Windows Drops Below 90% Market Share 595
ozmanjusri writes "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90%, according to Net Applications Inc. Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. 'Mac OS X... [ended] the month at 8.9%. November was the third month running that Apple's operating system remained above 8%.' The stats show that while some customers are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground. A Net Applications executive suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use. 'The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up,' he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the US, a result that emphasizes the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft."
Re:Yes, Laughable Numbers. (Score:3, Insightful)
But then you have to factor in the people that do things like setup firefox to report its running IE6 on Windows XP to get web pages to display correctly (remember when MS would send broken CSS Pages to non-MS browsers a few years ago?). And 4 million SubNetbooks is nothing. Think about how many windows desktops have been sold, over the last 5-6 years that are still being used! (and you can get the EEE PC with XP on it)
Many factors... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's the general opinion of Vista's unsuitability, the rise in Macs, the netbook phenomenon, the economic downturn slowing hardware turnover, all leading to fewer Windows boxes out there. The question is whether MS has any chance of reclaiming them with their even-fatter Windows 7, or accelerate the downturn.
Now if some Large Visible Company decided to jump off the Microsoft Upgrade Treadmill in favor of Some Other OS, *THAT* would be a story...
SCOX(Q) DELENDA EST!!
I believe it .... (Score:4, Insightful)
When people realize there are alternatives, they start to look for MORE of them. Firefox specifically is proving that one doesn't need MS to do normal activity. When no website "breaks" because one is using FF, they subtly say "wow". When they learn of new features (tabs) in IE and realize that those were available in FF long before MS got to them, they go "wow".
This would cause people to look at what they do, not what they use to do it, and see if what they need is available elsewhere.
The next big push should be OpenOffice. My kid comes in and shows me her "Powerpoint" (her words) and I know that I haven't put MS Office on her computer, then I point out that it isn't "PowerPoint" but a presentation. She realizes it isn't Microsoft Office and I now have someone who can tell her friends "I didn't use MS Office" (and she will too!).
When people realize they can surf the net (already there) and make "PowerPoints" and "Word Documents" and "Excel Spreadsheet", it will increase the options for discovering that one CAN get along quite nicely without Microsoft.
I've long said that 2007-8 is going to be the beginning of the end for MS. The writing is on the walls, it is just a matter of time before the whole thing collapses.
So, What's the *Actual* WinVista ONLY use? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Yes, I mean to Exclude counting any WinVista Downgrade licenses in the %, and show the *Actual* market share % use of WinVista in PCs since the WinVista release to date.)
Those stats might be more interesting and possibly more insightful to MS losing market share to other PC OS options.
Grouping *EVERYTHING* marketed as "Windows" into one pool is not statistically transparent.
I argue that many would NOT consider WinME, Win2k, WinXP, WinVista, or even Windows Mobile to be the the same category, etc...
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's less a "good news for Apple" story as it is a "bad news for MS" story. Apple gained a slight bit of market share. But MS is in a much more vulnerable position. MS's entire business model is pretty much PREDICATED on the proposition that they pretty much own the OS market (and has been for a long time now). Anything that threatens that share, even just a little, threatens the very underpinnings of the company.
God, it was hard getting through that paragraph with no sarcasm.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoloy (Score:2, Insightful)
Monopoly isn't all about market share. It is about anti-competitive practices.
Re:Many factors... (Score:2, Insightful)
The unsuitability of Vista is an internet echo chamber, not a general opinion.
Sure, a lot of the people using it aren't entirely happy with it, but read that again.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)
Just curious, but at what point is Microsoft no longer considered a monopoloy? At what percentage are they legally allowed to start pulling the dirty tricks again?
when they no longer conspire to dominate the market through misconduct.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's less a "good news for Apple" story as it is a "bad news for MS" story. Apple gained a slight bit of market share. But MS is in a much more vulnerable position. MS's entire business model is pretty much PREDICATED on the proposition that they pretty much own the OS market (and has been for a long time now). Anything that threatens that share, even just a little, threatens the very underpinnings of the company.
God, it was hard getting through that paragraph with no sarcasm.
