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?

Comments

Science at its best

[daeley]

Boy, glad to see that unscientific guesswork from extremely limited statistical samples is alive and well! ;)

My company is jumping on Java

[HotButteredHampster]

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