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How Many Applications Depend On Windows?
Alternatively, is anyone astonished that a number so arbitrary (in either direction) is considered a serious point of evidence? Not that there's a great way to weight the importance of programs in isolation from each other, but [random shareware X, even if business related] doesn't match the importance of, say, a major word processor in the real world. Isn't the flexibility that a given OS offers to create new programs, and the rate of change in the number of available programs, more important than the existing number anyhow?
Updated 20:05 by timothy: PJ Doland, Webmaster of the Cato Institute writes: "The article on Microsoft that you mention is now online at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-380es.html. I'm a slashdot addict. When I saw your link to the Institute's site, I convinced the higher-ups to let me post the report early for your readers. The full report is in PDF."
Here's my summary of some of the points from the report:
Don't take my word for it, read it for yourselves, its very poorly reasoned and uses the same types of arguments that it claims are bad when Judge Jackson used them.
Remeber when Windows 2000 came out? There were 65,000 documented bugs. This is eerily close to the number of "applications" that they say it has.... coincidence?
Unfortionatly, your app doesn;t rely on the windows OS.. ;-P I can simply recompile for nearly any compiler out there.. ;-P
That's french for a standard API. Win32 doesn't have one..
I do, however, agree with your point. It's not the number of apps. It if I can open that neato word document that my grammy just emailed me from prison. Interoprability is the key, not app count.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Kind on/off topic (depends on your perspective)
I'm not disputing Cato's claims or Microsoft's. I'm just saying be aware that the Cato Institute has their own agenda.
Cato self labels itself as "market liberalism". But if you also search a little deeper in the other links, you will see a link to the Institute of Objectivist Studies. And in case you don't know what Objectivism is, it is based on Ayn Rand.
I bring this up only because these guys are a bit aggressive and not very open about the ties between them and IOS/Ayn Rand. Everyone remeber the John Stossel Report "GREED"? Well, ALL of his experts were from Cato or IOS. So the whole report was basically a platform for Objectivism. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see the agenda behind all the rest of John Stossel's "insightful" reports. So perhaps Stossel really is an "objective" reporter :-)
If you read up on their site, you will find discussion about how they (Objectivists) are actively trying to place Objectivist professors at the head of philosophy departments.
So, as with all things on slashdot, I would take their arguments with a grain of salt, remembering their perspective and view. Because that is how you think critically. Taking in all the facts.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
I guess what I'm really saying is that Linux was dependent on having a niche to fill (and thankfully that niche has grown tremendously). If there had been no need, there would have been no OS.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
So, to make sure the lawyers get their pound of tasty flesh, all companies that choose to sell tobbacco (even a brand new company which has never done anything wrong) must pay into the settlement escrow. That way, all companies that sell tobbacco have the same costs, allowing companies to fix prices on cigarettes to guarantee a steady profit to pay the settlement. All this money comes out of the pockets of the smokers... mostly working-class chumps who got addicted when they were 12 or 13.
What kind of criterion do you use when you say "a brand new [tobacco] company which has never done anything wrong"?
Disclaimer: I am a smoker. I don't like the fact that I smoke, but all my quitting attempts have so far been unsuccessful. This is the reason why I don't think tobacco products should be sold. A government-enforced ban on smoking would probably be the best thing to happen to me in my life.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
Thank you, that IS what I meant. Amazing how often people engage the Slashdot Reflex: "He defended Windows? Quick! Poke holes in his logic!" (although I didn't defend Windows in any way, but whatever...)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I know corporation bashing is popular on /., I guess that's why your computer was hand crafted by a tribe of indigenous people from the amazon, right?
That's a no-no also, as it implies trade between countries, i.e. Global Capitalism. Shudder to think that those durned fur'ners might have made your floppy drive.
The truly 'socially responsible' computer is one built at cost by a local peoples' cooperative using indigenous materials.
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I thought Microsoft had only one application-Windows- with everything else being an integrated part of the OS.
Seriously, I wonder if Internet Explorer was counted in the 70,000...
MC
Do you have ESP?
This is what happens when you have ivory tower academics weighing in on things. I've been with companies that have serveral thousand of their own internal applications... entire history of the industry indeed.
The NYTimes report I read on this study implied that they are just counting commercial applications. Your thosands of internal applications and all the other internal apps aren't in the figure.
Even if it's corrent, the statistic is useless.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
You're resorting to that tired old statement that capitalists are motivated by greed. It wasn't true when the Communist Party said it in the former Soviet Union, and it isn't true now.
You might be surprised to know that capitalists (those who believe in private ownership of the means of production) want lower profit margins too. Razor-thin profit margins are a sign of healthy competition.
Adam Smith, one of the fathers of capitalism, denounced profit as evil, saying it was an indicator of inefficiencies in the marketplace (which are often due to over-regulation and political corruption).
Sorry about the sarcasm in the previous post. I have been very sarcastic today for some reason.
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The flaw in this argument is that the antitrust case is not about Microsoft's operating system monopoly. The actual cause of this monopoly (which in my opinion is a vicious cycle of application availability forcing users to use Windows, which forces software firms to write programs for Windows - but that's not important right now) is irrelevant. Microsoft has monopoly power. Anyone who questions that needs an emergency rectalcraniectomy.
