On October 22, Microsoft will unleash the much-anticipated Windows 7. After the commercial disaster that is Windows Vista, it is believed the new release will turn the tide for the world’s biggest software maker. A lot of people also believe it will put a halt to Mac OS X’s growth, but I personally think we need to remember the timeless quote form Steve Jobs: “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”
In anticipation of the Windows 7 release, and what it could possibly mean for Apple,BusinessWeek interviewed Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice-president for marketing. Schiller stated that Apple sees the release of Windows 7 as the best opportunity in years to further grow the Mac platform at the expense of Microsoft. “It presents a very good opportunity for us,” Schiller said.
Apple is planning to capitalise on the launch of Windows 7, and will launch a marketing campaign to lure people away from the Windows platform. The campaign will focus on promoting that Macs are more secure than Windows and are better suited to accompany iPods and iPhones. Apple will most likely also mention the upgrade hassles Windows 7 buyers will have to go through. “Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out,” Schiller believes, “If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?”
Microsoft doesn’t think the upgrade hassles are a problem, since more than 95% of Windows license sis sold through OEMs anyway – that is, on new machines. “For the vast majority of people that get Windows 7, most will move to new hardware,” said Parri Munsell, Microsoft’s director for consumer product management. In other words, the complicated upgrade paths won’t affect more than 95% of Windows buyers.
Schiller does not believe that Windows 7 will see the same upgrade rates as Snow Leopard, and he’s probably right on that one. “We’ve been through these transitions before, and no matter how you look at it – it’s still Windows,” says Schiller, “When all is said and done, the Mac picks up share a bit at a time.”
Everyone – and the media in particular – love a good fight, and the competition between Apple and Microsoft always receives a lot of that love. People like Joe Wilcox claim that the release of Windows 7 will put a stop to the slow but steady growth Apple’s Mac OS X has seen over the past few years.
People like Joe Wilcox don’t think properly. They do not seem to have a good grasp of the nature of the competition between Microsoft and Apple. Let me make it very clear: Windows and Mac OS X do not really compete – at least not directly. Apple sells computers, and Mac OS X just tags along. Microsoft sells operating system licenses and office software. On top of that, whereas Apple offers products in the higher price ranges, Microsoft mostly caters to the lower ends of the market. Maybe even more important is that Microsoft does not need to convince Mac users to switch to Windows – no, Microsoft’s real competition is Windows XP.
Apple and Microsoft more or less work around each other in the operating system business. “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” This is what Jobs said back at MacWorld 1997, when Microsoft more or less single-handedly saved Apple from certain doom. We’re 12 years down the line, and it is still valid: Windows 7 can be a massive success without Apple slowing down for one second.
That’s what I think is the most likely scenario. It’s not as exciting as Wilcox’ one, though. Sorry.
I believe one other thing is this: how many people with Intel Macs will be running Windows 7? In that case its a Win/Win for Apple and Microsoft, isn’t it? And there are people making Hackintoshes out there to consider – is that a win, sorta win, or loss for Apple (assuming the person actually buys a copy of the OS as well)? The only people possibly left out in the cold would be Mac owners with PPC models (like my boss and his dually G5, or my entire workplace) who cannot upgrade to Snow Leopard.
Either way, Apple is *really* selling Windows to its customers. Even after explicitly mentioning I do not wish to install Windows on my system, the guy at the premium reseller repeated his promotional talk on Parallels. It was kinda amazing.
Whilst change isnt something which comes quickly, the development of the mac market base has reached a point where it has mainstream, and everyone and his dog has access to the platform to try it out, and realise that it is a viable alternative to windows, the ipod and the brand recognition it has given has made sure of that. my prediction is that OS X will erode the Microsoft market/mindshare regardless of windows 7’s performance in the stores, as will Open Source platforms as people become more aware of what is available, the more linux is on netbooks/phones the more it will make its way into the desktop/laptop market
But i do wish someone would point Schiller to the pown to own competitions when he refers to mac security!
Mac is only mainstream in Nth America. OSX share in other developed countries varies between very low (Australia) to non-existent (Sth Korea). Linux is more popular in Brazil and Finland than OSX. In some parts of Australia the nearest Mac reseller is 1000km away. Even the capital cities only have a handful of Apple dealers. Yet every suburb and most small towns have a whitebox PC dealer.
