Microsoft Encouraging OEMs to Beautify Computers 563
Grooves writes "Microsoft has shipped a 'Vista Industrial Design Toolkit' to PC manufacturers, meant to
encourage them to design computers that are more visually appealing. From the article: 'From color palettes to suggestions about how the power and reset buttons should appear, the kit basically describes Microsoft's vision of what a Vista PC should look like. The look features accelerated curves and purposeful contrast, among other qualities.' The report goes on to say that Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.' Sound familiar? It's hard to see budget-conscious OEMs stepping up to this."
The first of many such comments... (Score:4, Insightful)
I desire my PC to be pure of spyware, security flaws and unstability.
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow Macs do this and manage to be sexy at the same time. That said, I have a PC at work and home. I'd buy a Mac for home except that Macs are sadly lacking in the one field in which I work (video game development).
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Informative)
Eh?? (Score:3)
He never suggested buying a MacBook Pro or an iMac. Secondly Apple desktop computers will become available pretty soon and until they do become available and we have seen t
Re:Eh?? (Score:3, Interesting)
...and don't assume they *will* have all the game-friendly features and power that a non-Apple gaming machine has right now. It's great to speculate what power these new Macs will have, but at the present time, Macs are not stellar game machines.
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
The MacBooks battery has ~5100mAh @12V. Under normal usage condition we get 4 hours of use. This works out to the machine using 5100*12/4=~15.3Watts. If we increased this to account for a non-integrated graphics card, we'd see ~18Watts (conservatively). 5100*12/18=3.4 hours, or about 36 minutes less of battery power. Plus the MacBooks already run warm, now we have to run further cooling, etc.
Most users of the MacBook however do not require high-end graphics. The GMA950 is good enough for all of Quartz's 3D graphics, and should be fine for all of 10.5's 3D effects. Also, all these gamers who complain about macs having underpowered graphics like this don't take into account that they're not in apples target audience anyhow. They would never want to buy a mac simply because OSX doesn't have the games for it that Windows does, and won't unless they get a much larger market share. Personally I'm very happy with apples decisions.
Phil
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:3)
Is OpenGL+SDL that bad?
Anyway, my Linux manages to do this, be sexy, and still play Half-Life 2.
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're writing stuff for PC and XBOX (or XBOX 360), you use DirectX not OpenGL. PS2 usually uses a custom renderer or a package like Renderware. Only PS3 uses a graphics API similar to OpenGL and most people are going to bypass that for the low-level graphics API for performance reasons. Game Development IDES like Visual Studio (XBOX/XBXO360), SN (PS2/PS3), and CodeWarrior (PS2/PSP/etc) have licensing controls built-in that *ONLY* allow them to run on specific Windows PCs (either by MAC # or with floating licenses off an attached network server). Additional debugging tools (PIX, CATS, WinPACon, etc.) only run on Windows. At one time, Sony actually made a lot of their PS2 tools run on Linux but since developers had to use Windows for everything else, this effort hindered the tool usage until they made cygwin ports for windows. Finally, no one in the industry has made any serious effort to get the game-programming specific development tools we use to run on Macs.
Macs are sexy and nice, they're just not practical for my job. Sorry...
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, in my current position as a game programmer for a major company, I have almost no control over the actual platforms we target for game design for current gen or next gen. These decisions are made much higher by management and marketing based on potential market and profitability. When it costs $10-20 million to make a game, no one wants to target a small unproven market. The best they'll risk is low-cost ports after the main game is written. In other words, incremental work that may increase the ROI from the already complete game. Find me a single publisher who will fund a 20-30 person team on a Mac game for two or more years because a programmer told them to do so and I'll eat my words. That's the effort going into high-end PC and console games right now and the sad facts of the economics.
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:4, Interesting)
Your strawman argument is pretty amateurish, even by Slashdot standards. I would argue that misdirected idealism is the cause of most of the bloodshed throughout history, not apathy. If Pol Pot, Stalin, and Robespierre had cared about nothing but money their homelands might well be better off.
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no personal desire to throw away my career or my company's money on developing a project projected to lose millions of dollars regardless of how sexy it is. It's hard enough to make money on PC's and Consoles as it is without targeting a niche market without a distribution channel. And equating my reluctance to push for more game development on an inexistant market to the "worst atrocities, of all kinds
There's no reason to throw away a happy life, a career, and millions of dollars on some eco-freak hippie whiners like you who think I should "grow a pair" and service them.