...if Microsoft did what
monopolists are supposed to do: restrict
sales in order to raise the company's prices
and profits.
The reason Microsoft is being punished is because they misused their monopoly power, not to press their OS, but rather for other applications, such as IE vs. Netscape. You can argue all you want that Jackson's numbers are wrong; so what? He just needed to say, "Microsoft has a monopoly on operating systems." Why waste a lot of time on something so obvious? Even M$ made at best only a half-hearted attempt to claim not to be a monopoly. The real case was what they did with their monopoly power.
The author also fails to understand the nature of antitrust law. An example:
The classic example of an antitrust case is the Standard Oil case. Standard Oil had a practice of buying out competing gas stations. If they wouldn't sell, SO would build a station nearby and undercut prices (even accepting a loss) until their competitors were out of business. This is not about restricting sales or raising prices - it is about preventing others from entering the market. If the author understood antitrust law, he would see that this, not the "restricting sales in order to raise the company's prices and profits," is the "misuse of power" that requires antitrust cases.
No matter how you count, this number is accurate in the sense of "insert random big number here." But not all applications are created equal. Judging just by the number of apps you can by at Amazon.com seems silly to me but it does prove a point. Many applications are not widely used and would not be missed by a user who switches from the Windows platform to the MacOS or Linux.
While most Windows users will use Microsoft Office at some point, very few will use, say World's Greatest Paper Airplanes. Those 70,000 (and probably more) Windows applications will include many games, obsolete or otherwise crappy applications, and small utilities that are only useful on that platform. It will also include many applications that also run on platforms other than Windows. (For example, MS Office also runs on the MacOS, Wordperfect also runs on Linux, Doom runs just about anywhere). The average (and even the above average) user will never use more than a few hundred applications at most. And most users will probably use the same few hundred applications for most of their work.
In the end, there doesn't seem to be much point in arguing over how many applications run on one particular platform. The important questions are:
Anything else is just statistical masturbation.
My own personal guess is that the number of Windows applications out there will ultimately be judged to be either irrelevant or a relatively minor consideration compared to the seriousness or non-seriousness of Microsoft's transgressions.
Does this
"It seems that their marketing behavior has come back to bite them," Mr. McKenzie said in an interview.
By George I think he's got it!
--
Infuriate left and right
The Cato Institute's analysts parrot the agenda of corporate America, trying to influence policy and legislation to benefit the wealthiest groups and individuals in the country.
/., I guess that's why your computer was hand crafted by a tribe of indigenous people from the amazon, right?
Oh, please. The Cato Institute published well thought out papers that are Libertarian in nature and are dedicated to getting the government of your back.
I know corporation bashing is popular on
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The article does make several points that are indeed valid, in that the judge made a big deal about some thing he didn't have to, and didn;t about some thing he should have..
The first thing addressed, or not, in the above article is that, yes, indeed, the judge *IS* making up a new meaning for a monopoly. In the past *NOTHING* of any value could simply be copied billions and billions of times at little cost. I can mass mail an application to a million people, at the total cost of 19.95. Heck, run a little banner ad proggy, and it's *FREE*. *NEVER* in *HISTORY* has a situation like this been present. No one could ever argue that Microsoft has not stopped people from developing alternate operating systems. They haven't. What they have done is ensure a closed and private 'public' standard.
Think about someone having a patent on the internal cumbustion engine. I'm sure someone had a patent at one point in time that applied. Now, along comes the car. Suddenly, you're forced to only buy the patents owners gas. And by the way, you'll need to buy a new engine for your car every few years, so you can run the new gas. Certainly, in no way has this patent holder stopped anyone from coming up with a new means of power. But if they can manage to get enough people using it, you *DO* have a monopoly.
Personally, I do not like Microsoft. I don't like their company, or how it treats its customers. Sure, they have some good apps. And yes, they've done some damned good buisness deals, and been sucessfull as hell. But at some point, it has to stop. At some point, it has to be said that you've simply made *to* much money, and you've locked in to good of a nestbed.
Anything that ends up being used widely in the public needs to be open eventually. It's in the general good of the public. In the past, things moved slower. No one could lock the public in, becouse of the length of time it would take. Microsoft locked over 90% of the OS market into place within a few short years, becouse of the success of the PC.
Whoever came up with the tarred road had a damned good idea. What if he was still recieving money for the idea? What if it cost the government millions of dollars, paying for the use of the idea? It's certainly in the good of the public to have these roads. It's also in the good of the public to have a well defined, standardized computing environment.
I'm blathering, I'll shadap and read some other opinions now..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
That may be what they "seem to believe" to you, but having meet many of these people I know that not to be the case.
As for the cable companies, pretty good argument for why they should have never received benifits from the government in the first place, isn't it? The fact is that the cable companies OWN all that infrastructure, no matter what grants allowed them to build it. Now we are crying because the won't share it... well, too bad. You shouldn't have let yourself get suckered by the greedy bastards in the first place.
Subsidizing ISP's to "compete" with them will only make the problem worse, extending the government/corporate marriage to a few more companies.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Nevermind the fact that their networks never could have been built without the government's permission and help (both financial and legislative).