Okay, let's get a little perspective here. It's a common meme in the business that Microsoft makes more money selling software to Mac users than Apple makes selling Macs to Mac users. I'm not positive whether that's still true, but it would not surprise me in the least if it was. MS-Office for Mac still costs a king's ransom and still sells like hotcakes at Apple Stores everywhere.
Microsoft makes pretty good bank on Windows, but it's far from being their main revenue stream. Productivity software, enterprise solutions, and services are where their big bucks come from.
What I find amusing about the story is this: Apple raises their market share from what was possibly as low as 3 percent a couple years ago to about 9 percent, while Linux remains something that non-nerds are not even sure how to pronounce, and what's the spin on Slashdot? "OS X and Linux are chipping away at Microsoft's market share!"
Re:Monopoloy (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh. Regardless of its popularity, OS X is still going to be the nicer platform to work with.
Mainstream acceptance does not always invalidate "hip" status. Obama won the election comfortably, but he's still considered the more "cool" candidate to have supported by most trendy urbanites.
Re:Pulling stats out of thin air (Score:3, Insightful)
Just plain wrong.
A fact is a fact, regardless of whether or not it is true. The opposite of fact is opinion, not falsehood.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
OS X is chipping away at the desktop market.
Linux is chipping away at the enterprise server market.
So yes, OS X and Linux are chipping away at Microsoft's market share of 2 or more markets...
The most important paragraph (Score:4, Insightful)
"Windows' share typically falls on weekends and after work hours, as users surf from home computers, a larger percentage of which run Mac OS X than do work machines."
So, what they are saying is that people would rather use something else, and do so at home. In effect, people don't want windoze but are forced to use it at work.
Windows sucks and there's your proof.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a matter of margins.
Each Mac mini needs to be built in a Chinese sweatshop and then shipped to the US.
Each MacBook needs to be built in a Taiwanese sweatshop and then shipped to the US.
Each version of MS-Office needs to be written once and then sold on $0.50 disks to millions of users for hundreds of dollars each. Plus, if the user is "keeping up" with your versions, you'll ding them about 3 times over the useful life of the Mac they're running it on.
Re:I believe it .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Apples and oranges. The last time I looked I can run FF on a Windows box. Users switching from IE to FF means nothing in the long run. If I had to run an alternate OS to run FF I guess I wouldn't be seeing much of FF.
When no website "breaks" because one is using FF, they subtly say "wow". When they learn of new features (tabs) in IE and realize that those were available in FF long before MS got to them, they go "wow".
Actually, I know of a lot of people having problems with the new FF running content on MySpace. Or is that a stupid user error? If it is I'd love to be enlightened.
And as for having a feature first? Big whoop. Pontiac had airbags before any other auto manufacturer, IIRC. Does that make me give Pontiac a second look today? Hell no. Far from it.
The next big push should be OpenOffice. My kid comes in and shows me her "Powerpoint" (her words) and I know that I haven't put MS Office on her computer, then I point out that it isn't "PowerPoint" but a presentation. She realizes it isn't Microsoft Office and I now have someone who can tell her friends "I didn't use MS Office" (and she will too!).
Yeah, and it is great that she can use it to her own ends. This doesn't make it a superior product. Just like the number of users who pirate Photoshop when all they need is Gimp. So there certainly is a niche for it at this point but honesty, MS's gains with Office is still in the corporate market place and I haven't seen it budge yet.
When people realize they can surf the net (already there) and make "PowerPoints" and "Word Documents" and "Excel Spreadsheet", it will increase the options for discovering that one CAN get along quite nicely without Microsoft.
Aside from a small home MS Office market this doesn't mean much in the ways of market share. As long as these tools are on Windows boxes there's not much for MS to lose. Apple made some gains, Linux kind of did but there still isn't any real traction and the usage curve of OS X vs Linux since the release of OS X is a sure mark of how much Linux is still being toyed with by the mass populace.
I've long said that 2007-8 is going to be the beginning of the end for MS. The writing is on the walls, it is just a matter of time before the whole thing collapses.
