back to article Numbers don't lie: Apple's ascent eviscerates Microsoft

Microsoft Windows once enjoyed a seemingly insurmountable dominance over operating systems offered by Apple, but new market share number-crunching shows Apple's inexorable rise blasting gaping holes in Redmond's once-impregnable battlements. According to stat-happy analyst Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, the ratio of …

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  1. Battsman
    Devil

    What's the best statement of mock surprise?

    Does anyone else read stories like this and not think to themselves "Where exactly is the NEWS in this article?" I believe that even ostriches with their heads firmly entrenched in soil would be unsurprised by the data reported here. Oh great and wonderous prognosticators lend me your wisdom.... </sarcasm>

    1. LarsG
      Trollface

      Microsoft

      Microsoft will be trying to level the playing field with the Fantasy Surface, due for release on 30 February 2013.

      Monsieur, Monsieur, the aeroplane is coming, the aeroplane is coming....................

    2. Neil Greatorex
      Thumb Down

      Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

      Yes I do too. Also I'm getting fed up with the shit spelling; "pay check", "ass" endless missing "u"'s,I shuddered at the use of "Metro-ized", I mean WTF does that actually mean?

      Also, apropos the article, what the fuck is a "Hostess sno ball"?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Neil Greatorex

          Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

          I appreciate the point he was trying to make, but he's writing for a UK based red-top, yet fails to correct his appalling (to UK eyes) spelling. That's just sloppy.

          He could also have linked to Tunnocks, known by > half the global population (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnocks) but chose not to.

          Sloppy.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            US spelling

            Is it so very difficult to accommodate American English? Most people on both sides of the pond seem to manage vey easily.

            I don't see how a reference to Sno-Ball rather than Tunnocks is sloppy.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Tunnocks

              Now I want some caramel wafer fingers. :-(

              1. gerryg
                Facepalm

                Re: Tunnocks

                I was on the wrong page - I thought OP was using back slang

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Tunnocks

                Or some tea cakes? Yumm.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: US spelling

              Why should we have to accommodate US English? They always translate ours. Anyone who has worked extensively and personally with Americans quickly finds out the semantics and meanings are often very different and, would you say that If it was written in French or Swiss German or Russian? After all, they accommodate English fairly well.

              Respect for and pride in our own culture and language please, before we lose it altogether, or get your green card, pay their taxes and move there.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: US spelling

                Oh, my precious culture! My tribe is the best!

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Headmaster

              Re: US spelling

              American Spell Chequers are for Retar.... Psychotheraputically Challeng... stupid people.

              I want Proper English Spelling - with a Poster of Her Lady, Queen Victoria, in an Oak Picture Frame, in Gold Leaf, on the ceiling, over my bed.

              "Yes Victoria - I love you too!"

            4. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: US spelling

              I think you'll find the "accommodation" is resolutely one-way.

              And, yes it does matter. I'm sick of having to suffer the increasing proliferation of idiotic American spellings and grammatical constructs, creeping into 'proper' English ["bigger/faster/older... THEN" —for fuck's sake!], just because people who should know better, or who should take the time to proof-read others' efforts adopt this "Well, it doesn't really matter, does it?" attitude.

              1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
                Thumb Up

                Re: US spelling

                @Madra

                Excellent use of the vulgar Anglo-Saxon you old dog....

                And the correct spelling is colour

            5. Neil Greatorex

              Re: US spelling

              "I don't see how a reference to Sno-Ball rather than Tunnocks is sloppy."

              And that's probably 90% of your problem.

              Sloppy.

          2. jai

            Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

            really? Tunnocks? I'm British, I spent several years living in Scotland, i recognise the product by its picture but i'd never have known was a Tunnocks was if i hadn't clicked the link to wikipedia.

            Hostess cakes, however, i know about, not least from their reference in Zombieland. So in this case, i'd say a Sno Ball trumps a Tunnocks

            in either case, it's redundant. everyone calls that model of iMac to iLamp anyway, since neither of the sugary foodstuffs have a screen sticking out of them on an angle-pose neck.

          3. Anonymous Coward
            WTF?

            As a resident of a former British colony

            they are known here as sno balls and always have been. Tunnocks? Don't make me laugh.

            1. Neil Greatorex

              Re: As a resident of a former British colony

              You, Sir, are a pillock.

        2. The First Dave
          Headmaster

          Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

          Snowball? I think you are talking about "the anglepoise iMac".

          1. Code Monkey
            Thumb Up

            Re: "the anglepoise iMac"

            Thank you. Now I understand.

            Yours

            Formerly Confused of Englandshire.

