Re:Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
by vogonj on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @09:43PM
(#3073768)
yeah, Microsoft's main competitive shortcoming against Apple in desktop strategy is twofold:
- Apple can let OS X be its loss leader, whereas Microsoft doesn't have a thing to let Windows be a loss leader for (the Windows Store, maybe, post-8?)
- breaking backward compatibility hurts Microsoft's sales, since there's no single source of application updates, and since so many Windows licenses are in the enterprise; it doesn't affect Apple's sales (maybe even helps them) because it sells shiny new Macs for shiny new features and because Apple doesn't live or die on OS X revenue.
its saving grace is that retail sales of Windows licenses are probably dominated by people refreshing their computers.
Re:Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
by brudgers on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @10:12PM
(#3073835)
Microsoft provides free updates in the form of service packs rather than calling it a new version.
Re:Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
by dasil003 on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @10:21PM
(#3073863)
That's a charitable interpretation of their inability to ship for most of the 00s.
Re:Microsoft Explains Why the Start Menu Needed to Die
by TallTalesOrTrue on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @01:29AM
(#3074361)
Service packs have been there before and even after 00s.
But then again, Apple has the benefit of being in control of the hardware, which makes up the lion's (haha) share of their revenue.