I write another blog that focuses on technology history, This Day in Tech History. During my research for today, I found that October 12 was the day back in 1988 where Steve Jobs’ NeXT, Inc. introduced their first computer, simply named the NeXT Computer. While the NeXT Computer was never commercially successful, it should be noted that the operating system for the NeXT Computer is the direct ancestor of Mac OS X which was the foundation of the iOS, which of course runs the iPhone and iPad. On the heels of the Lost Steve Jobs Speech from 1983, I thought it was interesting to note that the seeds of the iPad were planted in the 80’s as well.

It is also interesting to note that Steve Jobs said that NeXT Computer was five years ahead of its time in 1988, just as he said the iPhone was five years ahead of its time in 2007. I wonder if staying five years ahead of the rest of the industry was Steve Jobs’ strategic plan for Apple – and if Apple is committed to it now.

After the huge response to The “Lost” Steve Jobs Speech, I took the time to read a lot of the comments people left all over the Internet regarding the talk and the almost prophetic comments Jobs made back then. What I found was that most people were genuinely in awe of the vision Jobs possessed as far back as 1983. However, there were a fair number of people who didn’t share that sentiment.

Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs

Some people want to downplay the accomplishments of Steve Jobs. They might say he wasn’t the first to think of a certain concept or he didn’t invent the technologies himself. But that simplistic line of thinking completely misses his genius. Time after time in his career, he brought products to market that completely changed not only the technology industry, but the world as well.

No, he wasn’t the technical brain behind the Apple I and Apple II. Steve Wozniak was the one who can largely be credited with actually building those computers. But without Steve Jobs’ vision and input, the Apple I would not have been much more than a hacker’s hobby – if it ever came to fruition at all. It would have been just another footnote in the history of technology as many computer kits from that era were. It was Steve Jobs’ uncompromising view of a computer that average people could use that created the Apple II, the world’s first practical personal computer that truly ignited the personal computer revolution. Without Apple’s huge influence in creating this runaway market, the IBM PC would not have happened in the way it did. Without Steve Jobs, the PC industry would have been completely different. Even Microsoft owes its success to the genius of Jobs.

True, he didn’t invent the graphical user interface nor the computer mouse. But while those technologies were languishing unrealized in research labs – research labs of companies that didn’t have the vision to bring them to market – Steve Jobs saw the future. He envisioned a “computer for the rest of us” and set out to make it happen. While the technology industry at first derided the Macintosh as a toy, they eventually adopted the main elements of the Macintosh themselves.

The iPod wasn’t the first digital music player, nor was it necessarily the one with the best technical specifications. But it was the most consumer-friendly device and users flocked to it. If Steve Jobs had stopped there, the legacy of the iPod was that it changed the music industry forever. And that may have been enough for most people.

But Jobs wasn’t done. He recognized that mobility was the next evolution in the personal computer. While most technology “experts” thought Apple was crazy to introduce a phone in 2007, Apple did anyway and completely changed the world – again. But the iPhone was just the first punch in a technology one-two combination. As I recently uncovered, his vision for computing as far back as 1983 was for a “book” device. The iPad was Jobs’ real masterpiece. If the iPhone kickstarted The New World of Technology, the iPad entrenched it – and started closing the door on the PC era.

There is a distinction between leadership and management that many people don’t understand. Leaders provide the vision and set the direction of their organization. Managers carry out the mission that the leaders have defined. Steve Jobs was a visionary. Steve Jobs was a true leader. It is largely irrelevant that Jobs’ wasn’t the first to think of some idea or that he didn’t actually build the devices himself. He put the wheels in motion and steered the ship in the direction that he wanted it to go. Which was often a direction where others didn’t have the foresight or guts to go. Plus his uncompromising attention to detail created products that were more than just good enough. Steve Jobs wanted “insanely great” products and that is what he made sure his company delivered. That uncommon vision is why Apple is the world’s most valuable company today.

While others could talk about futuristic devices or make cardboard mock-ups or design movie props, Steve Jobs made them real. That is his legacy and we are all in his debt for his accomplishments.

