Death of Microsoft
Every once in a while, I try to remind some of you the time has come for you to consciously consider alternatives to Microsoft software. Time to wake from the coma. The nightmare you’ve been living.
Macs are far superior and not any more expensive. Ubuntu can do everything you need and is totally Free and free. OpenOffice is more compatible with versions Microsoft Office than Microsoft itself. Internet Explorer is a toy for little kids; grown-ups use adult browsers such as FireFox or Opera. The list goes on.
Recently, I read Paul Graham’s both wise and funny essay. I’d like to share some choice quotes with you.
A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead… No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous.
I’d guess they were dead by 2005…. What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s.
The most obvious is Google… what later came to be called “Ajax.” And that was the second cause of Microsoft’s death: everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web… The third cause of Microsoft’s death was broadband Internet…. The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. Their victory is so complete that I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows.
Windows is for grandmas… no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.
I’m glad Microsoft is dead. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the way only inherited power can make you. Because remember, the Microsoft monopoly didn’t begin with Microsoft. They got it from IBM.
Microsoft’s biggest weakness is that they still don’t realize how much they suck.
If you use Windows XP, you’re going to keep hearing more things like this. The gauntlet has been thrown down and the writing is on the wall. I tend to agree with the guesstimate that Microsoft died somewhere around 2005. It’s over, folks. Definitely over. A chicken with it’s head cut-off may run around a little bit a lot, but it’s dead all the same.
If you use Windows XP and you’re comfortable paying fair money for a quality computer that makes your experience better, plan on buying a Mac next; they rock something fierce.
If you use Windows XP and need to keep your costs down, then download Ubuntu and install it as a dual-boot so your existing computer can have XP and Ubuntu at the same time in order to let you learn slowly just how easy it is to replace Windows with a quality operating system that’s free.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Or has your senility already set in?
April 8th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
While I tend to see the validity of your points and somehwat agree with the reasoning (I am a mac user myself) I wouldn’t go as far as claiming that Microsoft is dead and resistence is futile.
On one hand Microsoft’s technology is still worldwide adopted not only by end users but, more importantly, by lots of biz partners (who generate revenues for MSFT actually), and, frankly, is good enough for the average Joe.
On the other hand Microsoft is far from being dead, on the contrary, a 4 billion company is far from being dead - this year the projected revenues is somewhere in the 50 billion range, I would very much like to be in their shoes.
Their biggest problem comes from their culture and atitude - it is hard when you were a monopolist to act as if democracy were the only game in town. You can actually see this atitude very well in the Romanian society as well. :)
April 8th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
No, I don’t think I’ll change my XP system for a Mac because:
1.) It’s a well-known fact that buying a Mac you’ll end up paying more in the long run; Macs are (much) more expensive both in initial costs and maintenance costs (frequent expensive operating system upgrades), expensive peripherals, expensive software etc.
2.) Google for “MacBook problems” and you’ll see that the latest MacBooks are on average much less reliable than a $300 Laptop (case discoloration, case bending, dead batteries, dead superdrives, random shutdowns, backlight flickering, dead backlight, etc.)
3.) Getting an Apple product you’re buying your way into another proprietary world just like Microsoft’s (maybe worse): Everything Apple, is based on proprietary hardware and software - iTunes songs are in a proprietary DRM protected format, iPod storage is proprietary and you can only upload songs using iTunes, streaming to Airport Express is proprietary, you’re not even supposed to change your iPod batteries by yourself etc. How hypocrite can Steve Jobs be, when in a recent speech he took an “anti-DRM” position??
4.) There are many more software programs (both commercial and open-source) available for Windows than for the Mac.
5.) I like Ubuntu, but I think paying $100 for a commercial operating system is a good investment, because it’s “better” in many ways relevant to most people.
April 8th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Good point about the warchest, dragos. I revised to acknowledge that this particular dead chicken will run around a bit more than others. ;] All the same, I’m increasingly confident that Microsoft (Windows franchise, most precisely) is dead. Like IBM, they’re opportunity will be to reincarnate into something else (MSN butterflies come to mind).