It's happening again? Geez. To hear people talk this up around here MS nailed it's coffin lid shut with Windows 98SE. But we're still firmly planted in Microsoft's product today. I'm all for alternatives, and use many of them myself, but let's keep it in perspective. Even at the rate Apple is going it's going to be many years after Windows 7 finally hits the shelves before they get the kinds of numbers it's going to take to get a majority of software vendors to take notice. MS has a damn good chance at redeeming itself in the meantime. Look at how bad a blunder ME was. Today the Joe Sixpacks who had to deal with that train wreck of an OS just shrug it off as they turn back to their XP machines. Vista will be no different of a story in another couple of years and we will still be hearing the same thing around here from the same people.
And I'll be 100% honest, I really use to be big on the anti-MS band wagon until all the promises that were made to me as a user from all these different camps became mainly vaporware. I spent years of talking down MS and saying that great alternatives are going to throw down this giant any day. Tick tock, tick tock... Apple is the only ones who've ever delivered and I really really hate the idea of Apple would become if they had MS type of numbers in the desktop community. I'd definitely go Linux before I'd go Apple only because of politics.
The only people who are getting a thrill out of these kinds of stories are Apple users and those who are so blindly anti-MS that they can't see what the future will hold if Apple takes the brass ring. And believe me, Apple has a much better chance at doing what the Linux community thinks it will do. The numbers are proof.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an article about the desktop market, not the enterprise market. Linux remains a non-factor on the desktop.
As for the enterprise, I admit I haven't been paying very close attention since shifting my career towards more of a programming role, but it seems to me that there were a lot more enterprises running some flavor of Unix or another (including Linux) ten years ago, and a lot fewer Windows Enterprise shops back then. A decade ago, Windows was not taken very seriously as a "big iron" server solution. Now they seem to have bleed into many (if not most) corporate server farms, though still not the overwhelming dominance they have in the desktop market. Am I just horribly misguided on that score?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Will someone please think of the XP users? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is buying a GNU/Linux netbook and then torturing themselves with a $200 XP install.
No, but a lot of people buy the cheaper linux netbook, and then install a pirated xp on it.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple with anti-trust?!
Only when they achieve a dominant position. That's not likely to happen unless Apple turns into Microsoft and allows Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and others to embed OSX into their computers.
Which is to say, pretty accurately, never.
Re:Many factors... (Score:2, Insightful)
How is Windows 7 even fatter? By all accounts, even in the pre-beta, install time is down, boot time is down, resource usage is down, memory usage is down, etc.
I guess it's still yet to be seen how this will change as the OS matures, but it's definitely off to a good start.
Re:The most important paragraph (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing could be said about Linux actually. There are quite a few people who use Linux workstations at work, but have windows PCs at home (often because their home PC is a family PC). By your logic, I could say "people don't want to use Linux, but are forced to use it at work".
Phil
Stop it, spammer (Score:1, Insightful)
Please stop. Just stop. Making "funny" versions of things that are reported on Slashdot and then posting links to your blog is SPAMMING. Get it? You're a SPAMMER for doing this. Stop it. You do nothing else here on Slashdot.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do people keep going on about the 'iTunes lock-in'? It is equivalent to Zune Marketplace, and any other mp3 player + music manager combo (there have been many over the years). I had a Rio MP3 player before an iPod, it had a music manager that only worked with the Rio, and I had to switch to iTunes when I got my iPod... so what??
As for the DRM, Apple is trying to get rid of DRM in their music. EMI is selling all their stuff through iTunes without DRM, the other music labels are selling DRM-free music through Amazon but won't through iTunes because they don't like the market share iTunes has. When MS brought out the Zune they stiffed all their 'partners' (victims) who had bought into the 'playsforsure' DRM (which the Zune didn't play), is that anything like what Apple has done with iTunes?
What is your logic for going after iTunes as being anything worse then is already out on the market from damn near everyone else? From what I can see, Apple is trying to be better but is shackled by others (music labels), vs MS who seems to like screwing people and companies over.
Re:Will someone please think of the XP users? (Score:1, Insightful)
The bogosity of that argument is especially apparent when you consider that Dell, Gateway, IBM/Lenovo and all of the other PC-heavy companies are doing just fine.
