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Microsoft’s HTML5 strategy and open dialogue

  • 아티클

I just finished reading Ed Bott’s fine post “Microsoft fires back at critics of its HTML5 strategy” and not only did it educate me, it reminded me of how we differ in our approach to Apple when it comes to communication. I’m not saying one is right or wrong but when I saw Charles Arthur of the Guardian call Steve Jobs recent missive on Adobe Flash a “blog post” I disagreed. As Ed points out, the big difference between the Jobs post and that of Dean Hachamovitch, (General Manager of the Internet Explorer division) is the ability to comment. Dean’s has it, Steve’s didn’t and whilst we can split hairs about what constitutes a blog, for me, one big feature is the ability to leave comments. Dean went on to respond to those comments in a further post.

I think it’s indicative of an open approach from Microsoft, one that invites commentary and acts upon it. The Engineering 7 blog is another example where Steven Sinofsky and team openly blogged about the process of creating Windows 7 and along the way, took feedback and changed things. (that blog has been short on posts for a while I’d add…hint hint :) ).

I wrote this post not to debate the merits of the approaches Apple and Microsoft take as I can see the benefit in both and the Apple approach serves them extremely well. Rather I was reminded as I read Ed’s post of an entertaining exchange on Twitter last week with a friend here in the UK. Nick thought it was ironic as an employee of Microsoft that I was chuckling about Apple and openness. In past roles at Microsoft I’ve taken a lot of heat for our lack of openness and in many cases, rightly so. As I said to Nick, things have changed a lot over the last 5+ years though and I sincerely believe we’ve become a much more open organisation, both in dialogue and in standards. For me, that’s a good thing but the exchange last week reminded me also how much work we have to do to change perception of Microsoft. It’s a big gig!

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  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2010
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