Windows 8: The Beginning of the End of Windows - Michael Mace ⇢

Michael Mace, via

Whether or not Windows 8 is a financial success for Microsoft, we’ve now crossed a critical threshold. The old Windows of mice and icons is officially obsolete. That resets the playing field for everybody in computing.

Mace is right, because iOS reset the playing field, and Microsoft is playing catch-up. But Windows 8 might be a credible response.

And Mace is right about obsoleting itself:

Microsoft will pay a serious price for the Windows 8 announcement.  Most PC users haven’t yet upgraded to Windows 7, and some Microsoft execs have been bragging in public about the revenue to come from upgrading all of those people.  Forget about it.  I think you’d be an idiot to buy Windows 7 for an existing PC when you know Windows 8 is coming.  It would be like buying a horse-drawn carriage after Ford announced the Model T.

And developers will skip Windows 7 too. And they will have to make a hard judgment call about Windows 8: will users transition to a new untried platform just because it will run old Windows apps badly? Or will users use this time of disruption to make a clean assessment of needed functionality, and opt for iOS or Android, and leave Windows 8 in the dustbin of history?

I am betting that Microsoft will retain some portion of the most entrenched Windows users and developers, but those that are less invested will move to where the action is fastest and the platform is most stable, and that is going to be Apple iOS, trailed by Google’s Android, and with Microsoft Windows 8 becoming a very distant third.

3 June 2011 6
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Notes

  1. mikeelgan reblogged this from stoweboyd
  2. stoweboyd posted this

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