Had Ballmer had the success of Apple that he said he was content without, Microsoft would have sold around 14 million copies in the first four days.
Except support for software tends to fall off after a few versions of OSX, where people on XP can run probably 98% of the programs on Windows 7/8. The culture of users with both companies are different. Users on Windows get to be more choosey with their upgrade patterns because Microsoft provides a very long period of support. On OSX it's not so much the case, and users are quicker to adopt the new OS.
I had my first exposure to Windows 8 over the weekend at Best Buy and a few other stores. I had to keep poking the screen to figure out wether the device I was using had a touch screen or not. What a stupid idea to make the OS look like it should work with touch when it doesn't.
At the mall I was in there was a big kiosk with Surface tablets set up and an army of young geeks to demonstrate them. Unfortunately for Microsoft, while the nearby Apple store was packed, there were few people checking out their tablets. On an iOS device the OS is there, but you don't really think about it. It's the apps that run on the OS that are important, but with Windows 8 the OS overwhelms everything to the point of confusion.
I think Windows 8 is going to make Vista look like a huge success.
Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS. Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation or it may become like MS, thinking they are too big to fail. I love my Macs and iPads, but they could become stagnate, thinking nobody does anything good and they will always be able to charge whatever because its Apple.
Apple has never really tried going after the large enterprise market. I am curious what the percentage shares would be if you only included home users. Over the last couple of years especially, I would bet Apple's share is growing big time.
Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS. Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation or it may become like MS, thinking they are too big to fail. I love my Macs and iPads, but they could become stagnate, thinking nobody does anything good and they will always be able to charge whatever because its Apple.
I don't see it happening with Windows 8 unless they quickly fix its glaring UI quirks. I tried to give it a fair shake, but it's a gimped OS for the desktop, and it absolutely needs a touch screen for the UI to make sense.
Previous versions of Windows stagnated and Apple still improved their product over the past decade.
Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS.
They haven't. Windows 8 is an absolutely miserable experience. As just one example, not even of the UI (because I could hit our post character limit talking about how bad the UI—both old and new—is), Windows refuses to acknowledge the existence of the WDDM 1.1 driver.
Just… doesn't accept it. So every time I boot into Windows, my resolution is 640x420. And this is being displayed on my 27" Cinema Display.
The Windows 8 install disc even understands how to make the resolution 1024x768 during the install, but as soon as it's done and booted onto the partition, boom. Unusably small (well, so is 1024x768).
So you do the 20 step process of letting the OS find new drivers on the Internet. Screen goes to black, boom, comes up 2560x1440 and works fine for the rest of the time you're in Windows. Driver reports itself as WDDM 1.1, like it should (since ATI has dropped support for the 4000 series in Windows 8).
Then you reboot and it's 640x420 again. It refuses to understand how to keep its own drivers up.
"Just use the driver in the Boot Camp 4 set."
It does the same thing.
Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation…
They don't. They've never really had a competitor before and they have always innovated, so I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is the case.
Originally Posted by bobborries
This remains one of the most terrifying images on the Internet.
What's hilarious is that Ballmer thinks of Surface as a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING platform and IOS tablets as a toy. Well, the interface for WIndows 8, all variants is basically the XBOX interface. Yeah Ballmet, a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING PLATFORM.
X-BOX. I guess Microsoft has to get their future computer users trained on X-Boxes first.
I was using the the windows 8 beta also on my iMac, instead of using bootcamp used Virtualbox. It worked... but It was not intuitive, innovative, nor cohesive. I thought that it was just me. Perhaps people using 7 and vista will think it's great and buy it. I don't mind XP at all and now days it runs great in Virtualbox. We switched all of our PC's to Macs and just use VB for our Windows apps.
Even with their low down rotten past I would really hate for MS to go away because I think Google is much worse and insidious. MS was at least forthcoming about their intent to harm companies by taking marketshare. Google steals from the inside and doesn't care who gets in the way. MS would be a good buffer between Google and Apple.
Microsoft's (Balmer's) biggest obstacle to future growth is their vision of the future. They need to forget about dominating the desktop and forget about dominating corporate applications (Office and Exchange). These products are dead ends. The era of ever expanding applications is over. The notion of adding dozens of useless new features every year to drive sales is over. In fact, just the opposite seems to be happening - applications are getting smaller, specialized, and compact. With regard to dominating the desktop, there isn't going to be a desktop to dominate as smartphones, tablets, and other personal devices connected directly to the internet become ubiquitous.
The new desktop is "back end services" like Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook, Smugmug, and iCloud. Microsoft needs to focus all its energy on creating a suite of "back end services" connected to end users via smartphone, tablet, and yes maybe even desktop "Apps". This doesn't mean simply "porting" MS Office to apps. It means imagining a completely new future scenario where small, tight little applications all converge for purposes of collaboration in the "back end" - on Microsoft servers.
Corporate IT departments are dead. The workforce is becoming too decentralized for traditional IT networks to facilitate the collaboration necessary to be competitive in our increasingly mobile and "outsourced" society. The "firewall" has been moved out to include everyone in your social/business network. Facebook demonstrated the viability of this concept in the consumer space, Microsoft could do the same for businesses.
Ballmer is prolly the worst CEO around - has no vision, loud mouth and not-so-loud actions. He is trying hard to get MS back into the picture. I have a feeling though MS would sink before his own eyes
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianCPA
Computers running Windows 7: 40%
Computers running OS X: 8.5%
First 4 days:
Upgrades to Windows 8: 4 million
Upgrades to Mountain Lion: 3 million
Had Ballmer had the success of Apple that he said he was content without, Microsoft would have sold around 14 million copies in the first four days.
