On the plane home, I had a thought...

I was riding on the plane back from New York and as I was trying to relax a bit, a thought popped into my head:

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"Vista is a disaster."

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I don't know why the thought came at that moment, nor had I been thinking very much at all about the operating system on my trip. However, when I got back to the office, I did a search on the phrase and found a couple articles. The best one was this:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9785337-7.html?



Microsoft is big enough that their failure with Vista won't make much of a difference to them, at least not in the short term. The question is whether or not it erodes a reputation that they've built over the last 15 years, which would affect things more as time goes by. The other hidden erosion would be the minds and hearts of the Microsoft employee base that put so much of their life into a worthless product.

Back in 2001 when I first saw OS X and started playing around with Linux, I predicted a very slow decline of the Microsoft franchise and unfortunately, I've been watching it happen ever since. One can't look at the opportunities presented by both the Open Source and Apple communities and ignore the superiority that each offering brings to the table.

The question is whether or not the behemoth that is Microsoft can react in time. Reaction at this point means looking at their business model and deciding that perhaps their old way of doing things no longer works. I think once they recognize this as a new and crucial perspective, they can then start to look at the next big opportunities available to them. If they don't realize this, they are in for a very slow and painful death. Unfortunately, in technology, it's usually the little guys that come up with the new directions for technology, not the behemoths. Microsoft is more like the buzzards of the world that try to take advantage of old opportunities. As technology moves faster and faster, there is little value in trying to capitalize on the remains of yesterday's excitement.

I have little faith that Microsoft will ever be able to regain the footing that it once had. For me, the thought that pops into my head is reminiscent of the old quarter arcade games: Game Over! And as it happened back then, the quarter you spent for a bit of entertainment didn't last very long.