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The Relevance of Windows
Josh Fink writes "ZDNet has up an article exploring whether of not Windows is still relevant. In the age of 'Web 2.0' both older folks who remember the days before Windows and younger folks who have never known anything else are beginning to see Microsoft's offering as old news. From the article: 'Before closing the books on the Age of Windows, however, let's not get too caught up in the fashion of the moment. The water-cooler crowd may take a dim view of "Win-doze" for all the right reasons. Still, Microsoft's archrivals continue to view it as a product with a potentially make-or-break impact on their businesses. In fact, two of them--Adobe Systems and Symantec--are lobbying European regulators to get tough on Microsoft. The European Union already has an unresolved antitrust dispute with Microsoft, and Adobe and Symantec would be silly not to play that card for all it's worth. So this is what they're doing.'"
Every computer still needs an operating system. Microsoft has huge amounts of mindshare and vendor lock-in going on with plenty of companies, and that's where the real money is.
to the following groups:
- gamers, who have specific games which exist on specific platforms
- programmers, who have code, and tools, and toolkits, some of which may be platform specific
- Anyone who has been "around awhile" and has invested dollars in software. For example, software I still use on a regular basis under Windows predates 2000 and I don't see a Linux offering worth giving it up for.
Maybe I'm getting my history wrong, but weren't analysts saying the same thing during the age of "Web 1.0"?
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This article is somewhat out there. How can an operating system with such market share be irrrelevant ?
And herein lies... I'll take the OS I hate if it means that I can play my video games. And I'm not the only person who thinks that way. Until hardware manufacturers start taking Linux seriously and come up with decent video drivers (the sound and networking drivers for all of my systems work fine), then Linux won't be a player in the games market. Likewise... even if there's decent video drivers for Linux, there's still the problem where game producers don't take either Linux or MacOS seriously. Software like Cedega will probably do wonders for that situation in the long run, but you still have the problem of decent video drivers.
Overcome those hurdles, and Windows will no longer be relevant. Until that time, though, it's very much relevant, and no amount of OSS evangelism is going to fix that.
You are right about one thing, though... the connection to the Internet is a deal-breaker. It's just that every OS is the current generation has the ability to connect to the Internet, and a wide variety of options for software that uses it. Heck... most of us can probably get the Internet on our phone. It may be a deal-breaker, but it's an irrelevant one.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Adobe and Symantec are perfect examples of why Windows isrelevant. Software companies are not properly supporting other operating systems. Although Adobe still builds graphics apps for the Mac, they support for Linux is, at best, tepid; they rarely even bother supporting Mac on non-graphics applications, such as Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro, which they acquired years ago). Symantec's support for non-Windows operating sytems is anything but legendary (ex. management console for corporate AV is all Windows).
1) People who drag lawyers into a tech contest are already on the losing end. (Like you, SCO.)
2) If many people feel the need to get a whole continent's regulatory arm fired up about X, then yes, X is relevant.
First, this idea of a web-only network computer type world is great for the readers of Slashdot and ZDNet where complaints of my 6Mb pipe getting enough throughput. People tend to forget that broadband is not universal in this country even for businesses. 70% percent of all US businesses are less than 10 people which equates to 1 Trillion dollars in revenues, this is the foundation of our environement. Only about half of these small business have broadband access, so you expect them to dial up to use a AJAX version of QuickBooks? Go out side the US and it gets worse, there are major manufacturing firms in Asia and India who power is still an issue let alone bandwidth. ASP, SaaS, and Web 2.0 is not an option for a large segment of businesses worldwide and will not be for years to come. Local OSes will be needed for the decade to come for most businesses. Businesses drive the majority of software revenue.
In ten years most people won't have an operating system period. Why would they? Even now you can do anyhting that you cna do on your home OS on the net. Email, word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, calculations, photo storage, watch movies, etc.
The only thing you really can't do is install software, but once we get away from the need to do that (and we will) we'll be set. the only people that will have home systems are hardcore elite gamers and IT pros (and the etremely paranoid).
"Mac Word operates like any other Mac app."
That is the problem, it does not. Or at least it did not about a year and a half ago when I last tried it. It was slow, crashed, used non-standard widgets, had ugly interface and had problems with Czech texts, which was a big show stopper for Czech users. Microsoft Office on OS X is simply not the same as Office on Windows. I like to use Word on Windows, I hated using Word on OS X. You did not answer my question, did You ever use Word on Mac? A good word processor for OS X is Mellel (http://www.mellel.com/), but it cannot be used for routine get-a-doc-edit-send-a-doc work.
If the world banned Windows, hmm.. your favorite software and games would have been ported to the dominate operating system.. you think those companies would simply stop making their software?
I really don't buy this one AT ALL nor have to imagine anything. I helped migrate an elementary school to a Solaris based network (Gnome desktops). This included teachers, administrators, students, computer labs.. everything. Besides having to learn some new icons and a few new locations for items, the "massive learning curve" issue we were anticipating never happened. Even friends, family and co-workers that use my system (KDE) don't seem to have any major issues being productive.. they ask how to access the web, write a letter, whatever, I tell them what app(s) they can try and thats about it. Sure doing adminsitrative tasks are different, but day to day operations for *most* end users is such a small learning curve as to be a non-issue.
That is true and the #1 reason why people stick with Windows. I think ultimately these apps need to be ported. The amount of development time and effort that has gone into each of those apps is astronomical and it is unrealistic to think that, at this time, these types of niche apps would attract the necessary development community to make a highly successful, competitive open source alternative.
