Lesson One: No One Misses The Boat
There are some cliche phrases that are so incorrect, I don’t understand why writers continue to lean on them. One of the worst showed up in a post at Download Squad:
I think Microsoft is putting out some decent software (Vista, Office, etc) but I think they have largely missed the boat on the digital lifestyle. Apple has that covered.
Wow. Forget about the fact that the many, many Media Center enthusiasts would completely disagree. Forget that, if you had to ask which best-selling device is more a part of a “digital lifestyle”, most people would pick the Xbox 360 over the iPod, because the 360 is part of a “connected experience” the iPod lacks, especially unless Apple TV takes off.
No, none of that bothers me. Fine, ignore the success Microsoft’s home entertainment products have enjoyed. I can see how you would argue that they are not as successful as I would claim. However, to claim that Microsoft “missed the boat” is ignoring history.
Did Microsoft “miss the boat” when Windows 1.0 wasn’t as good as the Mac, and didn’t sell? If there was a boat to miss, Microsoft wouldn’t have released version after version until Windows 3.0 garnered enough respect that Windows 95 was able to storm the market and bring about ten years of Microsoft market leadership.
Did Microsoft “miss the boat” with Xbox 1? If there was a boat to miss, then the lower-than-Sony sales of the first Xbox would clearly have translated into even worse sales for the XBox 360, and Microsoft wouldn’t have a chance in this console generation.
Did Apple “miss the boat” with almost every damn thing they did from 1994-1997, until Steve Jobs returned to set things right? If so, there would have been no chance of the Mac gaining market share and the iPod becoming a hugely popular device.
There is no boat to miss. Don’t lean on it, because you just sound stupid. Microsoft’s Zune could fail for fifty years, then all of a sudden be a success. It’s how the market works, anything can happen.