      2. toadwarrior
        Trollface

        Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

        It's cute when old people are on the Internet. They get confused and angry so easily.

        And poop themselves.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

          You mean anyone over 12 who is educated and knows more than you? Such as manners?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: What's the best statement of mock surprise?

      I read this with thoughtful malevolence.....

      "Comment Microsoft Windows once enjoyed a seemingly insurmountable dominance over operating systems offered by Apple, but new market share number-crunching shows Apple's inexorable rise blasting gaping holes in Redmond's once-impregnable battlements."

      Microsoft's once impregnable battlements?

      While the whittling away was occurring from a million and one tiny cuts - most of them came as a result of customers and corporations getting nasty back at Microsoft, and their appallingly bad software and service;

      But where Microsoft really did fuck up, was being so dishonest and so bad and so unethical and so monopolistic that these were the seeds of the rot that grew from within.......

      Microsoft - the corporation that has the rights of a person but is not a person, that has no personal accountability for anything that the people in it do....

      The people in it are wading across the rivers of time with their feet of clay.

      Attacking your customer base with shitty products, unethical practices and outright greed and deceit can only carry you on so far....

      Ohhhhh so charging an imaginary figure for Software Suite No. X - at say $200 US, in the USA, and then charging the same in other currencies making the software cost the same as $400 US for other people in their own countries? Then blocking sales of the software in the USA, to people outside of the USA, based on IP address or shipping address?

      Like who in the fuck do you think you are? You lying, gouging, thieving war mongering profiteers?

      This is the management of Microsoft, making decisions like these, against the customers.....

      Rigging the markets...

      Lying about everything and anything...

      Microsoft - it's simply a matter of time.....

      Meanwhile I will continue to use Linux and Steve Ballmer - I ain't buying your product no more. In fact for the most part, if the software was given to me for free - I'd toss it in the trash rather than onsell it on Ebay or whatever......

      Because I don't deal with scam artists who try to con me, lie to me or rip me off with shoddy software.

      That's why.

  2. eSeM

    Complete Garbage

    I don't recall anyone comparing Symbian devices with windows ..... and at 1million activations a day it won't be long before Android devices outnumber both iOS and Windows devices.

    1. Mikel
      Thumb Up

      Re: Complete Garbage

      In the comments you'll find he agrees Android sales find parity with full Windows this year. It's not included because there are only 3 years of Android data, and because it's athwart the purpose of comparing these longtime rivals. That's reasonable, and if someone wants to do the paper you're suggesting I would like to read it.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: it's athwart the purpose of comparing these longtime rivals.

        If the newcomer of only 3 years is about to reach parity with the 80,000 pound gorilla from 30 years ago, I think focusing on the 30 year old challenger is picking the wrong story. Cause if the claims for the 30 year old challenger are actually true on his behalf, and the current trend continues, by the end of next year the new comer is going to have wiped the floor with BOTH of the old farts.

        1. Mikel
          Devil

          Re: it's athwart the purpose of comparing these longtime rivals.

          Yeah, that's a good story too. Somebody should write it. You first.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Competition is good, but innovation is so lacking in the computer industry. There was so much more happening when there were more players in the computer industry.

    Linux is good and bad, its cheapness and easily availability means nobody really bothers to create anything better and lets face it, it is rather retro kernel design.

    BeOS was better than Windows, it just was always going to struggle due to it not running Windows software.

    1. FanMan
      Windows

      "Lets face it, it is rather retro kernel design"

      I just wish I had a fraction of the technological insight required to evaluate that remark.

      Really.

      1. Giles Jones Gold badge

        Re: "Lets face it, it is rather retro kernel design"

        Monolithic kernels are an old way of doing things. A fast way of doing things of course, since everything is talking via memory addresses instead of using internal ports and messages.

        The use of a monolithic design was the basis of the argument between Linus and Andrew S. Tanenbaum as his Minix OS used a microkernel.

        So the point about it being "retro" is perfectly valid.

        1. Nigel 11
          Flame

          Re: "Lets face it, it is rather retro kernel design"

          Monolithic kernels may be said to have passed the test of time ... at least if they're put together as well and as flexibly as Linux is. Point me at some other kernel architecture that works half as well. Yes, I'm aware of all the academic arguments in favour of microkernels. On paper, they are quite convincing, but I won't be convinced until I see one working well, across a range of workloads and system types, in the real world.

          Personally I think Linux has a lot in common with Microkernels. Its software architecture is well modularised. New subsystems are easily integrated and existing ones re-engineered. it's just that the binding is done at kernel build time, not at runtime. It's a bit like the C++ versus script language argument. C++ is less easy to develop, but more efficient. A monolithic kernel is likewise less easy to develop for, but more efficient in production. A kernel is somewhere that efficiency DOES matter.

