“The negative feelings about Microsoft and within Microsoft have many people thinking that this is the moment in time where the giant will finally crumble. Apple will own the media market, Google will become synonymous with the internet, Linux will power all servers and the Xbox 360 will be stillborn in anticipation of the more powerful PS3. Microsoft will be left collecting scraps, eking out a few billion here and there, still profitable, but no longer the ultra powerful corporate monolith it once was,” Chris Seibold writes for Apple Matters.
“Everybody may be scoffing at the ineptness that typifies Microsoft of late but they are making a mistake when they expect that trend to continue. Microsoft has far too large of a head start, too many resources and a market position that is so advantageous that it is just a matter of time before every little thing starts breaking Microsoft’s way again,” Seibold writes.
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft has lost its focus. If it doesn’t figure out what it wants to be and do, and get a handle on its mess of an operating system (security, roadmap, quality), no amount of money is going to help. It’s not as impossible for Microsoft to fail as Seibold ultimately paints, but the article is a good read and thought-provoking.
Microsoft aren’t doomed or beleaguered. I was over at a web stat checking site earlier, and checking OS changes nearly all of the Windows 98 users Apple were hoping to nab two years ago have now moved to another OS…..XP.
I really don’t care if Apple don’t grow much past 5%, as long as they maintain enough presence for us as users to be catered for by other companies. So long as we don’t get left out in the cold anymore, I’m happy.
Sony’s PS3 announcement came at the perfect time; people will not be clamoring to invest their money into an Xbox 360 device until they see both in action, as well as the cost and variety of available games. At this point, it’s a dead-even horse race because neither has left the gate yet.
The article, in general, was fairly good. I would describe Microsoft’s position in the computer world as slowly decaying. They don’t seem to be able to to anything extremely well. It’s as if the company motto is “That’s barely good enough”, as competition from all angles is stomping them bit by bit.
A highly contagious disease is spreading throughout the WIndows community; people are exploring alternatives to their default applications such as browsers, media players, and computer search engines. The popularity of the Mac may be more of a trickle than a sudden rush of fed up XP users. From their experimenting with other sources, they will be much less inhibited to experiment with a hew operating system. Accelerating this contagion is Microsoft’s own unwillingness to produce advanced, easy-to-use, software.
As long as Apple just keeps doing what it does best, they will not have to pull people over via expensive advertising; Microsoft will be pushing them to Apple.
Apologies for my crappy use of punctuation in the previous post.
I think MS gets some bad press in the tech community, but their stock price is holding fairly steady, the tech analysts still believe in them, and the average consumer probably couldn’t care less. MS isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
And don’t underestimate XBox 360. There’s huge buzz for it already, and if it catches on in Japan (something the old model never did) MS stands to make a TON of money in game sales, console sales, and XBox Live subscriptions.
From Dave H: >>>>> I really don’t care if Apple don’t grow much past 5%, as long as they maintain enough presence for us as users to be catered for by other companies. So long as we don’t get left out in the cold anymore, I’m happy. <<<<<
You know … when it gets right down to it … I would be happy, too. I’m thick skinned enough to ignore the snide comments from the windows folks. I just want to be one of the users, who happens to use the mac. … Oh, and I want a complete voice operated operating system that can understand my accent and my mumblings.
eking out a few billion here and there
Seibold must really be a true believer that MS is indeed a monopoly.. how else would they be able to withstand mediocrity for so long.
Bottom line.. you would NEVER hear MS say anything like ‘we can still end up on top… we have too much money.. too many resources.. and too big of a lead’..
MS likes to think they are what the market wants.. they like to call themselves Capitalists… the market would have MS so-so marketshare guy in the OS market (in other words.. if OS X was sold for X86) if there were actual competitors.. alas there are none (sorry linux.. you’re for hardcore users) and MS is trying to get its users to upgrade from Windows 98.. *sigh
Apple has only this chance to gain some momentum in the home market…. thinking apple will eat into microsoft’s corporate market is just plain lunacy.
of course with their great solutions on server technology, they can double or even triple their presence, but microsoft won’t even feel that.
but with the right moves, maybe the home/consumer market can be had (or at least a competitive enough marketshare). and i think right now, that’s what SJ is aiming at. and microsoft IS feeling that.
MW is corner…. Apple needs to find it’s corner of the sky and plant its flag on it.
