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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."
I don't mean to be pedantic, but Dell, HP, Panasonic, and Sony all make Microsoft Windows PCs. Apple is the only company that makes Apple computers. If my calculations are correct, Apple is the one with continued minimal marketshare and Microsoft will ride along with those aforementioned four to grand success.
If all your sales outlets have really high customer satisfaction, it's not really a big deal if your customers hate your guts.
All MS has to do is keep backward compatibility for legacy apps and most everyone already using it will simply stay with it.
Okay, I'm a Mac geek, and as much as I'd like to see that, please, for fuck's sake, consider the source -- MacWorld has always been a pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking magazine. Back in the day, when Apple was one bad day from becoming a memory, MacWorld had a glowing-postive view of the future. A little success now, and they think that every bad review for Microsoft means that millions of users are just going to jump ship in a heartbeat.
I mean really? This is news? Product-specific magazine predicts rosy future for the product it reports on? No shit?
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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.
I wish the article had more numbers and less hypothesis. The gist seems to be "people distrust Microsoft, therefore Apple could get bigger." Now, how long has Forrester been conducting these surveys and for how many years in a row has Microsoft been un-trustworthy in the public eye? If 5 million MS users have distrusted MS for years but are still using Windows, the survey doesn't mean anything.
Of course "Mass Defections to Apple are Possible". But they've always been *possible* and yet Microsoft still holds the majority of the market share. Too bad this article couldn't shed more insight than "Survey confirms what Slashdot already believes - people don't trust Microsoft."
After they get the hang of OS X, they will wonder why they ever tolerated Windows. . .
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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!
Sony? Highest level of trust?
Sony?!
The public is either a mass of idiots waiting to be fleeced, or..uh...
I think I just answered my own question.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The old school reasons for not even trying a Mac have fallen away. The old saw was that Macs used nonstandard parts that were more expensive. The truth is that you can buy a cheap Mac Mini which uses standard RAM and notebook hard drives, and has a socketed CPU which can be upgraded. You don't have to give up your investment in Windows software, since Boot Camp lets you run Windows on your Mac if you wish to. If you end up deciding that you don't like MacOSX then you have a very classy super small mini me Windows based computer. No wasted money.
Windows users who give MacOSX a try find that they like it quite a lot. Anand Lal Shimpi over at Anandtech.com springs to mind. Windows uber user Paul Thurott also couldn't review the CTP of Vista without saying "I have certain misgivings about Vista resembling Mac OS X. With its translucent windows, such comparisons are going to be hard to avoid. But Vista's similarity with OS X goes well beyond window dressing. Certain applications, such as Calendar, Sidebar, and Photo Gallery, appear to be directly, ahem, influenced by similar applications in OS X." This is an OS that geeks can't help but love once they use it.
The really amusing thing is now the Mac supports more software than Windows does. You can run everything that runs on Windows, everything that runs on MacOSX, plus quite a bit of the software that runs on Linux. It's geek nirvana.
There really isn't any reason not go give a Mac a chance anymore. I'm an MCSE (gee, did you guess from my handle?)and I like OSX quite a lot. I can't wait to see what they do in the next version of MacOSX since it looks like Vista is going to be used dog food.
"Microsoft faces big consumer defection risk: One measure of consumers' dissatisfaction with Microsoft is seen in the 5.4 million households that gave it a brand trust of 1 (distrust a lot) or 2 (distrust a bit),"
5.4 million customers? Such a staggering number, for Apple maybe. Really folks, how much revenue are these people going to generate for MS? A hundred bucks a pc, every 5 years?
If users need office they will have to buy it either way. In addition, it will be cheaper to buy the bundled version with a Windows based PC.
The salient point the article fails to make is that the real risk is to Apple. By not converting these people they miss out on revenue generated by hardware and software. Incidently, if you are a Mac owner, and you've paid for every major release of OS X, you've paid about $500 over the last 5 years for your operating system. Compare this with $120 (assuming 2k upgrade) for the last 5 years for an XP owner.
