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MS Says Longhorn To Arrive 2005
Lawrence Person writes "According to this article in PC World, Microsoft 'publicly confirmed 2005 as the release year for Longhorn, the successor to Windows XP.' And of course, we all know tha Microsoft release dates never slip..."
Windows 98 integrated IE into its operating system (and still is to date) to eliminate competition from Netscape. That is the reason IE is everywhere, not because Netscape was slacking on Mozilla as you suggested. If Mozilla was better than IE in terms of ease of use (for the people using windows, IE was just there, and was convenient to use), Mozilla would have come up ahead of IE. But the fact of the matter is (and the DOJ ruled on this) that Microsoft was using anti-competitive behavior to drive competition away from Netscape.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
It's fun to snipe, of course, and it's nice to feel some kind of safety/security in the fact that they've been very late on many things and/or delivered with bugs.
It's easy to mock, but at least Microsoft have ship dates and feature lists. That means decision makers - like CIOs and CTOs - can make at least tentative plans. The Open Source style, it'll ship when I feel it's more-or-less ready, and it might have feature X unless I get bored coding it, drives potential users away.
"Windows 98 integrated IE into its operating system (and still is to date) to eliminate competition from Netscape."
One could make the argument that KDE is doing the same thing with Konqueror. The reason that nobody's crying foul on that, though, is because there are better browsers out there and people will go find them. In MS's case, they had the better browser. Why go download a browser when IE's doin the job? If MS had a shoddy browser like Konqueror (well Konq's not that bad, but bear with me) people'd flock to Netscape and there'd be none of this nonsense over MS trying to secure a monopoly via the browser.
Yeah yeah, convicted monopoiist, whatever. There's still strong reason to have IE and Explorer use the same interface. Why make browsing the web (the killer app for Windows 95 and even 98) such a different experience from browsing around on your commputer? KDE does this. They seem to think it works too. Plus, HTML can be used to customize the interface. All kinds of benefits here.
So yeah, MS may have been shitty about putting IE on there and making the competition's battle harder to fight, but the reason to make IE what it was in relation to Windows was a predictable evolution of the OS. IE's rendering engine is very versitile. You can throw HTML, Text, JPEGS, Flash, and a bunch of other objects at it that the web has caused to become standard, and it'll view it. (Not to mention the plugin support...) Why rewrite all that when you can modularize it and have a bunch of apps call the same thing?
Long story short, IE's bundling with Win98 may have dealt a death blow to Netscape, but there's enough reason to believe that wasn't MS's sole reason to include IE.
"Derp de derp."
Sorry: it was *not* a DOJ ruling, but rather a finding of fact by a Federal court, which finding was upheld on appeal (the only thing reversed was the penalty). In terms of law, Microsoft was found guilty of abusing its monopoly and violating antitrust laws. That case is closed and of public record.
TANSTAAFL
THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT...
That out of the way: YOU MUST BE DREAMING! In two years Linux will probably still be a niche OS, in four, it might be a slightly better alternative OS (as in Netscape is the alternate to IE, meaning IE has 90%, and netscape 5%).
Linux has some serious flaws, which, unfortunatly, are beginning to seem inate. The thing that linux is missing is DIRECTION, there is no mass-marketing plan (marketing as in mind-share, not profit), there is no drive to get the average luser using it.
Give me ONE good reason, besides price, that the average windows person (me included) would want to use linux? What advantage is there? What advantage will there be in 2 years? The only way to make linux successful would be to make it STRUCTURED, and to make it FREINDLY. Both of which it is the antithesis of right now, and promises to be the same in the future.
My suggestions are, make some form of body to control development, and make it so market-share reflects on their possition[sic]. Meaning an EXECUTIVE. Now don't take that as meaning make Linux closed, or for-profit. To make it viable to the masses, something must be at stake, otherwise it will not move out of the developer-masterbation stage.
Also, LOOSE THE *NIX ROOTS! I don't WANT a command line. (Well *I* do, but a DOS prompt, not an archane unix interface) I want something nice, easy, and intuitive. Something I can do buisness on, without worrying overly about innards. I want ease of use, AND power. Sacraifcing ease of use for power is bad, as is visa versa. You need balance.
In otherwords, to make Linux a contender in 2 years, would require linux not to be linux anymore.
Please refute me if I'm wrong. And mind, I don't really mind linux, if someone made it nice/usable/gameable, AND powerful for my purposes, I'd use it in a heartbeat over Microsoft. But right now, MS has the superior product.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
A.K.A. vapourware. Announce nifty new features that you will be providing a year from now, and even though a competitor is offering the same feature now, they'll hang on just a bit longer so they don't have to switch platforms. And then realise how stupid they were when you release the product without the new features, and say they've slipped back to the next release. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.
Remember when Win95 was supposed to eliminate crashes forever because of its 32-bit memory protection (or something like that)? Remember when Win98 was released, and it was supposed to be far more stable than Win95? Remember when WinME was released...
Whistler (Windows XP) is a ski resort in British Columbia (just north of Redmond). Longhorn is a bar/pub at the base of Whistler mountain.
I wouldn't say you're 100% wrong but you're not 100% right either. Point-by-point:
market share: irrelevant, it's the available software that counts
marketing: that's the job of co's like RedHat and IBM
average luser: hard to OEM Lin due to exclusivity arrangements on Win made by MS
advantages of Lin: performance, stability, security, virtually virus free
disadvantages of Lin: not much familiar commercial Win software, few native games
*NIX roots: for a *nix user, DOS is arcane. There are several "dos-like" shell setups available for Linux
ease of use: use a desktop focused distro, Mandrake or SuSE, and KDE
The only good argument that can be made for not using Linux is the lack of commercial ports of familiar Windows software and games. Some of the major Win apps do work under Crossover and several games run under WineX. However, for a boxed distro, Crossover, and WineX you're looking at about $100, not the proverbial free.
That said, you can't deny that most people use MS simply because it's what came with the PC when they purchased it. This is the same reason IE tookover, most people either didn't know how or couldn't be bothered to install NS. If a law were passed tomorrow banning the bundling of PCs with software, you'd see rapid growth in the number of Linux users. Let's be honest, without any prior knowledge, no sales-dude interference, and given the choice, would you pay $20 for a boxed Mandrake Linux (or even better, borrow it from a friend) or $200 for XP? Heck, I see people tripping all over themselves at BestBuy to save $200 through those MSN lock-in scams.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato