5 ms·

The 9 Flavors Of Windows 8 Show The Key Difference Between Microsoft And Apple

13 points by justjimmy 15y ago

lionhearted 15y ago
Not a bad article, but it misses the key two words of the whole thing: Price discrimination. Price discrimination is attempting to get the maximum price a person or organization would be willing to pay. Apple doesn't do that -- they just go 100% upmarket. Microsoft has the challenge of trying to get top dollar from wealthy people using top-notch machines while also preserving all their market share at the low end of the market. It's hard to say which model is better. Apple's is sexier and wins more spectacularly, for sure, and I love Apple. I'm all-in on Apple. But the Apple model is also immensely more prone to catastrophe. Two bad product cycles in a row, or missing an emerging trend and it might be curtains for Apple again. Well, they have the huge cash position. But it could get pretty ugly if they miss the boat, whereas Microsoft can even endure a mess like the huge delay post-XP followed by the heavily-panned Vista, and still be okay.
- justjimmy 15y ago
  My short time with Apple's OS (4 years), I noticed Apple doesn't make drastic changes but rather alot of tweaks and gradual improvements. (From a UI/UX perspective) Windows on the other hand makes erratic leaps and breaks users' expectation (from previous versions) alot, and have to relearn alot of new flow. (Not just the OS but its Office Suite as well. The Tabbed categorization of Toolbars really frustrated me). Now that with 8, they're shifting their focus, again. Will it work? Who knows – I just know I have to learn everything again, and it's daunting.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    I would categorize Lion's scrolling change to be drastic.
    - justjimmy 15y ago
      Not when the underlying experience exists on iPhone and with the prominence of the touchpad (from MacBooks), it's not a blindsided change.
  - UnFleshedOne 15y ago
    Interestingly it is almost opposite picture from developer's point of view -- apple breaks things every major release, windows still supports stuff back from win95 days.
- r00fus 15y ago
  > Microsoft has the challenge of trying to get top dollar from wealthy people using top-notch machines while also preserving all their market share at the low end of the market. Microsoft doesn't even see it that way. They inherited their monopoly directly from IBM. Their customers are really not consumers, but the PC manufacturers. The revenue Microsoft gets from OS sales directly to consumers is meagre compared to their licensing revenue from manufacturers. And this is the problem - all those windows flavors are their product to sell to the PC Manufacturers (who add drivers, support software, and probably some bloat/trail ware) who sell the actual physical hardware to consumers.
yread 15y ago
Their article is missing the source link http://windows8beta.com/2012/03/exclusive-windows-8-sku-revealed-in-consumer-preview http://windows8beta.com/2012/03/exclusive-windows-8-sku-reve... A week back there was this rumour of only 3 editions: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/windows-8-skus-mentioned-on-hpcom/4739 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/windows-8-skus-mentioned-on-hp...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
currywurst 15y ago
Where do they find these mythical "confused" consumers ? This trope is really getting overused IMHO. As far as I can tell, most consumers use the version of windows installed on their desktops/laptops/tablets. Enterprise users have their decisions made for them anyway by corporate IT. So that leaves a minority group who i) plan to upgrade ii) assemble their own boxes. The latter are sufficiently educated and the former usually consider a simple one-to-one mapping for their upgrade path ("I have windows 7 home, i upgrade to windows 8 home"). So, did I miss anything ?
- flomo 15y ago
  I purchased a netbook, and the only OS available was Windows 7 "starter edition" -- and you can't even change the wallpaper! So, I am confused why this product even exists. (But I guess if Microsoft wants to put their brandname on something which is intentionally defective, that's up to them.)
hammock 15y ago
Apple follows this model too, just on a hardware level, not a software level. All of their products come in different flavors intended to add a little price discrimination to their product lines. E.g. the 5+ different types of macbook pros.
sj4nz 15y ago
Nine different products = massive confusion for users. Apple certainly made more money when they simplified their computer offerings so that users didn't have to do extreme mental exercises to compare features and buy.
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  There is no perfectly generalisable strategy. Simplify or die works for Apple, but it assumes you know exactly what the customer wants and are willing to have those you guessed wrong for walk away. Tim Cook used to hand out Competing Against Time, which advocates reducing cycle time to increase variety (Apple tweaks this to variety over time, i.e. rapid development). I agree, however, that consumers should have one version that smartly configures itself. Keep price discrimination for corporate/enterprise customers.
- Duff 15y ago
  Not really. They segment the market pretty well, and few people buy the retail box and have to think about this stuff. Basically, it's cheap PC, or PC that does video for consumers. The key difference is Apple has "computer offerings". Microsoft doesn't. With my enterprise hat on, I don't want to pay for video editors, etc. Likewise, the parent buying a laptop for a child doesn't want to pay for full disk encryption that is FIPS compliant.
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  Amongst those editions: PreRelease Edition. Enterprise Eval Edition. Prerelease Arm Edition. Users won't be confused. They will buy their computer, and use what it comes with. They'll go to the store, and they'll have 3 editions: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. And most people won't even bother buying it, they'll just buy a computer and use what comes with that.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  There's absolutely no need for so many Windows versions. I don't care what their argument is, neither manufacturers nor consumers need that many versions to choose from. This is just Microsoft's way of nickle and diming their customers, even though I doubt they'll even have success in doing that.
untog 15y ago
TechCrunch is overstating their case a little, here. Certainly, that screenshot shows "PrereleaseARMEdition","EnterpriseEvalEdition", and so on. Obviously these aren't relevant. The different flavours of Windows are disliked by consumers, and liked by corporate customers. The answer is clear: just have one 'consumer' edition and stop selling both Home and Home Premium. The rest- Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise, etc. are all fine. Pet gripe: I wish people would stop saying that OS X costs $29.99 and that Windows costs considerably more. They both operate on considerably different models- OS X is released once per year, Windows much less frequently (and with service packs).
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- mcobrien 15y ago
  OSX isn't released once a year. With the exception of the just-announced Mountain Lion, it has received major updates every two years since 2003. It also gets "service packs" in the form of point releases every couple of months. $29.99 still seems like a great deal to me.
- aneesh 15y ago
  OS X doesn't cost $29.99. It costs $29.99 plus the cost of Apple hardware (the cheapest of which is the $600 Mini). Unless you go the Hackintosh route, you can't install OS X on non-Apple hardware. Whereas you can install your $100 Windows license on your choice of hardware devices that support it.
  - tvon 15y ago
    You could just say "Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware, OSX does not" to more simply get your point across. edit: Okay, the point being made is "Apple hardware is not cheap, and you need Apple hardware to properly run OS X". It's made in a very hand-wavy way, though, which I find a bit annoying.
    - kiloaper 15y ago
kbob 15y ago
Absolutely correct. The key difference between MS and Apple is that MS is a software company and Apple is a hardware company. As a software company, MS tries to maximize SW revenue by differentiating their basic product into various flavors at various price points. As a hardware company, Apple does the same thing with Macs and iWhatevers. Then they throw in the software for a nominal fee (nominal for the affluent people who can afford Apple's hardware, that is). Nothing to see here. Move along.

