How Microsoft blindsided vulnerable Apple with Windows 7

TGDaily ^ | Thursday, October 22, 2009 18:05 | By Rob Enderle, principal analyst, Enderle Group

[Swordmaker]

I still use mac on occasions, but given I work in engineering, there is not that many scientific number crunching apps for mac, science is not cool, and cool of course is what the mac is all about.

Amazing. Mac OS X is one of the four fully certified UNIX OSes on the market. There are thousands of science and engineering apps that run on UNIX. In addition, OS X can compile and run any of the 1000s of Linux apps for science and engineering. Now, add that an Intel based Mac (any Mac made in the last four years) can run 100% of Windows apps and your assertion falls flat on its face. You should see the number of Macs found at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

[Swordmaker]

Wow.. How many windows does Rush have open on that pc?

Looks like seven to me. . . and it's a Mac.

[chris_bdba]

My hubby has been ooggling that thing since it appear the other day. I’m thinking that sometime after the first of the year we will have one of those. I keep teasing him though that he’ll need sunscreen with that huge monitor.

[Sir_Ed]

My life was immeasurably blessed by Steve Jobs, Apple and the Mac.

I changed careers when Dr. Paul and Aldus released PageMaker and Apple released postscript printers, and I’ve upgraded since then to InDesign, Photoshop and Dreamweaver and my current batch of Macs. They’ve allowed me to be successful and happy in my career.

I’ve tried PC’s but they don’t work as good at handling large files, CMYK color spaces and exporting files to service bureaus.

Jobs and Apple are excellence personified, I’ve seen it with my own eyes for many, many years, and yeah, they’re liberal, but ALL OF SILICON VALLEY IS LIBERAL.

Microsoft, Google, Oracle, they’re all hard-core Leftists, if you want to take the attitude that you must only use conservative computer programs, you’d probably be limited to Corel in Utah and HP in Boise...and even then I’d have my doubts about how conservative they are.

Ed

[Sir_Ed]

I use a Wacom tablet for that...great, fantastic tool for drawing vectors and paths, as well as Photoshop graphics like the paint brush.

Wacom just came out with a new tablet, I might try one of them...

Ed

[riverdawg]

“I work in IT. You know what - my coworkers and I put our feet up on the desk, drink coffee ...”

Yeh, that pretty much accurately describes the IT people where I work, also. I just wish you folks knew more about systems and software than our typical new hire in just about any non-IT field.

[Sir_Ed]

I loved that ad. We watched it during the execrable Office wedding show, and everyone in the room started laughing as PC aged backwards into 1980’s Windows 3.11 garb, cool pants, sunglasses and all.

Funny thing was, I’m the only Mac user and everyone else uses XP, yet we all laughed.

One woman, in fact, said “Those Mac commercials are always funnier to watch than the actual TV shows!”

Ed

[aruanan]

How Microsoft blindsided vulnerable Apple with Windows 7

The same way they blindsided Apple with Vista? Very shortly thereafter everyone knew they had to quickly cobble something together to answer the questions of "WTF do we do now?" and "Do you think people will notice that Vista was a stop gap until we could come up with something else?"

[johncatl]

Parallels costs about $80-90, I’m not sure what VM Ware options are. XP home is $89 and Pro is about $150. So that adds up to $170-$230 to run Windows programs on the Mac unless you want to use BootCamp which requires a reboot to get into Windows.

Recently QuickBooks came out with a Mac version but is has less capability and features than the PC version.

Last time I looked, one of the the biggest selling software packages on the MAC was Microsoft Office. Is that still true?

This summer Microsoft ran a promo for Windows 7 upgrade for $40 and has the family pack 3 user for about $150.

So what was your point?

[aruanan]

I first used a mac in 1979, thought is was the coolest thing ever but even then out of the price range for a college student.

As I recall, in 1980 I got an Apple II+ (w 48k RAM) when that was the top of the line product from Apple; that was shortly before the Apple III came out. 1984 was when the first Mac appeared, same year as the Yamaha DX7.

[Sir_Ed]

I run two monitors, one a 31” Cinema Display for the main screen, the other one a SyncMaster 21” for my tool sets.

I use Spaces to create four virtual workspaces, and in each of those spaces I’ll typically have Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, InDesign and Safari, and in each of those programs I could have anywhere from five to fiteen tabs open.

Sounds chaotic, I admit, but the Quad handles it with aplomb, nary a choke or stutter.

The Macs are fantastic machines.

Ed

[lefty-lie-spy]

WTF is this sophomoric nonsense?

[Yossarian]

Parallels costs about $80-90, I’m not sure what VM Ware options are.

Actually, VirtualBox is free. As in beer.

That brings the cost down to $89 to $150, maybe lower if you snag the OEM versions of Windows.

[Swordmaker]

Recently QuickBooks came out with a Mac version but is has less capability and features than the PC version.

Nothing recent about it... Quickbooks has been available for Macs for at least a decade, and the Pro version from 2003. I agree about the features and capability. Try Mind Your Own Business's AccountEdge. Excellent accounting, good support, and a built in payroll package as well as offering a payroll service.

[Yossarian]

Windows 7 is here to stay and it is going to clean their collective clocks. Especially with the new I7 chip and the new AMD killer video processor that just came out.

Huh? Apple uses Intel's i7 chip, even in their new iMac. They've often used AMD (ATI) video chips, even if they seem to be on a solid NVidia kick right now.

I'm happy that Win7 is a better OS than Vista, especially that it's pared down (I run Vista on occasion in a virtual machine, just for software & website testing purposes.) I also want Apple spurred on to greater innovation. But Windows fans can be so backwards with their analyses....

[Swordmaker]

WTF is this sophomoric nonsense?

Is it that high? Junior High seems more like it.

[WashingtonSource]

How much did Microsoft pay for this article?

[Patrsup]

Actually I don’t deal with software and systems - thats for the drones - sitting in the cubicle staring at a monochrome screen.

I actually have a pretty comprehensive job non-IT job history. The problem is I’m not one of the fan kiddies enamored with and having to define myself by what I buy, wear, drive. You will notice that I did not gush about one or the other system(s). I am on my third career - retired out of two completely different non-IT careers (Military and Locomotive Engineer) so I have a pretty good view of the lifestyle of the young and impressionable. Laughing about how intense people get about stuff that really doesn’t matter is something we all can do. Sorry if I roughed up your sensibility’s.

I hope you are doing some new hiring per your post - there are a lot of people who need it.

Have a good weekend!

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out. - Ronald Reagan

[coon2000]

Microsoft employees contributed much more to Obama than Apple employees. Both as a total amount and as a percentage of.

[randita]

Hey there! When your wife got my G4 I inherited my husband’s G4 (same vintage!) which had more power and memory-needed because I got into video editing and DVD’s. He got an aluminum G4. Now we’re both getting MacBook Pros-15” (our Christmas gifts to each other).

I think we’ve gotten our money’s worth!