A few issues to consider:

1. The delay is a loss of prestige.

2. The reorganization points to fundamental failures in Microsoft's corproate transition following the District Court's determination the company had a legal monopoly in operating systems.

3. It delays the product rollout plans of dozens of developers and peripheral makers who will lose sales opportunities over the critical Christmas shopping season.

4. This delay puts on hold Microsoft's planned frontal assault on the iTunes/iTMS franchise.

5. It leaves Apple in very good position to gain more momentum in establishing the iPod in the global culture.

6. It makes inventory issues much more problematic for PC makers and retailers into the holiday season, trying to balance consumer demand with quickly outdated product come the first week of Jnauary.

7. It provides Apple an opportunity to highlight its highly functional (and shipping!) modern OS and may help the company increase its domestic market share.

8. Holiday shoppers aren't going to put their purchase decisions on hold because Microsoft is late to the party with Vista. It's lost opportunities for Microsoft in terms of its Vista penetration plans.

9. Vista will require some radical hardware changes in order to make the most of many of its hyped features. Without Vista the changes aren't needed. Most PC buyers are not interested in after-purchase upgrades. This will slow Vista's adoption rate.

10. The number of PCs sold may only take a minor hit, but too many 3rd parties will indeed miss the critical holiday period with products tailored for Vista. Without strong 3rd party support, Vista may become a consumer bust.

In all, it presents very good opportunities for Apple. We are discussing many of these issues in the Apple Finance Board forum.

I don’t believe they’re gonna make January. Bet it’ll slip even farther out.

Minimal impact? Bull.

I agree with you both.

Most PC buyers don't know anything about operating systems. Vista or XP, it's all the same to them. The only thing most PC buyers believe about Macs is "MAC is not compatible with my work computer." When I see the total cluelessness of most PC buyers, I wonder how Apple will EVER grow their marketshare...

Yeah, it will slip again. Won't help Apple all THAT much, but it will definitely help some, especially if Leopard makes the holidays.

We'll probably see Vista at the end of the 1st quarter, a.k.a. March. Maybe.

The consumer version of Vista could be "released" in January, but availability could come weeks later. I don't see the major PC makers being in a rush to embrace what is now just an expensive XP upgrade.

I almost expect to see many mfr's (both computers and peripherals) touting "Vista Ready!" or "Made for Vista" when promoting their wares this holiday season. Some may offer a discounted/free upgrade to Vista when it comes available... but as mentioned earlier, it would remain to be seen how many actual purchases truly go through with the "upgrade".

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mshoaf wrote:
I almost expect to see many mfr's (both computers and peripherals) touting "Vista Ready!" or "Made for Vista" when promoting their wares this holiday season. Some may offer a discounted/free upgrade to Vista when it comes available... but as mentioned earlier, it would remain to be seen how many actual purchases truly go through with the "upgrade".

I think we can expect some of that, but a few factors work against it.

Vista's hardware requirements (processor, RAM, graphics card, etc) are quite hefty. In some cases product lines will need major modications to make Vista work as planned.

PC makers, if they are to have Vista product available early in January, will need to watch inventory very closely and make decisions about constraining supply of soon to be outdated product before the end of the Christmas season. Not a good spot.

Peripheral makers and software developers will not spend heavily in the Christmas quarter on promotions for products that will not appear before January.

The Christmas quarter accounts for roughly 40% of annual retail sales. Missing the quarter will significantly slow Vista's adoption and hurt sales of 3rd party products.

While overall PC sales might not dip signifianctly because of the delay, it will materially impact the performance of dozens of companies readying Vista products.

This is not a good thing for the Windows crowd and provides a unique opportunity for Apple to exploit the delay.

DT-- I agree with you mostly, but there are a lot of product lines that are geared heavily toward the consumer market... and I've heard/read all kinds of statements suggesting that the CONSUMER computer market's sales in the Q4 is much higher than 40% of the annual total... most suggesting 70-75%!

I also see the consumer market adopting Vista much more rapidly than the cubicle farms do... most IT folk are going to want to test and see how lots of things shake out in Vista... and see what value there would be for their respective organizations.

This leads me to believe that the manufacturers will be scrambling to add the "ready for Vista" stickers to anything (consumer-related) that would qualify... BECAUSE of the honkin' hardware req's you mentioned.

I do agree that Apple can use this to their advantage... if for no other reason than to gain a little more repect ("mindshare") as a modern platform. Especially if OS X 10.5 ships by early-mid October.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out. I know that I'm sure glad I'm not in charge of spec'ing inventory for anything from parts to finished goods for any of these companies. There are gonna be some tough calls to make. I think it will really all depends on how heavily Microsoft markets Vista in the coming months, and what happens to the general public's perception of the value of Vista as a result.

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mshoaf wrote:


I do agree that Apple can use this to their advantage... if for no other reason than to gain a little more repect ("mindshare") as a modern platform. Especially if OS X 10.5 ships by early-mid October.

The vast majority of PC users in the home (which is who the delay will affect) don't know anything about the mac anyway, nor will this change that. Friends who know the mac might help, but they can do that without a vista delay anyway.

Personally, I don't know of any of my family members whose PCs could meet the graphics requirements of Vista. Even my own workstation which I used to keep quite up to date is now pretty outdated with an AGP Nvida GeForce TI4400 card - ancient by today's standards. And based on what I do, which is web application development using vs.net 2003 and 2005, among other things, I have no desire to spend a lot of money to upgrade it either. I could be using that money for other things like goodies for the macs!

I'm sure at some point I will upgrade my hardware to take advantage of Vista but I'm honestly not disappointed in the delay. I'm fine with my PC as is for a few more months.