“Trends in the data that have to be massively disconcerting to Microsoft management (not to mention its external shareholders). Dripping, gloppy Apple envy coming from the top. Incredulity at the public’s lack of understanding of Vista’s greatness. These are not signs of a company, of a culture, of a management team doing well. They are failing. Failing to understand their customers. Failing to understand the tone of the market. Failing to understand the kind of messaging that is necessary to get people excited about their products. And yes, failing to transition into the Consumer Era of Computing,” Roger Ehrenberg writes for SeekingAlpha.
Ehrenberg writes, “And I’ve got to say that this latest leg in the Microsoft/Apple battle bears stunning similarity to the duel (although it is hard to have a duel when one of the participants is already dead) between Sony and Nintendo in the PS3/Wii war, while a story that still needs to be fully played out looks increasingly like the nimble, adaptive, consumer-focused company kicking the crap out of the Grand Dame of Gaming. And I am sure over the ensuing months and years we will see more of this stuff happening, where the more consumer-centric, lighter, friendlier applications will dominate the legacy titans of yesteryear. It is all just beginning, and the first and highest profile casualty may well be Sony, closely followed by Microsoft.”
Bill Gates “has not been doing Vista or Microsoft any favors with his recent performance. Contrast this with his alter-ego, Mr. Jobs, who even in the face of controversy surrounding the Apple options backdating scandal can get up on stage and wow his employees, his customers and the technology community at-large. Steve is a rock star. Bill looks as if he’s been living under a rock,” Ehrenberg writes.
Ehrenberg recounts some choice moments from Gates’ February 1st interview with Steven Levy of Newsweek. See related article: Bill Gates has lost his mind: calls Apple liars, copiers; slams Mac OS X security vs. Windows – February 02, 2007
Ehrenberg writes, “Are you kidding me? Bill sounds a little like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, and that he is getting ready to boil Steve Jobs’ bunny. First off, Bill, after having spent an amount exceeding the GDP of several sovereign nations – $500 million – to launch Vista, don’t you think you could have spent even a little of that on media training? THAT is your elevator pitch? Sorry, Bill, but you’re not getting the VC funding you desire. You’re not even getting out of the elevator. Your answer on security: poor. Your paranoia and irritation at Apple’s successful branding and image-making? Nauseating. You’re the richest guy in the world. You do lots of great things with your money. You’re a brilliant man. The Apple threat and a changing world is making you become unhinged. Do something about this. Fast. For your shareholders sake. Please.”
MacDailyNews Take: Gates was much more lucky than brilliant. In fact, we don’t see much brilliance in Gates, past or present.
“And if you think that’s bad, our friend Bill a/k/a Mr. Malaprop is getting the crap kicked out of him by former friends in the media – everywhere. For some reason Microsoft and Bill just don’t get the props they used to,” Ehrenberg writes. “The world has changed. Bill either doesn’t see it or doesn’t want to see it… What do you get when you take arrogance, a ton of cash, an enterprise software-laden culture and fierce competition? Microsoft. People (and what are companies but conglomerations of people, anyway?) react to fear in different ways. Some clam up and stick to what feels comfortable. Others challenge this comfort by acknowledging that something has changed and recognizing that they need to make decisive change. Microsoft, unfortunately, appears to be in the former camp… Bill’s got a bunch of reasons to feel pretty lousy. Microsoft has never been as vulnerable as it is right now.”
MacDailyNews Take: See related story: The Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Anderson.
“We may be witnessing an historic changing of the guard, which takes place in every generation. Remember IBM? They were invincible. How could they be beat? By a couple of geeks in a dorm room, that’s how. Microsoft rises. And then another snot-nosed kid with a great idea and a dorm room made it happen in the box business, enter Dell. Then others got wise and squeezed their efficiency-based margins to nothing. Apple rose like a phoenix, crashed and rose once again, by virtue of innovation and a customer-centric ethos. Sony was like IBM. Now they’ve been bloodied by the customer-centric and community-oriented Nintendo,” Ehrenberg writes. “When put in this context Microsoft just seems so big and slow and old, hidebound by 30 years of culture and organizational silos that seem impregnable. And it appears that Vista – the product, the PR, the marketing approach – is the result of such an organization.”
Full article – a must read with much, much more – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Macaday” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Back on ,January 10, 2005, we took a bit of flack from some readers for our Take, in which we have always believed and therefore reprint here: As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly waved (and continue to wave) the white flag, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail. For the naysayers: In 1929, Ford held just over 61% of the U.S. market for automobiles. GM’s market share stood at just 12%. Ford was thought to be invincible, with GM regarded as a niche auto maker. Probably, some analyst at the time said, “The reality is, long term, GM will always be a niche player.” But, in 1936, just seven years later, Ford held just 22% of the market for new automobiles while General Motors held a 43% share. No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft.
