and Microsoft will reply with continued WORLDWIDE LEADING SALES in software and pc's etc, etc...
i have had pc's and windows all my life and wouldnt use a mac if ya paid me.....
So you have no frame of reference?
Posted on 02/03/2007 6:52:37 PM PST by ShorelineMike
A big week for Microsoft is winding down - the company's first new operating system in five years has made its debut without major hiccups. It was a launch as typical as it can get for Microsoft and very different than one of those Apple product announcements. Get the background launch story and how Apple's Vista reaction could look like.
You have to admit the PC guy probably does more positive for Microsoft's image than anything Microsoft has done for the PC in a long time. But Microsoft has brought out Vista, the first really new operating system since Apple launched OS X and that means things should get rather heated going forward.
As promised we'll take a look at the Vista launch and compare it to an Apple event and then we'll chat about the rumored response Apple is supposedly cooking up to spoil Microsoft's party. Oh, and yes, we'll chat a bit about Vista someplace in the middle.
Vista launch: It sure wasn't an Apple event
I was talking to another analyst about this and he probably said it correctly. When Apple does a launch event Steve Jobs takes special interest and personally has a great deal to do with the staging, something he is incredibly good at. For Microsoft, they contract it out and you often wonder if the folks that designed the event either understood or cared about what it was they were launching. Microsoft's events tend to be parties bracketed by stunts designed to make people remember the name so surveys testing name recognition show improvement.
Apple, on the other hand, does events designed to sell products and the most recent example was their launch of the iPhone which virtually overwhelmed everything at CES and caused Apple's stock price to spike. This is a good example of doing an event that has a clear purpose and goal to sell product vs. doing one where the goal is visibility.
Now it may actually be kind of smart to do this with a Microsoft OS launch. The biggest problems with upgrades and migrations to a new OS occur in the first three months and things get vastly better after that as fixes are created for OS and application migration issues and more and more people are embraced by these fixes. If you realize that something like a billion PCs run some version of Windows, then, say even a 10% initial migration would be 100 million folks or 2.5 times Apple's estimated entire installed base of Macs. If only 1% of those folks had problems, and typically it will be much more than this, you would have 1 million people in dire need of help and there is no support organization or combination on the planet that could handle that kind of load over a short period of time.
This initial sales spike for Windows 95 nearly shut down Microsoft support and partially resulted in sales that were estimated to be only 50% of potential over the first year. This would suggest a softer launch would be better for a stronger first year sales ramp.
If Vista eases into the market, then the techies get it first and they, by nature, become part of the virtual support organization that updates to both Vista and the applications that run on it. In effect, the percentage of problems drops and the support capability of the market improves resulting in a sharp decrease of really upset people who can't get this product to work.
This could, and to be honest should, result in a more linear ramp for the product and a better overall experience for everyone involved. We'll try to revisit this at year end and discuss how it went.
Vista: When do you move?
Typically there are a couple of rules to moving to a new major OS release. The first is the migration gets much better, as I've noted, after the first three months because more of the third party applications have both migrated and been patched and because the drivers are more mature (both more reliable and better tuned).
The best experience will always be on new hardware and, if you bought a new PC last quarter, you probably already paid for a copy of Vista. This copy should come from the OEM designed specifically for the machine you purchased. Some will have them right away while others may take a few weeks to get it right. Trust me when I say it is better you get this right than get it early.
When you migrate, try the built-in Vista migration tool coupled with a migration cable. The Belkin Data Migration Cable for Windows Vista which costs under $50 seems to work fastest but you can also do the migration over your home network.
If you want to see just how much can be done automatically, the PCMover Application from Laplink actually moves many of the applications, you can get the download version for $50 and it should save you a lot of time. You will probably still need to upgrade these applications to their newest versions but this is arguably the simplest way to move to a new PC running Vista.
Is it worth it? That depends on you, I do identify with the PC guy in Apple's ads and it sure was worth it for me. But there is no need to rush, it isn't going anyplace. Some of us just like to get places first.
Apple's rumored response
With every major upgrade, there is a significant opportunity for a competitor to come in and steal market share and this one is no exception. At the Vista launch, there were folks chatting about Apple's supposed planned response to Vista and it could actually work.
If what they said is to be believed, Apple will come out in force when the most breakage is likely to occur and will roll against Vista with a campaign that targets this breakage and promises to give more benefit than Vista does without all of the pain.
Based on some informal sampling, if Apple was able to execute on such a campaign it could increase their market share by two points this year taking them to 6% of the market or nearly half again what they currently have.
Now because this is the slowest time of year for PC purchases in general that 2% may be conservative but the overall numbers sold won't be as impressive because they will be a fraction of what could have been sold had this occurred in the fourth quarter. Still, you play the cards you are dealt.
