Microsoft - Bored With PC's



Yes , the article completely ignored the fact that just having a product and having an actual non-crappy version of it are two separate things. Word & Excel 1.0 though 3.0 were brilliant. Word/Excel 4.0 was decent but then - the DARK YEARS - until Office OSX, they were Ford Excursions navigating Highway 1. Bulky, top-heavy - worse, pointlessly large.

But basically, MS is not that afraid of Apple anymore and sees no reason not to continue supporting the Mac:

a) it makes them money.
b) they get a 'halo' affect by still offering Mac programs.
c) they get to watch Apple test out everything first (music , .Mac , etc - just the latest examples - we'll just skirt over the fact that MS has basically used Apple as their Xerox Parc except when they were still in NM and that Explorer is based on Mosiac/Netscape - while first on the mac, not from Apple).

And going forward ...
d) That the PC biz is a money making but dull, dull, dull these days. Sure, they'll keep upgrading stuff but they're not all that interested in the sense there's no huge growth in that business. It's all $499 PC's, servers, fighting the Linux crowd and fighting gov't's - "pest" control is exciting when you're shooting wolves, coyotes and feral boars but when it's ants and termites - not so much.

So, MS is really focused on home entertainment technology, cell phones, car technologies, etc ... etc. - products such as XBox, cable boxes, car telemetry, etc ... and the competitors there are HUGE. Apple is still competition to them but in the one area they feel pretty secure and that they know that people who buy $499 PC's don't really get why everyone should own a Mac instead. Even if enough actual people wake from their slumber and switch over, for every PC sold to an actual live person, they sell dozens as airline terminals, cash registers, car, wedding registers, and so forth - they don't care if no one actually uses the OS, just that the licensing is paid for.

Sure, they still want their paws in everything because the reality is that they're really not very good at guessing what's coming next (Ultimate TV, wristwatch CE, Windows CE, MSN, etc ...) but if you have 5 people working on it - if it becomes something like the online music market exploding, here comes MS! And here come the analysts falling over themselves.

Now that MSN is .Mac for PC users, when will the ill-designed GarageBand be out?

Posted: Thu - January 8, 2004 at 09:41 PM        

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