Let’s get one thing straight right out of the gate. Just because your “users” aren’t paying, doesn’t mean they aren’t customers. They are absolutely customers and if you want their attention, you are going to have to woo them with the same intensity as the big dogs.
Ok, that being said, an interesting conversation with a new Linux friend on Twitter, (@explodingwalrus) led me to write what I think is a very important statement. I truly believe that if half of this message got through, Linux could actually make some real ground in the Operating System Ménage à trois that is Windows, OS X and Linux.
Who is the customer?
We have a mantra at Microsoft. More than a dozen times a day it seems, I hear the phrase “You are not the customer.” You might think that if it’s that important, we wouldn’t have to say it so much. The reality is that it’s vitally important and also so incredibly simple to forget.
In my conversation with my Walrus buddy, we were talking about an experiment I pulled a few years ago. I switched my son’s computer over to the Edubuntu flavor of Ubuntu in order to see how he fared with Linux at 9. Andy had a honeymoon period in which he really liked it, but soon he realized he couldn’t play the same games his friends were playing, and he couldn’t use his iPod.
Walrus quickly responded, “But we have solved the iPod thing now.” And that’s where I realized I was not going to get my point across. I told a quick story about how we deal with software ideas at work, the scenario. You see, for Walrus, the key was that you can plug an iPod to a Linux computer, and with a software tool like Amarok, you can copy music to it. Technically it IS support, but here is where it falls part. I explained how we write user scenarios, and an iPod scenario might look something like this:
John goes to a retailer and buys an iPod. He comes home, installs iTunes, and after supplying some personal information, is able to browse and purchase millions of songs, movies, TV Shows and podcasts. His purchases are automatically updated on his device and he is able to enjoy his media anywhere on his iPod.
Notice that he never had to figure out what software to use, find a place to get the music (hopefully legally) and figure out how to configure or set up anything. The beauty of the iPod, and the key to it’s success in my opinion, is that it is an entirely flushed out ecosystem. Something that we at Microsoft also managed with the Zune devices. The magic is that the user (read customer) never has to think about what to use, how it works, or if it will work.
That’s about the time the standard Linux preamble started to stir up, it always begins with “The user needs to learn…”
That’s when you’ve lost. This is not an insult to any person at all. This is just a realization of how consumerism works. If your mentality begins with changing the customer, you are probably doomed to fail. Unless your customer has some incredible desire to change, they aren’t going to.
When put in the context of Windows I said “For them to switch, it either has to be A) so much better that they want to, or B) so similar that there is no reason to pay for Windows.” Being different, but not clearly better, is a losing position. People don’t want change, and they don’t accept it well without serious benefits.
What does it all mean? It means the customer is the embodiment of what appeals to the audience you really want to attract. If you want to attract Servers, embedded systems and nerds, you are clearly doing it exactly right. If you want to attract soccer moms and Joe Everyman, maybe it’s not so dumb to take a peek at how the two companies that are selling their products to literally 99% of the world and see what they are doing differently. It seems painfully obvious to me, but it really is this gaping hole in the mentality.
So what is the point?
There are a few things that the Linux community brags about that it’s about time we just pulled the rug out from under.
“We support that printer you dug up in an archeological dig in Egypt”
Nobody cares that you support computers and devices that someone left at Goodwill. Technology is about progress. Progress happened. First let me say that I am willing to bet that you cannot find a single device that was EVER sold in a store anywhere, that wasn’t supported on Windows first. Now sure, it may not be supported now, but that doesn’t really mean anything. Hardware is cheap, people aren’t really upset that the printer their parents bought them in the 8th grade doesn’t work anymore because that printer sucked and a new one that prints 1,000 times better costs less than the ink you put in it. That’s just reality.
It’s time to stop hanging your hats on device support. OS X supports a tiny, infinitesimal amount of devices that Windows supports and it’s totally kicking your ass.
“Stop paying the Windows tax, Linux is free”*
I am using the asterisk because I am talking about free as in no cost, which is what everyone else in the world but you think free means. Nobody cares about “software freedom” and they sure as hell don’t want to monkey around in the source code when the registry alone breaks them into hives and causes them nightmares. Last year, when they accidently deleted their printer driver, they swear it was a virus sent to them by a personal email from Glen Beck.
Let’s face it, computers are stupid cheap. People are getting seriously powerful desktops for literally 20% of what they cost 5 years ago. Laptops under $300. That’s with Windows buddy. To the public at large, Windows is free too. It came on their computer, it was there. They paid for the COMPUTER, not Windows. You are fighting a battle you can’t win, you might as well be an engine manufacturer bitching about Toyota’s “Engine tax.”
“I can use the same OS on my phone and my computer.”
Dude. You didn’t install your OS on your phone and you aren’t going to. I am pretty sure there isn’t one person on EARTH that said, “God I am so mad I can’t install Windows 7 on my RAZR.” It’s just a ridiculous argument. Nobody is installing Ubuntu on phones, phones need specialized OSes. Sure the Kernel might be kind of the same, but it’s not like that actually matters to anyone but you. You aren’t going to be caught in a fire sale and need to connect your smart phone to Skynet and save the world from the legions of hackers of doom, this isn’t a movie, it’s life. You need to know when to get milk and check your email.
“I can use different Window managers and customize it to look any way I want.”
News flash: While you were making your custom LOLCats themed desktop and making sure that a whole bunch of meaningless terminal nonsense was constantly flashing by on your desktop so your non-technical friends think you are Neo from the Matrix, the rest of the world was actually doing shit with their computers.
I get you might want to change your wallpaper, maybe theme it with some color, etc., But I don’t think that anyone ever chose their operating system by this criteria. That’s why Windows and OS X neither offer much in this department.
“There is an amazing community of support. There are forums and they can answer any question you have.”
If you have a friend or relative who has used a computer. You know very well that they won’t use Google. If they aren’t going to try to solve their problem by searching the internet in the most simple way at all, they sure aren’t going to visit Linuxgeeks.com and try to sort through a sea of “sudo to blah blah and root to some text monkey God while you juggle three terminal windows that are bashing something.”
They are going to call the smartest computer person they know, probably one that has a job in computers, and I am going to take a safe bet that that guy (or super smart girl) is using Windows or OS X.
I am Snarky, I get it
I am sure the tongue was a bit sharp on some of these. But as I told Walrus earlier, I sincerely wish I could get some Linux boys in a usability lab for a few weeks and let them watch everyday users use Linux, install Linux and troubleshoot problems with Linux. The reality is that problems are going to be things they never considered. Things like “I am trying to install this photo program that came with my digital camera and when I stick the CD in nothing happens.”
The bottom line is, if you want to make progress, go to where the people are, stop trying to drag them to you.
In the beginning I accepted every request. When a graduation class group started, the invites started pouring in like a flood. I accepted all of them and before long I had over 300 friends on Facebook. These days I have 136, and regularly I go through the list and prune it here and there.
Maybe if I read my feed non-stop it wouldn’t matter so much, but as I only check it every little bit, having a mountain of friends will mean you miss a whole lot.