While I was thinking that the Super Bowl ad Apple is funding might kick this off, other industry observers who are likely better connected to Apple indicate that this will be a launch of the iPod based on the iPhone design instead. While I don't like the iPhone for a lot of reasons, an iPod based on that design could, if done correctly, get even me into the store wanting one. This is because most of the things that make the iPhone a bad phone simply don't apply to a device that doesn't need to be a phone in the first place.
Of course, if Apple does this after saying nothing about PCs during Steve's MacWorld address its going to cause folks to once again wonder if Apple is exiting the PC business. The other rumor was that Apple was going to license out their OS, that's been around for awhile and I still doubt that Steve would do that, but given the iPhone is actually a kind of a newer version of the Newton and we know Steve would never do that, maybe someone has upgraded his brain while he wasn't watching.
We'll see, regardless it may make the Super Bowl required watching for those of us that are more into tech than sports. I'm guessing even the PC guy from Apple's ads will be watching this game for that very reason.
No, they don't. What needs to happen is that Apple's detractors need to get over the idea that market share is the sole and solitary indicator of success. Why don't you look at Apple's income statement before declaring what they need to do?
Are we talking computers or I-Pods?
Excuse me. Don't let facts get in the way of your rant. You are wrong.
Apple BOUGHT the rights to use the information and inspiration they received from two visits (a total of 16 hours) to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Station in 1978 by giving Xerox one million pre-IPO shares of Apple Computer common stock worth about $1,500,000. Xerox sold that stock for about $22,000,000 less than a year later after the IPO.
The first meeting involved just Steve Jobs and one other Apple representative. He returned about three weeks later with eight Apple engineers who were not allowed to see any code, just ask questions, see operations on demo machines and to play around with the User Interface, which is distinctly different from the Lisa or the Mac UI.
Some theft.
. . . since it will be kind of difficult for Steve Jobs, the guy who is busy hiring criminal defense lawyers, to attend a launch party from prison.
Guilty until proven innocent, Eh, KellyAdmirer?
Are you aware that Bill Gates ALSO received back-dated stock options from Microsoft? And, unlike, Steve Jobs, actually benefited from his options? How about the fact that Microsoft's accounting adjustments for the backdating totaled over $150,000,000 for three years of backdating compared to Apple's $84,000,000 for ten years??? How about the fact that over 200 companies practiced Back Dating of stock purchase options... which was and is legal so long as it is properly reported on the books?
Never...with all the new Big Brother DRM "features" of Vista, XP will be my last OS.
That's fine, it was all done legally. Just like MSFT has done with Apple. Everything done legally - and Microsoft hasn't "taken" anything from Apple. Fair enough.
Except that Apple took what Xerox showed them (in 16 hours with no code) and built upon that and built and built.
Microsoft has been dining out on Apple innovations for years and years.
And without Apple's determination to turn their Xerox PARC lessons into the personal Macintosh, there would be no Windows, and you're be memorizing keystroke combos for Wordperfect 14.2 to this day.
The real problem here is the "holier than thou" attitude that somehow Jobs is this genius and Gates is a schmuck loser - I don't think so about that, either. Neither invented the wheel, both rode on others' inventions, and both are probably equally clean or dirty or however you want to look at it. Just don't lecture us about how wonderful Jobs is compared to Gates, because they are birds of a feather.
Where is the payment?
Microsoft did "steal" the UI from Apple. In fact, Microsoft essentially lost a lawsuit, Apple Vs. Microsoft, over the matter in 1997 when they were required by the terms of the out-of-court settlement to purchase $150,000,000 of Apple Preferred Stock (No, it wasn't a bailout. Apple had $2 billion in cash in the bank at the time!), continue producing and developing MS Internet Explorer for Mac and MS Office for Mac for an additional five years, and pay Apple an undisclosed sum to license the patents and copyrights under dispute for a three year period. Apple's agreement in the same settlement was to license for one year some software patents from Microsoft and bundle Internet Explorer for Mac along with Netscape in future Macs for a five year period.
The settlement was widely reported in computer industry and Main Stream media at the time. It was only several years later that the spin was started that MS "bailed Apple out of near bankruptcy."
Incidentally, MS sold the Apple stock for a tidy profit a couple of years later.
Lies can be very telling about the teller, can't they?
Research the price of the machine at XeroxPARC vs. the first Mac. As I recall (I invite correction) $80,000 vs. $2,495.
Also, compare the feature sets of the Xerox device vs. the Mac. Apple took the paper/folder/desktop metaphor and the mouse pointer and the pulldown menu and put it on retail shelves. Xerox didn't do that at all. Microsoft only did it after Gates threw a quiet fit upon seeing the Lisa.
