The Players From Redmond

Microsoft has decided to take on Apple's iPod with a music player that will allow for wireless downloading of content. And it's not a bad idea: The value proposition to the consumer will be that a PC isn't required. Songs will be plucked from midair, like the oldtime radio, provided you have reliable access to a WiFi network.

Although it's funny ... perhaps on some subconscious level Microsoft knows that anytime Windows is removed from the equation, well, consumers usually have a much better experience with technology. But what Microsoft fails to understand is how they always come across like shoddy opportunists who are constantly following the true innovators. Once a market is defined and opened up by a new technology Microsoft can be counted on to come around, sniffing after a revenue stream. This has been true for videogame consoles, windows software, browsers, and various segments of the server market. They start by offering a half-assed improvement to the previous technology, and they finish by using their weight and muscle to bring into line all of the other vendors and providers in that market space.

Sure, everybody takes a shot at the alpha dog. It's unfair that a colossus in the marketplace is expected to tread more lightly than it's nimbler counterparts. But that's the game. And part of Microsoft's problem is that it seems to veer so far away from it's core products to make a few bucks. Nobody has any warm fuzzies about a company that keeps slumping from one market to the next while relying on the fact that we are forced (for no good reason, really) to use Microsoft Office, despite the fact it hasn't offered anything besides marginal improvements in years.

True innovation - in the form of a product or market which is defined from the start without influence from others - this is rare to the point of nonexistence when it comes to Microsoft, which is astounding when you think of how many big bright brains they have working up in Redmond.