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Microsoft Brand In Sharp Decline
Amy Bennett writes "A recent poll of about 12,000 US business decision-makers by market researcher CoreBrand found that Microsoft's brand power has taken a dive over the past four years. According to the study, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful US company brands in 2004 to number 59 last year. In 1996, the company ranked number 1 in brand power among 1,200 top companies in about 50 industries. The CEO of CoreBrand said: 'When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern.' To add some historical context, IBM suffered a much faster and more severe decline in brand power in the early 1990s and it took them 10 years to rebuild the brand's reputation."
You mean, they put out a new version of their main product, it was widely ridiculed, and their brand suffered as a result? Who would have guessed!?
Today's forecast calls for light showers with a high chance of flying chairs. Seriously, though, I used to doubt the power of "branding," but the more I learn about the average consumer (disappointing as it may be), the more I understand why companies care about this kind of thing.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
I have a friend who got a Macbook the other day. She said it was really awesome. I was trying to figure out why she liked it so much, but when I asked her she said, "everything is so easy to use!"
That seemed a little strange to me, since it usually takes a little while to get used to a new interface. Then she said, "My boss and coworkers are so jealous."
That's how you know Apple has turned the corner. When suddenly random people can become cool for owning a Mac. Compare that to a few years ago, my brother mentioned in his university classes he was the only one who had a Mac, and people gave him strange looks. You had to actively go against the flow to get an Apple in those days. Now the flow is starting to head in that direction.
(Heads off to buy more Apple stock).
Qxe4
Can someone explain what "brand power" is, and how you can possibly measure it? I know that "branding" is important, but ranking companies by "brand power" seems like useless information being created by "CoreBrand". I'm guessing CoreBrand didn't make it very high on the list themselves...
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
Mike Rowe Soft.
It's a dirty job.
corebrand? never heard of em'
In my opinion they need to stop trying to take over the internet and look internally to focus and improve their core product lines. The release of vista and its lack of acceptance in the business sector was a huge blow to their reputation. I personally am aware of several VERY large companies that were considering Vista a year ago and have completely turned 180 degrees towards open source. I dont know how far MS thinks they are going to get by forcing Vista down the corporate throat.
Im not a microsoft hater, in fact I depend on MS products to make a living, but I know Im not alone on this sentiment.
Microsfot has forgotten, like many other corporations, is that all one needs to focus on is making a quality product. If you do that, all other things, quartely earnings, shareholder returns, marketing, ect, will take care of themselves natually.
Microsoft may be down quite a bit, but Apple is not even on that list at all.
IBM is at spot #18, which is quite surprising really - as far as I noticed there are no other software companies that high on the list at all. Most of the top 25 seems to be car companies, food/drinks/restaurant franchises and the like.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
They still haven't jumped into war profiteering or suing their customers so the drop in brand name value is probably due to incompetence not malice.
I'm sure unfavorable reception to Vista doesn't help, but it's not like MS hasn't weathered that before. (ME anyone?) I would suspect brand dilution is more to blame, as they branch out more and more. At one point, people might just have thought of their software, but now there's a whole slew of different products that may bring their reputation down. Users who prefer the iPod to the Zune, or the Wii to the Xbox 360, or now see Google as the big cheese in the online world may all have a less favorable impression of MS as a whole.
hot foreign sheep.
Are these guys still around? I remember using a BASIC interpreter of theirs in the early 1980s.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
IBM suffered a much faster and more severe decline in brand power in the early 1990s and it took them 10 years to rebuild the brand's reputation.
So, Microsoft ought to be selling a decent version of Windows by 2018?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Microsoft comments on their branding decline in Sharp Consumer Electronic products.
Saying " our Products sales are doing so well that we can drop Sharp Consumer Electronics from our certified MS OEM's list.
"When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern". Especially when it's a chair making its way down from office building above you.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
- Coca-Cola (same rank as last year)
- Johnson & Johnson (same rank as last year)
- Hershey Foods (up from number 8 last year)
- Harley-Davidson (up from number 6 last year)
- Hallmark Cards (same as last year)
- Campbell Soup (up from 10 last year)
- UPS (down from 4 last year)
- FedEx (down from 7 last year)
- Colgate-Palmolive (up from 12 last year)
- Starbucks (up from 13 last year)
- PepsiCo (down from 3 last year)
This list is measured from a telephone interview among business leaders. Their scores were weighted higher if they had more familiarity with the companies in question. They were rated based on the Brand's overall reputation, perception of management, and investment potential. Note that these are corporate brands, not consumer brands. Apple is not on the list, in case anyone was wondering.Qxe4
(Heads off to buy more Apple stock).
