Windows 7 will be launching a week from today, and many are looking to it as a revitalization of the PC industry. While every new release of Windows does bring with it a sense of newness, Vista failed to convince those happily running XP that newer was better.
The upcoming version of Windows hitting next week is better than Vista, which has PC business excited. Most will agree that Windows 7 gets things right and will finally get those still working off XP machines to finally upgrade.
With such a compelling, reinvigorated PC operating system coming out, one would think that Apple would be worried that PC would become the popular kid in school again. But Apple isn't worried at all. In fact, Apple sees the release of Windows 7 as an opportunity to snatch even more users over to the Mac camp.
"It presents a very good opportunity for us," says Philip W. Schiller, Apple's senior vice-president for marketing, in a BusinessWeek report.
Schiller reasons that those running Windows XP machines may view the upgrade to Windows 7 as too complicated and daunting, giving customers a reason to ditch PC for Mac instead.
"Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out. If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?" says Schiller.
Granted, users going from XP to 7 will have to perform clean installs, as in-place upgrades are only supported from Windows Vista. Schiller doesn't believe that many users will upgrade to Windows 7, at least not as many as Mac users who have upgraded to the $29 Snow Leopard.
"I expect Snow Leopard will have an amazing upgrade rate, and Windows 7 won't," he said.
Earlier this week, we reported historical evidence that showed Mac sales increasing with each release of a new Windows version.
