The hot post today that has the blogosphere churning is this essay by Paul Graham entitled “Microsoft is Dead.”
I like the way the author of this post has just suddenly realized that Microsoft’s business model is in trouble. I had an epiphany much like this while I was in the very den of the mothership itself. While standing on the third floor of building 25 in Microsoft’s Redmond campus… fighting with their products to get some test data put through on our… unusual deployment of their products… came the word that Apple went Intel. That’s when I had the epiphany: Microsoft is toast. Thus begins their slow, painful demise as people wake up to the innovations happening elsewhere. Microsoft’s lack of supporting standards and their blind eye toward security… combined with failing in just about every endeavour except Windows and Office… was finally starting to do them in.
I pictured crowds of people looking around with sudden surprised, shocked looks and little idea bulbs sprouting over their heads – much like the Truth commercials about smoking.
It’s a revolution of sorts. I changed to Mac once I could get my hands on an Intel Mac and haven’t looked back. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – it’s my single best weapon against my daily fight. My ability to support every operating system with one machine has been a blessing to me. Top that off with dreamy hardware and you have a match made in heaven.
Apple’s move to Intel was the start.
Rather funny: I recently had a Microsoftie brag to me that Apple was going to get out of the software business completely because they had realized they lost. Leopard (OS X 10.5) was going to be their last revision of the OS. There was to be no more iWork and iLife after ’07. The Zune was going to kill the iPod, etc.
Talk about drinking some serious Kool-Aid.