13 points by justjimmy 15y ago

Not a bad article, but it misses the key two words of the whole thing: Price discrimination. Price discrimination is attempting to get the maximum price a person or organization would be willing to pay. Apple doesn't do that -- they just go 100% upmarket. Microsoft has the challenge of trying to get top dollar from wealthy people using top-notch machines while also preserving all their market share at the low end of the market. It's hard to say which model is better. Apple's is sexier and wins more spectacularly, for sure, and I love Apple. I'm all-in on Apple. But the Apple model is also immensely more prone to catastrophe. Two bad product cycles in a row, or missing an emerging trend and it might be curtains for Apple again. Well, they have the huge cash position. But it could get pretty ugly if they miss the boat, whereas Microsoft can even endure a mess like the huge delay post-XP followed by the heavily-panned Vista, and still be okay.

justjimmy 15y ago
My short time with Apple's OS (4 years), I noticed Apple doesn't make drastic changes but rather alot of tweaks and gradual improvements. (From a UI/UX perspective) Windows on the other hand makes erratic leaps and breaks users' expectation (from previous versions) alot, and have to relearn alot of new flow. (Not just the OS but its Office Suite as well. The Tabbed categorization of Toolbars really frustrated me). Now that with 8, they're shifting their focus, again. Will it work? Who knows – I just know I have to learn everything again, and it's daunting.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  I would categorize Lion's scrolling change to be drastic.
  - justjimmy 15y ago
    Not when the underlying experience exists on iPhone and with the prominence of the touchpad (from MacBooks), it's not a blindsided change.
- UnFleshedOne 15y ago
  Interestingly it is almost opposite picture from developer's point of view -- apple breaks things every major release, windows still supports stuff back from win95 days.
r00fus 15y ago
> Microsoft has the challenge of trying to get top dollar from wealthy people using top-notch machines while also preserving all their market share at the low end of the market. Microsoft doesn't even see it that way. They inherited their monopoly directly from IBM. Their customers are really not consumers, but the PC manufacturers. The revenue Microsoft gets from OS sales directly to consumers is meagre compared to their licensing revenue from manufacturers. And this is the problem - all those windows flavors are their product to sell to the PC Manufacturers (who add drivers, support software, and probably some bloat/trail ware) who sell the actual physical hardware to consumers.

yread 15y ago

Their article is missing the source link http://windows8beta.com/2012/03/exclusive-windows-8-sku-revealed-in-consumer-preview http://windows8beta.com/2012/03/exclusive-windows-8-sku-reve... A week back there was this rumour of only 3 editions: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/windows-8-skus-mentioned-on-hpcom/4739 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/seo/windows-8-skus-mentioned-on-hp...

