Apple’s Mac OS X was a game changer for many reasons.  First of all, it made Apple relevant again.  The days of Microsoft pumping money into Apple to simply have a competitor and Mac being a hobbyist platform were now behind Apple. Secondly, and most impactful, was the effect OS X had on Microsoft.  From a consumer’s point-of-view, Windows was headed down a boring path of features that only mattered in large corporate environments.   The success of OS X made Microsoft reevaluate their strategy that if you used Windows at work, then you would also use it home.  This was true in the 1990s, but not true in the mid 2000s.

Vista helped boost OS X sales. Win 7 only helps Microsoft.

The success of OS X was at a high-point during  the Windows Vista era. During this time, OS X reached a previously unfathomable 7% market share.  Vista, the much anticipated and long overdue upgrade to XP, disappointed many early adopters.  There were so many early disenchanted users that the operating system earned a horrid reputation from which Vista would never be able to recover.  Many of these users decided a change was in order and jumped to OS X. Obviously, this made Microsoft re-think many things and eventually recovered their desktop dominance with the release of Windows 7. (See my previous post how Microsoft took Windows from a Vista flop to a success with 7.) For the year ending 2010, the OS X worldwide market share dropped to 4.13% — that is a significant drop in the 1.5 years Windows 7 has been available.  The entire drop in market share cannot be attributed to Windows 7 alone because a good portion of the drop is from the iPad cannibalizing Mac sales.

Keep in mind that Apple is experiencing record revenues each quarter. When you consider that Mac sales are down, it’s clear that Apple doesn’t make extraordinary amounts of money from its desktop operating system. (Mobile and iTunes, that’s another amazing story.)

So what should Apple do with OS X and their desktop line of business?  I’m glad you asked, here’s my plan!

Step 1: Sell Macs Running Windows

Sell Macs with Windows pre-loaded. I mean Windows only, not a hokey dual boot with OS X and Windows. No, I’m not crazy. This is very simple.  I am not suggesting that Apple stop selling Macs with OS X, but they should give consumers a choice which system they want to buy (yes, I know consumer choice isn’t one of Apples business tenets). Windows is an open system so any hardware maker can create a device and write drivers – even competitors like Apple.  In fact, this is possible today through Apple’s Boot Camp utility. Think about this, inside that cool Mac case is standard hardware. They have used ATI & Nvidia for graphics drivers, Intel for the CPU and so on. These Windows drivers already exist!  I have met several people that buy Macs to dump OS X in order to run Windows 7.  I guess these people like the cool Apple hardware but refuse to give up the conveniences and compatibility of Windows.   Before the iPod saved Apple’s bacon, I had the theory that Boot Camp was a market test to see if people would be willing to run Windows (XP at the time) on a Mac.  The answer was and still is yes.

Step 2: Sell Macs Running iOS (and OS X too!)

I know that many Apple purists would not run Windows based purely on principle. For those people there would be two options:

1. Run iOS on entry and mid level  Macs
2. Run OS X for higher-end solutions

Again, you may think I am crazy, but OS X development has seemingly stalled and it appears that Apple is near the end of its innovation road. Recent additions like a Mac App Store and a going back in time animation for Time Machine don’t really count as innovative. These “features” actually make my point for me. iOS (Yes, Apple’s mobile platform) has significantly outsold OS X. Now that iOS has a primitive form of multitasking, it’s not a far reach to think it could power a full featured Mac with keyboard, monitor, USB ports, etc.  This would be an appealing upgrade to iPod and iPad devotees. You could even have a mobile phone in your Mac!

Of course iOS, in its current form, is limited and couldn’t handle the heavy-duty processing required for more intensive tasks like photo and video editing.  For these users, they could opt for a Mac running OS X just like today.

Step 3: Open Source OS X

If the majority of Macs now run Windows or iOS, Apple’s attention to OSX will further decline.  That would be a shame because Apple has done a ton of good work over the last 10 years with the operating system. (There’s actually more than 10 years of coding if you consider they didn’t start from scratch and recycled NeXT.) To ensure that OS X doesn’t become extinct (NeXT and OS/2 come to mind), OS X should become an open source project like Linux.  Can you imagine what the open source community could do for OS X? Excitement for Linux has fallen off year over year, but Open OSX would be a huge hit in the software community.  Just think, within months, you would be able to install OS X on a computer of choice – not just those made by Apple!