The article goes on to say that many people don't associate the iPod with Mac Computers. An interesting point - however it is going to be difficult for Apple to upsell people on a $3K computer, from a $300 purchase.
I use Microsoft products daily.
Do I trust Microsoft? No way!
I would agree that (among my client base) there is a general uneasy feeling building towards Microsoft. So the idea that their ranking is lower does not surprise me at all.
Do I trust Apple? Not anymore than Microsoft.
The conspiracy theorist in me believes the real motive behind their switch to Intel has to do with standardizing DRM.
When all of the hardware is "Trusted" then who will you trust at all?
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Be careful not to interfere with the two animals while they are in their natural habitat. On the right, you can see the Windows troll. He is identifiable by his tendency to make sharp insults that are long outdated. Here we see him make a jab at a Mac user.
... Yes, I'm glad you mentioned that! While it is not true of the entire species, many Apple fanatics are in fact unable to perform even basic math operations.
Apples tend to be 60% overpriced anyway.
On the left, hidden by the foliage, you can barely make out the Mac fanatic. He is identifiable by his quick defense of the Mac platform. Sometimes this species puts together coherent thoughts, but as you can see in this case, he is more interested in showing his rainbow-striped plumage than engaging in an actual battle. He is hoping that the Windows troll will be frightened away by the display.
show me any PC that can match every spec on an iMac or MacBook Pro that costs 60% less.
You in the back. You had a question?
Now let's head back to the classroom so as to let these little buggers get back to their routine.
I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see one! And there's Magnetbox, and Sorny.
While it's true that there is less software available on the mac platform, a lot of people have a poor conception of the problem, and think there's more competition in the PC space than there actually is.
For niche stuff there's definitely an issue. This hits home with me in the games department, but I understand that for some really specific business-related tasks it's a big hurdle to adoption as well.
Then there's what normal people do with their computers:
That's about it. People who bitch about a big vaccuum of software on the Mac platform are still thinking in the 1990's, when the web was static and people published things like interactive, searchable Bibles and Microsoft Fucking Encarta. That stuff is like ice makers in a car: novel but totally unnecessary and easily replaceable by, say, getting ice from the freezer. It was an immature space and you had a lot of weird stuff out there, but now people realize it's less of a pain in the butt just to get it on the web for free or look at Wikipedia. Therefore, there are only five applications that people use:
IE - Office - Outlook - AIM - Quicken
Choice doesn't matter. Even though choices exist, 90% of people will use those 5 applications most of the time. It's a space where there's 31 flavors but everybody buys vanilla, and the clerk knows you want vanilla in advance so he starts scooping it and rings you up before you have a chance to say a word. In light of that, is it so horrible that on a Mac, you'll be using:
Safari - Office - Mail - iChat - Quicken
Oh noes! No ActiveX! Whatever shall I do? Furthermore, there are, in fact, alternatives to all of these. You could use Camino, Firefox, Shiira, OO.org, Opera, Thunderbird, Eudora, Fire, GAIM, Pages, or event Pine, Lynx, TeX, and centericq if you really, really like terminals. People have just been trained to think a certain way about the Mac/PC rift, and many of their ideas are sort of fossilized in 1996.
BARSTOW, CA (AP) - Today, computer scientists at the DeVry Institute claimed to have solved the Halting Problem, a classic thought experiment of theoretical computer science. The problem's insolvability, a landmark in the field, was proposed by theoretician Alan Turing in 1938.
"We were skeptical at first, of course", said Dr. Ephraim P. Fingerbottom, emeritus professor of computability theory at DeVry. "The Halting Problem's intractibility is one of those snippets of lore we love to torture undergraduates with, so we really had no practical motive for accepting this hypothesis. Come to think of it, we have no practical motives at all, we're theoreticians. Anyway, our faces fell when we proofed the submission, let me tell you. Never ask a theoretician to come up with new material. Hell, now we may to juggle teaching and the hunt for grant money like everyone else."
