Cloud Vaulting Apple Over Microsoft

It’s taken over twenty years for Apple to get to where it can seriously rival Microsoft on the desktop, and ironically, for this could happen, the desktop had to become an anachronism.

Another irony is that Microsoft is ignoring the signs of change, just as IBM did before being swamped by the Microsoft-led PC revolution. This change is the cloud — an environment that allows users to access software via the Internet — and it is creating the conditions for a permanent shift in the ground rules for personal computing, both at the consumer and the enterprise level.

As with many aspects of Web 2.0 (a term meant to encompass Web-based applications like instant messaging, and online collaborative tools like blogs, wikis, and social networks), change will come in consumer markets first, where Microsoft Windows-dominated PCs have had the upper hand for decades, almost by default. Microsoft won the desktop market for one reason and reason only — it made computing simple and was relatively inexpensive. PCs came with software pre-installed, they were less expensive than Macs, and it was easy for the local tech guy to dig around in the DOS operating system if something went wrong. Macs were expensive, closed systems and largely out-gunned by Windows until the advent of OS X, the operating system Apple introduced in 2002.

Windows also trumped Linux because even consumers who were aware of other options didn’t want to be bothered with asking for non-Windows PCs and non-Microsoft productivity tools like Open Office.

This is all about to change with Apple’s next move, regardless of whether it’s called an iPod Touch, an enhanced iPhone, or an Apple netbook. Apple is about to take advantage of the ubiquity of cloud computing, the storage available on its devices, and its superior design and marketing skills to introduce a device that is simpler, cheaper and more elegant to use than a Windows-based PC. And Apple will win without having to fire a single shot in Microsoft’s direction, or try to convert Windows users to a non-Windows type software platform. Because the Web is becoming the universal platform that everyone intuitively understands.

Imagine a sleek device you can fit in your pocket, with both a keyboard and screen interface, that allows you to surf the Web quickly, download email and attachments, compose documents and spreadsheets, and read reports from applications like ones used by businesses to track the performance of salespeople, market segments, or weekly sales, click on customer contact info to initiate a call (or even a free call using Skype or some other IP-based telephony service), or find the nearest Italian restaurant. The software for all those activities wouldn’t reside on the device — it would reside in the cloud — but there’s enough capacity on the device to let you store documents and reports locally, which makes them load faster when you need them. The device would cost around $500, and a lot of the software would be free. When the time comes to replace your existing desktop or laptop, wouldn’t you consider switching to that? Especially given that it’s easier to move all your files to the cloud than onto the next computer?

That device will be made by Apple. Think of the iPhone, only a little bigger and with a keyboard. Word processing and spreadsheets from Google or Zoho, business apps from Salesforce.com, email from Yahoo or Google (or, come to think of it, Microsoft Hotmail), an e-book reader from Eucalyptus or Amazon – you get the idea.

The only reason we use still use software installed by a retailer is that it’s easier and cheaper than anything else. But there’s no actual brand loyalty attached to Microsoft Windows, “I’m a PC” ads notwithstanding. People will naturally migrate to the next, easiest, cheapest product, just like they moved from tapes to DVDs when it became obvious that this was the next generation of recorded video entertainment, and they didn’t care if the name on the box was Sony or Toshiba or whathaveyou. The same will hold true with personal computing.

Eventually, just as consumers forced their employers to adapt to the iPhone, so they will force employers to start equipping them with these lightweight devices, oh-by-the-way reducing capital expenditures, and spending on software licenses and maintenance fees. Eventually, enterprises will also realize they can even rent their infrastructure from someone like IBM or Amazon (or yes, Microsoft) and rent IT maintenance applications from the likes of Service-Now.com, rather than paying HP or BMC or Microsoft for software suites to run their IT service desk.

It won’t happen overnight, but this change is ineluctable. Microsoft has meanwhile dithered with “software-plus-service,” its own rear-guard version of software-as-a-service, but even while listening to Steve Ballmer in denial, you realize that Microsoft itself knows that its vision is self-serving and doomed to failure.

Unless Microsoft changes course and catches up, it will join the likes of DEC, Burroughs, and other memers of the BUNCH as a name evocative of a bygone era.

[Image source: Jorge Fernandez]