Has Microsoft lost focus?
I've been looking into it a bit recently, and I am thinking more and more that Microsoft has lost their focus with Windows, and is possibly even looking into the wrong direction.
So what is that wrong direction that Microsoft is looking towards? That direction is back towards the past. Microsoft has announced that with every copy of Windows 7 Business and Ultimate, there will also be a copy of Windows XP available to Install in Microsoft VPC2007.
I know there are a lot of people who will want XP around to use, but most people who will take the time to virtualize it, probably already have a license, and for the purposes they want to virtualize it for, they will probably just use VMWare or Virtualbox, especially if they choose to play a few old games on there, Virtualbox supports Graphics acceleration, while MSVPC2007 does not.
I also think they may have lost their focus on Windows, while they are trying to compete with every market out there. I know Microsoft is a large company, and they do have quite a few divisions, but I feel that when Microsoft does pay attention to their key product, Windows, they seem to be looking again, into a wrong direction, whether it be the past, or the wrong group of users. I feel that with Microsoft offering that copy of XP, instead of listening to the users who said "I don't like Vista, but Microsoft, with the next version, you could do this, and modify this a bit, you could also work on this a bit." enough, and they decided to pay more attention to the users who were like "OMG! VISTA SUXORZ! DON'T GET IT! VIVA LA XP! THEY CAN'T DO A THING TO SAVE IT!!!1!1!1!!!"
A couple of other things that Microsoft paid attention to, that again, they shouldn't have really even considered, were listening to users who didn't have adequate hardware to run Vista and still complained about it, those that only run Windows in virtual machines to run certain pieces of software they can't run on their native OS (thats directed to **NIX and OS X users,) and one new thing that popped up in the past few years that has gotten Microsoft even more involved with keeping XP, was the Netbook market.
Yes, I mentioned netbooks, which brings me to my next point, one of the major reasons Microsoft has lost focus on their key product, is they are trying to enter and compete in other markets as well, including competing with new Phone OS', Netbooks, web-search, advertising, mp3 players, and quite a few other markets.
I know Microsoft previous had a phone OS, so I will excuse them on that, and they don't even focus on that as well, but, Microsoft's irrational fear of Linux taking over due Linux having great success in the Netbook market, kind of really dragged MS into the netbook market, causing Microsoft to loose focus, again, on the future version of Windows because Vista was just way too large for netbooks, so focusing on the past, they extended XP support to go along with the netbook craze.
Then you've got Search and advertising, while I haven't seen much in advertising, I know Microsoft has been trying constantly in the past few years to compete Google - face it Microsoft, Google is king of the Search industry. When people want to search something, 95% of the time, you will hear Google. You're trying way too hard, and are lacking the simplicity that keeps bringing people back to Google.
Then you've got the mp3 market with the Zune, ah yes, the Zune. Ok, you had a bunch of people complement the Zune, ok, but, I do believe the Zune was almost as bad as Apple in the DRM department, if not worse with the Zune subscription service. I think after you quit the Zune subscription service, your songs just won't play after like a week, while if you quit iTunes, I believe you still have your songs (but, of course, they only play on one type of player, the iPod.)
Before I loose you in the midst of my rambling, I will sum it all up: Microsoft has lost focus and keeps looking into the wrong direction. I can even imagine an Apple commercial out of this - Where PC's neck is crooked starting at his own arse. Anyway, thanks for reading, please subscribe to this blog, pass it on, etc. etc.
~ Tyler Brown (condoulo)