While I acknowledge others' pervious predictions of rough sailing ahead for Apple have generally not come to reality (since the return of Jobs), your tale leads me in the opposite direction.
It reminds of the story of Joe Kennedy knowing it was time to get out of the stock market when he was getting stock tips from the shoe shine boy. Part of Apple's appeal was its status as an outsider. Random people can't become cool for owning a Mac; the point of being cool is you're not just another random person.
With apologies to Yogi, are we reaching a point where no one will buy an Apple because everyone's buying Apple?
This is just further evidence of Microsoft's imminent defeat at the hands of open source software. Microsoft is terrified of Linux, and it has been the primary cause of many of their recent screw ups which are driving people to Linux in droves.
Just the other night I was installing Ubuntu onto the computer of a freind's daughter, and I explained to her the benefits of open source software, and how it is inherently superior to closed source software.
Please forgive me for going a little OT here, but, at one point she suggested that Photoshop was better then GIMP. I tried to hold in the laughter, but my mouth was full of cheetos, and I spluttered some soggy crumbs over her keyboard. I used my Ubuntu t-shirt to wipe most of them off, and when I looked up, she was staring at me, and making eye contact. Does this mean she likes me?
I guess I just don't understand the list of apples and oranges and cars from the article. It just seems to me that if you're going to compare companies they should be at least in similar markets. Sure if you're doing a who's top earner then I can see throwing everyone in the same basket, but then you'd also want to get more accurate information and not just base findings off of a phone survey, which to me is just crap info.
Ave Molech Setting
#4 is Harley-Davidson, which is listed in the "Hotel & Entertainment" category. Are there Harley Hotels I'm unaware of? Shouldn't they be in "Motor Vehicles"?
I have a hard time telling here whether you're serious or not, but really, more people hate Microsoft than love any alternative. Most casual computer users I have met (therefore I very carefully make no broad sweeping statements about "all" of any population of people), gripe constantly about Windows but use it anyway.
At the moment their a single digit player, but they are no longer just for graphic artists.
At work, just about everyone here has at least one Apple machine at home - for most people they're the primary machine, and all the new workstations I've seen bought at work have been a variety of MacBooks. Admitadly this is a Unix shop, so there's likely to be more of a skew towards Apple hardware.
However, almost everyone I talk to about getting a new computer is seriously considering Apple hardware. That's not just geeks, this includes my land lady, my flat mate (who's a carpenter), and even a 60 year old receptionist in my last job. Apple are huge at the moment, and I can't see them going away any time soon unless they do something *really* stupid.
Some of it is branding, and making good looking hardware, but a lot of the influence they're gaining is quite simply through building software that people want to use. People get excited about applications like iPhoto - when's the last time you heard someone actually being interested in Office?
I'm an educator and work with kids (and some university students) all day. Ask anyone aged 10-25 what Microsoft is known for and they'll say Xbox (or Xbox 360). Sit kids in front of a Mac and they'll start messing with it; sit kids in front of a Windows box and they'll start messing with that. They don't "see" the operating system or the cognitive dissonance of the Office ribbon... They're still platform agnostic. And Microsoft is counting on that.
We associate Microsoft with "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software", we hate their stuff, and we take glee in the decline of the Evil Empire that brought us Windows, IE, and OOXML. If I were to be associated with the Vista debacle and ActiveX exploits forever, I'd want my brand to die, too!
Don't be fooled by the article however, Microsoft still has the mindshare of future consumers - they're the cool company that brought us the Xbox, Xbox Live, and the Halo franchise... In another 20 years, wouldn't you want to buy technology from the guys who brought you all the great memories from your childhood??
Apple went from a declining "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software" company to a hot mainstream company, and used the iPod halo effect to come back into their old, failed "Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software" market, hotter than ever. Microsoft is simply stealing a page from Apple and guaranteeing its survival for the next 20 years, when the Xbox gamers of today take their turn at being CIOs and CTOs.
