...and Microsoft may be dead, too. The Doomsday Memo as analyzed by a researcher and former MS'er. For years I've been saying "Microsoft doesn't matter anymore" but now I see Microsoft leaders think worse of themselves than I do.
All this news about Microsoft is coming about because they report earnings Thursday. Investor's Business Daily:
Guess it depends on which part of Microsofts business you look at. 56% of users still use Windows XP and most like it because of the software they actually use in their business. Most specialist business apps cost way more than windows - and it is just too expensive for them to change. The internet is great - when you can access it! But that is also it's greatest weakness. Stayed with my elderly mother a couple of weeks ago - no internet and none in her village - that was really painful, felt like going back to the stone age. This moning my internet connection kept going on and off - not for long, but stopped me listening to a webinar. So we still need some way of working when the internet is down for real businesses to really jump ship and put all their eggs in the cloud rather than being able to do most of their mundane work off line
Your PC is more likely to go down than the internet and businesses are more likely to have strong internet connections.
Come again? You're saying my PC is more likely to crash than me losing the internet connection? I can tell you that's wrong. Countless times the internets dropped when I've been usnig my iPad recently, which renders a fair few of my apps useless. It happens with the PC too (I run firefox, FWIW), but I can keep working until the connection recovers.
You're comparing your personal wireless to a business. No comparison. Essentially, large businesses have been working in the cloud for decades. Those of us who use *nix frequently access other machines over the 'net to access data and run programs. The cloud is nothing new to us. In fact, when I worked at SGI in the 90s, I remember we accessed documents over the 'net. This is only new for Windows users. But my real point is, if a blip on the internet causes your cloud access to occur, just wait a minute. If you're PC crashes, how long you gonna have to wait?
They've kept on making a killing ($$$) all those years. Whether we like it or not Microsoft and some form of Windows is here to stay for a long time.