I once decided to cut cord to the vanity light in my car (long story why). Even though the car was off I was able to get quick a scare. Lesson, electricity in a car is not off when the key is out. I was close to winning one of those Darwin awards.
I don't even think you need to call them jerks. Just say something like, "Our new licensing deals have us moving to a model where we are charged, not for how often you stream video, but for everyone who could potentially stream video. This means that if you're not watching our instant streaming at all today, but only using the DVD service, we still have to count you as a head. So we decided that the best way to handle this was to separate our DVD from streaming service. This way we, and you, pay for the services you use, and not what you don't.
Now you may then ask, 'why the fee hike?' Simply put, the math doesn't add up otherwise. To keep $9.99 pricing we'd have to do something like $4.99 for DVD rental and $4.99 for video streaming. Compare our DVD pricing to Blockbuster -- even at $7.99/month we're still cheaper. $4.99 for video streaming would only barely cover our licensing costs. We found a reasonable price point that allows us to offer great DVD and streaming services going forward."
* People forget that Microsoft is used to selling Windows that runs on multiple architectures. They had(have?) Itanium, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, and MIPS in the past. Of course those were targeted at professionals, not consumers.
* I don't think MS really cares that much about x86 native apps running on ARM. They care about desktop managed apps running on ARM. Why? LOB apps. LOB apps are managed and they want to support ARM tablet users having access to these.
* Related to the above point, there are actually few native x86 apps that really matter. Look at the Amazon top 20 selling SW list. It's basically: Office, Windows, Intuit, Adobe, and antivirus. Microsoft ships half of the top 20. They'll be shipping antivirus, so effectively shipping 2/3rd of the top 20. The only apps in the top 20 they'd need to get are Intuit (Quickbooks/Quicken/TurboTax) and Adobe Premiere XYZ. MS can probably have at launch 95% of the cycles consumed by native x86 apps on ARM.
With that said, for once, I do think Gruber is generally correct.
"Android and iOS are covered tons in the media, and Windows Phone—surprisingly for a Microsoft product—seems to have missed the boat on brand awareness. An embarrassing 45 percent of consumers surveyed by NPD said they were unaware of Windows Phone 7.
And among the 50 percent of consumers who said they will be buying a smartphone, but didn’t want to buy a Windows Phone, the biggest reason, accounting for 46 percent of respondents, was because they didn’t know enough about the Windows Phone OS."
Basically if you know about WP then you'd consider it. But nearly as many people don't know about it at all as those that have heard of it.
A lot of people wondered why in the world would MS endorse a 4'7" phone (the HTC Titan). From people I know who work retail, including a cousin who works for ATT retail, people come into stores wanting either an iPhone or a smartphone.
The iPhone users are pretty set. Their kids have it, or they had one before, or their wife has one, or everyone tells them it is the best.
For people not set on iPhone, it sounds like the decision is often made in the store. And apparently big screens and thin phones area big deal. Android has dominated the retail presence. If WP can match the retail presence, it can probably start splitting some sales with Android.
OK. And Windows on ARM won't run Amiga apps either. You and I both know that's not really related to what the poster stated. The poster said that ARM will only run Metro apps. You can not run x86 apps and still run non-Metro apps. And you can run x86 apps, but not run non-Metro apps. It's a completely orthogonal statement.
I don't mind having both worlds, in fact I like it, I just don't want them so intermingled.
When coding, doing a research paper, or going through my finances, I want classic desktop mode. I'm probably at my laptop, and mostly typing, searching files, etc... I don't want to see Metro.
But I'd love to be able to take that laptop and sit on the couch or in bed and either convert it to a tablet or treat it as one (with a touchscreen) and go into Metro mode.
The thing I like about the two worlds is that I like the ability to get disrupted while on my tablet, due to some work email, and be able to quickly address it on the same machine. I like the fact that I could get a link to a Flash site, and drop out of Metro and check it out. I like being in classic desktop and get hankering to play a game and drop into the Metro app store to get some .99 cent game to kill an hour.
But most of the time I don't want the two worlds to collide. And when they do I want to explicitly choose to do so.
And it seems like everyone has this feedback. I can't help but believe MS is going this direction.
Doesn't the highlighted section actually note that silence can be used against you? It would seem you need to decline to talk and request counsel, if I understood correctly.
This depends. For most startups what you say is true. You can launch 5 times and most wouldn't notice. But for a startup with a lot of press, a bad launch can hurt momentum (I'd think). Look at Color.
That's horrible. This article did also remind me to cancel my streaming (but now I'll wait until the end of the month ;-). I'm going the surprising route of doubling down on DVDs now.