Partners Fuming About Vista, But Mac OS X Flat?

I have to say I expected it: Microsoft partners are lining up against Vista. Acer president Gianfranco Lanci stated "The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista." This is coming from the fourth largest PC manufacturer.

[from Acer: PC Industry 'Disappointed' with Vista by Matthew Broersma]

Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch has had the smallest impact on PC sales of any version of Windows in the history of PC manufacturing. He added the situation didn't look likely to change in the next six months.

Many business customers have specifically asked for Windows XP to be installed on their new machines, Lanci noted.

But other research suggests that dislike of Vista is not translating -- as I had assumed -- into Mac OS X encroachment:

[from Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat by Gregg Keizer]

[...]

If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August.

Shifts from the Mac OS X running on older PowerPC processors to the edition running on Intel CPUs have been constant, but according to Net Applications' data, the computer maker is not making new Mac converts. In January, for example, the PowerPC version of Mac OS X was reported by 4.34 percent of the machines Net Applications tracked, while the Intel version accounted for just 1.88 percent. June's numbers showed that the PowerPC edition of the operating system still held the lead, but the gap had narrowed considerably: Older versions were pegged at 3.52 percent and Intel editions at 2.48 percent.

Likewise, Vista's increases have come at the expense of Windows XP and Windows 2000, both of which have dropped in usage since January. Windows XP, for instance, accounted for 85.02 percent of all machines that month but was down to 81.94 percent in June. Windows overall total has remained flat, ranging between 90.01 percent and 90.46 percent through the first six months of the year.

Net Applications' 6 percent share for Mac OS X jibes with recent IDC sales estimates, which put Apple's portion at 5.6 percent of all personal computer sales in the U.S. during the second quarter.

Wow. Apple seems to be moving more strongly in the laptop sector, but the desktop world is still firmly linked to Windows.

I have always believed that the transition to web apps would relax the stranglehold that Windows Office and Exchange have had on corporate America, but if that is happening, it is very slow.

The value proposition for moving from a Web 1.0 technology footing to Web 2.0 is obviously not enough to liberate people from Windows. And, after all, you can browse the web on a low-cost Windows XP box almost as well as you can on Mac OS X.

I guess the true point of inflection will be the transition from the Web-of-pages -- navigating a static web using a browser -- to a Web-of-traffic. When we start to move past the notion that the entire Web should be shoehorned through the tiny browser, then the Microsoft hegemony might start to fail. Could be a while. Most people don't even consider the notion of a post-browser Web.