Cable companies are legally protected monopolies.
Your argument is that because of this, their competitors should be allowed access to their network.
Instead of this, how about opening the cable market up to competition, and allowing more than one cable provider in a given region? In other words, why don't we get rid of the laws that create these monopolies?
I hear a lot of arguments saying something to the effect of 'Well, they're given special treatment by the government, so we have to also give special treatment to their competitors.'
This invariably results in layer upon layer of special treatment, and a convoluted legal code base.
Libertarians want to *eliminate* the special treatment across the board. What's so bad about that?
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That add up to 70,009
I guess between the time this article was first posted online 'til when ackthpt posted his comments, 9 new apps that we don't know 'bout were created...that seems kinda slow though...oh well...
Yep. I expect 70,000 for the whole history of MS computing is a pretty conservative number.
I wonder what figure you'd get if you toted up the (sales/download figures) for every Windows (programming language/development environment) ever (sold/given away), and then assumed that only, say, 5% were actually used to create meaningful applications?
I added it up with the Windows calculator ;-)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Many companies and individuals today hide their greed behind the good name of capitalism, just as many dictators hid behind the name of Communism. Unfortunately, I let myself fall into the incorrect usage of the term as well, and must apologize for letting my emotions run away with my typing.
The Cato Institute is scary in that they seem to believe that corporations should be running everything rather than government. They always rant about government regulation of business. They're running a piece now about the opening of broadband cable networks to ISPs where they claim that it's a violation of the cable company's free speech rights to make them open their networks to the ISPs. Nevermind the fact that their networks never could have been built without the government's permission and help (both financial and legislative). Nevermind that people don't want every damn ISP out there digging up our streets to lay cable for their own networks. There are many compelling reasons to make the cable companies open up access. Do the cable companies think they should be able to receive those benefits that give them a big boost in the market without having any responsibilities as well?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
lemme guess: notepad?
Nope, it terminates each line with CR/LF.
Viruses make your computer crash less often.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Personally, I have no problem with the existence and operation of large corporations. As you suggest, many of the fine technological products I utilize on a daily basis are the result of corporate developments. I do not simply "bash" corporations; rather, I argue against the policies and would-be politicos that try to hand them control of the world's governments on a silver platter.
Tons of ways. Think about how easy it is to install a virus on your system. Many times, you don't even know it's happening. It usually proceeds normally after simply clicking (or double clicking) on the installer program. It rarely gives you error messages, or makes you want to beat your head against a wall wishing it would just finish, dammit. You don't spend hours on the phone with tech support to get a virus installed, and the installation process doesn't give you an ulcer and drive you to drink.
Microsoft only wishes it could say those things about windows!
because you live in a society that rewards greed more than compassion, and measures personal worth by personal wealth.
You make that sound like a bad thing or something. If you ahve such an aversion to wealth, no one is stop you from giving away your money, etc.... You don't need to make those decisions for the rest of us, thank you very much.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Misspelling on my part, thanks.
The tobacco settlement was big, but would have been bigger if he hadn't pocketed enough to fund a US Senate campaign.
Not to mention the fact that his law firm bankrolled the Skip Humphrey for Governor campeign, as well.
Mark Dayton may be in some obscure way my boss (I think he's the largest individual shareholder in Target Corp., which his ancestors founded), but I'm still glad he's ahead of Ciresi.
Swell... just what we need... another member of the Rockefeller family sent to Washington. (For those who don't know, Dayton married a Rockefeller, and has used some of their personal fortune to run several high-profile campaigns for Senator in the past. He's at it again this year.) Old money never goes away. (sigh)
Needless to say, my preferred candidate, Jerry Janezich, is way back in 4th place. He's from a mining town and owns a bar. He even has the DFL endorsement. How could he fail?
I'll though I am a conservative, I will take an good ol' honest left-wing radical over the two-faced bastards running the Democratic Party any day of the week. I really hope Janezich gains ground.
The guy I wanted already dropped out of the race. Tim Penny has been the Democratic Party's best asset in Minnesota for a long time now. He's a Senior Fellow at the U of M's Humphrey Institute, an experienced leader, and (funnilly enough) a Fellow of Fiscal Studies at the Cato Institute.
On the bright side, I understand that Wellstone intends to step down from the Senate in a couple years (he promised to be a two-term-only guy), so maybe Penny will run for that seat.
Oddly enough, Rod Grams can't seem to please anybody. The Republicans in Washington hate him because they consider him to be far too moderate, but here in the People's Republic of Minnesota, he is painted as some kind of far-right conservative.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
70,000 figure might actually represent the number of applications that have been written during the entire history of the personal computer industry.
Oh, come on. This is what happens when you have ivory tower academics weighing in on things. I've been with companies that have serveral thousand of their own internal applications... entire history of the industry indeed.
Hell, there have probably been around 70,000 bad first person shooters in the past few years....
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Whether their arguments are well thought out or merely drivel, you have to judge for yourself. In my opinion, most of their arguments are intellectually lightweight, based on polemics and hot button phrases, without deeper reflection, sound economic analysis, or hard data. They appear to be arguing and judging from the position of reasonably well off middle class academics, often missing the point behind the social policies they are pontificating about entirely.
