And that’s where I see the model making sense – with established products where the potential for innovation in the forseeable future is minimal. I wouldn’t expected to have heard about the iPod nano from any Apple blogger beforehand, say.

And don’t forget that MSFT’s blogging seems half-hearted at best sometimes. For one thing, it sounds like a rather stifled voice on occasion, usually so when there is a distinct sense (for me as an outsider, anyway) that a particular direction seems to have been dictated from above, where the team might have chosen differently or just doesn’t have an opinion.

But notably, the entire upper echelon at MSFT is absent from blogland. That’s interesting, no?

Contrast the other company which you didn’t mention, which has done a much more respectable job at this so far: Sun. Not that I’m a fan on Sun at large; their upper echelon seems rather conflicted at times. But at least they’re not entirely phobic, as MSFT is.