All Apple did was make it happen. No small feat in a green-on-black "C:/>" world.
Both contribute to Apple's profits.
I was going to get to that next.
Xerox voluntarily gave up on the GUI. I know it seems hard to believe, but at that time they were simply into basic research. Computers were practically a hobby for them. They wanted to build copiers, not computers. Yes, Apple "made it happen" - just like Gates "made it happen" from his purchase of the original Windows source code while IBM got into the disaster that was OS/2. The similarities between the rise of MSFT and the rise of Apple are really astonishing when you look at them - both got their start because the real originators either decided to take a pass or just got off track somewhere along the line. To say that Apple has somehow succeeded at building on the original idea where Microsoft failed flies in the face of history. Both "built and built and built" on the original ideas.
I didn't mean to imply Microsoft failed to do it, only that Jobs saw it and first had the **gasp** vision (I hate that word), to do it, to put it in a tiny box. Oh, he also had Wozniak and Hertzberg and the rest of that crazy engineering team to make it happen. And if it weren't for that jackass Scully, the Macintosh was going to premiere at $1995.
Anyway, I only mean to say that in my observation, Windows GUI innovations trail Mac GUI innovations.
OTOH, Windows had true preemptive multitasking before the Mac...no small potatoes that.
To this day, that's gotta hurt. LOL
Well, you are simply giving Jobs credit for being there first - and he was. No question about it. I remember playing with an Apple II in 1978, when I think Gates was still in school. Yes, it was astonishing at the time, being able to manipulate pictures on the screen whereas a few years earlier, in 1975, the computers I was using were glorified adding machines on typewriters. So Gates came along later - terrific. He assembled some fine talent of his, and they haven't done half bad.
The reason that there isn't more press about Mac vulnerabilities is that the virus writers don't bother with hacking Macs - there isn't enough of an installed base for it to be worth their while.
The Mac "Security by obscurity" myth is just that: a myth.
Consider the case of the Witty Worm. The Witty Worm was a Windows worm, really quite nasty, that was written to infect Windows server computers that were protected by Internet Security Systems' BlackICE Firewall.
Three months before Witty was released into the wild, ISS released a security update that CLOSED the vulnerability that Witty exploited. By the time Witty was out, all but around 10,000 ISS BlackICE protected computers had been patched. The 10,000 or so computers were spread-out all over the world in over 24 countries.
Within 45 minutes of Witty's release, ALL ~10,000 WERE INFECTED!
The point of this story is that any and every computer on the internet is as close as next door... scarcity has no function in avoiding infection on the internet because of the vast interconnection and high speed which anything can be sent.
There are approximately 22,000,000 Mac OS X computers in the installed base. TWENTY TWO million. That's 2,200 times less scarce that the Windows computers that were susceptible to Witty. It probably can be safely said that the vast majority of those Macs do not run any anti-malware apps at all. Yet not one, ZERO, viruses have been found in the wild in six years.
Gates' point, I think, is that Microsoft is getting tough and tested from all these attacks, while Apple isn't.
The core of Apple's OS X is FreeBSD UNIX, one of the most secure OSes in the world. It has undergone 30+ years of trial by fire and patching by the open source community. The code is open. Anyone can look for vulnerabilities... and any one can patch one they find.
The reason that there isn't more press about Mac vulnerabilities is that the virus writers don't bother with hacking Macs . . .
There have been a few Proof-of-Concept viruses such as Leap-A/Oompa-Loompa, Renepo, InqtanaA and MacArena... but at best, they are Trojan Horse applications and have never been seen outside of a Computer security laboratory. . . and they require an Administrator' Name and Password to be installed. Each and everyone of these were trumpeted in the press... the vaunted Mac has been brought down by the (insert name here)... but after examination, the Mac community laughed at the FUD and went on, unimpressed and uninfected.
Have you hit all your talking points yet?
I haven't read the replies yet.
We got Vista along with the new computer. Absolutely love it.
People that just bought the software are having problems...maybe not enough computer?
Who cares how Apple should react?......I don't.
He assembled some fine talent of his, and they haven't done half bad.
I'm an XP user. My wife has an iBook, but my desktop and notebook both run XP (albeit skinned and tweaked to look like OSX).
I like the Apple style, but I find it hard to give up open architecture.
I'm reminded of the Stephen Wright joke about how he owns the ax Washington used to cut down the cherry tree. Although he had replaced the handle...and the head...it still occupied the same space.
My current computer is just like that. I don't go into the store and buy the whole box, I replace what's broken, and it runs on parts that I've bought in each of the past eight years.
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