I was reading over what I wrote over the weekend, and found that it is quite......lacking.....(hmm)....
So I decided to put it here in one post, sort of combine things~~
Well, we will see how well it will turn out~~
Hello World
Hello there. Hello world.
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 also seeing the same thing now with Apple’s supporters, I am doubting myself.
I can safely say that about 90% of the people who are currently reading this post are running a Window's operating system, whether it is Win7, Vista, XP, 2000, or even NE--it doesn't matter. Another 6-8 % of people are on a Mac, and the rest on different distribution of Linux or Unix operating system.
However, that is based on the assumption that you reading this post from a desktop, laptop, netbook, ultrabook, or any sort of tradition “personal computer.” If you are talking about mobile, then it’s a safe bet to say you’re likely on an Android tablet, IOS5 tablet, smart phone or a chromebook.
Why am I so sure about it? It’s 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, Linux/Unix system and Macs out-performed PCs by a great deal in certain fields, yet they only have a small population of users.
Why?
Was it because that the fields that Linux and Mac were extremely powerful in are less relevant to the normal daily users who just use a browser?
Why was Microsoft able to dominate this market for years with almost monopoly advantages and people are not gradually switching to other operating systems?
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 got used to it. As people get used to Windows, are they less willing to go through the trouble of changing the OS and learning everything from scratch?
However, that doesn't explain the reason why people are willing to try new technologies nowadays, such as iPads, iPhones and Android tablets which are eating away lots of market shares in the industry.
As a software engineer, I am extremely interested in what drives trends, why is it that people are stuck on Windows but more than willing to try out the newest mobile devices?
Another angle that I will attack this topic would be the environment. The majority of the market for the PC industry, to be frank, is not in the home PCs but in the business PCs, systems, and servers. A standard business server can cost several times more services than a very high performance home desktop can (yes, that includes the famous expense Alienware that you gamers might be using now). Why are big companies insisting on using Windows, and some even go as far as using pirated Windows copies? Linux and Unix are great for servers, and most of them have free distribution on the Internet. But no, these 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 nowadays?
Profile Blog
Voice
Hello there. Hello world.
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 also seeing the same thing now with Apple’s supporters, I am doubting myself.
I can safely say that about 90% of the people who are currently reading this post are running a Window's operating system, whether it is Win7, Vista, XP, 2000, or even NE--it doesn't matter. Another 6-8 % of people are on a Mac, and the rest on different distribution of Linux or Unix operating system.
However, that is based on the assumption that you reading this post from a desktop, laptop, netbook, ultrabook, or any sort of tradition “personal computer.” If you are talking about mobile, then it’s a safe bet to say you’re likely on an Android tablet, IOS5 tablet, smart phone or a chromebook.
Why am I so sure about it? It’s 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, Linux/Unix system and Macs out-performed PCs by a great deal in certain fields, yet they only have a small population of users.
Why?
Was it because that the fields that Linux and Mac were extremely powerful in are less relevant to the normal daily users who just use a browser?
Why was Microsoft able to dominate this market for years with almost monopoly advantages and people are not gradually switching to other operating systems?
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 got used to it. As people get used to Windows, are they less willing to go through the trouble of changing the OS and learning everything from scratch?
However, that doesn't explain the reason why people are willing to try new technologies nowadays, such as iPads, iPhones and Android tablets which are eating away lots of market shares in the industry.
As a software engineer, I am extremely interested in what drives trends, why is it that people are stuck on Windows but more than willing to try out the newest mobile devices?
Another angle that I will attack this topic would be the environment. The majority of the market for the PC industry, to be frank, is not in the home PCs but in the business PCs, systems, and servers. A standard business server can cost several times more services than a very high performance home desktop can (yes, that includes the famous expense Alienware that you gamers might be using now). Why are big companies insisting on using Windows, and some even go as far as using pirated Windows copies? Linux and Unix are great for servers, and most of them have free distribution on the Internet. But no, these 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 nowadays?