In the meantime, they’re bleeding from ventures into Xbox and the joke called Zune. Vista will sell some, yes, but I suspect a fair analysis of the shakeout will show it was ultimately anticlimatic. There’s still some juice to squeeze from suckers who pay for Office. Sharepoint and Exchange look like the cash cows for the next 5 years, but I don’t think they’re on entirely secure ground there.
Yes, you mention Developers! Developers! Developers! Certainly, there is some inertia still to be spent from past mindshare. Even some tribute being paid by some hardware manufacturers as a collaboration to boost ecosystem sales.
The growing trend is Linux systems are being adopted by governments, NGOs, and even corporations. For the desktop. For the web. For documents in an office suite. In fact, the impending change is so palatable that many people are writing about the trend seriously, even going so far as to note differences between factual adoption now and the hype surrounding the 1999-2001 era when false hope circulated in abundance.
Back then, Microsoft was just slaying the dragon of Netscape while starting it’s anti-linux campaign. Netscape cashed out and died, while we know it’s original purpose and vision has been successfully reborn into a new threat. Linux will not be defeated, period.
I’d go so far as to say Microsoft as we had know it is dead. It doesn’t know it yet, so it stumbled around swinging it’s fist as the ghost of linux and the intarwebz while casting about for entertainment revenue diversification and methods to leverage what’s left of it’s dead Windows tyranny.
I think it’s quite interesting to compare aspects of this situation with concepts of Romanian politics. Sublime inspiration, even. I shall endeavor to ponder this more.
April 8th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
J, you haven’t been doing your homework. It’s very clear that a Mac does not cost more than a comparable system (except in Romania). That old wives tale has been dead for years and years. What’s even more amazing is that you can get an Apple computer, including OS X, for the price of Vista as you see it advertised on TV.
As for the OS upgrades, some people do choose to leapfrog every other release to save a buck or two. However, many people are very happy to pay far less than the cost of Windows bloatware in order to receive highly substantial upgrades to OS X which make it more robust and efficient. This argument is as old as the hills, but only the last few years are relevant and in the past 6+ years, the evidence is easy to see for any logical person.
There was some trouble with the MacBook line for a while. No doubt about that. I do think you’re overstating the case about “$300 laptops” which are, of course, both vaporware and a joke. We call that a strawman, when you set up a non-existent enemy to attack. But I’m not impressed with arguments which fight the wind.
Apple hardware runs linux, if you want. You can put OS X on non-Apple hardware, if you try. iTunes now sells non-DRM music after being the only company to slap the music corporations around, for which no one else has made significant effort to do. The iPod can and does load music without iTunes, although iTunes certainly is a graceful media management tool.
iPod battery situation sucks. No argument on that one!
Ubuntu rocks, but I’m glad to see you are willing to pay the $100 it costs to upgrade your OS X. That tells me I misunderstood what you said earlier. ;]
April 8th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
OK, I take back that part with the initial cost and leave only the part with the cost in the long run. High-end PCs are similar in price with their Apple counterparts, but Apple doesn’t have low-end PCs. How do I know that you end up paying more in the long run? Since I don’t own a Mac, all my information comes from the blogs of Apple aficionados I read; even though they are Apple fans, they aren’t afraid to show the cons of switching to a Mac.
I don’t know where that guy lives, but Vista Ultimate is not 600 EUR in Europe, the highest I’ve seen was around 400 EUR. However, just because there is an Ultimate version, doesn’t mean you have to buy it or that it’s the only one worth buying. Vista Home Premium is around 120 EUR and has all the eye-candy and multimedia features that Ultimate has. Also, these are the prices for retail versions; if you buy a computer with Vista, the OEM version for Ultimate is under $200.
The $300 laptop is not a joke, there are many laptops under $400 that are good enough to watch movies, browse the internet, do office tasks or manage your photo collection.