This is the time capsule that holds an Apple Lisa mouse donated by Steve Jobs – Photo courtesy of John Celuch, Inland Design

The response to the “Lost” Steve Jobs Speech has been absolutely phenomenal! I have more to say about the speech, which I will post in the future, but first I wanted to share another interesting tidbit about Steve Jobs and that 1983 conference in Aspen.

John Celuch of Inland Design, my client who gave me the tape of Steve Jobs’ speech at the 1983 IDCA, shared with me the story of a time capsule buried at that conference. The theme of the conference was “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be,” so a time capsule seemed like a natural project to go along with the conference. He was part of the informal committee that was in charge of gathering items to be placed in the time capsule. The plan was to unearth the time capsule either after 20 years or in the year 2000 (he doesn’t remember exactly).

After Steve Jobs’ speech, in which he used an Apple Lisa computer to control what Celuch recalls was a 6 projector setup, John approached Jobs and asked for something that he could include in the time capsule. Jobs thought about it for a few seconds and then unplugged the mouse from the Lisa. Celuch recalls that he was amused by the manner in which he was handed the mouse, as Jobs held the mouse by its cord, almost as one would hold a real mouse by the tail. So into the time capsule the Lisa mouse went, where it was buried at the end of the conference to be unearthed about 20 years later.

And here is where the story gets really interesting. As Celuch recalls, the time capsule was not unearthed as planned. I did some research on this and found a newspaper article published in 2010, “After 27 years, Aspen time capsule location remains unknown.” Apparently, no one knows for sure where the time capsule is located! The grounds where the time capsule was buried has changed hands and improvements made to the area have possibly changed the landscape enough to make locating the time capsule difficult. Additionally, any documentation detailing the exact location of the time capsule seems to be missing. Regardless, the current owners do not want people haphazardly digging all over their land.

So long story short, there is a piece of Apple and Steve Jobs history buried in Aspen, Colorado. And no one seems to know exactly where it is. Making it yet another “lost” piece of Steve Jobs lore.

That being said, I would love to organize an effort to recover this time capsule. John Celuch has already started gathering contact info for the people he remembers who were involved in the time capsule project. I hope by publicizing this information, we will find people who were involved or who have the missing pieces of information that will give the exact location of the missing time capsule. If you were involved, or know anyone involved, in the International Design Conference at Aspen in 1983, I would appreciate being contacted. Wouldn’t it be great if we could dig up the time capsule next year, on the 30th anniversary of its burial?

Steve Jobs giving a speech at the 1983 IDCA – Courtesy Arthur Boden

In 1983, Steve Jobs gave a speech to a relatively small audience at a somewhat obscure event called the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA). The theme of that year’s conference was “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be”, which looking back seems all too fitting. Circumstances being what they are, very little is available on the Internet regarding this Steve Jobs speech. In my extensive research, I could find only one recording of this talk, which itself was just posted in June of this year. This talk received a fair amount of attention at the end of August, after it was mentioned in a Smithsonian Magazine article written by Walter Issacson, Jobs’ biographer. However, the recording currently available is not complete. It ends after about 20 minutes, which corresponds with the end of Jobs’ prepared speech. Left out is almost 40 minutes of a follow-up question and answer session where Jobs offered incredible insight into his vision of future technology. I now present this recording to the world so that it may be preserved indefinitely.

First, I’d like to thank one of my oldest clients, John Celuch of Inland Design. He personally attended this speech almost 30 years ago and was the one who gave me the recording I now share. Attendees of the speech received a cassette tape copy and he held on to it all these years. He found the tape sometime last year and thought I might like it. He was absolutely right, but because I was in the middle of a move (and also due to a lack cassette tape players available to me!) I set the tape aside and put off listening to it until this summer. Had I known what was in this recording, I would not have waited so long! Incidentally, John met Steve Jobs at this conference. During their interaction Steve Jobs gave him something to put in a time capsule that was buried at the conference. To our knowledge this time capsule has yet to be dug up. I’ll share more on this in a future article.

[Update – Read The “Lost” Steve Jobs Time Capsule article now]

Here is the cassette tape I digitized this recording from. I’m not sure what the #20 means.

