Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He’s currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator, a venture firm specializing in funding early stage startups that helps startups move from idea to company.
Graham blogs, “A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead.”
“Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting in the late 80s. I can remember when it was IBM before them. I mostly ignored this shadow. I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly—for example, in the spam I got from botnets. And because I wasn’t paying attention, I didn’t notice when the shadow disappeared,” Graham writes. “But it’s gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money—so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous.”
Graham writes: What killed them? Four things, I think, all of them occurring simultaneously in the mid 2000s:
• Google
• Ajax
• broadband Internet
• Apple
Graham writes, “Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I’m now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s… And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Microsoft faces mutiny: Dell to expand Linux factory-installed options; HP dumps Media Center PCs – March 29, 2007
Spate of recent Mac security stories signal that Microsoft, others getting nervous – March 06, 2006
Apple’s Mac is not doomed to small market share forever; the ‘Ignorance Lag’ is ending – February 11, 2005
Defending Windows over Mac a sign of mental illness – December 20, 2003
@Peterson
You’d call your mom a pig and not know the implication…
I’ve noticed that Windows’ weaknesses are the very reason for its success! Its attraction for viruses and habit of crashing often is the reason huge IT departments exist in many organizations. And sadly, it is these IT personnel who drive the computing decisions in many firms. Why would these MS techies threaten their own jobs by recommending an OS like Mac, which doesn’t face virus threats and hardly ever crashes?
“Windows is for grandmas”
… the greasy-suit in my local PCWorld was still saying that of Macs not six months ago.
I smiled at him beatifically and murmured “You’ll change your tune, young man. Just wait and see…”
Like Jobs said long ago, Microsoft lacks innovation and lacks culture. They don’t develop anything, they just acquire little software companies that do.
Andrew Hamilton
Video Production Las Vegas
http://www.hiproductions.com
Joakim
Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier, but I am here now to help.
If you are going to make these carefully worded, semi-concealed criticisms of the Mac and OS X, please be more careful with your spelling:–
“I love the estetics of mac, if nothing else”
Try “aesthetics” – and incidentally Mac is always spelt with a capital “M”. True Mac users never make this mistake – they are usually very careful on this point.
My advice, Joakim, is to stick with Vista.
All the best!
Hasta la vista.
John
There is a very slow change towards Apple in the market. Of greater importance is the change in perceptions of young people.
First thing I do in the morning at the school where I teach is to plug the projector into my 12″ PowerBook and fire up Promethean – which looks great on the little feller and crappy on the new HP desktops with whch we’ve been saddled.
The kids continually ask to be allowed to use my laptop and ignore their new PCs which some of them can hack with ease.
The fact that 75% of them have various models of iPod (particularly the new Shuffles) show me that Paul Graham is accurately commentating on a trend that will accelerate in years to come.
I remember the awe with which IBM was held. It isn’t dead and neither will Microsoft die soon: they’ll just settle down into being a large boring IT company who can’t harm anyone else anymore.
I usually laugh when people say “Macs are non for serious work” “Professional use Windows, not Macs”.
Yeah, right. Maybe the professionals you know of are clerks and salesman.
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/harvard/
Practically all the Professionals I know work either with Linux or Mac OS X. I know not a single one Professional using Windows to do any serious job. They are in niche market rather like using an instrument for which the only drivers are for Windows or architects using AutoCad.
The rest of professionals are then low-key figures: salesmen, accountants and clerks. Or, as the author of the article correctly put it, people in need of running that accounting program for plumbers that only runs on Windows.
And grandmas of course, people who know very little about computing and who answer with “Office 98” to the question “Which operating system do you run on your computer?”
And it is very true also that brilliant professionals do NOT look at Microsoft as a possible employee. Yuck.
twilightmoon@mac.com:
1. Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio were Cupetino’s equivalents of Redmond’s Ballmer and Gates.
