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Mass Microsoft Defections to Apple Possible
An anonymous reader writes to mention a MacWorld article covering research by the Forrester group. Their report shows that mass dissatisfaction with Microsoft and its products could lead to defections from the company. From the article: "Over all, only Apple and Tivo saw their brand trust rise in the last two years, according to the report. The final tally saw Bose, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic and Sony earn the highest marks, while Microsoft, Gateway and LG ranked lowest. The low scores for Microsoft could mean good news for Apple as consumers showed their distrust of the Redmond-based software-giant."
Computer specialists and hard core Linux users and stuff may have a distrust towards Microsoft, but I think the general public probably could give a rats ass, and probably trust MS as much as any other company. iPod sales are more likely to cause conversion due to interest then distrust of the alternative. And most people that use a computer for email/web and don't really like to fixate on it would probably prefer to follow the "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" philosophy, which will lead them to using Windows systems for a very long time. I'm a big Mac user, but from most people I've talked to that use a computer as a tool for communication and that's all dislike OS X, because it's too different.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Dell, HP, Panasonic, and Sony all make crappy PC's compared to an Apple product. Apple is super stable and hold their resale value in ways that even a gold plated Alineware laptop can only dream of.
Tell me where you can sell your 2 year old PC for nearly 60% of it's value and easily get it sold. Apple's usually get that premium.
I know of many people switching from Windows to MAC for video editing and graphics simply because the software on the windows side is utter garbage compared to the apple offering, and the regular consumer is starting to see that.
When you get high end hardware with high end software and couple it with a system that you do not haveto hire a company every 2 months to clean it out you get the general public looking at it very closely. The mac-Mini entices them further as it's cheap and will use their monitor. (Actually a Dual G5 tower will use their PC monitors, just the FUD surrounding the apple products leads them to think otherwise.)
Also faced with dropping $300.00 for Vista and the requirement to double ram, speed,etc... people will really look at apple closer as their current system ages.
Other than games or wierd business apps from the vertical market, there is no real reason to not switch to a more stable, secure and user friendly platform like OSX.
anyone that lived in the windows world for their computing life will be up to speed on OSX within 48 hours.... I know, I did that switch.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Here is some karma suicide for yah:
I agree, MacWorld is a glass always full kinda publication. And as an avowed mac freak, i for one do NOT want there to be a mass exodus of sheeple to the mac platform. One thing that keeps mac great is that in order to survive in the mac market, your software has to be pretty damn good and it has to just work. I do not look forward to our new Apple overlords. Being the little guy means more innovation, new interesting technology. As soon as Apple becomes the new M$ then it becomes all about keeping the cash cow alive at all costs. So, please, all you windows apologists! get crackin! We dont want your market share!
Actually, in terms of your comment, I believe the article would be referring to "mass defecations", something MS has also been doing to customers.
Seriously--having spent several years as a Windows sysadmin prior to becoming a IT apps/systems analyst, I thought that it was nebulous for a medium-sized company to need to pay $60-80K just to get access to NDA KnowledgeBase articles.
I'm sure some of you remember the great fun had with needing to keep comments off the Windows for Workgroups workstation name configuration because the Master Browser record was getting too big, and you couldn't see all the machines in your workgroup. We only got access to specific details on that because we had an MS Premier Support account.
Thanks for the mammaries, MS, you big teat. Sheesh.
Windows Vista and Mac OS X appear to be very similar, at least if this video is any indication. The audio is from a preview of Windows Vista, while the video is a live Macintosh desktop.
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
The key words in the parent's post are "run all software". People are going to be upset when they realize they can't use their purchased software and can't use any of the software (like say games) that is available in their software store.
There simply are not viable linux choices for all the commercially available software that people buy out there.
It's not just that either. For example, most linux distro's do not ship with the ability to play dvds since there no licensed dvd player for linux. Try it. Install a full copy of suse or redhat for a novice user and tell them to get dvd support working. See if they succeed. In the unlikely event that they do, see if they feel using Linux was worth the hassle.
Essentially if there's something you cannot do after performing a full install of a given distro, it will not be easy for a novice user to figure out. Unfortunately in a closed source world these things are many.