Conclusion

There you have it — Joey’s road map for Apple’s operating systems. Yes, I know you Apple fans think I have committed the ultimate sin, but let’s face it.  Apple has shifted itself from a software company to a gadget and media company.  in the process, many resources have been shifted from the OS X product group.  If this trend continues (and it looks like it will) OS X will continue to be an afterthought in the Apple portfolio. If Apple sold Macs pre-loaded with Windows then sells would increase making yet even more money for the company.

I have gotten several emails about Windows 7 recently (and even a couple about Vista). Since I am in the middle of a large Win7 architectural and deployment project, I thought I would take time and jot down some thoughts and try to answer the emails in the progress. 

I don’t want to do a feature by feature comparison of Vista and Win 7, because there are hundreds of those available. I could spend the next three months writing about XP Mode(virtualization), multi-core performance improvements, TRIM support for solid state drives, the new task bar, and on and on.   Within Microsoft the company, they changed the way they managed code internally during Windows 7 development. While this won’t necessarily lead to better code, it did speed development time and allowed more time for quality assurance testing.  These are all great features and topics, but I want to take a consumer’s view of what happened between Vista and Win 7.

Windows 7 has been available for less than a year and it has already surpassed the market shares held by Apple’s OSX and Windows Vista.  There will always be those who follow OSX in a cult-like fashion, but it seems that Vista has become a distant memory to even the most ardent Microsoft supporters.  How is it that Microsoft can release an operating system that infuriated people then turn around and release a successor a couple of years later and have people claiming it is the best operating system ever?

What was so wrong with Vista?

From a consumer point of view, Vista was a train wreck when it was released  in 2006.  Specifically:

1. Bugs: Microsoft and their legion of followers cannot deny it, there were bugs. Vista was a re-write of the Windows client.  During the development process, there were numerous delays and feature cuts.  At one point early in the development process, Microsoft even stopped development completely to push XP SP2 out the door. Microsoft was feeling pressure to release this much anticipated operating system. With any re-write, especially on the magnitude of Windows, there will be bugs.  It is obvious this pressure forced Microsoft to release the bits before Vista was ready.  As a result, there were many more bugs than there should have been on release day.  I’m sure Microsoft was taking the “we’ll fix it later” approach just to say they shipped by a certain date.  Within weeks Microsoft began to publish reliability and performance patches.
2. Drivers: Like many things, the driver model changed from XP to Vista. As a result, all hardware drivers had to be rewritten. (This is the reason that some legacy devices won’t work with Vista/Win7) Even though there were several preview versions of Vista, hardware makers were not ready.  I saw a stat that claimed Nvidia video drivers were the number one cause of all Vista crashes — but I have no way to verify this.  This wasn’t just an Nvidia problem, they were just the most visible.
3. Hardware: The hardware requirements in Vista were dramatically higher than in XP. No longer would 512 MB of RAM be sufficient to run Windows.  Vista would require a minimum of 1 GB to operate, and 2 GB to operate proficiently.  The same leap in performance was also required for the processor.  Many early adopters were the first to buy Vista, but also the first to realize their XP-era computers could not handle the load.
4. Crapware = bloat:The scourge of crapware started in the XP days and reached a peak with Vista.  Mainstream computer manufacturers were adding their own utilities on top of the core operating system. Plus, they were offsetting the cost by allowing other vendors to place their apps and utilities on the system.  True, most of the craplets could be removed, but the problem was that if you ever needed to restore your computer to factory state, the DVD that shipped with your computer included all this junk.  Take for example my sister-in-laws Vista laptop.  This Dell laptop had decent specs with 3 GB of RAM and a solid CPU.  However, it took nearly five minutes for the laptop to boot to a usable state!  I got a hold of it and found media players, photo editors, printer monitors, wireless managers, and all kinds of unneeded garbage that she didn’t install.  Why would she need Dell’s wireless manager when the one built into Windows is clean and works very well?  After I removed the junk, it went from a five minute boot to under one minute!
5. Core Apps: Why did Vista include Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, and Windows Movie Maker if they were also developing a new set of the same utilties called Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo Gallery, and Windows Live Movie Maker.  It wouldn’t have been so confusing had the new Live apps actually replaced the bundled apps.  Instead, when you installed the new apps, it left the old ones behind too. If you has JPG files set to open in Photo Gallery and PNG files set to open in LIVE Photo Gallery, it would get really confusing very quickly.

