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The Weekly Round-Up: 14.09.07
Once upon a time in Redmond...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 14 September 2007

Steve Ballmer is a troubled man. The Microsoft CEO has one eye on an internal memo about 'the EU' and it's bothering him. The other eye is watching his specially customised Vista sales ticker widget update slowly - ever so slowly - on his desktop.

Intermittently, both his eyes are focused on the plate of sugared pastries in front of him and filling with tears at the imminent prospect of running out of frosted doughnuts.

Steve presses a big red button on his desk to call in his PA. His monitor spits out an error message and the PC instantly reboots itself. The irate Ballmer bellows for his assistant, who shuffles into the room apprehensively.

"Get me some more doughnuts and tell me what the hell is happening in Europe."

"Well, sir. A European court is due to hand down its antitrust decision about us next week. At stake will be nothing less than the power of the European Commission to regulate the high-tech industry. They could lose their regulatory teeth."

"That's got to be a good thing for our industry, right?"

"Er quite, sir. The decision by the 13-judge Grand Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg will determine whether the European Union's executive arm ruled properly in 2004 that we used Windows to push rivals out of the marketplace."

"But that's our whole mobus, midas, what do you call it?"

"Modus operandi?"

"That's it, Spanish was never my strong point."

"The EC insists that competitive products must perch on the Windows platform."

"I bet my interoperable butt they do. What else? What are the bureaucrats doing about it?"

"They're worrying, sir. If the court rules in our favour it could cut into the EU's ability to regulate. A commission official said this week: 'If we lose this one, we're in deep [trouble]. It would put in question our ability to regulate competition in high-tech industries'."

"Damn right, these Europeans are nothing but a hindrance to Microsoft's ability to innovate."

"Ha ha, very good, sir."

"What the hell are you laughing at?"

"Sorry sir, I thought you were being ironic."

"I-what? What's that? Some kind of new Apple thing?"

"Yes, sir. Anyway it's not just us. The ruling could affect Intel, Qualcomm and Rambus, to name but a few. They're worried, OK."

"Mmm. Weakness, I love it."

"What's more sir, we might not even have to pay the $685.4m they fined us back in 2004."

"Hell, that's over half our annual doughnut allocation. Can we do anything to influence the decision?"

"Well we've identified the clerk drafting the legal documents for the Grand Chamber and we're 'messing' with him."

"How so?"

"Well, we've just reformatted his document back to Times New Roman for the third time in an hour and now the paperclip has appeared asking him if needs any help drafting his note."

"And is our defence team on hand to 'help' him draft it?"

"Of course, sir."

"Great news, now tell me some more good news."

"Well not so great news on the Vista front, sir. Sales aren't so hot. In fact, boxed copies of Vista are selling more slowly than boxed copies of XP did in its early days. Standalone unit sales of Vista at US retail stores were down 59.7 per cent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group."

"Hm, I'm not sure I like this news. Can you give me any better news?"

"Well, sales are definitely better than some of our competitors' operating systems, comparatively speaking."

"OS X?"

"OS/2 Warp."

"Well that's something to keep the investors happy. Still, boxed sales of Windows only represent a tiny fraction of our overall revenues, most copies of Windows are shipped on new PCs and that market is booming, right?"

"Right, sir. The doughnuts have arrived sir."

"Thank Bill for that. So what's the problem? What more can we do? We took the best features from Linux and Mac OS X, employed our deft touch with interface design to improve them, changed all the names of the screen elements around and put the disks in a nice, shiny box. What more do our customers want?"

"Stability, security, interoperability and support for third-party drivers?

"Mmm Mmm mm Mmm Mm!"

"Sorry sir?"

"I said: 'I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that'."

"Sorry sir. Doughnuts any good?"

"Mmmmm."

"Speaking of intuitive interface design, we're helping the UK NHS to develop a common design for clinical software."

"Remind me."

"Inside a business, software with a good user interface can improve productivity. Inside a hospital, it can save lives. By standardising the display medical data, we hope the industry can make a dent in the 600,000 errors that take place in hospitals each year, many of them from medication mix-ups."

"Excellent news."

"On a related matter, we had a call from some guy from BUPA."

"Who they?"

"No idea but he said 'thank you', 'God bless you' and whooped a lot."

"What a nice man."

"Indeed. Sir, I'm afraid we also need to talk briefly about open source."

"Hell."

"Yes, sir. The Linux Foundation has announced two summits in Boston in October to deal with legal issues surrounding Linux and open-source software."

"Jeez, these guys are getting serious."

"Yes sir, summit attendees will focus on building a legal defence structure for Linux and policies designed to support intellectual property rights within open development. At a later conference they'll also look at providing practical legal guidance on the development and distribution of open-source software."

