Is Microsoft's end near?

Tahuti

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Is it?

First, take the following given's into account:

1) Microsoft Windows had the monopoly on PC-gaming with things such as DirectX. That seems about to change: Apple gaming is increasingly accepted, and soon Valve will launch a Linux version of Steam. In this pace, Microsoft Windows won't be alone on the PC-gaming market soon. In fact, it already isn't.
2) Casual users find Apple increasingly appealing.
3) Windows 8

If anything, Microsoft seems to be on the decline.
 
Not even close.

1) PC gaming isn't a particularly important market, and MS is still dominating it, Apple is just getting casual titles for users who'd be using Apple anyway and Linux is negligible (not just from the gaming perspective) on the desktop.

2) Apple is increasingly appealing, their PCs weren't very good before Intel, and they had neither worthwhile other products nor an ecosystem. They're still underselling wrt value with their PCs but overselling with their phones and tablets.

3) Windows 8 is pretty good.
 
1) PC gaming isn't a particularly important market
It generally drives innovation in the industry, so while it may not be that important profit wise, it is quite important on the whole.

and MS is still dominating it, Apple is just getting casual titles for users who'd be using Apple anyway and Linux is negligible (not just from the gaming perspective) on the desktop.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/02/28...growing-desktop-os-up-64-percent-in-9-months/
If this pace continues, Linux will become a serious contender for Windows alongside OSX.

2) Apple is increasingly appealing, their PCs weren't very good before Intel, and they had neither worthwhile other products nor an ecosystem. They're still underselling wrt value with their PCs but overselling with their phones and tablets.
Doesn't matter, Apple is beating the crap out of Microsoft anyhow (and note that I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of imagination).

3) Windows 8 is pretty good.
No comment :p
 
It generally drives innovation in the industry, so while it may not be that important profit wise, it is quite important on the whole.

And the MS stack is still the premier location for PC gaming - and they're soon going to have DirectX across PC/mobile/console.


http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/02/28...growing-desktop-os-up-64-percent-in-9-months/
If this pace continues, Linux will become a serious contender for Windows alongside OSX.

That's what they've been saying every year for the past decade.


Doesn't matter, Apple is beating the crap out of Microsoft anyhow (and note that I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of imagination).

What? Apple is beating the crap out of MS in mobile marketshare, not much else.


No comment :p

Well, I'll elaborate anyway. Pretty much every complaint I see about Windows 8 amounts to "Whaaaa, I don't like change. :cry:", which is the same thing that happens every time a new OS comes out.
 
Zelig is correct on everything he's said here.

Rebranding an increase in market share from slightly less than 1% to slightly more than 1% as a 64% increase is a truly Jobsworthy deception.

EDIT: I just read this comment on an unrelated zdnet article that struck a chord with me:

"Microsoft could release 10 bad versions of Windows and I'd still stick with them. It's not that I like them, it's just that native Linux software will always be 10 times worse than the worst crap Windows has to offer. Hell, I hated Vista with a passion, it was a nightmare to use, and still I'd gladly choose it over any Linux distribution. Linux people don't realize this because Linux people don't do anything of value on their silly little permission boxes."
 
Is it?

First, take the following given's into account:

1) Microsoft Windows had the monopoly on PC-gaming with things such as DirectX. That seems about to change: Apple gaming is increasingly accepted, and soon Valve will launch a Linux version of Steam. In this pace, Microsoft Windows won't be alone on the PC-gaming market soon. In fact, it already isn't.
2) Casual users find Apple increasingly appealing.
3) Windows 8

If anything, Microsoft seems to be on the decline.

What about Windows 8? The Metro UI seems pretty brilliant, and full of it's own brand of 'chicness' with simple power user features. It seems pretty competitive with what people like in an Apple OS over traditional Windows.
Also I still think of Apple OS as an acquired, trendy taste, that is more acknowledged in public. 95% of the time I'm offered a public computer though, it's on a Windows OS computer. I'm an ingrained user since MS-DOS and Windows 3 days.

Linux is not trusted by the mass public, but is still a techie thing, even if some installations don't require a high level of education; the same could be said for Windows. Mass public who buy pre-installed OS, pre-built systems don't ask for Linux, they get Windows or Apple OS.

Direct X hasn't been the only gaming in town for a long time, and I don't find Direct X 11 to be particularly threatened by competition. I.e. I think it's perfectly competitive but not the sole reason why someone uses Windows in the same way that computer gaming isn't the sole reason why people own computers.