2. The 80’s and 90’s weren’t exactly great for Apple. Jobs didn’t return to Apple as CEO until 1998.
3. Jobs doesn’t own the world’s monopoly in vision and innovation.
4. Cults of personality depend on weak minds thinking similarly to sustain the myth.
5. Past history is not an absolute predictor of future success.
6. Future history hasn’t been written yet.
Every day of every 100 computers sold only 4 will be Macs.
I believe the reports of the death of Microsoft are vastly overstated….
I would say a more apt statement is Apple marketing has long been brain dead and cannot for the life of them figure out how to sell its computers and OS to the public.
Thanks hotinplaya!
Well I have been a naysayer of Mac for a long time mostly out of ignorance and I am finally going to buy my first Mac as soon as Leopard is available…Although I am still ignorant when it comes to computers and I have no idea what I could do with the power of the 8 core whatever…I can see that Mac is better deal in the long run. It’s prettier it’s faster and I don’t have to deal with the Vista fiasco. Which is the biggest selling point. Apple is targeting me and my lack of knowledge as well as the rest of us with limited knowledge. It hasn’t happened over night and neither will M$ dying off. I don’t think either company cares how much I know about start up times or when the registry gets full just as long as I buy the product.
Mac is a Harley? That is a first. The Harley is old school. 40’s technology tarted up to todays standards. Hondas, for the most part, are state of the art technology. Harleys are anything but comfortable. The 1200 cc Honda is not much better. The rice burning, Honda crotch rockets really are state of the art.
If you are going to use the motorcycle analogy, instead of the car analogy, you got it bass ackwards. OS X is a state of the art crotch rocket, Vista is an old tech warmed over, 1950’s, suicide shift, ex-cop bike sitting in pieces in 3 bushel baskets.
Bartender! No more Kool-Aid for this crowd! Can’t you see from the babble they have had enough.
MS is not dead. But I do believe it is acccurate to say that there are chinks in the armor that may lead it to do things differently. When they come to the end of their fiscal year this time, some very brave accountant (from this point on referred to as the ‘Messenger”..or the soon to be unemployment statistic) is going to have to explain to some defensive executives that they did not even come close to the ROI they promised for Vista.
The stockholders will have to decide whether the CEI (Chief Executive Idiot) at MS is really helping MS keep it’s legalized monopoly unchallenged. If Vista does not completely take over the Windows market all these exclusionary file formats will hurt MS not help it….why because there will be enough of a market left out of the new formats that some company will make products for it. Those products will help people stay out of buying Vista and MSOffice ’07. MS is so big that any money they leave on the table (pennies in their perspective) is a pot big enough to make a few young programmers millionaires. That is incentive enough.
Just my $0.02
I really want to believe the premise of this article – but I don’t. It simply hasn’t happened – yet. From an end user stand point the pressure is still on to use Windows, and to build all enterprise infrastructures on MS products, and in fact, 90+% of the world, today IS built on MS products, and the end user is still compelled to be running Windows and/or IE. (I just dropped my favorite online photo printing service because they now “require” that I be using IE – See ya.)
The article is a bit of an ivory-tower perspective, but it is important as a baromoter of where things are going, but we’re still a long way off. This doesn’t mean things won’t happen quickly; just a few months ago on MDN we were all speculating that things are changing and that maybe in 10 years it will be a different world. Then a few weeks ago we were beginning to get the feeling that maybe things were changing much faster than that…
Some realities that are difficult to get around are:
1) MS has incredible financial resources.
2) Most, if not all, IT pros are still coming out of school with the gospel of Windows in their mouths and in their hearts.
These are the facts that have continued to perpetuate the organizm we call Microsoft, and I don’t see enough change in these core areas to indicate any dramatic change in the short run. It’s not a stretch to see that its going to take many more years of persistance by end users of all types to get Windows off of the vast majority of desktop computers.
This does not mean that Apple cannot continue to progress, but Apple is still resting mostly on the laurels of its other-than-desktop-computing successes, which make no mistake, have also tended to empower its desktop sales, but again, just because MS appears to be in a PR slump does not mean it isn’t the monster its always been. Thanks in no small part to Apple Inc., what we do have now that we’ve never had before, is a window of opportunity into public perception at all levels, and its now, right now, up to Apple, and linux, and whoever else is into providing real, genuine, beautiful, good ‘ole American capitalist competition, to step up and continue to pound the truth into the public mind that we do not have to use Windows to succeed, personally or corporately.
