Gizmodo: "How a Silly Phone for Teens Reveals Microsoft's Plan for Us All"

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://gizmodo.com/5547676/how-a-silly-phone-for-teens-reveals-microsofts-plan-for-us-all' target='_blank'>http://gizmodo.com/5547676/how-a-si...plan-for-us-all</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Despite its mobile prowess, Apple sucks at the internet. But surprisingly it's Microsoft-not Google-that's best positioned for Our Future in the Cloud. Here's why..."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1275954435.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>A well-written, well-researched piece by John Herrman - definitely worth the read. I agree with his general conclusions, and share his feeling that Microsoft is uniquely positioned to pull off some amazing integration...but I've been saying that same thing for several years in a row now. Microsoft seems really slow at pulling together all the pieces - it's a no brainer for Microsoft to leverage the Kin Studio for Windows Phone 7, but the question is, will they do it in time for launch? Or will it take them until Windows Phone 8 to make that happen? The mobile space is all about speed, and that's not something Microsoft excels at. Give the Gizmodo article a read and share your thoughts with me - do you agree that Microsoft has a compelling offering that no one else can match?</p>

[Brad Wasson]

Jason,

I tend to agree with your comments, and yes they do have a complelling offering that others cannot match, but I think they will have trouble making this all as seamless as it needs to be. Here's an example ...

The new Office 2010 allows you to save a document to your SkyDrive folder in the Office section of your Windows Live account. This is very nice once it is set up. The challenge is that it is not straight forward to get it set up in the first place. I would have expected that when you want to save your document to the web you could start with either the "Save" menu or perhaps the "Save As" menu and then navigate to your SkyDrive folder. Not so, it appears. You actuallly have to use the "Save and Send" menu that then has a "Save to Web" option that will guide you through connecting to the right SkyDrive folder. This will not be obvious to the vast majority of people who would want to take advantage of this feature.

Microsoft tends to miss some critical "simplicity" steps that make all the difference in the user's experience. They need to make progress in this area for this vision to become reality.