Well, hell froze over. You posted something sane to me and I agree with it.
The open standards of the Intel chips have been exceptional for all concerned. The fact that all 3 major OS’s now use the same general architecture lowers costs, increases competition and creates much greater economies of scale. All good things.
My only point is, the subject of this thread. Microsoft trying to out Apple, Apple. And giving the reasons why I think that is a fools errand, and they should just do what they do already well, better and get over it before they NEW COKE themselves.
I use that analogy because it fits PERFECTLY.
COKE had 85% market share and now has 45%. Pepsi had 5% and now has 45%.
Because COKE freaked out when Pepsi went from 5% to 15% and BLEW IT trying to be something they were not ever going to be and did not need to be.
Microsoft MAY loose another 15% to Mac. Whooopie. Better 15% than 30% yes? Cede the ground that you cannot hold and hold the ground you can.
Don’t NEW COKE it Microsoft.
You’re ignoring the fact that de-facto standards rule the PC world. Technical standards often lag de-facto standards by 2-5 (or more) years. What works in the market becomes the standard.
That is what you get with an OS and vendor that encourages long-term support and promises decades or more of support. It is what gives Apple the ability to actually survive.
How many Macs do you think they’d sell right now if they had to set up their own foundry to make PowerPC chips (which IBM dropped because there just wasn’t a large enough customer base for them)? There’s a reason Apple shifted to using standard PC hardware - it was either switch to the de-facto standards of the PC/Windows hardware world or die.
And IMHO as long as Apple continues to eschew long-term support and backwards compatibility (measured in decades, not 4-5 years) they’ll never gain more than the 3-4% market share they have now. The truth is that companies spend a few hundred dollars on their hardware, and tens of thousands of dollars on their software. Supporting that software long-term is where the value is.
Microsoft will continue to totally dominate the PC world as long as they do not lose sight of that. Being able to run a 20 year old program on the latest OS - including hardware access - is a huge benefit and massive advantage.