I'm pretty stoked that Microsoft is no longer evil/complacent and is innovating (again?). This is of course not the beginning of this turnaround, nor even the first time Microsoft-as-Good has reached me for unabstract personal benefit[1], but this is probably the first thing I've seen from Bing that could make the rounds being touted as cool without my first and overriding suspicion being "total astroturf".
Back in the days I read Slashdot, I very viscerally hated Microsoft like only a teenage Windows-user reading Slashdot could. I switched to Macs after the Intel changeover and I've been increasingly locked into Google since Gmail. Completely removed from their ecosystem, when (rarely) some news of Microsoft bubbled up to my attention, I watched with bemused indifference. Lately though, with Apple's behaviour especially, I've borne actively good will towards Microsoft. I'll probably never use Windows again, but I want them to succeed. Competition is good, and it's also very gratifying to see this affirmed.
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[1] "Windows 7-style Window Resizing" is my most indispensable feature in BetterTouchTool[1] - http://blog.boastr.net/
I had much the same train of thought when I saw this article. I've been very harsh on Microsoft since roughly the Active-X era of the late '90s for doing things that benefit their own dominance at the expense of the ecosystem. I WANT them to be good citizens and good competitors. When I see something Microsoft does that really is innovative, I'm happy. And at first glance, that's what I thought of this napkin-map thing. And then I tried to look at a Bing napkin map on this computer - running Ubuntu. They've done it with Silverlight. Back to disappointment.
Back in the days I read Slashdot, I very viscerally hated Microsoft like only a teenage Windows-user reading Slashdot could. I switched to Macs after the Intel changeover and I've been increasingly locked into Google since Gmail. Completely removed from their ecosystem, when (rarely) some news of Microsoft bubbled up to my attention, I watched with bemused indifference. Lately though, with Apple's behaviour especially, I've borne actively good will towards Microsoft. I'll probably never use Windows again, but I want them to succeed. Competition is good, and it's also very gratifying to see this affirmed.
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[1] "Windows 7-style Window Resizing" is my most indispensable feature in BetterTouchTool[1] - http://blog.boastr.net/