DoctorZettabyte
02-18-2008, 5:48 PM
I thought I could finish this a week ago, but then I realized I was writing a freakin novel in the process, and I dropped the ball. The tech annex is a better spot for this editorial because Microsoft + Gaming = Fail. Here goes.
So, dear readers, let us embark once again down editorial alley into a more personal, close to home topic instead of a (however broad) niche of gaming.
Before we begin, I’d like to state that this is not a “bash M$, Apple’s 1337, Google is a godsend” thread. I’m a firm believer in Microsoft’s ability as a business, and this is strictly a commentary on the business world today.
As we learn the details of Microsoft’s rejection by Yahoo, what does this signify?
Well, a lot of things. Let’s start at the top.
In the early and mid nineties, Microsoft Corporation was making tremendous gains on all fronts. 95 and 98 were both excellent operating systems, despite a few flaws, and they both did an excellent job of incorporating computing into modern society, like businesses and schools, raking in a sizable profit to boot. The only real threat to Microsoft was Netscape, the top competitor of Internet Explorer. MS had partnered with NBC to create a joint news corporation, MSNBC, and Yahoo was a simple search service. Apple, at this point, was facing troubling times, as their new Mac platforms had not sold well, and money had been getting tighter as IBM had decided to partner with Microsoft. A dynasty in computing had been built in just inside a decade, and nobody could have predicted what the next decade would bring.
The end of the nineties into the start of the new millennium saw a flurry of OS’s from Microsoft. 2000, ME, 98SE, and our beloved (or hated) XP were launched within three years. It also saw the creation of Google, and Yahoo had become an enormous internet mogul. Apple was buying out companies left and right, and it was about to resurge into a major media corporation and Microsoft’s main competitor through the middle of the decade. Things remained quiet until one fine day, people suddenly started to listen to the music. On their iPods, no less. Image searching was made fast and easy through Google, so people would begin to Photoshop these images for their desktop backgrounds.
Gone were the days of crawling through MSN Search for links to images. Gone were the days of fooling around in MSPaint because good image editing was expensive. Gone were the days where people tolerated BSODs every other minute. And with those days went Microsoft’s security as the top company in technology.
Seven years later, Apple’s market share nears the 15% mark, the highest it’s been since the days of Apple II. Google has stormed the internet and wrested control from Yahoo and AOL, and if this goes where common sense predicts, Google will develop its own OS, or its own portable media device, etc, and eventually become Microsoft 2.0.
Let’s see where Microsoft went wrong, starting with Apple.
Hard to believe, but long before you were born (if you’re older than, I don’t know, 15, you know this), Microsoft worked for Apple, making word processing apps for their OS’s, notably the II and Mac I. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were considered friends. Look how far we’ve come. In 2001, right around the launch of XP, Apple launched its now most profitable device of the last 15 years, the iPod. Bulky and expensive, this monochromatic mp3 player didn’t even have iTunes with it. That’s right kiddies, a world without mp3’s. All manual searching and downloading on a blazing fast 56k modem. Whoopee.
Microsoft was launching nice, sleek updates to Windows Media Player, and it was the player of choice then, as Winamp was still somewhat buggy and didn’t have much of a fanbase. Then, in 2003, the world changed for the…music industry. iTunes was launched, making it quick and easy to download songs.
Microsoft’s answer? Nothing.
Apple exploded back onto the scene almost every year with a new iPod generation, like one that has color, or a backlight, or a bigger hard drive. Everything got better for Apple. And still, MS waited.
2007 saw the first end-user OS release for Microsoft since XP in 2001. Vista had a sleek new design, few security holes and was promised to be all-around better than its predecessor. Months later, we’re still waiting for that, as Vista is widely considered a failed business enterprise. Apple released Leopard, its latest update to Mac OS in late 2007 as well, with a better interface and newer security patches. In 2006, Apple also partnered with Intel to make better processors for Macs than ever, making Apple a now tough competitor for hardware as well as software. How does this affect MS? Well, in a lot of ways, this is most of how Microsoft will lose its empire.
Macs continually get cheaper and come pre-loaded with nifty software to get users creating their own content immediately, so they can share and publish it quickly and with ease. Microsoft has…the Office Suite and Windows Movie Maker. While nice and relatively easy to use, they’re simply flat tools.
The gap between Vista and XP has also been a major factor for Microsoft’s failure. XP has been streamlined over the years, security threats have been closed, and the UI is familiar to anyone who uses it regularly. Fixing it and developing for it are simple tasks, and XP is very slim in terms of HDD space and resource usage. Vista, on the other hand, is a system hog, doubling the requirements of most programs just to get them off the ground. When starting up Vista, sure, people know mostly how to use it, but there’s still a lingering unfamiliarity with it. Icons that have been a staple of Windows since 3.1 and 95 are gone, replaced with shiny blue counterparts that many people can’t get accustomed to easily. Network code is shoddy, making music quality priority over connection speed and bandwidth by default. While the requirements for Vista are somewhat low in today’s market, Microsoft is making a tremendous jump from 128 Megs of RAM to 1GB of RAM as a requirement. A lot of people don’t have 1GB of RAM. Those of us who can and do use Vista have almost certainly seen the compatibility issues surrounding it. Drivers are buggy, most products don’t have Vista drivers, and most of our games, like StarCraft, weren’t designed for Vista. By most of our standards, Vista is a failure. People like XP.
This leaves an open market for better OS’s and newer companies and cheaper hardware to move in and take the top spot as operating system mogul. Linux is gaining a huge following, not just by webmasters and business server networks, but around the globe, police forces, governments and school systems are making the switch to various forms of Linux.
