Kodak, legacy stasis, and Microsoft
What a thud that was.!
While expected, as a result of the extraordinarily inept executive and board management led by Antonio Perez, it was still a shock.
To see such an icon of American innovation and exceptionalism fall to earth with such ignominy is painful, and at the same time annoying.
However, while the blame for the spectacular flameout can be laid at Perez’s feet, the seed for this corporate death were sown a long while ago.
It is doubly disconcerting that the same company that invented digital photography has been felled by that same innovation!
Why?
Despite the innovation of digital photography, the honchos at Kodak were so drunk on the insane profits coming from their bread-and-butter (chemical) film and processing business!
They rode that train into the ground, virtually making jacksh’t from the digital business they invented.
Now, they are kaput.
This is what I call ‘legacy stasis”.
It is a truly crippling condition, for it blinds the eyes of the management and strategists at the company to all what is happening in the real world.
Contrast this to that other company with a long tail of a legacy, IBM. IBM has seemingly weaned itself from the profitable shackles of the mainframe. The mainframe isn’t gone, for it is always the pink elephant in the room. It is just that they haven’t made it a mandatory requirement for doing business with them.
Just how did Microsoft creep into this conversation, you may ask?
Well, Microsoft has Windows, and by proxy, the personal computer, or PC, business.
One of the things Microsoft MUST do, is wean itself away from developing products and solutions that demand an umbilical to the PC.
While it is desperately trying to do so in several businesses, there are several vestigial traces of the silliness that seemed to permeate Microsoft in the past.
What has been pissing me off to a great extent is this music storage within the device.
There are currently three ways to play music on the Xbox 360 – in all cases, I am talking about the Xboxes with hard drives:
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Play a music or MP3 CD in the console
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Rip only from a music CD
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Stream music from a PC on the same local network as the Xbox.
What is missing from this list?
YOU CANNOT COPY MUSIC FILES FROM ANY MEDIA TO THE XBOX!!!
Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me?
Why this silly restriction?
When I asked why this idiotic absurdity on Twitter, a couple of Microserfs informed me that you since one could stream music from a PC, that functionality wasn’t needed.
I immediately noted these people were fools, and have disregarded anything they have to say since.
What is apparent is that Microsoft inserted the silly atavistic restriction in order to provide make the Xbox remain connected to the PC.
What sense does that make?
In other words, someone with a repository of MP3 songs, but without an Windows or Mac PC cannot enjoy their inventory of songs on their rightfully purchased Xbox 360 console unless they either burn music CDs of the songs, or have to walk to the console to insert/de-insert MP3 CDs.
Again I ask, Why this silly restriction?
The Executive at Microsoft really needs to wake up, and realize that cutting the umbilical would help them think to news ways to innovate, and bring new value to the PC, and the company.
