Microsoft’s Desperation to Catch Apple in the Crackpad Race to the Land of Dumb and Dumber
September 14th, 2011
Loading ...As you guys know, I’m not much of a fan of any operating system. I find Windows XP to be the least bad for what I do. Windows 7 is usable. Mac OSX is usable (but doesn’t support MultiCharts, an application I use daily). Linux still sucks, on the client side, and I guess that will never change.
I’ve written repeatedly about Apple’s move to dumb down OSX, which immediately worried me, because Microsoft has been copying Apple for decades. And now, guess what…
If Apple’s transitioning of OSX to an iOS-like experience is dumb, Microsoft wants to be dumber with Windows 8. Apparently, Windows 8 is going to be a full-screen ‘app’ type experience from the start. I know, we will be able to make Windows 8 look like Windows 7 (which I make look like XP), but that’s not the point. The point is that the focus is shifting toward catering to zombies by default.
Do you want to see what happens when people, who actually use these systems to do real work, run into this zombie app paradigm on the desktop? It’s called Final Cut Pro X:
In the first week since its debut, Apple’s Final Cut Pro X was met by a spectacular disappointment and a list of harsh reviews calling the software “disastrous.”
Disastrous.
Yes. There are hundreds of articles like that.
Apple users, who were working professionals, were hair-on-fire pissed. Competing companies have been feasting on people leaving Apple over it and, less than two weeks ago, Apple broke down and started selling the “old” Final Cut Studio product again:
Apple has agreed to make older versions of Final Cut Studio 3 available for purchase, following several months of customer backlash against the radically redesigned Final Cut Pro X.
When Final Cut Pro X was released in June, Apple touted the release as “the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro.” Video professionals disagreed.
After receiving negative reviews from customers, Apple promised to frequently update Final Cut Pro X in order to bring its features up to par with previous versions of the venerable editing software. Apple’s competitors in the space, including Avid and Adobe, used the opportunity to offer Final Cut Pro customers cheaper migration paths to their software.
Since July, we’ve been hearing that existing Final Cut Studio customers could purchase additional licenses to the old program by calling Apple directly. MacRumors confirms that any customer can now obtain the legacy version of the video editor by calling Apple.
Here’s why Apple is dumbing down: It likes zombies. It wants zombies. It needs zombies. Don’t take my word for it. Sachin Agarwal was an Apple developer on Final Cut Pro from 2002 to 2008:
I worked on Final Cut Pro from 2002 to 2008. It was an amazing experience. The Final Cut Pro X project was just getting started when I left Apple. It was an ambitious and controversial move, but it made sense for Apple. Here’s why:
Apple doesn’t care about the pro space
The goal for every Apple software product is to sell more hardware. Even the Mac operating system is just trying to get people to buy more Mac computers.
The pro market is too small for Apple to care about it. Instead of trying to get hundreds or even thousands of video professionals to buy new Macs, they can nail the pro-sumer market and sell to hundreds of thousands of hobbyists like me.
Millions of people are buying phones and cameras that can shoot HD video, and many of them are looking for ways to edit. I know how to use Final Cut Pro because I worked on it for 6 years, but for most people it’s just too complex.
FCP X lets Apple move beyond the pro space, and sell to a much larger group looking for better tools.
I don’t want an app version of Photoshop or Premiere Pro. I don’t want to run MultiCharts next to my Twitter feeds. I have no interest in Reason for Dummies.
DON’T CATER TO ZOMBIES WITH APPLICATIONS THAT ARE MEANT TO DO REAL WORK.
And I need multiple applications and windows open across my desktop, not full screen, single f*cking app nonsense.
I understand the logic for apps on mobile devices (get the Cryptogon app here haha). I won’t go near that stuff myself, but, hey, to each his own. But on real computers… This is not good.
It’s just starting and it’s going to be everywhere. Have you seen the new look on Amazon.com? That’s right. It’s a better interface for Amazon’s take on the crackpad/vending machine business model that will be out soon.
Here, have some apps. Would you like some apps? FREE APPS!
Thankfully, Google’s Chrome OS flopped, which was predictable. This full court press by Microsoft to catch Apple, however, can’t be written off. The Kool-Aid has gone down the hatch.
Check this out on Engadget:
It’s just not a developer conference these days without a big giveaway, and Microsoft’s now come through on that front at Build. The company announced that it’s giving away 5,000 Samsung-built developer “PCs” to attendees, and that AT&T will throw in a year of 3G service (2GB per month) for good measure. And, yes, if you haven’t noticed, Microsoft is intent on calling every Windows 8 device a “PC,” even including tablets. In this case, that PC comes complete with a second-gen Intel Core i5 processor, an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 Samsung Super PLS display, a 64GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and a dock with a USB, HDMI and Ethernet ports.
That’s no tablet, young Skywalker. That thing has laptop specs. Real computer specs. This is aimed at you and me and everyone else. It’s not just for the Dancing with the Stars demographic anymore.
