Microsoft Barring Certain Staff From Buying Macs, iPads?

[Templario]

Perhaps they want use a real computer, the next step to use a real operative system, hey Hyperion or MorphOS Team prepare the cash register.

[runequester]

Im surprised this wasn't policy already. Corporations don't like competition

[Linde]

Are you sure about that? Anyway, it would be a supposition, not a fabrication.

I'm obviously not 100% sure that you don't have any idea, but since you posed most of the points in your last post as questions, I think I made a perfectly valid assumption (or supposition, if you will) in saying that you don't know.

I never mentioned Adobe, but Microsoft does have numerous products and technologies that compete directly with Adobe's.

... and Adobe has several poductivity tools that aren't easily replaceable by Microsoft tools. I'm not proposing they'd be using Flash over Silverlight, but maybe PS over MS Paint, Premiere over Movie Maker or Audition over... sndrec32.exe?

On the surface, this isn't much different from policies that prevent employees from wearing a competitor's labeled clothing to work.

Yes it is, unless those clothes are bought with company money. Did you overlook that or do you just think that it doesn't make any difference?

[Trev]

Yes it is, unless those clothes are bought with company money. Did you overlook that or do you just think that it doesn't make any difference?

I didn't overlook it. Salaries are expenses, too, and most companies at least attempt to control how their employees spend their money. Whether or not unauthorized purchases, personal or otherwise, are actionable depends on the jurisdiction.

In any case, Microsoft can approve or deny spends however they choose, within the law. While high performing employees should be given leeway in their choice of tools, most organizations don't see it that way. I'm just writing academically; I haven't actually read the memo. ;-)

EDIT: I read the memo. He used "should," which means there can and will be exceptions. Good call.

[persia]

Both Flash and SIlverlight are doomed technologies.  HTML 5 is killing them both.

But back to the subject.  It is not unusual for a company to not spend it's own money on the competition.  Microsoft collects money from Android, they want to support it.  If employees want to spend money on competitors products they need to spend personal money.  Hardly unusual.

[runequester]

Flash seems to be lingering for a while. Hasn't microsoft given up on silverlight by now?

[commodorejohn]

Flash isn't going anywhere just yet, I don't think. HTML5 adoption seems a bit dead in the water at this point - some sites have offered the option, very few have converted altogether, and some (like The Escapist) have made the aggravating choice to make HTML5 content a premium thing, missing the point entirely. Flash has its problems, to be sure, but it's also got sixteen years of accumulated content and support, and that doesn't just change overnight the moment someone comes out with a new standard.

And HTML5 is not without its problems, either: for one thing, it depends entirely on your browser having a good Javascript engine; not all HTML5-capable browsers do, and for some of us who live on lower-end equipment, upgrading to a flashy new browser that eats memory like popcorn and enables all kinds of annoying new tricks by bad Web designers to impair usability, all for the sake of enjoying replications of functionality Flash already provides, is not an option. It also suffers from being designed especially for streaming content and "web apps," and thus it doesn't (to my knowledge) have a container format like Flash does. There's no equivalent of an SWF that you can store a complete cartoon or game in and upload to Newgrounds; you'd need to have the whole mess of resource files uploaded in their proper hierarchy. Pain. In. The. Ass.

I have never once seen Silverlight on any site other than Microsoft's.

[runequester]

It'll be a while before flash goes away, but slowly, every so slowly, the idiocy of a company owning the key to a "common standard" is becoming more ingrained in culture.

[commodorejohn]

No argument on the idiocy, but when the alternative isn't really an improvement, you have to question just how far adoption is going to go...

[runequester]

No argument on the idiocy, but when the alternative isn't really an improvement, you have to question just how far adoption is going to go...

I imagine that's why it's taken so long. I am surprised we haven't seen the likes of google (who aren't less evil, but at least have more of a vested interest in a relatively open standard) throw weight behind it.

Ironically, I guess with the proliferation of i-stuff, that might end up doing more to end flash than anything else.

[CritAnime]

Google are taking on the Flash Player API for Linux and rolling it into something called pepper for google chrome (http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/adobe-adandons-flash-on-linux/). So if everything went tits up for windows then I am sure it will be rolled into the Windows version of Chrome.

[commodorejohn]

I imagine that's why it's taken so long. I am surprised we haven't seen the likes of google (who aren't less evil, but at least have more of a vested interest in a relatively open standard) throw weight behind it.

Ironically, I guess with the proliferation of i-stuff, that might end up doing more to end flash than anything else.

Well, Google supported HTML5 (at least on YouTube) almost from the moment major browsers had decent support for it - but I don't think they're going to try and abandon Flash. Sabotaging capability in order to stick it to a competitor is more Apple's turf; if Google were to, say, remove support for the Flash plugin from Chrome, all that would happen is people wouldn't be able to watch Homestar Runner or Newgrounds or whatever, and they'd move over to Firefox or something. You can't pull that kind of thing off without a captive market; and while Apple and iOS did do just that, I'd note that one of the first things my brother did once he jailbroke his iPad was to put Flash on it.

It's the same problem faced by any new technology: if the advantages don't outweigh the burdens of conversion, there won't be much converting. Currently HTML5 offers some advantages for a few applications and not many for others, and it doesn't (as near as I can tell) have the tooling Flash does. Flash, meanwhile, has a massive userbase and mature development tools, as well as being better-suited to many things than HTML5. We'll see how this develops in the future, but at the moment the case for HTML5 pretty much comes down to "it's not controlled by one company," and there's not a lot of people who really care that much about it.

[runequester]

Im not disputing what you are saying in the slightest. People by and large just want to plop down money and stuff happens. That's kind of how we got here to begin with

[CritAnime]

Going back to topic (check me trying to be all proper lol). I can see where Microsoft are coming from. After all it must put out a conflicting message when they are trying to sell Microsoft products for Microsofts market but then use Apple stuff to do orders ect. As someone mentioned they do sell products for Apple computers. but I would imagine that they would have a dedictaed set of staff selling those products and thus would need Apple devices for that. It's appropriate so to speak.

[save2600]

It does speak HFS volumes (pun intended) that M$ employees would want to use the occasional Apple product, but I understand the principal behind what they're enforcing. For business use with M$'s money... *should* be an off the shelf Windoze native machine. Especially if that's clearly understood in their multi-thousand paged employee handbook.  lol     Hypocrisy or a Miracle on 34th Street mentality ensues otherwise. Bottom line: if someone at Macrohard feels so strongly that they must use an Apple product at work, for work or otherwise, perhaps they should go work for Apple.

Pretty simple stuff here.

[CritAnime]

Exactly. Same principle applies to many other industries. For example it probably wouldn't put out a good image if a sales rep for Fosters Beer started using the companies money to buy Budweiser. It would probably consitute a conflict of interest or something along those lines.