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Rivals Upset At Windows XP Features
Beowu1f writes: "Found an AP story on yahoo with a few snippet comments from the Iowa Attorney General, AOL, RealNetworks, Norton and a law professor. The article is relatively plain, talking about how rivals are getting pissed at the snowballing of features into XP, .NET and Hailstorm, saying it's the same as what MS did with IE, etc. etc." The article quotes David Farber, too. I don't mind that most Linux distros come with CD-burning software, IRC clients, a great paint program, etc. -- but then, they're independently written and optional.
Tilt your head 90 degrees counter-clockwise for the Eric Cartman effect.
The difference is:
(1) Imagine that a single company made 96% of all the cars on the road.
(2) Imagine that company wanted to own the car stereo market, so they dumped loads of money into R&D and came up with a car stereo which was as good as all the aftermarket ones.
They advertise that they are putting this super car stereo in all their cars for free. This kills the third-party car stereo market. But there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, so the cost is made up for increasing the price of parts for these cars.
If Microsoft shipped a simple, bare-bones, no-bells-and-whistles web browser with their operating system, and then marketed a super-gee-whiz version of their web browser separately, I wouldn't complain. After all, this is what they do with MS Write / MS Word!
Why isn't Microsoft bundling all the functionality of Microsoft Word into every copy of Windows?
There has actually been numerous lawsuits and fed investigations of the car stereo situation. So far, Detroit has gotten away with what they've been doing (for example, the oval-shaped stereo in Tauruses), but don't oversimplify the situation.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It's been known since the early 90s (to paraphrase/steal the words of the authors of "Undocumented DOS"): Your product may be a DLL in the next version of Windows. If you develop apps for Windows, don't act all shocked when it finally happens to you.
You gambled: take the risk that MS will eventually get around to backstabbing you, and in the mean time, enjoy having a fairly large market. When they finally come for you, don't bitch about it. Where the fuck were you when Microsoft was preloading Windows on everyone's PC and making per-CPU licensing deals? Where the fuck were you when users of the minority platforms cried out for more apps? You ignored them because their market was too small, and you reinforced Microsoft's dominance and legitimized Windows as a desktop product. So shut the fuck up and quit begging the government to protect you now that you've reaped what you've sown.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Meaningless masturbation. Why bother listing all of that? Do any of us really care? Does it somehow make you more knowledgeable about Microsoft or the Windows market?
Uhh ... no. Windows (NT and 2000 -- I'm not even considering Win9x here) can actually be considered more secure than Linux (assuming both machines are properly setup by knowledgeable administrators), as it's more difficult to run code remotely on an NT box. As for the virus problem, the only reason it exists is because Windows is vastly more popular than pretty much anything else. As we've seen in the past few months, even Linux can have "virii" (well, worms, but still ...).
By "system tools", what do you mean? Seems to me like all the Administrative Tools and the Control Panel would be considered "system tools". On top of that, you have standard stuff like ping, tracert, nslookup, and so on. And if you want stuff like perl, python, or bash to do some scripting (and you don't want to use the Windows Scripting Host), you can get them just fine. As for the installer situation, I guess you haven't heard about this nifty little thing called "Microsoft Installer". Released slighlty prior to Windows 2000, and available for 95, 98, NT4, and Me (shipped with Me), the Microsoft Installer gets rid of the whole Installshield dependency (though Installshield has built a tool to make it easier to generate an msi. You should don't have to use it). I won't even bother to mention how fragmented Linux's whole installer systems are.
I agree, to an extent. The low-level I/O functionality should be in the OS. however, that doesn't mean Adaptec can't go and make a nice gui on top of it. If these companies would get their heads our of their asses and start working rather than bitching, they'd see they're not so screwed as they think they are.
And you want to be able to buy all that for $99. Yeah, right. Remember, Microsoft's software is written by professionals, not volunteers writing in their free time. For them to continue to be able to produce software, they need to charge the proper amount for their products (and whether you like Microsoft or not, I think you'd agree that they should be allowed to continue writing software and let the market get rid of them if it will, rather than forcing them out by pricing caps). On top of that, I'd rather pay money for a quality office suite like Microsoft Office, rather than suffer with a free suite like Star Office.
