Peter Cohen writing for iMore:

It was only October when professional social media network LinkedIn introduced Intro, a service that enabled you to check the LinkedIn profile (when available) of people sending you e-mail. Today LinkedIn announced that as of March, Intro will be no more.

Intro met with a pretty disastrous launch – the software required you to reroute your e-mail account through the Intro service.

Hard to believe people weren’t lining up for that.

A few months ago I lamented the fact that Microsoft wasn’t receiving the crazy level of advice Apple used to get. I’m not sure how crazy this advice from Charles Arthur is, but it’s a step in the right direction.

To add to all the advice being ladled out to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, here’s another piece: stop bothering with Windows Phone. It’s a waste of money which will never pay off.

Instead, focus the efforts of Microsoft and soon-to-be subsidiary Nokia on forking Android – because that way you can exploit the huge number of Chinese handset makers who want to burst out of China and sell to the rest of the world.

Plus, the level of confusion this would cause among the people who think that because “Android is winning” Google must be “winning”, too, would be fun to watch.

Benedict Evans:

The assertion that an ecosystem with close to 500m users now and over 800m in a few years will not be viable because there’s another that’s bigger seems pretty simplistic. It can’t be taken for granted that any ‘winner takes all’ dynamics will work like that.

Particularly when there’s more money poured into the one with a smaller share.

Not that this will stop this argument from being promulgated. Whether that’s because the people who keep making it can’t read or simply choose not to understand this remains unclear.

In contrast to my posts below about Satya Nadella taking over as Microsoft CEO, Ben Thompson stakes out the bear case:

So now we come to Satya Nadella. By all accounts he is a great guy, super sharp, and responsible for Azure, one of those foundational services I mentioned above. Still, he traces his recent success as head of Microsoft’s Enterprise and Cloud group mostly to the Enterprise part – aka on-premise server software – which is intimately tied to Microsoft’s current business model of PC + Office + server, not it’On s necessary new model of any device + Office365 + Azure. Moreover, he’s inheriting the current leadership team of which he was recently a part, raising questions about just how much authority he can exert.

I guess that’s part of the reason Gates is stepping down to assist, to give more legitimacy to his decisions because “dad said so.”

In episode 5 of Turning This Car around, Jon Armstrong, Lex Friedman and I talk about illness, which somehow leads to attaching weights to your…

Well, anyway.

Kontra paid a visit to a Samsung Galaxy store and it’s unbelievable.

7. No merchandise is sold in the store.

Whuuu?

12. As you’d expect, the whole Samsung Galaxy experience is gamified. You get a check-in card (see above), NFC-activated on the spot via a Galaxy phablet, to harvest your contact info. If you get enough points (by familiarizing yourself with various store sections) you get freebies like food, t-shirts and “a chance to win Samsung products”.

Gross.

9to5Mac’s Ben Lovejoy:

Estimating the revenue value of a product whose price is unknown and whose existence hasn’t even been confirmed is probably about as tenuous as it gets, but Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty reckons that the iWatch could generate $17.5 billion in the first twelve months.

To put that into perspective, the iPhone generated $2.5B and the iPad $12B in their respective first 12 months of sales …

So, our estimates of the mythical iWatch’s impact to Apple’s bottom line run from “TOO LOW TO SAVE DOOMED APPLE” and “ZOMG HUGE.”

Seriously, no one has any idea. Just stop.

Brent Simmons brings up the one real indicator that Nadella could be a good CEO choice for Microsoft: Azure.

Creating services for iOS apps doesn’t sound at all like the Microsoft I used to know. Using Node.js and JavaScript doesn’t sound like that Microsoft. The old Microsoft would create services for their OSes only and you’d have to use Visual Studio.

Nadella doesn’t live in the Windows-only world of 10-15 years ago. He recognizes the world has moved on.

Microsoft:

Microsoft Corp. today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Satya Nadella as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors effective immediately. Nadella previously held the position of Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group.

…

Microsoft also announced that Bill Gates, previously Chairman of the Board of Directors, will assume a new role on the Board as Founder and Technology Advisor, and will devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction.

It’s probably a good idea to give Nadella the Gates training wheels as it will help insulate him from criticism from within. I’m not completely sold on this pick but I was always more inclined to think an insider was a better choice than an outsider. He’s got a tough job ahead of him but they could have done a lot worse.

Marco Arment:

The problem isn’t that they botched it although they did, in some ways. The problem is that Microsoft isn’t Apple, and Microsoft’s customers aren’t Apple’s customers. They tried selling a more Apple-like attitude to their customers, most of whom don’t want and won’t tolerate an Apple-like attitude. That’s why they’re not Apple customers.

I’d generally agree that Microsoft’s customers are more conservative than Apple’s. If you asked their enterprise customers in 2005 what they wanted they probably would have said “Exactly the same interface as XP, just add more features as menu options.”

But I think the real problem was their all-in-one mentality messed with their existing platform, something Apple avoided. If Metro had been introduced as a tablet interface separate from desktop Windows… well, I don’t know if it would have taken off but it would have allowed them to offer a desktop upgrade path that was more palatable to their customers. They didn’t make upgrading exciting, they made it scary and daunting without any real benefit other than touch which most people don’t care about on the desktop.