As a side note, there is a free utility called The Decrappifer which claims it will scan your system and remove all this junk.

Why didn’t Windows 7 suffer the same growing pains?

Fast forward to 2009 to the Windows 7 release.  Why didn’t the problems listed above impact 7 in the same way they did with Vista?

1. Bugs: Windows 7 was not a re-write.  In fact, you could even consider it Vista Version 2 — really.  Yes, MS made many improvements on the surface and under the hood, but the fact remains that most of Win 7 is, in fact, Vista. As a result, the opportunity to introduce new bugs went way down.
2. Drivers: Since Win 7 was not a complete re-write, the driver model did not change.  Even though most hardware makers updated drivers for Win 7, the Vista era drivers were sufficient in most cases.
3. Hardware: Once again, since Win 7 is really Vista Version 2, the hardware requirements did not go up.  So any Vista capable machine could run 7.  In fact, due to lots of work optimizing the operating system, you could actually run Win 7 on fewer hardware resources than Vista required!
4. Crapware: Yes, crapware still exists, but Microsoft has put limits on what can be installed.  In fact, they even limit the number of icons which can be “pinned” to the Windows 7 start menu.  With any new store-bought system, you should still examine what is installed and remove what you can. Dell or HP will try to sneak their wireless manager onto some systems. The Decrappifier works on Win 7 also!
5. Core Apps: Windows 7 did not include a photo library, movie maker, or mail client.  Instead, they directed you to a download of the new Live Essentials site.  This is much cleaner and allows the Live apps to be developed and released independently of the Windows Client. No longer will you have to wait for a Windows Service Pack to add functionality to the mail client.

The Truth About Vista.

It seems that the industry in general ignores this, but the truth is that Microsoft eventually fixed Vista and it became a good operating system.  Take this note I got from Robert R:

“Why are people telling me to upgrade to Windows 7 when Vista works perfectly for me? To me, Vista seems just as good as Windows  7.”

I wouldn’t say that Vista as good as Windows 7, but it definitelybecame good enough to run on a daily basis and to operate your business on. It took a few years to get to this point and many of the improvements were actually a result of the Win 7 development.

Even th0ugh there are many people using Vista (some liking it, some not) it has become the forgotten operating system and it is time to move on to Windows 7. In fact, there are already talks about what is going to be included in Windows 8! The damage is done.  Even those who have never used Vista, claim it is a horrid operating system.  Did you ever see those Microsoft Mojave commercials? The producers sat typical consumers down and asked them rate Vista.  Then, they unveil Mojave, Microsoft’s newest OS.  They then ask the same consumers to rate it.  The commercials show user rating Vista a 2 to 3, then Mojave anywhere from an 8 to 10.  Of course they drop the boom and inform them they are actually using Vista.  A little dramatic, but they were trying to overcome the stigma which the bad release caused.

Time to Move On

The point is, the damage is done and no clever marketing can undo it (well, maybe Apple’s marketing could). This is why Microsoft saw Windows 7 as such a ciritical release.  Even though this was really Vista Version 2, people saw it as much more and the results have been much much better for Microsoft, consumers and corporate users.

1. Assuming you’re running Windows 7, can you complete your system with free applications?

2. Building on question #1, can you run your computer — including the operating system — on 100% free software?

3. Now that Windows 7 has shot past Vista market share (in just six months), I’ll post a high-level review of what made this forgotten operating system such a sore subject for many people. (Update 9-8-10:  Here is that blog entry: http://www.bowlesonline.com/from-vista-to-windows-7-how-did-microsoft-fix-windows/)

3. I got an Apple ipad for work (yes, for work).  What are my thoughts?

Way back in 2001-2002, Microsoft released a set of free utilities for XP called PowerToys. Theses were small, very useful programs. One of the best tools in the set was the Image Resizer. Once installed, you could right-click on any photo, click on Resize Image, then select one of the preset sizes or create a custom size. You could resize a single image or in batch within two quick clicks. Additionally, the utility would create copies of your images and not touch your originals. This was the perfect solution for posting photos to the web, sending emails, or any other time you didn’t need the full sized image out of the camera.

