Before I begin this post I must confess a conflict, Arrington style. I own a Mac Pro. It is beautiful and powerful. In earlier posts I have said that the market for heavier Operating Systems which run big applications locally is limited. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Apple owns this market. I use mine for editing video and the sole reason I shelled out three grand for it was Final Cut Pro. I tried Adobe Premier on a PC and, combined with the move to Vista, I decided to go for a Mac.
In essence Microsoft’s problem is that they are now caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of Apple and Asus. Make a big powerful OS and you are faced with Leopard, make a small light OS and you are confronted with Linux. MS is caught in the middle trying to be all things to all men and failing. It was a profitable business in years gone by but now it is being squeezed by the two A’s and further pressure is being exerted from the Web as applications increasingly migrate online.
The bottom line is that in future only specialist users need powerful machines. Creating an OS for such power will be a niche pursuit and it is a niche that belongs to Apple having long ago captured the hearts and minds of the creatives. All other users want is to access the web easily to check facebook, write email and read the news. And all that needs is a web browser. I also think in future increasingly enterprise apps will be rendered through the browser to increase flexible working. Some may say security will not allow this but the reality of security is that employees invariably use insecure systems such as webmail, especially when confronted with a ’secure’ system which is locked down so far as to be unusable.
I’m not sure this is all doom and gloom for MS, it just means they will have to diversify away from their traditional revenue streams. All they need to do is take this guy’s advice. He has some of the best insights I’ve read about the way things are moving.
You know, I have to tell you, I really enjoy this blog and the insight from everyone who participates. I find it to be refreshing and very informative. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyway, I felt it was about time I posted, love spent most of my time here just lurking and reading, but today for some reason I just felt compelled to say this.
Thanks Jim, I appreciate it. Comments and Diggs are always welcome.
you dont write very well, please try and qualify your statements with evidence to back them up.
Good post and I agree, on the whole. But you forget about gaming which is still a very popular pursuit and is pretty much confined to Windows-based PCs. I currently have an iMac G6 that can handle the latest games but as it’s not really upgradeable, my next desktop will probably be a Mac Pro. Almost completely upgradeable, multiple OS, the perfect machine for a software journalist!