Gates versus Jobs

A Minyanville Cartoon: Charge!

:-)

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=12181

Thanks sn for your other posting comments.

Trader75, you had a couple of comments back there:

“My wife just got a new computer at the office w/ Vista. She has been cursing Microsoft like a sailor ever since.”

Did she buy it for herself or is it a work computer provided for her?

What exactly about it caused her to curse it?

Is she using it still?

And you also said:

“Wonder how many people who heard bad things have said ‘forget that bloated Vista crap, give me XP.'”

I was in the Office Depot in my town of 35,000 pop, on 2 days during the first week of Vista’s release. Usually their computer rows are sparsely cruised and the sales associate would often approach a random customer to see if they needed help on anything.

On both these days there was a line of 5-8 people all generally waiting for assistance, and they were animated enough to not wait for the salesman, but were actively discussing the merits of Vista related purchases with each other. One big discussion was about the avoidance of the need for Norton or McAfee. One customer swore by it and had a Norton box in his hand, hoping to determine if it was Vista compatible for the machine he was about to buy (wasn’t), but found out one would be available later that was.

Another customer informed the first that he ‘recommended highly’ that the man just ignore separate security software because Vista was designed for it, and said Norton and McAfee had only caused him trouble with other computers.

All these customers had not the slighest interest in buying the V-upgrades, but were carrying out their order slips for computers to the front desk, and all seemed to want the Home Prem version. The salesman told me it had been that way all week.

The next week was still above average sales, said the salesman to me, but Office Depot had taken off a couple of sales and even he was waiting to buy his own with another sale price reduction. Too, several of their models were marked ‘sorry, we’re temp sold out.’

I think we’ve also heard (correct me please if wrong) that computer sales during the first week of Vista were up approx 67%, and Dell put out some info that (I think I’m quoting correctly) “thousands and thousands” of new sales were ordered due to customers having waited for Vista loaded machines.

If all that’s true, what portion of that 67% increase in overall computer sales do you expect were Macs?…What % of the PCs were not Vista pre-installed?

Esbisworried, quoting you:

“…the vista aero interface is a silly gimmick, and when a silly gimmick requires half of your system resources it becomes a stupid silly gimmick, and that is exactly what vista with aero is, a stupid silly gimmick. (space)* Incidentally, anyone here know of a major (or not so major) retailer still selling some remaining xp desktops??? Would like to pick up one or two myself.”

*my emphasis.

Esbisworried, are you really actively searching for unsold new XP desktops that you would prefer to purchase instead of a machine properly designed for Vista?

I will admit that there are some circumstances in which I might be interested in buying a new XP at a cutthroat reduced price, and you seem to indicate you have an XP desktop already capable of running Vista to a degree, but except for saving a few dollars on one or two new machines, why would you want to buy earlier obsolescence for yourself with the new ones?

As I’ve spoken to new PC buyers and potential buyers at computer stores, they seem to be pretty impressed with Aero, and I think once the speed/graphics/mem issues are covered by buying a new machine, I don’t expect them to be concerned at all with Aero’s comp/power demands. Do you really think it’s a go/no-go issue with new buyers?

wnsrfr,

I agree with some of your sentiments expressed… but I have to say the ad agency that designed those commercials ought to win whatever highest awards are given for commercials.

If there’s such a thing as a killer app commercial, that’s it! The last time a commercial slayed me this badly was back in the days of the Aqua Velva girls, and those put me on a sure-enough trajectory.

I can’t get the little Apple’ee jingle out of my head. Dee dee dee, d-d-d – d – dee dee dee, d-d-d, d… You see, there I go again.

I’ve never owned a Mac, mainly because of fear of that sudden recognition after buying one that whatever program I might need to run *now* won’t work on the Mac. However, I am not opposed to buying one, and interoperability of OPSs makes it much more appealing.

It’s not very likely that I would now, but that commercial is just too good… and makes me begin to think about it. That neat little trendy Mac guy is such a charmer, and he must never have any sort of problem, not even the slightest one, and girls, girls-girls, and girls he must have climbin’ all over him.

It’s unequivocally true in my mind that Jobs surely must be enjoying playing NIGYYSOB “Nig-e-sob” with MSFT with this commercial, not to ignore the great sales advances they’re gaining.

However, Ballmer addressed that when questioned about it in their recent analysts’ meeting. I’ve read all 20-plus pages of the transcript from the meeting.

Without exact quotes, he more-or-less said, “Why expend a couple of hundred millions for advertising a response, when all you can hope to regain is a mere few % of market share?”

It certainly makes sense to me, and they wouldn’t regain the share anyway, since there’s a degree of religiosity that seems to be embedded in this MS/Apple discourse.

In order to accept the notion that Apple was giving MS any significant worry about loss of PC sales to Macs, we’d also have to buy the notion that 90+% of the computer using and buying public were about to switch.

And, I suppose too it must still be true that over 90% of computer users, while somehow subconsciously likening themselves favorably to the fat boy geek that plays the PC in the commercials, either can’t or won’t recognize it in themselves, or if they do they simply can’t force themselves to escape the mindset.

I know a man who once received some sort of slight from a Ford dealership salesman, about 50 years ago… and ever since then he’ll actually almost become ill on discussing cars and preferences for various makes.

I sensed from everything Ballmer has said that MS knows they almost waited too late to get their head out of their butts with more than one competitor, but I didn’t get the slightest notion they are disappointed, to date, with Vista’s launch.

Regarding Abelson in the just recent Barron’s: It seems odd to me that AA decided to hold MS responsible for somehow failing to have a ‘Bofo’ launch, when no reasonable person that’s paid attention to what MS has been saying could have interpreted anything the company had said for weeks prior to the launch to indicate they expected anything like the Win-95 extravaganza.

The company also seemed to indicate the use of rather conservative accountancy going forward, as opposed to much of the hyperventilating of EBITDA pro-formancy we’re up to our gunwells in from other members of corporate USA.

Barringo,

You remember the Seinfeld when George had his ATM card password set as “Bosco” and he figured he was secure because nobody could guess it?

But, then, he’d short-changed Kramer’s psycho-analytical skills and was in for a surprise, huh?… and the reason is because Kramer spent a lot of time thinking about how people behave and how they often do and say things entirely differently, later, from what they pontificate about beforehand.

In other words, Kramer knew George better than George knew himself, and so it was just a matter of Kramer beginning the process of picking through George’s Freudian ‘id’ and looking for reactions, and then within a few questions he was all but onto “Bosco” as being George’s password.

He’d have guessed it too, had the episode not called from Kramer to be distracted by being removed from the scene. I can’t remember just how they did it, but Kramer had to be prevented from revealing it then, because they had to save the punch line for the ending scene, where George was faced with the prospect of having to reveal it in order to save a life.

I like to think of the Big Pic as being somewhere that Kramer would’ve thought was a fun place to play… and a fun place to take the facts that are before us all… and figure out how the people who think they know what they want, fear, like, dislike or understand, and how they express their biases without the slightest understanding of the roots of bias… and then figure out that their passwords were really set to “Bosco.”