After listening to the recording, I did some research in an attempt to find some pictures of this speech. I only found one source of pictures, courtesy of Arthur Boden via his son Ivan’s Flicker account. Arthur had also personally attended this speech and took some pictures of Steve Jobs giving his talk. His son uncovered them while scanning some old slides and made them available on his Flicker account. To my knowledge, these may be the only known pictures of this speech. If anyone has any other pictures of this talk or any other Steve Jobs sightings at the conference, I’d love to know.

Regarding the speech, it is amazing to hear Steve Jobs talk about some things that were not fully realized until only a handful of years ago. This talks shows us just how incredibly ahead of his time he was. I’ve listened to the entirety of the recording a few times now and have taken extensive notes, of which I will further elaborate on in future blog postings. But for now, here are a few of the highlights – and remember – he is speaking in 1983. To put that in context, the Macintosh had not yet been introduced, Apple still thought the Lisa was going to be a hit, and the IBM PC was the second most popular personal computer behind the Apple II series.

• He mentions that computers are so fast they are like magic. I don’t think it is a coincidence that he called the iPad “magical”.
• He states that in a few years people will be spending more time interacting with personal computers than with cars. It seems so obvious now, but hardly a given back then.
• He equates society’s level of technology familiarity to being on a “first date” with personal computers. He recognized that technology would continue to evolve in the near future as would people’s comfort level with it. In hindsight, once it became dominant the PC industry stood relatively still while Jobs was busy planning “the next big thing”.
• He confidently talks about the personal computer being a new medium of communication. Again, this is before networking was commonplace or there was any inkling of the Internet going mainstream. Yet he specifically talks about early e-mail systems and how it is re-shaping communication. He matter-of-factly states that when we have portable computers with radio links, people could be walking around anywhere and pick up their e-mail. Again, this is 1983, at least 20 years before the era of mobile computing.
• He mentions an experiment done by MIT that sounds very much like a Google Street View application.
• He discusses early networking and the mess of different protocols that existed at the time. He predicts that we were about 5 years away from “solving” networking in the office and 10-15 years from solving networking in the home. I’d say he was pretty much dead-on.
• He says Apple’s strategy is to “put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you that you can learn how to use in 20 minutes”. Does that sound like anything we are familiar with today? And they wanted to do it with a “radio link” so that people wouldn’t need to hook it up to anything to communicate with “larger databases” and other computers. Hmmm ….
• He compares the nascent software development industry to the record industry. He says that most people didn’t necessarily know what computer they wanted to buy. In contrast, when walking into a record store they definitely knew what music they liked. This was because they got free samples of songs by listening to the radio. He thought that the software industry needed something like a radio station so that people could sample software before they buy it. He believed that software distribution through traditional brick-and-mortar was archaic since software is digital and can be transferred electronically through phone lines. He foresees paying for software in an automated fashion over the phone lines with credit cards. I don’t know about you, but I think this sounds incredibly similar to the concept of the Apple App Store. Plus his comparison to the music industry just might be foreshadowing the iTunes store. You need to listen to the speech to hear the entirety of this passage for yourself.
• Right at the end of the Q&A session, a question is asked about voice recognition, which he believed was the better part of a decade away from reality. Given the context of Siri today, it is interesting to hear him talk about the difficultly of recognizing language vs voice because language is contextually driven. He says, “This stuff is hard”.

So finally, here is my digitized recording of a “Talk by Steven Jobs” from the 1983 IDCA. The previously unavailable Q&A session starts at about 21:30 of the recording. Note that most of the questions asked by the audience are unintelligible, but can generally be divined by the responses Steve Jobs gives. I digitized the recording using Audacity and applied a simple noise filter to remove the tape hiss and saved it as MPEG-4 (M4A). And finally special thanks to SoundCloud.com for agreeing to host the download. Enjoy!

(If you downloaded the file earlier with Safari on a Macintosh, Safari may have appended the extension .mp3 to the end of the filename. I have corrected this issue now, but if your downloaded file has the .mp3 extension, simply remove it and leave .m4a at the end so you may see the custom icon) 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are aware that last week’s release of Apple’s iOS 6 operating system (and related iPhone 5 release) caused a stir due to the less-than-stellar Maps app. Earlier today, Apple released a statement from CEO Tim Cook apologizing for the frustration the new Maps app has caused. While promising that Apple will improve the functionality, he did something quite extraordinary – he suggested that his customers try alternative apps from competing companies such as Microsoft and Google. Now that’s having confidence in your platform. He has no fear suggesting alternatives from competing companies to make his customers happy while they work to improve their own product.