CompUSA went bankrupt because Vista isn't selling well? Now that is laughable.
Why is twitter still allowed to post here at all?
Re:Monopoloy (Score:2, Insightful)
Regardless of its popularity, OS X is still going to be the nicer platform to work with.
Short term I don't expect people's informed opinions to change, but longer term this is a much more shaky statement. (What I mean by "informed opinion" is that if you know the systems. E.g. there will be people who switch to a Mac because they use it a bit and go "oh, this is actually quite nice.")
Ten years ago I'd have said the exact reverse; I still maintain that MacOS before OS X was... underwhelming at best on a number of points, even by the day's standard, and even as compared to the Win9x line (let alone NT).
But then Apple goes and basically pulls a 180 from sucking to starting to do a pretty darn good job, and has been making progress since. Meanwhile MS and Windows are sort of plodding along, making largely incremental improvements at best. (I do think Vista is an improvement over XP overall, but not a substantial one.)
MS is not going to be able to maintain what they've been doing for the past couple decades, but they aren't going away any time soon, and there's a lot of time for them to do something radical.
(My disclaimer: I'm largely a Windows person, but not very strongly. I'm posting this from Linux right now, and I've used OS X a bit. I would consider setting it up as an alternate OS on my computer but Apple won't let me, because they steadfastly refuse to offer either something I both would want and can afford hardware-wise (laptops possibly excepted, but I'm a desktop person still) or a stand-alone installation of OS X.)
Re:Let's all play Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
What's hurting Microsoft is pervasive management incompetence. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the money comes in too easily for too long.
It's a corporation thing - when managers start surrounding themselves with their pals and ass kissing flatterers instead of the right people for the job. This cancer eats at all companies from the inside, and it's just human nature. There are ways to deal [wikipedia.org] with THAT kind of thing, but no one has the balls to do it.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:3, Insightful)
I submit that all monopolies abuse their position sooner or later. What are you going to do about it? Especially when (looking innocently at the telcos) they own the politicians.
Re:So, What's the *Actual* WinVista ONLY use? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista's market share has been monotonically increasing since release, and now stands at 20.45%
Wow, that's pathetic. That means it accounts for about 22% of Windows computers, or 1 in 4.4. Since Vista has been out for over two years now (November 30, 2006 for corporate customers), it would take Vista about 9 years at this rate to cover 100% of the Windows market alone. Given that computers are typically replaced much more often than once every 9 years, it's actually far behind the adoption curve you'd expect from just hardware upgrades.
Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true with nerds too. Why, just the other day, I was Yahooing a javascript method...
See what you did there? "Why, that fool doesn't use Google!" The mainstream - and yet still the coolest - search engine. Because it works the best.
Popularity does not always have a negative feedback loop.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is trying to get rid of DRM in their music? How did Amazon get all of theirs without it? Are you telling me the CEO from Amazon is a better negotiator or speaker than Steve Jobs? I don't think so. Face it, it's not in Apple's best interested to remove the DRM.
Honestly iTunes is fair game for scrutiny.
Re:The most important paragraph (Score:3, Insightful)
There are quite a few people who use Linux workstations at work, but have windows PCs at home
Back up that statement with facts please. In my experience, Linux users who have Linux work stations at work have Linux machines at home and for family members, either Linux or Mac. That is not something I'd assert as fact, but is has more foundation in my portion of the observable universe.
Re:This will likely keep happening until.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this is gonna hurt, but I'll bite.
Video editing. DVD authoring. MP3 Encoding. Video Capture. HTPC. Signal Processing.
The list goes on for processor limited tasks that new hardware continues to improve. To say that you only use your PC for gaming shows your age and naivete.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:5, Insightful)
That is what people are talking about, when they complain about iTunes lock-in. Try using a Rio without their software: easy. Try using an iPod without their software: hard and you get threats and deception from an Apple lawyer. [slashdot.org]
Because it's not "damn near everyone else," it's damn near no one else. It's unusual for an MP3 player to require a proprietary syncing app and refuse to work if the user chooses some other way to get the music onto the player.