Boycotting Nike gives Nike more power, not less. Ignoring Nike gives them less power. Get it?
So if I boycott Studebaker by refusing to drive one, that gives Studebaker more power over my life?
1. I think its very difficult to predict the future but I will say this: Microsoft has peaked influence wise.
Their stock price is flat, and has been for years (but I’m not about to predict the future here either, other than to say the chances of a significant increase are low). I would expect their revenue to grow for a while longer, however, probably longer than most expect.
And I agree with those who say Graham is talking about several years out, and is talking about startup successes, which are very hard to predict, in general, and take a while to hit the mainstream.
2. More serious for Microsoft is the fact that they’ve been utterly unsuccessful at branching out from Windows and Office, with the arguable exception of XBox (which is Windows, and, regardless loses money), and low end servers (which is more of a supplement to Windows, particularly things like Exchange servers).
Other companies get it about Microsoft and won’t partner with them any more than absolutely necessary, leaving Microsoft on its on. The PC box assemblers aren’t partners, they’re more like indentured servants, just waiting to get free/revolt. Intel is being particularly bold here.
And monopolies always fail, its just a matter of time, a vibrant marketplace (like technology’s), failing to branch out and not being protected by law. Certainly Microsoft is a mature, i.e. DYING monopoly, the technology markeplace is vibrant and they’re not protected by law. It is intersting that Microsoft got it about the branching out part, just failed at it.
3. The big things that keep Microsoft going are IT, unsophisticated users and business owners who blindly and needlessly accept of the Microsoft Tax. Which can be summed up as inertia.
As Graham says, this is changing. And once it reaches a tipping point, look out – it will go down quicker than people expect simply because Microsoft isn’t as big a percentage of IT as IBM was, and because there is more competition against Microsoft, in spite of their monopoly abuses.
I think a more significant point is that 50% of PC sales to undergrads at Ivy League schools (i.e. the next generation of movers and shakers) are Macs – this is a staggering accomplishment on the part of Apple. And it has more than doubled in the last 5 years, from under 20%. Where will it be in 5 years – 70%? 90%?
How long before a smart accountant makes the business case for Mac? Its sitting there, ready to be made, TODAY. Key words: viruses, support costs, productivity (in that order).
How long before a smart accountant makes the business case for Openoffice, for desktops (particularly basic word processing)? Its also sitting there, ready to be made, again, TODAY.
Companies DO want to save money.
The simple version is: make a business case to justify the use of Windows and Microsoft Office, and the default is no Windows, no Office.
4. .NET is simply the latest version of lockinware, reverse engineered Java without cross platform (Java’s best feature). It did get Java going again, after a bit of a slow spot.
Fast Office startup? Indeed, because its started at boot time. Good trick for ALL slow to start applications (altho unlike Office, ask first, at install time, default no).
5. Ajax and GMail are interesting, but they have a ways to go before they’re fully equivalent to a desktop. The browser experience isn’t 100% equivalent yet, browser memory footprint and robustness is an issue, UI richness is an issue, network bandwidth is an issue (sending the whole thing each time is not a good move), cross browser compatability is a big issue (the monopoly abuse thing again, lack of a reference implementation/test suite by the standards bodies) and developer tools are a HUGE issue – where is the web application point and click GUI builder?
Plus, Javascript isn’t a robust enough, rich enough language.
The point? Its fairly immature still, and some of the technologies have serious, fundamental flaws.
In fact, I wouldn’t be shocked to see rich, net based, (inherently platform neutral) Java clients make a resurgence, using Ajax (or other technologies) for communications, and kicked off initially via a web page, eliminating all the problems mentioned.
The buzz is with Ajax, however, but regardless of technologies the applications are moving to the internet, like a tree growing over barbed wire as Graham so cleverly says.