And MY desktop says it isn't. Woah, anecdotal evidence! That's no better than the "Linux is more stable because I had my computer stay up for three years straight, once" argument. Linux may well be more stable, but that kind of anecdotal evidence means less than nothing.
Greg
Believe it or not Microsoft has got to actually SELL copies of Windows XP. If Windows XP is chuck full of stupid "features" that are actually disincentives to the upgrade then people will stick with what they have.
No they won't. Microsoft puts major pressure on OEMs to ship the latest version of Windows. Prices on older versions are typically not cut, and sometimes pricing it set so that older versions actually cost more. 6 months after XP is introduced, it will be virtually impossible to buy a computer from a major OEM that doesn't have it pre-installed. Most people won't know enough to go somewhere else. And it won't even really be a viable option for those few who do; new hardware and software won't support the old OS after a while.
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Excellent point.
I suppose that operating systems are a tough business to be in anyway... that is, suppose a lot of the reasons why Windows is an "entrenched" OS (application support, hardware support, brand name recognition, ease-of-use, existing user base, etc.) were nullified by Monday morning at 10am. I seriously doubt that Linux, BeOS, and OS/2 would fill in all the gaps and/or do a better job for most users anytime within the next 2 years. But even more important, I seriously doubt that someone on Monday morning, deciding to seize the opportunity, could make an OS from scratch within the next two years that could compete among the remaining OSes. Considering that a very large user base, several times the size of the MS Windows core development team, has spent the better part of a decade building a better OS from scratch in an open and collaborative process, yet only 5% of the market uses it and most admit that it's not ready for most of the 85% majority OS users, that says something about the sheer difficulty of living up to the expectations set by Windows.
Before anyone adds that MS is anticompetitive and THAT'S why they're entrenched... well, Linux is free, it's been around awhile, and the business world knows about it. With all respect to the concept that people don't like change... I think the expense of Windows licenses would be enough motivation for the majority of the business world and computer manufacturers to jump ship by now. But Windows apparently has enough advantages to keep a lot of people in its tent.
The fact is, Windows, Linux, and now even OS X, constantly set a very high bar for what's expected in an operating system. OS X took YEARS to come around, and GNU/Linux is a very complex system for providing a very complete library of tools and applications that can be bundled as a package (and unbundled, as well). I marvel at innovation that's so speedy and prolific like this.
Microsoft plays unfair? Probably. But in this "business", I doubt that fair could ever win anymore. I think that at some point we have to settle for "unfair" but "pretty damn good". Just like with Intel... they might have a questionable lock on their market (well, AMD has been creeping in on them for a number of years and they're permanently in the game now), but can you really look down on a company that has kept up with Moore's Law for over two decades? If we had 10 processor vendors competing harshly today to sell 33mhz processors, would that be better for the consumer?
Actually, a lot of those stereos are built by the big-name brands - Sony, Blaupunkt etc - and then rebadged by the car manufacturer. That's why the manufacturers don't complain: they're the ones benefitting!
Yeah. Just like getting long-distance service bundled with your local phone service was a really good thing, and we all love getting Windows bundled with our PCs - oh. Wait. We don't. That's why it's illegal...
The whole point of the anti-trust legislation is that when you have a monopoly in one market (local phone service, OS sales) you aren't allowed to use that monopoly to boost market share in another market (long distance, applications) - that's illegal abuse of monopoly power, which is what AT&T were cut up for, and what MS will hopefully be cut up for...
Maybe this is the future of third-party software - stuff that removes preloaded Microsoft crap, just to free up resources for real work.
