Windows, Macs and Exclusivity

Channel 9 interviews one of the Longhorn designers at Microsoft. He’s got a hard job ahead. How is Windows going to be able to assert personality and individuality vis-a-vis the Mac? If everyone drives a BMW (using the words of the interviewee), the value of the BMW itself is decreased. Value is relative to an object’s perceived scarcity.

To quote John Zapolski

designs can be copied, and coolness fades with scale.

This contrast is going to be even more striking as Macs will soon run on Intel chips as well. Isn’t this going to say something about how people perceive brands. Perhaps Microsoft needs to spin off small design houses whose job is to create new branded operating systems with a logo that says “Longhorn Inside”? In particular, products whose aesthetics, like the Macs, extend from the exterior hardware to the interior user interaction?

Managers want to drive a little exclusive German-branded operating system, one with bells and whistles on the hardware side.. perhaps integrated with a PDA dock. As long as it still can run the companies software since it is Windows, deployment will not be impaired.