Comments on: Microsoft: The "Bootleg Apple" Strategy and Why It Will Fail

By: Bloor Robin

Bloor Robin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:17:02 +0000

I’m in agreement about Microsoft innovation. They can do it and now they really need to and if they pull out the stops nearly everyone will be pleased by it. It’s very difficult to hate an innovator no matter what your grievance.

By: Neil Anderson

Neil Anderson — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:44:28 +0000

Apple continues to make great products that appeal to a wide range of ages.

By: Bloor Robin

Bloor Robin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:40:29 +0000

Microsoft’s Surface is, I agree, not an imitation of the iPhone, just an example of Microsoft failing to get to market first with the touch interface. However they now have such an interface on Windows Mobile. My assertion that iPod users began to buy Macs was known as the “Halo Effect” on Wall St. The financial analysts didn’t seem to think it was an illusion, as you seem to think. They invented the term to describe the uptick in Mac sales that accompanied the growth of iPod sales, because there was a correlation.
As a Windows user up to 2005, I managed to get BSODs on XP pretty much all the time. Admittedly the blue screen didn’t show up directly, Microsoft having realized that having the computer just hang was “better marketing.” However technically it was exactly the same – dead PC. You could pretty much ensure a dead PC, if you just ran more than 3 or 4 applications. Memory leaks would gradually fell your PC after a while. Friends of mine still using Windows also see this same behavior on Windows, which seems to have avoided you. I only run Windows XP under VMware occasionally and only to run the browser. With a single application running it’s very stable.
As for Apple and corporate dementia, I agree entirely. The whole Sculley episode looked like corporate dementia to me and without iron fist of Steve Jobs in control, there’s no telling what will happen in the longer term. I’m inclined to believe that if Apple goes into decline then Google will move into the market with Android, but it’s too early to speculate on that.

By: fung0

fung0 — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:56:48 +0000

While your conclusions are solid, many of your talking points are simply more Mac-centric myth-making. For anyone who’s seen both sides of these issues, they weaken your argument rather than strengthening it.

For example, Microsoft’s Surface initiative is genuinely innovative, and owes roughly zilch to the iPhone. It’s a very different technology, and a very different application. Comparisons are pointless and misleading.

Your assertion that “iPod users began to buy Macs” is baseless. Windows has continued to dominate even in the iPod era, and your suggestion merely detracts from Apple’s real achievement in forging a new market category (albeit one truly opened up by the likes of Creative Labs and others) and making its own software near-ubiquitous on Windows.

Most wildly incorrect is your assertion regarding Blue Screens. This type of crash ceased to be an issue with the release of Windows NT, way back in the mid-1990s, at a time when Apple was still running a far more primitive, far more crash-prone OS. With the near-universal adoption of Windows XP, protected-mode operation became the rule in the PC world; most Windows users haven’t seen a BSD crash in this century. Again, Microsoft was WAY ahead of Apple on this one.

On the other hand, yes, Vista is a total disaster, and you are clearly quite right in noting that Microsoft has now totally abandoned innovation in exchange for a fruitless strategy of chasing Apple. Idiotic, to be sure… but only a symptom of Microsoft’s deeper ills. The main problem is that Microsoft has lost its original vision of relentless technical advancement, and become mired in bean-counting marketing initiatives.

For now, this means gains for Apple. But Apple is far from immune to this form of corporate dementia. When (not if) Apple loses Steve Jobs, you’ll see it go exactly the same route. So all these partisan Mac-vs-Windows arguments are really losing their relevance in a hurry. In the five-to-ten-year term, we’ve all got to start looking to free and open-source alternatives, or face a steadily deteriorating computing environment.

By: Bloor Robin

Bloor Robin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:01:36 +0000

I think we’d all like Microsoft to do something truly innovative – whether they do it through an app store or real stores or something completely unexpected. When life got desperate for IBM in the early 1990s they managed to pull a few rabbits out of the hat, so maybe Microsoft can do the same. Maybe they need to be in trouble to provoke that. It remains to be seen.

By: Dennis McDonald

Dennis McDonald — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:50:41 +0000

Wow, this is quite an analysis. It definitely points out the difficulties associated with a lack of innovation, as in “Why should we innovate? We have a much larger market share!”

On the last point about the Microsoft store, though, I have to differ. My first thought on hearing about this was, “What in the world are they going to sell? Zunes? Mice? Other people’s computers?”

But I also think that opening stores in such a down economy where online selling is so much more effective is also an opportunity to innovate. I have no idea what shape that innovation might take but opening up retail stores is an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and try something really different.

True, your litany of anti-innovation is sobering and suggests that Microsoft just doesn’t “get it.” But I wouldn’t count them out of the game just yet. There area lot of creative people out there and they just might find the right mix. And, frankly, I would like them to succeed through innovation; we’ll all benefit from that.