Okay, so I wanted to cover MSN and Google too, and maybe move into the console arena, but I only got around to Apple & co. Thoughts?
-DocTera
So, dear readers, let us embark once again down editorial alley into a more personal, close to home topic instead of a (however broad) niche of gaming.
Before we begin, I’d like to state that this is not a “bash M$, Apple’s 1337, Google is a godsend” thread. I’m a firm believer in Microsoft’s ability as a business, and this is strictly a commentary on the business world today.
As we learn the details of Microsoft’s rejection by Yahoo, what does this signify?
Well, a lot of things. Let’s start at the top.
In the early and mid nineties, Microsoft Corporation was making tremendous gains on all fronts. 95 and 98 were both excellent operating systems, despite a few flaws, and they both did an excellent job of incorporating computing into modern society, like businesses and schools, raking in a sizable profit to boot. The only real threat to Microsoft was Netscape, the top competitor of Internet Explorer. MS had partnered with NBC to create a joint news corporation, MSNBC, and Yahoo was a simple search service. Apple, at this point, was facing troubling times, as their new Mac platforms had not sold well, and money had been getting tighter as IBM had decided to partner with Microsoft. A dynasty in computing had been built in just inside a decade, and nobody could have predicted what the next decade would bring.
The end of the nineties into the start of the new millennium saw a flurry of OS’s from Microsoft. 2000, ME, 98SE, and our beloved (or hated) XP were launched within three years. It also saw the creation of Google, and Yahoo had become an enormous internet mogul. Apple was buying out companies left and right, and it was about to resurge into a major media corporation and Microsoft’s main competitor through the middle of the decade. Things remained quiet until one fine day, people suddenly started to listen to the music. On their iPods, no less. Image searching was made fast and easy through Google, so people would begin to Photoshop these images for their desktop backgrounds.
Gone were the days of crawling through MSN Search for links to images. Gone were the days of fooling around in MSPaint because good image editing was expensive. Gone were the days where people tolerated BSODs every other minute. And with those days went Microsoft’s security as the top company in technology.
Seven years later, Apple’s market share nears the 15% mark, the highest it’s been since the days of Apple II. Google has stormed the internet and wrested control from Yahoo and AOL, and if this goes where common sense predicts, Google will develop its own OS, or its own portable media device, etc, and eventually become Microsoft 2.0.
Let’s see where Microsoft went wrong, starting with Apple.
Hard to believe, but long before you were born (if you’re older than, I don’t know, 15, you know this), Microsoft worked for Apple, making word processing apps for their OS’s, notably the II and Mac I. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were considered friends. Look how far we’ve come. In 2001, right around the launch of XP, Apple launched its now most profitable device of the last 15 years, the iPod. Bulky and expensive, this monochromatic mp3 player didn’t even have iTunes with it. That’s right kiddies, a world without mp3’s. All manual searching and downloading on a blazing fast 56k modem. Whoopee.
Microsoft was launching nice, sleek updates to Windows Media Player, and it was the player of choice then, as Winamp was still somewhat buggy and didn’t have much of a fanbase. Then, in 2003, the world changed for the…music industry. iTunes was launched, making it quick and easy to download songs.
Microsoft’s answer? Nothing.
Apple exploded back onto the scene almost every year with a new iPod generation, like one that has color, or a backlight, or a bigger hard drive. Everything got better for Apple. And still, MS waited.
2007 saw the first end-user OS release for Microsoft since XP in 2001. Vista had a sleek new design, few security holes and was promised to be all-around better than its predecessor. Months later, we’re still waiting for that, as Vista is widely considered a failed business enterprise. Apple released Leopard, its latest update to Mac OS in late 2007 as well, with a better interface and newer security patches. In 2006, Apple also partnered with Intel to make better processors for Macs than ever, making Apple a now tough competitor for hardware as well as software. How does this affect MS? Well, in a lot of ways, this is most of how Microsoft will lose its empire.
Macs continually get cheaper and come pre-loaded with nifty software to get users creating their own content immediately, so they can share and publish it quickly and with ease. Microsoft has…the Office Suite and Windows Movie Maker. While nice and relatively easy to use, they’re simply flat tools.
The gap between Vista and XP has also been a major factor for Microsoft’s failure. XP has been streamlined over the years, security threats have been closed, and the UI is familiar to anyone who uses it regularly. Fixing it and developing for it are simple tasks, and XP is very slim in terms of HDD space and resource usage. Vista, on the other hand, is a system hog, doubling the requirements of most programs just to get them off the ground. When starting up Vista, sure, people know mostly how to use it, but there’s still a lingering unfamiliarity with it. Icons that have been a staple of Windows since 3.1 and 95 are gone, replaced with shiny blue counterparts that many people can’t get accustomed to easily. Network code is shoddy, making music quality priority over connection speed and bandwidth by default. While the requirements for Vista are somewhat low in today’s market, Microsoft is making a tremendous jump from 128 Megs of RAM to 1GB of RAM as a requirement. A lot of people don’t have 1GB of RAM. Those of us who can and do use Vista have almost certainly seen the compatibility issues surrounding it. Drivers are buggy, most products don’t have Vista drivers, and most of our games, like StarCraft, weren’t designed for Vista. By most of our standards, Vista is a failure. People like XP.
This leaves an open market for better OS’s and newer companies and cheaper hardware to move in and take the top spot as operating system mogul. Linux is gaining a huge following, not just by webmasters and business server networks, but around the globe, police forces, governments and school systems are making the switch to various forms of Linux.
Okay, so I wanted to cover MSN and Google too, and maybe move into the console arena, but I only got around to Apple & co. Thoughts?
-DocTera