I get to see a number of teens in public places. Stores, malls, parks, and even just walking down the street. When you see their behavior, you know that groups like the NAACP and the PUSH/Rainbow Coalition are irrelevant. They were once highly influential, but they cannot compete with the influence of the music and television industries. Thus, while the ethnic organizations try to promote right behavior, the target audience is no longer listening.

There is a parallel situation in the software field. Microsoft now has Windows Vista as their flagship operating system. Vista, however, has landed with a thud. Neither users nor IT staffs like it. Even many of the leading voices in the "all for MSFT and MSFT for all" crowd are saying that they can no longer deal with Vista's failings. There is no excitement around Vista.

What do you do if you have an ugly daughter that no one wants to marry? Well, you can set prospects up with her older sister, but that is only a temporary fix. She's rapidly approaching the time when no one will want her either. You can take out your shotgun and recruit "volunteers" to take her out. Or maybe you can follow Apple's example and adopt the neighbor's nearly-perfect daughter and build your dreams of dynasty around her. Finally, you can wait until her younger sister grows up.

Older Sister

It turns out, Microsoft is already doing the first alternative. They recently announced the continued availability of Windows XP into next year. The hope is that people will stick with Vista's older sister instead of looking at other eligible beauties.

Shotgun Wedding

This was tried through contracts that required computer manufacturers to pay for a copy of Windows for every computer they sold, regardless of whether it was installed on that computer. Now that that scheme has ended, the new way is to tie desirable content to Windows-only applications. A good example is most of the videos on MSN, MSNBC, FoxNews, and NBC stations' sites, which inform non-Windows / non-IE users that they need to install IE on Windows to view the content.

The rise of sites like YouTube have deeply cut the effectiveness of the platform-specific tactic. Most viewers go to YouTube, so the desirable player is Flash, not Windows Media or Internet Explorer.

Younger Sister

If users stay with the older sister, Windows XP, long enough, Windows Vista's replacement will be available. It is scheduled for 2009, about two years away. The issue there is that Windows computers have short lifespans, so most will need replacing between now and the end of 2009. If WinXP is no longer available, buyers could jump to Mac OS X and Linux before then.

Adopt Neighbor's Kid

This is the tactic that Apple successfully used to create Mac OS X. Using a BSD Unix-based operating system as the core of the system, Apple built its famously pretty interface (GUI) on top. It is no secret that the NT-based kernel is a morass of dependencies, and that Microsoft needs to start over from scratch. Adopting a BSD-based core and building Windows-specific functionality on top of that is one way to make their products.

Of course, it appears from this point of view that software vendors are becoming less and less relevant. Sensible buyers are starting to demand that their software should be fairly easily swapped out, just as you swap out a network card or a modem. It means that software, like hardware, needs to be based around open, license-free, patent-free standards (including standards for file formats and protocols such as OpenDocument Format and TCP/IP).

I still believe that adopting is Microsoft's best option. I just don't see it agreeing with their corporate pride.