OSX is very mainstream here in Sweden also. I’m not sure about the rest of Europe or even Scandinavia though. Of course it’s not as common as Windows but it seems that almost everyone wants a Mac if they could afford it.
How many cities in Australia, outside of metropolitan centers on the coastal regions have population densities that would justify a Mac store?
The closest Mac store for me in the US is nearly 300 miles away [Seattle].
It has nothing to do with population. Even the capital cities (between 2 and 5 million population) only have a handful of Mac resellers (mostly concentrating on the professional graphics market). My local university campus has nearly 35,000 students and staff. The campus computer shop has absolutely zero Mac hardware or software. I have seen no more than half a dozen Macs on campus during the past three years.
Yeah, the “osX is more secure than Windows” bit made me smile too. It’s fallen first the last two years and lacks good security design features even in the latest version release. The only place osX is more secure is in Apple’s marketing material.
I’d say only Apple could degrade Unix inherent security by design.. but then.. there is also Connonical with some interesting default config choices.
A PR disaster, maybe, but Vista wasn’t a commercial disaster.
Outside of the world of news blurbs there does exist a middle ground that products inhabit which is between blockbuster success and utter failure. You’d never know it from the headlines…
Still, the number of people upgrading their current machines wasn’t that good and that was noted.
Vista gained ground mostly in those new machines purchased.
Hopefully, for Microsoft, a lot of corporate accounts are ready to upgrade to Windows 7 and will already be in need of newer machines, if they held back from buying Vista.
That’s right!
Given enough RAM Vista is as fast as Win7. As intended.
Win7 can run with less RAM. As intended. People seem to miss that part and think Win7 is some super optimized thing.
I was using Vista x64 until Monday, when I took the time to upgrade to W7 RTM.
It is the first upgrade I’ve run since 3.11 to 95, and I was very impressed. As you mention, the system is notably snappier with W7 than Vista, but I don’t imagine it was related to any memory pressure under Vista. It is especially apparent when first logging in, which is more or less instantaneous now, but it extends to other areas.
At least in my case the standard advice of installing clean proved unnecessary, and the end result saved me quite a lot of time. Almost all of my programs came through unscathed. The ones that needed updated or reinstalled all made sense, like RSAT, VMWare, &c.
I was well enough pleased with Vista, but like almost everyone else, find W7 a nice improvement.
Edited 2009-10-15 23:13 UTC
Mac still has the price problem. As a student, I only had a budget of $400 to buy myself a laptop. I can’t even get the mac mini at that price. If it weren’t for netbooks, I would still be using my 450mhz P3 laptop with 20 minutes of battery life.
You’re using a netbook for school? [i assume college]
If you’ve not already, check into referbished Apple machines. You can probably get a pretty good condition second hand machine for a more affordable price.
In comparison to similar quality hardware, Apple is as expensive as other business quality brands. A Thinkbook is going to be within the same range. Both tend towards better hardware components. By comparison, a 400$ Dell is not likely assembled from similar quality parts.
If you go Netbook, be sure to consider what functions it has to do for you. The general features may do what you need for school but video and music playback may be questionable and you won’t be doing any big multimedia project editing on it.
I did take into consideration what functions it needed. It handles the standard definition recordings from my wmc PC fine, the 160GB HDD has plenty of space for music, and I really like the 5hr 30min of battery life I get.
The size is fine for doing open-office docs, spreadsheets, powerpoints, and light programming in my web design class. It’s small size also fits perfectly inside my backpack so I don’t need a carrying case.
@badtz: yes i’m using a netbook for school, no i’m a High-School student, senior year.
//no i’m a High-School student, senior year//
That explains it. Next!
We’ll see about that prediction, but I think Wilcox is spot-on that Windows 7’s primary competition is XP. Microsoft really does worry first about raw market share, and XP is the market leader by a long shot. Such comparisons against the Mac are apples-vs.-oranges, though, because Apple isn’t concerned about overall market share. They’re concerned about sales only in the middle-to-high end of the market, and hardware profit share. Apple sells computers, not OS licenses, and their share of the profits in the U.S. computer market is somewhere north of 25 percent. (Maybe way north.) But so even if it’s true that Microsoft isn’t concerned with Apple’s growing market share (which indeed is just a few single percentage points), is there any doubt that PC hardware makers are very much concerned about Apple’s growing profit share?
