Friday, March 2, 2012

Microsoft 9, Apple 1: Apple Wins!

TechCrunch has an article today which points out that Microsoft will be shipping 9 – nine! – versions of Windows 8. This is amazing to me, especially when I reflect that Apple has only shipped 9 total releases of OS X (I'm not counting server versions from either company). It gets even better when you look at the cost of upgrading. While I'm fairly well-versed in Windows use and troubleshooting, I don't keep up with all the versions and their differences, so I was a somewhat surprised by the following quote from the article:
Windows 7 Starter and Basic isn’t sold directly to consumers but they can still be found online for less than $100.
So the most economical versions aren't even available to your average consumer, who won't know to go online to try to find these cheap versions, and that may be a good thing considering what's left out. Windows Home Premium – the cheapest version of Windows available from Microsoft – costs $120 and doesn't include a lot of features such as XP Mode, which would seem to be something your average XP user upgrading to Windows 7 would want. Apple on the other hand charges $30 bucks (these days anyway) and only ships one version of each release. And yes, Apple killed support for PowerPC code by discontinuing Rosetta in Lion, something that I think should have continued at least through 10.7. But I also doubt that Microsoft would have included XP Mode in Windows 7 if Vista hadn't been such a disaster.

But beyond that, how is your average consumer or small business owner supposed to figure out what version of Windows they should buy? Even if someone explains the differences between the different versions to them, they're not likely to truly understand if or how those differences are going to affect them unless they're reasonably tech savvy. Ultimately they're likely to buy the cheapest version and hope for the best.

I encountered this about a year ago when helping a client who's a small business owner get a network of several PCs up and going. It was an interesting project because the machines were all running different systems, from XP to Vista to Windows 7. Among the XP machines was one running Professional and one running Home. I don't recall the exact issue (there were lots of issues and they all kind of run together in my brain at this point but it was a pretty basic networking function) but I couldn't get the XP Home machine to do what he needed it to. All the other machines, including the one running XP Pro were handling this particular function, whatever it was, just fine.

After beating my head against a wall for a while, I finally called a friend of mine who's a PC god and asked him if he knew what was up. Sure, he said, you're running XP Home and it doesn't support that or a bunch of other networking features. As I said earlier, I don't keep up with the differences between versions, and all my experience with XP up to that point had been with the Pro version. I figured the Home version didn't support Exchange servers or something like that.

When I explained to my client, who's also a friend, that his only real option short of purchasing a new PC was to purchase XP Pro and install it on the machine (it didn't meet the requirements for Windows 7 and there was no way I was going to recommend Vista) he didn't want to accept it. He had spent a lot of money on that machine when he bought it, it ran XP, his other XP machine worked, so it should be able to work too. Like all small business owners he's on a budget and views everything from a bottom line perspective. He's also a good boss who would rather give a bonus or a raise to one of his workers than spend money on a machine he's already spent money on. I tried to explain to him, as I have many times over the years, that he wouldn't have this issue if he bought Macs but the prices freak him out no matter how often I've explained the savings on tech support. Of course, he's my friend and wasn't paying me much, so maybe he figured it was worth it.

But I see him as pretty typical. He has a mishmash of machines because he's bought them one at a time, usually when he added to his staff. At such times he went to the nearby Office Depot and bought the cheapest machine that would do what he thought he needed. The profusion of Windows versions just confused him, the salesperson couldn't explain it to him, and so he just picked a machine from a company he was familiar with that fit his budget. Yes, he could have hired me or someone else to advise him, but spending money on someone just to tell him what machine to buy isn't in his nature – that's what the store salesman is for, right? And he could have read reviews but how many would he have to read before he understood what he would and wouldn't be able to do? Again, something he's not likely to do. Eventually he decided to just buy a new Windows 7 machine and donate the old one so it all worked out, but not after a lot of useless hassle.

When I compare all this to Apple and OS X, it's clear why the Mac's market share has been rising so steadily. Lots of people claim it's because of the popularity of the iPhone and Apple's "coolness factor" but I don't believe that explains it all. With Apple you have one company and one OS version that does everything. The easily understood product line helps as well. Throw in the Apple Stores, with their well trained salespeople and Geniuses, and you've got a much better, much more understandable, and much less frustrating experience. Not having to find out sometime later that your OS is crippled in some way is just icing on the cake. All of this in my opinion is more than worth any price premium (perceived or real) on the machines themselves. After all, the first time you upgrade your OS it's going to run you a a hundred bucks or more for a non-crippled version. As the TechCrunch article says, no wonder Windows is so heavily pirated.

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