There is a change brewing and only Mac folk are aware of it.
I like what I’m seeing from my family, friends and even from co-workers. They are all slowly but very surely coming around to the Mac (except for our accountants…they still want to use only their Windows PCs even though they have no choice – ’cause I “saddled” them with 20″ iMacs) and once they do, they do so in full force.
Just today one of my co-workers called that her sister’s PC is dying and she wants me to advise her on a Mac.
Amazing!
We’ll see. I’m not holding my breath, this time next year there will be a service pack release and half of Windows users will be using Vista.
I hope this is true but I get tired of reading all this gloom and doom over M$’s future, then to be disappointed when they keep rolling on a year later.
Steve: “Sounds like a Apple Fan Boy. I am, but see MS all over at every business I enter. Including BIG business. Is he dreaming ten years out?”
Snapper: “MS might be dead but some one forgot to tell the general public about it”
et al…
Folks who think Microsoft is still alive and ticking because the average joe bought a PC or because BIG business still buy PCs are completely missing the authors point…
The average joe buys a Dell, or an HP, or whatever because they don’t know any better, or because they think that buying the cheapest is all they can afford (which may be true as many people live their lives so irresponsibly, they can’t get a credit card – If anyone EVER says “I can’t get a credit card,” they did something irresponsible with their credit – even 18 year olds, on their birthday, can get a modest limit credit card, which will rapidly go up in credit line if they remain responsible). These people, cumulatively, are know of as “idiots.” Even well educated and high IQ people can be (and often are) idiots.
BIG business buys Dells, HPs, etc. because Dell, HP, etc., gives them a really good price, long term support contracts, etc., and keeps the initial investment low, which means that buying their hardware will not impact the bottom line for this fiscal quarter. Like the aforementioned idiots, most big business do not make intelligent decisions. They look at most everything on the short term, and almost never look at the long term repercussions. Low to mid level managers in such businesses are afraid to do anything different than the company has been doing before, out of fear. High level management are more into the wheeling-dealing, immediate personal benefit (bonuses, kickbacks, immediate stock value, etc.) and don’t really care about the businesses long term.
The people who are creative, intelligent, and clear thinkers often have good credit, though not necessarily the money or income to leverage it all, but still make intelligent, well thought out decisions, run close to or over their margins when they start up, take big risks, and most of all, they have a vision… These are the people who will set the path of the future. Apple is one of very few big businesses that, for the most part, fits into this mold. To be sure, they are a lot more conservative today than they were in the late ’70s/early ’80s, but it is because they have a mainstream leadership position (iPod) and truly innovative products (everything), and most importantly, market directly to the clear thinking, intelligent, creative small business people that they are growing…
Businesses come and go, and Microsoft, because they capitalized on old business, subsequently adopted old business management practices and while they may continue like so for decades, if a serious challenge coupled with a market shift were to occur, the old companies like IBM, Microsoft, etc., will either die off or become service oriented.
Just as a reminder, whilst IBM does make computers today, manufacturing of their own products to be sold and or leased to their primary customer base is not their bread and butter. IBM makes most of their money in the service sector, providing IT outsourcing, and the like, and also has a fairly solid OEM chip business. Most of the rest of IBMs business sectors are low profit, high cost R&D operations, which have been steadily, albeit very slowly, dwindling in size.
Microsoft is already clearly moving in the same direction… Promotion and deception regarding Windows just helps them keep the edge of dominance necessary to become the preferred service company for those companies that have already invested heavily in Microsoft… That is precisely the same strategy that IBM used to gain their dominance in the service market a decade or so ago.
Do understand that I have significantly simplified this essay. If I had not, it would easily take up a whole book.