More than 70,000 I bet. Unless the average Windows developer has written less than one application, the number has got to be a lot higher than this.
Of course, it all depends on how you define "application". Does Hello World count? Does a screen saver count? Certainly a freeware app distributed over the Internet counts. Shrink-wrapped software counts. Does in-house custom work count? I've written apps in all these categories except shrink-wrapped.
If I had to put a number to it, I'd say I've written at least 10 apps, 2 or 3 of which are currently being used by at least one person other than me. I'm not counting the countless little test applications and scripts I've written that run in a Windows environment. If I did, the number would probably be in the hundreds.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The guy's name is Mike Ciresi, and from what I can tell he is a grade A scumbag, even for a lawyer. The tobacco settlement was big, but would have been bigger if he hadn't pocketed enough to fund a US Senate campaign.
.com TLD. I think that says it all.
Mark Dayton may be in some obscure way my boss (I think he's the largest individual shareholder in Target Corp., which his ancestors founded), but I'm still glad he's ahead of Ciresi.
Needless to say, my preferred candidate, Jerry Janezich, is way back in 4th place. He's from a mining town and owns a bar. He even has the DFL endorsement. How could he fail?
The other DFL candidate is Rebecca Yanisch. Her website is in the
Of course, all of them are vastly preferable to Rod Grams.
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--
E_NOSIG
Many Unices claim 10,000 applications or more written for them, so 70,000 written for M$ OSes doesn't seem out of line to me.
The playing field would have to be leveled first, then let loose, if there was to be any chance of a true open market and all its potential benefits. Personally, I don't think that would be such a bad idea, but I don't see much popular support for the idea of simply pulling the big corporations apart and starting over.
How many windows developers are there? Surely, a magnitude more than 70k. So, the average windows developer has written less than one program.
I think this 'wild guess' is way below the real number of apps ever written for windows.
Jilles
This is silly ....
I did a quick survey on the "Norman virus scanner, it knows about 18.284 viruses, that is more than 25% of all programs written according to the "Cato Institute". That simply has to be wrong, their estimate of 70.000 programs is way to low.
RFC1925
I dunno how many progams exist, but I do know that I really feel sorry for the guy that had to run then all to count them.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
not getting all the free goodies that they feel "entitled" to.
That's funny I have been reading slashdot for a long time now and I have never ever read anybody say that.
Oops I forget it's ok to lie if you are capitilist never mind.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Everyone manipulates figures for their own benefit. Microsoft just does it more then most. Personally, I can think of several programs that cannot run on Windows, because I've talked to the developers of those programs.
As for there being 70,000 programs that run on the various incarnations of Windows, it would only be possible if they counted each new version of the program as a seperate program. If that's the case, there's easily 70,000 programs for Windows.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
People didn't believe Cato when he testified at the OJ trial, and they're really not going to believe him now. This is a bit out of his league.
Every body who made any money from a product that killed and tortured human beings (trust me cancer is worse then torture) are the true scumbags of the earth. they deserver whatever they got and much worse. Those billionaire CEOS are still living high on the hog and laughing at people like you who still defend them.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I know internally most financial companies have around 1200 applications in the windows environment. This number is pretty consistent within the top 50 financial companies. I would say about 70 percent of these applications are written in house. The number of these that are in use is significantly smaller. I'd say about 100 of them are actively used, but they all have to be working and installable because they are so specialized. I don't know any of the numbers for OTC apps but i'd say a good 20000 - 30000 of that 70k number are accounted for this way.
Seems to me this "report" serves more to justify M$ inocence than to provide actual figures into how many apps are available. The problem with it is the way it presents the facts, stating that there are no entry barriers for other OSes, but it misses several important points.
Drivers: Not an application per se but when you consider that in the Windows world most drivers come with tuning applications attached, whereas in the Alternative OS world if you have a binary driver you have to thank god six times in Swahili while you dance around a candle or something...
Office Applications: Oh yeah, we've got StarOffice, Abi, KOffice and their ilk, but since M$ changes file formats every three days you're facing incompatible/unformatteable files.
Vertical Applications: He's not going to find those on Amazon for sure but there are at least 70.000 custom vertical apps developed around the world. The cost of migrating those pieces of often klunky and badly documented code? Better not talk about it.
Games: The turning point of the Windows world, right now Alternative OS users are for the better part left out in the cold, it's changing but slowly. And if I count the number of games released every month around the world for Windows PC's only (Including stuff like card and hunting cames) you have around 100 games out per month.
Multimedia: Windows have at least 8 media players, 10 DVD players and at least 100 different media utilities not including music or specific software like codecs. Where are those for BeOS or OpenBSD?
Only there in those categories, you've got a 50:1 relationship between Windows apps and other OS apps.
He also talks about M$ not enforcing monopolistic pricing... WTF? does he at least compare prices in the Windows world?
For Office 2000 Professional you pay $240, for Lotus SmartSuite Millenium you pay $89 for the same exact features (And no annoying talking clip), for Corel is around $120... so in average M$ charges 200% more than their competition, and why do they remain the first choice? FUD, strong arming of OEM's and a lock in file formats.
