parislemon:

Steven Sinofsky on the internet figuring out he was using an iPhone:

Moving beyond the gotcha blogs, there’s an actual reason for using technology products and services other than the ones you make (or happen to be made by the company where you work/ed). I think everyone knows that, even a thousand tweets later. The approach in many industries to downplay or even become hostile to the competition are well-documented and studied, and generally conclude that experiencing the competition is a good thing.

Learning from the competition is not just required of all product development folks, but can also be somewhat of a skill worth honing. Let’s look at the ins and outs of using a competitive product.

…

Obviously you should use a competitive product. You should know what you’re up against when a consumer (or business) ultimately faces a buying decision. They will weigh a wide array of factors and you should be aware of those not only for the purposes of sales and marketing but when you are designing your products.

Sinofsky’s former boss, Steve Ballmer, to Fortune in 2006:

Do you have an iPod?

No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children—in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.

“I think everyone knows that…”

“Obviously…”

Gotcha, indeed.

And you know what? That attitude toward Apple products may explain in part why Microsoft is so passé right now… They should have learn from the others while it was relevant to do so. 

Apple must have been listening to what Amazon had to say this week when then announced their new Kindle devices. I think Amazon is much more competitive than any other Android tablets for Apple. The reason is very simple: they kind of have a similar business oriented model: they have content and they build their own devices. They have  complete control of the stack. This is one of the thing that makes Apple so successful. 

How is Apple going to answer that? Lowering prices is not an option. They don’t go after  market made of lower priced machines. Apple’s answer is going to be the iPad mini: a great device, with plenty of software to run and content from the iTunes store. But, Apple must take into account Amazon’s announcements. From the Betanews’s post:

Apple must be scrambling to retune its iPad Mini announcement for later this month, but what Microsoft has to be feeling (especially with this week’s lackluster Nokia phone intro) is panic.

We are still not talking about competition as the product is not shipping yet (someone knows when it will? No one knows).