Windows 7 Early Looks: First Impressions and Future Possibilities Microsoft's Unintentional Effort to Boost Macs Rob Enderle
Microsoft's Unintentional Effort to Boost Macs
I've been thinking about this a lot because, right now, the PC market is truly broken. If we look back at Windows 95 we see that it was largely driven into business, particularly enterprises, like Smartphones are driven — by the user. But Microsoft made some licensing changes in the XP timeframe that make it incredibly difficult for users to drive operating systems into businesses anymore, which has opened the door to Apple.
According to Laura DiDio's survey about 2/3rds of businesses are considering Macs largely because users are driving them into enterprises, much like they did Windows 95, and can't now do with Vista even if they wanted to.
This is because consumer versions of Windows, by design, don't work with critical Enterprise infrastructure offerings like Active Directory. It's kind of amazing because the MacOS actually is better in this regard than a home version of Windows.
I can imagine a young Bill Gates being dumfounded when he saw IBM intentionally cripple the PC Jr. and turn PC dominance into a disaster. I can imagine the Google kids doing the same thing when they look at Windows Vista Basic and Home Premium. Steve Jobs should send whoever came up with that idea a commission check.
This shows, however, that the market is willing to change, but not necessarily to Macs.
The Need for Hardware Flexibility
One of the big problems is that while hardware units like Netbooks and MIDs continue to proliferate, enabling the possibility of multiple PCs per person, software licensing still does not align with this usage model. And people don't want to buy or pay for upgrades for multiple copies of the same application. This is reducing hardware sales and increasing dissatisfaction with the PC platform.
In addition, we've moved from the desktop and onto the Internet for much of what we do. From corporate applications like Salesforce Automation and HR tools, things have been increasingly moved to the Web and we now find ourselves moving between smartphones, PCs (some of which may be borrowed), and increasingly settop boxes and TVs to get access to this stuff.
The market appears to be in the hunt for some kind of a virtual platform in the cloud supporting this concept of Portable Personality. And while Microsoft has the tools to make this happen, they are spread across a number of divisions and probably won't come together into a solution before someone else establishes the high ground.
Currently Lenovo and others are beginning to explore this concept of a personality in the sky and IBM began talking about this some time ago. RingCube actually announced a working product back in 2007 that didn't have the network dependency that typically plagues these things.
However we get there, I think what is moving to replace the PC is a platform that can deal with the vast variety of hardware that is being created, while maintaining both a consistency of user experience and personality across all of it.
In addition, the result will tie the application rights to the users rather than hardware, assuring we have rights to use the software we purchased on any platform we choose at any time we need to. Our stuff, anyplace we might be: that's the goal the market is looking for.
Wrapping Up: The Future
I compare Windows 7 to Windows 95 and I see a lot gained, but I also see a lot that has been lost. The gains are largely technical and visual; the loss is the user needs that created the platform.
Needs that now require users more hardware freedom and easier access to the massive number of developers who are currently working on the iPhone and Android platforms. Perhaps the next big thing from Microsoft isn't Windows 7 or even Windows Mobile 7, but a blend of Microsoft technologies resulting in a flexibility that users have never before seen.
It would be ironic if, like IBM who had a similar advantage in the 80s, someone else got there first. This will be where we find out whether Ray Ozzie can do the vision thing as well as Bill Gates did.
