iOS vs. Windows 8: Apple and Microsoft have very different world views

15 years ago

“There are a couple factors at play in Microsoft’s decisions to create a single operating system for tablets and PCs. First and foremost, this is Microsoft. The company does not believe in a post-PC world, which you might expect from the folks whose software runs on most PCs,” Jason Snell writes for Macworld. “Microsoft has a real, business reason to try and keep everyone in the Windows ecosystem, where it dominates, rather than a mobile ecosystem where it’s way behind.”

MacDailyNews Take: Trying to bend reality to fit your world view is a recipe for failure. Self-delusion is not a valid business plan.

“As someone who covers Apple and is used to that company killing its hit products in order to transition to something even better—and as someone who works in an industry with its own challenges—I am predisposed to appreciate businesses that embrace the new rather than opting to squeeze as much money out of the old thing as possible before turning off the lights forever,” Snell writes. “So yes, my instinct is to dislike Microsoft’s PC-centric approach. I understand it, but it feels like denial.”

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Snell writes, “As someone who was excited to see Windows Phone 7’s Metro interface come to a tablet device, I’m disappointed, because it seems what we’re getting is a small Windows PC with a tablet-interface shell floating on top. It just feels like the wrong approach to me, but I’ll say this for Microsoft—it’s consistent.”

Much more in the full article – recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back on June 1st: Our initial impression is that Microsoft, in trying to cram everything into Windows 8 in an attempt to be all things to all devices, will end up with an OS that’s a jack of all trades and a master of none (which, after all, ought to be Microsoft’s company motto).

By the time this hybrid spawn of Windows Phone ’07 + Windows 7ista actually ships, one can only dream where Apple’s iOS and Mac OS X will be! For Microsoft, it’ll be more like a nightmare. Perhaps Microsoft will someday put some scare into Google’s Android/Chrome OS, but only time – and a lot of it when measured in tech time – will tell. We simply do not see the world clamoring for the UI of an iPod also-ran now ported to an iPhone wannabe that nobody’s buying to be blown up onto a PC display.

From what we’ve seen so far, Windows 8 strikes us as an unsavory combination of Windows Weight plus Windows Wait.

Not to mention that probably no one on earth knows how much or what kinds of residual legacy spaghetti code roils underneath it all (shudder). Is Microsoft giving up on backwards compatibility? If so, people might as well get the Mac they always wanted. If not, then Microsoft’s unwilling to do what it takes to really attempt to keep up with the likes of Apple or even Apple’s followers. No matter what, if Microsoft’s going to ask Windows sufferers to “learn a whole new computer” (and that’s exactly how they’ll look at it, regardless of how Microsoft pitches it), millions will simply say, “Time to get a Mac to match my iPod, iPhone, and iPad!”

As if they needed it: More good news for Apple.