Summary: Shattering yet again the myth of Microsoft as an innovator, using the past week's news alone

AS we wrote in our previous post, Windows Mobile is in shambles and Microsoft watcher Joe Wilcox rightly says that "Windows Phone 7 Series imitates Apple's iPhone in the worst ways" (it's actually his headline, which we agree with).

For years, people have accused Microsoft of being an imitator, rather than innovator. Finally there is evidence: The ways Windows Phone 7 Series imitates the very worst of Apple's iPhone. Unless there is the strangest of coincidences -- like two students having the same wrong answers on a high school history test -- Microsoft is imitating Apple, using the same strategy to make the same mistakes. It's either imitation or incompetence, and out of fairness I assume the former.

Windows Phone 7 is also being quite harshly criticised in the Philippines.

If rumours are to be believed, the Windows Phone 7 will not support multi-tasking, at least for third party applications, no removable storage, no copy-cut-and-paste and will have an application store that will only feature Microsoft approved apps. Does this sound familiar? It is just as if Microsoft used a 3D scanner and a 3D printer to create the exact same device from the fruit company.

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I am waiting for consumers to criticize this new OS from Microsoft - the same way they criticized the iPhone. Android lovers will still find their OS to be "superior" because of its third-party background app support.

Microsoft fails quite badly when it tries to sell something other than just software; it fails not just in technical terms but in business terms too. The monopoly abuser uses these toys to lure young people, but that's about it. Not many buyers accept hardware from Microsoft. "Microsoft Surface is vapourware" is the title of this post, which turns out to be more like a Microsoft advertisement. Surface never sold in a sizable number, so it's a business failure. Microsoft is removing negative technical reviews of the Surface, so it's not so easy to find them.

The best known example of Microsoft failures in hardware is probably Xbox/Xbox360, which had Microsoft lose billions of dollars. It is still being mocked by both Nintendo and Sony this week, with quotes that shed light on Microsoft merely imitating again.

Damning with faint praise Tretton said that Natal was a “pretty big idea” and if punters really want to play with a camera they might like to buy a $99 PS2 and play some of the great technology “we invented eight years ago.”

Microsoft has already admitted that Windows Mobile too (now renamed to escape its bad reputation) is an attempt to copy other companies' products. Microsoft is still not innovating, it's just observing what others do and then markets its copycats mercilessly. History can be rewritten later when the victims die and cannot defend themselves (or preserve the true story). ⬆

"I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating systems."

--Bill Gates