3 ms·

Certainly a valid point. And PG's criticisms were deserved as well. At the same time, I can't help but think some of this is an overreaction. Microsoft beat Ap

Certainly a valid point. And PG's criticisms were deserved as well. At the same time, I can't help but think some of this is an overreaction. Microsoft beat Apple as well as IBM in the market the first time by letting users pick their hardware vendor. And, even today, they still do that, and that's still Apple's achilles heel in gaining market share -- if someone wants more choice than a half a dozen or so models, they're going to have to buy a system running a different OS. Yes, Vista sucks. Microsoft has come out with a completely crappy version of it's most important product. But other companies have released crappy products before and have lived on past their mistakes. Intel has released some horrible products before -- i860, Itanium, and the P4 all come to mind -- and pretty much all of them happened because they thought it was more important to keep their profits skyrocketing by controlling the market than it was to give customers what they wanted. But Intel has recovered from all of those debacles and once again makes the best CPUs around -- Core 2 Duo is great. The fact that people are clinging to XP says that people at least perceive Microsoft operating systems to have value. The real test for Microsoft is whether they can learn from the Vista debacle and focus on making a better product the next time out with Windows 7. Having one failed product cycle isn't likely to sink them, but a second one could. I run Ubuntu and I don't regret it for a second. It's a great system, and I like it better than Windows (or OS X, for that matter). But I think it's silly to say that Microsoft should just pack up and surrender because they shipped something that sucked.

allenbrunson 19y ago
i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up. steve jobs was immature, and engineered things such that he was made irrelevant in his own company. the dude's firing on all cylinders now, and is virtually unstoppable. it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects. all your friends use windows, you've spent a lot of money on windows software, people you know pass around windows-centric .xls and .doc files, you've been using windows long enough to have become familiar with it, etc. if it wasn't for all that, i think apple would have already eaten about half of microsoft's lunch.
- wanorris 19y ago
  "i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up" Microsoft gave people a clear transition to a windowing environment -- back when people weren't even sure they wanted one -- that allowed them to run hardware from any vendor they wanted, with software from the vendors they were used to using, and allowed them to load a windowing environment only when they wanted to. It was a nice, safe, incremental step. Going to Mac meant throwing everything away and starting over. "it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects." Agreed. And don't forget: when you get there, you have a limited selection of hardware (and none at the entry level), you can't play most computer games even if you were willing to buy them all over again, and if your company has custom apps, they probably only run if you load up Parallels, which is a daunting prospect for most people. There's no question that network effects drive Microsoft adoption. But Apple also isn't behaving like a company that wants to attract all of Microsoft's customers. It's behaving like a company that's perfectly happy skimming off the most profitable customers and collecting a premium for it. Actually, if you want to take a look at someone that fits Paul's criteria for a company that tries to grow by acting like a nonprofit and going out of it's way to look for ways to benefit its customers, you could do worse than to look at Ubuntu. Ubuntu looks like a company that could start eating Microsoft's lunch at some point.
  - allenbrunson 19y ago
    i think you're making too big of a deal out of hardware choice. you're talking about people who don't know if they want a gui or not, yet you think those same people will want to choose what type of computer to run it on? as if. people like that want to AVOID having to make choices like that, as often as possible. i'm up at the other end of the spectrum: i know all the tradeoffs, i'm as technically savvy as computer buyers get ... yet i don't want to make that choice, either. i haven't had to worry about what type of hard disk controller i've got for ten years or more, and i'm glad to be rid of dealing with piddly issues like that. the only people who care about the low-level hardware they're using are gamers, tinkerers, and cheapskates. probably a tiny percentage of the total computer-using population. well, i guess i do care about what hardware i'm using -- to the extent that i want it to be pleasant to use. once again, apple's interests are exactly aligned with my own.
maxwell 19y ago
Nintendo had a great comeback with the Wii after the GameCube (and even the N64). Microsoft could do something similar, but I haven't seen any indication they will.
- wanorris 19y ago
  The Windows 7 team seems to recognize that they have to recover from a colossal screwup. Whether they understand what they need to do to make that happen -- and whether they can execute on those ideas -- I have no idea.
  - jcl 19y ago
    On the plus side, they only have to deliver something as good as XP to be considered a success. :)
- wumi 19y ago
  was there any indication from Nintendo that they would come out with a market-leading console (after the disaster that was the GameCube) ?
  - marvin 19y ago
    Yes, there was. Or rather, there were indications that the Wii would get very popular. I was in the camp of "the Wii is definitely going to be successful", but the market at large obviously wasn't. From what I heard at the time, the Nintendo DS was very successful in "niche markets" (or "casual gamers", choose the label that suits you), which could be taken as an indication that the Wii, with its promised novel control scheme, would be very popular at least among non-gamers. For contrarian investing, there were a lot of things pointing towards Nintendo being undervalued in early 2005. The prevalent opinion of "graphics capabilities is the most important aspect of a computer game" and "gamers want predictability, not a novel control scheme" and "Nintendo sales have been falling since the NES" should have set off lots of red lights among people who actually play games. Market-leading is actually an irrelevant label in this regard, the important thing is that Nintendo released a console that made them more profitable than they were. In sales, the GameCube did about as well as the XBOX..not the market leader by a factor of 6, but definitely not something that would kill the company by itself. Any console doing better than that would drive up the stock price of Nintendo ("break the negative trend canal in sales", as an annoying stock market analyst would say)

