Facebook + Amazon : Social Shopping

Interesting, ZDNet has an article about Debian / Ubuntu package management.

There are some interesting comments about why this wouldn't work in the Windows ecosystem. They're good arguments, but I think Apple just proved that a closely vetted app-store *does* work.

So, sure, an official M$ app-store wouldn't be the only place you could get Windows apps. Maybe Microsoft would only certify a handful of them given that there's an implied approval. Maybe M$ would have to be able to see the source-code and compile it themselves as part of their approval process. Nevertheless I think the app-store model would be incredibly valuable to Microsoft.

Question : Why the hell don't Microsoft have an app-store?

I don't mean why they haven't built an entirely new distribution network for some projected new Windows mobile phone operating system. I mean, why didn't Windows 7 Desktop launch with a complete "give us your credit card number and we automatically install, manage, upgrade everything for you automatically" sort of thing?

I had managed applications from a central repository of packages on my Debian system in 2001. I have it seamlessly on Ubuntu (and have had for a good while). When Apple came along and showed the world that owning an app-store was a great business to be in, all the other mobile providers rushed in and started building their own.

What M$ could have done, is set a few engineers building something similar, for integration with Windows 7. I don't mean a website, I mean something more like win-get (or Debian's apt-get).

I'm installing software on my wife's new Windows 7 laptop today, and I'm amazed, now I come to think about it, that there's no "buy apps" option under the Windows Start button, right next to the list of already installed applications. Why is there no search-box built into Windows to let me find Microsoft-approved 3rd party applications to buy?

Think what a feature this could have been for Windows 7. How it would have driven corporates to upgrade (too expensive to pay our own IT people to install software, better to pay for the new Windows and let Microsoft sort it out.) How it would have energized the MicroISVs and lone developers to continue to invest their energy in Windows (rather than start dabbling on Android and iOS). How it would have given M$ a cut of all the software sold in the Windows eco-system.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like it would have been a good idea, and the more the absence of an app-store in Windows 7 seems like an extraordinary oversight. Was one planned but not finished in time? Was Microsoft too scared of potential legal implications to do with competition? Did they just slip up?

Some great insider anecdotes on Google's 20% time.

Gamasutra on Google's investment in Zynga, possible games platform.

WTF? Why are Google doing this? Smells very wrong (ie. defensive / me-too-ism) to me. And not at all core. (How is this organizing all the world's information?)

But let's see if they have an angle.

Update : I guess Farmville et. al. as a social gaming network that's folded into Google TV might make sense.

Stowe Boyd quickly summarizes the Flipboard debate.

Someone *ought* to be getting ready to buy this.

More on Apple getting into the Enterprise.

This is important. iPads getting into the Enterprise.

iPads are an ideal vehicle for "corporate dashboards". Expect to see every senior(ish) manager want to control their own little empire from one.

It will be very problematic for Microsoft if the iPad becomes the aspirational machine for executives. Here's why : Excel. If M$ don't get Excel onto the iPad, soon, then the iPad will pull people away from Excel. (Rather than Excel keeping people on Windows.)

Suddenly, as well as those dynamic dashboards, executive summaries, quick to-do lists and project plans will all be migrating to whatever catches the imagination of iPad users.

And if M$ lose Excel, then the whole Office edifice starts to collapse.

Very good Douglas Rushkoff talk.

Cringely :

Remember when Ballmer talked through his hat a few years ago about how Microsoft was headed to a model of Windows based primarily on ad revenue? There’s no way in Hell that business model can be sustained for Windows or the PC (or for Macs, either). But make the platform cost $199 and be replaced every 24 months, build-in mobile subscription revenue, MobileMe subscription revenue, content revenue, app revenue and ad revenue, with none of those involving much effort or expense on Apple’s part at all and the future becomes clear.

Worth a listen.

I've long argued that Microsoft are a company built around a profound and fundamental belief : that it was possible to be a pure software company and allow someone else to produce commodity hardware.

Microsoft's DNA is to be a maker and seller of software qua product but not of hardware and not a provider of services.

This was an idea that served them well during the 80s and the explosion of the microcomputer, but served them badly in the 90s during the rise of the internet and its twin correlates : free software and software as a service.

Apple, by contrast, have always been a hardware / software company; which put them at a disadvantage in the 80s and 90s, but proved to be surprisingly fit when they adapted their "full stack" philosophy to become a hardware / software / service company in the last decade (starting with the ipod / itunes / itunes store ecology and moving on to the iphone / ipad etc.)

Anyway, I always thought that, due to free software, and software-as-a-service, the vision of a pure software company was on the wrong side of history.

Today I just had an intriguing thought. What if I was wrong? What if Microsoft's big vision wasn't out-of-date as I supposed? What if it were possible to thrive as a pure software company?

What if the only problem was Microsoft's bad execution? Or if, from their dominant position, Microsoft had come to believe that their role was to capture and dominate platforms, and to extract rent from them? That it was their birthright to own platforms?

That belief has proven to be spectacularly wrong. What if M$ did try to live according to their DNA? And did try to be a pure software company in 2010?

What would they look like?

Well, they would support all important platforms. They wouldn't worry about *owning* platforms, just selling software to take advantage of them. The important platforms today are the web, Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Linux, Facebook, Twitter etc. So if M$ were true to their DNA they'd start producing apps. for these platforms.

When did you last see M$ producing a popular iPhone or iPad app? Or a killer game on Facebook? Or a great Twitter client? Or making sure that Office and Sharepoint and IE and IIS ran on Linux?

If you do start seeing this, then you might start to have some hope for them. That maybe they have started to rediscover their true nature.

New battle between Twitter and Facebook.

Daniel Lyons :

The most telling thing to me was Google's tone toward Apple at the event. Instead of pretending to still be an Apple ally, Google today basically threw down the gantlet and admitted that it's engaged in total war with Apple.

And unlike other Apple rivals, like Adobe, Google execs weren't huffing and puffing and wringing their hands about Apple's bad behavior. No, instead, Google was mocking Apple. Making fun of it. Laughing at it.

So ... GoogleTV. Clearly some interesting ideas.

(I still think they should have gone for the YouTube brand, though.)

Phil Windley's Technometria is a really good. This podcast about Facebook is well worth the listen.

Overview of Facebook vs. Zynga

Jonathan Edwards :

App Ads are potentially a Google-scale cash flow, and Jobs wants it. He wants to sell ads and inject them into apps on the iPhone/iPad/iDesk, just like Google injects ads into web pages. He can’t do that unless all the apps are using his libraries. If he lets Flash apps in, then Adobe would be able to sell the ads instead. That is why section 3.3.9 of the new developer agreement says “the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited”. Like, for example, Ad networks.

Festo is arguably the coolest company in the world at the moment.

Apple vs. everybody