Microsoft has finally inspired Apple-like passion in their customers. Too bad they’re passionately hating rather than loving it. Of course Apple couldn’t resist kicking Microsoft while it’s down in their latest ad [Podium]. I hope Gates and Ballmer have cardiologists on call.
Anecdotes from friends have been uniformly bad. My friend T is not in the industry, but he knows more than the average computer user. Here’s what he wrote after encountering Vista on his parents’ computer:
P.S. Not sure if you’ve experienced it yet, but Windows Vista SUCKS!!! It takes about 2 more clicks through menus to do just about everything! Why did they have to f*ck with XP????
Vista hasn’t touched a single machine in my home and probably never will. Pundits are calling for Microsoft to drop Vista completely, go gangbusters on Windows 7, and do a few extra-special XP service packs in the meantime. That doesn’t seem like crazy talk given the vitriol that’s still building against this product almost a year after launch.
I suppose I’ll have to use Vista at a client eventually, but I bet it won’t be my next one–or even the one after that! Granted most of my clients have huge installations and some laggards are just rolling out XP to the frontiers. However, there seems to be enough Vista hating in the press that the herd animal mentality will kick in and have companies fleeing Vista en masse.
With this talk of Microsoft going into the ad business to chase Google’s golden-egg-laying goose now that they’ve killed their own, I’m really beginning to question Microsoft’s competence instead of just their motives. What have they done in the last ten months to address either the technical or perception problems with Vista? Not much. It’s certainly making room for innovation to return to the operating system market with the likes of Apple, Google, and Ubuntu eager to cook Microsoft’s goose even more. What really makes me smile is how open source UNIX is the foundation of this revolution.