Related articles:
Apple takes dead aim at Microsoft’s Windows Vista in latest ‘Get a Mac’ ad (with video) – February 06, 2007
Bill Gates has lost his mind: calls Apple liars, copiers; slams Mac OS X security vs. Windows – February 02, 2007
Net Applications: Apple’s Mac market share continues rise, hits 6.22% in January 2007 – February 01, 2007
Bill Gates lists Microsoft ‘innovations’ that Apple has offered Mac users for years – January 30, 2007
Apple larger than Microsoft by 2010? – January 29, 2007
Gates bristles over Vista, Mac OS X comparisons – January 29, 2007
Microsoft about to lose the software business just as IBM lost the PC business in ‘80s – July 26, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Apple vs. Microsoft rivalry heats up again – January 10, 2005
Chrissy One
Jeez, why would you buy a Mac TWO MORE TIMES when the first one was so bad?!!
Anyway, it is true that after all is said and done, Macs are not going to be replacing PCs any time soon as the dominant platform in the world – 90% or so of market share vs. 5% is too big a gap to close easily. What is more important is the trend – Apple is clearly on the way up and MS is (unless they really get their act together) on the way down. The tide is turning. Apple’s time is coming.
If Vista had been lauched five years ago, Apple wouldn’t even have been part of the conversation. Now, it seems even Vista’s biggest admirers cannot write or broadcast a complete story without mentioning Apple or Mac, even if it is to take a dig.
Bill Gates was plenty lucky. He’s also pretty damn smart, you’ve got to admit.
I’d add extremely aggressive and predatory.
Ethics are sorely lacking, if nonexistant as well.
All built on a foundation of Greed.
I wish someone would compile a list of ALL the software companies who were buried or destroyed by Gates and Microsoft’s tactics. It’s certainly a long and sordid history.
With Gates and Microsoft’s decline, we aren’t seeing Instant Karma, but karma nonetheless!
If BG incarnated in this life as a micro-soft, pencil-neck, twit & dweeb, given MS history, what on earth will he come back as next time around?
“You can’t build a company as successful as Microsoft on luck alone. You can catch some lucky breaks, ride opportune circumstances however opportunity ‘favours the prepared mind’ so to ascribe Microsoft’s success to luck alone makes the writer of that line as blind to reality as he claims Bill Gates current is.”
Well, let’s just say Microsoft had an inside track…
First, the ended up with a cash cow in PC-DOS. Microsoft made money whenever IBM sold a PC–and they sold alot of them. As IBM PC clones entered the market, Microsoft made even more money. Microsoft entered the business software market but got trampled by Lotus, WordPerfect, and Ashton-Tate.
How to solve this problem? Leverage the operating system!
Microsoft saw this thing over at Apple called Macintosh and developed their own, called Windows. Windows 1.0 was a joke. Windows 2.0 was a bit better. Microsoft started releasing applications written to the Windows APIs–Excel was one of the first. But since it dragged all the “Windows baggage” with it, pretty much everybody laughed. About the only people who used Excel on the PC were Mac users.
To solve this problem, Microsoft changed the standard. With Windows 3.0, Microsoft “turned on” Windows by default. If you bought a PC, it now started up with Windows. And, gee, there was Microsoft with a suite of Windows software.
As other developers started working on Windows, it was discovered that Microsoft software used “undocumented APIs”–again, leveraging the operating system–so that Microsoft applications could get around bottlenecks in Windows. Thus, Excel was faster than Lotus 1-2-3/G when it finally came out on Windows.
@ ChrissyOne
I too have seen a slight decline in Apple quality but I stress, only slight. I just assumed that the (slight) increase I have seen is merely due to Apple cranking out more machines so this is bound to occur.
I am not really complaining as I have certainly seen tons of new HP and Dells bite the big one in the past two years. My biggest disappointment are the iPods as I have purchased at least 15 over three years, mainly for gifts. My original 5Gb died…that is ok, it was a work horse and served well but my G3 and iPod photo were major disappointments. Both died immediately after the warranty. I love my iPod but that hurt. So fat my 80Gb video works without problems but hey, it is only 2 months old.
I have a 4 year old white ibook, and it is on its third logic board.
Should not have happened.
I use it at least 8 hours a day in a minimum of 2 locations per day.