Ok so it’s not really $300 here’s $399 one that comes with Vista (if someone’s looking to buy a cheap laptop, I’m sure he could find others like this or cheaper):
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmcat103700050018&type=category&_DARGS=/site/en_US/catalog/fragments/product/olslinelistingsortfilter.jsp
Yes there are 3rd party applications that upload music to the iPod, but the guys that did those reverse-engineered the proprietary format that Apple can change anytime. (And many commercial software vendors cannot rely on such hacks; look at the Audion story here http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ - they don’t hold it against Apple but they had to discontinue their music player because iTunes was preincluded on all Macs + they had to deal with all their proprietary formats.)
“Apple hardware runs linux, if you want. You can put OS X on non-Apple hardware, if you try.”
Maybe, but I prefer to run Linux on a system I can make and upgrade myself even with junk components lying around in my house. As for the other part, I’m sure that breaks the license.
“iTunes now sells non-DRM music after being the only company to slap the music corporations around, for which no one else has made significant effort to do.”
However, iTunes has been the only major online music vendor for the last five years or so, so if someone was to do something about this they were the ones to do it. For this reason, I still think Jobs is a hypocrite.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
MS is “dead” the way apple was “dead” a few years back. They can always bring themselves back in to relevancy through reinvention and rebranding. MS is just out to cultural lunch and no longer pays attention to where their customers and potential customers are at.
Myself, I use Kubuntu (a variant of Ubuntu), and I agree that it’s a great operating system. I love the customizability. Possibly a bit rough around the edges for those afraid to google for an answer to a problem and tinker, though.
On the Xbox, I think you underestimate that one. It’s done well in the states and Canada (although I’m sort of stunned by how well the Wii is doing). If I played more games I’d get a console (um, and a TV) because so many titles aren’t made for mac/linux or just don’t work that well under WINE (Vista and DX10 won’t help either). And a console is really custom made for gaming, usually in a different part of the house, controllers, etc. I could see a lot of mac folks also owning a console of some sort for those reasons, so owning a mac doesn’t preclude financially supporting MS. A gaming OS/machine and a work OS/machine are very different beasts. Same for PDAs too. Point is, not dead yet.
April 9th, 2007 at 12:38 am
J - I don’t think we’re all that far apart. Apple does have some relatively low-price offerings. $600 for a computer (Mac Mini) isn’t outlandish which means they do have something to fill the void.
I am curious, however, as to what the supposed cons are! What, a video game or two? That’s more than made up for in the included applications for music and video manipulation. Granted, some teenagers might feel peer pressure to play Game X and that’s a choice they have to deal with, but for most people the Mac offers much more realistic software of a quality level.
I can reach out and understand that not everyone needs or wants the version ABC of Vista, but they also don’t comprehend what’s in version 123. These fractured pricing strategies end up giving apologists a chance to pretend Vista is fantastic while untruthfully claiming it doesn’t cost much. Look, the advertising displays the range of possible features and that’s the price we should be talking about. We know Europe is being ripped off. Could that be retribution for the EU forcing Microsoft to finally share some of it’s underlying code? I won’t play tinfoil hat, but the question is valid.
I also looked around really quick and found some used laptops in the $400-$500 range. They do not compare to the MacBook and should not be used in comparison unless we want to tout the relative superiority of the Mac offerings. I think we’re shooting at shadows here.
Almost no big-name vendor sells a new, feature-devoid laptop which has basic functionality at these prices. And, if they did, I’ll be the first to say that Ubuntu is sufficient to fulfill the requirements you laid out. I will, however, stick to the notion that Mac remains a better bargain for user-friendly completeness.
Certainly, Vista is hard pressed to fill that gap.
While I prefer open format and all, I must also gasp at the notion that any company went under the waves because OS X includes iTunes in it. Given the demographics, I find that to be a bit reaching. Not arguing principle here, mind you, but practical reality.
I can relate to the preference for choosing component hardware and wanting to run linux on it. No contest from me. Slap together whatever devices meet your need and fit under your budget, then run Ubuntu (or other) to make your inexpensive machine run at full strength.
