Daring Fireball: Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline

So many good things in here from Gruber. The bad economy excuse, the NPD numbers, the enthusiast market, the boasting about Laptop Hunter ads when Mac sales went up and PC sales went down, etc.

The most interesting part may be the talk about Windows 7 though. I’ve had Windows 7 for several months now. It is much, much better than Vista. As I’ve written, I wouldn’t mind using it. But Gruber brings up a great point that I’ve somehow overlooked:

“But no one seems to be arguing that Windows 7 is something that will tempt Mac users to switch, or to tempt even recent Mac converts to switch back. It doesn’t even seem to be in the realm of debate. But if Windows 7 is actually any good, why wouldn’t it tempt at least some segment of Mac users to switch? Windows 95, 98, and XP did.

Sure, Windows 7 is better than Vista. But that’s a bar that was set so low. The real goal of any product should be to be the best, period.

Would I switch to a PC to use Windows 7? Nope. In fact, I said I would consider buying a cheap netbook that ran it, but with Chrome OS coming out, that might not even be the case anymore. As I wrote, the thing I liked most about Windows 7, was running Chrome on it.

I have no doubt that Windows 7 is going to make Microsoft a lot of money. As I said, it’s much better than Vista, and for many of users who have been stuck with XP for the past 8 years (seriously), Windows 7 will be more than good enough to finally upgrade.

But again, just being better than something that was bad is not a sound long-term strategy. The quarter Windows 7 goes on sale will be good, but what about the quarter after that? And the one after that? And 10 years from now?

I wrote 2 and a half years ago that we were in the age of Apple – it just didn’t look like it to many people yet. (And remember, that was right before the iPhone launched.) I knew it would take a while before we started to see the tangible signs of it in things like sales, but we’re starting to now.

To be fair, recently, it seems like Microsoft has been showing some signs of progress, but some of the silly things that their executives are saying (as I’ve pointed out in the past, and Gruber does in this new post) are troubling. Microsoft has no shortage of good people working for them, but they just don’t seem to get it at the highest levels. And that’s a big problem.

They’re consumed with chasing Google, with chasing Apple. Make the best products, and make them chase you. It really is that simple.