Profile Blog
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 strategies. He is a software developer and a computer/tech hobbyist who “has 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. 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 inclination on the bad news Microsoft threw out. He seems to be very determined 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 find it interesting to read about his passionate and sarcastic posts and also to see the comments that take a ride along the post or retaliate his points heavily. From his post, ““Me too!” Microsoft gives social networking a go?” he points 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, Microsoft is hurting its strategic partner, Facebook. Wow, point at the giant in the industry and calling it a copycat right in the nose. Good work there!
The other interesting (and definitely fun) post to read is titled “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 hard statistics. 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 argues 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 credit 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.
Voice
Openbytes is definitely a strong example of how Microsoft can create passionate emotions within people--except it is passionate in the negative direction. Tim, or the Goblin, or Tim (Goblin), is definitely on the extreme side if all the people in the world is put onto a scale based on their love/hate towards Microsoft. He cuts Microsoft no slack, bashing on every aspect of them without remorse--yes, I mean every aspect. This can be easily seen from two of his posts: “Windows declining market share – 6% drop for the product that gave you the BSOD” and “‘Me too!’ Microsoft gives social networking a go?”
For the people not familiar with the term of BSOD, Google it! I am not kidding, I just Googled it myself and found that it means “Blue Screen of Death”. From the title I can see that “Tim, the Goblin,” is aiming his post towards a more technical oriented audience, or else he could have just said, Windows and not something so specific. The other title of “Me Too” is trying to say this issue in a mocking tone. He is pretending to be Microsoft who is like a loner want a piece of everything, even if the company is entering very late in the game.
If you think putting using “BSOD” to reference Windows is bad enough, Tim comes up with more lines to humiliate Microsoft. He started listing all the failures of Microsoft in the past few years, including the not-so-popular Windows Phone 7, its browser Internet Explorer, unpopular search engine Bing, and then stated that “Windows, one of its flag-ship products suffered a 6% drop in the fourth quarter of 2011.” As I was reading this line, I got the image of a big battleship with the Windows sign on it gradually sinking into the water. He seems to favor this technique and used it repeatedly over and over again in the other posts too.
But that isn’t enough--he doesn’t stop there. He was prepared to fend off the retaliations of the so-called “Microsoft Advocates who infest the newsgroups, who engage in personal attacks“ by stating “But wait”. This transition indicates that he understood the readers would start to have counter arguments by that point in the post, buy he is essentially telling these people to shut up and listen. And he is not prepare to play as a Mr. Nice guy, as he called those people like parasites that infest on forums and harm other people with personal attacks.
To sum up all the bashing that he has done, he even states that “there is a hint of deja-vu here”, pointing out that all the failures of Microsoft are the results of chasing after the leaders in each market; “Bing is trying to catchup with Google, WP7 is trying to catch up to Android and Apple phones...” and he describes these attempts merely as “flinging mud at the wall in the hope something will stick.” Microsoft, the giant in the industry, is being described as some little kid from the hood playing with mud in the ghetto. He further describes the “patent suing” move made by Microsoft as a little bully in the industry who just want to lay back and collect money without “trying to compete with its own products.”
Wow, let me take a look at these lines again. A bully is someone that harasses others via various means just because he can. Often people who are bullies actually feel relatively inferior in the sense that they are weaker, and so they bully others only do it to make up for his weaknesses (just like the boy that we see in kindergarten who tries to harass the girls that he likes). Microsoft, after becoming less able to profit from anything that it produces, simply starts trying to be a copycat and bet on luck that one of the projects would succeed and surpass the original. Then, after seeing that strategy doesn’t really work, Microsoft feels weak and ashamed just like a little bully who harasses other companies vialawsuits in order to make up for its own weaknesses.
Tim is waiting on that “when the once ‘mighty’ Microsoft will roll over and admit defeat” instead of trying to catch up on different areas or bullying other companies. He also questions Microsoft’s motive in investing a social network since it has been a major investor and strategic partner with Facebook. However, he believes that this once mighty giant would not go down without a fight, especially with its “war-chest of cash”, indicating that Microsoft has a larger reserve for fighting.
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