Fast forward to the Vista release in 2006, this functionality was not included in the box, and Microsoft didn’t produce new PowerToys. Now, there is an open source clone of the Image Resizer PowerToy that works on Vista and Windows 7. It is identical in nearly every way. If you run Vista or Win7 and need a simple way to resize images or photos check it out.  It doesn’t get easier or simpler than this:

Current “stable” release: http://www.codeplex.com/PhotoToysClone

Preview release of next version (I am using this without any issues): http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/releases/view/74953

Tip:  Resize multiple photos at once.

After you install this free program, perform the following steps:

1. Select the photos to resize*
2. Right-click on any of the selected photos
3. Select Resize Pictures
4. Select the size you want, then OK.  Within a few seconds you will have resized copies of your photos.

* Tip: How to select multiple files.

• To select ALL photos in a folder, hit CTRL-A on your keyboard.
• To select multiple individual photos, check out how to enable check boxes for file selection in Windows.

1. Highly Recommended: The most dramatic single UI change you can make is implementing the Royale Noir theme.  I don’t know the full story on this theme, but it was developed at Microsoft as an alternative to the default blue/olive Luna theme. For some reason it was not included with the original XP release or any subsequent edition or service pack. It is obviously the basis for the default look in Vista. I am using it now on my work laptop. You can download Royale Noir here – I’ve included a read me.txt file on where to copy the files. Here is more info on Royale Noir at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royale_Noir

2. Highly Recommended: Most people know about PowerToys. These are XP add-ins that have been around since 2001. These are free useful utilities developed at Microsoft that weren’t included in the base XP code.  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

a. You will want the alt-tab replacement. Although this is not as cool as Vista’s “Flip 3D” it is a definite improvement over XP’s out of the box alt-tab look. This PowerToy gives you a screenshot of the Window (verses a boring icon) as you alt-tab through your open windows.

b. Also consider Virtual Desktop Manager. This may not be a Vista specific tool, but it is useful if you have a need for multiple desktops. This utility allows you to switch among different desktops without having to login as a different user. You may have one desktop for work, for home, etc. Or you may have a specific desktop config for working on photos, one for gaming, etc…

3. Highly Recommended: Turn on Clear Type. This is a font smoothing technique that has been built into XP forever. I’m not sure why Microsoft didn’t turn it on by default. It dramatically improves the way fonts look on your screen. (This same option is also available and disabled by default in Windows Mobile.)  Display Properties > Appearance > Effects. 

4. Replace the old yellow XP balloons with new glass notifications. This guy has created a free simple balloon replacement meant to look more Vista like. The source code is also available if that interestes you. http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/vista/glasstoasts.html

5. Convert the XP start menu to a Vista-like start menu with this free utility. This is a nice utility for freeware but it is a little sluggish on my system. http://www.vistastartmenu.com/index.html 

6. One really cool Vista feature is the live previews you get when you hover over a minimized item in the taskbar. Visual Task Tips is a free XP implementation of this. http://visualtasktips.com/  Again, it’s good for freeware but has room for improvement. For example, previews are not available for all minimized windows.

7. IE7 and QuickTabs. Don’t forget the QuickTabs (Ctrl-Q) feature that is built into IE7. If you have IE7 then you already have QuikTabs and didn’t know it. This allows you to quickly see all your IE tabs in a simple thumbnail layout. You can rearrange the thumbnails by dragging them around.

8. If all the above still doesn’t do what you are needing, there is a highly rated utility call Vista Inspirat which should do all the above (except for the PowerToys) in one install.  I have not used it myself, but it does look cool.  http://www.crystalxp.net/news/en181-vista-inspirat-ultimate-2-brico-pack.html

Obviously this does not turn XP into Vista and you don’t get all the new Vista features like window transparency, enhanced security, media center, a new graphics model, etc. These tools will give you a fresh look to an aging Windows XP.