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Microsoft Sees Linux As Bigger Competitor Than Apple
Facetious writes "It seems Microsoft doesn't believe the data from Net Applications regarding Linux any more than Slashdot readers do. In a recent presentation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a slide showing, from Microsoft's internal analysis, that Linux client use is clearly ahead of Apple's."
Makes sense... a PC user can switch to Linux by downloading a LiveCD (or whatever) and installing or just running from the disk. A PC user has to buy new hardware to switch to Apple.
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I think thats sort of a "duh" statement when you consider server usage as well as desktop usage.
Mac servers can't be much of the server market.
Of course they're worried! If Linux (and the rest of the open source projects) become even slightly common, Microsoft have lost. They can't buy Linux, they can't do deals with it. They don't seem to be able to out perform it either. Short of zapping every magnetic and (some how) optical media on the planet, Microsoft cannot kill an open source project of a large magnitude; there'll always be community members willing to take over where one was "bought" by Microsoft.
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Of course not. Apple has a different model (Linux is GPL and Apple is closed source). Apple is still proprietary and paid-for while Linux can be shared freely. Just because they have similar origins from a software standpoint doesn't mean anything when you consider their market viability. They're completely different beasts in that respect.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
OSX can only realistically come from one over priced manufactuer where as Linux is free and can be installed on any machine.
The economy is in the dumps. Would you be worried about the over priced guy with no net book or the guy that's infiltrating the netbook space quite well when that's a fast growing sector?
The day the manage to lock out piracy, a lot of that group will switch to Linux, not pay full prize full Windows licenses.
I can understand why they see Linux as a bigger threat. Linux is something completely different than Windows, MacOS is "just" another proprietary closed source company controlled desktop OS. These days, more and more people see the advantages of free sofware, and Microsoft will never be able to catch up with Linux on that one.
An operating system's installed base is not the same as the market share.
Market share is measurable because it's based on percentage of sales over a given period of time.
Installed base is difficult or impossible to measure, because it's the percentage share an operating system has over the entire population of computers. This means the market share of Macs and Linux machines is underestimated. Macs, because they last on average 2 years longer than Windows PC's. Linux, well, because hardly anybody pays for Linux since they can legally get it for free.
So, essentially, market share figures are highly inaccurate for estimated the installed base of any given operating system.
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There are Apple products that compete directly with Microsoft ones. Both Apple and Microsoft make keyboards and mice. I regard Microsoft keyboards and mice as the nicest products they sell.
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To this discussion that has absolutely no relevance: linux is dangerous because attacking a single vendor is useless and because no single vendor needs to become 'huge' for linux to grow... and this is all a result of being free software
A lot of the more traditional real UNIXes were crap too, from what I've read. Being certified as Unix probably isn't all that useful.
actually i think your missing the real point. its not really about who you can threaten.
Apple has a business model which literally cannot take a market majority. the day Apple hits 30% it can no longer be apple anymore. however Linux can go all out.
but even that is an aside in these times of recession people have a vested interest in their hardware. XP is getting long in tooth and vista was a flop if 7 doesn't pony up there will be a huge body of unsatisfied people who cannot afford to go buy a mac but *can* afford to download a Linux distro.
once Linux gets enough of a market foothold support for the platform snowballs. more drivers come out more people get linux etc etc.
I revently took a course in Microsoft AD after having been a linux guy since RH 5. I couldnt in my wildest dreams think that Microsofts server products are such pile of manure that they are. The more i learn about Windows the more surprised i get that people stand for all the shortcomings, the bad usability, the lack of customer centric solutions and the costs.
In my mind there are just some small things that needs to be pieced in for Linux to be a really dangerous threat to Windows. Most of the things already exists for a Linux solution to completely replace a Microsoft centric network.
I have run Linux Terminal Servers, Linux Fileservers, Linux webservers, Novell, Windows various solutions and Novell Linux solutions. The only thing really needed is an easier and faster way of setting a Linux solution up. Novell and Windows is very hard and tedious to manage once setup but its really easy to get a minimal system up and running. Linux on the other hand is very hard to setup but very easy to manage on a daily basis.