Re:The most important paragraph (Score:4, Insightful)
Though every time I have installed Linux on a computer at home I spend so much time trying to install drivers and software I usually give up after a week.
There is no way to politely respond to this statement because it presents only two alternatives. Either the author is an idiot or the author is lying. Either way, it would not be nice to point that out.
Instead, I'll say maybe Linux is not for you.
Re:The Big news: Linux failed. (Score:2, Insightful)
And just wait for the pricepoints on netbooks to shift even lower. Microsoft will either be forced to abandon the segment (fatal) or slash prices to levels that will have Wall Street analysts howling for blood.
But they're not. They're putting bigger screens, keyboards, and drives in them. I'm not opposed to making them more usable but doing these things puts the price within shouting distance of a "full size" notebook. Put a SSD in the smallest full size notebooks for only 50 bucks more or so then why bother with a "netbook"?
I'd like to see the equivalent of an EEEPC 701 in a blister pack for $150 or so. Even in rural areas of the US there are plenty of people who don't own their own computers. My old hometown library has people standing in line to use the computers there. The economy being what it is a small $150 machine may be the only computer they're buying. So it would sell.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:2, Insightful)
I think what you meant to say is you have to use iTunes to add songs PURCHASED from iTunes to your iPod (so as to decode the FairPlay DRM). Otherwise it's relatively easy to put music on an iPod without using iTunes. It requires any number of free and readily available freeware downloads. It's even easier with WinXP--(show hidden files, drag and drop to iPod in target disk mode). Other music services "Work with iPod" as well, allowing you to use their music service to add songs to the iPod (Amazon, for example).
Re:Many factors... (Score:1, Insightful)
You can partly blame Vista for being a pig, but you must also hold some nonfavor to the fact that people attempt to install it on aged or totally underpowered systems, laptops especially. When someone's laptop comes out of the factory with an Intel graphics chip, 1.5gb of memory, and a 1.9ghz dual core, of course they're going to have a horrible time running Vista. Moreso when people are 'upgrading' from XP to Vista on an older machine, thinking themselves tech-savvy, and come to find it doesn't like their Ti-4200 AGP graphics and P4 2.9ghz; as I mentioned they believe themselves to be technically capable and henceforth bedrudge Vista when in fact they've installed a very large, capable OS on a very old, limited system.
I find the majority of problems associated with Vista and its performance and compatibility actually stem from the hardware it is installed on. Microsoft made the mistake of putting it out with minimum specs far below what it could operate decently on, or worse the minimum spec just gets ignored entirely. If the minimum spec was more inline with the recommended specification or perhaps higher, whereas the performance of the OS can be appreciated (Runs in RAM instead of dumping to pagefile ASAP like XP, hence the gripes of 'memory usage', for example), and again presuming people don't ignore the spec, Vista wouldn't be hurting so much in the eyes of the 'midline tech-savvy' crowd.
In short: Vista suffers from being installed on aged and underpowered hardware by people more than ready to misassign blame to it and gleefully tell all their friends about it.
Re:The most important paragraph (Score:3, Insightful)
it usually takes closer to two weeks, and even then he is happy to accept that only 90% of everything works properly, because "hey it's free, what do you expect".
This is pure FUD. Plain and simple, here's why:
No operating system is perfect, this is a fact. However, if we were to assume that universal support of devices were some sort of benchmark to quality, then Vista would have a HUGE problem. (Well, another one, anyway) Linux supports more devices than Vista.
I'd rather have 90% support from something that was free than less support from something I'd have to pay for.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that Linux usage is a teeny bit higher than Net apps tracks. This is because Net Apps relies on browser response to track OS users. Many Linux users spoof IE/Windows in their browser to allow certain poorly coded websites to function. While it likely won't account for more than a 0.5% difference, Linux usage IS a bit under reported.
