wither MS?
 

Not sure that I believe the timeline, but I think we are in the middle of a sea change and it isn't clear that MS has the right people at the wheel. Interesting piece.

Microsoft Looking Like An End-Stage Company -- InformationWeek

I thought this thread would be about Michael Schumacher. Yes, of course Microsoft is end-of-the-road. Nobody wants boring, anymore.

I feel like one of the biggest problems with MS, and it's been this way for a while, is that you have to find the cool stuff some of the software does yourself.

In an Apple commercial, within 30 seconds, you see 7 or 8 neat things you can do. You never see that sort of stuff for Windows, or when you do, the same 30 seconds shows you one thing, and doesn't even describe it well with all that extra time.

There are tons of things I do that people are amazed by because they didn't know they were possible, and nobody reads the what's new or checks out the videos on a new version of Windows, so you get the constant feeling from everyone that it's all rehashed and nothing is new. There are lots of new things, they are just hidden, or non-obvious, or you don't even know to look for them.

Even look at this Windows Phone 7 thing. Supposed to be released on the 8th, what phones are available on what carriers has already been announced, there have been several reviews, etc. But no commercials, not pre-orderable, no way for anyone other than IT nerds to even know it's coming.

I think they definately need to change up the advertising and marketing in a big way to have any hope of the new directions getting any traction.

Eh, so they don't excel at certain new things. They still are the market leader in operating systems. They won't be in trouble until that changes.

Heh, weird, there was just a WinPhone commercial, and it had a date, amazing.

Will say though that it was still sortof a waste of airtime, as it had people doing this or that looking at the phone, and all of 2 seconds at the end that showed the phone.

iPhone/iPad marketing rocks because it's all about the product and what it'll do, and seeing them makes you want to play with one.

Microsoft is like a drunken elephant in the social media market. Their failures & the loss of IE's dominance should be troubling them. The business OS market won't erode anytime soon but the phone market is mushrooming so fast & so profitably & MS are merely watching from the sidelines. Time to cattle-prod (figuratively) their creative staff.

Ian

What do Lotus, WordPerfect, Netscape, America Online, and Yahoo! all have in common?

They are all companies who had a better product that Microsoft who Microsoft eventually crushed. As long as Microsoft has the cash cow that is the OS business, they can afford to make repeated mistakes and will still eventually win. Almost everyone else has to get it right on the first try, but not Microsoft.

After the MS policy about Office 2010 (no "upgrade pricing"), I went to Ubuntu and Open Office and I cannot be the only one doing this...

Like Apple did with Jobs, MSFT need to bring back their visionary.

But I doubt IBM will make that mistake again.

I gave up on Microsoft about a year ago. Soooooooooo sick of all the antivirus, anti-malware, defrag, spyware, crap-tastic maintenance I've been doing (and still do for family) just for the pleasure of using the internet. no thanks...

OS-X, Linux, all better.

bwuahahaha funny

Not quite. The only reason those OSes are "secure" is because they are obscure. Hackers concentrate their efforts where they are likely to realize the most damage/personal gain. No point in attacking OSes that no one uses. If those OSes gain in popularity, they will be vulnerable. In fact, I'd argue they will be MORE vulnerable because their makers have no history with actually trying to thwart hackers.

Being BSD and Unix/Linux based is natively more secure. It's another reason why all the big boy servers typically run one of those (though they also do run their share of MS, too, for ease of use).

=)

Bzzzt. Wrong.

I've asked this question multiple times. In fact yesterday on another thread.

Pre OSX there were hundreds of Mac viruses AND their market share was smaller.

We're all those guys go?

Security thru obscurity is BS.

No OS is 100% secure but if you lock the door and leave the key in the lock you might as well leave the door open.

The real truth is MSFT had crap for security.

It could have been far more secure with a few minor concessions.

You know, like don't allow a root/superuser account to exist with no password.

This kinda sounds like the US auto industry "strategy" in the early 70's...

I still prefer using smoke signals or on a windy day the Tom Toms work well.

Trust me, there are plenty of holes in Unix that no one bothers plugging because no one is looking for them. Sudo get me a sandwich.

I went to Open Office in 2008 because things I normally do became buried or only identified through some picture with no clear sense of purpose in Office 07. I have no regrets whatsoever.