I wonder if this is less a matter of Microsoft Vs. Apple, or the lack of quality in Vista, but more a matter of MSN Vs. Google
I don't believe you, I'm here for a seat on the secret spaceship.
I am not sure what "computer boom" you are referring to. The last I heard, there was still an increasing demand for computers; not to mention, MS has boasted record quarters in very recent history.
If you read the article, you will see that sales/profits etc.. have very little effect on the phenomena observed, unless you argue that sales correlate directly with investment potential, in which case you might be right. To counter though, MS stock has been virtually static for quite some time.:
CoreBrand measures brand power using four criteria. It first rates the familiarity of a company's brand. Once a company has a certain level of familiarity, they are ranked according to three "attributes of favorability": overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential, Gregory said. While Microsoft's brand is still eminently recognizable, the company is declining in all three favorable attributes, he said.
which is totally what she said
Hahahahahahaha.... they might be if you could actually trust them to run reliably. A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer. One of the reasons that's so is because riding a motorcyle long distance is very tiring, the other is the rate of failure of Harley's is atrocious.
I can't believe I'm doing this, but if Harley Davidson is ranked number 4, then this study has little or no bearing on the reliability of products the company makes. At best, it's showing what the public perceives the reliability of the products the company makes.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Apple is not even on the entire 100 list. What's with that. Apple has to be in the top ten.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, one thing I remember about ME in comparison to Vista, is that it didn't last all that long (even MS dropped it somewhat like a hot rock), and that the previous options (win98) were still supported, followed not too long after by a somewhat worthy successor (win2k and, eventually, winXP). I know only a few people who had machines come with ME, and when those machines screwed up, 98 still worked.
Vista is different, as there is a lack of choice in the MS realm. If you want to run software that runs on a Microsoft OS, you need to keep your old PC up and going for as long as possible, or switch to Vista. With the limited exception of some business-class machines, a lot of newer machines simply *do not* work properly in XP: There are no drivers, or limited functionality (no cardreader drivers, media buttons don't work), or many other hurdles to using the legacy OS. People are forced to try Vista, and because of that many have the choice of either "love it or hate is." As it is, with a mediocre reception in the business arena, and a less-than-warm reception in the home arena, this has turned a lot of people off the MS brand, moreso than previous issues.
The problem with Microsoft isn't Vista or Clippy or XBOX360; those less-than-good products are just the result of the arrogance that runs through everything they do. They've turned out a few good products, too.
If you need to point a finger at them, how about pointing at - well, how about their anti-trust conviction? Did you notice how they changed their ways after this conviction? No? That's what's wrong with Microsoft. It's the anti-competitive way they insure that every new computer has Windows installed. It's the anti-competitive way they bundle other products. It's all the companies who were crushed by Microsoft - but not before Microsoft "liberated" the intellectual property from those doomed companies.
How about their shrink-wrap license agreements that they use to bind you - but if you disagree and try to use the remedy they've provided (return product for refund) you'll find that's virtually impossible to do? How about the way they're currently trying to subvert the ISO standardization process?
Remember when XP went out the door with a list of 50,000 bugs still unresolved? They're still sticking band-aids on it - but rather than complete that product they're off to yet another (arguably less functional) product which was also rushed out long before it was ready.
For those who want to defend this miserable excuse for a software company, here's a question for you: name 10 technologies that Microsoft has shipped that were invented in-house by Microsoft.
I'd like to point out that this study is pretty much worthless. I like to hate Ms as much as the next guy but this study shows a slippage against other brands *IN OTHER INDUSTRIES*. This is comparing Microsoft and Coke? WTF. Maybe some of these other brands surged in popularity. Or maybe computer industry in general is viewed less favorably. This would be much more useful if it was focused a specific industry.
To see a list of brands owned by Johnson & Johnson: http://www.jnj.com/product/brands/index.htm
Chances are you have heard of at least some of these products (e.g. Tylenol, KY, Rolaids... the list is long).
