Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Sebhelyesfarku — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 06:46:11 -0000

Why bashing MS and not Nokia? I thought it's obvious. The bloggers in the MS affair were Maczealots. Sending a Windows laptop to a Mactard is like placing a bloody horse head in their bed.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Jeremy Pepper — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:27:33 -0000

I wrote about this a couple days ago on my blog - where I am a Nokia blogger, and disclosed - and what the differences are.

It's an apples / oranges, thing, though.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Pete Prodoehl — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 19:57:10 -0000

I've been trying to get on Nokia's list of folks who can test their phones. I'm a fan of Nokia, but their phones have issues just like anything else. I'd praise the good, and complain about what is wrong, all in the hope that it would be improved in the next rev...

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Bertil — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 07:14:26 -0000

A heated debate: I guess the teaching for tech companies is not to send anything, but have the potential blogger fill in a form like:

[] Send me the disk (and a return envelope)

[] Send me your product with supporting platform :Wink:

[] I'll buy it, just allow me to do so in advance

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Bob Jones — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:58:13 -0000

Okay, in this bizzaro fantasy world where Metrowerks hadn't abandoned CodeWarrior for their embedded platform tools, why would Apple want to spend the time and resources to develop/enhance Xcode (which they don't make a dime on) when an outside company was going to instead?

Metrowerks didn't want to spend the developer time because they were refocusing on a more profitable embedded market, which is why they sold off their x86 stuff to Nokia.

I don't see what Apple has gained from this muscling out CodeWarrior, they don't sell Xcode and it costs Apple a very non-trivial amount of resources.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Bill Sledzik — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 12:15:30 -0000

While it's possible for a blogger to write an objective post about Vista AND keep the laptop, a discerning reader must view the opinion as tainted.

Edelman wouldn't offer a freebie like this to the New York Times, would they? First because it violates the ethical guidelines of most respectable MSM outets, but also because credibility with readers is compromised in the process. You know, once in a while the MSM folks have ideals worth emulating. This is one of those times.

For my complete take: http://toughsledding.wordpr...

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

kaizensand — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:41:54 -0000

There are generally two schools of thought on things being free:

1. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

2. As my grandfather used to always say, if someone's giving you something for free - TAKE IT - and worry about the strings later.

Sorry gramps, but I'm more along the mindset of #1.

Any tech company giving me something supposedly for free wants my bones, blood, and soul. I'll buy my own damn laptop and phone.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Dominic Jones — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:13:38 -0000

The value of the freebie is relevant. The more expensive, the greater the potential to influence, as your $1 million vs. $100 debate illustrates.

We all know that, and that's why the review you link to failed to fully disclose the freebie. The retail value was not disclosed. I guess if you know the guy and know cell phones, you would have an idea of the cost. I don't, so I can't really judge how much incentive he has to say nice things about the phone and gloss over some problems.

If bloggers want to take free stuff, fine as long as they disclose properly and no one is being deceived.

As for whether companies should send free laptops to bloggers so they can try out some software that doesn't work as the average machine, well that's a completely different story. It was a stupid thing for the companies to do because they gained nothing from it.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

LayZ — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:11:36 -0000

@55 Interesting, but not really relevant. The gift baskets for the celebrities are really just additional incentives to get them to show up at the events, and/or "payment/thank yous" for showing up. Same happens, for example at college bowl games. The players get gift baskets with lots of stuff. But, the players aren't expected to shill for those companies. Neither are the celebrities.

There's a difference between getting a gift and bribing someone to hopefully say good things about your product.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Stephen — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 23:24:43 -0000

@Bob Jones

Um, no. You now darn well that the big devs like MS and Adobe were using CodeWarrior up until the intel switch, and only swithched to Xcode because XCode is the only IDE that can make universal binaries. This is common knowledge; don't sit there and try to pretend that Codewarrior abandoned the market and forced everyone to switch to XCode. They didn't abandon the market until they were forced out by Jobs.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:58:52 -0000

For some outside perspective on gifts, three suggestions:

Read the piece in The NY Times today, byRonald Pies, M.D. for a look at the issues involved when patients offer gifts to therapists.

