4 ms·

I can see your points, but this is EXACTLY how Nokia and RIM went down the drain. They both thought that as long as we just churn out new iterations of the same

I can see your points, but this is EXACTLY how Nokia and RIM went down the drain. They both thought that as long as we just churn out new iterations of the same thing, it'll keep people on. Look how that went...

cyphax 13y ago
I see what you mean. I think you might be right. I get the impression that Microsoft is trying as hard as it can to be... hip and sexy? They're not very good at it, though, which is unfortunate for them. Maybe one of their core problems is the fact that the market in question is, well, not a market. They are only competing with themselves and they don't even need to compete. Why would I care about Windows 8? It doesn't do things that Windows 7 can't do, save for the modern UI, which I'd probably try to stay away from in the first place (because it is aimed at a different type of machine than the one I'd be running it on). So what's left for them? How are they going to convince ME that their newest operating system is worth buying because of how much better it is? I don't know. The one thing that seems to have made Windows 8 innovative over Windows 7 was also a reason it's not being adopted and the only reason for its current adoption rate is because it's simply sold on new hardware, whether we like it or not. The other features MS added to Windows 8 were mostly catching up with the rest. I'd seen things like one dialog for all copying actions years prior. The same goes for allowing an actual task bar on your second monitor. They're throwing away so much money on marketing something that I don't know if they need to market it in the first place, and if they care to, they might want to consider replacing the whole marketing department because when Microsoft's marketing makes the news, it's not in a good manner...
Silhouette 13y ago
The difference is that there were plenty of competitors whose commodity products were overtaking even the premium, business-friendly features in BlackBerry gear, just as generic PCs eventually made dedicated high-end workstations obsolete. Right now, the only credible competitor to Windows for a user-facing business PC operating system is OS X, and even then a lot more of the serious business software is better on Windows today so Apple's penetration seems to be mainly laptops for management and sales roles. There are plenty of ways Microsoft could develop Windows that would play to their existing customer base and their established strengths; I've argued at length in previous posts that Microsoft are the best positioned business in the world to push a "private cloud" trend, for one possible example, and that they could offer genuine benefits to businesses that would justify upgrading their installations. All they have to do is regain the focus they had a few years ago and play the cards they've been dealt to best effect, and as far as desktop Windows goes, I believe that means not rocking the boat trying to be too clever and "consumery", but instead building out the technical strengths under the hood and making them easy and familiar to access. But if their next desktop OS is another turkey, I suspect their luck will start to run out. It will take them several years to even try a different strategy, and by then I expect at least one major competing platform will have reached enough maturity to take them head on and start stealing away the big business software market. Apple could do it -- they have the technical smarts, the war chest, and the scale to pull it off -- but I don't think they will under their current management team. I suspect a more direct challenge might come from a start-up with a big name backer building something on Linux. While "year of Linux on the desktop" is still a running joke, the likes of Android phones/tablets, Chromebooks, and probably soon Steam Machines show it can work as a non-geek's OS given the right front-end. Looking 3/4/5 years from now, around the time Microsoft's next-but-one generation user OS arrived, a huge amount could have happened in an industry this fast-paced.
- Systemic33 13y ago
  Apple wasn't a competitior to anyone in the phone industry, right until they made the iPhone and blew everyone out of the water. My point still stands.
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    Apple didn't blow BlackBerry out of the water overnight, though. The BB phones available around the time the original iPhone hit the market were competitive. The brand was strong. They had technical innovations like a high resolution, full colour display several years before Retina iPhones arrived. Then they dropped the ball even harder than Microsoft when it came to the mobile Internet, persisting with a proprietary browser with insufficient market share and other non-standard tools for far too long. They also released some ill-timed new products that fell behind the curve, such as the Torch that still had a "normal" resolution display when everyone else was doubling up. In short, it wasn't BB continuing to churn out the same kind of products that led to their downfall because the iPhone arrived, it was them falling behind the curve and putting out inferior products for several years even after the competition had arrived and started to become established. Right now, there is no iPhone-level disruption in the end user PC operating system market, but if someone started the ball rolling this year and made their entrance to compete with Windows 9, they could be a serious competitor by the following generation if Windows 9 chokes the way Vista and Windows 8 did.