allenbrunson 19y ago

i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up. steve jobs was immature, and engineered things such that he was made irrelevant in his own company. the dude's firing on all cylinders now, and is virtually unstoppable. it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects. all your friends use windows, you've spent a lot of money on windows software, people you know pass around windows-centric .xls and .doc files, you've been using windows long enough to have become familiar with it, etc. if it wasn't for all that, i think apple would have already eaten about half of microsoft's lunch.

wanorris 19y ago
"i think microsoft beat apple because apple was busy beating itself. apple had about a ten-year lead in gui operating systems, but couldn't keep up" Microsoft gave people a clear transition to a windowing environment -- back when people weren't even sure they wanted one -- that allowed them to run hardware from any vendor they wanted, with software from the vendors they were used to using, and allowed them to load a windowing environment only when they wanted to. It was a nice, safe, incremental step. Going to Mac meant throwing everything away and starting over. "it's very painful to switch operating systems, due to network effects." Agreed. And don't forget: when you get there, you have a limited selection of hardware (and none at the entry level), you can't play most computer games even if you were willing to buy them all over again, and if your company has custom apps, they probably only run if you load up Parallels, which is a daunting prospect for most people. There's no question that network effects drive Microsoft adoption. But Apple also isn't behaving like a company that wants to attract all of Microsoft's customers. It's behaving like a company that's perfectly happy skimming off the most profitable customers and collecting a premium for it. Actually, if you want to take a look at someone that fits Paul's criteria for a company that tries to grow by acting like a nonprofit and going out of it's way to look for ways to benefit its customers, you could do worse than to look at Ubuntu. Ubuntu looks like a company that could start eating Microsoft's lunch at some point.
- allenbrunson 19y ago
  i think you're making too big of a deal out of hardware choice. you're talking about people who don't know if they want a gui or not, yet you think those same people will want to choose what type of computer to run it on? as if. people like that want to AVOID having to make choices like that, as often as possible. i'm up at the other end of the spectrum: i know all the tradeoffs, i'm as technically savvy as computer buyers get ... yet i don't want to make that choice, either. i haven't had to worry about what type of hard disk controller i've got for ten years or more, and i'm glad to be rid of dealing with piddly issues like that. the only people who care about the low-level hardware they're using are gamers, tinkerers, and cheapskates. probably a tiny percentage of the total computer-using population. well, i guess i do care about what hardware i'm using -- to the extent that i want it to be pleasant to use. once again, apple's interests are exactly aligned with my own.

maxwell 19y ago

Nintendo had a great comeback with the Wii after the GameCube (and even the N64). Microsoft could do something similar, but I haven't seen any indication they will.

wanorris 19y ago
The Windows 7 team seems to recognize that they have to recover from a colossal screwup. Whether they understand what they need to do to make that happen -- and whether they can execute on those ideas -- I have no idea.
- jcl 19y ago
  On the plus side, they only have to deliver something as good as XP to be considered a success. :)
wumi 19y ago
was there any indication from Nintendo that they would come out with a market-leading console (after the disaster that was the GameCube) ?
- marvin 19y ago
  Yes, there was. Or rather, there were indications that the Wii would get very popular. I was in the camp of "the Wii is definitely going to be successful", but the market at large obviously wasn't. From what I heard at the time, the Nintendo DS was very successful in "niche markets" (or "casual gamers", choose the label that suits you), which could be taken as an indication that the Wii, with its promised novel control scheme, would be very popular at least among non-gamers. For contrarian investing, there were a lot of things pointing towards Nintendo being undervalued in early 2005. The prevalent opinion of "graphics capabilities is the most important aspect of a computer game" and "gamers want predictability, not a novel control scheme" and "Nintendo sales have been falling since the NES" should have set off lots of red lights among people who actually play games. Market-leading is actually an irrelevant label in this regard, the important thing is that Nintendo released a console that made them more profitable than they were. In sales, the GameCube did about as well as the XBOX..not the market leader by a factor of 6, but definitely not something that would kill the company by itself. Any console doing better than that would drive up the stock price of Nintendo ("break the negative trend canal in sales", as an annoying stock market analyst would say)