Vista the End of An Era?

mikesd81 writes "The Times Online has an article about the uncertain future of Windows. Even Microsoft, it seems is admitting that Vista will be the last OS of its kind. With the push towards a constant presence on the internet, and the churn that entails, the company has admitted that even with a two year delay 'it is not really ready'." From the article: "Security experts are acknowledging that Vista is the most secure of Windows to date. However, 'The bad guys will always target the most popular systems,' Mikko Hypponen, of F-Secure, the security group, said. 'Vista's vulnerability to phishing attacks, hackers, viruses and other malicious software will increase quickly.' But the current fear is that the Internet will kill Windows, with Google being Public Enemy No. 1: 'Microsoft is way behind Google when it comes to the internet,' Rupert Godwins, the technology editor at ZDNet, the industry website, said. 'Building Vista, Microsoft is still doing things the old way at the same time as it undergoes a big shift to catch up.'"

Comments

Not gonna happen

[NineNine]

All of this "The Net IS the OS" stuff is just ridiculous. This kind of thing doesn't even have a chance until broadband is as ubiquitous and as reliable as electricity. I think that we're still a good 10 years out from this even beginning to happen.

Re:Not gonna happen

[Ngarrang]

This ignores the reality that old OSes never die and go away. As long as older computers continue to exist, the older OSes will continue to be used. The open-source community is also proof that the traditional OS will never die.

Re:Not gonna happen

[LionKimbro]

I think what you, and the others who are saying things like you, are missing, is what the conversation is all about.

Nobodies seriously arguing that "OS'es don't matter," or that OS'es will somehow magically, poof, up and disappear, somehow. If you think that's what the message is, you're almost certainly misinterpreting.

There will always be stuff that people will only entrust to their own computer, and run on an OS, and so on. Like the fellow who replied to you first said: "I don't want to authenticate, just to edit a word document." Quite right.

What they're saying, or one of the things they're saying, (since "they" are quite large and nebulous,) is that the era of the super-important dominance of the OS is at an end.

That is, that software developers, around the world, are never going to go back to the heady days of 1995, where every new platform change to Windows or Apple was the compelling subject of the magazines.

It's sort of like in Linux. Who cares what happens to the kernel anymore? It's all about the desktop efforts.

Sure, the old stuff never went away: There are still innovations in the Linux Kernel, and, there are communities of people who keep up with what's happening in kernels and so on, and the myriad activities and so on. Even exciting things still happening there. But it isn't the focus of the discussion.

The primary discussion, the things businesses and users and developers and so on are concerned about, is something different.

So, this is the context in which you interpret: "The net is the OS."

They mean something very big and complex, but when you put a message into the political sphere, it's gotta be short. You have to apply the context to decipher the message.

Re:Not gonna happen

[aetherworld]

You intend to live that long? ;)

That's the main problem here. All this 'never' talk merely concerns our current generation. And maybe the generation after us. Do you think your grandchildren will know DOS?

What would have happened if you told the people in 1800 that in 1876 bell would invent a telephone which would make it possible to talk with everyone in the world. Would they have believed you? No. What if you told them, that only 100 years later everyone would have such a telephone, only then it would be called cellphone and you could carry it around with you and even see the person you're talking to. They would have laughed at you. Would someone have believed you in 1900 when you would have told people that in only a few years, there would be television. Soon in color. Transmitted via satellites in the sky. And small silver discs where they could fit several movies on. They would have taken you for a poor lunatic.

Do you believe people now when they say in 100 years you won't sit in front of computers anymore because they're wired into your neural system and use wireless power? Or that we will have colonized several planets? :) Probably not...

"Last of its kind"? Fooey

[Scareduck]

If by that they mean software-as-a-service, well, good luck to them. I have no desire whatsoever to be forced into downloading their product whenever I need it, or authenticating myself to Redmond when I want to open a spreadsheet.

Re:oh no, not again

[Ajehals]

If we start seeing companies go down the software as a service model, we may well see vista as a cut down but free product, with Microsoft's revenue coming from on-line productivity services. Games will be relegated to the console (where they can also be locked to the hardware or only available on-line).

This would be good for the companies that are currently seeing losses due to copyright infringement, just imagine if all your media was only available on-line - you could only rent it, it would be playable on your PC but only if the platform had sufficient technical measures in place to prevent you from copying it. You couldn't copy Office or Photoshop because its run directly from someone else's server. This would be a dream for software providers as they could charge you on a per use basis, and lock your data into their services. No more trying to sell upgrades as you wouldn't have a choice.

The only thing that stands in the way of that is a decent and mostly feature complete open code base, something that would allow you to do what you want with your computer, your "Intellectual Property" and the media you buy, or already own. We are seeing the end of the huge revenue streams for those people who provide a product that is easily reproduced. Those providers are looking for ways to re-generate those revenue streams, and I dont think the scenario I have outlined above is too outlandish for them to consider.

Microsoft and it's own history

[salesgeek]

Back in the '80s MS built it's success by making computers accessible and usable by the masses. Prior to the 80s useful computers were usually leased mini or mainframes. Often they were timeshared services that were paid by monthly subscription. They were pushed aside by a model led by Microsoft: I own my computer and can use it how I see fit. Recently, they seem to feel because others build web service driven models, that they should too.

Microsoft is now vulnerable because they believe things have went full circle. They see people building new ideas and new markets that don't include them - or need their software. What MS misses is that people don't want their software when it doesn't do something of great value. The days of people marveling at the convenience of a multitasking GUI or amazing their boss with a pivot table are over. Problem is that Microsoft's current innovation isn't being driven by customers or users, but by a bad combination of developer arrogance and greed. The result: you get products that people just don't want like Zune. You get a company selling out it's users for a buck they may never get from the music business. You get ideas like Live Update and Genuine Advantage that hurt legitimate users because your bean counters want to squeeze every dime out of their market. You get ideas like threatening patent litigation for ideas that are almost as old as most college grads instead of inventing something worth patenting.