Technology companies take note. Mistakes happen. Acknowledge them and treat your customers well. If you haven’t figured this out already, this is one of the keys to Apple’s success. Microsoft, with your recent Windows Phone debacle, you especially need to take note if you want any chance at a successful future.

With all the uproar about the new Maps app introduced in Apple’s iOS 6 – also part of the new iPhone 5 – a story has surfaced that puts a new light on the situation. The general consensus among the techie-crowd was that Apple wanted to do their own maps app to thumb their nose at Google or because Apple was being greedy. However, it is now being revealed that Google was not willing to license the voice guided turn-by-turn navigation technology to Apple – at least not without concessions that Apple could to agree to. Not willing to grant a third-party significant leverage over the functionality of its operating system (ala Adobe Flash), Apple was basically forced to develop its own mapping application.

So was Google being the nose-thumbing, greedy company instead of Apple? There is probably truth to both sides, but the reality is that where the companies were once allies, it appears that they are growing ever more antagonistic. Apple seems to have known this was coming, as they have been making acquisitions of mapping-based technologies since July of 2009. The Google/Apple schism is a shame because both companies have strengths in their respective areas. Hopefully they’ll be able to cooperate again in the future. The specter of Microsoft still lurks.

This is how Android phones make many people feel

I just read a great article from Jason Perlow, the senior technology editor at ZDNet. A former Android evangelist, Jason has decided to leave the Android platform and buy an iPhone. He claims he is switching to the iPhone because the promise of what Android is intended to deliver is perverted by the hardware manufacturers and wireless carriers. The Android that is being sold – as compared to the Android that is talked about by Google and Android supporters – are two very different things. To quote Jason:

What I’m trying to get at is there is a perfect image of what Android is supposed to be, what Google and Android’s staunchest adherents purport it to be, and then there is Android as it is practiced in reality.

Android as it is being sold to you by OEMs and wireless carriers is a lie. It is Android interpreted and regurgitated as perverted scripture from false prophets.

Specifically, Jason’s biggest beefs with Android phones are the fact that promised updates often come very late (if at all), the general unreliability of the devices as he has experienced, the complexity that hardware manufacturers and wireless carriers introduce into their particular Android-based phones, and the resulting inconsistent user experience. When compared to Apple’s iOS devices, which have uniform updates, unmatched ease-of-use and reliability, and a universal user experience, Android just isn’t in the same league.

I’ve written about Android’s problems before on this blog as well as my one of my other blogs, State of the Tech. Most of my writings echo exactly Jason’s dissatisfactions with the Android platform. So I won’t rehash them here. However I will discuss the many surprising comments people wrote about his article. A main theme among many of those comments were the idea that the problems with the Android platform aren’t Google’s fault. They are the fault of the hardware vendors and carriers. Which makes the author’s point exactly!

Who cares whose fault it is that Android phones have these problems? The problems EXIST. That is what matters. It really doesn’t matter one bit what Android is supposed to be. It doesn’t matter in the least what Google’s intentions are. The only thing that matters AT ALL is reality. The only thing consumers care about is the user experience. Whining that it’s the hardware vendors’ or carriers’ fault doesn’t change the fact that the Android user experience doesn’t hold a candle to Apple’s iOS devices.

What this whole experience shows is a fundamental flaw in Google’s approach to Android. For all the complaining that people do about Apple’s “closed ecosystem”, the very reason Apple controls everything it can is so that they can ensure the end user experience is as good as possible. Most other hardware manufacturers are motivated by differentiating their devices from all the others that run the same operating system. To think that the hardware vendors are going to conform to a unified Android experience is fanciful. If all Android phones had nearly the same user experience, hardware vendors would have an almost impossible time differentiating themselves. The problem is that they already have a very hard time with differentiation! The root problem is that Android encourages a commodity smartphone market, just like Windows encouraged a commodity PC market. A commodity market encourages competition almost completely on price. Profits suffer in a commodity market. PC makers had higher margins to start with but they all still eventually consolidated on the same low-margin business model – not coincidentally except for Apple. The problem with smartphone manufacturers (again, other than Apple) is that they were already in a low margin business to start with. If companies aren’t making any money, all the good intentions in the world doesn’t matter. Companies won’t stay in the Android business if they aren’t profiting.