However, they have all been paid for by Apple. The newest one has been in the computer for longer than the average life of a PC, according to statistics.
Total down time for the repairs (I live in a remote area) 5 days total for all time for Apple to issue a pickup for the iBook and for them to return it repaired. 5 days, not bad!
Data loss during repairs: 0 My local Apple reseller did backups for me, but NONE were ever needed.
Of course the logic boards should have not needed to be replaced.
But considering what I see in the return desk line at Best Buy when I walk by on my way to buy blank CD’s, do you think there is a chance that I will buy a PC?
(you take a guess what I see every time I walk by the return counter)
Yes Apple Fanboy, Microsoft is going to fail, Soon!!! Apple will have a 90% OS market share, and the iPhone will be used by all businesses, and Bill Gates will go to the poor house, Steve Jobs will be King of the Work..
Gotta Go, mommy’s calling..
To ChrissyOne and Senator
My friend is a Mac Genius and when I asked him if I should buy a MacBook Intel Core Duo, he said no, wait until the first revision, too many issues. When the Core 2 Duo was realeased i aske dteh same question and he politely shook his head no, syaing the quality is still not there.
It is true that techs only see the bad stuff and rarely the great stuff, it is telling that within the Mac community the negative quality issue is very real.
And if you need more proof, my local Apple Store had Core Duo MacBooks shutting doen randomly becasue of the earlier problem the plagued that model. And not just a couple of computers, 60% of the MacBooks on display. Meaning out of 10 on the floor 6 were having problems. And these are the ones the store chose to put on display.
no one wants this quality issue to go away more than me, but it is a concern and it does exist.
The war may not be over BUT I’VE HAVE WON!!!!
I use Apple Computer.
I love the arrogance of people so sure that the way things are at this moment will be the way they are forever.
The horse-and-buggy companies were riding high on the hog when the automobile showed up. Radio was once THE mass-market communication device — until TV showed up. The world in the early ’40’s had never dreamed of an atom bomb.
None of these things were expected. The world was shocked when they appeared, because they thought, just like so many trolls here, that the world will never change.
The train that you don’t see is the one that kills you.
Am I missing something? OSX would run on a PC if Apple allowed it, right? So, what if the next version of OSX let you run any PC software right from within OSX (without any copy XP or Vista installed). After all, my PC version of Photoshop does not tell me I have to open it in Windows, I have just had no choice. Is there a reason that this would not work? Think what it would do for Apple…
I wish Steve would replease Leopard, and at the same time announce IMMMEDIATE AVAILABILITY of OS X Tiger for use on generic PC hardware.
Now THAT would signal the death of Microsoft! Imagine, Tiger running on generic PC’s, and if you want the latest, greatest version of OS X, you need Apple hardware.
There is a good book called “Barbarians led by Bill Gates”.
It was written by ex MS employees.
It goes into details of MS rise and how they captured technologies.
I won’t forget the chapter on Windows 3.0 it was a dead product . They
could not get it to work with protected memory allocations.
IBM OS 2 was going to be the standard OS for IBM and MS.
MS bought a small company with a lead engineer and some compilers.
Shortly before the OS 2 announcement this engineer got Win 3.0 to work
and MS came out with Windows 3.0 and changed everything.
The book also goes into details of the vaporware Windows 1.0 and how Bill
used marketing at Comdex to change everyone’s thinking about a OS.
Its a great read!
Kendal Whitley, This is already possible with some applications, but not all. There are more apps all the time that do this.
Kendal, Google for “crossover parallels bootcamp”. Crossover is what you need to read about.
I truly believe we are seeing the beginning of the end of an era.
Microsoft have failed to execute on any of their strategies for some time. The result is a significant number of loss-making enterprises, accompanied by a gradual decline in their market share for their cashcows Windows and Office.
There is generally a tipping point after which the decline becomes a rout. We are not quite there yet, and MS could turn the ship around. But they won’t – for to do so would require the departure of Gates and Ballmer and the ruthless pruning of projects and people.
The best example of this failed strategy is Internet Explorer. Microsoft saw the world was turning to the net. Its answer was to try to turn the internet into a proprietary Microsoft domain. How? Three simple steps:
1. Bundle IE with Windows so that everyone would use IE to access the net
2. Build proprietary technologies into IE wherever possible
3. Encourage web developers to use these proprietary features
This started to work – many sites ONLY work properly with IE, so if you want to access the net you have to be using a windows desktop.
The strategy failed however, and complaints from users of Safari, Firefox, Opera and others, and the emergence of stronger standards, combined with the success of antitruist measures in the US and Europe, mean that the net is now moving rapidly to embrace Open Standards.
