The Tide Turns

Yeah, this is a lot of Bill Gates coverage for a site that is about switching to the Mac and other Apple products, but I think it fits. I said it once, this is a watershed event which marks the beginning of Microsoft's decline. That means there will be a lot of switchers over the next decade or so.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so:

We may be witnessing an historic changing of the guard, which takes place in every generation. Remember IBM? They were invincible. How could they be beat? By a couple of geeks in a dorm room, that's how. Microsoft rises. And then another snot-nosed kid with a great idea and a dorm room made it happen in the box business, enter Dell. Then others got wise and squeezed their efficiency-based margins to nothing. Apple rose like a phoenix, crashed and rose once again, by virtue of innovation and a customer-centric ethos. Sony was like IBM. Now they've been bloodied by the customer-centric and community-oriented Nintendo. And now there's Google, the poster-child for the democratization of the Internet and the ever-flattening, increasingly frictionless world. When put in this context Microsoft just seems so big and slow and old, hidebound by 30 years of culture and organizational silos that seem impregnable. And it appears that Vista - the product, the PR, the marketing approach - is the result of such an organization. At times brilliant, very heavy, complicated and expensive. This is not a product for today. This is a product for an era when the desktop ruled. And that era is long gone.

- Information Arbitrage: Microsoft Revisited: Vista, Apple and the Sony/Nintendo Phenomenon

I couldn't have said it better.

"Only 15 percent of today's computers are capable of running Windows Vista Home Premium, considered to be the mainstream consumer version, according to Gartner. That is just one reason why people probably won't be lining up outside stores to buy Windows Vista out of the box on the first day of release."
- Vista Is Ready for Consumers but Businesses Key

"The sense I'm getting (probably because I'm sensitive to it) is that Microsoft's free ride is coming to an end...

I've never seen non-techie mainstream media give MS such a hard time... you will find tech journalists going Wow! but by now we know that they are likely to be dipping into that $500million publicity well for their handouts in exchange for uncritical commentary."

- Vista not getting an easy time in Mainstream media - has Microsoft's free ride come to an end?

"Both Microsoft and Apple have seen healthy revenue growth in the last 5 years. Microsoft?s revenues have grown approximately 60% from just under $30B in 2002 to over $44B in 2006. However, while Microsoft has grown linearly for this period, Apple has accelerated with revenues of just under $6B in 2002 growing to just under $21B in 2006. An impressive 250% revenue growth! In other words, Apple has been growing much faster than Microsoft."

- 10layers.com: 2010: Apple larger than Microsoft?

"Microsoft's Slow Slide To Web Irrelevance Continues"

- Microsoft's Slow Slide To Web Irrelevance Continues - SeekingAlpha

I could go on, but these are very representative. I can't recommend this one enough: