Microsoft better than Apple, says Mac blogger

Giles Turnbull at O’Reilly MacDevCenter believes Microsoft has stolen a march on Apple in its willingness to communicate directly with its customers, often through blogs.

There’s something that Microsoft is doing much better than Apple. Not only doing it better, but improving with each and every day that goes by. It is a cutting-edge activity for large corporations, something that few businesses today have even tried, let alone got right. But Microsoft has got it right and is reaping the benefits.

What is this mysterious activity I’m talking about?

Opening up.

Furthermore, “Microsoft is opening up like no other company I have ever seen. Just take a look at all the detailed information about Office 12 and Windows Vista that is coming out on weblogs written by the coders and managers working on each project.”

This is not professional PR, says Turnbull, “they are full of detail, full of facts, full of stories of success and sometimes failure. When something goes wrong, these MS webloggers tell their audience about it, they fess up. Then they get back to work, and fix the problem.”

As a result of their open policy, we know a great deal about forthcoming versions of Windows and the applications that will run on it.

No other company the size of Microsoft is opening up to this extent. Most companies a fraction of Microsoft’s size are terrified of being so open.

[Via Scobleizer]