If someone packages a solution where you can get a file, print, ldap and policy handling up and running without much fuss i think Linux would explode. Windows integration is from my view overrated, its much more important of making it easier to get up to speed with a pure linux network. Right now to much work is put into following Microsofts whims around with AD and whatnot instead of building a better solution on linux. A copy can only be so good as its original.
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When I was a kid, I had an Apple IIgs and a DOS box. The Apple was a nice machine, but the DOS box felt a lot more like a computer. At the time, I had a full instruction manual for DOS. That manual included descriptions of all the COM and EXE files on the system, their switches and examples of how to use them. Apple lacks that raw computing experience. It is there in the terminal window, but you don't need to go there to use the OS. Linux on the other hand still has that natural and exposed underbelly that geek kids can get into. Some kids are curious and those kids like figuring out how things work. Those kids don't need mommy and daddy to shell out $1000 for a computer that runs OSX because they can get Linux for free and run it on a 486. Those kids are a lot more likely to go a school that will move toward open source as a cost saving measure, as opposed to a school that will come up with a lot of money to pay the Apple tax.
If I were Microsoft and I was focused on the next generation of geeks, I'd be scared shitless of Linux.
Perhaps after the success of the switch adds Apple inched ahead of Linux on the desk top. But if you look over the last 15 years, I believe that there has been more Linux on the desktop than Apple OS's.
It hasn't been in anyone's interest to say that. I think that is even true of the Linux companies. For a long time they wanted to be under the radar under dogs. Perhaps because they didn't want a fight to the death with Microsoft.
This is an excellent observation and it lies at the heart of Linux's success. Anyone who fails to grasp this point is not even in the right ballgame.
In terms of economics, the most important difference between free and proprietary platforms is that free platforms do not require a large userbase in order to thrive. The number of skilled developers willing to work on Linux for free would remain very high even if Linux's userbase were to drastically shrink. (This is incidentally the main reason why Microsoft cannot win against Linux, at least not by any means available in the marketplace.)
By contrast, a proprietary platform requires a large userbase in order to even survive, since the only way for a proprietary platform to get developers is to pay them a salary, and salaries require money, which requires users. There are no volunteer developers who are even able, let alone willing, to contribute code to Microsoft Windows for free, because of the locked-in nature of the platform.
That's why proprietary vendors routinely inflate their usage numbers. Larger numbers are necessary in order to convince new users that the platform is worthy of adoption. If a proprietary platform does not have a lot of users, then it has no future, and rational users would not risk selecting that platform. That's why OS/2 died, and that's why Solaris (despite being made free recently) is about to die.
We thus have a situation where every vendor, other than the Linux vendors, has a huge economic incentive to inflate the reported size of their userbase. I don't necessarily mean illegal activity here; there are well known legal methods by which usage numbers can be inflated. For example, Microsoft counts every Vista OEM license as a Vista sale even if the user exercises downgrade rights to XP, and so on. In any case, it doesn't surprise me at all that the actual market share of Linux is far higher than what is being reported.
The business model is different. Microsoft can pull a Novell or a Xandros deal, but that either 1) ends up helping those distros, or, more worryingly, 2) does nothing to fight the multiheaded hydra that Linux is. Add the fact that it cannot be bought or threatened with any serious lawsuits, its a major headache for Microsoft.
It's even a bit more fundamental than that. The core of the matter is that for "foundation" software, like operating systems or office suites, open source is the inevitable endgame.
In general, every widespread product drives gradually towards commoditization, where profit margins are driven to the lowest levels that capital sources will allow (any lower and capital flees to better ROI). But the marginal cost of software is zero; no capital is necessary to produce additional copies. For custom and niche software, there are too few people interested in the software to drive commoditization, so the software can be profit-generating. For software that is consumable content and differentiable, like games, there is opportunity for profit. But for stuff that everyone needs, and which provides few opportunities for differentiation, commoditization is the natural course.
Without the presence of open source in the market, the commodity price level would remain above zero, even once the software was "perfected" (meaning real differentiation is no longer possible), but if open source enters the game, as long as it is sufficiently functional that it is cheaper for some individuals or organizations to fix the ways it fails to meet their needs rather than buying commercial software that does, then the open source code will continue to improve, which increases the segment of the market that finds it acceptable, or nearly so. And remember that cost isn't just dollars. Ill effects of monoculture, perceptions of vendor lock-in and even just plain dislike -- even if irrational -- are all "costs" that some people apply to commercial software.