cyphax 13y ago

I see what you mean. I think you might be right. I get the impression that Microsoft is trying as hard as it can to be... hip and sexy? They're not very good at it, though, which is unfortunate for them. Maybe one of their core problems is the fact that the market in question is, well, not a market. They are only competing with themselves and they don't even need to compete. Why would I care about Windows 8? It doesn't do things that Windows 7 can't do, save for the modern UI, which I'd probably try to stay away from in the first place (because it is aimed at a different type of machine than the one I'd be running it on). So what's left for them? How are they going to convince ME that their newest operating system is worth buying because of how much better it is? I don't know. The one thing that seems to have made Windows 8 innovative over Windows 7 was also a reason it's not being adopted and the only reason for its current adoption rate is because it's simply sold on new hardware, whether we like it or not. The other features MS added to Windows 8 were mostly catching up with the rest. I'd seen things like one dialog for all copying actions years prior. The same goes for allowing an actual task bar on your second monitor. They're throwing away so much money on marketing something that I don't know if they need to market it in the first place, and if they care to, they might want to consider replacing the whole marketing department because when Microsoft's marketing makes the news, it's not in a good manner...

Silhouette 13y ago

The difference is that there were plenty of competitors whose commodity products were overtaking even the premium, business-friendly features in BlackBerry gear, just as generic PCs eventually made dedicated high-end workstations obsolete. Right now, the only credible competitor to Windows for a user-facing business PC operating system is OS X, and even then a lot more of the serious business software is better on Windows today so Apple's penetration seems to be mainly laptops for management and sales roles. There are plenty of ways Microsoft could develop Windows that would play to their existing customer base and their established strengths; I've argued at length in previous posts that Microsoft are the best positioned business in the world to push a "private cloud" trend, for one possible example, and that they could offer genuine benefits to businesses that would justify upgrading their installations. All they have to do is regain the focus they had a few years ago and play the cards they've been dealt to best effect, and as far as desktop Windows goes, I believe that means not rocking the boat trying to be too clever and "consumery", but instead building out the technical strengths under the hood and making them easy and familiar to access. But if their next desktop OS is another turkey, I suspect their luck will start to run out. It will take them several years to even try a different strategy, and by then I expect at least one major competing platform will have reached enough maturity to take them head on and start stealing away the big business software market. Apple could do it -- they have the technical smarts, the war chest, and the scale to pull it off -- but I don't think they will under their current management team. I suspect a more direct challenge might come from a start-up with a big name backer building something on Linux. While "year of Linux on the desktop" is still a running joke, the likes of Android phones/tablets, Chromebooks, and probably soon Steam Machines show it can work as a non-geek's OS given the right front-end. Looking 3/4/5 years from now, around the time Microsoft's next-but-one generation user OS arrived, a huge amount could have happened in an industry this fast-paced.

Systemic33 13y ago
Apple wasn't a competitior to anyone in the phone industry, right until they made the iPhone and blew everyone out of the water. My point still stands.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Apple didn't blow BlackBerry out of the water overnight, though. The BB phones available around the time the original iPhone hit the market were competitive. The brand was strong. They had technical innovations like a high resolution, full colour display several years before Retina iPhones arrived. Then they dropped the ball even harder than Microsoft when it came to the mobile Internet, persisting with a proprietary browser with insufficient market share and other non-standard tools for far too long. They also released some ill-timed new products that fell behind the curve, such as the Torch that still had a "normal" resolution display when everyone else was doubling up. In short, it wasn't BB continuing to churn out the same kind of products that led to their downfall because the iPhone arrived, it was them falling behind the curve and putting out inferior products for several years even after the competition had arrived and started to become established. Right now, there is no iPhone-level disruption in the end user PC operating system market, but if someone started the ball rolling this year and made their entrance to compete with Windows 9, they could be a serious competitor by the following generation if Windows 9 chokes the way Vista and Windows 8 did.