Are you an editor??? (Score:2, Funny)
by Stavr0 (35032)
You MUST be an editor of slashdot, right?
Re:The first of many such comments... (Score:5, Funny)
Porn sites lead to spyware.
I see your point.
What they really said... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What they really said... QWZX (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What they really said... QWZX (Score:5, Insightful)
Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
You know that I'm fighting the urge to make a Goatse comment right now.
Anyway, I am glad that Microsoft is fighting against beige box syndrome. Computer makers seem to think that painting their 'puters black instead of off-white is what consumers want. I disagree. The important thing is that all designs are durable. My wonderful Sony Clie NX-73V failed because of a broken power switch. I would be ever angrier if that happened to my prettified computer.
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Its kind of like why people enjoy decorating their rooms/dorms/etc with posters and other such junk: they want their living space to be an extension of themselves and their personality/interests. The PC is just
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
When you've got a product in a comodity market where the software (which costs about $.50 to duplicates can cost more than the hardware (which costs $200 + to duplicate), you don't have a whole lot of room in the 'make it look pretty' department.
If you want a pretty box, then go to a corner computer store and buy one of thei
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
You do realise, don't you, that software developers don't work for free at Apple (or Microsoft) and therefore the true cost of software is not the duplication cost? Oh and there's graphic designers, test hardware, etc. as well.
Re:Object of Desire?!?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
vs Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Dan East
Re:vs Apple (Score:5, Funny)
In the Dell Corprate HQ.... "Mike, we want you to make Dells look pretty so people won't notice Vista as much"
"Fuck off, Ballmer"
Re:vs Apple (Score:3, Funny)
In the Dell Corprate HQ.... "Mike, we want you to make Dells look pretty so people won't notice Vista as much"
"Fuck off, Ballmer""
It'd be pretty funny if Dell started producing chair shaped Vista machines.
Re:vs Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see it as a way to fight Apple but just as a way to get a better selling of their products. If you can have manufactures in their showrooms showing Vista on a computer that
Re:vs Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Loose vs. lose (Score:2, Informative)
loose (adjective): slack, not tight
Come on, guys. English isn't *that* hard to get right.
Design from MS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Design from MS? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Design from MS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Design from MS? (Score:4, Funny)
do stock certificates count?
Most PCs are objects of desire (Score:4, Funny)
After all, that's where everybody keeps their porn.
Not necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe the words you're looking for are... (Score:2)
we would have known what you meant. Most of us are multilingual with *spoken* lanugages, too.
Re:I believe the words you're looking for are... (Score:5, Funny)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe that is due to misshaps that Apple made during the early and mid 90s (this is before Steve Jobs and OS X). Apple had a hard time creating a modern OS (Pink, Taligent, Copland), while Microsoft started to improve their OSes to the point that they surpassed the original Mac OS in stability and performance while almost matched it in usability (Windows 95 and especially Windows NT-based products). In 1999, I'd choose Windows 2000 over Mac OS 9 any day for most tasks. Had Apple's failed OS ventures actually didn't fail, then perhaps Apple's marketshare would be much more substantial.
Windows and non-Mac PCs are still selling very well for a few reasons. Businesses are still heavily dependent on Windows software. But the biggest reason why MS has 95% and Apple has 5% is the price of admission is much lower. You can buy an entry level desktop for $300 and an entry level laptop for $600. It would come with some Celeron processor, a somewhat shabby graphics card, the traditional bundled applications (that don't really play together with other applications, unlike iLife and OS X's integration), and XP Home. However, this is what 90% or so of the computer population wants to buy; a computer fast enough to do email, word processing, photo editing, DVD watching, web browsing, music downloading, and other everyday tasks. For them, that $300 Celeron machine or $600 Celeron laptop would suffice.
Now, if you spend $600 (or $1100 for the laptop), you can get a Mac. The Mac comes with OS X, iLife, a pretty nice processor (1.5GHz Core Solo for the $600 Mac Mini, 1.66GHz Core Duo for the $800 Mini, and 1.83GHz Core Duo for the $1100 MacBook), decent graphics (I'm typing this on a MacBook now; the Intel Integrated Graphics on this machine isn't very hampering unless you are a intense gamer, which I am not). All of the iLife applications work together. I enjoy the searching capabilities of Spotlight and use them every day. I like how Spotlight is integrated with all of my other applications. For a Unix hacker like myself, the terminal is just a click on the Dock away. I don't have to worry about bad drivers, malware, viruses, or anything like that. I work with a peace of mind.
