[aleprok]

How can someone say, "You own an operating system brand (Windows) that 91% of all computer owners in the world have installed on their system (June 2013). How is this not awesome?"

The customers do not even make the decision of buying Microsoft Windows operation system, but that is the only thing being sold to them alongside the Personal Computers they want. Personally I have pretty much only hate for Microsoft, but I can not argue if this statement is awesome when the statement is at least in my mind absolutely wrong.

[ScottWhigham]

The customers do not even make the decision of buying Microsoft Windows operation system

Oh pish posh - that's just not true, not in any way, shape, or form. If we're talking about "regular people" buying computers (mom, dad, etc), they absolutely choose Windows when they go to the "computer store", play around on a new PC, and walk out with it. How can you act as if they had no choice? The Apple Store opened almost a decade ago yet these people chose Windows as their OS instead. If we're talking "enterprise/company employees", it's likely that their base OS was pre-chosen for them but, that said, at some point a higher up IT person chose Windows because of Apple's choices 20+ years ago w/ respect to having servers and networking being first class citizens of the OS/environment.

You can hate MSFT all you want but to act as though, 91% of the time, people did not make a decision is just willfully ignorant or foolish.

[aleprok]

Oh pish posh - maybe it is not completely true, but as far as I have seen it is.

The Apple versus Microsoft computer decision for regular people buying computers is more about the price of the computer than the operation system. If you ever go and work on the other side of the "computer store" you should see that most of the customers do come to buy a computer and not an operation system and often they do not even understand how powerful computer they need.

Of course there are those who have heard that Apple computers are good and buy Apple because of that, but those who do not have money for Apple computers do buy Microsoft computers because they do not have other choice at least here in Finland as we do not have any Linux or BSD computers on sale and probably never have had one on a regular home electronics store at least I have not seen.

It is also such a fiasco trying to sell Windows 8 computers when the customers who do not have money for Apple computers do not want Windows 8 because of the bad rumors which have gone really far and even beyond. They only decide to buy these Windows 8 computers because we do not have any Windows 7 computers on sale anymore and they are not ready to buy another operation system because they know someone on their family will pirate Windows 7. Those who do not know how to replace Windows 8 are stuck with it.

So where does a regular customer have the option to decide the operation system for the hardware they want in the store? There is only Microsoft until customer has enough cash to pay for Apple.

Oh boy I forgot about Chrome OS. It's cheap and people buy it because of the cheap price, but the return amount has been pretty damn high, because Chrome OS just can not do what those little more advanced computer users want like native gaming. Even the regular people want to install some game like diablo 2 on their system.

Of course in enterprise the decision is done, because these IT persons do know the options exists, but regular customers usually do not.

I am saying that the decision for customer to select different operation systems has been made for them for quite some time by the computer manufacturers.

[mittermayr]

it's awesome if you care about market distribution, which was one of the major arguments for iOS apps. it's terrible in terms of personal choice. agreed.