebook page, although you had to run adverts for people to see them. So you paid for the adverts for your events and then you were not allowed to send messages to the people who signed up? Yes, it was like that, warnings popped up that you were sending spam and that your account would be suspended, if you continue. The next step was that you couldn’t send messages to your Facebook page fans. The same warning came and it didn’t take long and you could see only a fraction of your fans. To the others you couldn’t get access at all. And the best of it is that you paid adverts for you Facebook page for people to know you are out there, the liked it, became fans and now you were not allowed to access them, your own fans.
This tendency got worse since about May this year. Facebook now started restricting how many of YOUR fans are seeing your posts on your fan page. Now they want you to pay for your posts to be seen by your fans and they call it “sponsored posts”. The moment you tried it once, they slow you down even more. Now only a fraction of a fraction can see your posts on your own fan page with your fans. They want you to do it again, they want your money. So what is left of the slogan you see whenever you log into Facebook “It’s free and always will be.”?
Read also the blog post from Dangerous Minds on the topic. What will happen when Facebook carries on making their clients more and more unhappy? What happens to the small clients also happens to the big. How long will they take it?

Read:
Facebook: I want my friends back. Dangerous Minds

Ute Sonnenberg for
www.rohoyachui.com