Gruber: Microsoft’s Competition for Windows 7 | Hacker News Reader

Gruber: Microsoft’s Competition for Windows 7

daringfireball.net

42 pointsharpastum39 comments

I think it's a fair point to say that apathy is Windows 7's biggest competitor. I would never recommend somebody "upgrade" their home computer to Windows 7, I might recommend they buy a new computer with Windows 7. There is a school of though "if it aint broke don't fix it" which really does dominate.

ps. I do have a home machine - it runs Windows XP. My laptop (newer) does run Vista - I work on a bunch of terminal windows connected to a linux box (which has been up for 600 days).

Apathy is the biggest competitor to any upgrade - you simply have to give enough reasons to upgrade. The price probably outweighs these benefits, but if price isn't an issue I'd recommend the upgrade.

From my POV, the biggest cost of an upgrade to W7 isn't the dollars, but the need to completely rebuild my environment. That's many hours of work, probably burning an entire weekend plus several evenings.

I can't fathom why MS didn't work their tails off to make the upgrade path from XP to W7 as easy as possible. It's like they're being spiteful, just saying "we told you that you should upgrade to Vista".

But since XP is really their competition, and they need to minimize the costs -- not just monetary -- to the upgrade, why do they make it so hard?

That's a great point. Windows 7 is one of the first Microsoft operating systems in a while that is suitable to upgrade older hardware with. Do they have any option to at least transfer the home directory and installed apps to the fresh install?

Can you elaborate? I didn't encounter this at all.

Geese, what made your Linux box crash? ;)

UPS Failure at the colo

Exactly, and this is also the reason many people are still using IE6. If your computer does the things you want - sends email, browses your favorite websites, lets you write a letter, maybe plays music - then what's the point?

Until recently, Apple's market has indeed been these "straw-man fanboys" - people that will always upgrade to Apple's newest kit, covet their latest OS or shiny thing. But that's not the case any more, and Apple have been selling to the common man, and they're eventually going to get bitten by the same bug as Microsoft - consumer apathy - as their market share rises.

I have a Macbook running Tiger, and a PC running XP. The only OS I regularly upgrade is Ubuntu, and only then because it's (almost) automatic.

It's not entirely consumer apathy.

There is a perception among Windows users that you don't "upgrade" Windows. You get a new machine with a new version of Windows, and then you spend a lot of time trying to get all of your files moved over and your programs working again. And then, after all that -- the user interface looks different. Things have moved around. You'll have to spend some time learning how to use your computer again.

Meanwhile, the perception among Apple users is that they can put in a disk, run an installer, and they get to upgrade their old hardware to run the new thing. There might be a few user interface differences, but most of them are subtle. They don't have to learn how to use their computer all over again, and somehow it's better now.

In both cases, the perception isn't quite reality, but that doesn't matter. Those perceptions are both Apple's strength and Microsoft's weakness in the vast majority of their markets.

Essentially Mac users get used to the upgrades, which are much more incremental, fairly painless, and much cheaper. Mac OS X also seems to actually get faster (Quartz Extreme, launchd, 64bit+LLVM) with every major release, rather than slower.

I find the argument that piracy is bad for Microsoft be so far from the truth. Are you kidding me? They practically owe their market share to the fact that the choice isn't "learn linux" or "pay for windows" it's "learn linux" or "get windows somehow". People would never buy vista for $400, but if their friend "fixes" their computer and all of a sudden it looks different, great!

I learned to program in windows because that's what was there. That's what my games (that I pirated when I was 13) ran on. They are ubiquitous because of piracy. I would love it if they could magically make windows "unpiratable". There is no way they would do it.

When Mercedes releases a new E-Class, Honda doesn't start shaking in its boots about declines in Civic sales.

Gruber is right; the markets for Windows and Mac OS are becoming more and more orthogonal.

And it’s really depressing that this whole stupid Apple v Microsoft thing is still the great epic story being told in (nearly) every press article or news report.

Stories sell better than facts.

And yet, I don't recall the last Apple ad I've seen where they weren't taking a direct swipe at MS.

Apple, too. Sure. But Apple’s PR folk are not the journalists.

Apple very much realizes that they're after a completely different segment of the market than MS is, but they also realize that many consumers cannot clearly see where one segment starts and the other one ends, because, if all you ever had was a Windows PC, then computers aren't all that different to you.

With their ads, Apple is trying to inform those consumers that there is an alternative.

What does it mean that a market is becoming more orthogonal? Is it that they are moving in different directions and that they are aimed at different kinds of consumers?

"Disjoint" is probably more accurate.

Except in this case neither can agree which one is Mercedes and which one is Honda.

MS will never admit to be uncool and workmanlike, and Apple will say their machines can run just as well in big enterprises.

"I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person."

– Microsoft Laptop Hunters ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIS6G-HvnkU

Obviously cool here is meant as wasteful or snobbish, but it shows Microsoft is fine painting themselves as the frugal, not-exclusive brand.

I know! Right or wrong, Apple has got to love this, they have a cult following of "cool" people. I totally appreciate the sex appeal of the hardware.