Macs are worth the price. When I showed my parents and siblings my Mac and fooled around with it for a few days, they fell in love with it. They were sold on buying a Mac, and they are now saving up for a iMac. The problem is that cheaper PCs are good enough for 90% of the market. Windows XP "just works" now (as long as you keep an eye on security), and Vista will be far better than XP (insert "it's a copy of OS X here"; say what you want, but Vista is still better than XP). Perhaps they haven't had exposure to OS X; my parents were sold on the Mac within a few days. Perhaps they still must have a Windows PC for their jobs (and they don't know that Intel Macs can run Windows natively). Or, perhaps that money is an issue for most people.
Many people say that in order for Apple to increase its marketshare, they should release OS X to all x86 PCs. After owning a Mac for a few days, I'll disagree. Most users don't know how to install an OS, assuming that they know what an OS is. Plus, part of the benefit of buying a Mac is that you know that all of your hardware works. You don't have to scrounge the Net looking for drivers; your hardware in most cases "just works." Finally, it will make Apple have to compete with Microsoft in Microsoft's domain: OSes. Apple would be back in the Spindler/Amelio days of cloning and red ink. The best way for Apple to raise its marketshare is to lower its price of admission and provide some more variety in Mac offerings (while retaining a clear-cut consumer/pro line). How about a Core Solo MacBook for $700? How about knocking down the Mac Mini to $500 again just like it was originally was in January 2005. How about releasing that iMac for Education to the general public for $999? That will make a large increase in Apple's marketshare, because they will be much closer to the price points that most consumers buy their computers at.
Re:So... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, MS has 100% market share if you consider that Windows now runs natively on Apple hardware. But you'd be better off considering Apple as a harware manufacturer and comparing them to Dell, HP and the likes and not Microsoft.
Here are Gartner's numbers [twice.com]
Which show Apple is the 4th largest after Dell, HP and Gateway.
Comparing OS numbers is only relevant for Software developers now that Macs run Windows. Which may have been brilliant marketing, but also the new reality.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the reality is that it's actually a bit more complex than that. Microsoft gained their market dominance early on by hanging on the coat tails of a much older monopoly. (IBM) Once IBM had successfully evicted the other competitors from the market, Microsoft became a software monopoly. Considering that they had no scruples to be
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
They were convicted of using their dominant market share (gained via IBM's entry into the PC business back when Apple and Commodore were the top dogs) to maintain their current market share. The question was, "Why does MS have 95%....", not, "How did they get it?"
Microsoft got dominant because they road on the the coat-tails of the dominant computer force of the time (IBM). They maintained their dominance through unethical behavior (the whole DR-DOS thing, followed up through Netscape, etc).
The "illegal anti-trust" activities are only "illegal" and "anti-trust" once you already have dominant marketshare, which they achieved by providing superior value (in conjunction with the hardware vendors) to the consumers.
I thought the question was about how Microsoft has 95% share today (which they don't, any longer), rather than how they got it? In that case, the GP poster is correct.
But, 'superior value?' Not by any real metric I've ever seen. Microsoft gained market dominance with IBM. Once Compaq cloned the hardware, Microsoft made exclusive distribution deals with them (Compaq just needed an OS). Every big manufacturer of computers went to Microsoft for the OS, because Microsoft was the only game in town.
When DR-DOS started picking up market share because it provided superior value, Microsoft basically told the computer sellers, "If you want to ship MS-DOS, you can't give the consumer the choice of DR-DOS." Later, when MS-Windows finally took off (with MS-Windows 3.1), this restriction had some serious teeth. Later, they used similar "deals" with the distributors to lock out WordPerfect and WordPerfect Office, which provided superior value to MS-Office.
This whole scenerio has been repeated several times in the course of Microsoft's rise to dominance. It was their one way of locking out competition.
There was never one time when Microsoft offered "superior value." There was a time when they had an exclusive deal with IBM (the 800-pound gorilla of the day), because IBM as a corporation didn't take the PC market seriously. By the time the PC took off, Microsoft was already firmly entrenched in the distribution channels, whether it was IBM or Compaq or Gateway. Then it turned out that IBM could eventually produce a superior operating system (OS/2), but didn't know how to market it. Gah! Idiots!
Microsoft ended up where they were because the hardware was a superior value proposition, and they worked it so that they were the only software that could get sold on that hardware. Microsoft worked hard to keep competitors out of their distribution chains. They have been so convicted in several countries, not just the US.