Apple’s priority is user experience. Google’s priority for Android is “openness” or whatever other technical nonsense is du jour. Hardware manufacturers and wireless carriers priority is differentiation. Given how well Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch continue to sell, I think the answer is pretty clear which priority users have in mind.

What if Microsoft threw a party and no one attended?

The answer to that question is probably, “who cares?” Because that’s almost exactly what happened Wednesday, when Nokia, Microsoft’s closest strategic Windows Phone partner, held a “big event” unveiling their two new phones that will run Windows Phone 8.

Most of the event was spent describing the hardware features of the yet-to-be-released Lumia 920 and its lesser cousin the 820. Microsoft’s manager of their Windows Phone program was there and gave a presentation on some of the features of the phone, but had relatively few details about the real meat of the new mobile operating system.

Reaction to the “big event” has been pretty much low-key. The phones don’t have a ship date (rumors are November for Europe). The technical press is wondering why Microsoft had so little to say about their soon-to-be flagship operating system – the very operating system on which Microsoft’s future hinges. And the average technology consumer has no clue there was even an event.

Contrast this to Apple’s situation. iOS 6 and its new features were unveiled in great detail back in June. Apple’s September 12th event, which will almost certainly unveil the rumored iPhone 5, is big news not only in tech circles but in the mainstream media as well. Average consumers are well aware of the event and will likely know what was announced by the end of that day.

So why is Microsoft being so shy about offering up more details about Windows Phone 8? We can’t know for sure, but I can speculate. And I can’t think of a feasible scenario that is good for Microsoft. There are three main possibilities.

The first scenario is that Microsoft could be behind schedule getting all the features of Windows Phone 8 implemented. So they can’t show off the features because they can’t get them running reliably enough to demo them. Obviously, that’s bad. If Windows 8 Phone is delayed, it only allows Apple to gain a bigger lead. A shipping delay would also make Microsoft look bad and possibly give Windows 8 a bad reputation. This really puts Microsoft in-between a rock and a hard place, because their alternative would be to rush Windows 8 Phone to market before it is fully ready. By doing this, they take the risk of shipping buggy, unreliable devices which would also put a black-eye on Microsoft’s already shaky reputation and potentially sink their entire marketing strategy for Windows 8.

Second, Microsoft may not want to cut into sales of Windows 7 Phones. Or more correctly, they may not want to alienate their hardware partners who have large inventories of Windows 7 phones gathering dust. Which is really a bad thing for consumers, since any phone that runs Windows 7 will not run Windows 8. Anybody that gets suckered mistakenly buys a Windows 7 phone will be very unhappy when they find out their brand-new phone is already obsolete, which again, only hurts Microsoft’s already weak reputation among consumers.

Third, Microsoft may realize that Windows 8 phone doesn’t really compare favorably to the iPhone or even Android phones. So they are letting their hardware vendors tout their hardware features for the time being. If true, that is a losing proposition as marketing on hardware features isn’t working with consumers. The iPhone sells because of the entire package of hardware, software, and ecosystem. Obviously Windows 8 Phone is nowhere near that yet. So perhaps Microsoft wants to quietly introduce Windows 8 Phone to market while focusing most of the attention on Windows 8 for PCs and Windows 8/Windows RT for tablets. They may hope that Windows 8 will have a halo effect and that if people are impressed enough with the other versions of Windows 8 that they’ll chomp at the bit to go buy a Windows 8 phone. Of course, if Windows 8 on PCs or tablets isn’t all that impressive, then there will be no halo effect and Windows 8 phones will continue to sell at the lackluster rate Windows 7 phones are. Obviously, that’s bad for Microsoft.

Again, it can not be understated that Microsoft’s future hinges on Windows 8. If Windows 8 isn’t a big hit, Microsoft may slowly fade into irrelevance. The fact that they seem to be so shy about marketing the supposedly great features of Windows 8 puts that future into question.