Watch episode 7 of season 6 of the Sopranos, "Luxury Lounge." See what happens when Christopher Moltisante encounters the marketing practice of bestowing luxury gifts on celebrities.

Listen to Frank Loesser's "Take back your Mink" from Guys and Dolls. ("I thought that each expensive gift you'd arrange was a token of your esteem. Now when I think of what you want in exchange, it all seems a horrible dream.")

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Hasan — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 20:34:23 -0000

@Bob Jones,
Project Builder predates OS X by many years -- my NeXT Cube circa 1993 has an almost identical version of Project Builder to the one that Apple shipped in 10.0. As for XCode, Project Builder was, as noted above, early 90s technology. Competing development environments (Eclipse, IDEA, VS.Net) are newer and have more conveniences (code completion, for one), so Apple had to do something about upgrading Project Builder. Unlike Microsoft and Jetbrains, though, Apple provided it for free.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

paul — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:43:11 -0000

Nokia pays a blogger, but how can you bash;
http://anina.typepad.com/an... ?

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Comic Strip Blogger — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:42:30 -0000

Nokia not being monopoly? Why nobody mentioned Symbian Ltd yet?! Symbian Ltd is owned in 49% by Nokia and practically is controlled by Nokia so if companies license Symbian for smartphones Nokia gets half of that no matter what... and on the hand Nokia itself releases Symbian phones with earlier access to the code and insider infos practically cannabilizing license takers of Symbian. In other words Symbian Ltd is just a puppet of Nokia, a cover-up invented to hide Nokia's monopoly.

So you see that Nokia is even worse than Microsoft - Microsoft is licensing Windows Mobile operating system but is not making Windows Mobile phones - and Nokia through their Symbian puppet do both!

Scoble is spot on!

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Jonathan Sheppard — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 19:30:45 -0000

Being sent products to try and test is what companies have always done. As on the post about the laptops. I see no difference in journalists who write book reviews getting the book for free as people who know about technoloy getting new gadgets for free. Surely if you really know what you're talking baout even if a product is free, if it is for want of a better word, "crap" you would write something along the lines of - 'its a good job they're giving it away as they wont sell many of them.'

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

zipidy — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:47:08 -0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Nokia promotes Linux and Open Source/GPL code use in commercial products.

When you go to circuit city, you don't HAVE to buy a Nokia phone. Nobody is forcing you to. You see the difference now?

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Bob Jones — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:11:54 -0000

Stanley, Metrowerks gave up on CodeWarrior for OS X.

Metrowerks focused on embedded platforms and made it quite obvious to everyone, just like how Microsoft's apathy towards IE for the Mac spawned Safari it resulted in the creation of Project Builder/XCode.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Bob Jones — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:09:39 -0000

Nokia makes cellphones.

Microsoft does not make laptops.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Rob Greenlee — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:19:15 -0000

I am part of the Nokia Blogger Review program and must say that the key to this blog review program working is the honesty of the blogger. I always mention in my blog posts about the getting these Nokia phones via this program. I also give an honest review about its abilities in the context of the topic of my blog. My current blog is about Mobile Phone Podcast Listening and the use of Melodeo Mobilcast to do it. In my blog I talk about many types of cool phones that enable podcast listening.

I also think that this program is very smart for Nokia to do. I know that these cool Nokia N-series phones get a lot of attention when I use them in public. I am in the mobile media business and thus these phones get shared a lot in the office and Mobilcast gets tested on these devices.

My teen age kids also use them sometimes and share them with their friends. The benefits of doing this program are huge for Nokia.

