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Mar
2
Just finished watching an episode of the GigaOM show with Dan’l Lewin.
When OM asked Dan’l why Vista was “everybody’s favorite whipping boy” and “what happened”, Lewin’s reply was that “the blogophere happened”.
Which is probably hitting the nail on the head. In 2007, everyone who had an issue with just about anything with Vista could blog about it - and the blogosphere would take it up and amplify it, via Digg or del.icio.us, among others. As is human nature, far fewer people blogged about things that they had liked about Vista. As a result, the perception of Vista quickly became that of a buggy, bloated animal.
Things were very very different back in 2001 when XP was released. There were far fewer blogs and viewers. Technology websites (the only ones who did any sort of rational evaluation of Vista) got far more readers as a percentage of Internet content than in 2007.
Similarly, Vista’s development was also very public. So when features that were originally slated to ship with Vista (WinFS, for one) were subsequently dropped, there was tremendous coverage and criticism from the blogosphere. Contrast that with the days of Windows 2000 (and XP), when very few ordinary users knew (or cared) about the development of the operating system. It’s insights like these that periodically wake you up to the power of the democratic web.
I’m also amazed at how good Apple is at keeping its development efforts secret. At the same time, Apple’s products don’t have to have interoperability with the sheer number of devices and software that Windows does.
One of those negatives of popularity, I suppose.
It’s not as if Microsoft is bound to provide interoperability with the thousands of hardware systems out there and Apple are not. It is a choice for both - Microsoft chooses to do it, and does a shoddy job of it. Apple chooses not to do the entire gamut, instead provides rock solid support for the few that it does support.
“Microsoft chooses to do it, and does a shoddy job of it.”
Amit: that’s because Microsoft doesn’t manufacture its own hardware. That’s a tired cliche, but it does explain why the OS ships with a billion drivers for as many devices.
Apple would love Microsoft’s 90+% share, but it refuses to separate Mac OS from the Mac. For good reason.