Gartner Analysts Warn That Windows Is Collapsing

spacefiddle writes "Computerworld has an article about a presentation from Gartner analysts in Las Vegas claiming that Windows is 'collapsing', and that Microsoft 'must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been.' Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald provided an analysis of what went wrong with Vista, and what they feel Microsoft can and must do to correct its problems. Larry Dignan of ZDNet has his own take, and while he agrees, he suggests that the downfall of Windows will be slow and drawn-out. As an interesting tangent to this, there's also a story from a few days prior about Ubuntu replacing Windows for a school's library kiosks, getting good performance out of older hardware. '[Network administrator Daniel] Stefyn said he was "pleasantly surprised" to discover that the Kubuntu desktops ran some applications faster with Linux than when they ran on Windows. An additional benefit of Windows' departure from student library terminals saw the students cease 'hacking the setup to install and play games or trash the operating system.'"

Comments

Really?

[toleraen]

"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," said Silver and MacDonald. Wait, the iPhone OS X can run on a several devices, with as little as a 133 MHz processor with 16MB of RAM?
Wait, Apple didn't have to customize OS X to run on the iPhone, it was perfect the way it was?
Wait, it's easier for people to develop and distrubte applications for the iPhone, even though the ability isn't avaiable yet?

Are these guys supposed to be taken seriously?

Re:Really?

[MLCT]

so who's to say that Microsoft can't trim Windows in order to fit better on a handheld? I think that is the point. 5 years of development and one service pack later MS is still struggling to get Vista to run on the machines it was designed for. Creating a lean palm version would be a million miles away.

I am not aware of the detailed structure of Vista's kernel, but my guess would be it is unlikely to be easily scaled down - it is an OS that requires higher specifications than XP to do mundane tasks like file copying. That doesn't suggest efficiency and portability.

Re:Really?

[OzRoy]

Of course not, that is stupid. But you would still say Linux can run on these devices despite the fact it also has to be recompiled and tweaked etc. I think what they are arguing is that Apple uses the same code base for the iPhone as it does for their desktops. Microsoft however has two completely seperate products for Windows and Windows Mobile which increases the development costs and complexity.

Re:Really?

[mabhatter654]

Steve has shown in 5 years that Apple can release more interesting stuff than Microsoft. Apple just "does" it, they don't pre-announce years in advance. Steve just shows up on sage with a fully operational Intel Mac running Apple's software Suite (OSX, iLife, etc) on day 1, or with a fully functioning iPhone that happens to have used OSX, on day 1.

Microsoft bellyaches how "hard" software is to make, and constantly delays (and they don't make computers or phones and sell them) Apple makes it look very easy and investors are starting to see Microsoft isn't really that good at their CORE job.

Re:Really?

[ozmanjusri]

Rubbish. Vista runs fine on the modern-day machines it was "designed for".

Sure. That's why Microsoft is fighting a class-action suit against customers who disagree withe your assessment.

Re:Really?

[unlametheweak]

Rubbish. Vista runs fine on the modern-day machines it was "designed for".

Sure. That's why Microsoft is fighting a class-action suit against customers who disagree withe your assessment.

Not quite. Vista was designed to run on high end machines, however Vista was marketed to be able to run on not-so high end machines.

Re:Really?

[erroneus]

The kernel is filled with legacy backward-compatibility stuff from all the way back to Windows 3.1. Some time ago, there was this leaked Windows source code thing going on and someone extracted all the comments and made those available to read. I read through them and saw where there was a LOT of stuff written into the kernel that was there for the purpose of running old code. To me, this is a backwards approach to things... the idea of writing the OS to run applications? The applications should be written for the OS. (I recognize that if Microsoft took this proper approach, they'd risk people not upgrading to their latest OS because of their dependency on older applications that aren't updated, but then that's all part of their broken business model. An OS isn't supposed to be "the thing." It's supposed to be the software that enables access between the hardware and applications that *are* "the thing.")

I'm actually quite pleased to see the reported direction that Windows 7 is taking. As I have stated earlier, I don't plan to run to Windows 7 and leave Linux behind. Linux is home now and I'm comfortable in it. Apple's MacOSX is interesting and I can make good use of it as well, but it's not home either... I have pondered the idea of moving to a Macbook pro or the like but so far it's hard to imagine leaving home where I'm quite comfortable and I'm sure you can identify with the sentiment if you're a Windows user.

But that said, I also recognize that Windows is what's used in business and here at work. Windows is also used by just about everyone on the planet... a planet that, incidentally, is connected by this internet thing which I have to coexist in... this same internet that is over-run with Windows computers that have been compromised and are hosting bot services for people to do all manner of terrible things. If Windows 7 represents the "clean slate" that I hope it does, we might see a serious reduction in the amount of that sort of trouble which will make my life better. What I'm saying is that even non-Windows users will benefit from a new Windows OS on every desktop if only because it may serve to clear away a lot of the crap that is polluting the public internet.