And let's not talk about server software... sheesh...
In the end what could've been an interesting report (Despite the pro M$ bias) ends up being a big FUD spitting piece. It might raise some interesting points like the real availability of shelf windows apps but the narrow minded view enforced by the author really kills all chances of enlightenment or at least food for thought.
ZoeSch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
Just think: If companies could not turn a profit, most every product they sell would be much, much cheaper. It would more than make up for the lack of six-figure salaries out there, and might even start to ease up the exploitation of the developing world by those nations that became industrial powerhouses long ago.
It's funny to me that hardcore capitalists, who complain so often about others feeling entitled to welfare, unemployment, medicare, etc., bitch and moan when they don't feel they're getting the opportunity to turn a profit that they feel "entitled" to. Yes, of course you're better than everyone else because you drive a Beamer -- you've earned it, and everything else that you get because you live in a society that rewards greed more than compassion, and measures personal worth by personal wealth.
66,372 Applications which suck and never should have been marketed by anybody.
1,654 Games.
1,104 Applications which cling to life even as Microsoft threatens their very existence.
795 Microsoft applications which have built in flight simulators which make install take up half of disk.
47 Fun Games.
36 Applications which actually perform some sort of work.
1 Bug Free. (ain't tellin' which, neither! :)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What question are we trying to answer?
How many applications depend on Windows?
How many applications run on Windows?
How many applications Windows users can use?
The first two are both mentioned in the Slashdot summary, but the three are largely unrelated. Consider programs that run on multiple platforms (via porting), consider Java, consider mainframe apps with customized (or telnet) front ends. I'm sure MS Marketing and MS Legal are both exploiting the vagueness of English to pull the wool over our eyes. Don't let's help them with misleading (and even contradictory!) news stories.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
We know, if they just counted programs from scratch, it would only be 1 program, Hello world from the sample, then everyone modified that.
Would Microsoft say something that's not true? Naaahhhh. Say it ain't so!
Fight Spammers!
The Cato Institute's analysts parrot the agenda of corporate America, trying to influence policy and legislation to benefit the wealthiest groups and individuals in the country. How they came to be considered authorities on anything and everything economic is beyond me.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
First, America has not had a capitalist economy since at least the early 1900's. It's now a mixed economy - part capitalist, part socialist.
Second, the countries that have the freest economies also have the highest life expectancies. This includes the U.S., which has the 4th freest economy in the world. Conversely, the countries with the least free economies have the lowest life expectancies. Coincidence? Nope. You see, free people live long and prosper. People in chains die.
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The antivirus software on my office PC protects against about 40000 viri...
:-)
On my office Solaris box there is no antivirus S/W nor on my Linux box at home
Too bad your karma notices that too, Zico...
Really? Guess that's why I'm posting this one with a +1 bonus. Sure, it'll get (legitimately) moderated down, but Slashdot karma's not as important to me as it apparently is to you.
Hint: More people will be able to see and/or appreciate your flame if you ever grow some balls and decide to not post as an AC with a starting score of 0. HTH, HAND.
Cheers,
I'm aware that this dependency isn't the same kind of dependency that they're talking about, but it is something to keep in mind.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
This comment may be redundant by the time that you read it. If people read the the PDF, then you will understand where the 70,000 number comes up from.
It comes from John Rose from Compaq who made the original claim that "approximately" 70,000 applications had been written for Windows, which was the "prime reason" that Compaq shipped PCs with Windows loaded.
All of this M$ Software is not necessarily a shrink wrapped package, buyable off the shelf at any given time. It may be different versions (service packs) and my guess would include all the different utilities that you find on the CDs when you get software such as Exchange server which has utilities to low level MAPI login to the database to change, view and delete entries in the database.
I would say the number of 70,000 probably came from something that John Rose got from within Microsoft itself, possibly a listing of all the different software releases from one of the source archives.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Windows does have some incredibly cool stuff written for it. But why does my winamp stutter if I'm downloading mail?? Sigh, stuck in a world where I can only play shockwave games in Windows and only play Dannivision with sound.
~Hammy
P.S. Don't watch Dannivision with winamp on. There's all kinda higgledy-piggedly...
A few points here folks..
.. I'd argue its fewer than 10000 the DEPEND on Windows. I read that as 'applications that couldn't be ported to something else'. Dependancy implies that it'd be impossible to get these applications running on anything else.. Well, there are Windows emulators of Linux, Mac and SGI that I know of.. With a lot of work it'd be possible to get stuff like DirectX emulated.. (Does Wine have DirectX support yet? Don't know, I don't use it) then we'd not really need a Microsoft product to run multimedia apps.. (Just a lot of cash to deal with the court case..)
1: Slight misquote of the original, part 40.. Even if the contender attracted several thousand compatible applications, it would still look like a gamble from the consumer's perspective next to Windows, which supports over 70,000 applications.. Note use of the word OVER.. doesn't say how many more.
2: Do 70,000 Computer Programs Depend on Windows or Fewer Than 10,000?
3: Not sure where msnomer got this from.. disputing the claim that there are 70,000 Microsoft applications.. I can believe there are less than 70000 MS applications.. written by MS.. I think its more of a misunderstanding there.
