Apple Tablet und Microsofts Untergang

Zwei zumindest als Gedankenspiel interessante (und sehr unterhaltsame) Artikel von Robert X. Cringely, der in den späten Siebzigern bei Apple arbeitete, von Steve Jobs Aktienanteile angeboten bekam, sich aber dafür entschied mit 6$ die Stunde nach Hause zu gehen und heute lieber nicht mehr darüber nachdenken will (wer kann es ihm verübeln?):

Der erste spekuliert über ein Apple Tablet, allerdings etwas abseits der bisherigen Gerüchteküche:

"A year from now, I am sure these technical problems will be solved, but by then Motorola will have been shipping DS-CDMA products for 12 months. And some of those products will be going in that Apple tablet computer. Watch TV in your bathroom, access your audio and video collection from anywhere in the house, control your big screen TV and route video to it from your desktop or the Internet. Take a dozen movies and your entire music collection with you on a trip. Strap the gizmo to the back of your car headrest and entertain the kids. Grab e-mail from a passing WiFi hotspot. Surf the web. Play video games. It will still cost too much, but a million early adopters won't care.
And a year later, when Multiband OFDM gets its act together, Microsoft will claim to have invented it all."

Der zweite befasst sich mit Microsofts Plänen allgegenwärtig zu sein und damit gleichzeitig den eigenen Untergang einzuläuten:

"The step after ubiquity is invisibility.  Last week, I wrote about the peculiar business psychology of Microsoft, and this week, we cut to the chase -- what it all really means.  And the key idea lies in that first sentence.  Microsoft's goal has always been to make Windows ubiquitous, but achieving that goal will ultimately be the company's doom.  And at the highest reaches of Microsoft, they know it.  What was the personal computing revolution has turned into just another part of the electronics business, and even mighty Microsoft risks being commoditized to death.  It is already happening.  Don't think so?  We live in the age of branding and the Microsoft, Windows, and Office brands are among the best-known in any industry, yet how many people actually buy software from Microsoft BECAUSE it's from Microsoft?"