Nearly everyone I know has a DVD player. Of all the people I know, how many have players that have been altered to be able to play multiregion? Probably 80-90%. about 5-10% of those are geeks.
This isn't a "geek" issue. People like to skip over ads. Anyone who has lived since the mid-80s has had this feature, and taking it away will piss them off.
I think Boot Camp was more about people like me who were sitting on the fence about the mac, but need the reassurance of being able to run Windows.
It's looking more like a no-brainer to me now. A high-end PC won't give me the option to run OSX, but a high-end Mac will for give me the option to run Windows, for a small additional cost.
So, what happens when many of the "best of breed" business applications start running as browser-based, an area that I'm already starting to see a lot of growth of in in-house applications?
When, you have far less need of a Windows machine in order to run them?
Microsoft will probably not die in our lifetime. But I think they'll just be another competitor in 10-15 years, not a company with their current market power.
I think there's some valid questions about the future of technologies and how that affects Microsoft.
It's not just Microsoft-hating. Personally, and for a number of reasons that aren't just based in wishful thinking, but based in areas like the future of networking and the maturity of their platform, I believe that Microsoft will be a shadow of its current self in 10-20 years time if they don't start producing something revolutionary.
Companies typically get beat when a new disruptive technology comes along and the company, instead of embracing it and saying "where's this going" defend themselves from it. And the longer they take to revolutionise themselves, the more damage is done. If people switch to a webapp and get used to it, what's the chance of them then going with yours when you get there?
The future is web apps and web services with the desktop as just another way of getting there, and Microsoft are doing very little to seriously move to that space. They seem obsessed with making sure that whatever they do deliver there is nicely attached to the Windows desktop.
Microsoft did, to some extent embrace the internet in the mid-90s. But where the technologies then were about client application as the interface, as the internet became faster and more "always on" people are moving towards the browser as the interface. I can edit my weblog from a mac, windows or Linux. It just doesn't matter. It's a lot simpler than installing a bunch of client apps too.
Not so much google alone, but lots of web app providers.
If you have a machine running Windows, and all your software runs on web apps, why do you need to spend money on a new Windows machine, and what's to stop you buying an unnamed, but likely-to-appear-on-the-horizon-sometime-soon cheap, locked-down, Linux-based device for web surfing and email.
I'm running a company with 20 people. 1 CEO, 2 or 3 power users who might write something complex, do some spreadsheets, and 15 people answering customer calls and doing things like typing letters.
In a few paragraphs, explain why, as a business guy interested in a return on my investment, I should put down a few grand on Office 2007.
From what I recall, you could do this yourself since at least Office 6. Regularly can't find a feature? Move it. Customize your menus how you like them.
As for "no more toolbars that appear and disappear", does that mean on menus too? Something again, that you could switch off.
There were also "hardware support leaps". Windows 98 did better USB than 95. Later OSs gave better support for large hard drives.
The rapid churn also meant that application developers could drop support for old versions of Windows, which in turn helped Microsoft.
The churn is going to slow down from here. For many home/SOHO users, their 2Ghz PC does internet, mail, the odd letter, photo and video editing. If they don't want to play the latest games, the reasons for upgrading are going to most likely be if the machine physically dies.
One of the biggest upgrades in future might be "have a nicer looking machine in my room" which might mean more Mac conversions.
Which means what in terms of increased sales? Nothing. Shareholders won't be happy with "good as last year!". People talk here about how much Microsoft have in the bank. But if the share price doesn't rise, those shareholders will start demanding a piece of it.
Of course, they could try and attach a premium to Vista, but then the difference between a machine with Vista and one with Ubuntu will become more apparant.
Look at the technology surrounding them, and how the world has changed. Then consider that 2 products they make are their earners - Office and Windows.
Faster internet, wifi and 3G are slowly making the Windows API less relevant. A lot of in-house work in companies is going webapp, which gives companies more power in choosing their desktop. People are doing more with their phones, a market that Microsoft have little share in, and certainly no dominance of.
Cheaper hosting and faster connections have meant that distributing Linux and OpenOffice.org (as well as development of them) can be done at extremely low cost. Likewise, that hosting has brought about more consumer/SME based webapps which are platform-independent.
Finally, the hardware is done. That is to say, there's no new USB around the corner. No hard drives that can't be dealt with.
For nearly two decades, Microsoft have enjoyed seeing people upgrade, either to get more software functionality (like long file names, tables in word), hardware functionality (USB) or buying machines because an upgrade gave them a considerable perfomance increase (which sold an extra windows license). This era is over.