Fact is, there are more than 70000 Windows applications.. but most of them don't depend on Windows, they simply run on it. Going on and on about there being lots of programs is a waste of time. Read the article, and the court statement that the article refers to, first, rather than leaping high onto the 'lets-bash-MS' bandwagon.. Onion
http://twitter.com/onion2k
...but how many of them are virii?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
#include
int main()
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 70000; i++)
{
printf("#include <stdio.h>\n\n");
printf("int main()\n");
printf("{\n");
printf(" printf(\"I'm unique program #%i\\n\");\n", i);
printf(" return 0;\n");
printf("}\n");
}
return 0;
}
I suspect Microsoft's "70,000" can easily be justified or villified, based on your definition of application.
It's all a matter of complexity and perspective. Like most things in life.
I tend to think of an "application" as a collection of programs and libraries that work together in to provide a solution. I wrote a specialized encryption program today, in a few hundred lines of console-based Visual C++; I don't consider this to be an application. In the last decade, I've created a couple of hundred Windows-based EXE/DLL/OCX files, but I've written perhaps a dozen "applications."
Considering the number of people who code for Windows, however, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there are 70,000 (or more) pieces of executable code for it. Hell, my Windows NT 4.0SP6 box has 3500 EXEs and DLLs alone, and I'm sure that doesn't even scratch the surface...
All about me
Microsoft has some very "sticky" software, including Microsoft Office, financial software, custom developed software, proprietary codecs, and proprietary device drivers. The cost for any customer to switch away from those to a competing product is prohibitive, both in terms of disruption of business processes, retraining, and replacement. With that kind of cost structure, Microsoft could afford to be much worse or much more expensive than anybody else and people still wouldn't switch.
In fact, that's what you see: StarOffice, Lotus, and other packages are quite usable and essentially free, yet people stick with Microsoft office.
Everyone is forgetting about enterprise applications. You ever wonder why Visual Basic is so popular? It's not because of milling swarms of newbies who are afraid of C. It's because countless corporations use Visual Basic to write custom internal applications. Most of these end up being form-based database front ends with snippets of more traditional code here and there, but they're still programs, and they are heavily relied upon. If you still don't understand, I'm talking about utilities for managing intranets, internal database front ends, phone list managers, employee time trackers, programs for collecting and processing sales data, and so on. This is a big part of the programming world, which is why "enterprise computing" is such a buzzword. Several times I've seen statistics claims that several times more new programs are written for internal corporate use than for the shrinkwrap market. (Microsoft also claims that over 50% of all new programs are written in Visual Basic for the same reason, if you want to believe them.)
The way I read what he said was that the lack of affordable Unix systems, combined with Microsoft's shittiness, lead to Linux starting Linux. Here's a quote from Linus which seems to explain it:
It kind of evolved through luck and happenstance into an OS, simply because there was very much a void where there wasn't much choice for someone like me. I couldn't afford some of the commercial OSes and I didn't want to run DOS or Windows -- I don't even know, did Windows really exist then? source
The same page talks about how delays to BSD gave Linux early momentum. I think you could throw in there Microsoft's and IBM's inablility to ship a consumer 386-based OS in the late 80s as something that generally ticked PC users off. And UNIX solutions (from say SCO) were ungodly expensive for an individual.
I think it's fair to say that if someone was selling a 386-based UNIX for $100 in 1990, Linus at least wouldn't have invented Linux. FreeBSD would still be around though.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Kind of a silly attack...
It isn't an attack on the Cato institute. It is a bit of context, in order to provide people with a sense of Cato's political and social agenda. This is valuable information if one is to read the report and weigh its value appropriately.
The Cato Institute is a very conservative, libertarian thinktank of sorts. They have some interesting ideas and arguments, and a lot with which I take personal issue (and disagree). Nevertheless I have a copy of the constitution in my home, published by the Cato Institute (and given to me by a friend who is running for congress on the Libertarian ticket).
I am not a supporter or opponent of Cato, although I think it fair to say I disagree with them more than I agree with them.
My point? It is important to know the agenda and slant behind the argument, whether it is my slant with respect to Cato (noted above), or Cato's slant with respect to Microsoft.
The Cato Institute opposes anti-trust law in general and the DOJ trial against Microsoft in particular. This is relevant information, when one is reading an allegedly unbiased report aimed at the Findings of Fact and Law in the DOJ trial.
To describe a post pointing these biases out as an "attack on Cato" is IMHO very erroneous.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And how are they classifying "application"? I write a quick utility, it runs, I put it on the internet. Bam, "application". Are we talking applications sold commercially (even still, the number sounds too low).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
It took me fifteen minutes to find those 52,000 programs.
I find it highly likely that if casual information gathering can find that many in fifteen minutes, that full fledged research would turn up a considerably larger number.
I'd also wager that vertical Windows apps alone number higher than 70k. For example, at the company I'm onsight at, we have more than twenty different vertical apps with Windows only clients that we sell to clients plus an in-house time reporting system based on Windows and an in-house project management system based on Windows. I'm sure that there is more that I am not aware since I'm just a grunt programmer.
