Mossberg Comes Off as Uninspired in His Vista Reviews
(Disclosure: BizzyBlog is a 21-year Mac user familiar [enough] with Windows.)
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Wall Street Journal technology writer Walt Mossberg’s 5-minute video review is available here, and is free to the public. Mossberg makes the whole enterprise feel like a chore. I suspect he sees eating spinach as more fun.
I lost track of how many times Mossberg said that Vista’s features were either already available in the Mac OS or weren’t as good.
His key conclusions (from his print edition review, which is also free):
Vista: Worthy, Largely Unexciting
XP Successor Doesn’t Break New Ground on Ease of Use, But It’s Best Windows YetAfter months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced. However, while navigation has been improved, Vista isn’t a breakthrough in ease of use. Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP.
For most users who want Vista, I strongly recommend buying a new PC with the new operating system preloaded. I wouldn’t even consider trying to upgrade a computer older than 18 months, and even some of them may be unsuitable candidates.
Gradually, all Windows computers will be Vista computers, and that’s a good thing, if only for security reasons. But you may want to keep your older Windows XP box around awhile longer, until you can afford new hardware that can handle Vista.
What I’m having a hard time getting my arms around is why there are SIX versions of the program. Mossberg identifies three:
- Home Basic ($199 New, $100 Upgrade)
- Home Premium ($239 New, $159 Upgrade; Mossberg says most users will want this version)
- Vista Ultimate ($399 New, $259 Upgrade)
Those prices make Apple’s typical prices of $129 or so for incremental OSX upgrades that come about about every 18-24 months look a bit less unreasonable.
Express Computer Online tells us that the other three versions are Vista Business, Vista Enterprise, and Vista Starter for “emerging markets.”
I anticipate that a lot of consumers will bide their time on taking the Vista leap.
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UPDATE: I also don’t see small- or medium-sized businesses jumping on the Vista bandwagon very quickly unless the security improvements are compelling.
UPDATE 2: Welcome to MacSurfer readers.
Install A free Vista visual style, the Vista icon set, Google search, and a few other tweaks. Like magic (FREE) you got XP looking like Vista. Please people just get a Mac and your pain will be over.
Comment by Joe — January 18, 2007 @ 11:18 am
#1, I (obviously) agree, but based on what was reported today (Apple stock hit because Mac sales aren’t satisfactory, it seems like no amount of pain will move most people (or, more importantly, companies).
Comment by TBlumer — January 18, 2007 @ 3:10 pm
Why six versions? Price discrimination.
Comment by meep — January 19, 2007 @ 5:27 am
Forget the stock hit.
Investors don’t know from sour owl jowls.
For the past 8 quarters out of 9 Apple has blasted past it’s own forecasts. Apple gives extremely conservative guidance (8 to 16% low) on future performance to wall street analysts, principally for 2 reasons:
1) People get upset, sometimes take legal action, against people who overpromise;
2) People tend to be much happier when a company overdelivers, like Apple has done for many quarters.
The Macintosh is doing brilliantly at the checkout counter. With unit sales up 28% year over year it is way ahead of pc average unit sales growth of 8 piddling %. More than triple.
The Mac is gaining in market share, it is gaining in profit margin. The Mac is Golden.
Stock prices go up, they go down, they go sideways. That’s what they do. If AAPL goes down some more I will buy the shares.
Comment by WingSpread — January 19, 2007 @ 10:27 am
#4, I would agree that further dips would make one consider a buy. I hope Jobs has about $5 bil in life insurance. :–>
Comment by TBlumer — January 19, 2007 @ 11:21 am
Gee, way to go on manipulative numbers. When your actual marketshare is in the low single digits, a 28% sales growth isn’t that big in terms of actual units sold compared to 8% growth of the platform that holds a very high double-digit marketshare. If you have a meager 1% of the market and experience 100% growth, touting the 100% sounds great if you leave off that you still only have 2% of the market. (Keep in mind that for Apple this applies to both the brand and the Mac platform while a company like Dell is just one of many PC vendors.)
You might be surprised how many good sized Vista deployments are in the early stages. I know of one government agency in Southern clifornia readying for a 2,500 seat deployment. Why are they and others such early adopters? Not because they’re terribly excited about the new stuff but rather that this is their first big upgrade for several years. All of their stuff is still on Windows 2000 and XP never got any seats there. So now that they got their big upgrade budget they’re committing to the newest stuff in hardware and software in hopes that it will hold them for the same stretch they ran Win2K.
The Vista and OS X pricing are both quite reasonable. OS X releases may seem frequent but I cannot recall hearing a lot of complaints from Mac users. They tend to be too busy digging on the new goodies. The next big Windows release will likely be be farther off since the big corporate customer base makes Apple’s more frequent releases unviable for Microsoft. So for the stretch of time covered and the feature sets included, the Vista Ultimate tag isn’t bad. Or rather, the price people will really pay. Only an idiot would buy the $400 retail box. PC buyers will get it for far less as part of a system purchase, and people like me who build our own will get the OEM version, which if precedent is any predictor, will be at least a third or half the price of the retail version.
Comment by epobirs — January 21, 2007 @ 2:04 am
#6, I assume your complaint it primarily with #4, though your examples of early adopters are heartening.
Did I say heartening? Yes I did. In previous posts, I have noted that faster Vista adoption probably means faster productivity increases, meaning economic growth continues. Rejection or widespread delays in adopting Vista may slow productivity growth, and therefore slow econ growth. So I am all for people who are going to stick with MS as their OS platform going to Vista as fast as possible, which is why I was frustrated that MS did not have it ready in time for Christmas shopping.
That said, I never thought I would see the day when Mac market share started pushing 5% — and the market is saying that it is not good enough, and that Apple should be doing better.
Comment by TBlumer — January 21, 2007 @ 2:18 am