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

currywurst 15y ago

Where do they find these mythical "confused" consumers ? This trope is really getting overused IMHO. As far as I can tell, most consumers use the version of windows installed on their desktops/laptops/tablets. Enterprise users have their decisions made for them anyway by corporate IT. So that leaves a minority group who i) plan to upgrade ii) assemble their own boxes. The latter are sufficiently educated and the former usually consider a simple one-to-one mapping for their upgrade path ("I have windows 7 home, i upgrade to windows 8 home"). So, did I miss anything ?

flomo 15y ago
I purchased a netbook, and the only OS available was Windows 7 "starter edition" -- and you can't even change the wallpaper! So, I am confused why this product even exists. (But I guess if Microsoft wants to put their brandname on something which is intentionally defective, that's up to them.)

hammock 15y ago

Apple follows this model too, just on a hardware level, not a software level. All of their products come in different flavors intended to add a little price discrimination to their product lines. E.g. the 5+ different types of macbook pros.

sj4nz 15y ago

Nine different products = massive confusion for users. Apple certainly made more money when they simplified their computer offerings so that users didn't have to do extreme mental exercises to compare features and buy.

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
There is no perfectly generalisable strategy. Simplify or die works for Apple, but it assumes you know exactly what the customer wants and are willing to have those you guessed wrong for walk away. Tim Cook used to hand out Competing Against Time, which advocates reducing cycle time to increase variety (Apple tweaks this to variety over time, i.e. rapid development). I agree, however, that consumers should have one version that smartly configures itself. Keep price discrimination for corporate/enterprise customers.
Duff 15y ago
Not really. They segment the market pretty well, and few people buy the retail box and have to think about this stuff. Basically, it's cheap PC, or PC that does video for consumers. The key difference is Apple has "computer offerings". Microsoft doesn't. With my enterprise hat on, I don't want to pay for video editors, etc. Likewise, the parent buying a laptop for a child doesn't want to pay for full disk encryption that is FIPS compliant.
jasonlotito 15y ago
Amongst those editions: PreRelease Edition. Enterprise Eval Edition. Prerelease Arm Edition. Users won't be confused. They will buy their computer, and use what it comes with. They'll go to the store, and they'll have 3 editions: Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate. And most people won't even bother buying it, they'll just buy a computer and use what comes with that.
nextparadigms 15y ago
There's absolutely no need for so many Windows versions. I don't care what their argument is, neither manufacturers nor consumers need that many versions to choose from. This is just Microsoft's way of nickle and diming their customers, even though I doubt they'll even have success in doing that.

untog 15y ago

TechCrunch is overstating their case a little, here. Certainly, that screenshot shows "PrereleaseARMEdition","EnterpriseEvalEdition", and so on. Obviously these aren't relevant. The different flavours of Windows are disliked by consumers, and liked by corporate customers. The answer is clear: just have one 'consumer' edition and stop selling both Home and Home Premium. The rest- Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise, etc. are all fine. Pet gripe: I wish people would stop saying that OS X costs $29.99 and that Windows costs considerably more. They both operate on considerably different models- OS X is released once per year, Windows much less frequently (and with service packs).

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
mcobrien 15y ago
OSX isn't released once a year. With the exception of the just-announced Mountain Lion, it has received major updates every two years since 2003. It also gets "service packs" in the form of point releases every couple of months. $29.99 still seems like a great deal to me.
aneesh 15y ago
OS X doesn't cost $29.99. It costs $29.99 plus the cost of Apple hardware (the cheapest of which is the $600 Mini). Unless you go the Hackintosh route, you can't install OS X on non-Apple hardware. Whereas you can install your $100 Windows license on your choice of hardware devices that support it.
- tvon 15y ago
  You could just say "Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware, OSX does not" to more simply get your point across. edit: Okay, the point being made is "Apple hardware is not cheap, and you need Apple hardware to properly run OS X". It's made in a very hand-wavy way, though, which I find a bit annoying.
  - kiloaper 15y ago

kbob 15y ago

Absolutely correct. The key difference between MS and Apple is that MS is a software company and Apple is a hardware company. As a software company, MS tries to maximize SW revenue by differentiating their basic product into various flavors at various price points. As a hardware company, Apple does the same thing with Macs and iWhatevers. Then they throw in the software for a nominal fee (nominal for the affluent people who can afford Apple's hardware, that is). Nothing to see here. Move along.