Work(ing Title)

Here with my partners-in-crime for the last show. Wish us luck and follow along at gdgt live.

The new MacBook Air is very slim and very pretty. Check out the photos of Steve’s keynote I shot for Engadget. Now it’s time to finally wrap up my grand CES story.

Joshua Allen recently dug into the rumor that IdentityMine, one of Microsoft’s most valuable partners, uses Macs for their cross-platform interactive design work.

You can imagine my consternation when I visited the offices of such a great partner, and discovered a bunch of their developers and designers using Macintoshes! In this interview, I try to get to the bottom of things and find out why the heck they are using Macs.

Nathan Dunlap demos how he does his day-to-day work using Vista and Expression Blend on the Mac, talks about his favorite software packages, provides some tips and tricks, and more. Be sure to watch all the way through for a humorous anecdote about his Macintosh overheating and melting (I’m not kidding).

(Joshua Allen)

The loudest CEO around is hosting an employee town hall right now, and he’s addressing a handful of areas where Microsoft can make progress. When talking about search he highlighted an interesting principle, “The market leader has no incentive to disrupt.” While Google will obviously continue to throw maximum resources at improving their search abilities and their model of giving away developed software is hard to answer, they truely don’t want to see the game change.

There’s also a difficult lesson to take from the operating system business that can be applied here: Windows being the strong leader has been a good thing, but Mac OS X has been able to grow significantly through being the underdog and changing the game. It’s not hard to imagine Microsoft being in the same position relative to Google, which gives us huge incentive and opportunity to grow.

I had a great conversation at work on Friday. Rory Blyth is a Channel 9 person, as he puts it, and he’s been at Microsoft for some time longer than I have. He’s also joyously verbose, which is just my brand of gin, and so our conversation was easily one of the best I’ve had since beginning this segment of my life.

We talked mostly about my frustrations with the Microsoft experience, in an attempt on my part to reconcile my Apple-fied cortex with my relatively earnest desire to appreciate Windows. I gave him some of my chief complaints in Windows Mobile (the complexity of the user experience and the apparent lack of simplicity as a design priority). I also drew out my Vista installation gripe, something I’ve pitched to just about anyone who will listen.

The brilliant thing Rory was able to do was to interpret my issues clearly and explain the thinking behind them. While I ultimately don’t agree with the motives behind why Windows Mobile or the Vista installer are built the way they are, what was more important was how Rory made me feel about it.

Previously the people I’ve spoken to at Microsoft about my issues have left me with the sense that I either didn’t ‘get it’ or that I was at the nonexistent mercy of Microsoft’s intertia. Instead, Rory explained the logic behind the design decisions and, in spite of my disagreement, I was able to see the logic for the first time.

Thanks Rory…air knuckles ;)