How Not To Learn Your Lesson

If you’ve read Scobleizer you know he works for and pushes Microsoft pretty much every chance he gets. Recently he’s been on a kick talking about buzz around the web, citing things like the announcement of Google Moon recently. He also compared Microsoft and Apple in blog buzz and a few wider market counts. His reference to Howard Dean seems on when it comes to blog buzz, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to popularity in the general population. Despite that Scoble still seems to have a touch jealousy about not getting more blog love buzz for Microsoft.

So today he tried to go on the offensive by responding to a MacDailyNews post. Scoble managed to not learn his own lesson here, and most folks will likely call him on it. First off the MacDailyNews article is nothing but name calling (think 2nd grade here), even those who use Apple products (of which I am one) recognize this and quickly move on or completely ignore in the first place. He would have been much better if he’d just left this alone or focused purely on features, not trying to return fire.

But since he did lets take a look at his response:

• Tablet PC: I haven’t seen anyone use a tablet system, and I see a fair number of notebook systems in use by people through out the year. Perhaps it is because I work at a university and that market isn’t interested in tablet systems. Perhaps I’m missing the boat here, but I don’t see this as being a big deal. Having said that though, he is correct on this point, Apple does not offer a tablet system. Neither does Microsoft, they only sell the OS. If I install FreeBSD or Linux on said tablet system then Microsoft is out of the picture. I also couldn’t find anywhere on Microsoft’s website where I could actually purchase a tablet system.
• Media Center: Again, I couldn’t find anywhere on Microsoft’s website to purchase such a thing. They sell an OS for such a thing, but then again I could also use MythTV and get the same thing. He is right on some level though, Apple doesn’t sell a system with Tivo features. Neither does Microsoft.
• Mobile Phone: Still couldn’t find any place on Microsoft’s website where I can buy said Windows phone. They make software for mobile devices, but so do other vendors.
• Mac on Intel: And I can’t get Windows for my PowerPC system. There is a developer system from Apple running on Intel hardware, but that doesn’t really meet the term shipping in this sense. So he does have a small point here, but again if I install FreeBSD/Linux on my Intel box Microsoft is out of the picture. And just like before, I couldn’t find such hardware offered for sale from Microsoft either.
• Integration with XBox: It isn’t clear exactly what he means by this, but if it is simply the ability to have your computer talk to your XBox then he is right Apple doesn’t sell such a thing. I don’t see what this has to do with releasing a new operating system.
• MSN Watches: I have to admit that I’ve never even heard of such a thing. I don’t suppose that it uses any sort of open or published standard so that other vendors can make use of it also? If not how is this Apple’s fault?

The constant theme here is that none of the issues that he brought up has to do with operating systems, specifically Mac OS X Tiger and Windows Vista (or XP for that matter). No where does Scoble actually address the issue of feature comparison between two operation systems. He completely dodged the question entirely, perhaps he should go into politics?

Scoble will likely see his post succeed on one point though, it will probably generate some blog buzz in response. Unfortunately I suspect that most of it will be negative.

Just to be clear, I deal with Windows (2000, XP and 2003), Mac OS X (10.3 and 10.4) and FreeBSD (4.x and 5.x) systems on pretty much a daily basis. Each has strong and weak points and I generally try to do my best to only use each one where their strong points shine and avoid each one where their weak points are most exposed.

UPDATE 23 Jul 2005 1:15pm: After seeing his initial response, I have to wonder if this goal was just to get people talking about Microsoft and Windows. What is that saying about and publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right?