Blogmatic

I blog about Apple (in a good way) and Vista (in a another  way) and predicted some time ago that Apple share of the PC market would increase. Well as it turns out Gartner Group is now predicting that Apples share of the desk top and PC world will double by 2011.

The fact that the Leopard operating system has been so well received and that Vista has been, … well Vista are probably the key contributing factors. Another factor in my humble opinion is the awesome job Apple has done in promoting their new systems with the Mac Kid and PC Guy ad series. The Apple ads are some of the most cutting edge and humorous bits on TV and the Internet today. Although the quality of the ads, again in my opinion, did slip a bit with the most recent crop of MAC versus PC ads. Apples ability to maintain that hip and funky feel will be key to their success and of course the actual quality of the product.

Time permitting I will have a look at the Apple and Dell 10k reports to confirm or deny the charges. Apples ads are proof that good advertising works well, I would be interested in the ROI calculations for the campaign costs and market share gain.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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A new series of Mac and PC ads have hit the airwaves. The ads have been available for sometime on the internet but have recently moved to prime time. Like their predecessors the ads are witty, funny and anatomically correct.

The latest ads attack Vista more directly than the previous ones. My favourite line is when PC Guy says “Ask not what Vista can do for you but what you can buy for Vista.” How appropriate considering it is an election year (or almost) south of the boarder and all. I believe there are three ads in the series, PC Guy on the podium, PC Guy with PR person and one other. Anyway all great fun to watch.

Here is a thought for the good folks bringing us those most excellent ads. Why not have an election between the PC Guy and Mac Kid. This could be a whole lot of fun and could provide some excellent metrics to measure the impact and reach of the campaigns. Another thought, have a facebook group for the Mac Guy. Plenty more ideas but the two above could probably generate some significant interest.

It seems that the Mac Kid smells blood and is moving in for the kill. The PC Guy, however, is a real behemoth with plenty of staying power. Look forward to the year end results from Apple, HP and Dell. When the major three have released results I will attempt to have an update on the PC versus Mac market share.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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 … hey nah, hey nah my emails back.

Let my start this post by saying how totally dependant I am on technology for my day to day operations. Two days with out email is about two days too long. Electronic technology whether it be email or phone, crackberry, or whatever is the life blood of business. Being without email has totally disrupeted my business and productivity.

This tale of woe started with an unsolicited windows upgrade, that I didn’t authorize, however, the default in Windows is to enable upgrades automatically. So this unwanted automatic upgrade corrupted my outlook.pst file. Trust me this is something that you don’t want to have happen. After a couple of hours searching and struggling with an assortment of messages it’s still down.

As I struggle with Vista, Office 2007 and various error messages I think to myself. Office 2007 and Vista are something that I would call valueless value add. While the teams and marketing geniuses at Microsoft have put lots of effort and engineering energy into these products is it something that loyal customers actually want. In my opinion the answer is a resounding NO THANK YOU. I liked Office 2003 new how to use it and was able to bang out documents and presentations quite quickly. With all Vista and Office 2007 shining new bells and whistles have actually made me less productive than I was with the older version. Therefore the simple questions are “Why should anyone familiar with Office 2003 upgrade to Office 2007?” My answer is they shouldn’t stay with XP and Office 2003.

I am of the strong opinion that Microsoft really missed the mark with Vista in terms of positioning and migration. Microsoft could probably have turned XP into a real cash cow with the appropriate lifecycle management. Instead they introduce Vista as a “Next Generation” (really not a big fan of the NG term) product that no one really wanted or at least none of their existing customer base. So instead of milking the cash cow and capturing the innovators and early adopters with Vista Microsoft has pst off the existing customer base and created opportunities for Google Office and Apple.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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As I mentioned in an earlier post Apple is one of my favourite large enterprise companies and their recent Q4 results have reinforced that sentiment. Mac Sales set a new record with quarterly sales of 2,164,000 units. Overall results were impressive with revenue of $6.22B and net profits closing in on $1B. Apple is on track to exceed $20B for the first time in corporate history.

Why the resurgence in MAC sales? I am guessing you can sum it up in one word “Vista”. (check out the last paragraph from this previous Blogmatic predition)If the issues with Vista continue to cause users grief expect to see the trend in increased Mac sales continue for the next year or two. The pain threshold and new learning curve associated with using a MAC have been overcome by Vista. I am sure that there is more at work in the sales resurgence than dis-satisfied Vista users; however, I expect Vista Migration is a key contributor to the growth.

Mac Guy lands a crushing blow on the chops of the nerdy PC kid.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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I have previously written a couple of posts regarding my experiences with Vista and you may have notice the progression from hey that was pretty easy, to man this is getting annoying to outright hostility. My experience with Vista actually started very well (Mac and PC Guy). I was able to get all of my files converted and transferred from old machine to new with relative ease (Microsoft Kick starting the product lifecycle). As I started to use Vista I encountered these little annoying things that were well … annoying (Locked in the car). I have used Vista and Office 2007 for several months now the number of annoying incidents has increased in frequency and degree of annoyance.

They say the devil is in the detail and after using Vista and Office 2007 for several months I have found many of the annoying details with both these products. In my opinion both of the product and feature decisions with Vista and Office 2007 have been poorly done. When you are migrating users there is a certain amount of change management involved and users do not like change. That being said no matter what the product managers at Microsoft do not everyone will be happy. Therefore you can take the slower more gentle change route, or a faster more radical change to move existing customers to new products. The analogy used for this type of change management is reforming an ice cube. You can take the brute force approach and smash the ice cube into powder with a mallet and then pound it into the new shape, or you can gently transform the ice cube by melting it slowly, then pouring it into the new mould and refreezing it into the new shape. Both methods have their merit.

Microsoft seems to have mallet in hand and have done a great job at smashing the Windows ice cube to transform it into Vista.  The problem with this is that the usability and existing user friendliness of Vista and Office 2007 have taken a huge hit. Vista is fairly radically changed from Windows lots of GUI stuff instead of pull down menus; right click functionality and all sorts of other stuff. For those familiar with Windows, Vista is something like culture shock. By trying to make Vista better than Windows Microsoft have actually made it worse. Much of the intuitive stuff and conditioning Microsoft had set with Windows has been radically altered in Vista resulting in user frustration.

This isn’t rocket science but my Blogmatic prediction is that Microsoft will lose share to Apple. The annoyances and reputation of Vista are enough to overcome the user switching cost of learning how to use a MAC. I understand that computer store are actually charging a premium to install Windows XP on new computers instead of Vista and I know why. Vista’s sometimes challenging user experience will drive people to check out the new iMAC which is a very sexy machine.

Cheers,
Ian Graham

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I enjoy critiquing ads on TV because it is a whole lot of fun and commercials are often the best part of TV.

My all time favourite ads right now are the Mac and PC guy ads being run on TV by Apple. In my opinion these ads are on target, brilliantly done and some of the best on air right now. I have a good chuckle every time I see a new ad. It will be interesting to see if Apple can gain back some of that PC market share. As a side note I see many Apple computers in funky and trendy TV shows and also out’n’about at local coffee shops.

Interesting side note. My son bought me a new computer on the weekend loaded mith Microsoft Vista. This replaced the vintage home machine that I had been using for the past 8 years on Windows 98. Getting the new machine up, running, files transfered and networked was actually reasonably straight forward. I even kind of like Vista, always a pain to learn something new, but I must say Vista is quite intuitive.

Anyway my son and his friend were there chatting as we downloaded and configured. We talked about how great the MAC – PC ads were. I remarked, yes those ads are great. My sons friend replied yes, but you bought a PC anyway.

Cheers,

Ian Graham

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