Profile OpenBytes!

Openbytes stood out in many technical websites and blogs in the sense that, Tim (Goblin), the author hates Windows/Microsoft with a passion which paints his article with a sarcastic yet funny tone. I guess that fits the role of a Goblin with a bad mouth?

Tim, the Goblin, has been using Microsoft software since his childhood and yet in his recent posts he has been constantly taking on a critical stand against Microsoft and its strategy. He is a software developer and a computer/tech hobbyist who “have been using Windows since the very first version” and “[had] spent many a happy hour trying to load data from tape (a concept that now is probably lost on the new generation of computer users)”. Gee, the first version of Windows? That is like back in 1970s, this guy, if not an expert, is at least a veteran! And a pretty active veteran indeed, from what I can tell by roughly four posts per month, although almost half of the posts are about what Microsoft is doing wrong. He started this site as a “forum for me to challenge others opinion and to highlight the experiences Ive had since I moved from a Microsoft dependency”, and it has been two years and the site is still going strong!

Most of his posts are comments and analysis to the major news and statistics regarding the tech industry, ...but with a major inclined on the bad news of Microsoft. He seems to determine to create this blog to challenge the opinions of the “people who would do anything to dismiss the idea that there were alternatives to Microsoft products”.

I found that it is interesting to read about his passionate and sarcastic posts, and either see comments that take a ride along the post or retaliate heavily. From his post, ““Me too!” Microsoft gives social networking a go?”, he pointed out that after being accused of copying Google’s search result in Bing, Microsoft went on to try to create another social network, Socl, which, according to the news source he quotes and himself, “ seems to more than slightly resemble Google+”. Not even to mention by doing so, it is hurting its strategic partner, Facebook.

The other interesting and definitely fun to read post is “Windows declining market share – 6% drop for the product that gave you the BSOD”. From the title you can tell that it is another post that hammers hard on Windows, with a hard statistic. Microsoft has been losing its market shares and revenues to the new mobile devices, the IOS and Android. Even though the next generation Operating System, Windows 8, is promising and might give the “Windows Phone 7  [who suffers from the] lack of interest in the face of Android and Apple products “ a way to come back, but he argue that by the time when Win8 is out, the market might have already adjusted to the new environment.

The blog that I have in mind would not be just hammering on Microsoft and Steve Ballmer totally, because they must have been doing something right in the early 2000s to keep that massive amount of market share until this day, ...or that the general market is just stupid and resist changes? I would give credits to his posts and references Tim, the Goblin, often for the rise of the new mobile market. The rise of a market is not the simple result of a new invention, but also the failure of the original market, and that is where Tim and his sarcastic yet informational posts come in.

http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/me-too-microsoft-gives-social-networking-a-go/
http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/windows-declining-market-share-6-drop-for-the-product-that-gave-you-the-bsod/

Hello World - Why Microsoft and Why Apple/Android?

Hello there. Hello world.

I can safely bet that about 90% of the people who is currently reading this post is running a window's operating system, whether it is Win7, Vista, XP, 2000, or even NE, it doesn't matter. And about another 6-8 % of you is on a Mac, and the rest on different distribution of Linux or Unix operating system. 

Well, that is to say that you are reading this post from a desktop, laptop, netbook, or ultrabook. If you are talking about mobile, then I bet it is either an Android or IOS5 tablet or smart phone or chromebook.

Why I was so sure about it? It was because Microsoft has been holding onto more than 90% of the market shares of home and business PCs for years, until the recent rise in mobile devices. 

Ironically, in many fields, Linux/Unix system and Macs out-performed PCs by a great amount, yet they only have a small population of users. 

Why? 

Was it because that the fields that Linux and Mac were extremely more powerful irrelevant to normal daily users? 

Why was Microsoft able to dominate this market for years with almost monopoly advantages?

Was it because Bill Gates marketed it so well back in the 70s and that it was easy to use?

Maybe not, because Apple had Macintosh back then.

Or was it because Microsoft OS was the default operating system that was installed on almost all home use PCs, and thus the people growing up with PCs get used to it and are unwilling to go through the trouble of changing the OS?

But that doesn't explain the reason that why people are willing to try new things nowadays, such as iPads and Android tablets which are eating away lots of market shares in the industry.

I am a software engineer and I thought, (yes, thought), that everything had some sort of a reason or a cause. But seeing this unbelievable trend of Windows supporters in the past and now the Apple supporters, I am doubting my belief. 

Another angle that I attack this topic would be the environment. The majority of the market of PC industry, to be frankly honest, is not in the home PCs but in the business PCs, systems, and servers. A standard business server can cost several times more than a very high performance home desktop, and yes, including the famous expense Alienware. Why are big companies constantly insisted on using Windows, and some even go to the extend of using pirated Windows copies? Linux and Unix are great for servers, and most of them have free distribution on the internet. But no, they companies insisted on paying up in the millions to Microsoft, or risked several years of jail sentence and heavy fines to pirate the Windows.

At this point I want to throw out question that "was this even a sensible action, or it is simply a result of a blind trust in the same system and brand (Microsoft) from the past?"

Or is it because that majority of home PCs are windows, and thus there is less cost for companies to train the new employee by having the same system in the company?

Finally, why and how does Apple and Android break this "monopoly" advantage in the mobile device and start hurting Microsoft so badly?