Ok, lets take a look at Windows. People don't want HTML rendering engines and stuff built in. Fine, so you take out high-level network stuff. What about low-level? Remember the days of Trumpet Winsock, and how you needed third party software to even get onto the Internet? Ok, so we take that out, because it's unfair bundling. What about device drivers? Remember the old days in DOS when you'd install a game, and you'd pick your soundcard and video card from a list? Gravis Ultrasound Max, Sound Blaster Pro or compatible, ATI, S3, Trident, all that? What about windowing environments? In the PC world, they started out as third party addons for DOS; Desqview and the like. So out they go. What about memory management? Quarterdeck got pretty pissed when EMM386 got bundled in with DOS. Hell, what about filesystems? Do you honestly think Sun's incapable of making a filesystem worth having? Of course not. But Veritas would get pretty pissed. Operating systems are including more and more stuff as time goes on, and I, for one, think it's a good thing. I like the fact that I don't have to tweak TSRs and IRQs in Windows the way I had to in DOS. I like the idea of buying a network card and having it work with the OS, and not needing to get a third party TCP/IP stack. I like the idea of software being able to say 'Requires DirectX 7' and that being the end of it.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
MS stops bundling all these apps with the operating system and instead makes them available as free downloads.
Is anyone here in favor of banning freely downloadable software?
KFG
Personally, I think the next MS case should be over the fact that they no longer support versions of their software; if it could be legally proven that one version of windows (let's say Win95) performed the same tasks as another version (i.e. WinME), but was no longer supported by the company, then they should have to purchase those licenses back (imho). Now *that* would make them suffer.
Somehow, getting more for your money is bad for the consumer.
Guess what? Many cars come "bundled" with car stereos. You can't get the car for less money if you don't want the stereo. Guess what else? That stereo was probably built by the car manufacturer under a different name.
Yet, somehow aftermarket car stereo manufacturers manage to survive. I don't here them whining about "monopolistic" policies of the car manufacturers, even that clearly costs them huge amounts of market.
Deal with it. Getting more applications for your money instead of less is a good thing.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I just killed a field mouse for 120 XP, how much do I get if I kill this Windows thing?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Netscape whined about Microsoft pushing them out of the browser business by giving away free software. But that is exactly the way the Netscape pushed Spyglass out of the same market. Netscape claimed to be charging for the browser but gave away as many copies as they could to seed the market.
Complaints about dotnet and hailstorm have to be considered in the same light. Sun made an attempt to gain a stranglehold over the development of computing languages. Java is the only 'standard' I know of where one manufacturer has a veto over the languages development.
All in all it reminds me of the Republicans complaints about Clinton's bribe taking while all the time taking even bigger bribes themselves from the tobacco lobby, etc. etc. etc etc.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Believe it or not Microsoft has got to actually SELL copies of Windows XP. If Windows XP is chuck full of stupid "features" that are actually disincentives to the upgrade then people will stick with what they have. This is nearly as dangerous for Microsoft as if the user had switched to Linux. Remember, Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Corel, or Oracle, or IBM, or even the amorphous "Linux," Micrsoft's biggest competitor is previous versions of their own software.
Even worse issues like games and compatibility with work also make it more likely that people will stick with what they have. I don't know of any businesses that have rolled out Windows XP (nor do I know of any that have done a serious desktop rollout of Windows 2000, for that matter). They should be making their operating system as attractive to buyers as they possibly can. Instead they are lining up an initiative to treat their customers as copyright breaking thieves. Things like WMA and the new copy protection scheme aren't likely to entire current Windows users to this new OS.
Meanwhile Linux will continue to grow. naysayers have been predicting its imminent demise since it's first arrival on the scene, and they have always been spectacularly wrong. The reason for this is simple, Linux is too darned useful. It's price tag is a siren song for hackers and entrepreneurs everywhere, and the cost of maintaining the infrastructure that keeps Linux alive is negligible. Microsoft can't bankrupt Linux, it can't buy Linux, and it can't intimidate enough Linuxers to make a difference.
This doesn't make Linux better than Windows. I personally don't think that Linux is ready for the desktop, for example. But it does guarantee that Linux will keep growing, and that it will continue to become a more viable alternative every day. If Microsoft continues to misuse their customers they will someday find that most of them are jumping ship.