Comment Re:Steve Jobs has clout (Score 1) 681
You are making a couple of presumptions. First, that you're going to be able to "fix" the user; and second, that there is not a suitable replacement tool that doesn't have the trouble.
The first is certainly not always true. Some people are difficult or impossible to retrain, yet in today's world they lose a lot of they can't use a computer. These people really want an appliance.
And that brings us to the second point. Windows is not the only viable choice in computing! That is *especially* the case for consumers, but it is becoming more and more the case in business too as business apps move to the web.
Back to the case of the Mac for my problem user: There is not much difference from the user perspective these days between a Mac and Windows box. They look almost the same, they work almost the same, there is plenty of software to do whatever you want to do as long as you aren't a hardcore gamer (and let's face it, the people with these problems are rarely if ever hardcore gamers).
That being the case, perhaps there are times when it's better to look at a different tool than to keep blaming the user, especially when blaming the user doesn't actually make the problem go away *and* better tools are readily available.
I note that it's not just blatantly stupid users who have problems with Windows. Malware infections are *endemic* on Windows. *Most* consumers get a malware infection within a year of getting a new PC, and most are completely incapable of removing it on their own, even with commonly used (and recommended) commercial software. Nor is the problem specific to consumers; businesses have fast re-imaging software because they *need* it. That is the elephant in the room when it comes with Windows: Nobody likes to talk about how easily it gets screwed up, and from a consumer's point of view nobody likes to talk about how hard it is to fix problems once they crop up.
Consumers tend to deal with it by buying new PCs much more often than they really need. "It got really slow" and "it does weird things" translates into "PC is broken" and since fixing the PC -- having a Geek Squad type person come and clean it up or reinstall -- can often cost nearly as much as buying a whole new one, they buy new ones. It's like replacing your car when the maintenance gets too expensive.
This is the cost of using Windows. Clearly business finds it an acceptable cost, but that cost is much higher for a consumer. For a long time the consumer really didn't have a whole lot of choice, especially at reasonable price points.
If we presume that this is happening with consumers, then a device that does not get messed up in this way, even if it costs more, may be a better solution. That is what we've got when we talk about Macs. They are more expensive (much more expensive at the low end) but they break much less often, and when they do break it is usually not difficult to fix them. The end result is much longer hardware life. My experience is that the lifetime is double or more. If the cost is less than double that of the Windows PC, and it is, then it's a win for the consumer financially. It's a win anyway because of the reduction in hassle, but there you have it.
I don't think the Mac is going to be a particularly good value proposition much longer, though, if it indeed is the best value even today. Like I said before, most want an appliance. That is what they're getting with an iPhone or Android phone today, although their limited screen size makes them relatively poor internet access devices. We see that kind of appliance scaling up though: The iPad is a terrific web access device, and Android tablets ought to be as well, and GoogleTV and its ilk certainly could work as well. Pricing on these things is already competitive with the least expensive PCs, and ought to be significantly better as volumes rise, simply because they don't need anything like the kind of hardware you need to run Windows effectively.
The iPhone gave the iPad a strong applications base right from the start, so it isn't hobbled there either, and it wasn't hard for many application writers to scale their phone software up to use a larger screen effectively. Android tablets and GoogleTV ought to benefit from the same effect as they hit the market over the next year.
As this happens consumers are going to be faced with new choices. Do they want an expensive PC to replace the nth PC they have had that stopped working? Or do they want to try something like the phone they have that never broke, and that is less expensive too? I bet more and more pick the latter over the next five years, and the computing appliance is dominant not long after.
So who wins? Jim's Law: "The cheapest thing that gets the job done wins." I think that's Android and its ilk, although there is the possibility Apple will win because of its huge head start and economies of scale. I consider that fairly unlikely because we'll see such a variety of Android stuff that it'll fill all kinds of niches that Apple doesn't want (in particular, cheap-ass hardware that doesn't really work very well but sells simply because it's cheap). I think Apple ends up in roughly the same niche here as did the Mac previously, although probably with upwards of 25% market share.