Quit treating us like dumb schmucks, US Cellular!

US Cellular is at it again, launching a new ad campaign that tries to downplay the importance of the phones people use and highlight instead the quality of their network. Called “Hello Better”, the campaign has one ad in particular that I wanted to address. In it, a man who claims to represent an competing wireless company tries to woo back a customer (who just happens to be an older gentleman) by offering them a “wonderphone” that does all sorts of relatively useless things. The customer asks “does it make calls?” and “does it get good reception where I need it?”, to which the wireless rep says “no … but” and continues to list off the useless apps the phone has. The commercial ends with the tagline “Goodbye Deception. Hello Reception”.

As I’ve written before, I applaud US Cellular for trying to highlight their purported strengths: a quality network and high customer satisfaction. And I appreciate the competition they are offering against the bigger carriers in regards to contracts and phone upgrades. But let’s stop with silliness of trying to pretend that smartphones are somehow all fluff and that the phone people use doesn’t matter. It just makes US Cellular look out of touch and out of date. While this type of marketing may appeal to certain technophobic demographics, that’s a losing proposition in the long run.

The New World of Technology is here and society is getting increasingly tech savvy, especially the older generations. While not all smartphones or tablets are easy or reliable, Apple is the dominant player and their products are attracting waves of former technophobes, including older people. Trying to sell people on the idea that their phones of choice are silly wastes of time is going to actually turn off a lot of people, marginalizing your target market to a demographic that is steadily shrinking.

In my prior article I noted how carriers that don’t have the iPhone are losing customers to those carriers that do. US Cellular reportedly turned down a chance to carry the iPhone. They seem to want to fight a battle pitting their network vs. Apple’s iPhone. Given what the iPhone has done to the entire technology market (goodbye BlackBerry), US Cellular may want to rethink their strategy.

Microsoft may not know how to solve this problem

If you miss what’s happening then the same kind of thing that happened to IBM or many other companies could happen to Microsoft very easily. – Bill Gates, circa 1995

In this quote Bill Gates was talking about the last major transition that occurred in the technology industry. The emergence of the personal computer during the 80’s and early 90’s sunk many early technology companies and almost toppled even IBM. Bill Gates recognized that no matter how big a company is, a significant shift in technology can undermine a business model almost overnight. This was one of the reasons that under Bill Gates, Microsoft was merciless to their competitors and almost as merciless to their own strategic partners. Bill Gates saw nearly everything as a threat and he was not going to let an up-and-coming new technology do to Microsoft what the personal computer did to IBM.

Fast forward to today and we see that Bill Gates’s prophecy is holding true. Microsoft, as many other Old World technology companies, are struggling to find relevancy in The New World of Technology led by companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook. Once dominant, Microsoft and their OEM partners settled for complacency in the PC market while companies began to grow empires in the new markets of Internet, social media, and digital media players. For many technology companies such as RIM (BlackBerry), the knockout came with the one-two combination of the iPhone and iPad. For Microsoft, they’ve been knocked down, but the question is can they get back up. And if they do manage to get back up, will they ever resemble the dominant company they once were?

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s future hinges on how well they execute their launch of Windows 8. Windows 8 is the lynchpin of Microsoft’s strategy to recapture the title of the world’s leading technology company. Microsoft’s plan is pretty simple. They want to bring a new and unified Windows interface to PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. By doing this, Microsoft believes they can leverage their dominance of the PC market to jump-start their entry into the mobile market. They believe Windows 8 will be the bridge between the Old World and the New World of Technology. On the surface, this sounds like a fair plan. Many people are familiar with the Windows operating system so it could follow that they’d like to extend that familiarity to their other devices as well. However, Microsoft’s entire plan revolves around a key assumption. It is this assumption that ultimately will doom Microsoft’s strategy and possibly the company itself.

What goes around, comes around.