I don't think any company should be bashed for doing one of these programs with key influencers. I believe that most of these key influencers are honest people that disclose. I am currently using the N80 phone and it is a small cool phone, but am dying to get the N95 as that sounds like it could be a dream smartphone with a quad-band, wifi, 3G UMTS/HSDPA and 5 megapixel camera. It is only missing an internal hard-drive like the N91.

Rob Greenlee
http://mobilcasting.blogspo...

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

sk — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:10:58 -0000

"Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?"

Simply because Nokia doesn't compete with Apple and Linux.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Stanley — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:59:17 -0000

Oh, I forgot one of Apple's most recent "sins" that they get a total pass on, and it involved their move to intel.

Metrowerks Codewarrior owned the Mac IDE market for years. All the big players (MS, Adobe, etc) used them rather than Apple's offerings (MPW, ProjectBuilder, XCode). But with the move to intel, Apple made it a *requirement* that a developer use their XCode IDE in order to create universal binaries (apps able to run both on PPC and Intel Macs). Now, Codewarrior already had PPC and Intel compilers; all they needed to make universal binaries was the information from Apple on how to package PPC and Intel code into one package that OSX would understand. Apple withheld that info, thus forcing all devs to move to XCode. Codewarrior essentially went out of business shortly thereafter.

Now, imagine if Microsoft made it a requirement that only Visual Studio could be used to make Vista apps. The bloggers and tech community would be all over them like white on rice. Apple does that exact thing, forces a company that had dominated them for years out of business, and that same hypocritical tech community raises nary an eyebrow.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Mauricio Freitas — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:55:49 -0000

@John C Welch

"Ethics that can be changed by free crap weren’t there in the first place."

Agreed...

"Microsoft could give me a new red laptop every day for a year, I’d still not like Vista for the same reasons I currently don’t."

Right. Have you ever used Windows Vista beyond a "look over someone's shoulders"? I mean, like a couple of weeks? I don't think so. I visited your blog just now and there are lotsof affiliate links to Apple products, so obviously you have a biased view on the issue.

Just like everyone else does...

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

Stanley — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:47:43 -0000

The *tech* blogger community is made up of a bunch of tech geeks, and it's "cool" among that set to hate Microsoft like they're the modern version of IG Farben. That's how deluded these haters are.

Some fool above said that Microsoft is full of unethical people and another talked of years of "bad behavior". What are you talking about? Oh, that's right, the bundled a browser in an OS. That violates all 10 Commandements I guess (actually, it violates none of them). The "bad behaviour" you guys speak of wasn't all that bad (it was normal biz practice, but MS was declared to have a monopoly at the time, after that fact, that got them in trouble), and happened 10 years ago! Get over it!!

Meanwhile, Apple has a stock option scandal, uses sweatshops to make iPods, and has been rated as the worst polluter of high-tech companies. They also killed off the Mac clone market, a more blatant abuse of monopoly power (as the sole provider of the Mac OS hardware specs and license) than Microsoft ever committed. Yet the same losers that hate MS for minor transgressions that happened 10 years ago, look a blind eye at Apple's recent, and indeed long history, of "bad behavior" (threatening to sue bloggers, anyone?) and worship Apple and Jobs like he's the Second Coming.

The hypocrisy is palpable.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

blogger@wordpress — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:42:20 -0000

@38 : There was some coverage on that. But not the amount it deserved.

The blogosphere reaction would have been much much worse had Microsoft just sent the media and expected bloggers to install it on a PC or Laptop. Not long ago a team from Firefox was invited to redmond to test compatibility with Vista. The reaction at best for that was cynical. Same when the IE team sent a cake over to firefox.

Re: Why bash Microsoft and not Nokia?

LayZ — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:17:25 -0000

@31. "Microsoft gave out free Vista licenses to some beta testers. What was the blog coverage on that?" Are you seriously asking that question?

There was plenty of blog coverage on that. Read Paul Thurott's site at all? Seems to me Microsoft was trying to overcome the reviews some of the more vocal and honest beta testers were given Vista by given bloggers a pristine experience with it. That was my point.