Having tested some clean installs of Windows 7, it really is a very smooth process (much improved over XP) -- at least for the somewhat technical user. I have not tested upgrading from XP to Windows 7, but it's probably not a good idea.

Regarding the learning curve, most users will probably view Windows 7 as just an enhanced version of their old XP system. The taskbar and menus are still there and as long as they can find the big 'E' and "W" buttons in the taskbar they are fine.

I don't think Windows 7 will have much of an impact on Mac sales either way. Most users that were tired of XP probably switched to a Mac (if they were able to choose).

I'm sure Windows 7 will do fine. Microsoft has a captive market for the most part. Eventually these XP machines will need to be replaced and it's very unlikely a large number of those people who have been happy with a ~10 year old OS will suddenly become interested in the virtues of OSX or Linux. Linux on netbooks was a threat to Microsoft briefly but it was never capitalized on. Most of the Linux distributions shipped on netbooks are really subpar. Hopefully ChromeOS, Moblin, and Android can change that. HP's Linux UI is quite nice also. The big question is how hard they'll push this when Microsoft is offering Windows 7 for netbooks so cheaply to OEMs.

I think the article is a little short sighted. While He definitely presents a possible scenario, I don't think it will be that simple.

I've been running Windows 7 64-bit on my home machine for quite some time (legally, first RC, then RTM) and it really is a rather nice OS. It's very polished among other improvements I wont go into now.

I think what the article underestimates is peoples willingness to try what they consider good.

Think, twitter. Another blogging site, really? The Sopranos. Yet another mafia show?

People will use what they or their friends consider good. I think Windows 7 will be fine, if for no other reason that as mentioned above, those XP machines will need to be replaced eventually.

I think the fact that you are not representative of most Windows users is Gruber's whole thesis, and you haven't really addressed it with this comment.

I'm doing tech support for people on my block running machines from 2002-2003. They don't need anything that Win7 offers; they use their computers to get on the web and edit Word documents and that's it.

By that reasoning they haven't needed any of the new technology to come out since Win98. I don't see why that's a mark against Win7.

Who said it was? Gruber's post isn't about whether Win7 is any good.

Right... the reason XP has hung on so strongly is that it was finally a Microsoft OS that did what most people wanted without crashing or locking up all the time. When you have a stable OS that meets your needs, why change (especially if you are a business and you need to justify expenses with a bit more of a rationale than "ooh, that's pretty, I want it"

Not true. Since most hardware and software manufacturers dropped their support for Win98, users have been forced to move to WinXP (that, and the fact that their old computers got so mucked up with viruses/spyware that it was cheaper(!) to buy a new computer than clean off the virus/spyware mess).

In other words, s/Win98/WinXP/ and you will be correct, but that was tptacek's point exactly.

I appreciate your stance, but you completely missed my point.

The point was that users aren't exactly rational. Sure, they won't need a new OS, but Windows 7 is good, and on that merit alone people, especially with old XP machines, will switch.

While I don't like to argue with analgies, it is fitting here.

The example I made was the Sopranos. When the creator set out to write the show, he was told it would fail, as people didn't need another mafia show. After all, the Godfather came out in the 70s and there have been multiple similarly themed shows/movies since.

In summary, the only thing I was trying to point out, is that when people like something, they will get it. Regardless of whether they need it or not. For yet another easy example, people don't need a new ipod every 6 months, yet they continue to sell.

Another argument to be made here is that Apple can argue that if you are going to have to "learn" a new OS anyway, why not "learn" OS X? I am very skeptical that the release of Windows 7 (as good as it might be) will slow the market gains Apple has seen.

The gap between XP and OS X is properly larger than the gap between XP and Windows 7.

I have seen how developers are treated on the IPhone, are Mac developers treated any better?

You're talking two entirely separate ballparks. On the Mac, Apple has no ability to block products from release. Furthermore, the environment of OS X seems to be a positive reenforcement for developers, because I've seen more beautiful software here than I see anywhere else. Hell, I can't think off the top of my head if I've ever seen an elegant minimalist interface on another operating system. Closest I can think of is the Ribbon system on Microsoft Office, which they unfortunately ruined in the transition to OS X.

Computers aren't getting faster as quick as they used to (certainly not to Moore's Law) so the Microsoft strategy that always assumed faster hardware, is a flop. Which means a properly optimised OS can sell more, ultimately (eg, no endless layers of graphical libraries just to draw a textbox in a GUI).

To me, the flag that tells me that Windows 7 is getting a lot of traction is when I see applications that only run on Windows 7. When developers are willing to use the new features and sacrifice XP sales, then things are going well.

I think he is correct in his apathy theory, but if Facebook and YouTube told these XP/IE users that they no longer could use their sites until they'd upgraded, millions would get off their lazy butts and upgrade from XP and or IE.

the article seems to reference a format and reinstall. I'm quite sure an upgrade path exists for windows 7, why would they bother with the xp virtualisation for older programs with no way to upgrade and keep those programs.

You can do an in-place upgrade from some versions of Vista to some versions of 7. See this official Microsoft chart for details:

http://www.macalope.com/files/windows-upgrade-chart.png

Note that 'Custom Install' means a clean install.

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