Microsoft have had their day. They’ve been cruising on autopilot with no one at the controls for the past few years. XP was a step up from 95/98/ME for home users, but only a small incremental step up from NT. They’ve been enjoying the fruits of Bill’s original ‘deal made in heaven’ which propelled Microsoft into the stratosphere, and resulted in Windows being pre-installed on the majority of all new PCs sold worldwide.
The tide has started to turn though, and while the Microsoft machine has been stuck on autopilot with Bill out of the driving seat and Ballmer jumping around doing his monkey impersonations, the rest of the world has been catching up… fast.
Apple have kept to their beliefs and continued to develop hardware and software combinations that work together in tandem to do just that… work. And work very well. Without driver issues, installation issues, hardware stability issues, blue screens of death, viruses, trojan horses, you name it. iPods are everywhere. iPhones are everywhere. College students are gravitating towards Macs as ‘standard issue’. Media professionals have always believed in Macs. Microsoft must be filling it’s pants, because right now they are very much in danger of being made irrelevant.
This article on investor news site Seeking Alpha absolutely slams Microsoft for resting on their laurels and basically doing nothing while Apple and Google are moving in to their space and owning it. I’d like to fast forward another 10 years or so in to the future to see what Microsoft is up to 10 years from now, because I’m starting to wonder if they are on their way out… is Microsoft set to become the GM of the software industry?