Interesting Contrast

Definitely a sign of the times: Two days ago, Apple announced another best non-holiday quarter ever, handily beating analysts' predictions. Today, the once-unstoppable Microsoft reported a 17% drop in revenue, marking the first full-year decline in revenue in Microsoft's history and missing analysts predictions by a wide margin.

It's obviously a good time to be a Mac user. It's been a long time since I've heard anyone predict the death of Apple (a favorite pasttime of analysts and pundits for years) and ignorant comments about Macs being "toys" or "not for serious work" are almost non-existent except for a few bitter and lonely commenters on Reddit and Digg.

The problems Microsoft is having, no they are not Microsoft's fault. It's the global slowdown and other things that they have no control over and couldn't have possibly predicted.

Let's face it, Microsoft has "Victim Syndrome". They're not fixing their problems because they haven't truly accepted that they're doing anything wrong. They go so far as to pat themselves on the back for cutting costs and laying people off, saying

In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter.

Seriously? Operational savings? That's a pussy way of putting it, but I guess "layoffs" sounds too negative. And how does the word "excellent" even get worked into reporting a substantial decline in revenue? And how do they title their release?

The company delivered operational efficiency and innovation in a difficult environment

Now, compare that with Apple's post-Jobs earnings statement from December 2000 where they had some similar problems. Right in the title, they called their results "disappointing". Although Apple pointed out the global PC slump as a contributing factor, the reasons they gave for the loss were that they didn't plan well enough. Apple's approach was, when you cut through the anaylst-speak, to say "we fucked up, we know it, and we're going to fix it". They acknowledged the problem.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is trying to convince everyone (themselves included, perhaps) that they are still headed in the right direction and are doing just great, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What they should be telling us is that they've got problems and they know it, and they've got a plan for fixing those problems.

Microsoft needs an intervention, badly. They need somebody to be a real friend and tell them the harsh truth: that they've got a problem and they need help.

I've said it before, but I think Microsoft is desperately overdue for a change of leadership. It takes a long time to turn a big ship around, so the sooner Microsoft can get someone with vision at the helm, the better it will be for Microsoft.