Microsoft can no longer rely on the desktop and office. OpenOffice.org and Linux will gradually chip away at their market share, and improve functionality, while their existing users have less incentive to upgrade.
IBM did have one thing - a decent relationship with their clients. I saw something recently about brand trust, and Microsoft were way down towards the bottom.
People often use them because they have to, or don't know that they have choices. Give it time, though.
The thing is that they are going to start to go downhill if they don't really start shifting their butt soon.
Just because they are huge now, where are they going to be in 5 years? Where's the innovation in Office that's going to keep it from getting its marketshare chipped away by OpenOffice.org? Where's the innovation in Windows that's going to stop Linux or Mac doing likewise? What are Microsoft doing to address the fact that the browser is becoming the new API, not Windows. Or that IE7 still isn't as good as Firefox.
Their demise isn't going to happen overnight, but if they don't embrace where the future money is (web apps), they are going to lose everything.
I've just installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot because I was so overwhelmed at how well the live CD went.
I'm a reasonably technical guy, but I'm more of a high-level business-orientated developer than a hardcore hacker. It took me a few hours last week to install a dual-boot of 5.10 and have it receiving podcasts and browsing the web. I've still got a few more things to try, but I'm not expecting them to be too tricky.
I hardly watch any TV now. Where I once would sit and watch an evening's TV and watch the best programme on, I'm more likely to sit and read a weblog by someone.
I hardly watch any TV news now. The net beats it hands down. I can read dozens of different opinions, and it's often not been run through a dumb filter. I can read weblogs of people who are on the frontline, not journalists trying to make a sensational story.
will this be a feather in their cap with SCO on their resume or will they be seen as the bottom feeding scum that they are.
The problem is that you are looking at the lawyer from your own, or the "community" perspective, not the perspective of the potential client.
If you want a lawyer, you want the guy who will win for you. If I'm up on a charge, I want the guy who got the biggest scumbag off, regardless of what views I might have on that scumbag.
I'm amazed at the hypocrisy of people. On September 11th 2001, the US was attacked. They could have taken the standard terrorist approach and hit back. They could have launched a nuclear strike at Afghanistan. But they didn't. Bush asked the Taliban to co-operate, and they failed to, so they got hit then. And then various anti-war groups complained about it, as though there was an alternative.
But when a terrorist blows up some people, the finger is always pointed back at the evil western powers who obviously drove them to it.
"Treat people with respect and they will treat you with respect as well". Ask Neville "I have in my hand a piece of paper" Chamberlain about this. Sometimes, people are not reasonable, and you have to kick them in the ass.
Personally, I thought that the Iraq war would be a mistake, and sadly, I feel proven right. That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down and get involved in a democratic, political proces. Because after all, they are victims of US aggression, and not aiming for a power-grab.
Why do you think this? Have you been watching Fox or something? This is a big distortion of the truth. When we have things like Remembrance Day in the UK, we remember everyone who has fought and died to help our country, and that doesn't just include British troops, but people from all around the world.
Most of us recognise how important the USA were to freedom in Europe over WW2. I'm grateful to the people who risked their lives for that freedom.
I don't see why 250 million (US) is that much different to 60 million (UK).
But actually, socialised medicine (like the NHS in the UK) doesn't work that well. Dirty hospitals, staff who frequently don't care, a blame culture, huge waiting lists, massive waste and politics. We are about to spend nearly $10 billion on the IT systems for this. Yes - $10 BILLION.
I recently paid for some private consultations. I had to wait about 2 weeks to be seen or wait FOUR MONTHS to be seen on the glorious NHS (which incidentally, has had a ton of money thrown at it in the past 8 years, and barely raised the number of patients treated).
Dell's biggest innovation is having about the slickest processes out there in terms of things like just-in-time stock management and sales processes, which keeps costs down.
I've not heard great things from friends of mine about quality recently (and they used to recommend them) but I still think they are not bad.
Government has a lot of problems to do with open source. Many of these same rules also apply to large commercial organisations, too (but not all).
First, lack of incentive. If a manager successfully implements an open source solution, what does he get for it? Nothing. He might save his employer thousands, but he's unlikely to see much of it. So why should he go out of his way and potentially risk his career, unless he's someone who actually cares (my experience of large bureaucracies is that most people don't care that much.
Second, alternative incentives. If you have a supplier that does a decent enough job, and once a year takes you out for a day's karting and beer, are you going to give that up, considering that your employer pays for the karting and beer?