But so here’s a thought: What if the reason why most PCs are still running XP has nothing to do with whether Vista is “good†or “badâ€, but rather is the result of indifference on the part of whoever owns these untold millions of XP machines, be they at home or in a corporate IT environment. I.e., that switching to Vista, regardless of Vista’s merits, seemed like too much work and too much new stuff to learn; that the nature of the PC as a universal commodity is such that most of them belong to people who value “old and familiar†more than “new and improved but therefore differentâ€. If that’s the case, Windows 7 may not do any better than Vista. Perhaps Windows 7’s competition isn’t so much XP as it is apathy.
http://daringfireball.net/2009/10/microsofts_competition_for_window…
Edited 2009-10-15 23:31 UTC
dang reply button so close to the edit button….
Edited 2009-10-15 23:31 UTC
…I think we need to remember the timeless quote form Steve Jobs: “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”
Reasonable. However, when will Microsoft let go of the notion that for MS to win, everyone else has to be put out of business? Not in our lifetimes; I’d wager and probably never, as that would be tantamount to the death of Microsoft’s culture My 2 cents.
We don’t normally upgrade at work. One guy used to buy his own upgrades and do that. By XP’s release he’d been burned enough to knock that off. My work box will be 3yrs old in January, so I don’t expect to see it replaced for at least another year, and since I don’t do high end graphics or any video probably not then. I may go for a new home box later this year, but I won’t allow an MS O/S to ever boot on it. Yes, I am prejudiced.
You never know. Maybe once Ballmer is retired, we’ll see changes from Microsoft.
The only thing I can think of is that the chairs will breathe a little easier, but not much else will happen with MS’s culture as long as Gates is there.
Can I just say that I love OSNews because of the level-headed articles here. This article is a great demonstration of that quality. OSes are tools to get the work done, and this was probably the best analysis of Mac and Windows since a long time.
So wait, we’re not biased? D:
I think that’s the first time a Windows article hasn’t resulted in claims that we’re Windows fanboys. Perhaps it being about Windows and Apple meant that the two fanboy states cancelled each other out.
Stop replying to your other user.
Yeah. You guys are pretty level headed.
The article has hit the nail completely on the head, the real competition Microsoft faces with mostly all of their products is their earlier versions.
Trying to convince people that Windows 7 will offer something more than Windows XP is a hard sell to both consumers and businesses alike. Microsoft has an upward struggle trying to convince businesses / consumers, that office 2007 is better than earlier versions, that exchange 07 is better than earlier versions. I remember the effort Microsoft spent trying to convince businesses that Windows 2000 / 2003 server was a worthwhile upgrade from NT 4.0.
I read another article can’t remember if it’s from OSNews or from another site, that describes Mac’s marketshare growing after every release of Windows client.
I’ve gotta disagree with you on that. I’m running Windows 7 on a Dell XPS 420 desktop equipped with dual ATI digital cable tuners, and I must say … Windows Media Center in Win7 is reason enough — just by itself — to upgrade. There is no way that I’d go back to using Tivo or any of the other current PVRs for driving my HD home theater. It’s freaking awesome!
Now, granted, it’s true that the vast majority of people will never even REALIZE what Windows 7 can do (and actually succeeds quite well in doing), but that’s a different issue. If people knew, the choice between upgrading or not would overwhelmingly favor upgrading. XP can’t do any of this. Windows 7 can.
(Side note to the obvious retorts: I’m not interested in getting into a debate over Windows Media Center versus your-favorite-fill-in-the-blank-open-source-PVR here. No current open source PVR supports CableCard decryption, so it’s not even worth considering).
Edited 2009-10-17 00:19 UTC
I think that the lack of people rushing for upgrades is more to do with the fact that the web is the computer now. Why upgrade the OS when all you do is log on and open a browser? Where’s the incentive for people? Remember that many (most?) people don’t even have a clue what the operating system really is. I can’t think of any of my friends who do anything beyond surfing or downloading and copying music to their MP3 players now. Even Office apps are used less and less in the home in my recent experience with the pervasiveness of e-mail etc. I think that any OS maker is going to find it harder and harder to sell upgrades to an OS in the future.