So again, the GP post was correct.
In conclusion, I'd say that Microsoft has hindered progress, not helped it. By locking out competition, Microsoft has been a regulatory force on the industry, pushing their goals on everyone else. And, near as I can tell, they've done this with never once providing "superior value."
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just an FYI on this, Microsoft and IBM collaborated on OS/2. Microsoft provided most of the usability while IBM provided the underlying technology. A few Microsofties then managed to get Windows to boot into Protected Mode, which caused Microsoft to back out of OS/2 in favor of retrofitting Windows with their Chicago technology & Win32 library to create Win95.
So IBM was never actually able to successfully create a consumer operating system. If they had such skills, they would have nailed the market after Microsoft backed out. Instead they put up a weak fight with, "Wow, I can do more than one thing!" advertisments that just didn't have any staying power.
Since I'm replying again anyway, I think it's important to clarify: Microsoft was never in a position where they weren't a dominant power in the market. From their Microsoft BASIC empire, all the way to Windows, they have always had power to weild over others, and they have always abused that power. The world might be a far more interesting place today if Microsoft had never existed.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
That certainly explains why Apple continues to dominate sales of new PCs.
The time to start worrying is now (Score:5, Funny)
"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good." [thinkexist.com] - Bill Gates.
haha (Score:5, Funny)
Re:haha (Score:2)
You see, since I work for a greeting card company we have a lot of the Mac vs. PC compatability issues. Thus, now and then we get a request for IT to install a Macintosh for s
Reset button (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reset button (Score:2)
Re:Reset button (Score:2)
Palm's PDAs on the other hand have reset pins that need to be unscrewed from the stylus to be used. And some even need a third-party paperclip! Unfortunately Palms have about the same freeze rate as Pocket PCs.
And the monitor case... (Score:2)
Pretty boxes?!? (Score:2, Funny)
Right?
Re:Pretty boxes?!? (Score:2)
Why do people think that a cmpany -must concentrate all their focus on 1 thing at a time? All successful companies are balanced and work on many things at once.
Hot grits? (Score:2, Funny)
Yet further (Score:2, Insightful)
This is yet further evidence of how MS have forgotten and broken their business model. They rose to prominence on cheap commodity hardware -- they empowered users and manufacturers alike to use whatever they wanted to get the job done, at a time when NeXT, SGI, Apple and Sun were competing to lock customers in to shiny, proprietary, non-serviceable hardware.
Hard to believe that even the most fundamental lessons from MS's years of success can have been forgotten -- but there it is.
Re:Yet further (Score:2)
It's basically non-serviceable, unless you buy overpriced parts from the OEM.
Yes, you can swap hard disks and optical drives, and maybe add/replace RAM, but otherwise they are full of servicing pitfalls.
Re:Yet further (Score:2)
It's not that they've forgotten their business model, but that it's become outdated, specifically because of their success. When you have 95% of the market, you have no place to go but down. Offering users greater choice and freedom won't help you grow, but it only makes it easy for people to use something else.
And that's the great inversion of this whole story, is that by being successful, Microsoft has forced itself into a corner where it needs to be anti-competitive in order to keep their market. At
Oh, so important. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, sure. After all, we know how unbelievably gorgeous Lenovo laptops [ibm.com] are.*
Actually, I suspect that this, more than anything else, is a sign of just how concerned Microsoft is that Apple is about to eat their lunch. The "beautify the box" message is inteneded as a point of product differentiation, but the only other product in this space who is doing better than Microsoft here is Apple. Unless you know of a company who is making really attractive Ubuntu boxes. (And if so, please let me know. I have a birthday coming up.)
* I should note at this point that in my previous job I administered a lab full of IBM ThinkPads. They were absolutely monster workhorses, and I have nothing bad to say about them. I mean, other than the fact that I was stupid and didn't set BIOS passwords right away, and as a result lost one laptop to some MBA student thinking he'd be cute and setting a boot password. Whoopsie.
Re:Oh, so important. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, so important. (Score:2)
Re:Oh, so important. (Score:2)
Real Doll? (Score:2)
Hard to see? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow the phrase, "Microsoft-approved" seems to be heading in a direction that I never thought possible. Not only will software writers have to conform, but now PC manufacturers should worry about how their systems look, just because they *might* be used to run Vista? What arrogance. Some things never change.