Over time, therefore, open source inevitably displaces commercial software in commoditized spaces. Microsoft and other software companies might kid themselves that they can continue innovating and adding value to their applications indefinitely, but in most cases they're wrong.
Whether they fully recognize this and are just delaying the inevitable, or whether they think they may be able to find a way, someday, to stave off the growth of Linux and OpenOffice, it doesn't surprise me at all that Microsoft recognizes Linux as a greater threat than Apple, because Apple isn't threatening to commoditize Microsoft's cash cows. On the contrary, Apple wants to find ways to push the price UP. Linux and OpenOffice, however, are real, direct and apparently unstoppable threats to Microsoft's major revenue sources. Even if the Linux installed base were half of OS X's, they would still be wise to worry.
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Two reasons: Apple is smaller because it requires specialist hardware that is fairly expensive. NOTE this does NOT mean I am claiming Apples are overpriced, just that you can't turn an obsolete PC into a perfectly fine linux server or desktop.
Second reason is that Apple is a straight competitor. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer ain't enemies, they believe the same thing: Software should be paid for and the end user does NOT get to own the piece of software let alone use it in any way that they want to.
Linux on the other hand says "Here is all this great software, use it, don't pay for it and do with it what you want how you want to for as long as you want to." EEK!
Or to keep it simple, an Apple buyer might be persuaded to buy MS office for the Mac. A linux user is a far thougher sell and might even use something like OpenOffice or even worse Abiword (remember that OpenOffice is as complex as MSOffice but Abiword, that is so scary because it says "not only am I not going to pay for MSOffice but I don't even need all that it offers").
Apple is a competitor, Linux is an assault on the very principles that MS thinks should govern software.
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You're wrong, Apple is in the business to sell hardware. Apple's software exists to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro? That is sold to get studios to replace their high-end Avid editing stations with Macs. It all goes back to their hardware. Their latest release of Logic Pro even removed the dongle copy protection requirement, which tells you how little they care about software piracy as long as you're using Macs. iWork '09 requires little more than a serial number which you can enter into the downloadable trial version to unlock the full program.
If Apple was a hardware AND software company, their software would be available for Windows. iTunes doesn't count because it's free and exists to sell iPods. Are you sensing a theme yet?
Yes, the iPhone and iPod are niches. The Zune is another product, but it failed to fill a niche largely because of the iPod but mostly because it's a piece of shit. The iPhone is indeed popular, but Windows Mobile plays a different role and provides significant competitive options. It also fills a niche.
The "YoTLD" is nonsense, Free Software doesn't have a turning point that can be suggested. Governments are mandating open source, countless consumer devices pick free pieces of software all the time, even if they don't always comply by the license they are released under, Microsoft not only acknowledges the existence of the idea of F/OSS but the actively combat it.
Free Software doesn't have to 'sell better', it doesn't have to be more popular to continue to exist. It just does, and it continues to improve and be used the world around. Free Software products will inevitably prevail over proprietary options because it is the moral and intelligent decision.
F/OSS won't take over the world, the world will take over it. The reason it can't be fought is because it doesn't exist, it's entirely abstract and supported cognitively. What Microsoft has pushes is their software as a physical item, the boundaries of which separated by licensing and legal agreements.
Consider how Microsoft is splitting hairs over virtualization, how they desperately try to redefine where the software starts and where it ends. Microsoft's power isn't in programming, it's in litigation, and their arguments are becoming less significant as people stop caring.
It's not just cost free, it's not just morally free, it's not just legally free, it's not just free to redistribute and free to modify, it's not just freedom... Free Software accepts the fact that ideas are impossible to solely possess, and dare I resort to anthropomorphism; Free Software has a free life all of its own.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
That is especially so in the context of what Ballmer was talking about. His point in the talk seemed to be that pirated Windows was (by far) their largest competitor, and the one they want to focus most on beating.
When looking at where else all those unlicensed users would go if they didn't become legal Windows users, Apple doesn't really come into it much. People with illegal copies of Windows would typically either be cheapskates or live in a developing country - neither of which are really Apples typical customer base. Linux on the other hand is better placed to pick them up if MS gets too heavy on them.