mike said:
The underlying driving force for the computer business is Moore's law.
It DEPENDS on more and more and more.
Once you have 10X the computing power you need, there's no incentive to
buy new stuff.
Apple realized this early and created a (paid) content delivery vehicle.
Android made it available at lower cost.
You don't buy stuff any more...you pay a continuing ongoing,
ever-increasing
subscription for the privilege of connecting to the network and for what
you use when you get there.
Not with me
M$ is trying to rent you "office". Reception hasn't been warm, but it's
coming.
Won't be long before you won't need a user name and password to log in.
Inserting your credit card will take care of all that...accompanied
by the gentle "ding-ding" of the cash register app totaling up the
charges in the background. The kids who grew up with a cellphone
in each hand won't even blink...they'll just pay the bill and keep
on tweeting.
Nope, their mom and dad pay the bills. Then when the kids come of age
it'll hit them. "Oh s..t! I can't make ends meet". Pretty soon they move
back in with their parents. I see it left and right, happens more and
more. 40- and 50-year olds living with mom and dad. Why? Because they
"need" a $60/mo cell plan, a $150/mo gym membership, a $80/mo cable TV
package, Netflix, TiVo, Apps, Tunes, car payments, and on and on. It
eats them alive and they have no clue what is eating them alive.
Microsoft must FORCE you, kicking and screaming, into that paradigm.
I'd bet that "pressing the XP kill switch" comes up at every strategy
meeting. As soon as the perceived backlash is acceptable, it will
happen. "The XP activation site is no longer available. Your XP
license has expired...your computer will be crippled in 30 days.
Click here to purchase and update to windows 12...
sorry for any inconvenience."
Then it could be like with servers. They lost a big chunk of that market.
...
...
Your hardware is incompatible with Windows 12. Click here to purchase
"Surface"...we're still sorry...
Windows 8 is inevitable. Their problem was not doing it earlier.
That's gonna cost 'em.
It started in the 90's. We were hardcore in the market for an RTOS.
Windows was touting CE but at the Embedded Conference they were unable
to answer the bulk of our technical questions, instead constantly
pointing to "partners", some of whom weren't there. So we picked another
OS. And so did lots of others. They could have had it all back then but
really blew it IMHO. CE fizzled, which was not at all a surprise to me.
Then they had the golden opportunity to build a phone, together with
Nokia, that could have been largely compatible with a PC. We all know
the results. If I needed a smart phone and there was one that could run
most of my regularly used PC programs I'd buy. That feature alone could
actually convince me to "need" one because it finally would enbale
people to leave their netbooks at home on short trips.
As a company one should cling to products that simply work and then
build upon them instead of tossing everything for a brand new design.
For Microsoft that is (or was) XP. Just like the Rabbit or Golf for
Volkswagen. Except that Volkswagen was smarter and kept it.
If a tech company's stock price is more or less flat for well over 10
years then people in there should put on their thinking caps.