Re:Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that just a bit out of date? Yeah, I know back when IE had 95% market share and there were extremely poor "there are no other browsers" sites out there that some did, but with IE at under 70%, Firefox at 20% and others at 10% are there I don't see how. Is there even a single site that would work on Firefox/Win but not Firefox/Lin? Or are you trying to say websites shut out 30% of the market? Sorry, but these days I'd call that wishful thinking.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
GP's point is still valid though. Microsoft's main profit point is neither Windows nor Office, it's synergy. Especially in the corporate office environment. They sell you the Windows, and the Windows works best with the Windows Server, and then well, you bought the Windows Server and the Exchange is not much more, so you get the Exchange... but the Exchange works Best with the Outlook, so you get the Outlook, which is MUCH cheaper as part of the Office, so you get the Office too. Hey! The SQL Server will grab auth info from the Active Directory! If you need a database, you should get the SQL Server, which works better with the IIS, which really wants the Visual Studios to develop the VB and ....
You get the idea. When you buy Windows you are often on the slippery slop of becoming a "Microsoft Shop" often one product at a time. But if you never buy Windows, why buy all that other stuff? If you replace Windows, most of that stuff becomes either unnecessary or counter productive. So if some little 100 man company replaces all of their Windows PCs with Macs, Microsoft hasn't just lost 100 Windows sales, chances are they've lost server sales, IIS sales, Exchange sales... On and on. Even if the company does get MS office, it's still a pretty big hit on what they COULD have bought. Now multiply that by 10 or 100 or 1000.
Microsoft is still in no danger of going out of business, but loss of desktop sales hurts them far beyond just the individual license sale lost. The main hole in GPs argument it that most of the lost Windows sales are for home use. The synergy is less important there. I wasn't buying a full fledged tech infrastructure for my house anyway, so MS hasn't lost many potential synergy sales because I bought a Mac or switched to Linux. Still some businesses are switching, so the tide MAY be turning, but it's going to be a long while before you see Apple or Linux get the kind of penetration on business workstations that they're starting to get in the home. (At least partially because a lot of businesses have already invested a fortune in those infrastructure synergies, and don't want to lose them)
Re:BSD is dead (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And Apple is near thier peak of marketshare (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Monopoloy (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I'm missing something here - or you are.
Example:
4 companies:
HHI = 33^2 + 33^2 + 33^2 + 1 = 3,268
HHI = 25^2 + 25^2 + 25^2 + 25^2 = 2,500
5 isn't even enough
HHI = 20^2 + 20^2 + 20^2 + 20^2 + 20^2 = 2,000
6 is though:
HHI = 17^2 + 17^2 + 17^2 + 17^2 + 16^2 + 16^2 = 1,668
I rather doubt it'd be a monopoly, if you had four companies with an exact even distribution of the market share. Much less so with 5, so either I misunderstood something, or you didn't explain what you meant.
The wiki page [wikipedia.org] skips these (somewhat unrealistic) scenarios as well, but since we're dealing with math, we should probably look at the cases where things "look odd".
Re:Good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Federal bailout? (Score:3, Insightful)
w00h00! The monopoly is broken! Microsoft will never dominate the operating system market like they used to again!
"Ding dong, the witch is dead, the wi..." Wait, 80 what percent? Rats.
Re:And Apple is near thier peak of marketshare (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason Apple sells is because they represent the high end and the stylish. Arguing Apple is stupid because it cannot grab 10% market share in the computer market makes just as much sense as arguing Rolex is stupid because it cannot grab 10% market share in the watches market, or Porsche is stupid because it cannot grab 10% market share in the cars market. Problem is - do these companies need to?
As Apple's venture with iPod and iPhone has shown, Apple can increase their profits by taking their brand and design and expanding into other markets, rather than go destroy their brand and combat the lower end PC markets. I'm not saying Apple is superior to HP, Dell, etc. But Apple's direction is fundamentally different from HP and Dell, it just doesn't make sense to judge Apple's success with HP/Dell's metric. It's like judging a fashion company from the viewpoint of a drugs company - it doesn't make sense.
Revenue and profit, a comparison (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, Microsoft makes a bit more than a billion dollars a week in gross revenue, and more than $930 million per week in profit.
Apple, on $32 Billion in revenue, makes a bit more than $11 billion in profit. Microsoft makes almost as much in a week as Apple does in a month.
Novell plus Red Hat? The two major Linux companies spend a year generating the revenue that Microsoft generates in a week and a half or so.