And PC gaming only drives the video card and peripherals market; I'd even question that it drives video displays. It'd be silly to say it drives other components when PC gaming has been slow to adopt features like multi-core threading.
 
The Xbox should last at least one more generation, and MS has a big enough user base right now that if it continues to play its cards right it can take many of these users with it in its efforts to broaden itself from strictly being a big player in the desktop & laptop market. MS will be fine. Also the vast majority of the business market is windows based as far as I know.

I hopped on the Android bandwagon for phones (after ditching the iphone 3G), and I never got into the tablet market, but years from now, who knows? I certainly would prefer a device integrated with my current computers, all of which are windows based.
 
Yeah it is.
 
Depends what Apple products you're looking at.

Some facts:

You can't get any Apple products under $1k, you can get PCs starting at $350 or so.

Apple dominates the high-end PC market, the majority of $1500+ PCs are Apple-branded. (I'm too lazy to look up numbers, but you could lower the dollar amount or provide impressive Apple-% figures.)

Macbook Airs are pretty competitive with Ultrabook in price, depending on specs, you're only looking at a $100-$200 premium.

Macbook Pros are $600-$800 more expensive than comparable PC laptops.

Retina Macbook Pro doesn't have any comparable PC laptops.
 
Well, it looks like Zelig has covered this pretty well, but I'd like to add a few other arguments who Microsoft isn't going to implode anytime soon.

1) Microsoft Windows had the monopoly on PC-gaming with things such as DirectX. That seems about to change: Apple gaming is increasingly accepted, and soon Valve will launch a Linux version of Steam. In this pace, Microsoft Windows won't be alone on the PC-gaming market soon. In fact, it already isn't.

But almost anyone who puts PC gaming as one of their factors when buying a computer is going to buy Windows. It's cheaper, which gives you more money for the actual games. It's where you can get the best hardware (especially graphics hardware). You can count on any PC game you want to play being on Windows - a lot either aren't on Mac, or are delayed on Mac (and a considerable amount of PC games being available on Linux? :lol:).

And then there's the console market. Which these days, you pretty much get either a PS3, or, increasingly often lately, an XBox 360. Which happens to be made by Microsoft. So I think Microsoft's doing OK in the gaming realm.

2) Casual users find Apple increasingly appealing.

Perhaps, but not all casual users can afford the Apple tax. And even among the ones who can, some of them have other priorities on what to spend their money on, and just want the cheapest computer that'll let them surf the Internet or whatever. Even if that whatever requires a $1500 computer, they might find that a more appealing option than spending $2000 for the same machine made by Apple. Money still doesn't grow on trees.

3) Windows 8

Even if it's not super-popular, neither were Windows ME or Windows Vista, and the latter was Microsoft's latest OS for more than 2.5 years. I'm sure if the reception isn't the greatest, Microsoft will let Windows 7 continue to be sold for awhile just like they did with XP, and then Windows 9 will come out, having addressed the main concerns, and everyone will love it just like they did with Windows 7 (even if Windows 9 is basically Windows 8 with polish - after all, Windows 7 is basically Windows Vista with polish).
 
I'm sure if the reception isn't the greatest, Microsoft will let Windows 7 continue to be sold for awhile just like they did with XP,

This actually has nothing to do with reception, Microsoft always provides downgrade rights to businesses.

Windows 7 has downgrade right to either Vista or XP and Server 2008 R2 has downgrade rights to Server 2008 or Server 2003.

They'll probably drop downgrade rights to XP with Windows 8, since XP is EoL in 2014, but you'll still be able to downgrade from Win8 to Vista.
 
Why did so many people hate Vista anyways? On a decent computer, i found it more stable than XP.
 
1) PC gaming isn't a particularly important market, and MS is still dominating it, Apple is just getting casual titles for users who'd be using Apple anyway and Linux is negligible (not just from the gaming perspective) on the desktop.

If Valve's move is part of a strategy to back a linux based gaming console, the day's of Microsoft's domination of PC gaming are finished.
But I agree that gaming isn't their main market. Corporate use is. And the general corporate move towards web applications means that is not as secure as it was.

3) Windows 8 is pretty good.

:confused: It's worse than Ubuntu!
And Ubuntu is, or was, the most popular linux distribution.. So... Microsoft may win that one. Unfortunately. But I hope it fails badly!

Anyway, where they are having their lunch eaten is in the mobile market. And the day is not far that the PC will be entirely replaced (by most users) by a simple phone plus some kind of docking station, I think.
 
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