Catastrophe Theory: Microsoft on the verge of a sudden collapse?

“Last week, usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote a devastating critique of Windows 8 on his Alertbox blog,” Anthony Wing Kosner writes for Forbes. “Okay, so Microsoft overreached on this one. They'll fix it for Windows 9, right?”

“But will it get the chance? I know that sounds extreme, and it never would have occurred to me if I hadn't read Charlie Demerjian's piece, ‘Microsoft Has Failed,’ on his SemiAccurate blog,” Kosner writes. “Demerjian lays out a scenario for a precipitous death spiral: ‘The problem is that if you are locked in with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, once someone goes, it isn't a baby step, they are gone. Once you start using Google Docs and the related suites, you have no need for Office. That means you, or likely your company, saves several hundred dollars a head. No need for Office means no need for Exchange. No need for Exchange means no need for Windows Server. No need for Office means no need for Windows. Once the snowball starts rolling, it picks up speed a frightening pace. And that is where we are. The barriers to exit are now even more potent barriers to entry.’”

Kosner writes, “The first thing this reminded me of was Catastrophe Theory, a branch of mathematics developed by Ren Thom in the 1960 s that describes, ‘phenomena characterized by sudden shifts in behavior arising from small changes in circumstances, analysing how the qualitative nature of equation solutions depends on the parameters that appear in the equation. This may lead to sudden and dramatic changes, for example the unpredictable timing and magnitude of a landslide.’”

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MacDailyNews Take: Even when misguided fools lined up for upside-down and backwards, insecure, pretend Macs in 1995, some us never lost sight of the fascinating, slow-motion train wreck called Microsoft. We’ve been waiting for the acceleration and the pileup of smoking wreckage for quite some time and we will relish it with complete satisfaction; all the while toasting Ballmer T. Clown while wishing Steve were here to see it, too.