I think about Microsoft a lot. I’ve got a soft spot for them. I remember launching games like Battle of Britain and Wing Commander from the DOS prompt. I remember learning Photoshop and playing Quake 2 on Windows 98. I remember assembling my first PC with friends. Happy memories.
So why do I use a Mac today? Why can’t I even imagine going back to Windows, even if my livelihood depended on it? And why do so many other former Windows users feel the same way?
Erosion.
Every day Microsoft caused us a little more pain. Every bad experience wore us down a bit more, and Microsoft wouldn’t or couldn’t fix it. Then a friend would switch to Mac and rave about it. Then another. And then one day we found ourselves in the Apple store, ready to believe.
Notes:
- More posts about brand erosion are in the pipe. Understanding why customers leave — especially when it’s painful or expensive for them to do so — is vital in understanding how to keep them.
- More on this later, but I believe Internet Explorer’s legacy of suck is a huge part of Microsoft’s undoing.
On a side note, I still have an old laptop at the foot of my bed that runs win98.
I was still running win2k on my Macbook until a year ago.
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