Finally, in the case of government, there are complex and bureaucratic rules that have to be followed that act as a barrier to small suppliers without large teams.
Small businesses are a better target. Remember when clone PCs came along? The people who bought them and created the initial market were small businesses looking to save a few hundred/thousand dollars because it made a big difference to them. Every dollar saved went to the owner (before tax).
Small businesses have a close link between the owner and the front-line staff. There isn't a massive staff manual full of regulations. You do what's right this time to save money. I've worked in giant businesses and offered to save money but couldn't because the way I offered to do it didn't fit into the expenses structure. Small businessmen I've worked for just took the saving.
The businesses that I know that are using ODF are small ones. They don't care about the openness - that's a side benefit. That £300 saving on having to buy an MS Office license by using OpenOffice.org is a big deal to them - it means that after tax, they can buy themselves an iPod, or alternatively, have the budget for half a day with a PR consultant.
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Nearly everyone I know has a DVD player. Of all the people I know, how many have players that have been altered to be able to play multiregion? Probably 80-90%. about 5-10% of those are geeks.
This isn't a "geek" issue. People like to skip over ads. Anyone who has lived since the mid-80s has had this feature, and taking it away will piss them off.
It's looking more like a no-brainer to me now. A high-end PC won't give me the option to run OSX, but a high-end Mac will for give me the option to run Windows, for a small additional cost.
When, you have far less need of a Windows machine in order to run them?
Microsoft will probably not die in our lifetime. But I think they'll just be another competitor in 10-15 years, not a company with their current market power.
It's not just Microsoft-hating. Personally, and for a number of reasons that aren't just based in wishful thinking, but based in areas like the future of networking and the maturity of their platform, I believe that Microsoft will be a shadow of its current self in 10-20 years time if they don't start producing something revolutionary.
I didn't mean that I wanted you to write the paragraph, but to think about "how do you sell this to such a person holding the purse strings".
I can't see anything that would convince a small businessman to upgrade to Office 2007. Sure, it's more pretty, but so what?
Companies typically get beat when a new disruptive technology comes along and the company, instead of embracing it and saying "where's this going" defend themselves from it. And the longer they take to revolutionise themselves, the more damage is done. If people switch to a webapp and get used to it, what's the chance of them then going with yours when you get there?
The future is web apps and web services with the desktop as just another way of getting there, and Microsoft are doing very little to seriously move to that space. They seem obsessed with making sure that whatever they do deliver there is nicely attached to the Windows desktop.
Microsoft did, to some extent embrace the internet in the mid-90s. But where the technologies then were about client application as the interface, as the internet became faster and more "always on" people are moving towards the browser as the interface. I can edit my weblog from a mac, windows or Linux. It just doesn't matter. It's a lot simpler than installing a bunch of client apps too.
If you have a machine running Windows, and all your software runs on web apps, why do you need to spend money on a new Windows machine, and what's to stop you buying an unnamed, but likely-to-appear-on-the-horizon-sometime-soon cheap, locked-down, Linux-based device for web surfing and email.
In a few paragraphs, explain why, as a business guy interested in a return on my investment, I should put down a few grand on Office 2007.
From what I recall, you could do this yourself since at least Office 6. Regularly can't find a feature? Move it. Customize your menus how you like them.
As for "no more toolbars that appear and disappear", does that mean on menus too? Something again, that you could switch off.
What, they're rolling out Office 2000?
The rapid churn also meant that application developers could drop support for old versions of Windows, which in turn helped Microsoft.
The churn is going to slow down from here. For many home/SOHO users, their 2Ghz PC does internet, mail, the odd letter, photo and video editing. If they don't want to play the latest games, the reasons for upgrading are going to most likely be if the machine physically dies.
One of the biggest upgrades in future might be "have a nicer looking machine in my room" which might mean more Mac conversions.
Of course, they could try and attach a premium to Vista, but then the difference between a machine with Vista and one with Ubuntu will become more apparant.
Faster internet, wifi and 3G are slowly making the Windows API less relevant. A lot of in-house work in companies is going webapp, which gives companies more power in choosing their desktop. People are doing more with their phones, a market that Microsoft have little share in, and certainly no dominance of.
Cheaper hosting and faster connections have meant that distributing Linux and OpenOffice.org (as well as development of them) can be done at extremely low cost. Likewise, that hosting has brought about more consumer/SME based webapps which are platform-independent.
Finally, the hardware is done. That is to say, there's no new USB around the corner. No hard drives that can't be dealt with.