"What are we doing to counter this heinous threat to our bottom line?"

"We're organising a series of impromptu comic book conferences in Boston over the same two days and lining up Stan Lee, JJ Abrams and the guy who played Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation to make special appearances."

"Good thinking. What else is on your clipboard?"

"Sun has formally announced that it'll start shipping Windows Server on its hardware."

"It's still hard to believe that Sun is now a Windows Server OEM."

[SUSTAINED LAUGHTER]

"What are we saying about this deal with Sun?"

"Sun and Microsoft will work together to ensure that Solaris runs well as a guest on Microsoft virtualisation technologies and that Windows Server runs well as a guest in Sun's virtualisation technologies."

"And will it?"

"What do you think?"

"Excellent work. What's next?"

"Apple, sir."

"Really? Must we?"

"I'm afraid so. Would you like to persevere with the good news/bad news motif, sir?"

"It seems to have served us well up to this point, carry on."

"Good news for Apple: It's managed to sell its one millionth iPhone. The company reached the milestone in just 74 days. It took the company almost two years to ship the same number of iPod units."

"Damn it. I told the world that the iPhone didn't have a chance in hell, didn't I? Can we pretend that never happened? Somehow eradicate the comment from history."

"You could buy Google and then shut it down? That way people will never be able to find any reference to it."

"You know I'm not getting anywhere on that one. You're not making any friends here."

"Sorry. Good news for AT&T..."

"The iPhone's US carrier."

"Yes, well done. That's over one million new customers in 74 days in an industry driven solely by the quest for new contracts."

"I guess the AT&T execs now think it was almost worth bending over for Steve Jobs, after all."

"The bad news for AT&T: Some ne'er do good hackers have managed to crack the iPhone's firmware to allow any SIM card to be used in the device. It's a kick in the teeth for AT&T, which ceded an unprecedented amount of control over the phone's design and access to content services."

"Suckers."

"Indeed. The good news for the iPhone hackers: They're expecting to make a fair bit of cash selling the software to people who simply must have an iPhone but don't want it on an AT&T contract. It might put a strain on Apple's relationship with AT&T and future carrier partners."

"Hackers - they built the internet you know."

"The bad news for the iPhone hackers: Some other hackers with real hacker values have hacked the firmware and made the unlock software available for free."

"Hackers - sub-human scum. Pass me another doughnut "

"Here you go. The number of websites offering the free unlock is proliferating rapidly. It's all over the internet."

"D'oh!"

"That's uncanny, sir."

"What?"

"Never mind. More good news for Apple: More people are probably going to buy the iPhone now they can potentially do so without having to subscribe to an AT&T two-year contract. What's more, if they install the hack on the iPhone you could probably argue it invalidates the warranty."

"Anything else?"

"There is just one more thing."

"You know that phrase gives me the heebie-jeebies."

"Sorry, sir. We have an opportunity."

"Excellent. What is it?"

"Women, sir. Gadget retailers and manufacturers are missing out on £600m a year because they fail to connect with the female market, according to a report out this week."

"You mean the brown Zune isn't doing it for the ladies?"

"Not exactly, sir."

"How about the pink one?"

"No joy with the pink or the brown Zunes, sir. That's part of the problem. The women polled said that they do not want diamante encrusted mobile phones and baby pink DAB radios. Only nine per cent of respondents thought it was important that their gadgets look feminine - and others said they felt 'patronised' and 'offended' by the abundance of pink products available at the expense of the sleek products they want to see."

"I see. Anything else?"

"Yes, sir. One in three female internet users polled by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi said they would increase their spending on consumer electronics if retailers thought harder about how they approach them."

"Right, I'm on it."

"Wouldn't you prefer it if I asked our VP for industrial design to work up a few ideas? Failing that we could go through Jonathon Ive's trash again."

"Ladies need some personal attention? I'm on it. Hand me that sketch pad, put Marvin Gaye on the hi-fi. I need some intimacy to work up my design concepts. Don't disturb me for an hour."

"You have my word, sir."

[PA LEAVES ROOM. A MOMENT LATER THE PHONE RINGS]

"Hello, Steve Ballmer... What? Who? Butz? Seymour Butz? Goddamit, Jobs - is that you again?"

The Weekly Round-Up will be back to normal next week. Hopefully.

Congratulations to the winner of last week's Caption Competition, Richard Phelps. Want a chance to win a bottle of bubbly? Have a go at this week's caption competition.

Still want more? Check out the Weekly Round-Up podcast which tackles iPhones, movie robots the future of the phone box.