This is encouraging, and somewhat hard to believe.

Quoted: Microsoft’s recent push to paint Apple as pricey is starting to work, according to data from BrandIndex.

Quoted: The perceptions of value the two brands offer has shifted dramatically in the eyes of 18- to 34-years-olds since Microsoft began running its “Laptop Hunters” campaign in late March. Apple’s “value perception” has fallen considerably, while Microsoft’s has risen.

My favorite quote…

Quoted: Apple continues to push the message that the Mac provides a trouble-free computing experience (though if you spend enough time around Mac users, you’ll discover that yes, Macs can have issues too).

If we could only get someone like Mossberg to admit it.

It does seem incredibly easy to criticize Microsoft’s marketing staff and vendors. To witness such a blatant and public pummeling is frustrating.

Quoted: Either way, Microsoft needs to fire a chunk of its marketing staff and get on the ball. If Microsoft cannot craft a clear, concise message as to why one should choose its products over Apple’s, no one will do so, and Microsoft is going to lose.

I wouldn’t go so far (at least not at this point) to say “Microsoft is going to lose”, but it’s certainly an up hill battle.

Ah, shame. So sad to see poor Apple and Google in antitrust litigation. My real question is, why is Apple Janet and Chrissy is Google? I would have defintiely put it the other way around. And Jack is the DOJ? Is Engadget trying to say that the DOJ is a fumbling idiot? Hm, ok, there is some correlation there.

Quoted: …the relationship between the two companies is so tight they actually share board members: Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson take meetings in both Cupertino and Mountain View. That’s apparently raised some hackles at the Federal Trade Commission, which has reportedly informed both companies they’re being investigated for violating a rarely-enforced section of the Clayton Antitrust Act prohibiting “interlocking directorates” when it reduces competition.

It’s remarkable to see how the iPhone has been so impactful that it’s pretty much made its own category of device.

Quoted: Despite such worries as data security, IT staffs are beginning to support Apple’s device—especially if the CEO starts carrying one.

Quoted: Apple makes it easier for companies to reverse their iPhone opposition in part through upgrades to the software that make the device more business friendly. A version due in June, iPhone 3.0, will add security and management features expected to make it more attractive to large companies. “It’s too early for iPhone to be a serious competitor to BlackBerry in the enterprise, but a year from now it will be,” says Ted Schadler, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research (FORR) who on Apr. 14 published a report on iPhone use by enterprises.

I tried this thing out. It looks kinda’ cool and the interface is novel… but it’s complete crap… hard to use and totally broken.

Quoted: Skimmer℠ is an Adobe AIR desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content.

Not an encouraging article. It makes one wonder though, how important is it really which browser people are using? Browsers may become irrelevant commodoties since it’s really about the content that’s being reached. What value add do the browsers offer? Speed? Security? Are the deltas really that big?

I certainly hope it doesn’t come to commoditization or significant loss in market share. I’m confident that Microsoft can demonstrate that it’s the best software maker in the world, and that browsing anything via IE is a superior experience.

Quoted: In February, I used a simple mathematical analysis to project that IE’s days of domination are numbered. Put simply, if these trends continue, Microsoft’s stronghold on the browser market will slip away sooner than most may think.

Quoted: So is the battle effectively over? Maybe. Given that IE 8 was hyped as the company’s big leap into outperforming its competitors, and given the dismal results we’re seeing so far, one has to wonder what further tricks Microsoft could possibly have up its sleeve.

There is a hardware “tax” today, but for how long? The more popular Apple systems are, the more the sell, and the cheaper they’ll get. It’s certainly no reason to be lax. It reminds me of when Apple was just a blip on the radar (think back to 2000) and was largely ignored by Redmond for years.

Quoted: As reported by Todd Bishop of TechFlash, Ballmer offered his theory as to why Macintosh sales fell 16 percent in February, according to stats from market-researcher NPD Group:

Quoted: “The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment — same piece of hardware — paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.”

Quoted: The Mac vs. PC argument is an old one, certainly, and Ballmer’s hardly an impartial observer in the debate. But does Steve have a point? Take the MacBook, for instance. The white 13-inch model with a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive is still $999. Compared to similarly-equipped Windows notebooks, that’s awfully pricey.