Google generates less than a third of Microsoft's revenue, and their gross profits are under $10 billion, less than Apple's.
Anyone who thinks that Microsoft doesn't have the resources to hire who it needs to in order to deal with changing market conditions is nuts. A few years ago, Intel was supposedly on the ropes. They changed direction, killed a few processors, and fairly quickly released the Core Duo processors and turned the company around. AMD was left flat-footed, and are only now even coming close to regaining their footing. I don't really care much whether Microsoft does, but I don't think people realize the difference in scale and the difference in resources that can be brought to bear. If Windows 7 works and gains acceptance, it won't matter that Vista had huge problems. And they're spending a ton on stuff like Sharepoint, which is a relatively unique product - and good enough to get a ton of organizations to tolerate vendor "lock in" to get the feature set.
Don't underestimate how much money they have and how many talented people they do have in much of the company. You can certainly compete with them and make money, but it's unlikely that even Google will be able to dislodge them any time soon.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:4, Insightful)
The labels intentionally gave Amazon the right to offer DRM free tracks to lessen Apple's negotiating power over them. Hasn't worked very well, ITMS is still the top seller of music.
Re:Monopoloy (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say that Apple's worse.
That's because you're an idiot.
When you buy a PC, you normally buy a box that happens to have Windows on it.
Yes, you buy an HP or a Dell and it comes with Windows on it. They both make more machines than Apple, and yet you aren't blathering about suing them.
and proprietary hardware
Name one part of a Mac that's proprietary. Then name all the parts that aren't and get back to us with the percentage.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that open source won't/can't accomplish some of the things you ask for.
Some are easy: unified sound architecture. Ok, that's pretty much done (see: ALSA).
Better graphics drivers: Well some of these are binary only, but both Nvidia and ATi have pretty decent drivers for Linux these days.
Filesystem that has a coherent layout? I personally think that the filesystem already makes plenty of sense, and since the OS that IS gaining ground on Windows (Mac OS X) uses the same Unix style layout, then I don't think it's a major factor.
Something other than X11? This could indeed work if done right. Notice how quickly people dumped XFree86 for the xorg fork for example. However, shifting from X11 would require a major, major push. Tons of applications that are no longer actively maintained (or at least not heavily maintained) simply aren't going to take the time to recode. Any replacement would HAVE to include a rootless X11 server as a seperate component. No problem there (Mac OS X has one and there are plenty available for Windows too), but if 99% of your applications just default to using the X11 server built into your new interface rather than the more raw mode, then you haven't accomplished much. Also, those drivers that Nvidia has put out are currently for xorg. It'll take another display method gaining SIGNIFICANT ground before they recode those things. In the transition phase people would have to live with subpar drivers.
So, there's the (somewhat) accomplishable goals. Then we get to:
One unified kick-ass desktop: not going to happen. At all. Linux is based on the concept that the userbase can write software as they see fit for their own use. There is no governing corporate board to choose one solution over another: by nature it's community driven. As such if somebody doesn't like a desktop, they'll write another. Prevent that ability and you destroy most of what's keeping the current Linux users loyal to the platform: freedom to modify, fork, etc.
Consistent look to applications: People tend to code to toolkits that they know. We have several established toolkits out there now: GTK and QT are the biggies. WxWindows, Tcl/tk, and others are minor but still significant. You're not going to get people to give up the ones that they like by choice, and to force them to would again kill freedom. About the best you could hope for here is a common skinning/theme engine that you could use to make both toolkits look similar, but I doubt they'd ever look completely consistent.
Klller apps that don't exist anywhere else? Most certainly not going to happen. Again, 99% of software for Linux is open source. If people like any of those programs they are going to port them to other platforms. That's a given. The only way to prevent that is to close the source and take it proprietary, but then you tick off your user base again. The small minority of commercial software for Linux certainly isn't going to code exclusively for it either. Why would someone code for a platform that is only 1% of the total market? It's financial suicide. The only business that would typically do that would be one trying to push the platform from some idealistic standpoint, but businesses that put ideals like that in front of profits don't tend to remain in business very long.