Microsoft fights for its reputation, where’s Apple and Google?

You look stronger when people don’t really know. If you don’t fight, you don’t loose

I do respect Microsofties for that too… and think that Google is more and more arrogant, with success !

Microsoft has a reputation? (I mean other than monopolist creating fairly crap software that by clever marketing has managed to imbed itself into corporate life?)…sorry, couldn’t resist.

Anyway, google is still coasting on their “don’t be evil” spiel and their geek roots which is kind of funny since that might hold for this generation of board members but at the end of the day it is a corporation like all the others.

As for Apple, well, that used to be a hacker shop that had some interesting ideas about interface and how a computer should work. Funnily enough, it has also turned into… a corporation! It has become more and more unapproachable as a result. Despite all this, their fanboys are among the most rabid.

Conversely, MS has been a corporation almost from day one. MS has never been ‘cool’. From Gates’ godawful letter to software hobbyists circa 76 to today.

Because the products speak for themselves.

Google and Apple are riding high on the advertising and iPod waves respectively. They don’t care. Microsoft desperately wants people to like it. Microsoft makes products for the average joe and not for geeks. Google’s products are more geeky and they have this “Don’t Be Evil” motto which seems to have melted everyone’s heart. And although Apple is way cooler than MS, Macs still appeal more to an average Microsoft hating geek. Quality wise, I think MS makes products that are just as good or as bad, but it’s all about perception. Of course, 95% of the world uses Windows and I’m sure a high percentage of bloggers do too.

Apple doesn’t have to. And they’ve been pretty much consistent while under Jobs in both eras. It’s showmanship, magic, and theater. You don’t rehearse in public.

I suspect that not only do the products speak for themselves, but that they haven’t done much recently that their employees would need to defend.

Very few instances where they have had to ‘fight’.

Echoing many other comments – your products are your most powerful marketing especially when it comes to generating word of mouth.

People love to crap MS products. “Oh! That software? It must be crappy. After all, it’s a Microsoft product.” Macs burn and crash. iPod Nano screens get heavily scratched. People are more than willing to accept that.

To be fair to Google, although they are far from perfect, they do have Matt Cutts, who is never shy in engaging with the great blogging and SEO community.

Apple & Google = introverts?
Microsoft = extrovert?

Apple and Google have great reputations because their products generally work first time without a Gzillion patches and updates, just to get to where they sould have been on release day.

Vista for example, Dont get me wrong, I want Vista..just sometime this decade!!

If Microsoft ever releases a product on time, without gutting the featureset, without making it stupidly hard to actually BUY, and does so regularly, maybe they’ll start getting some slack too.

Above posters are basically right: there’s a lot of friction in interactions with Microsoft, so much more needs to be explained. By friction I mean “complicated stuff that makes it harder for the end user to do x”, where x=understand the company or use the product.

Friction could be simple stuff, like the three or four different ways you can “license” XP. Or it could be complex stuff like problems with 3rd party drivers (the “we didn’t make the hardware problem”). You’v laughed with us about the friction in the marketing materials before, (the ipod by Microsoft).

A great deal of what makes Apple and Google successful is reducing the complexity of what they present the end user.

Examples: Apple’s simple product line reduces friction in sales interactions – you either buy a product at one of three price points or you don’t.

Google has all kinds of tools under the hood – but the main one you need to understand is the little box you type words into. Less communication (marketing) is needed to explain the product, since it is self correcting. Also note that the consumer-facing product is _free_, so the need to weigh the risk of purchasing (more friction) is removed.

I don’t think it is accidental that good UI design is characteristic of both Apple and Google. If the product is self-explanatory, (problems never reach your consciousness) then there’s less need to blog it.

I think it’s partly due to such high-profile incidents as the Barkto Incident. ‘softies went online very early on, and were supported in this by the company – http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.html

Google and Apple have traditionally – or so it seems to me – been content to let their users rave. IBM used to mumble – until they came up with a product a good many of their own employees loved – IBM OS/2 – and then they dropped the ball.

What’s more interesting is the question of when did Microsoft’s own products became so interesting to ‘softies that they’d endure the scorn of the outside world – which knows MS software rather too well, in many cases – to boast about them? I don’t recall any ‘softie getting excited about MS DOS back in the early nineties; ditto about MS Word (DOS), or Multiplan.

It’s got zero to do with the ‘conversations’, and in fact in Microsoft’s case, the conversations do far more harm than good, all so much vaporware talk and eventual backtracking, I only need to cue up your PDC 2003 overhype as a perfect test case.

People like Google and Apple, as their products generally ‘just work’. Not always and they don’t perform very well outside of their core constituency, but it’s the products, not the conversation. But so what? Apple and Google’s marketshare is but a fraction of Microsoft’s. People might hate Microsoft, but they use it and it’s a standard, sub-par at that, which is what irritates people, they have to use, and it’s not very likeable.

Microsoft marketingese talks it all up, delivers it years late, with half features cut, and then sends out a small Army of MVPs and Evangelists doubling as therapists. Apple and Google keep mouths shut and surprise people…differing methodologies.

As one of your previous posts mentioned “tearing down the big guy” is fun. So its basically a question of “who” rather than “what”. so the simple principle – Anything MSFT is evil.

For inst, somebody responds to this -http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Invites_Mozilla_Devs_Over/1156192744 – as an attempt by MSFT to ‘tape and transpose’. Excellent

I must agree Google nor Apple need to defend their products with me, they work great and they do what they intend to do well, they do not try and jump on every bandwagon passing by to make money, the phrase “Jack of all trades master of none” springs to mind.

e.g. Google has an online spreadsheet but it is not an Excel replacement by any stretch and it is not intended to be one, it is something entirely different based on the concept of a spreadsheet.

“they work great and they do what they intend to do well”

What about http://www.orkut.com ? try searching for a login id/display name that you know exists for sure. I dont think there are a proportionate amount of rants about that site.

Microsoft is like the kid on the playground that never got any attention, and Google and Apple are the cool kids. MS suffers from an inferiority complex.

I don’t think the two main concepts you’re getting at here — engagement (from the corporate side) and product use (from the consumer side) — are necessarily connected. You make it sound as if you expect corporate engagement to drive consumer adoption. I think that’s putting the cart before the horse. And even that aphorism implies a causality relationship between the two concepts that may not exist.

Google and Apple have the cachet that they do because they do first and foremost what good companies need to do — make a superior product. Would it be nice if they were more transparent and/or engaging, corporately-speaking? I guess, but whether or not they achieve that I’m still going to use their products. And if their quality slides and a superior product emerges, no amount of “engagement” is likely to keep me from using it.

Looks like everyone already said it. I run both windows and OS X. OS X runs smooth and has at least 99,998 fewer pieces of malware that can affect it than windows does. The peanut gallery says that’s because windows is popular. Where I live, the Subaru Outback is a very popular car. If it were unreliable, we’d have a lot of data points on that. It’s not. Reliable is reliable. An insecure OS is an insecure OS.

I use Windows under Parallels to run vs.net and sql management studio, everything else is done in OS X. I enjoy my computing so much more since adopting this approach. Microsoft never did learn that it’s not just features, but security and user experience that matter just as much.

IMHO … it’s the mystique and elusiveness that intrigues people about Google (Apple, not as much).

The products speak for themselves, but in a little tinny voice.

And as I’ve grown older, I prefer to be called a fanMAN!

What is more important-having a good reputation with the customer or a good reputation with the journalist? I don’t care that Apple doesn’t blog, I don’t care that Microsoft does. I care that the product works. That’s why I choose Apple and am forced to use Microsoft