The Mac isn't a good comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always loved third party cases and keyboards and monitors moreso than the Big Four for the same reason that I've always liked clones -- they've pushed the envelope before the big guys did. The downside is that the clones never seemed to sell well in the corporate environment nor in the newb home environment; the clones were just powerhouse sellers for us geeks. By having Microsoft "dictate" what they want to see, we may actually see more third parties offering competition to the Big Four, which in turn could see prices drop a bit more, which could push more legal Microsoft products into the fray.
All around, there are some Mac-branding similarities, but I don't really think that is Microsoft's desired goal to miMac (mimic the Mac, in my vernacular). I think it is just a good idea that will help the little(r) guys, and still give the big guys a chance to offer different products that the market can choose from.
Rnd (Score:2)
Table of Contents (Score:5, Funny)
Getting Smart: Our new user interface needs some magic and copies Aqua -1
Making Titanium-looking cases from inexpensive aluminum -2
Preventing dual-boot -3
Wacky driver troubleshooting -4
Thwarting competing anti-virus makers-5
Understanding why we have so many versions of the same thing, and how to sell it -6
Learning how to shave like Steve Jobs -7
Appendix A: Stock options manual for new employees
Appendix B: Using your wife's PR company to kill everyone's love for you
Appendix C: Why Longhorn isn't a cheese
Mmm...desire.... (Score:5, Funny)
That might work too well (Score:2)
No. (Score:2)
They'll try, and fail, as they have in the past. Remember that little blue Compaq that looked kind of like an SGI O2? It had an LCD panel in the front that could show you the time or if you had emails. (This was made when Celeron 500s were cool--I remember a friend had one.) How about that little grey tube thingie that Dell made for a while, a little after Compaq ditched that blue model? I think it was called, like, Web Jr., or something. Came and w
Re:No. (Score:2)
Ah, yes, the Dell WebPC, I remember laughing about that one. What a half-assed, me-too product. You are correct in your recollection that it didn't last very long. A quick Googling reveals it was announced on November 30, 1999 and quietly discontinued in June of 2000.
~Philly
cash (Score:3, Funny)
It's a lot like the toolkit they shipped to DC lobbyists encouraging the govt to go easy a few years ago. No wait, that was cash....
Design suggestion (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Design suggestion (Score:3, Funny)
I want my computer small and invisible. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't want a another pretty but big object in my house.
MS vision very close to my image of Vista PC (Score:4, Funny)
Dear John (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that you are doing a lot of things lately to tell me what I want out of your products. Vista's new UI, and now these fancy industrial design specs.
Guess what? I couldn't care less what the shape of my PC is. It is under the desk with my UPS, subwoofer and trash can. And I have no need for a fancy new desktop UI, especially one that takes resources away from what I actually want to do with my computer, like photo and video editing.
What I want is excellent software, compatible with open standards, for a reasonable price. You used to deliver this. When you delivered virtual memory and preemptive multitasking, you were ahead of Apple. Now you seem way behind. And also, I want you to support open standards so that I can use other products with others that haven't paid you a licensing fee, such as open source. I'm not a sheep to lock in. Hello Linux and OSX.
And your prices are far from reasonable. The fact that I can't transfer a OEM Windows licence from one PC to another is rubbish. The fact that you want $399 for the standard edition of office, which I have paid you for several times over the years is robbery. I was happy with the functionality of office five years ago. Why should I need to buy it again? Hello, Open Office.
I'm not a sheep, Microsoft. You used to be innovative. Now you are all about marketing. Its been fun, but we're breaking up!
Reset? What's that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Macs don't have reset buttons. 'nuff said.
It's an effort to justify higher prices (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to imagine that there is $1200 worth of electronics in the new Dell computer I just got at work. As cell phones and iPod-like devices become ever-more powerful at sub-$200 prices, it's going to cast an ever-more powerful spotlight on the PC market. I've thought for some time that we are on the verge of seeing PC's become commoditized like calculators.
This latest blurb from Mircosoft is an attempt to stop PCs from becoming generic commodities - because once they start to look like that consumers will expect them to be priced like that.
I already do.
Steve
Re:It's an effort to justify higher prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Those OEMs couldn't "beautify" anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they finally realized... (Score:5, Funny)
Real Design considerations. (Score:5, Interesting)
The design of the product goes 'way beyond just cosmetics. There is only so much you can do with an enclosure for a PC board, but there is LOTS you can do with the system as a whole. Case modding is just a place to start. Functional design improvements are being made in everything from the input devices ( http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,111201
The IDEO method cards are different from the "Creative Whack Pack" or "Thinkertoys" cards, in that they redefine the product design domain. The jobs of the future are going to be design jobs requiring both high creativity and high technical ability. If someone in India or China can do your job as well and cheaper than you, or if a computer can do your job better and faster, your job is obsolete.
