It is a little sad to admit that I am a “veteran” in the technology world. My first job was testing games at Sierra Online (today just Sierra) in the early 1980’s. I did this while I learned to program Radio Shack and Commodore computers followed later by Apple computers. My little brother made a version of lunar lander on the Commodore that kept us entertained for hours. These days a four year old would find it boring.
Over the 25 + years I have been making money directly or indirectly from the technology industry I have seen a lot of names come and go. Anyone remember Tandem or DEC? Many of the pioneers of the PC industry are long gone or a name on another brand like Compaq sitting on HP computers.
With all of the changes in the industry, a few big names remain. intel, AMD, Apple, IBM and of course Microsoft.
If you turned on the financial news anytime in the past three to four years, you would think that Microsoft (Nasdaq MSFT) is out of business and Apple (Nasdaq AAPL) owned the world. Given the value of Apple Stock and total Market Value or cap of Apple, no one would blame you if you though Apple must have bought Microsoft.
With a very respectable 3.09% yield Microsoft is very much alive profitable, and as always cash rich. With Windows 8, Microsoft has stopped playing catch up, and has decided to not only jump back in the ring, but come out swinging with a vengeance.
With the ho-hum release of the iPhone 5, Mini iPad and new iPad, it almost appears that Apple has once again stumbled. This happened once before when Steve Jobs left and Apple eventually entered a tailspin only to be rescued by it’s famous founder. That required Apple to acquire NeXT and along with it, the eventual return of Steve Jobs.
This time is different. Steve Jobs regrettably can’t come back.
There is a note of irony as I write this on a MacBook Air because the latest update to Windows 7 Pro caused my PC to crash. My HP PC is loading a system restore point and I hope to see it alive again soon.
My three year old HP PC with Windows 7 pro has been flakey lately, requiring a new hard drive and video card in the past 8 months. I was holding out to see what Windows 8 looked like before I ran out and bought a Mac Mini.
I have always been an Apple fan, and I even bet that Bill Gates, secretly admires Apples amazing design talent. I have had over a dozen Apple computers, and currently own an iPhone 4, MacBook Air, Apple TV and and iPad 2. My wife has an iPhone 4 and iPad 2. We each have a PC simply because I am too cheap to re purchase all of the software.
This spring will be different. Both of us have three year old HP PC’s and have been considering buying Mac Mini’s to replace the PC’s. I just wanted to wait until Windows 8 came out. I use Quickbooks for my business, and if you only upgrade every 24 months, it is significantly less expensive than getting an online business suite at $19.99 per month or $24.99 for Quickbooks online monthly fees.
Having an entire Apple based system looks good on paper but there are some flaws with the idea. To begin with I run a business, and Apple’s don’t really play nice with inexpensive servers. I don’t want to put everything into iCloud because ironically, iCloud files don’t show up in the finder. At least I can’t find any that way and I don’t have time for an appointment and a class at the Genius bar to store files. What I do like about iCloud is the basic Calendar and notes appearing on all of my devices and my wife’s. We share a single iTunes account to make this work the best. This works on PC’s of course as well.
I also would like to be cheap and continue with Quickbooks software, but for that one item I won’t change my computer purchase. I’ll buy Quickbooks Mac if that is all it comes down to.
This week, my wife and I went to the Microsoft store, and saw Windows 8. My wife, who had been admiring the larger iMac for her new desktop,
simply said “I want this” while playing with a Dell Touchscreen featuring Windows 8.
Next we learned we could get an X-box and add a Verizon FiOS App and get FiOS programming without wiring another TV. When I got home I tried to find a FiOS ap for my Apple TV, and no such luck. Score again Microsoft.
Fifteen minutes after leaving the store, we were back to play with Surface. Surface is the rather odd and uncatchy name that Microsoft gave it’s very cool tablet. For style and appearance, the iPad does look nicer, but the updating tiles on the Surface are really cool.
Before we could leave we had to look at Windows 8 phones. Finally Microsoft had an operating system that looked and felt similar across multiple platforms, and it is clearly a winner. At first the tiles look gimicky, but after playing with the systems for over an hour, I suddenly realized the cool factor. If you put a Microsoft Surface in your kitchen, you have a live realtime snapshot of whatever you think is important. That is really cool.
It may take some time for the judges to rule, but Windows 8 is one mean right hook that I didn’t expect and I am sure Apple didn’t either. In dream land I would find a Mac Mini sized PC with three monitor outputs running Windows 8. So far the best thing I have found is the HP slimline which just might have to work.
At the end of the day, Microsoft has a terrific and friendly operating system in Windows 8. The big question is simply this, can Windows 8 take on both Android and Apple in the mobile game? Mobile is growing over 4 times faster than standard desktop systems and it might be the deciding factor in this battle
One thing about Microsoft, you can never count them out. Check out Windows 8 and tell me what you think