“We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.”
Doesn’t mean we have to let go of the notion of wanting to see Microsoft going tits up and be removed from the face of the Earth. =)
I have a user in the US who recently upgraded from xp to Windows 7, XP mode included so that she could use both a legacy sales application in IE 6 and have the benefits of IE 8.
We’re talking about someone with 20+ years in marketing so she wouldn’t fit the definition of a power user. An enthusiastic user yes; power user no.
She loves windows 7.
Windows 7 is going to succeed because its technically a good product and because normal people are excited about it.
By contrast, I have 20 years in IT, and I’ve already pre-purchased two copies of Windows 7, been using RC1 since release as my main OS.
Best OS since XP SP2. Bar none.
hell no – they sell their computers by bundling osx with them!
if i’d had a chance, i would have bought cheaper alternatives most of the time. i’d never considered buying a mac from apple during the clone wars (ok, no osx back then, but the same bundling of os & pc).
on the other side, my little brother is mostly using winxp on his macbook. but i’d say that people which are buying macs because of the hardware and not because of the software are definitely a minority.
err, what? did i miss something? apple cut a deal with microsoft to end a long court case over stolen quicktime code. the $150m invested by microsoft weren’t even enough to pay for apples loss in one quarter back then. or if you look at it from the perspective of ms: it was as much as they earned by selling office for macs in a year.
MS made a deliberate choice to save Apple. They could have effortlessly destroyed Apple at the time by immediately abandoning Office and IE for Mac. The $150 million was also seen as a vote of confidence. MS only did this because they needed Apple to survive to prevent antitrust actions.
MS no longer needs Apple to prevent antitrust lawsuits so the 600lb MS gorilla is being let out of his cage again.
What is so bad in hurting Microsoft????
//”Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out,” Schiller believes, “If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?” //
Um .. because they’re _still_ overpriced?
Also … in the new Apple ads, I’m sure we’ll hear the usual crap about “viruses! and, um trojans! and oh .. BSODs! Crashes! Blah! Boo!”
1998 called, they want their errors back.
On one hand, there’s the option of finding one of the millions of techs that do Windows support and paying $50 to get it sorted out. Or pay (at least) $200-$300 more than an equivalent PC to buy a Mac – and Phil Schiller thinks that’s a good value proposition.
That’s all the current Apple ads do, they just rehash the same old tired, lazy arguments that Mac fanboys were using 10 years ago.
The really pathetic thing is the way Apple fanatics are actually gullible enough to think that the “I’m a Mac” ads are clever.
Don’t get me wrong, I find Apple hardware aesthetically pleasing, but I am an OS person. I prefer OS X over Windows. I prefer linux too. Just wish games worked better on both.
But I am running OS X on a PC right now. I do not currently have wireless, but since this is my workstation and my router is on the other side of the wall, I just hook directly into it. Things SEEM more natural to me on OS X. I know that is subjective and an invalid argument, but it is true. I always know where to look for things, I know how to get things done in terminal, and while I frequently feel like networking into our MS network is slower on OS X, it works fine.
I used and actually enjoyed Windows 7 from December 2008 to June 2009. It is very nice. But it just doesn’t FEEL as nice as OS X (or linux) and I think that is because I enjoy using a terminal, tweaking configuration files, etc.
I actually, recently, tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 but it failed every time with disk detection. Not sure why. So I did not bother researching it… the logs said something about volumes not being recognized as a valid form of the windows file system so it would not allow me to wipe the disk and start fresh. Weird.
Anyway, I have my two favorite games installed on OS X so I should be good for awhile, and I have all my work utilities, and personal programming utilities working on OS X so I’ll probably stay here for awhile. It’s comfortable. And even after 6 months of using Windows 7 I would still type “ls -la” at the CMD prompt.
Anyway, this is why I will continue to purchase OS X, with or without Apple hardware.
I agree the whole Apple vs. Microsoft thing is more a matter of sensationalist journalism than fact – Apple doesn’t want to compete with Microsoft, this is evident by the fact that as mentioned Microsoft doesn’t care what you run it on for hardware, while Apple has a their way or the highway approach to it. So far as Apple is concerned 3rd party ANYTHING is the ultimate evil – particularly where hardware is concerned. (which I suspect is the REAL reason behind the lack of expansion slots on anything less than $3K in price)
But I REALLY have to take issue with the repeated reference to them catering to the ‘high end’ of the market, since the ONLY thing high end about their product line is the price. I would say they cater more to the people with more money than brains.