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
The 2007 Brandz Rankings, based on survey conducted by Millward Brown, presents a different story http://www.brandz.com/z3_top_51.html . Methodologies are different, but for the average person, which list makes more sense? Here's the top 10:
1. Google
2. GE (General Electric)
3. Microsoft
4. Coca Cola
5. China Mobile
6. Marlboro
7. Wal-Mart
8. Citi
9. IBM
10. Toyota
how Microsoft refuses to play well with others. That is my biggest beef with them on a corporate level. We are currently trying to integrate a few windows machines into our all mac/linux network, and it is painful. There are all sorts of "security policies" that need to be fiddled with because they aren't the same, XP gets upset if you have more than one domain controller on different domains it seems, and it doesn't even support NFS....NFS a protocol that will be celebrating its 20th birthday next year, isn't supported by Windows XP. Can you name me one other major PC operating system that doesn't support NFS out of the box? Any Mac box can be an NFS server or client, ditto for Linux, BSD, Solaris etc. But since it wasn't invented at Microsoft Microsoft doesn't consider it to be important, esp. since they could use their lack of NFS support to get you to buy a Microsoft server product that does the same thing but isn't nearly as secure.
SSH, LDAP, etc. the list of technologies that almost every other OS on the planet supports but XP doesn't(I don't know about Vista, but it's not like XP is that old). Microsoft's client OSs seem to have features that try to force you into buying Microsoft server OSs. Samba is great, and I certainly don't want to denigrate the brilliant people who write the stuff, but it shouldn't be necessary. Maybe back in 1996, when most business networks outside the megacorps consisted of a dumb hub with very little centralized management Windows wasn't all that bad, but the problem for Redmond is that the rest of the world moved on and they didn't. They still seem to think its a Microsoft only world, but the rest of the world thinks differently.
Monstar L
This study has nothing to do with reliability, only brand recognition. Regardless of Harley's reliability, they are a very, very widely recognized brand name.
Actually, I have. Sad as that may sound.
E.g., when some people I knew switched the whole company from WordPerfect to MS Word, much against my zealotry at the time. The fact is, the first attempts at WP For Windows sucked hairy donkey balls. Word might not have been a shiny gold nugget, but compared to WP it was at least like polished lead compared to a turd.
E.g., Windows itself gained a lot of market share fast back in the day, because the 386 version was pretty much the only thing that combined (A) preemptive multitasking, at least for legacy apps, (B) a GUI, unpolished as that might have been, and (C) compatibility with those legacy apps. And maybe (D) a price you can actually afford, as opposed to buying an ultra-expensive, and just as proprietary, Unix for that PC. There have been other attempts at one of the three, but they typically missed the other two.
Yes, I know, _nowadays_ Linux exists which fits all the bills and is a viable choice and all. But back then the competition actually had worse products than MS, sad as that may sound. Who was better than Windows? GEM with its max 4 windows and no support for using memory over 640k? The text-mode-only task-switching of DesqView? (Even DesqView/X was too little, too late. Way too late.) OS/2? Heh. Trust me, I used all those, I even was an OS/2 fanboy at one point, but looking back, I can see how Windows won on its own merits back then.
The last genuine competitor to Windows was IBM's OS/2, and even that was a sad story. For a start it was a story of corporate schizophrenia, where half of IBM didn't want to use or sell the OS that the other half created and/or endorsed. But it was also a story of IBM ignoring the users' grievances. Year after year people complained that a single mis-behaved or crashed application can lock up the common event queue, and thus the whole computer. And year after year IBM stuck to its guns that that's the right way to do things, and generally STFU you bloody user. It was a story of such fuck-ups as IBM launching a version of OS/2 with much fanfare, and then discovering that if you were upgrading from a previous version, it would fuck up the config so badly that your newly installed OS wouldn't boot. (Or not make it to the desktop.) It was a story of IBM developer suport being non-existent. Much as we laugh at "Uncle Fester" Balmer's developers dance on the stage, it was a whole other message than IBM's. IBM at felt a lot more like "fuck off and stop trying to steal the market for our own apps for OS/2." Etc. And IBM lost. Why? Because, bloody sad as it sounds, their stuff was actually worse than MS's.
E.g., I remember being one of the last Netscape fanboys in a world which was quickly going IE, and Netscape's Mozilla team had gone in dada land for years reinventing skinned widget libraries instead of making a browser. The fact that everyone kept pointing out was that IE was head and shoulders above the buggy (and rapidly getting outdated) mess that was Nescape 4.x. Both being free, people preferred the MS one as (subjectively) better.