This is why windows will still be relevant, I just ordered my mom a dell system with a monitor for $500. It comes with windows, I unpack the computer hook it up, install office, subscribe to anti-virus subscription, and make sure windows updates are set to automatically download and install. After this I bet I will never have to touch this computer for her again until she is ready to buy a new one. She will be able to telecommute to work, she will be able to surf the internet, get email, do her taxes, edit he pictures from her camera and do it quickly, reliably, and with no hassle at all. For most people this is the reality of windows, it isn't this unstable, BSOD throwing, pile of crap everyone makes it out to be. With a little caution towards security on the users part there is nothing it cant do for the average computer user.
With a 95+% share of the overall market and a nearly 100% share of the corporate (250+ employees) windows remains very relevant. There is a whole "ecosystem" of windows that will keep it around for a long time.
./'er argue about the relevancy of (pick one) Mac OS X, desktop Linux, Amigas, etc. The real question is should anyone care about the Mac? Will that be around for the next 5 years?
./.
Yet with less than 5% share and almost 0% of the corporate market, the
There seems to be a "distortion effect" on
So I supose that those of us unlucky enough to still be on dial-up (with no other option available other than satelite which to me is no option) are going to be left behind in this new OSless world? You will always need an OS as a computer won't operate without one but trying to do all of these wonderfull "Web 2.0" things on a dial-up connection just won't work.
I realize that high speed Internet access is becoming very common but there is still a large segment of the population that just don't have access to a high speed connection. I'm limited to a 26.4K connection at home due to the local phone system and therefore not overly concerned with the 2.0 hype.
There's nothing stopping major improvements to the kernel. As I understand it, the problem is that the kernel maintainers seem to have a specific desire to *not* maintain a stable interface against which drivers can be written, the reasoning being that if the drivers are open source, then the changes required by the new interface will be trivial to implement. So, the kernel maintainers make a point of not bothering to maintain a stable interface for driver developers over the long term to discourage binary-only drivers.
Guess what - those hardware manufacturers who are releasing binary-only drivers aren't going to suddenly decide to release open-source drivers. They have a lot of intellectual property in there that they either cannot afford to be disclosed to their competitors, or cannot disclose due to licensing requirements from 3rd parties.
If the kernel wasnt such a moving target, it would be easier for hardware vendors to release one set of drivers that will work on a large range of kernel versions. I'd imagine having to maintain multiple releases of the same driver for different point releases of kernel contributes a lot to the perceived apathy of hardware vendors towards linux. Before this gets marked as a troll, think about the number of 'i upgraded my kernel from x.y.z to x.y.z+1 and ABC stopped working' comments that accompany so many kernel release announcements
Obviously most people will be getting their software OEM, but seeing those sticker prices on the retail packs is going to make your average shopper think twice about what that beige box might cost them without the predatory pricing.
No. It will make them think they've got a bargain, because the box with comes with very expensive sofware.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Symantec has an extremely hefty investment in the windows platform. Symantec has put out fud here and there about open source security precisely because the software is too secure. If an alternative to windows were to gain substantial market share that would mean lost marketshare for Symantec since their AV products wouldn't be needed, used, or even available on that platform.
At the same time Symantec wants all that juicy system internal information that microsoft won't share or charges them out the arse for now.
If every new garage, barn, carport, and shed in the world came with a Ford Model T pre-parked inside it, their attitude would have been correct, too...
Sure, there'd be some installs of Linspire and some people running MacOS (and maybe Apple would see this as a good time to make MacOS install on lots of machines), but for hard core gamers and especially for corporate IT departments, it would be next to impossible to switch quickly and they'd end up paying quite a premium.
Thing is, why would they need to "switch quickly"? With the resource overhead I've seen in the beta version of Vista "hardcore gamers" would have to be retarded to make the switch. It'll only decrease the performance of your games, and all games for the next 3-4 years at least will keep running on XP. Meanwhile it makes no sense for corporate IT departments to switch immediately - any decent admin would wait until at least SP1 before switching. So you've got a good 2-3 year buffer there before anyone would really NEED to switch, which leaves plenty of opportunity for a viable alternative to gain popularity. The only thing MS could do to encourage people to upgrade sooner is stop releasing patches for Windows XP....but that'd set up an excellent opportunity for a class action lawsuit. Therefore, no matter how you look at it, it makes no sense for MS to "raise the price by some interesting factor".
There's at least two main things I see wrong with your argument. First of all, your percentages sound off. The main reason I'd imagine this is the case is that you're speaking of only the desktop market. But, there's a lot more to computers than desktops. Depending on how you slice it, embedded OSs far outstrip the number of Windows installs available. Yet, at the same time, one can hardly say it's the case that people are somehow tied into supporting those embedded OSs for years to come.
And that leads into the second main point, the relevance of Windows could just as well be questioning the relevance of Mac OS X or Linux or Amiga. The whole point of Web 2.0 and similar technology is to produce platform agnostic applications that remove any sort of vendor lock-in that might exist. If this is actually achieved, then the only real motivation to continue to use Windows is the amount of driver support that already exists. But, it's not hard to imagine that BSD variants could be created by OEMs with new drivers for new hardware that rather mitigates the point for most people.
So, I wouldn't say it's a reality distortion field. I just think you've misunderstood the question, as the article was pointing out that even that which we might find most relevant today might not be at all tomorrow. What better example than Windows?
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'would you rather have a machine with your favorite operating system, access to most applictions for that machine but no internet connection'
OR
'a machine with your favorite operating system, a browser and access to the internet but no other applications (and with downloading of applications disabled)'?
It still runs about 95% of the world's desktops and laptops that are used to access all the "web 2.0" stuff we all love so much and which is currently being hailed as "the end of the operating system"...
So long as web servers, web clients, etc. have the dependency of requiring an OS to run on, OSs will remain relevant -- just as the hardware on which the OS runs remains relevant. Like hardware, OSs just aren't "hot" or "trendy" anymore among us software people, that's all...
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