Except support for software tends to fall off after a few versions of OSX, where people on XP can run probably 98% of the programs on Windows 7/8. The culture of users with both companies are different. Users on Windows get to be more choosey with their upgrade patterns because Microsoft provides a very long period of support. On OSX it's not so much the case, and users are quicker to adopt the new OS.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craiger77
I had my first exposure to Windows 8 over the weekend at Best Buy and a few other stores. I had to keep poking the screen to figure out wether the device I was using had a touch screen or not. What a stupid idea to make the OS look like it should work with touch when it doesn't.
At the mall I was in there was a big kiosk with Surface tablets set up and an army of young geeks to demonstrate them. Unfortunately for Microsoft, while the nearby Apple store was packed, there were few people checking out their tablets. On an iOS device the OS is there, but you don't really think about it. It's the apps that run on the OS that are important, but with Windows 8 the OS overwhelms everything to the point of confusion.
I think Windows 8 is going to make Vista look like a huge success.
Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS. Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation or it may become like MS, thinking they are too big to fail. I love my Macs and iPads, but they could become stagnate, thinking nobody does anything good and they will always be able to charge whatever because its Apple.
I don't see it happening with Windows 8 unless they quickly fix its glaring UI quirks. I tried to give it a fair shake, but it's a gimped OS for the desktop, and it absolutely needs a touch screen for the UI to make sense.
Previous versions of Windows stagnated and Apple still improved their product over the past decade.
Originally Posted by Bryce Steiner
Not to rain on everyone's parade but I hope that Microsoft does well with the new OS.
They haven't. Windows 8 is an absolutely miserable experience. As just one example, not even of the UI (because I could hit our post character limit talking about how bad the UI—both old and new—is), Windows refuses to acknowledge the existence of the WDDM 1.1 driver.
Just… doesn't accept it. So every time I boot into Windows, my resolution is 640x420. And this is being displayed on my 27" Cinema Display.
The Windows 8 install disc even understands how to make the resolution 1024x768 during the install, but as soon as it's done and booted onto the partition, boom. Unusably small (well, so is 1024x768).
So you do the 20 step process of letting the OS find new drivers on the Internet. Screen goes to black, boom, comes up 2560x1440 and works fine for the rest of the time you're in Windows. Driver reports itself as WDDM 1.1, like it should (since ATI has dropped support for the 4000 series in Windows 8).
Then you reboot and it's 640x420 again. It refuses to understand how to keep its own drivers up.
"Just use the driver in the Boot Camp 4 set."
It does the same thing.
Apple really does need competition to keep up it's innovation…
They don't. They've never really had a competitor before and they have always innovated, so I'm not sure why everyone thinks this is the case.
Originally Posted by bobborries
This remains one of the most terrifying images on the Internet.
What's hilarious is that Ballmer thinks of Surface as a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING platform and IOS tablets as a toy. Well, the interface for WIndows 8, all variants is basically the XBOX interface. Yeah Ballmet, a REAL SERIOUS COMPUTING PLATFORM.
X-BOX. I guess Microsoft has to get their future computer users trained on X-Boxes first.
I was using the the windows 8 beta also on my iMac, instead of using bootcamp used Virtualbox. It worked... but It was not intuitive, innovative, nor cohesive. I thought that it was just me. Perhaps people using 7 and vista will think it's great and buy it. I don't mind XP at all and now days it runs great in Virtualbox. We switched all of our PC's to Macs and just use VB for our Windows apps.
Even with their low down rotten past I would really hate for MS to go away because I think Google is much worse and insidious. MS was at least forthcoming about their intent to harm companies by taking marketshare. Google steals from the inside and doesn't care who gets in the way. MS would be a good buffer between Google and Apple.
Microsoft's (Balmer's) biggest obstacle to future growth is their vision of the future. They need to forget about dominating the desktop and forget about dominating corporate applications (Office and Exchange). These products are dead ends. The era of ever expanding applications is over. The notion of adding dozens of useless new features every year to drive sales is over. In fact, just the opposite seems to be happening - applications are getting smaller, specialized, and compact. With regard to dominating the desktop, there isn't going to be a desktop to dominate as smartphones, tablets, and other personal devices connected directly to the internet become ubiquitous.
The new desktop is "back end services" like Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook, Smugmug, and iCloud. Microsoft needs to focus all its energy on creating a suite of "back end services" connected to end users via smartphone, tablet, and yes maybe even desktop "Apps". This doesn't mean simply "porting" MS Office to apps. It means imagining a completely new future scenario where small, tight little applications all converge for purposes of collaboration in the "back end" - on Microsoft servers.
Corporate IT departments are dead. The workforce is becoming too decentralized for traditional IT networks to facilitate the collaboration necessary to be competitive in our increasingly mobile and "outsourced" society. The "firewall" has been moved out to include everyone in your social/business network. Facebook demonstrated the viability of this concept in the consumer space, Microsoft could do the same for businesses.
B.J.
BlaneJackson.com
Surface = low-volume netbook.
But wasn't the line hoping the next version would be good?
But wasn't the line hoping the next version would be good?
Ballmer is prolly the worst CEO around - has no vision, loud mouth and not-so-loud actions. He is trying hard to get MS back into the picture. I have a feeling though MS would sink before his own eyes