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Windows 7 Likely Going Modular, Subscription-based
Microsoft CRM writes "When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most 'modular' operating system to date. That's not necessarily a good thing, of course; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS. From Microsoft's perspective, though, there are many possible benefits. The OS's developers can add/remove functionality module by module. New modules could be sold post-launch, keeping revenue streams strong. A modular approach could also allow the company to make functionality available on a time-limited basis, potentially allowing users to 'rent' a feature if it's needed on a one-off basis. Microsoft is already testing 'pay as you go' consumer subscriptions in developing countries."
Considering Microsoft has, in the past, been accused of artificially bundling components together (IE+Windows, DirectX10+Vista, etc), I'm going to remain skeptical on this plan. It seems like Microsoft can get much higher revenue from a several-hundred-dollars major upgrade than a pick-n-choose bundle of features. The only way I see them breaking it apart is if their monopoly really does begin to be challenged and they have to start selling in a truly competitive market.
E pluribus unum
...how that more & more Windows looks like *nix sometimes.
Since NT 3.5 we've had:
True multi-user (Terminal services, fast-user switching), sudo (UAC), headless servers (server core), decent scripting (PowerShell), and now more modularity?
Yeah I know, some of these aren't exactly the same, but you see my point.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Another 'danger' (from Microsoft's perspective) would be "the WINE effect", a.k.a. reverse engineering. If they separate their OS into well-defined modules, then others can create replacements for those modules. Even if the interfaces are secret and there is no public documentation (which is likely to be the case), the partitioning into modules will mean that at some level there is a well-defined API (even if it isn't publicly disclosed). So people can reverse-engineer that API and write their own drop-in replacement modules.
This would be great for lots of people: other companies could write competing modules to replace Windows functionality (why pay for Microsoft's system-wide search module when Google's is so much better?). Also, free and open-source modules will probably be created for many of those features.
Of course, it may be that Microsoft intends to create a complicated system of internal certificates and code signing so that only MS-approved modules can use these hidden APIs. It seems like that would add a considerable performance penalty, but then again I guess that's not too different from the decisions they made in designing Vista.
Anybody remember Vista Ultimate edition? The one that promised Ultimate Extras - regular extras that you could download through Windows Update? They released 3 things through that: an small card game, DreamScene (sucks up CPU to animate your desktop background), and Bitlocker full drive encryption. That was all just a little after RTM - nothing since then.
When they came up with the idea I thought it might be interesting, but they've shown they can't follow through. If this is at all similar I'm sure it will fail. Microsoft won't be overthrown just from this, certainly not by 2010, but I'm sure it will pave more of the Disappointment Road that Vista started.
When they say "subscription" I get kind of worried. Valve carefully calls their Steam games "subscriptions" to remove your right of resale.
What they REALLY mean is that they are going to be taking out huge chunks of functionality, and then charging you separately for each of those chunks.
I *fully* expect that the first version of Office that runs on "Windows 7" will have formerly free features that no require you to pay for add-ons to Windows before they will work.
I actually like Microsoft for the most part, but their push towards software-as-a-service is really turning me off. If anything is going to bring them down, it will be this. I don't think they understand just how much of a backlash their is going to be. No one wants to be nickeled-and-dimed to death. Business won't do it, and consumers won't care.
It was a bit before my time, but the story goes that IBM used to operate in pretty much exactly this way back in the mainframe days. They would sell the customer a mainframe at a certain performance level, but actually ship them a much more powerful machine with some of its resources disabled/limited/throttled via software, so that it performed at the (lower) level the customer had been sold. Then when the customer needed an upgrade, they would bill them a ginormous amount, then send out a service tech to "install the upgrade" -- but all he really did was remove the limiters. This was called a "golden screwdriver" upgrade because the tech could earn IBM hundreds of thousands of dollars just with the proverbial turn of a screw.
Read my blog.
Japanese grammar is actually very uniform. There are only 1 or 2 verb conjugation exceptions or something like that. The hard part is reading/writing the Chinese characters, which does include knowing which pronunciation to use (Japanese or "Chinese"). And actually I've spoken with Japanese people that felt Romance languages weren't too bad, particularly Spanish, especially because of the conjugation system, and the somewhat similar tones.
A German guy once told me that he felt his language was one of the hardest in the world, and all the reasons he described reminded me of English to be honest (which makes sense considering English is Germanic, with lots of Romance vocab bolted on).