Microsoft: It's a scary world out there without us
Reading through Ina Fried's excellent interview with Microsoft's Brad Brooks, I can't help but wonder how Microsoft cornered the market on chutzpah. Microsoft has become so dominant in markets like the desktop that its best argument for consumers and enterprises avoiding the Mac and open source is, "But it will cost you so much money to leave Windows."
Now there's a ringing endorsement. Brooks doesn't argue that his product is better. He doesn't argue that Windows is competitive with the Mac. He argues, rather, that consumers are fools for not understanding just how scary and expensive it will be for them to leave Windows behind:
There really is a tax around there for people that are evaluating their choices going into this holiday season and going forward. There's a choice tax that we talked about, which is, hey, you want to buy a machine that's other than black, white, or silver, and if you want to get it in multiple different configurations or price points, you're going to be paying a tax if you go the Apple way.
There's going to be an application tax, which is if you want choice around applications, or if you want the same type of application experience on your Mac versus Windows, you're going to be purchasing a lot of software. And even at that you're not going to get the same experience. You're not going to get things like Microsoft Outlook, you're not going to get the games that you're used to playing....And so you've got all of these things that are truly taxes.
In other words, it's cheaper to continue paying the Microsoft tax, wherein companies give up any hope of future innovation or industry competition, than to try that dreaded, costly thing called "choice." Brooks conveniently forgets the "monopoly tax," the "security tax," its proposed "patent tax," and other taxes that Microsoft happily heaps upon its users.
Brooks may very well be correct about consumers taking a short-term hit in terms of productivity and what-not by choosing a Mac, but by that same logic everyone should just buy into the Microsoft Borg and rely on it to provide eternal sustenance. There is a cost to choice, but there's also tremendous upside. It's called a free market, and costs inevitably fall in truly free markets.
Perhaps that's what frightens Brooks.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
But seriously, MS is making a lot of noise lately against a company that has a slim share of the market in comparison. Their business model is set up to maintain their monopoly. They have no impetus to truly innovate, as much as they love to throw the word around.
Their reputation as a clueless monopolist who makes bloated software in a vacuum is well earned.
At least he has hair...... **Cough cough Steve Jobs cough cough.**
You'd be banned from any other forums for being a troll. That you actually get to write such off-topic, biased garbage at all is amazing. I've posted about you several times, but I've tried to keep it pointed, and yet respectful. I'm losing my ability to garner any more respect for you.
I'm sorry that Sharepoint is beating your Alfresco-The-Open-Source-Product-I'm-VP-Of. But stop using a position Cnet gave you regarding open source to bash your competitor nonstop!
Monopoly tax??? Let's seee... um, people can choose Linux for free if they want. They can choose Apple if they want. The fact that Microsoft charges anything at all just irks you to no end. Me, I'm glad capitalism still exists, where people get paid to create products. All you can do is bash Microsoft, without realizing that no one else can make a desktop that can run on millions and millions of computers of all different types and sizes with a consistency that would be unimaginable if it was so taken for granted. Sure, they have their issues because of all this legacy support they have to keep within their product, but they should still be respected.
Matt, find a blog that's meant to be biased, and set up roost there. Stop using your "Open Road" blog to continue to rant and rave about your competitor.
John
1. I have not had to spend as much upgrading my system. In fact I managed to skip what would have been a new system purchase as my present system works great with Leopard. Vista would have required enough hardware updates to make a new computer the more economical path with Windows.
2. Since Windows does not come with the software that I would need for audio/video editing I would have had to buy that. That software came as part of the package with my Mac.
3. And the biggest savings of all is that I have spent less time fixing problems with OS X in five years than I typically did with Windows in a month. Maybe your time is worth nothing, but mine is valuable to me.
You're outlandish exaggeration exaggeration asides, this is not your personal space and you don't need to be here so if it offends you so much then leave.
"Me, I'm glad capitalism still exists, where people get paid to create products."
Ah, you're one of those 'Linux is Communism' idealogue whack-jobs completely ignoring that millions of people are paid to work on F/OSS software and that capitalism requires competition, not Soviet State style monopolies.
Of course, for those dependent on the MS ecosystem I guess it's grating to face to possibility of having to actually compete instead of gently coasting on a placid lake of vendor lock-in with the oars pulled in.
Of course, we all expect Microsoft to say this. When respected independents come to the same conclusion then that is the time to sit up and take notice.
LvM!
Recently I also tried Ubuntu and Xandros (Linux distros) and both worked out of the box - Linux is also making a huge headway on the desktop so the alternatives have never looked better, especially with Vista being such a dud.
Linux is making a huge headway on the desktop? LOLOLOLOL
I want to see someone with no computer knowledge try to use Ubuntu without giving up after 1 minute...
- by Get_Bent October 14, 2008 11:28 AM PDT
- And then there's the Microsoft tax, as in taxing my patience with all these $#@%& patches and bug fixes every month!
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- by protagonistic October 14, 2008 12:02 PM PDT
- Well, to be completely fair OS X has a lot of patches and bug fixes as well, but at least they don't normally bring the system to its knees when you happen to get bit by one. :-)
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- by Dalkorian October 15, 2008 2:20 PM PDT
- Linux has patches too. It's because software is written by these eternally flawed creatures called "people". The difference is in how vulnerable you are with each system. both before and after patching (and of course whether or not the patches work to begin with). There's a reason people started calling the newest M$ offering "fista".
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