What I'd like to see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lower electrical power -- I'd like to be able to reel in consumption, slow down the CPU and power use when not needed. If drives took less power, you could run them off some daisy-chained juicier USB2 or FireWire.
Quieter machines -- one shouldn't have to sacrifice or pay big bucks just to knock 20dB off the sound output of the fans/drives.
Fast bluetooth -- or an equivalent thereof. Maybe something that would make sense with external HDDs, as well as cameras, camcorders, phones, etc. Monitors?
Cheap low-power monitors with decent color for video work would be nice too (the LCDs with the truest color are just too expensive compared to the CRTs).
After that, I'd put aesthetics -- which I don't care too much about since my PC's under the desk.
Just trying to increase sales (Score:3, Interesting)
There was a big push to beautify boxes just after Apple started their resurgance. It had an impact, but not a big one. People still looked for the same thing...the cheapest price. I don't know anyone who will buy a new computer just because the new one has a prettier box.
Who cares about looks? I want a quiet computer. (Score:4, Insightful)
MS has forgotten who they are (Score:3, Interesting)
MS is a software company not hardware. Although, in the last decade it can be argued that the products only exist to give the marketing department something to do.
This "Industrial Design Toolkit" screams "we're afraid of Apple". MS obvisously wants to strongarm the OEMs into creating simulacrums of Apple's product design philosophy. It works for Apple because there's really only one person at the top: Steve Jobs. Never mond the fact that Apple hardware and software visually mesh, with the design itself being clean and elegant, if not minimalist.
MS plus all the OEMs will not be able to pull this off. Will Dell, HP, Lenovo, or any other OEM be willing to adhere to design guidelines that reduce or eliminate the recognizability of their products for the sake of the software installed on them (which is not their product)? Hell no. The next step would be for MS to require that all laptops have a light-up Windows logo on the back of the screen in order for the OEM to get reduced cost Windows licensing. The OEMs will laugh at that, and many lawyers will get rich off of the lawsuits.
The only way an industry wide hardware branding for Vista can happen is if MS outright buys the PC divisions of every OEM in existance, and begin to make themselves into a mirror of Apple. But, they won't do that, because a 400% margin on software (Office) is more profitable than an 8% margin on all the hardware to run Office. Of course, it's more than likely that they would completely botch this, and in 10 years there would be little left of the PC market.
Plus, this is just another seemingly innocent move which reveals that MS is very afraid that Vista won't sell on its own.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a decent idea (Score:3, Interesting)
But i'm all for breaking away from the ubiquitous beige box. Granted these days it's the ubiquitous black box, but the point is valid. A computer is a household appliance not unlike your TV or your dish washer. People go out of their way to buy matching washers and dryers. Dishwashers are often sold with optional faceplaces to match the kitchen. And there is always a tendy color of the decade such as avacado or almond. If microsoft wants to go out of their way to create color pallets, more power to them. Odds are there would be one that is not too offencive. It would be nice to be able to at the very least get a matching monior, keyboard, and printer.
But most important, really most imporant I see is standarzing the size and shape and color of the power and reset buttons. This isn't an issue for slashdot users, but joe user and easily be confused with the placement of the power button. I'm not being insulting, you can spy them with ease if you look dead on but when the desktop moves under the desk, the only thing you can see is this round bit and this other round bit, where round bit could be sleep, reset, or off. And between the location and placement of power buttons on desktops, monitors, printers, well you can see where this would be an issue. This is one of those cases where it doesn't actually matter too much what the end result looks like, so long as there is something consistent. For example, no bugger knows how to turn on my canon ip5200 printer, they alway hit the silver button next to the unlit LED which is resume stop, or the button dead center which is the front cover release.
Hopeless (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The point of the robot... (Score:2)
Re:I want my Vista PC to Shout Out What It Is (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I was thinking of that old ad about the guy rushed to the hospital because he has "money coming out the wazzoo." [superbowl-info.com] That's what I want my computer to do--spit cash out the back! Or maybe just a windows where it burns $100 bills to power itself... :^)
Seriously, though, you have a point. I'm sure part of the reason Micr