I don’t think Microsoft will “crumble” and go away. It will simply become irrelevent. We don’t think much about toilet paper or light bulbs — they’re ubiquitous and we’re not likely to seek alternatives to them. Windows and PCs running windows have become much like toilet paper — universally accepted as a standard, but not deep or remarkable.
Of course, at this point in its history, with its resources, now would be the perfect time for MS to actually write a real operating system to replace replace Windows entirely. But, it’s not likely to happen.
“..Apple will own the media market, Google will become synonymous with the internet, Linux will power all servers and the Xbox 360 will be stillborn in anticipation of the more powerful PS3. Microsoft will be left collecting scraps, eking out a few billion here and there, still profitable, but no longer the ultra powerful corporate monolith it once was,” “
One thing you can say for the CRAAPLE crazies,they sure live in dreamland.
Hey creeps, time to wake up and smell the coffee.
Microosft is stronger than ever in its history.
The XBOX 360 is already clobbering PS 3 , even before launch.
Its virtually impossible to even preorder the XBOX360 anywhere.
All preorders have been taken, with another huge mass of gamers only too eager to plunk down their monies, and going away dissapointed.
My local Gamestop owner says he’s never seen anything like it.
Windows Media Player rules. Even CNN has switched over to WMP. So has Yahoo which is now using WMP exclusively.
Meanwhile both next gen DVD players have WMP VC-1 as a standard.
As for Linux, its, to quote the idiot who wrote the article, “still born” on the desktop.
Linux has been around since 1992, even before NT, and is still nowhere to befound on the desktop with Windows taking up over 92% share of the world’s desktops.
On servers, Windows Server has over 55% of all servers shipped on the planet, easily clobbering Linux and everyone else..
As for CRAPPLE, they will continue to eat Microsoft’s dust in perpetuity.
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Nothing is gonna save you guys, I am afraid.
So long suckers!
Microsoft makes most of its money off of 3 products: Windows, Office, and Exchange. Office will be the first to lose significant share. Open Office is getting good enough to replace Office in businesses. Thats why it is important for Apple to produce a native version of Open Office. I don’t see anything overtaking Exchange anytime soon. Groupwise hasn’t been able to do it even though its arguably better and definitely more secure. And there’s nothing in open source to overtake Exchange. And the jury is out on Windows. If Longhorn is a complete flop, then the Microsoft juggernaut will definitely start to crumble. Linux will be ready to replace it on a lot of PC’s. A lot of people will look to Apple as well. But the corporate world will still not switch to Apple.
If Longhorn is good though, Windows will dominate for another decade.
Actually, most of the serious gamers that I know have a PS2, an Xbox, and a Nintendo. Remember, we’re talking about $250 dollar devices. So the concept of “marketshare” isn’t all that significant if everyone has one of each.
From Smithy, above: “Even CNN has switched over to WMP.”
Uh, I just went to CNN.com. I attempted to click on a video news report and it came back as RealPlayer, not WMP. I’m pretty sure CNN supports all of the above.
Smithy’s post is quite funny, I highly reccomend it.. I give it two blue screens up..
-the pre-orders were stopped? why? you’re just putting your name down… I call BS. The XBOX360 looks great..but why do you have to go and make claims like, ‘the guy at the store refused my money’…
-WMP is hell, in my opinion. Typically when you deal with convergence of different technologies, you have to compromise to get them to fit in the same form. That’s the idea. What starts out being a huge selling point ends up bringing the whole thing down. Check out iLife for a different take on Multimedia.. it’s very impressive. WMP looks just painful.. things are hard to find.. it’s clunky.. disappearing menu bars etc..
-ask novell how linux is doing. people had really high hopes for the open source darling.. but ultimately, only the hardcore techies are adopting it (client side). On the server side.. Linux should keep MS fighting for every penny they make.. it really is quite a compelling solution.
Part of the reason the Xbox exists is MS is hedging its bets.
Basically, you don’t need a powerful PC to do anything like Word, email, internet. So how is MS going to sell PCs? Well for gaming. So MS decided to spearhead the gaming PC.. like a console.
Again, the XBOX360 looks great.. video games are kind of boring to me.. but it looks nice.. leveraging windows seems to have been a good strategy for MS and they’ll keep at it…
So MS owns the client PC market. What’s that gonna look like in 5 years if/when Apple owns the Home Media Player market with some iHome device hooked up to the TV (speaking of leveraging monopolies….)
