Windows Vista Will Make People Buy OS X

Yes, that’s the prediction I’ve had for quite some time: the single biggest factor in peoples’ decision to move to OS X is going to be the fact that Vista is going to bomb. When I say bomb, I mean an utter failure. Here’s a quote from Paul Thurrott — a consumate Windows guru:

“Since the euphoria of PDC 2003, Microsoft’s handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal. Promises have been made and forgotten, again and again. Features have come and gone. Heck, the entire project was literally restarted from scratch after it became obvious that the initial code base was a teetering, technological house of cards. Windows Vista, in other words, has been an utter disaster. And it’s not even out yet. What the heck went wrong?”

Uh, yeah…

The latest issue he wrote about is Microsoft’s attempt to mimic the Unix model of limiting user access to the system, i.e. making sure people can’t tear up their own machines as easily as they can in older versions of Windows.

Well, as some expected, Microsoft’s attempt to do this is an utter joke. Again from Paul’s piece:

“The bad news, then, is that UAP is a sad, sad joke. It’s the most annoying feature that Microsoft has ever added to any software product, and yes, that includes that ridiculous Clippy character from older Office versions. The problem with UAP is that it throws up an unbelievable number of warning dialogs for even the simplest of tasks. That these dialogs pop up repeatedly for the same action would be comical if it weren’t so amazingly frustrating. It would be hilarious if it weren’t going to affect hundreds of millions of people in a few short months. It is, in fact, almost criminal in its insidiousness.”

It’s April, folks. April. This far in and they are still grappling with major design issues? It’s like these people are lost somewhere with no leader. Microsoft is full of awesome programmers, so why can’t they make things the way Apple or Google does? I don’t get it.

Anyway, regardless of the reason, they are in major trouble. I think Vista is going to be the single biggest reason for people moving to OS X and Linux. People are going to be somewhat hesitant, yet excited to some degree about the release, but once they see it — and see how many issues there are with it — their loyalty to Windows will suddenly turn into anger.

Basically, it’s not Leopard that Microsoft has to worry about — it’s Vista. It’s the reason people are going to leave them in droves, not the competition’s offerings. If both Vista and Leopard were great, but Leopard was a little better, most would stay. But Leopard is going to be revolutionary, and Vista is basically going to limp onto the scene. Microsoft is going to have to hire a slew of people just to do public damage control for how much it sucks — a fact that’s no doubt going to make Jobs laugh uncontrollably.

Some predictions are too grand to make, but I’ll make one anyway. This is the beginning of the end for Microsoft’s dominance of the home market. Apple is surging faster that most people relalize, and if Microsoft doesn’t do something soon they’re going to be tired and stale within a couple of years.

Thoughts?