For MS to come back all they have to do is recognize reality: people actually do like and use their software. Focus on what you can add (or remove) that will make it better. And remember that USERS not the music, movie, media or any other industry makes the buying decision. When you add a feature to the OS, make it a benefit to the USER. Everyone is in love with the idea of being a landlord. MS would be wise to remember that they made their way to success by putting the landlords out of business.

$150 per line of code?

[SurturZ]

From TFA:

Vista's 50 million lines of code have cost an estimated $7.5 billion to assemble.

That's $150 per line of code! I reckon the Microsoft devs have been playing WoW on company time :-)

Summary misleading

[proxima]

From the summary:

[...]the company has admitted that even with a two year delay 'it is not really ready'.

where "the company" is implied to be Microsoft. However, from the article:

[...]but even after a two-year delay it is not really ready, Michael Silver, an analyst at Gartner, said.

I think that's a rather important distinction.

Re:I have a hard time believing claims like this

[theLOUDroom]

Every release of windows since windows 95 has been marginally better.

What about Windows ME?

I think you'd find a lot of people disagreeing with you on that one.

targeting a popular system makes less secure?

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is not insecure due to it's popularity. It is due to it's design. A secure system can withstand what comes at it because in it's design, these anomalies were accounted for. Stop pimping that excuse.

You give them too little credit.

[Kadin2048]

I think maybe you're not giving those folks back in centuries past too little credit. From the New York Times, December 17, 1906:

[T]he telephone is a nuisance as well as a convenience and a blessing without which, it seems now, life would be almost impossible and business quite so. When we ourselves "call up," of course it is all right, but when others do it the rightness is often rather deeply veiled, and we resent not a few of the demands upon our time. And yet everybody "answers the 'phone," interrupting almost any occupation to do it. How will it be when we're told, not that somebody's "on the wire," but that somebody's "on the air," and we are exposed to answer calls from any part of the atmosphere?

That statement was made an easy 80-90 years before cellphones became ubiquitous, but yet easily foresaw the convergence of two distinct and at the time emerging technologies (the telephone, just reaching critical mass at the time, and radio, relatively new).

So anyway, a bright person a century ago would probably have believed, given sufficient explanations, most of the technology we have today. Cellphones are just radios plus telephones; televisions just small movie screens; automobiles are significantly faster but still easily recognizable for what they are. It is only when you start to drill down into the underlying technology and infrastructure that enables modern devices that they truly would astound someone living a century ago.

The "futurists" of the late 19th and early 20th century predicted many of the technological developments of the past 100 years remarkably well (obviously not in detail, but conceptually in many cases they were right on). You would have to go back further than that, to eras when people were not used to continuous change -- where it was not expected that the world one grew up in would be different than the world one's children would inherit -- in order to find people who would be unable to conceive of our current state.

To be perfectly honest, I think many a person from the early 20th century would be a little disappointed if they were suddenly transported forward to the current day. Although many things have changed, a great many other things have not or are at least recognizable equivalents of devices or activities present 100 years ago. Someone who expected the rate of progress seen during the period from 1800 to 1900 to continue and increase, might find life in 2000 startlingly familiar (and sadly devoid of flying cars).

Can't lead when you're hell-bent on following.

[Kadin2048]

But, let's set aside the fact that Linux is an excellent gaming platform for the majority of people who just like a simple game every now and again. Even if Linux had a perfect port of every single bloated, big-budget, proprietary computer game out there, we still won't see widespread desktop Linux adoption on home desktops in rich countries. People in rich countries can afford Windows, and they see no compelling reason to switch away. Linux won't provide a compelling reason for most users to switch. They'll switch to Mac before they switch to Linux.

Ding ding ding! Seriously, you should get a prize or something.

You can't replace Windows with Linux, when a lot of Linux development seems to be centered around making Linux as much like Windows as possible. As bloated and generally inelegant as Windows is, most people just don't have a very compelling reason to switch away from it. And cost isn't a big factor, since most people don't 'see' the cost of Windows in any direct fashion anyway. (And the people who do see the cost directly -- principally barebones builders -- can just pirate it and always will.)

As long as Linux is trying to 'catch up' to Windows, it can't ever surpass it and provide any convincing reasons for people to switch.

Apple, over the past 5+ years, has done a good job of giving users reasons to switch to their platform, and they didn't do it by trying to emulate the market leader. They picked a few things that they thought they could do better (multimedia, "digital hub" functions, ease of use) and concentrated their effort there. When you use a Mac, you know you're using a Mac -- they don't attempt to 'out-Windows' Windows, and that's what I see a lot of Linux distros trying to do. (Look at KDE's default skin and tell me that's not the out-of-wedlock child of Windows 98 and XP.) The Mac OS, love it or hate it, makes a stand and seems proud to not be Windows-y; many Linux distros seem embarrassed and suffering an identity crisis by comparison.

I'll end with one small anecdote: the most consistently impressive way I've found to show Linux to Windows diehards, is to show them a MythTV/Knoppmyth box. Why is it so impressive? Because it's something that their Windows PC just can't do (admittedly, I suppose MCE+SnapStream is close, but most people have never heard of it). You're not going to win admiration and envy by showing a Linux machine running OpenOffice and editing a spreadsheet; acting proud of that just makes Linux look like a joke. (Again, it's somewhat cool that it's all free, but not that impressive to most people.) But when you show a Linux machine doing something that most people's Windows desktops are just never going to do, and suddenly it looks a lot more interesting. And at that point, you can just drop in "oh yeah, it does all that Office-type stuff, too."