News: Microsoft Admits Vista Failure
Posted on 03. May, 2008 by Benjamin Patton in News
Actions speak louder than PR with two overlapping events, Microsoft admitted what we have been saying all along, Vista, a.k.a. Windows Me Two (Me II), is a joke that no one wants.
It did two unprecedented things this week that frankly stunned the world.
Dell announced that it would be offering XP again on home PCs. The second that Vista came out, Microsoft made it very hard for you to sell anything other than Me II. It can’t do this on the business side because it would be laughed out the door, but for the walking sheep class, well, the past speaks for itself. I too currently have installed and am writing this from a Vista operating system.
This is classic abusive monopoly behavior, Microsoft wrote the modern book on it. It pulled all the major OEM’s in by twisting their arms with the usual methods, and they again all fell into line. Never before has anyone backpedaled on this, to do so would earn you the wrath of Microsoft.
But Dell just did. This means that Me II sales are at least as bad as we think, the software and driver situation is just as miserable, and Dell had no choice but to buck the trend. If anyone thinks this is an act of atonement for foisting such a steaming pile on us, think again, it doesn’t care about the consumer.
What happened is, the OEM’s revolted in the background and forced Microsoft’s hand. This is a big neon sign above Me II saying ‘FAILURE’. Blink blink blink. OK, Me II won’t fail, Microsoft has OEM’s whipped and threatened into a corner, it will sell, but you can almost hear the defectors marching toward Linux. This is a watershed.
The other equally monumental Me II failure? Gates in China launching a $3 version of bundled XP. Why is this not altruism? Well, it goes back to piracy and how it helped enforce the MS monopoly. If you can easily pirate Windows, Linux has no price advantage, they both cost zero.
With Me II, Microsoft made it very hard to pirate. It is do-able, you can use the BIOS hack and probably a host of others, but the point is, it raised the bar enough so lots of people have to buy it. Want to bet that in a country with $100 average monthly salary, people aren’t going to shell out $299 for Me II Broken Edition?
What did MS do? It dropped the price about 100x or so. I can’t say this is unprecedented, when it made Office 2003 hard to pirate it had to backpedal with the student edition for about $150. This time though, things are much more desperate.
If you fit Microsoft’s somewhat convoluted definition of poor, it still wants to lock you in, you might get rich enough to afford the full-priced stuff someday. It is at a dangerous crossroads, if its software bumps up the price of a computer by 100 per cent, people might look to alternatives.
That means no Me II DRM infection lock in, no mass migration to the newer Office obfuscated and patented file formats, and worse yet, people might utter the W word. Yes, you guessed it, ‘why’. People might ask why it is sticking with the MS lock in, and at that point, it is in deep trouble.
So, it did the unthinkable, and dropped the price. I won’t bother to hunt down all the exec quotes saying how people can’t afford clean water would be overjoyed to sell kidneys to upgrade to the new version of Office, but they are out there. This was a sacred cow, and it is now hamburger backed up against the wall.
These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested before. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can’t compete on level ground, so is left with backpedaling and discounts of almost 100 times.
What we are seeing is an unprecedented shift of power. It is also an unprecedented admission of failure. And the funniest part about the moves made? They are the wrong things to do. Microsoft is in deep trouble.
When you stack this with the missing file system that has been hyped literally since 1991, the fact that their are just to many versions of the OS, the size of the code which is way to big, the laptop battery drain effect, bogus vista capable stickers, missing drivers, conflicting advice, Mediocre roll out, shoddy performance, and the fact that XP is now more popular than ever leaves you wondering just what the heck is going on.
Eventually however Vista will dominate the market share and higher end computer hardware will become cheap thereby negating some of the performance issues we see now. It is sad that Microsoft repeats this cycle with every operating system. Systematically making its users pay to beta a “finished” product. Only time will tell and with the M$, Yahoo merger still on hold Mr. Ballmer might soon be looking for a new job.
Parts of this article are take from http://www.theinquirer.net.
Related posts:
- News: Bill Gates On Yahoo And Damage Control For Vista
- News: Is Microsoft Really Walking?
- Dell: We'll install XP for you, even after the deadline
- Dell: We’ll install XP for you, even after the deadline
- Rant: Ballmer: Vista – A Work In Progress, But Bigger Than XP
forest_parks
Big Ben Patton
JK Swopes
Nathaniel
used tires
jewelry supplies
Chetan
book buyback
EmmaB
I truly wish they’d come out and actually say the words, “Oops, Vista does suck we rushed it.” If they did that if they took responsibility instead of trying to patch and patch and patch and patch some more. I think more people would respect the company in a whole. The only reason they have such high amount of respect now with the TechWorld is because of how open and honest they let the employees be on the Microsoft blog network. We get an inside view of programmers, program directors, bug testers and designers. That’s an amazing amount of transparency for a huge company to give and it works.
EcoJason’s last blog post..Jay Leno’s green garage
What I hope is that like the os’s before this one they learn from their mistakes and are more honest, offer less product versions and are much more realistic about what it will do upon release.
Why use Windows if you can use MAC OS? The time I used Windows delivered gray hair to me…
your blog came to my attention by word-of-mouth, and I was skeptical at first. So I visit your blog… And i think that this is really a nice blog!
I really liked your blog!
Amazing! This blog looks exactly like my old one! It’s on a totally different topic but it has pretty much the same layout and design. Great choice of colors!
I just like the helpful information you provide to your articles. I will bookmark your weblog and take a look at once more right here frequently. I’m relatively certain I’ll be told many new stuff proper right here! Good luck for the following!