Etc.
I can even tell you the mistake you're making. You're seeing just the years after they became a monopoly, and when they actually could push people to buy just for compatibility sake. But you forget their years of actually fighting uphill in those markets. Before you could have people telling each other "get Word already because we all have it", you first have to convince enough people to ditch WordStar and WordPerfect, _in_ _spite_ of the fact that everyone else has them.
Don't get me wrong, that doesn't excuse MS's monopolistic tactics or anything. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying you first have to have enough of a foothold before you can apply them. MS's monopoly isn't based on just one thing, it's an interlocking porcupine of pieces which need each other. It only starts working at all after you have at least a few such pieces which are the de-facto standard. And there must have been _some_ merit involved in getting at least those ramm
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know what kind of evening you have planned, but count me out.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Hah. While you jest, I've seen quite a number of non-techies seriously annoyed with Windows — so annoyed, in fact, that one of my colleagues asked me a number of questions about my MacBook Pro just yesterday. It seems her next laptop will have nothing to do with Microsoft.
Linux has a bit lower penetration among non-technical users... then again, my father, stepmother, grandfather and grandmother are all running Kubuntu. Primarily thanks to me, though — my grandparents have absolutely no need for Windows, since they are complete newbies (I built their computer a few weeks ago).
Apple, however... it looks pretty, it's stable — I certainly cannot attest to any of the problems my Windows-based friends encounter — and it's not Microsoft.
Forget the geek cred; Microsoft's has been pretty much ruined for years. Now the non-geeks are catching on.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Microsoft almost seem to have given up on their PC products. They are churning out latest versions of Office and Windows in order to keep milking their core consumers, but their heart doesn't seem to be in it anymore. Its more like rent-seeking than software development for them now. They seem to have bought their own carefully crafted image of immortality and become complacent.
They just haven't cottoned on to the essential change in peoples perceptions of computers since the last time they fucked up good and proper (Windows ME). You used to talk to non-technical people and they would complain about how computers are too slow and computers are always getting viruses and crashing and computers always need reformatting. Now that the majority of the population have been shown there are computers that don't suffer nearly so badly from those issues, they are more and more talking about how windows always gets viruses, crashes and needs reinstalling. The crappiness of windows is no longer assumed to be just a general feature of computers that users have to live with.
The Xbox line seems still pretty strong though, with a certain demographic of gamers (I won't be too insulting seeing as I imagine a lot of the people here own an Xbox or Xbox 360, but my image of the average Halo player does involve a sideways baseball cap). In fact I think it is strong enough to keep Microsoft afloat and in the public mind no matter what happens to windows/office. Whether or not they can make an apple-like comeback and re-enter the OS market if Windows 7 doesn't miraculously save them, remains to be seen.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
The article isn't about product reliability, it's about brand identity. Brand identity is about awareness. As they say, any publicity is good publicity, it's who consumers are attracted to because of the brand. Apple computers fail at roughly the same rate as any Intel-based PC (e.g. Dell, HP etc.) however, because of the coolness of the brand, I would much rather own a Macbook Pro rahter than a DELL XPS, or an iPhone rather than a Blackberry. It's the brand, nothing more.
'When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern.'
No, it's called gravity!
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
You jest, but there actually was a Mike Rowe Soft, which was shut down by Microsoft.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Oil out of babies?
For some reason, Windows users feel happy after they fix their computer, not pissed.
I believe thats the primary reason behind Windows still having popularity.
You see it all the time.
E.g. Printer wont print just before something urgent is due.
They are annoyed when it occurs but are happy when they fix it (usually by rebooting or restarting the app).
I've been watching people using Windows and most of the time they dont even realise when it crashes.
Its just automatic for them to reboot/restart the program and they edit what happened out of their memory.
I've actually had to tell someone that their computer crashed because they didnt notice.
They have been taught that all computers are like that and they just accept it.
Whenever I make Windows crash (very often with Explorer) I get really pissed.
Which is why I make a point on not using Windows unless absolutely necessary.
Microsoft makes money off of defense contracts and their contractors. You can be assured that the Green Zone is a Microsoft zone. The Business Software Alliance sues the customers of Microsoft by proxy. So its more than incompetence, Microsoft is the computer face of Brand America... and we know that brand has been in free fall for some time now. Apple seems more international, and less Amero-centric.