Nonetheless, Dr. Fingerbottom was heartened by the new-found stature of his department in light of these findings. "We're attracting some exciting new talent here", he said, perspiring under the layers of chalk dust that have covered his face since 1962. "This development, coupled with our reduction of the '3-SAT problem' to a scientific proof of the existence of God, has swelled our ranks with students who want to do something else other than write software and make money."
The resulting paper will soon be published in the next issues of Communications of the ACM and the DIMACS Journal for Applied Math.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
When I match the specs/features, I get $2,075 for the Dell and $2,399 for the Apple or a difference of $324. That's hardly 66%.
Here are the specs/features I used for each:
Apple
----------
$2,399
Dell
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$2,075
These really aren't even exact matches, but they're very similar and moreso than the prices you quoted.
* The Mac includes a backlit keyboard, remote control, OS X install disk, CD/DVD RW, Bluetooth, and ATI video standard while the Dell does not, which is why, aside from the backlit keyboard they're added to the Dell. Although the remote on the Dell won't work with XP Pro supposedly.
** Despite the limited web hosting ability of XP Pro, OS X more closely resembles WindowsXP Professional over the Media Center version. Macs always include an OS X install disk while most (if not all) PC vendors charge extra for the Windows disks.
I can't see a gamer spending a crapload of money on a system that they can't slap the latest video card into every 6 months.
First, gamers are a tiny segment of the market. Second, many gamers now use laptops to make LAN parties easier, thus have no upgrade option. Third, why can't you slap a new video card in the Mac tower when it is released?
And I can't see a business spending crap tons of money on a more expensive machine to do all the same tasks they currently do.
While some companies do use Macs for the simplified management and lower security costs, you're right that most won't be switching anytime soon. Rather, expect a slow migration towards Linux in the business space. That trend, I think, may open some doors for Mac purchases, as environments will become more friendly to standards compliant OS's
Maybe they'll sell some upgrades to people who use an older mac and want the ability to dual boot, but beyond that...?
Mostly I see this as a way to sell more Macs to potential "switchers." People might want to use OS X, but be unsure if they will like it in the long term. This gives them the security of being able to "switch back" at a low price point. The real market for new Mac users, in my opinion, are those who would love to ditch Windows, but require some Windows-only software. I foresee a lot more migration in this space as virtualization/emulation/reimplementation takes off. Here at work we get to choose among a few particular models of computers; one of which is a powerbook (used by maybe 55% the company right now). I know when the time comes to pick an upgrade several people in administration, sales, documentation, etc. who are now using a Thinkpad will probably go for a powerbook combined with something to run those Windows applications within OS X.
For some it will be their first experience using a Mac (or first using OS X anyway). They have at this point only looked over the shoulders of others and said, "hey how come you can do that?" and "wow that is really cool!" Another interesting item of note, is I don't know people that switch back. Well, I know one guy who bought a powerbook, used OS X for a while, and then went back to Linux as his main OS. But, by and large, when people buy a Mac, they continue to do so from then on. It is hard to lose all that functionality, once you get used to it. This will probably influence their next home computer purchase as well.
In summary, I don't see that bootcamp will be used much, but I do think it will drive some Mac sales. Further, I think other technologies (enabled by the switch to new Intel processors) that allow Windows software to run will drive even more sales. I think this particular article was empty fluff, but I do foresee increasing market share, especially among power users.
...that makes the transition difficult. For a long-term Windows user it would mean buying a new software suite unless vendors start giving good cross-grade pricing. There's lots of money tied up in software and shifting it to a new platform may well cost several times the cost of the platform itself. Looking at my quad-G5 I see that I have well over the cost of the machine and its 30" display in software.
The user experience would have to become very bad for me to move.
On the other hand the troubles friends have with the Windows machines seems to suggest that they have passed that line already!