Apple making a bold move to sideline Microsoft in UK

O2 just announced the tarrifs for the Apple iPhone and it is pretty stunning - £99 for the 8GB version on a £30/month tarrif, free on the £45/month one. It is on an 18 month contract BUT people who are already on an 18 month contract with the old iPhone CAN upgrade - it looks like you just extend the contract by a further 18 months. That means that unlike other 18 month contracts on mobile networks, the 18 months only ties you to the provider - you will still be able to upgrade to the latest and greatest Apple phone.

With Microsoft’s phones looking dated already and updated versions that are just glossy front ends (the backend OS is not due to be upgraded till next year) - Apple look to be wanting to take market share away from Microsoft and possibly gain a strong foothold in the business arena (the new phone supports Exchange email which is used by a large number of companies). This of course could then in turn lead to even greater uptake in Apple Macs. Right now the markets dont think so (shares were down 4% at one point yesterday) but I think this is an interesting move by Apple.

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So you can now add your facebook friends to your windows live (or MSN) messenger account. (You can also add your msn messenger friends to facebook). I gave it a quick test and sure enough it pulled all my contacts out of Facebook and offered me the option of adding htem to my messenger account.

One problem.

It did not differentiate between those that already have a Messenger account; those that I am already connected to and everyone else.

Basically I have to spam all my friends asking them to sign up for Live Messenger, surely Microsoft can check who has a valid account or not? I am ignoring the fact my friends could be using Yahoo Messenger (whom I can also connect to using Live Messenger) - as I assume Yahoo will not let Microsoft check for a valid account.

Another major issue, is that it also only pulls in my main email address from Facebook - not my Live messenger account which I have filled out in my profile so anyone using this would connect to me using the wrong account anyway.

Oh dear.

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There has been a bunch of rumours that Plaxo will get bought by Google or Facebook. But I think Microsoft would be a much better fit? Plaxo has great integration with Microsoft Outlook - which fits well with Microsoft’s connected applications strategy, it has a large base of registered users and could add to Microsoft’s online portfolio. It would also allow for Outlook to become more “socially” aware and take advantage of the email social network. Of course Yahoo has a social network so maybe this is only a go-er if the Yahoo deal falls through.

I do not see any positives though for Facebook buying it or for that matter Google really. What am I missing?

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If you haven’t heard about Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope you should go check it out here. It looks very cool and will change the way kids interact with astronomy.

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Reading Dylan Fuller’s post on AOL CEO, Andy Fulco, talking tough:

“I hope they beat each other’s brains out over search and leave the display market to us,” he said to the Interactive Advertising Bureau annual conference. “I think it’s a mistake. But I think Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of making a mistake.”

Dylan is right there are some cool products being talked about. But this is how to lose users.. go along to the Xdrive website and click the link for more info about their new ultra cool Xdrive Desktop Lite app - a 404 error.

So I download it instead.

I already have an account.. I can log in via the website just fine - but I just get a login error via the Xdrive Lite app. I know it is in beta still but surely they can do better than this?

AOL are lucky Google’s Gdrive is not out yet and Microsoft’s version (Skydrive) is currently unusable - you have to select individual files to upload to their online storage - thats great when I have a few thousand files.

[update] ah - they fixed the link now and updated the front page design entirely - much better, there is also no advert either on the front page interestingly. For me though, the product still just doesn’t seem to work as advertised. I selected a directory and dragged it to the app. It should sync right? Well the list of transfers shows all the files but after it syncs some files, it just seems to get stuck - files are no longer being uploaded. I don’t know why.. some form of error message of status bar would be useful! Incidentally this was the same issue 4 months ago when I last tried Xdrive

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