Businesses that started before the advent of cloud software will continue to use QuickBooks because that's what the owners know, and why fix something that isn't broken? But newer businesses that started in the last few years will be much more likely to use cloud software because it's so much more convenient.
One of the accountants I know considers herself computer savvy (she's not, but that's a different topic) and she's pretty young (30s) and she insisted I build her a server for her business to run Quickbooks off of. She won't trust a cloud solution, or even a remotely hosted server. Some of this fear seems to be based on the seminars she goes to which are either held by or attended by FBI special agents. They are pretty good at telling you all the ways you may be hacked, and precious little practical advice on how to avoid that while staying sane.
The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client computing in different ways.
I haven't seen any issues with apps though, so I have to dispute this claim. We just moved 5,000 employees from Windows 7 to 10, and it went far smoother than anyone really expected - everything just works. It's a wide range of apps too, everything from in-house WPF apps to CAD and engineering software.
IE11 support will go away at some point. Many of those apps are now being updated to work on Chrome -- I know of a few large shops that aren't testing IE or Edge anymore for internal apps!
I do agree that they did a heroic effort on making the update process incredibly reliable. Most non-prehistoric applications transition seamlessly.
Note that I personally equate Windows 10 and the subscription "Office 365 ProPlus". The layers of complexity are astounding. I present to you what I call the "Office 365 ProPlus Build Decoder Ring" - https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Version-and-build-n...
Windows 10 itself has about 8-10 releases that an enterprise needs to think about. Transition from release to release has gotchas and additional Windows-Office gotchas. (For example, the way Office authenticates changes in certain builds) (See: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows-10/release-inf...)
Tablets are rapidly taking over the market for cash registers.
Or the restaurants or cocktail bars that happen to have tablets instead of paper menus.
They started with iPads, but as their chains got bigger they moved to a mix of Android and W10 tablets.
Source, personal anecdote getting out of the menu app into the OS.
Most of the tablets I've seen in stores and restaurants are actual iPad hardware, the virtual keyboard used when entering information is the iOS keyboard, and the Square app follows the Apple design guidelines.
And the rare occasions when I encounter an Android tablet, I recognize it from the virtual keyboard. Case in point: the food hall I mentioned in my above post. When you buy something, it asks you if you'd like to enter your phone number so they can text you when your order's ready. When I chose to enter my number, I instantly recognized the keyboard for that as the Android 4.x keyboard.
On top of that shop owners tends to rely more on local vendors for cash machines, and many of those still heavily built atop of the Windows ecosystems. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if W10 surpassed Android for this kind of appliance. Here in France I often see waiters use device with old school stylus on UI with really small buttons. I'm not even sure what OS this is to be honest.
Or as alternative go to a local games developer meeting group.
There were plenty of them in San Jose at GDC, from what was shown on the live streams.
People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10.
Android devs are to blame, given the little effort to adapt phone apps to tablets.
I know what I see when I go into a store, travel across Europe and look around for what the other passengers are using.
If you feel vindicated by posting some random link asserting you are right, so be it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...
And yet they still account for the majority of tablet sales.
>People are either going for iPads, or hybrid laptops runnig W10.
The W10 tablet market share is so low they barley even register. In fact, Microsoft Surface tablets aren't even visible on the following graph:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276635/market-share-held...
any major players? entire healthcare industry is married to microsoft, at least the big names. same for lots of major enterprises that i know of
Get rid of CAL's. Charge a fixed price for a certain # of simultaneously running Windows instances, no matter how you run it. Even charging an ongoing subscription for this would be acceptable. Simplify the licensing situation for SMBs wanting to run an on-premise redundant systems, without needing diagrams to explain the difference between running, standby, CAL's, virtualization, etc.
If you're developing software for a platform, trying to figure out how to optimally license that platform should be the least of your concerns, so you can focus on your product.
I've supported several Windows-centric SMB accounting platforms, including QuickBooks and trying to figure out the right way to license just Windows, in order to support High-availability or redundancy is headache-inducing at the SMB-sized server level.
I evaluated a bunch of other products, like QuickBooks, Curdbee, etc. but always ended up coming back to FreshBooks and have been with them consistently since about 2010.
Their customer support team is also great. I've only had one or two issues with the system, but in each case, they were quick to respond and help me resolve the issue.
The hardest part of running a small business for me is collecting money from customers, and FreshBooks makes that easy. FreshBooks allows me to connect with my customers in ways I wasn't able to before and it has reduced the process of billing to just a few clicks I have to do once a week; allowing me to focus on the services I provide instead of data entry and invoice tracking.
I hope that helps.