ParisLemon » Why Does Windows Vista Get No Fanboys?

Why Does Windows Vista Get No Fanboys?

A ton of stories I’ve read the past few days have been about Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista…but they haven’t been about the software per se, instead they’re mainly about the anti-climatic release of it. I can’t help but wonder, why does Microsoft get absolutely no fanboy love like Apple does?

Granted I’m pretty biased in this as I clearly love just about all things Apple (though not the Mighty Mouse), but I’m still not completely sure why Microsoft doesn’t seem to get love from anyone about Vista.

I used to love Microsoft products, I went the midnight sale of Windows 95 and bought XP the day it came out; so why could I just not care any less about Vista? Well the answer for me at least is Apple, and more specifically OS X. As much as I loved Microsoft in the 90s, that’s how much I disliked Apple computers. We had Macs at school, I hated using them. But when I moved out to California and I was forced to use OS X for the first time at work, I was immediately hooked.

But that is just me, and while a lot of people (at least that I know) have switched to Macs in the past 18 months or so, the majority still use Windows by far, so why don’t they come out in droves for a huge release like Vista like they do for any Apple product? Microsoft has supposedly spent a half of a BILLION dollars on marketing for Vista, so clearly the word is out there, but what they apparently can’t buy is any buzz whatsoever.

While I haven’t used it yet, I think Vista looks really nice, much better then Windows XP. You’d think Windows users would be thrilled about it, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. While some of you may point to the fact that I get my news from a lot of Mac-biased sites such as Digg, that is really looking past the bigger picture: why is Apple and not Microsoft loved on sites like Digg?

I guess maybe you could explain it that Apple users are more passionate, and perhaps have to be more vocal because they are the minority, but one would still think you’d see some love for Vista right now, yet I see basically none.

What else is interesting is that another Microsoft product, the Xbox 360, seems to have very good buzz around the Internet while rival Sony is getting killed. So it can’t just be a completely blind anti-Microsoft bias that is killing the Vista buzz.

I would argue that the 360 gets good buzz because Microsoft is making a lot of right moves with it. The Xbox Live service with its arcade and video downloads is particularly compelling. The previously-loved Sony meanwhile dropped the ball badly with the PS3, and the Internet is letting them know it.

This brings me to my point which may be fair or unfair, since as I said I’ve yet to use Vista; while there is no doubt that blindly-loving fanboys exist for companies like Apple, the great buzz Apple enjoys also exists simply because Apple makes great products. The same is true for the buzz Nintendo is getting for the Wii, it’s an excellent product; you didn’t see this kind of buzz for the Gamecube did you?

Microsoft on the other hand has a lot to prove with Vista, they’ve shown they can emulate the OS X GUI, but that hardly makes it a great product. So while some people may try to blame the fanboys for brainwashing the Internet, which in turn seems to brainwash the media, I would argue that if Microsoft would just make a piece of software worth buzzing about, the buzz would come; just like it has for the 360. A lot of people it seems, don’t think Vista is that piece of software. And their silence is deafening.

Post by MG Siegler on 01/31/07
Comments

Marty

Really interesting post. I agree with your position that MSFT doesn't get the love from consumers. Vista is an amazing product. I work at MSFT and have been using it for several months. Once you get over the install hell and new UX it's transforming the way I work. But to set the record straight, MSFT didn't spend anywhere near a half billion on marketing. While I don't work on the Vista team I know for a fact we NEVER spent that kind of money on a launch. We spend approximately $2Billion a year on marketing all up, that's everything. Salaries, etc. I did a blog post http://martycollinsblog.spaces.live.com/blog/cn... on the Vista launch that covers the consumer launch. But 80% of MSFT business is BtoB and that's where we get a lot of love. But I would love to increase the consumer love. Suggestions?

MG Siegler

Hey Marty. I hope you are right about Vista, as I said in the post I have yet to use it.

I've heard the $500 million various places, I think all the major news outlet picked it up. Here's one source:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=114589

In terms of suggestions I think the only thing Microsoft can do at this point is hope that others feel the same about Vista as you do. There are too many years worth of flat buzz surrounding the Microsoft OSes to create good buzz just with marketing and the like.

I would look to what you guys did with the Xbox 360; a great service was created (Xbox Live) and as such the buzz has been great for the 360, and it's doing great.

Thanks for the comments.

Steven

we could also look at the fact at VISTA is the first truly consumer aggressive OS to come out to date, unless ive been living under a rock, that is.

Microsoft has been very aggressive in the past, as have many developers. i wouldnt exactly consider Apple the holy grail of developers either, as they have had more than their fair share of screw ups aswell.

Apple has survived in recent times off an increased number of "converts" and a "pretty" product. however MS has an OS, not a computer system, and that in it own right, deserves less praise than what Apple "tries" to accomplish. however at the same time Apple was saved by a stroke of luck.

but one needs to consider than apple did not jump on this bandwagon of consumer aggressiveness with a few select organisation's and companies, to develop this aggressive and disgusting change of developer mentality.

whether this in time becomes the reason consumers turn their backs on the likes of microsoft, sony, riaa, mpaa etc, only the future can tell. i myself hope that the MAJORITY of consumers open their eyes to the reality of what these companies are trying to do them and their rights, rather than only a minority speaking out, but having no one listen.

ofcourse there are other issues with VISTA that are well documented around the internet, like backwards compatibility, performance etc. but i hope the aggressive nature of this product is what truly makes it struggle.