Microsoft makes the assumption that the familiarity people have with Windows equals an enthusiasm for the operating system. At first glance this assumption might seem valid. After all Microsoft Windows is still the most popular operating system in the world. PCs running Microsoft Windows continue for the time being to outsell most other computing devices. So with all those Windows computers being sold, it would seem to follow that Windows is a popular operating system. The fallacy in this assumption, however, is that the people using Windows-based computers actually like Windows. Consider these facts:

• The vast majority of PC purchases are made by large companies. Enormous volumes of purchases are controlled by a relatively few people in IT departments. Large numbers of people who ultimately use the computers generally didn’t have a say in the purchase decision.
• Until recently, most people based their individual technology purchasing decisions upon what they used at work or were recommended by their IT departments.
• The early history of the PC market was marked by compatibility issues. It was difficult to share data or software between different computing systems, entrenching many users into the Windows platform over several purchase cycles.

However, things have changed over the last several years:

• Smartphones and tablets have expanded the definition of what people consider “computers”. Sales of these mobile devices have definitively impacted the PC market.
• Society is much more tech-savvy now. Consumers are no longer relying on IT departments for their information, are now making their own purchase decisions, and are increasingly buying non-Microsoft devices.
• Compatibility issues are much less prevalent now, removing the long-standing hurdle to using non-Windows platforms.
• The predominant force in the technology industry is now the Internet.

Don’t burn your bridges behind you.

Even with all the above points, the biggest issue working against Windows is the very familiarity that Microsoft thinks is an asset. Yes, most people have years of experience dealing with Windows – but most of that experience has been exasperating! Years of putting up with viruses, awkward user interfaces, instability, and the general hassles of Windows have left people with a bad taste in their mouths. Microsoft thinks that people’s familiarity with Windows means they are comfortable with it. On the contrary, most people want to run screaming from Windows! Where Microsoft thinks that continued sales of Windows means market acceptance, the reality is that for years people didn’t think they had a choice. So they put up with Windows and when time came to buy a new computer, they begrudgingly purchased another Windows PC. But now people are able to confidently choose non-Microsoft platforms and are increasingly doing so. The proof is in the pudding: Apple is the most valuable company in the world, having surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable tech company two years ago. Once people realized a clear alternative to a PC running Windows, they are switching in droves.

Be careful how you treat people on your way up – there may not be anyone around to catch you on your way down.

For years Microsoft was the bully in an abusive relationship. They pushed around their partners and they abused their end-users. It is well-known that Bill Gates had an extremely strong desire not just to be successful, but to crush and eliminate all competition. It was easily evident in their actions during the 1990’s. I remember telling people back then that Microsoft’s actions would come back to haunt them. You simply can’t treat people and companies as badly as they did and expect them to support you in the long run. Now it seems that my prediction is finally coming to fruition. Just like the bully that suddenly finds himself with no one on his side, Microsoft is about to find out that no one really cares if they fall.

You’ve made your bed – now lie in it.

There is really only one group of people who actually want Windows to succeed. Those who have a vested interest in Windows and Microsoft. That includes obviously Microsoft executives, employees, and stockholders. PC vendors also want to see Microsoft succeed. Those who make their living supporting Microsoft technologies such as corporate IT departments and Old World technology journalists also would like to see Microsoft continue their dominance. Suddenly, their job security is at risk as the world starts to shift away from the Microsoft dominated PC era to the New World of Technology. Many of these people wish that things would just go back to the way they were – where they were the decision makers and they could influence the technology people chose. They’ll do (and are doing) everything they can to convince people that Microsoft’s resurgence is right around the corner – just give them a little more time and they’ll be back in the driver’s seat. But Pandora’s box has been opened and there’s no closing it. People are now very familiar with a life away from Microsoft and there’s no way they’re going back to the one who abused them for so many years.

Karma is a bitch.

Some of you may be thinking that my viewpoint is overly-simplistic. But I can tell you that a lifetime spent working with technology has taught me that many things in the tech industry are just that simple. It has also taught me that history repeats itself – as Bill Gates himself recognized. Microsoft and the PC industry were caught with their pants down. Now Microsoft wants to be a player in the New World, and are trying to position themselves as a technology innovator. However, Microsoft represents the Old World of Technology to many people. That Old World was not a happy place for the majority of tech users and they aren’t in a hurry to return to that way of life. This perception is ultimately Microsoft’s biggest problem and one that Microsoft may not be able to overcome.