I LOVE THE MACS, I USE MAC BUT THIS SHIT ITS A LITTLE FOCUS IN TALK BAD ABOUT MICROSOFT, TRYING TO GET SWITCHERS OR MORE BUYERS TO MAC, ITS A LITTLE SICK SEE EVERYDAY… I KNOW MICROSOFT SUCKS BUT MY QUESTION ITS WHY WHY INTEREST YOU GET MORE PEOPLE USE MAC IN THE WORLD???? ITS BETTER THAT MINIS PEOPLE USE… MORE EXCLUSIVE AND SECURE… MORE FINE… ITS ALL THE WORLD USE MAC MORE PROBLEMS COMING… SO JUST STOP TO TRY PUT BAD MICROSHIT… ALL KNOW THAT IS A SHIT BUT I DONT WANT EVERYBODY USE MAC.
REMEMBER? NAPSTER? WE USE PEACEFUL… A LOT PEOPLE USE LATER AND BOOM! CLOSED! ECT… ALWAYS HAPPEND SO STOP TO TRY GET SWITCHERS!!!
Games is such a huge part of youth computer market that Apple not addressing this is a huge flaw in its efforts to lock up the consumer market.
From what I’ve seen, Windows XP runs at least as well on an Intel-powered Mac as it does on any PC. For maximum performance, hard-core gamers are currently advised to run Windows under Boot Camp rather than Parallels Desktop, but having to restart your computer is a small price to pay for the luxury of “having your cake and eating it, too.” And I guarantee you that, if enough “dual booters” start running their Windows software on the Mac, these software developers will be highly motivated to reach the rest of the Mac market by releasing OS X versions of their products.
No one is saying that it won’t take some time for this story to unfold—the story of how a ruthless electronics giant was finally bested by an idealistic upstart with a better idea. But the war is already over. Microsoft is old and decrepid, and Apple is bursting out all over.
Snapper wrote:
“MS might be dead but some one forgot to tell the general public about it…”
People are sheep, but sheep go where you point them. All the signals are now pointing to Apple. The sheep will catch on sooner or later. Even Best Buy, which I totally agree is currently a horrible place to sell Macs, may eventually have little Apple boutiques in their stores; and Apple doesn’t have to sell a single machine for this strategy to be effective. Just think of it: an endless supply of hapless Best Buy customers who just happen to walk by the Apple display and decide to check it out, just out of curiosity. As the old song goes, “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?”
In order for Leapard to be a true hit with the general public (not the pundits) it will have to run pc apps natively without Winblows.
I disagree. There is nothing to stop value-added retailers from pre-installing Windows on new Mac computers for the benefit of computer novices who want the benefits of running Windows on a Mac. And as stated above, I think Windows developers will write OS X versions of their best-selling programs as soon as they smell the money.
I’ve come across Paul Graham before but not for his computer writing, this I found an interesting piece.
Is It Worth Being Wise?
http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html
I wrote my first ‘Microsoft is dead’ article back in 2000 published on some now defunct small Mac web site. I thought they would be dead by 2005 too but maybe they weren’t quite because Longhorn aka Vista hadn’t arrived by then (it should have been 2003 so I allowed a bit but not enough). I didn’t think that they would be dead and buried but I thought they had gone passed the point of return by the measure ‘they had pissed too many people off’. I too never expected them to die, although the Pan-Am model would be nice (disappearing in six months after a major mistake – not that people died).
I always thought they would be some kind of a force simply due to the money that had been stolen from it’s customers and any company that they found would enter an agreement with them. Bill G has done that, diversified, Getty Images, funding drug development and suchlike but Microsoft even now looks vulnerable to losing more tens of billions in lawsuits. The patent law situation is a big risk for them, software patents is a big risk full stop but Microsoft have stolen so much on the basis that they can successfully argue/buy their way out of it over the years and it could come back to haunt them.
Not that Microsoft was ever alive as a software company, they always begged borrowed and stole and argued about it later. They did marketing and aggregation but were best at lawyering and lobbying thanks to Bill’s dad at Preston, Gates & Ellis.
Perception counts for a lot, the more people think that Microsoft is dead or even dying the more people look at the alternatives, and they ALL are better.
With bluetooth for KB/mouse, wireless connectivity, 8 GB drive, an OSX operating system and a decent video plug, there’s nothing stopping the iPhone from being very similar to the Mac mini. And obsoleting many Windows PCs sitting in home offices.