There are no absolutes.
With a distro like Ubuntu do those 99% need to deal with config files, CLI, and compiling from source?
Seriously, using Ubuntu on this machine I rarely if ever have to go to any of those above. Almost anything I could want (except high-end games) is up on Apt/Synaptic with a decent summary, push button installation/un-installation/updates. Configuration is much the same way, with far more options available through nice gui menus than are ever available to the Windows user.
Even those games that I have for linux such as Second Life and Eve Online have been push button to install. Sure with SL I did have to make my own menu button for it but that was filling in a gui form menu and was not strictly necessary.
I don't think it's that surprising though. Look at Ipod ads; they are about the Ipod, not about Apple. Apple targets their products more than their company brand. Apple products are named iStuff. Their office sweet is named iWork. If you look at the Apple website and look where the term "Apple" even appears it's rarely ever a key term on any given page. This is key difference between them and Microsoft who has traditionally used "Microsoft ${x}" as their product name mantra. In recent times Microsoft has also started different branding such as .NET, Windows, and Live. Their brand has been diluted, but I'm not sure the consequences are as dire as many make it sound. It may be of concern that over time if these other brands hold little power and the Microsoft brand also does not have the weight, that they may not be able to simply tout things that are simply made by them. At that point they better have a better product, and at the moment they often don't (X-box probably being the only contender).
Income doesn't matter in publically traded companies; Growth matters, and hitting projections, nothing else.
I wish I was a C-Level exec that could run a company for 10s of years without turning a profit all while pulling a 7 figure income and an 8 figure golden parachute when the company finally pops.
I generally point out that Microsoft's brand is dying because they've stopped innovating, but then, the only time Coca-Cola's brand ever weakened was when they did try to innovate (with New Coke). When they brought back the formula (Coke Classic), they recovered. I guess Microsoft is different, though, because they're a technology company, and thus should be perpetually innovating. Instead, they've turned into a bank, and just buy up other companies and use monopoly power to control their market.
This is a MS marketing ploy that has managed to devalue the brand and that is word assumptions. For example, when DOS came out it was referred to as "DOS", then it merged into PC, PC became Computer, now what was once DOS problems are now computer problems, the same thing happened to Windows, Windows problems became computer problems, OS became Windows editions, word processor became Word, E-Mail became Outlook and until recently Browser used to be IE. By MS having a monopoly, these simple words that without a monopoly would be broad definitions became un-trademarkable words, making the MS brand obsolete, which is why Apple can stick either Apple or i in front of anything and it will sell because Apple avoided that, OS != OS X Mac != PC (and because that is a computer with most MS users, it makes Macs referred to as Macs, not just computers) and it also is why MS can't make Zune or Xbox make a profit.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
So last quarter RH's income was 22m while MS's was 6B+.
That's profit, not revenue but anyway. MS's income depends almost entirely on a government-granted monopoly, whereas Red Hat is thriving even though they allow (in fact want) people to copy their software.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
The CEO of harley davidson has himself said they are in the fashion business not the motorcyle business. Harley Davidsom makes more money off their apparel than they do off of their (overpriced and expensive) motorcycles.
Come to think of it the cycles themselves are nothing but fashion accessories. The japanese bikes are better in every objective criteria.
evil is as evil does
The Tylenol is for when you say you have a headache, the Rolaids are for when you say you ate too much and the KY is for when you tell me you're on your period.
More like "was atrocious". back in the Shovelhead days now decades gone. FWIW even those were so easy to work on that they very rarely went to scrap, unlike (check any cycle salvage if you doubt me!) most other brands.
Since the Evo engine in the 1980s, Harleys have been boringly reliable, and are easy to support with aftermarket parts. You can build a whole motorcycle from such if you wish. Going over 100K miles on an Evo isn't uncommon.
"A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer."
That applies to every brand as the riding population ages. Plenty of Gold Wings etc can be seen on trailers headed for Daytona etc, and they are sweet highway rides.
I've wrenched on all brands for years. Since I put a premium on being able to easily work on reliable bikes, I own a Harley and a BMW. Those are brands that not only work well out of the box, but you can continue running them for many years.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."