“The consensus opinion regarding Vista is that it’s a massive six-years-in-the-making dud.” – Daring Fireball
I can’t say I know why Vista has failed, but ZDNet seems to know The top five reasons why Windows Vista failed. Their first reason “Apple successfully demonized Vista”:
Apple’s clever I’m a Mac ads have successfully driven home the perception that Windows Vista is buggy, boring, and difficult to use. After taking two years of merciless pummeling from Apple, Microsoft recently responded with it’s I’m a PC campaign in order to defend the honor of Windows. This will likely restore some mojo to the PC and Windows brands overall, but it’s too late to save Vista’s perception as a dud.
The marketing was good. But to say Vista failed because Apple had some good ads is absolutely ridiculous – even juvenile. True or not, you would never say “The Ford Focus could have been great car if only the Toyota Yaris didn’t have better TV commercials.” What petty nonsense.
The bottom line is that Apple’s ads and products resonate with people. Microsoft doesn’t.
Tags: apple, emerging tech, microsoft
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Peter, it’s an interesting issue for Microsoft. Vista is not a dud in looking at overall performance (since SP1). It works quite well and is rather stable in my humble opinion.
I think Apple’s ads, which are brilliant, have led to the overall demonization of Microsoft in general, and thus Vista. Basically, it is a bunch of mongering, and people love to have a bad guy to beat up on – especially one as a largely successful as Microsoft.
Everyone talks about Apple’s halo effect, but it will be interesting to see the haters come out as Apple becomes more successful in grabbing marketshare.