          I have a big problem with neophiles. They think that "old" automatically means bad, without any actual comparison of the relative merits of the old and new products. They don't like "tried and tested and nearly unbreakable". They are also happy to disregard the vast amount of man-hours that are wasted, when a company like Microsoft replaces (say) the XP UI with the Windows 7 UI, and the Office 2003 UI with the Office 2007 UI. Sure, it may be only a couple of hours of lost productivity per user, but multiply that by maybe a billion users. Personally I think it's much higher. There's no accounting for the cost of the mistakes that are made while someone is thinking about the bloody new interface rather than the work he's trying to accomplish within it. Somewhere out there, I'm sure that the change to windows 7 has been the triggering event that destroyed marriages, killed companies, and caused deaths (by heart attack, probably). The right way to go is incremental improvement. Slip in th new features in a completely non-intrusive way, so that if you don't yet need the new stuff you never notice that it's arrived. That's what the Linux kernel has been doing very successfully for at least the last decade. (Unlike Gnome developers ... sorry!)

          And almost as soon as we get used to Windows 7, Microsoft decides to Metro-ize us. That's a good neologism, by the way. To Metroize. To pull the rug out from underneath a billion users, in a misguided and doomed attempt to increase corporate revenue. To FUBAR by deliberation rather than by accident.

          1. Tom 13

            @Nigel 11: And it's not the first time they've Metro-ized the OS.

            In fact, I'd say the Mac interface has been far more stable than the Windows interface has been. And you are quite right about the lost man-hours of work learning the "new and improved" interface.

        2. Armando 123

          Re: "Lets face it, it is rather retro kernel design"

          "Monolithic kernels are an old way of doing things"

          So is calculus, but it works.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

      Considering the fact that the Linux kernel happily runs and runs and runs on devices ranging from skinny DSL routers (having 8MB of RAM) up to the latest, largest IBM Mainframes, I would call it excellently designed.

      They did not make the mistake to roll GUI stuff into the kernel, which M$ did. Linux doesn't have kernel exploits because of a 20 year old buffer overflow in some font parsing code. Or bmp parsers and similar claptrap.

      You can load and unload modules using insmod and rmmod.

      And of course it does make little sense to change all the protection mechanisms (TLB and all that) of a CPU just to mashall data from the network card into a process. It would slow down things to a crawl and that is exactly the problem of systems like Minix.

      Linux, many other Unixoid systems and many mainframe operating systems are still very modern in the sense that they almost perfectly do the job they were designed to do. Something you can't say of the hairballs from Redmond. At least if you consider their distribution strategy - I simply can't get a stripped-down NT kernel to use it for some special purposes, I have to take it with the whole package of abominations such as the registry, the GUI system and so on.

      I would consider the NT kernel a serious competitor if it would run on 8M of RAM machines.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

        @Mr Torx. The NT kernel did run on 8M machines back in the 90s. The fact that it isn't sold for special purpose lown memory systems indeed means its not a competitor for memory challenged systems but that hardly means its not a serious competitor to Linux per se.

      2. Doug Glass
        Go

        Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

        Maybe you need to try and install Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13 on a non PAE cpu. Both will simply not install and not install and not install ........

        1. JEDIDIAH
          Linux

          Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

          Your example is meaningless.

          Linux is modular and very configurable.

          You don't need to be limited to Ubuntu's build options.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

        Windows Phone 8 is built on the NT kernel, and is reportedly designed to run optimally on devices that have only 512KB of RAM. It may be true that *you* cannot use NT this way, but it seems that Microsoft can.

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

          > run optimally on devices that have only 512KB of RAM

          Not since MS-DOS 2.1 has anything from Microsoft tried running in such a small amount of RAM.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @AC: "Linux kernel Retro"

            Really? I ran DOS 3.X and 4.X on an Amstrad PC1512, with, err, 512KB of RAM.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eviscerated?

    I don't think you understand what that word means. There isn't a business in the world that thinks *ONLY* selling 24x the number of units your next closest competitor sells is being "eviscerated".

    And comparing IOS numbers to Windows numbers is ridiculous. There isn't a person in the world who does any *REAL* work that can get by with nothing but a phone or ipad. You might as well be comparing the number of Windows licenses sold to Logitech television remotes.

    1. fifi

      Re: Eviscerated?

      "There isn't a person in the world who does any *REAL* work that can get by with nothing but a phone or ipad"

      I often do and I'm a DBA.

      I can 'get by' It certainly wouldn't be my first choice, but I can do everything on an iPad that I can do on my laptop, including various flavours of VPN, ssh clients, RDP and access google docs.