RS - Apple was certainly on the deathbed, if not dead. With the reinstatement of Jobs, it is undeniable (by rational beings) that Apple has made an astounding comeback to the point of far outstripping anything Microsoft does for home users and most corporate users (were they smart enough to try). I’ll agree with you that MS is out to lunch and no longer pays attention to end users, their “We Heard You” mantra notwithstanding.
I have moments where I wonder if Kubuntu would have been a better default than Ubuntu. Though I’ve dispelled the myth of Xubuntu, as far as I’m concerned. However, these are relatively minor quibblings we might have given the scope of reality here. Definitely agree with you about Google for an answer and I think that day is just now dawning. Not for everyone, but the snowball effect is upon us.
From what I gather, the Wii flat-out kicks serious ass. I surveyed my friends and all of them (regardless of desktop preference) love this Nintendo platform. They’re so enthusiastic that I’ve love to get my hands on a Wii for a couple of weeks and check it out. Alas, I never was and certainly am not now much of a gamer, in the hardcore sense.
Zune is toast. I’ll agree there’s still some potential for Xbox to turn a dime and become a worthwhile investment. That remains to be seen.
As for games, in general, for the hardcore gamer, I won’t pretened DX10 doesn’t have the lock-in. Point, match. A number of games work great on linux, from Quake to WoW to Savage, but most titles are nearly Windows-exclusive. That’ll slow down the all important 13-to-17 year old male market. As for the rest of us, there are enough other games that a goodly number of adults won’t be restricted by Windows. Linux has some killer games. Mac, well, Mac has some, if that matters.
PDAs? Help a brother out…
April 9th, 2007 at 5:47 am
“We heard you”…you mean with the hardware locking thing?
PDAs…I mean that the PDA area is another front where one could differentiate a product and where one could win users, and a place MS currently sucks for all the same reasons Vista is such an uncompelling upgrade. CE doesn’t add much and it’s requirements are onerous. I use my workstation at home for 90% of what I do…its not a laptop because I got a lot more for my $ by going with a DIY desktop and I needed power, not portability the last year or so. But I could see that, if I had a phone that was a PDA that had internet access, that I might find that notion useful on a daily basis even where a laptop was inappropriate to carry around (ie, drunken late night food searches post-show or whatever). As it is, since internet access is free on my phone I do look things up now and then, but the interface sucks…it’s painfully slow to use. Windows CE is bulky and essentially requires lockin to MS products…no luv for you, thunderbird users! iPhone is interesting, but…it looks like lockin again. Check out OpenMoko…I’m really interested in seeing where those guys end up. Maybe the non-existant GooglePhone? heh. Anyway, point is…no one has this solved yet because they are all busily trying to lock us in to their inferior products when we have all spent so much time trying to decide on particular solutions for our own individual needs. That’s why I like linux…at least, for now, I can set it up to my liking (DX10, vista issues coming up in the near future aside). Maybe I’ll have to switch to a Mac soon though to get some corporate protection, you know…to do things like play my music, to make my content, etc. :/
That Wiimote is so cool. I’m really looking forward to linux drivers for it, as it would be an awesome music performance tool on an open platform. I really hated the name, but…they have really got something interesting there. It’s unique. I mean, it’s like the gun with the old NES systems. How cool was it to not use a controller, but to actually shoot the ducks in duck hunt? Wii bowling, Wii tennis, it’s amazing what you can do with that damn controller. It’s really hard to imagine why someone didn’t think of it earlier.
Out of curiousity, what games do you find “killer” on Linux? I pretty much only play WoW now and then, and FreeCiv. There are tons, so I’m curious…
April 9th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
You left out (maybe knowingly) a few products that Microsoft does really well. .Net and Windows Mobile for example. I would like to hear what you think about them before we can go ahead with the RIPs.
April 9th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Well I believe Microsoft is definitely losing ground in the desktop market, the 360 is a smash hit, and that’s their backup plan I believe. So many people I know in the past year have purchased a 360. They are also bringing IPTV to the 360 and I believe this is the direction they are heading. My buddy works at m$ and says the reason they still make a lot of the products they do is just to appease shareholders, he said that if microsoft quit making anymore $ right now they would still have enough money to survive 7 years and keep the same employees and departments, even though I’m a huge open source slut, sadly m$ won’t be going away soon.
