

Gruber: Microsoft’s Competition for Windows 7 - harpastum
http://daringfireball.net/2009/10/microsofts_competition_for_windows_7

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koblas
I think it's a fair point to say that apathy is Windows 7's biggest
competitor. I would never recommend somebody "upgrade" their home computer to
Windows 7, I might recommend they buy a new computer with Windows 7. There is
a school of though "if it aint broke don't fix it" which really does dominate.

ps. I do have a home machine - it runs Windows XP. My laptop (newer) does run
Vista - I work on a bunch of terminal windows connected to a linux box (which
has been up for 600 days).

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dtf
Exactly, and this is also the reason many people are still using IE6. If your
computer does the things you want - sends email, browses your favorite
websites, lets you write a letter, maybe plays music - then what's the point?

Until recently, Apple's market has indeed been these "straw-man fanboys" -
people that will always upgrade to Apple's newest kit, covet their latest OS
or shiny thing. But that's not the case any more, and Apple have been selling
to the common man, and they're eventually going to get bitten by the same bug
as Microsoft - consumer apathy - as their market share rises.

I have a Macbook running Tiger, and a PC running XP. The only OS I regularly
upgrade is Ubuntu, and only then because it's (almost) automatic.

~~~
thaumaturgy
It's not entirely consumer apathy.

There is a perception among Windows users that you don't "upgrade" Windows.
You get a new machine with a new version of Windows, and then you spend a lot
of time trying to get all of your files moved over and your programs working
again. And then, after all that -- the user interface looks different. Things
have moved around. You'll have to spend some time learning how to use your
computer again.

Meanwhile, the perception among Apple users is that they can put in a disk,
run an installer, and they get to upgrade their old hardware to run the new
thing. There might be a few user interface differences, but most of them are
subtle. They don't have to learn how to use their computer all over again, and
somehow it's better now.

In both cases, the perception isn't quite reality, but that doesn't matter.
Those perceptions are both Apple's strength and Microsoft's weakness in the
vast majority of their markets.

~~~
rbranson
Essentially Mac users get used to the upgrades, which are much more
incremental, fairly painless, and much cheaper. Mac OS X also seems to
actually get faster (Quartz Extreme, launchd, 64bit+LLVM) with every major
release, rather than slower.

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cschep
I find the argument that piracy is bad for Microsoft be so far from the truth.
Are you kidding me? They practically owe their market share to the fact that
the choice isn't "learn linux" or "pay for windows" it's "learn linux" or "get
windows somehow". People would never buy vista for $400, but if their friend
"fixes" their computer and all of a sudden it looks different, great!

I learned to program in windows because that's what was there. That's what my
games (that I pirated when I was 13) ran on. They are ubiquitous because of
piracy. I would love it if they could magically make windows "unpiratable".
There is no way they would do it.

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mrshoe
When Mercedes releases a new E-Class, Honda doesn't start shaking in its boots
about declines in Civic sales.

Gruber is right; the markets for Windows and Mac OS are becoming more and more
orthogonal.

~~~
ugh
And it’s really depressing that this whole stupid Apple v Microsoft thing is
still the great epic story being told in (nearly) every press article or news
report.

~~~
dschobel
And yet, I don't recall the last Apple ad I've seen where they weren't taking
a direct swipe at MS.

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tjogin
Apple very much realizes that they're after a completely different segment of
the market than MS is, but they also realize that many consumers cannot
clearly see where one segment starts and the other one ends, because, if all
you ever had was a Windows PC, then computers aren't all that different to
you.

With their ads, Apple is trying to inform those consumers that there _is_ an
alternative.

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neovive
Having tested some clean installs of Windows 7, it really is a very smooth
process (much improved over XP) -- at least for the somewhat technical user. I
have not tested upgrading from XP to Windows 7, but it's probably not a good
idea.

Regarding the learning curve, most users will probably view Windows 7 as just
an enhanced version of their old XP system. The taskbar and menus are still
there and as long as they can find the big 'E' and "W" buttons in the taskbar
they are fine.

I don't think Windows 7 will have much of an impact on Mac sales either way.
Most users that were tired of XP probably switched to a Mac (if they were able
to choose).

