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Is Windows Losing Ground?
Rimbo asks: "I work for a small company developing wireless mesh networks to (among other things) give broadband access to large areas where a single access point can't cover the whole place. Since we're small, we made the mesh networking application for Windows, intending to support other platforms later. To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.' Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Is Windows losing its dominance to the point where small shops must consider multiple OS support to get business, either through Java, 'web services,' or cross-platform toolkits like Qt?" With the number of IE vulnerabilities, macro viruses, exploits and other such annoyances over the years, is this really that surprising?
I think it's the power of "word of mouth" in action. Let's face it, Windows still has 95% of the desktop market. It's just when your next door neighbour gets his shiney new G5 and invites his friends around to show them how cool Mac OS X is, they all go and buy Macintoshes, then their friends go and buy Macintoshes, and so on. You get islands of Linux users and Macintosh users in small communities all over the place. Unfortunately they're not very representitive of the industry as a whole.
If Linux were not a threat to Window's market dominance, would Microsoft be advertising Windows vs. Linux benchmarks on Slashdot?
After four years of almost exclusively Visual Basic development since a switch from PowerBuilder and un*x, we are now officially in "catch up to our competitors" mode. I warned my boss a year ago that our main clients were going to a Java J2EE model of application deployment. Not just going: completely overhauling and rewriting all their old apps. Where before VB/Windows solutions were happily accepted, today they are rejected outright. Just today, I was working out specs for a small project, and I could see it working either way: VB or Java. The answer was "Well, I suppose we could accept a Visual Basic solution under certain extreme circumstances."
Needless to say, my boss is freaking, with a stable of VB developers and only three (including myself) with Java experience. The change has come quickly, but we could have been better prepared than this.
The reason that Windows/VB is rejected: too much of a headache deploying and maintaining when compared to a J2EE solution.
HBH"Smart is sexy." -- D. Scully ("War of the Coprophages")
I know they're not a small company, but I know they support multiple OS's to meet customer needs. This Interview with Martin Fink talks about it. It's kind of old, but it's a good read.
From the Interview:
How would you characterize Linux sales, in terms of hardware?
The vast majority is on Intel x86 servers. We're also seeing sales on Itanium, especially for large supercomputing applications. There's an airport whose approach control system is HP Linux on Itanium. Right now, Linux is definitely the leader on Itanium. HP is not all about Linux. We're about multiple operating systems. Our analysis shows that 85 percent of enterprises have multiple operating systems. The idea of saying, "The world is about Linux" is not the real world. The real world is, "You've got to have a strong Linux solution, but you've also got to have Windows and Unix." Our Systems Insight Manager (formerly Nimbus) is a platform that looks across the whole thing.
HP has a close relationship with Microsoft. How does pushing Linux affect that relationship?
Our strategy is a multi-operating system strategy. IBM is pushing Linux at the expense of other things. We're pushing Linux as part of a complete enterprise solution. Does Microsoft want HP to be selling Linux stuff? No. But at the same time, they understand that Linux is in the market, and we have to compete. It's not about competing with Microsoft. HP is not poking a finger in their eye. It's about competing with Dell and IBM.
Sorry for the lame headline, my brain is spent for today.
I don't think you can say they are losing ground yet, (at least on the desktop, where we all know this is going to get interesting) but I think a lot of people are 'leaning over' the box to look inside and see what's going on with Apple, Linux, etc.
Yes, I think viruses and security problems are a big part of that.
No, it's not the only part. I honestly think people are getting tired of Microsoft insisting that they need to upgrade just because they have a new version out and the strongarm tactics are really putting them off. MS needs to learn how to fork a project so they can maintain support and improve features for those who want to stay with the older desktops (like Win98SE), while people who don't like thinking for themselves and controlling their own property can plow right on ahead into Longhorn.
This is way off topic, but I don't care becuase I had an idea yesterday. I've been trying to get someone to tell me one good reason for MS wanting to get rid of the web browser as a stand-alone application, and I think I came up with one for myself.
I'm just hypothesiX0ring here, but hear me out. This is fascinating.
The whole idea behind
Sounds great, right? Well, remember, this is M-I-C-R-O-S-O-F-T we're talking about. So think a minute.... what's the MOST ANNOYING thing about the internet? SPAM? Spyware/Trojans? HAH! Pop-up ads!
So, imagine a world where all your pop-ups are PROGRAMS.
The worst case scenario I've come up with so far is that you try to run OpenOffice and some piece of crap adbot spyware like Claria/Gator (which TCPA won't let you disable because you agreed to a license authorizing it) opens up MS Word or WordPerfect for you instead. Worse, without a browser, how are you going to find all these wonderful apps? Well, your START menu is going to evolve into little more than a flashing neon billboard loaded with GREAT DEALS! It's only job will be to steer you toward the software and services whose vendors are most willing to pay to be on your START menu.
Think about it -- why was Passport so important - to make multi-site logins possible? Hell no! How about web services? Apps as a service? XAML?
Maybe the days of contolling the PC you bought and paid for are truly over in MS land, eh?
Please tell me I'm wrong, because I really hope I am. It *is* late, and I've had a very long day, so I'm probably more paranoid than average. But if I'm not, I think MS is signing their own death certificate because nobody's gonna go along with that kind of a hairbrained scheme.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
To our surprise, our first beta site complained: 'Most of our residents use Apples.'
You can't take a comment like that at face value. A lot of Mac users assume that everyone else also uses a Mac, primarily because they, personally, have never used anything else.
It's possible that you have managed to find a place where Macs are predominant. Your really need to survey the population that you hope to serve before you can assume that is the case.
If your product only works with Windows right now, then plan your beta test accordingly. Talk to the site ahead of time, ask for a tally of what systems and OS versions they use, and then decide whether to roll out the product.
That ensures that you look successful and professional.
Three Squirrels
You know something interesting? I was tracking web stats on my web page. And no more than 60% of the traffic was IE. Then, I made it so that the root directory of the server (never published) is a redirect instead of a missing page. Guess what? Suddenly the hits go to 95% MSIE.
It seems that all of these viruses, web-crawlers, etc that attack random IP addresses actually report themselves as IE. Now I won't say IE's a worm itself, but clearly a significant amount of that "IE" traffic isn't coming from human users.
My experience is that with users that would use a wireless mesh, Macs really do tend to dominate. These are often people who are working all the time outside of an office: grad students, graphic designers, musicians, etc. These tend to be Mac users anyway, but add in the long-ish history of Apple making laptops w/ built-in 802.11 cards, and its plausible that there are an awful lot of Powerbooks being used on these networks.
There is nothing surprising about certain platforms being popular in different, small subgroups of the population. Whether it be Solaris, Linux, OS X, or the mighty Amiga, there is likely going to be some niche, large or small, that finds the particular platform the best tool for the job.
This doesn't mean anything in terms in total market share though. For general purpose office computing, the niche leader is MS Windows. I don't see this changing in any dramatic way, despite the many cross-platform development options out there.