How many large IT companies that produce vertical apps are there? I'd wager the number is at least in the tens of thousands.
I think a metric like app count is a bit ridiculous.
voila (stick it in a file like "manyapps.pl" and run with "perl manyapps.pl"):
#manyapps.pl
#create 100,000 C++ applications, each of which
#sums a different number of integer inputs
#you can test them with something like:
#"yes 1 | add100000"
`mkdir manyapps`;
for($i=0; $i<100000; $i++){
open CURFILE, ">manyapps/temp.cpp";
print CURFILE<<'END';
#include <iostream.h>
int main(){
long sum=0;
for(unsigned long i=0; i<
END
$num=$i+2;
print CURFILE "$num; i++)\{\n";
print CURFILE<<'END';
long addthis;
cin>>addthis;
sum+=addthis;
}
cout<<sum<<endl;
return 1;
}
END
close CURFILE;
print "g++ -o manyapps/add$num manyapps/temp.cpp\n";
`g++ -o manyapps/add$num manyapps/temp.cpp`;
}
#end of Perl code
--------
As other posters have said, "Is the hello world program an application"?
The number also depends on what you count. If you look at in-house applications as well as anything sold in the shops, or on internet sites as freeware/shareware, then 70,000 might be incredibly low. There may in fact be hundreds of thousands of applications if you include everything.
If you include only shrink-wrap boxes on shelves, and only add one per app (not per version of the app), you're probably talking a few thousand.
What's my point? The thing is - few people in the general populace have any skepticism any more. People just lap up the tabloid journalism that Fox News at Nine pump out every evening, being wowed by the sensationalism then believe it without question. This means the kind of spin such as "70,000 applications" works with the general population because they don't even think to question it.
And this lack of skepticism is why Microsoft's marketing is so successful. Most of the population aren't people any more, they are sheeple who blindly follow the marketing man.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
A new definition of the term 'monopoly' due to the 'new' economy may be a good point, but in a report that, as one of its main points, condemns Judge Jackson's legal reasoning as being innovative and not being on solid ground because it has no legal precedent, it is somewhat hypocritical to then introduce an innovative new definition for monopoly that has no legal precedent.
2 different issues actually. I like my job, I just do not like the tools that I am reqired to use right now, i.e., I do not have a "windows" job I am a Logistician. As stated, I am planning to change that.
An issue related to your statement, is that using and running Linux at home does not carry much weight in job world. Several places have called me for Linux jobs, because it is on resume, but insist on candidates having used it at their "regular job".
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
A) Microsoft knowingly lied in 1997 about the number of applications written for Windows.
B) Microsoft saw that the large number of reported applications was going to cause the judge to move toward a break-up.
C) Microsoft didn't correct the mistake.
D) Microsoft continues to validate it's false claim...
Doesn't this look like a classic case of a criminal that wants to be caught?
I'm not surprized that they continue to deny the truth. Every one of you knows as well as I do that as long as the general public hears "70,000 applications!", they'll believe it. Of course Microsoft wants to appear to have bukoos of applications for it's OS. Of course it doesn't want the public to know that their inflated number "counts programs written for all available operating systems, including Red Hat Linux, IBM OS/2, and Apple Mac, as well as Microsoft Windows" and that "many of the software programs are also listed several times in the various subcategories".
At some point, Microsoft just wants this whole thing to be over, too. Like anyone that's done anything deviant in secret, sometimes you are ready to even face the consequences, as long as the situation just comes to an end.
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Come on now, with all the variants of all the branches of all the OSS programs out there, don't you think we could come up with a similar number? 70,000? That's not that big.
:)
Shoot, I bet there are at least that many text editors.
http://kered.org
I'm the Cato Institute's webmaster (as well as a Slashdot reader). I convinced the people upstairs to let me post the report a early because of Slashdot. It's at http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-380es.html I hope this will clear up some questions.
-- "The reward of suffering is experience." - Aeschylus
(since that's what is running on my work system).
/usr/bin /usr/bin/X11 /sbin /usr/sbin 2>/dev/null | wc -l
/usr/local/bin, /freeware/bin, etc. (since I didn't want to include GNU duplicates of existing Unix programs, which would probably be all right, though).
/usr/bin/X11 probably has a few -- and all those other things I can find on Freshmeat that usually build on my platform.
$ ls -1
1018
And most of these are STANDARD with Tru64 Unix... that is, I didn't include
This includes Netscape (comes standard with Tru64), but not Apache, MySQL, Oracle, Informix, and all those other programs that people with Alpha systems tend to run.
Admittedly, this is just a frozen point in time; with each release, there are some utilities that are obsoleted, and new utilities added.
But the point can be made that any Unix system would have a similar number of standard utilities as well, especially if you include X11, etc.
Of course, this doesn't include vertical applications (banking software, instrumentation programs, chemical analysis programs), games -- although
Maybe the author was counting the number of brain cells in his head... [smile]
(Oh yeah... how many times have CS newbies written "Hello, world!" programs????)
