This is a vending machine:

 

So is this:

And so is this:

 

The “smartphone” (iPhone, Blackberry, Android la la la…) and the tablet are ingenious. Ingenious marketing tools, that is.

You not only have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy one, but you also get to sign up for expensive data plans from service providers.

And they are out-selling laptops and desktop computers by a good margin.
Just look at everyone on the street with a “device” in their hand. (don’t worry, they won’t notice you).

But the real money makers are the “Apps”.

You bet there’s an app for that.

Basically, the makers of smartphones and tablets, and the phone carriers and internet service providers, have just sold you a device and a plan so you can really spend money – on the Apps.

I believe this is called “Freebie Marketing” or “the razor and blades business model”.

The razor blade companies would give away their razors for free, knowing that customers would have to buy the blades forever. They made their money from the blades.

 

So who is the latest player in the Bait and Hook marketing model?

 

Why it’s …. Microsoft.

And so now, here is the latest vending machine – and it gets to sit, not in your hand, but right in your home:

Are you sitting down? You’ll want to be, though Microsoft would prefer you use your hands.

Welcome to the Windows 8-o-Mat

When was the last time you sat down to use a vending machine?

The last time you started up Windows 8, that’s when.

All those tiles, those “apps”, look just like a snack vending machine.

I just want to sit down and work.

Up until Windows XP, I could do that. Years of learning DOS and Windows started to pay off with XP. The computer became an understood, transparent, tool. I thought no more about operating systems than I did about using a telephone or a toaster. This, I thought, was progress.

I used to tell my clients, who were actually frightened of using computers, that things would get easier, faster – that the computer would become almost invisible. And with a little training and time, they did.

For no apparent good reason, along comes a new operating system – and  it is in their way. I have yet to see any real benefit to any computer user since XP. The final product (documents, graphics, music …) has not benefited from a re-vamp of the UI (user interface – the screen) or UAC (the horrible requests for permission to run a program) or all the little fiddlings that go on in the background.

They have to roll out new version of Windows for the sake of rolling out new versions of Windows. It’s the cult of the “new”, and the motive is simple: profit.

I’m not even complaining about Microsoft’s (or Apple’s) desire or right to make money.

Ford does it, GM does, GE and General Foods do it – that’s biz.

What I do not go along with  is having marketing, pure and simple, shoved down my throat.

Windows 8 tries to get me to subscribe to a bunch of “apps” that I don’t want or need and can’t easily opt out of. It’s a kind of “negative billing”.

It treats me like a consumer, not a producer of “output”. Sure, I want to listen to music, watch videos and read email. But don’t make me sign up for a new email account, and subscribe to a bunch of online services to do it. I already know how. And so do my clients. They deserve better.

Except that Microsoft, like the smartphone and tablet vendors,  is charging for the primary product AND the complimentary product. At least Gillette had the proper sense of shame to give you the razor for free.

We are quickly being coerced into two classes of computer users. The Consumer and the Producer (Professional).

The consumer has already switched over to the cell phone and tablet as passive users. The professionals – people who actually use computers for work – will still need to have the computing power and software to produce their graphics work, music production, novel writing.

If Google and Microsoft and Apple have their way, we will soon just have some sort of screen to press our fingers on, and everything else will be in the “Cloud”. All our programs, all our files, all our money.

At the risk of sound like a paranoid of a conspiracy theorist, it seems that with the arrival of Windows 8, we are somehow being pushed into it.