      1. Graham 24

        Re: Eviscerated?

        "There isn't a person in the world who does any *REAL* work that can get by with nothing but a phone or ipad"

        "I often do and I'm a DBA"

        And are the databases you administer running on iOS? If not, you're not using "nothing by a[n i]phone or ipad"

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Eviscerated?

          Jumping in here; but his DBs probably are not running on Windows either. So what are you trying to say? How many serious applications are really running on UNIX or similar, while the administrators, developers and users use a Windows front end. I suspect, I know actually, that an increasingly large number use IPhones and iPads and even Macbooks as their front ends (not yet Android so much as security, software and official approval are harder to get).

          I think you are a little behind the times.

          1. Magnus_Pym

            Re: Eviscerated?

            The effect on the business depends on the business model. Apple make a good profit margins on smaller sales numbers because they concentrate on high end products. Microsoft make small profit margins on huge sales numbers because they essentially sell services for third party products. They really really need to be by far the biggest player. The big question here is who will be the first manufacture to tell Microsoft to stuff their restrictive contract clauses up their collective arse.

          2. JEDIDIAH
            Linux

            Re: Eviscerated?

            A Windows terminal really isn't that far removed from an X Terminal or even a real VT-220.

            All of those are much more alike than any of them are to a "nothing but a mouse" kind of interface that tablets are.

            Sooner or later, you will need to type something.

      2. JEDIDIAH
        Linux

        Re: Eviscerated?

        > I often do and I'm a DBA.

        I seriously doubt it.

    2. Neil Greatorex

      Re: Eviscerated?

      Heh, or the number of windows licenses sold to the number of traffic wardens wearing a tutu. On Borough High Street.

    3. aThingOrTwo

      Re: Eviscerated?

      1. Regardless of whether iPad is used for "real work", remember that not every PC sale is goes to a business. Plenty of PCs are sold to consumers as well. Consumers generally use their computers for play (games, video catchup, music, shopping, social networks etc.). While there may always be traditional desktop, the amount of time most people spend using the desktop PCs may well decrease as users prefer mobile devices (arguably it already is). This is not good if you are Microsoft and your mobile solution has something like 3% market share.

      2. The problem isn't that Microsoft is selling 24x more "units" than their nearest competitor. That is not the problem at all - as you point out in most circumstance it is great. The problem is that just eight years ago they were selling 54x more "units".

      At the end of the day that in itself is the wrong way to think about it.

      Microsoft (currently) sells 0 computers. Apple sells 0 Operating System licences. For every PC sold, Microsoft gets ~£30 in license fees for every copy of Windows sold, whilst for every Mac, iPhone and iPad sold Apple makes considerably more profit. Which is probably why Microsoft is making its own hardware now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Eviscerated? @:aThingOrTwo

        "Which is probably why Microsoft is making its own hardware now."

        I think you'll find they're branding their own hardware, not making it. Even the technical design will have had more input from the maker than from MS, albeit the overall design concept is entirely from MS, and that's what the world sees.

        I don't think MS are doing this to move into hardware - they're doing this as a exercise in learning (for them) and piloting (for customers) the concepts of varied input/output methods via a core data processor. Together with Win8, MS are looking to evolve in a world where the conventional PC is no becoming less relevant. Technical advances are seeing smaller, more capable integrated devices, and the need for a whole tower of meccano is passing rapidly into history (gamers, nerds, us, not included...yet). Likewise the need for having separate devices is more a legacy than a design requirement. The phone in my pocket is easily the same procesing power as a Pentium III, and subsequent ARM quad core devices will take the next generation or two into the territory of Core 2's and above. Take Surface, project technology forward, and MS need to have a software offering that centres around your mobile device, and can fluidly adapt to the particular peripherals that you have to hand, mixed cloud and local storage, and increasingly universal wireless broadband (cue: Howls of complaint from the broadband deprived). On the hoof that I/O is the mobile device's screen alone, but it might be a tablet type of device driven by the "phone", and blow out non-touch peripherals for the desk based power user. The software and the hardware therefore needs to be capable of supporting both keyboard and touch, differing screens and peripherals for the same user etc.

        I think the lesson they've drawn from Apple is the right one - not that they are currently losing share (which is a fact), but that they need to regain relevance in response to the evolution of hardware and user expectations. For a decade now, hardware has evolved, but MS have been churning out lukewarm makeovers of the same offering. Now they are getting their bottom into gear for the future. Whether that's the right future, and whether they will be successful only time will tell, but I'm pleased they're trying, because otherwise it is a straight fight between Apple and Google.

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