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
What twisted, bizarre logic. How do you take dependence on a lack of open Unixes and call that dependence on Windows? If it hadn't been for Windows, then something else would have filled the void. Are you suggesting that void-filler would have been an open Unix? What open Unix? BSD was in legal limbo, and I don't see any other open Unix contenders, especially in 1991. Linus would have still had his incentive.
I don't wanna get flamey, but what you're saying doesn't make a lick of sense to me.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
1. MS Word
2. MS Excel
3. MS Access
I am stuck with a MSWin machine at work because everything that I do must comply with the above 3 programs.
I do not run them at home, no longer do any work related to the above stuff at home and am currently devising a plot to recreate all of my output on a FreeBSD (or Linux, if Oracle for Linux will not run on FBSD) and Oracle 8i machine.
Perhaps at that time I can actually complete a database app without running out of memory every hour.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This cracks me up. Because there are so few applications available for Windows, Microsofts monopoly on desktop productivity software (MS Office) is vulerable to losing marketshare to a no-cost productivity suite.
In other words, MS isn't a monopoly because their product that cost hundreds of dollars per license might lost marketshare to a competeing product that costs $0.
Can someone explain this to me in a way that makes sense?
For Windows, what it comes down to is that most things are incovenient to do with it out of the box, and inconvenient to fix with a little script. To address that inconvenience, you usually need to shell out $20-$100 to buy some shareware or commercial utility. Each of those programs requires installation, updates, and maintenance. No wonder that Windows is so popular with software developers. And no wonder that Windows TCO is so high, with all these niggling little hidden costs and limitations.
In terms of actual application software diversity, Windows is actually looking more and more bleak, as Microsoft and a few other companies take over one application software market after the other.
I don't understand why this is news on slashdot. You are disputing the number? Are you seriously that out of touch with the marketplace?
70,000 sounds quite low actually. That must be commercial apps, not all the custom in-house stuff companies write.
When you consider there is something like 5 million registered users of Visual Studio...
Not flamebait!
Not to defend Microsoft here, but their numbers could be correct. How? I used to work for a fairly large software company. The product that I worked on had a Windows version and a Mac version. On top of that we supported 5 different languages. Then on top of that, we had 4 different packages that included different sets of 3rd party software. Then we had 2 different bundles that it went in with other software from my company. So, when it came down to it, we had:
1 product * 2 platforms * 5 languages * 4 distrobutions * 2 bundles = 80 different shippable CD and box sets. All from one single application.
From an engineering perspective, each of these shippables was considered to be a separate product due to the testing we needed to do to make sure everything worked as intended.
I can imagine that Microsoft has hundreds of applications that they sell, then all the languages that they support, plus bundles, plus patches, etc, would lead to an extremely large number of shippables.
Now I could imagine that your average marketing person could take those numbers of shippables and massage them into some kind of data saying Microsoft has 70,000 applications. Which is not correct. They may have 70,000 shippables, but not applications.
That number is way too high
That number is way too low
Are they counting all the virii/Hello Worlds/shareware programs/versions of Windows?
Kato is on crack
I coded more applications on my weekend
Linux r00lz
Any obligatory joke about Micro$oft
You're welcome.
Are you sure about that?
If you check out the link above, you'll see they
are moving to a java-like (but with different TLA's) engine to work around the Win32-Win64 issues!
Gotta love it!
Myddrin
That question and those like it can never really be answered honestly because no one will ever define what gets counted.
Does that junker up on blocks behind your neighbor's house count? Maybe. What about that 1948 Ford that's rusting in the creak down near the mill? Probably not.
When it comes to cars, I'd say the right count would be the number of registered automobiles.
With applications, I think the count would be the number of products on the shelf plus those actively supported by in-house staffs.
I can't say that 70,000 sounds all that unreasonable. There are hundreds of thousands of companies in the United States alone. If just a quarter of that number wrote one application, you could easily hit 70,000. Add to that all your shrinkwrap commercial products and shareware and you've got far more than 70,000.
Heck, looking at all the legacy crap I've got to support, built by employees who have long since moved on to bigger and better things and I can come up with almost that many applications at my company alone.
InitZero
Keeping hundreds of thousands of help desk folks the world over gainfully employed. IF Windows wasn't broke the world economy would collapse. It's kind of like the crime 'problem'. If we could solve it then an entire sector of the economy focused on underclass management would stop.
Disclaimer: I am a smoker. I don't like the fact that I smoke, but all my quitting attempts have so far been unsuccessful. This is the reason why I don't think tobacco products should be sold. A government-enforced ban on smoking would probably be the best thing to happen to me in my life.
I bet a government-enforced ban on smoking would be real successful, just like alcohol Prohibition and the War on Drugs.
Just what we need, more violence in our streets, adulterated tobacco, people stealing to support their nicotine habit, and no discernible reduction in smoking.
Disclaimer: I'm a smoker too. I've quit twice for 6 months each time, and am determined to quit once and for all. They say that most smokers quit 3 times before quitting for good. It's painfully difficult to quit, but where there's a will there's a way.
I still think that I am the person who is best equipped to make decisions for myself. Not Dubya, Gore, Nader or any other person with a tie and a thirst for power over others. It's my body, my life, and my choice for better or for worse. Whatever happened to the concept of personal responsibility?
--
--Mike--