April 10th, 2007 at 12:35 am
RS - The “We Heard You” is a marketing theme throughout several product family campaigns. With each new version or significant upgrade, they use the constant refrain “We Heard You” as a message they are listening to users. Often times, it’s highly disingenuous. But clever!
And, really, what else can they do? Fend off criticism of disconnect by overtly stating that each iteration is supposedly a direct response to user feedback. It’s the only thing they can do, at times. If you’re going to lie, then lie with confidence!
I conned myself into buying a couple Handspring units during their heyday. I’m not sure why I repeated the purchases since, although conceptually hot, I got very little practical use out of it. It was just another device that I ultimately didn’t want to carry around.
Now, I did pick up a Treo 650 at some point. That was cool. I could do all my PDA functions, handle all my phone calls, and access the internet for directions and information when I was lost in the backwoods of Romania. I loved it (except the camera was a joke).
I had a couple buddies with the then-Compaq iPaq and all that jazz. They tried to extol its virtues, but it was crap. Underpowered for the bloatware… and who’s realistically going to do spreadsheet calculations on one of those to the point of needing Excel? Bah! I’m pretty sure it became a paperweight much as my Handspring had done in the past.
Without knowing too much detail about OpenMoko, I had though they’d have quit by now, so I’m pleasantly surprised to see they’re still in the game. Looks like they’ll have an early adopter roll-out this year, so perhaps by 2008 there might be some other manufacturers testing the water a little bit.
Heh, with a statement like that, I’d have to guess it’s truly revolutionizes the gaming experience (or has the potential to, if you actually use it). Sounds cool; I wouldn’t mind blowing a weekend with one.
Ovidiu - I have heard lots of positive feedback about the 2.0 version of .Net and everyone seems to respect C#. I’m no programmer, so you’ll have to let me dance my way out of that one. I do think these tools will keep them a significant player in the server game for a while, if not a long time.
Lots of companies love to play the Microsoft game and that ecosystem is a huge one. .net Servers will make money for Redmond for quite some time.
For mobile platforms, I see Microsoft growing its’ lead in the short term, but defending against the inevitable losing of ground to linux. There’s money to be made and prestige to be had, to be sure, but it’s not a war Microsoft is likely to win.
At the same time, there’s no doubt in my mind that Microsoft must play full-court press on all non-Windows (desktop) product families, because once people realize the desktop has indeed been lost then Microsoft won’t be able to leverage that entrenched mindset to corral blinder-wearing middle management buyers at soap factories and dog food packaging suppliers into making the safe choice of brand recognition.
They’ve got no choice and I’d fire anyone who didn’t do precisely that. So, I expect a last-ditch surge in several areas which will keep revenues coming in. But I think we’ll hear about shake-ups as the new Microsoft reincarnates.
xamox - If I understand correctly, the success of the Xbox 360 is bleeding Microsoft at the rate of over USD$1,000,000,000 per annum. That’s a serious cap in the ass, homie. Publicly, they’ve no specific plans for a target date of product line profitability. They’re asking share holders to continue bleeding like a stuck pig for the next few years.
I don’t see the play here.
Granted, I’m no crystal ball and there are some awfully intelligent people working at Microsoft, so there must be a plan in their somewhere. I wonder how smart it is to start up a division that rakes in such huge losses year after year after year after year after year after..
April 10th, 2007 at 10:59 am
You should meet my husband. On his keychain he carries a memory flash with a Stallman speech as to why we should use free software. I’ve probably heard this speech 100 times. Now he’s installing Gentoo on his mom computer (she’s almost 60 years old). I’m really curious how this experiment is gonna go.
On a different note, I used to work for Intel and they were talking about the desktop platforms being on the way out and the switch to laptops about 4 years ago (that’s why Intel spent so much money promoting Centrino). It’s unlikely that Microsoft doesn’t grasp that trend, they’re probably just trying to get as much as they can from this dying animal.