Seriously, when the best system they offer below the Mac Pro is $3300 for a 24″ display, 3ghz Core 2, 8 gigs RAM and a crappy HD 4850 video card and a single 1tb hard drive, they are overcharging. Of course, most of that is the COMPLETELY ABSURD grand you end up spending on RAM since it only takes laptop form factor… but even so drop that to 4 gigs of ram and we’re still talking $2300 for the equivalent of sub grand HP or Dell… What are you getting for that extra $1300? An art *** form factor and glossy white plastic. (That has all the style of a recently sanitized hospital ward)… and if you REALLY need that artsy all in one, look at a Dell XPS Studio “All in One” (which is around $1400 and nets you a quad core).
Let’s look at the cheapest iMac, shall we?
2.66ghz Core 2 duo
2 gigs RAM
320 gig hard drive
Ge9400m video
20″ display at 1680×1050
$1199.00
Let’s see… Acer Aspire AX1700?
2.66ghz Core 2 Duo E7300 (holy ****, they tell you WHICH processor)
4 gigs RAM
750 gig hard drive
nVidia G100 video (g100==9400m==7600GT for all intents and purposes)
$419.99 @ newegg…. leaving enough left over to buy damned near any 24″ LCD you wanted. (Samsung B24?)
CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 7212
Athlon II X2 245 (2.9ghz)
4 gigs RAM
500gb hard drive
Ge9500GT
$539.99 @ newegg, again leaving enough left over for any 24″ display you could ever want.
Acer Aspire AM5800
2.5ghz Core 2 Quad Q8300
6 gigs RAM
640gb hard drive
ATI HD 4650
$609.99… Hmm, see a trend here on what’s left over for display?
Oh, but it’s all about the high end
Is that why their high end uses overpriced outdated (by todays standard) Xeons, and at $2500 only comes with 3 gigs of RAM and a 640 gig hard drive, and good **** luck getting a decent video card for it since they condsider the GT120 ‘high end’… the best they offer being a 512 meg HD4870? ***** PLEASE. Maybe it’s because they have the balls to charge $150 to go FROM 3 gigs to 6 gigs? I know, maybe there’s some magical Kooality (with a captial K) that makes adding a second 640 gig hard drive worth $200 or a second 1tb $300? I know, how about $100 to go from a 640 primary to a 1tb – more than the street price of the drive itself? (Must be that Apple magic convincing you a **** drive like a Hibachi Deathstar is worth money)
When for under $1500 I can go out and build a whitebox (or have built for me by a local mom & pop) i7920 with a GTX260 and more RAM and disk storage than three iMacs? Apple products as “High end” my tuckus.
Seriously, every time I hear about someone buying an Apple, ESPECIALLY today now that it’s the same hardware base, all I can think is “Christ, are people out there REALLY that ***** STUPID?!?” — which is doubly funny coming from an agnostic AND a former Apple tech.
But maybe that’s the Apple tech in me having seen Apple products at their worst – in other words the insides… where they put insulating foam instead of heat sinks and underclock the CPU on the G3 iBooks until it burns a hole clear through the dialup adapter – where they intentionally avoid anything resembling airflow just for aesthetic reasons – where they issue warnings that iBooks and macBooks aren’t laptops and should not be used on your lap – where they sell displays advertised as 16.7 million color when in fact they were only 262K color (almost ALL the first gen intel iMacs) making them unsuitable for the artists who are their alleged target group – from magnetic connectors that cause disk corruption, fray and have even caught fire – intentionally nuetering PCMCIA slots so only broadcom chipset wireless cards can be plugged in and work – intentionally crossing two wires so that 3rd party optical drives cannot be connected internally – using the parity bit on RAM slots NOT for parity but so you have to buy memory from them (that’s going back to the 68030/68040 days)
Given their sleazeball business practices, over the top absurd markup, and completele lack of anything approaching what I would call style or quiality on their recent products, I really do wonder what the **** is in the kool aid.