PC’s are going to cost about $300-400 and most work will be done on little palmtop PCs..
It’s hard to imagine what Gates thinks MS will do.. they’ve never really been good at software.. so their software sales beyond Windows and Office can’t be a ‘growth area’..
They’ll have to find new ways to
a)repackage office and windows
b)market current versions of office and windows
c)integrate programs no one wants into office and windows
d)develop a subscription service for office..
Remember the “THRUTH” and the truth shall set you free.
Microsoft didn’t get where they are by building great products and caring for their customers. Microsoft is a CRIMINAL company which took market share and extracted horrendous profits from computer vendors and customers by lying, cheating, stealing, coercing, badgering, beating, deceiving their way to the top. Microsoft does not innovate, they steal. Microsoft does not care about customers because they don’t need to. The customer is not presented with a choice.
Early on, Microsoft recognized that Windows (GUI interface) was the way, and a standard OS and a standard suite of applications (MS Office) would be a requirement of business. Microsoft provided both by every means possible. They intimidated vendors into bundling Office wherever possible. They intimidated vendors into paying for Windows for each PC made whether it shipped with Windows or not.
Who could resist?
Microsoft: “Michael Dell, you’ll have to pay us this much for each machine, AND bundle Windows on every machine, AND put Office on each machine, OR we will revoke your Windows license.”
Dell: “Uh, OK.”
Multiply that conversation many times to many manufacturers all over the world.
Microsoft: “Mr. Corporation/Government Agency, you have x-number of employees using computers, so your price for Windows and Office is based on every employee using a computer. Pay this amount, or we won’t give you a license for Windows OR Office.”
Corporation/Government Agency: “Uh, OK.”
See how that works?
Now that Microsoft is on the ropes in a few areas just think of it as “just desserts.”
Folks, what goes around, comes around. And it’s coming home to burn MS. Burn they shall.
Tera Patricks
Mac360
“Uh, I just went to CNN.com. I attempted to click on a video news report and it came back as RealPlayer, not WMP. I’m pretty sure CNN supports all of the above.”
Not from Jun 20th they are not:
“NEW YORK – CNN.com will make its existing online video offerings available for free beginning June 20 as it prepares a new video package that will cost money to watch
…………………………………….
CNN now charges $12.99 a month for video as part of the Real SuperPass package from RealNetworks Inc. The site is switching to rival Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Media Player 9 to deliver the free video,…… “
At home I use Linux, at work XP, at church I use Tiger. Each one has their pluses and minuses. Of the three, I like XP the least. It’s bulky and I am tired of Norton flashing updates at me daily, patching weekly, and being forced to restart at random. It has several other quirks that I don’t like too. Nether Linux (KDE) nor osX has these quirks.
I said that to qualify this. Our IT manager here (mid sized electric utility in Ohio) uses Mac and Linux at home too. When asked why we don’t run something other than dell wintel machines here, he had three reasons. 1. Everyone is familiar with windows – most are not as adept as the folks reading this – change would be slow, difficult, and expensive. It all depends on what you are used to!!! 2. Software support. Our billing system is written to run on Windows or *nix, not Mac. For this reason alone we will not change. Even if we went to Linux we could still not run our database reports in Access. It’s a catch 22. 3. For better or worse since everyone is running 2000 or XP, and all computers are Dell, support is easy. Both Dell and Microsoft have an extensive support base and we can find the issue there and fix it. osX is lacking in its support base and the ability to manually fix bugs in the operating system when they occur.
I see it more like we are locked in a three-way struggle where Linux, osX, and Microsoft will stay where they are at until something dramatic happens. At that point there will be a realignment of all three.
“-the pre-orders were stopped? why? you’re just putting your name down… I call BS. The XBOX360 looks great..but why do you have to go and make claims like, ‘the guy at the store refused my money’…”
No claims.
Just facts.
I tried at least 20 electronics shops in Manhattan just yesterday.
All their pre-orders have been taken, even before anyone knows the price of the 360!!
And consumers have plunked down 50 bucks of their money as deposits, site unseen, to get hold of this awesome machine for Christmas!
Face it boys, the 360 is going to rock!!
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Its going to be THE toy to have this Christmas, and Microsoft is going to win yet again.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, dude!!
Petey-
The only thing different about the Quark-Microsoft thing is, it isn’t as easy to change platforms as it is to change programs.
