iLife, Microsoft, and Scoble

Scoble says:

“He also recommends we do something like Apple’s iLife. OK, but can you get us protection from not only the anti-trust lawsuits that’ll happen when we go after Adobe’s market and put that into Windows, but the hatred we’ll get from a whole new generation of people who think Microsoft is being a bully with the industry?”

[Microsoft's approach to Music Industry ADD?]

I think it would be awesome if Microsoft did something like iLife, but here is an awesome idea, DON’T BUNDLE IT IN WINDOWS! If you want to get the anti-trust people off of your back, remove stuff like media player and movie maker from windows and offer it in a digital media add-on pack like iLife. It could include:

Windows Media Player
Windows Movie Maker (And make it not suck)
Windows Photo Something - Photo editing/management
Windows Music Something – Simple music editing

This would be the kind of stuff our mothers would use, not professional level, into level. If you don’t build it into Windows then people still have a choice and anti-trust people can shove it. I bet you could get a bunch of the OEM’s to bundle it with new systems, but other companies like Adobe and Real could also compete in this area. People who want to do simple photo and video editing are being drawn away from Microsoft and towards Apple, the way to fight this is with a strong add-on pack to Windows from Microsoft… not by bundling more stuff in Windows. So how about it?

-James