I am waiting for my flight from Johannesburg to London and I came across this very interesting article/discussion: Dell’s Move Raises Question: Will Windows XP Compete With Vista?
I was really disappointed by Apple’s decision to focus on iPhone and delay OS X Leopard but this article made me to think again. What if Apple is right? What if big OS upgrades like Vista don’t deliver any real benefits to the users. It is actually quite ironic – Microsoft worked so hard and for so many years to deliver a system that nobody seems to need. Features like GUI and DRM must have been considered so critical a few years ago and now they seem to be too intrusive and overdone. It is difficult to manage product with such a long time-frame and still adapt to a changing landscape – such as DRM-free music from EMI.
So maybe Steve Jobs is right at the end. iPhone might bring more value to Apple and that’s where the resources should be spent. It would also mean no good vistas for Microsoft…
Comments
Last May Michael Dell made an interesting statement. He said he would really love to sell systems based on OS X.
Dell certainly needs to figure out a strategy beyond where they have been.
I wonder if there are any investment plays on companies who can add stuff to XP to give you the vista eye candy with the XP cost and reliability.