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jsz0
I'm sure Windows 7 will do fine. Microsoft has a captive market for the most
part. Eventually these XP machines will need to be replaced and it's very
unlikely a large number of those people who have been happy with a ~10 year
old OS will suddenly become interested in the virtues of OSX or Linux. Linux
on netbooks was a threat to Microsoft briefly but it was never capitalized on.
Most of the Linux distributions shipped on netbooks are really subpar.
Hopefully ChromeOS, Moblin, and Android can change that. HP's Linux UI is
quite nice also. The big question is how hard they'll push this when Microsoft
is offering Windows 7 for netbooks so cheaply to OEMs.

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gxs
I think the article is a little short sighted. While He definitely presents a
possible scenario, I don't think it will be that simple.

I've been running Windows 7 64-bit on my home machine for quite some time
(legally, first RC, then RTM) and it really is a rather nice OS. It's very
polished among other improvements I wont go into now.

I think what the article underestimates is peoples willingness to try what
they consider good.

Think, twitter. Another blogging site, really? The Sopranos. Yet another mafia
show?

People will use what they or their friends consider good. I think Windows 7
will be fine, if for no other reason that as mentioned above, those XP
machines will need to be replaced eventually.

~~~
tptacek
I think the fact that you are not representative of most Windows users is
Gruber's whole thesis, and you haven't really addressed it with this comment.

I'm doing tech support for people on my block running machines from 2002-2003.
They don't need _anything_ that Win7 offers; they use their computers to get
on the web and edit Word documents and that's it.

~~~
dschobel
By that reasoning they haven't needed any of the new technology to come out
since Win98. I don't see why that's a mark against Win7.

~~~
tptacek
Who said it was? Gruber's post isn't about whether Win7 is any good.

~~~
ams6110
Right... the reason XP has hung on so strongly is that it was finally a
Microsoft OS that did what most people wanted without crashing or locking up
all the time. When you have a stable OS that meets your needs, why change
(especially if you are a business and you need to justify expenses with a bit
more of a rationale than "ooh, that's pretty, I want it"

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dmillar
Another argument to be made here is that Apple can argue that if you are going
to have to "learn" a new OS anyway, why not "learn" OS X? I am very skeptical
that the release of Windows 7 (as good as it might be) will slow the market
gains Apple has seen.

~~~
tomjen2
The gap between XP and OS X is properly larger than the gap between XP and
Windows 7.

I have seen how developers are treated on the IPhone, are Mac developers
treated any better?

~~~
unalone
You're talking two entirely separate ballparks. On the Mac, Apple has no
ability to block products from release. Furthermore, the environment of OS X
seems to be a positive reenforcement for developers, because I've seen more
beautiful software here than I see anywhere else. Hell, I can't think off the
top of my head if I've ever seen an elegant minimalist interface on another
operating system. Closest I can think of is the Ribbon system on Microsoft
Office, which they unfortunately ruined in the transition to OS X.

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zandorg
Computers aren't getting faster as quick as they used to (certainly not to
Moore's Law) so the Microsoft strategy that always assumed faster hardware, is
a flop. Which means a properly optimised OS can sell more, ultimately (eg, no
endless layers of graphical libraries just to draw a textbox in a GUI).

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protomyth
To me, the flag that tells me that Windows 7 is getting a lot of traction is
when I see applications that only run on Windows 7. When developers are
willing to use the new features and sacrifice XP sales, then things are going
well.

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paul9290
I think he is correct in his apathy theory, but if Facebook and YouTube told
these XP/IE users that they no longer could use their sites until they'd
upgraded, millions would get off their lazy butts and upgrade from XP and or
IE.

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etherealG
the article seems to reference a format and reinstall. I'm quite sure an
upgrade path exists for windows 7, why would they bother with the xp
virtualisation for older programs with no way to upgrade and keep those
programs.

~~~
thelibrarian
You can do an in-place upgrade from _some_ versions of Vista to _some_
versions of 7. See this official Microsoft chart for details:

<http://www.macalope.com/files/windows-upgrade-chart.png>

Note that 'Custom Install' means a clean install.