For nearly two decades, Microsoft have enjoyed seeing people upgrade, either to get more software functionality (like long file names, tables in word), hardware functionality (USB) or buying machines because an upgrade gave them a considerable perfomance increase (which sold an extra windows license). This era is over.
Microsoft can no longer rely on the desktop and office. OpenOffice.org and Linux will gradually chip away at their market share, and improve functionality, while their existing users have less incentive to upgrade.
People often use them because they have to, or don't know that they have choices. Give it time, though.
Just because they are huge now, where are they going to be in 5 years? Where's the innovation in Office that's going to keep it from getting its marketshare chipped away by OpenOffice.org? Where's the innovation in Windows that's going to stop Linux or Mac doing likewise? What are Microsoft doing to address the fact that the browser is becoming the new API, not Windows. Or that IE7 still isn't as good as Firefox.
Their demise isn't going to happen overnight, but if they don't embrace where the future money is (web apps), they are going to lose everything.
And openoffice.org is snapping at its heels.
I'm a reasonably technical guy, but I'm more of a high-level business-orientated developer than a hardcore hacker. It took me a few hours last week to install a dual-boot of 5.10 and have it receiving podcasts and browsing the web. I've still got a few more things to try, but I'm not expecting them to be too tricky.
I hardly watch any TV news now. The net beats it hands down. I can read dozens of different opinions, and it's often not been run through a dumb filter. I can read weblogs of people who are on the frontline, not journalists trying to make a sensational story.
The problem is that you are looking at the lawyer from your own, or the "community" perspective, not the perspective of the potential client.
If you want a lawyer, you want the guy who will win for you. If I'm up on a charge, I want the guy who got the biggest scumbag off, regardless of what views I might have on that scumbag.
(too obscure?)
But when a terrorist blows up some people, the finger is always pointed back at the evil western powers who obviously drove them to it.
"Treat people with respect and they will treat you with respect as well". Ask Neville "I have in my hand a piece of paper" Chamberlain about this. Sometimes, people are not reasonable, and you have to kick them in the ass.
Personally, I thought that the Iraq war would be a mistake, and sadly, I feel proven right. That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down and get involved in a democratic, political proces. Because after all, they are victims of US aggression, and not aiming for a power-grab.
Why do you think this? Have you been watching Fox or something? This is a big distortion of the truth. When we have things like Remembrance Day in the UK, we remember everyone who has fought and died to help our country, and that doesn't just include British troops, but people from all around the world.
Most of us recognise how important the USA were to freedom in Europe over WW2. I'm grateful to the people who risked their lives for that freedom.
But actually, socialised medicine (like the NHS in the UK) doesn't work that well. Dirty hospitals, staff who frequently don't care, a blame culture, huge waiting lists, massive waste and politics. We are about to spend nearly $10 billion on the IT systems for this. Yes - $10 BILLION.
I recently paid for some private consultations. I had to wait about 2 weeks to be seen or wait FOUR MONTHS to be seen on the glorious NHS (which incidentally, has had a ton of money thrown at it in the past 8 years, and barely raised the number of patients treated).
I've not heard great things from friends of mine about quality recently (and they used to recommend them) but I still think they are not bad.
First, lack of incentive. If a manager successfully implements an open source solution, what does he get for it? Nothing. He might save his employer thousands, but he's unlikely to see much of it. So why should he go out of his way and potentially risk his career, unless he's someone who actually cares (my experience of large bureaucracies is that most people don't care that much.
Second, alternative incentives. If you have a supplier that does a decent enough job, and once a year takes you out for a day's karting and beer, are you going to give that up, considering that your employer pays for the karting and beer?
Finally, in the case of government, there are complex and bureaucratic rules that have to be followed that act as a barrier to small suppliers without large teams.
Small businesses are a better target. Remember when clone PCs came along? The people who bought them and created the initial market were small businesses looking to save a few hundred/thousand dollars because it made a big difference to them. Every dollar saved went to the owner (before tax).
Small businesses have a close link between the owner and the front-line staff. There isn't a massive staff manual full of regulations. You do what's right this time to save money. I've worked in giant businesses and offered to save money but couldn't because the way I offered to do it didn't fit into the expenses structure. Small businessmen I've worked for just took the saving.
The businesses that I know that are using ODF are small ones. They don't care about the openness - that's a side benefit. That £300 saving on having to buy an MS Office license by using OpenOffice.org is a big deal to them - it means that after tax, they can buy themselves an iPod, or alternatively, have the budget for half a day with a PR consultant.