Apps Are Not Enough: Putting People First

12/19/2011

2 minutes to read

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This is a time of year where we tend to think about connecting and reconnecting with all the people we care about, virtually and in person. And it’s a time of year where many of us are incredibly busy – wrapping up our to-do’s for the year, wrapping up holiday presents, sending out cards, getting ready for holiday travel or preparing for visitors. And it turns out, there really isn’t an app for the holidays that lets us do it all.

But here at Microsoft, we’ve always been a company that thinks about what we can do to make people’s lives better – from putting a PC on every desk to creating the universal productivity solutions used all over the world to creating Xbox and Kinect, which are revolutionizing gaming and entertainment. Or just making it easier to communicate, to connect, to get enough done to allow us to relax.

What do we mean by that? Take a look at the video below. It shows a real-life scenario that’s common to many people today – whether you’re traveling for business or for pleasure. And it shows a few of our products and services working together to help a real-world person make their life a little bit better.

Are there other ways to accomplish these things? Of course. That’s the beauty of technology, the choices it brings. But not as easily and not with the built-in tools and services we provide. In fact, the easiest way to do some of the things in the video on competing devices is to use some of the software we have made available for those products! And that’s the real point – putting people first and making their lives better and richer with the help of technology instead of getting hung up on numbers of apps, or technical specifications or on living in a world where there is only one right way.

Of course we want you to consider our products when you buy gifts this holiday season, but we also want you to think about how those products can help you and your loved ones. It isn’t about what product has the most of this or the fastest that, it’s about the product that fits your life or your loved one’s life the best. And as we showed in the video above, we think we have some good answers.

Posted by Frank X. Shaw

Corporate Vice President, Corporate Communications, Microsoft