Jon

I agree with the point you make about mindset. In my opinion that's a lot of the explanation of the phenomenon (or lack thereof) that you write about. To my mind Mac people tend to be generally more fashion-conscious and self-advertising than PC users; while they see their Mac as an extension of their identity to shout about, PC users see the machine simply as a means to do whatever it is they need/want to.

And the minority thing as well of course; look at linux - it's hardly super-cool, but it's a (very) credible minority so gets the tub-thumping treatment - people love to side up with the underdog because it makes them feel individual. Apple are extremely clever to have continued to keep their spotless underdog image spin going by the way, despite having turned a good (read: bad) number of dirty corporate tricks in their time. Look at the royalities issue when iTunes first came out; that was downright despicable, yet for some reason nobody ever sees them as a corporate monster.

Lastly, as a Windows user for 10+ years, I'm utterly unexcited about Vista, as I was utterly unexcited about XP when it arrived. I still use Windows 2000 because it's stable, reliable, and has the features I need to get the job done.

Perhaps not as stable and reliable as a unix-based OS.. although in my opinion the BSOD issue is massively exaggerated, if one knows what one is doing; I've had only one BSOD in my entire history of Win2k usership, and that was caused by flakey software that messes with the SCSI subsystem, but i digress..

If Apple's computers ran all the Wintel software/games that I can't live without, I'd have no qualms about swapping over to OS X; I used to love NeXTStep/OpenStep when I was working as a support tech for it a long while back; it sure as hell blew NT 3.51 and Win95 out of the water back then, and I have no doubt that its descendent is the current leader in terms of desktop OS usability, even granted that it trys to hide away a lot of the "ugly, hard-to-understand" bits from its users.

Even if Apple are just another despicable corporate monster, Jobs and his cronies' design instincts are spot on.

MG Siegler

Interesting Steven, I hadn't really thought of it from that angle. I'm not sure I agree with it all, but it's interesting none-the-less.

MG Siegler

Some excellent points Jon, though it would seem very superficial, perhaps Microsoft should be more concerned about design.

I would again argue that the one product where they seemed to make this an important part of the product was the Xbox 360. I think they also tried this with the Zune, but pretty much failed (the brown color...a scroll-wheel looking thing that isn't a scroll wheel..)

As for OS X running Wintel programs there are a lot of rumors swirling beyond what is already known (Boot Camp) that Apple could be working on for its Leopard release.

Ron

I saw a sign the other day outside of an Apple dealer. It said "Apple now runs Windows". Apple is talking about Windows support in OS X. Soon, it will not matter anymore which platform you use. As a developer, I would love to code for the OS X, but in my industry (healthcare) I would be out of business in a week since almost all the hospital database systems use Windows workstations. I think if Apple came off their purest purch and actually had the kind of developer support MSFT does, then you would see Apple have far greater market share.

MG Siegler

Ron - You're right that Apple is supposedly working heavily on creating a way to run Windows apps, as you currently can with their Boot Camp patch, though you have to reboot the computer everytime you want to switch OSes.

Parallels, which allows you to run Windows while still within OS X seems like a great thing, but I'm not sure what the performance hit is for programs (I haven't used it yet).

Still I think even if you could natively run Windows apps on a Mac there would be great hesistation for areas of business such as the one you are in to switch to Macs as it would be a very costly operation with not only new systems, but training/teaching people how to use them (which isn't hard to learn, but still takes some time to get used to).

That is why Microsoft is not going to be losing big business to Apple anytime soon. While it may be relatively easy for single users to switch to Macs, it would be a monumental task for whole businesses and corporations to do so.

Now, when everything goes online in the years to come and there it no longer matters at all what kind of OS you run because the Internet (read: Google) will be your de-facto OS, that's another story...

Anonymous

One reason alot of people have not given Vista alot of love is because of alot of people who had tried out vista pre-release, and were not impressed with the OS. Yes, it is pretty, but there are also a lot of problems with the operating system such as the security settings being too vigorous, and bugs with the explorer program. There has been a lot of advertising for vista, but due to the delays in release of vista, and the fact that there are still such prominent bugs and annoyances in the operating system, many people have decided to stick with XP for a while longer, at least until some type of service pack is released fixed. That's just what I have seen and read through my own browsing the internet.

Anonymous

Why I uninstalled Vista after a week's usage, and installed XP (and Ubuntu) instead? I could not get it to work. Connecting it to a wireless network proved to be a fruitless time consuming task. I had both the XP and Ubuntu systems connected in minutes.
It was too annoying. The dimming of lights, the unnecessary confirmations got onto my nerves. Its like the popup balloons in XP magnified several hundred times over.

The only real significant addition which Vista has over XP is security. For people who dont know what they are doing, Vista is great as it will keep them much safer. However, having had so much experience with XP, I can keep pretty much any system completely safe, so the perfomance costs brought about by the increased security in Vista was not a worthwil trade off for me.

In the end though, I still end up doing most of my work on my ibook. There is something about the way Mac OS X works that just is not replicated by any of the other systems I mentioned.

manifest

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