I like Freehand better than Illustrator, but if I had to change, no big deal. A little learning curve and away we go. But changing platforms is a multi thousand dollar switch. When you consider all new hardware and years worth of software to replace. It isn’t worth the cost to “most” people. Especially if they don’t know the difference anyway.
And I get so tired of hearing the Ford market share fall to GM in the 30’s or whenever that happened. It’s not the same at all. All that took was buying a new car and changing my set of keys, no big deal if you’re buying a car anyway. But I think that if the GM vehicles weren’t compatible with the existing roads and it couldn’t use the standard fuel supply and was vastly more expensive in initial cost and in terms of upgrades, the story would be about like it is with Apple and MicroShaft. You mean I can’t pull into to any gas station (software store, best buy etc.) and fill up? I can’t use all the stuff I already own with my new GM? Guess I’ll get a Ford, even if they do suck…
Microsoft CANNOT be beaten. They’re NOT the same as other big companies that have faded in history. They reach into every personal and business life in a way never done before.
And you know what? I don’t care.
It’s grim news, but only for the majority that keeps on suffering.
And that does not include me.
[/PowerBook closed]
“ask novell how linux is doing. people had really high hopes for the open source darling.. but ultimately, only the hardcore techies are adopting it (client side). On the server side.. Linux should keep MS fighting for every penny they make.. it really is quite a compelling solution..”
Umm.. I already asked Novell.. by looking at Novell’s sucky results just yesterday.
From “the street.com” :
“Novell Inc.’s shares sank Thursday as investors expressed disappointment with the networking software firm’s second-quarter results that showed a wider net loss as well as modestly improved revenue.
…………………………….
In recent trading, Novell’s stock dropped 44 cents, or 7%, to $5.84 on heavy volume, with over 19.5 million shares changing hands. Its 10-day average volume is 9.7 million shares.
Earlier, the stock fell by as much as 8.3%, touching $5.76.
….”
Let’s face it, Linux on the desktop is a joke.
Windows rules!
Asfor servers, Microsoft’s server divions has had one of its highest growth ratesever in the past 4 quarters.
Don’t see any signs of “fighting for every penny they make.. ” there.
Dream on dude.
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re: Somebody needed to say it.
REALLY!!..
Funny – that’s exactly what people said about the Roman Empire and the Nazis…
One thing is guaranteed my friend – NOTHING LASTS FOREVER!
“WMP is hell, in my opinion. Typically when you deal with convergence of different technologies, you have to compromise to get them to fit in the same form. That’s the idea. ……. “
WMP is simply the best media player on the planet right now. Period!!
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Which is why both the Blue-Ray and HD-DVD forums have adopted VC-1 from WMP as a MUST HAVE standard.
Plus WMP now domimnates streaming media on the internet, and the gap is just getting bigger.
So sorry.
“So MS owns the client PC market. What’s that gonna look like in 5 years if/when Apple owns the Home Media Player ……”
In 5 years time, Microsoft will own the Media Player Market, with WMP in over 50 million XBOX 360’s, WMP VC-1 as standard in both Blue-Ray and HD-DVD, and WMP totally dominating the streaming media on the internet, and with WMP devices from Creative, Samsung, Dell etc etc having clobberd the Ipod.
You guys are going to be even sadder in 5 years time than you are now.
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“Remember the “THRUTH” and the truth shall set you free”
Try telling that top Steve Jobs.
He is the biggest liar I know.
“”..Apple will own the media market,..”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Read and weep:
“Unstoppable? The Microsoft media juggernaut
-Posted by David Berlind @ 3:41 pm
Three weeks ago, when I penned my third piece on how Microsoft is very much poised to dominate the media player and authoring landscape (the other two posts are here, and here, and there’s also a video of my whiteboard session on the topic), I had no idea what Microsoft had waiting in the wings. First, its announcement with Philips and second, the launch of the next version of its mobile operating platform (code-named Magneto, but officially Windows Mobile 5.0). Not to mention that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates served notice to Apple and the Podderati (Dan Gillmor agrees that the iPod’s runaway success is unsustainable). After you add it all up — how deeply entrenched into the global infrastructure (computers, other devices, telecommunications networks, content providers, etc.) Windows Media already is, what will happen as a result of the Philips announcement, and the Magneto news — is there any doubt that Microsoft is not only poised to repeat its successful Windows formula, but that that success will, over the long run, actually dwarf the company’s success with Windows? …”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1381&tag=nl.e539