Leaving Microsoft with a hige bill for the ongoing development of IE, which is given away for nothing, and failing to deliver the monopoly position they sought.
IE is just one failed strategy. Zune is another and xBox is still bleeding money.
Office is under threat from free simple tools on the net, MS SQL server is under pressure from mySQL which is appearing everywhere, especially in the SME space and Windows is under threat from Citrix in the corporate space and OS/X in the home user market.
The disaster that is Vista means that Microsoft now looks incompetent. A 28% drop in earnings means the business analysts are now looking hard at MS strategies. The more they look the less happy they will be.
The bad news is just beggining to flow. Alchin has left, Gates is going, and Ballmer can’t be far behind.
Just playing devil’s advocate: Is this dude on Apple’s payroll?
To @rayman:
…You’re joking, right? Me? Defending Microsoft?!? Could you be any more of an ignoramus? Did I not say Macs were better? I fraking have one! I was merely saying in my comment that Microsoft is a very powerful company, with a foundation built on greed, that has 90% of the public in its hands. That’s why I find it very unlikely Apple will gain a significant market share. I find it even MORE funny to see the look on YOU’RE face when it dosen’t happen. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. Seriously, try reading an entire post before you go into fanboy mode and claim “lolz ur wrong. lord Jobs and the majik company of teh almihty macintoosh will rulezz” like a pathetic hopeful, as I said before.
My MacbookPro is working perfectly. So is my daughters ibook. So is my old G4 Sawtooth, so is my 8500/150, so is my Performa and my llci. They all work, one hard drive failure. Oh, our 5iPods are great! Doesn’t sound bad sitting here in my family room while typing this.
Ford lost their market because they shut down their entire production for several months to retool for the Model T’s successor.
Sounds eerily familiar to MS having their OS production mired (and effectively shut down) with Vista.
Now imagine if Ford, instead of launching the Model A, could have only delivered a renamed Model T, despite extensive promises of new features and innovation? Ford would just be someone’s brand division today, if it existed at all.
Bill, you’d better open some business history books on your next sabbatical…
“Once you get beyond all of Steve’s huckstering (impossible for most around these parts) Apple’s products are becoming ordinary – now, that’s a comparison you can make to US car makers and be right on!”
Jobs’ Huckstering? You don’t even know the meaning of “Huckster.”
Exhibit A:
(n.) A mercenary person eager to make a profit out of anything.
We all know that Apple and Jobs go to great lengths to make sure their products are not only innovative, but increase the user’s satisfaction compared to what’s been previously available. Whether the product succeeds or fails really has no bearing.
On the other hand, we only have to look at Microsoft’s own internal emails to see that they create products with little or no concern for the enduser.
Exhibit B:
(v.) [trans.] To promote or sell (something, typically a product of questionable value).
a. Do we need 10 versions of Vista? Shouldn’t Vista piss off fewer users than it pleases?
b. Does Windows Media Center even work? Shouldn’t it piss off fewer users than it pleases?
c. How about that Zune thing? Shouldn’t it piss off fewer users than it pleases?
Gates and Ballmer are the real hucksters and their user base have finally figured it out.
@Newly currious user who discovered how to make emo
“Interesting…”
It’s not interesting until you see your submit online, until then it’s a mystery … and there is only one R in curious and …Newly currious… whats that all about?
Aggh nevamind, wots apened tu de lingo, i asks meself.
Truth is, I was standing in line for VISTA. I am now a proud Windows user!
True, true, true. I wouldnt touch a PC with a bargepole for the forseeable future. Macs are just better, nicer, and they just work. What more could you want – oh yeah, an iPhone, please Mr Job’s, don’t forget Australia. I do have to day however, what has not been mentioned in this article when the PS3/Wii war is mentioned is that despite being attached to Microsoft (and it pains me to say it, really), they are doing great work with Xbox 360, I love mine. Maybe Microsofts future is elsewhere and they know it. Lets not forget that while it looks as though the entirely predictable mess that Sony’s created with PS3 is coming to fruition, Microsoft has only been in the console business for a very short while and actually, I’d say they’ve got it pretty well sewn up.
Once upon a time, Microsoft came out with a very good OS called Windows 2000. Instead of improving MS 2000 with what people wanted MS decided to try to dictate what its customers needed. Of course, MS expected outrageous profits for telling its customers what was best for them. What customers found was that XP was annoying and Vista is even worse in terms of getting in the way. Sometimes the people just stop listening Bill.