They fattened up the products with features many people simply do not need.
I do not need a ribbon menu, i do not need the new style windows 7 start menu, i do not need popups asking me if i'm sure i want to do this.

Fine if some end Lusers need it, but i don't, so don't bloody force me to use the crap i don't need.
Because other then not needing that crap, i also do not want it. So, i don't upgrade, in fact i buy my pc's and i downgrade back to XP.
And when the day comes that i won't be able to find drivers anymore, then that will be the day that i choose my new OS with a completely open mind. I will toss all i know overboard, and i'll start from scratch... May be linux, may be Apple, maybe, but unlikely MS.

I heard that just last week MS now prohibits any manufacturer to sell a computer with XP pre-installed. At our office we have 14 computers. All but one is XP. That one oddball is Win2000. Some of the software we use is very specialized. It will only work with XP.

I have Ubuntu on my personal netbook, XP on my main home computer.

Even though MS has several different software and hardware products, their bread and butter is Office and Windows. If they start to lose those two (they are already losing Office - very few companies are signing enterprise agreements anymore), then they are done. If Apple really wants to kill MS, they can license OS X for any Intel device = MS is done.

I don't see apple doing that.... That would be loosing too much control, Jobs won't allow that....

I don't see that happening.

Windows needs to run on a nearly infinite combination of hardware. Which to MSFT's credit it does very well. Windows would undoubtedly be a better product if it's compatibility list were smaller/controlled/limited.

And the impact would likely be limited to consumers.

The cost to corporations would be staggering.

We got a new President just as I had finished submitting a request for new hardware for my group. We are/were exclusively Apple.

He insisted we could get the same hardware from a PC vendor for far less.

So I went back, wrote up a budget for PC hardware, then added in the costs for dumping our Mac apps and replacing with Windows versions which by itself was 2-3x's more money than just buying new Apple hardware.

I was not commenting on whether Apple WOULD do that, just saying that if they really wanted to put the nail in MS's coffin, they COULD.

The big trick would be to partner with some firms so that you could get standard drivers ie. say that if you buy an Intel board, ATI video card, etc., OS X will run. If not, good luck.

I agree with other's comments - the only reason that Apple hardware is so expensive is that it can be - enough people are willing to pay it.

Apple doesn't care about OS market share... they simply wanna sell hardware at high end prices..

After all, it's all made in the same Chinese factory.. Dell, Apple, whatever, it's all Foxcon... You know, that place where employees have a rather high suicide rate.

So what is the difference, why is Apple hardware so much more expensive?
Right, because they can swing it, because they have the design(looks) right.
And because the software matches the box that runs it in the looks department... It's all about style..Ipods, iphones, imacs mac air... whatever.. it's all compatible , it all matches in the looks department... Why Jobs would, could or even should branch out is beyond me... It simply does not make any sense for them to do so.. They have made a come back like no other.. they make Billions a year in profits... Why change a winning thing???

And as for beating MS.. remember, MS payed Apple money in some kind of cooperation agreement... I'm sure there are certain stipulations in there to make sure neither rains on the other one's parade to much... And as for beating MS... MS still makes double the profits that Apple does, with only 50 % more revenue... So MS still does something right in the big picture. They had a drop in profits last years, but hey, i guess the crisis works the same for everybody doesn't it.. or rather it does not if you drop a billion but still nett 16 billions... It doesn't really hurt that much that way.

Some coffin if it makes em 16-17 billion a year..
Hell, if they think they are loosing, they can spend as much cashon R&D or marketing as Apple makes in a year, and still nett more profit then Apple does...

Apple were hurting.

MSFT were under heavy Fed scrutiny at the time. Noise about the Fed forcing MSFT to break up.

Apple was/is the only other commercially viable consumer operating system available.

Without it Windows/MSFT become a monopoly, we all know what happens next.

It was in MSFT's best interest to ensure Apples survival.

It still applies, they both need the other one to prevent being targeted as a monopoly...
So neither will hammer any nails in the other one's coffin... There's no reason why they should, they both make sj1tloads of money... shareholders get dividends even during a time of global economic crisis...

Yup.

The "rivalry" makes for good TV.

Yeah, any Apple/Microsoft rivalry is much like a Ferrari/GM rivalry.

One makes and exclusive, overpriced product for a very small percentage of the population. The other makes a mediocre product for the other 99% of the population...