I disapprove of your attempt to disassociate the "bloated GUI" from OS. While it's technically correct, it's practically incorrect. In just the same way that most users think "The Web" is the internet, most people see the GUI as the OS. And since the GUI and the kernel are always together as a virtually inseparable set, they are pretty much one in the same. If you're trying to say that Microsoft could write a new, more simple, GUI for the "Vista kernel" and make it run on lower-end hardware? You're probably right, but not without also modifying the kernel to pull out ALL that backward compatibility stuff. It's really hard to know if they can actually do that or not. Microsoft has testified in court that the GUI, and more specifically, Microsoft Internet Explorer, cannot be removed from the OS because it would break too many things. We know that Microsoft wouldn't lie in court, so it must be true... and so Microsoft would probably also disapprove of your attempt the disassociate the "bloated GUI" from the OS.

Re:Really?

[geekoid]

That would be nice is it was designed to run on todays computers. It was not, it was designed to run on computers 4 years ago.

The fact that current products are fast enough to cover their poor design is another matter.

Since we tested it on dozens of machines with higher spec and it wasn't acceptable, I am dubious of your claim that it will run on that machine with all the features in an acceptable way.

That aside, what exactly does Vista bring to the table? Nothing. All the features that would have made this OS an actual improved new OS were stripped out. SO know we have a bloated OS that has no value add and can't justify the expense of a roll out.

Failure.

Re:Really?

[Vellmont]

Apple just "does" it, they don't pre-announce years in advance.

That's very true. The reasons are more to do with where each company is in the market though. Apple doesn't have much to lose if some applications don't maintain backward compatibility. Microsoft has a hell of a lot to lose. Shit, Apple just announced they were ditching Carbon for the fully 64 bit version of OSX. That means a lot of re-development, and incompatibility of apps. For Microsoft when you're at the front of the race you've got a LOT more to lose than anyone else.

The other major difference is Apple doesn't have this horrid codebase that Microsoft does. They went through their transition pretty recently having ditched all their legacy code long ago. Essentially OSX and Linux are light on their feet, modular, and can turn on a dime. Windows is the hulking giant dinosaur that takes years to realize it-ain't-gonna-work.

Re:Really?

[SirGarlon]

The other major difference is Apple doesn't have this horrid codebase that Microsoft does.

Apple also has complete control over the hardware specs their software is supposed to run on, which must considerably narrow the complexity of their hardware interfaces. That's why Apple makes whole computers (or devices) and doesn't separate their hardware from their software.

Re:Really?

[geekoid]

Vista was supposed to be released over 4 years ago, so, Yes.

You must not do anything interesting in IT.
Those are just toys, I am talking about the real good stuff that was scrapped. I mean really, calling stuff that other systems have had for years, or was available through other programs in windows 'new features' is a bit rich.

I am talking about the three pillars.

Normally I don't like waving the 'I've been doing X for this long' dick waving, but since you bring it up.
I wrote my first Program in 81. I have been following what is not called Vista pre-longhorn. I remember in 99 when they where talking about it's development progress in the Microsoft paper. I worked at a company that had a MS partnership agreement for pre-beta Vista and pre-beta office. I have been up to my elbows in the bits of vista for a while.

"Suckered by Intel"? no, they weren't they knew what they where doing and they knew they where being deceitful.

Not being able to run all the features of a product means the product doesn't work.

Shit, I could write an OS, Again, that won't be able to use all it's capabilities for 4 years from release and I would not call it ready or done. Creating something that can't be used in a practicable manner is bad, and stupid, and deceitful.

SO you enjoy your toys, Microsoft's lies, and the nice blinders you have bolted onto your brain, but Vista was not ready, and brings nothing new or useful to the corporate world. In fact it introduces a risk, as would any new OS.

Good OS's mature, bad ones age. Interesting that about the time a MS OS begins to hit the mature stage it's phased out. Yes, it takes years for an OS to mature.

Here we go again, eh?

[Kwirl]

For how many years have slashdot 'experts' been predicting the 'downfall' of windows? For 23 years they have not just controlled, the word is 'dominated' the desktop environment. For the majority of computer users, the words 'Windows' and 'Computer' are borderline synonymous.

And you're proof? Because some users believe that 'Vista sucks' blah blah blah. How many people started ringing the bells for Microsoft after Windows ME? We saw how that worked out...

Re:Here we go again, eh?

[LiquidCoooled]

The Windows Me situation was different.

Microsoft had the entire Windows NT branch practically ready and waiting in the wings to replace it with.

With XP coming to the end of its life for desktop machines, what can they move to this time?

Re:Here we go again, eh?

[vux984]

Some are experienced IT people who have seen Linux/Unix and know how it could be.

Was this a pro-linux/unix comment or a pro-windows comment? Its much too ambiguous.

Getting linux running smoothly can be just as trying as windows if not more trying.

Most are now in a position to ask the professionals "Is this as good as it gets?" and being told - no, there IS another way.

A different way, with its own slew of canyon-wide pitfalls. Like... nearly all your software won't work, including your accounting software won't run on it at all, period. Or the minefield of setting up dual screens or wifi, or getting your shiny new blackberry or iphone to sync contacts with outlook... oh wait... no outlook...

Sure ubuntu etc have reached the point where you can build a basic web&email machine very quickly and its pretty simple, but go much beyond that and Linux throws plenty of obstacles into your path. Some can be overcome, some can't.

students will hack *anything*

[sqldr]

An additional benefit of Windows' departure from student library terminals saw the students cease 'hacking the setup to install and play games or trash the operating system.'"

Yeah, that'll last. I'll give it a week before someone finds a manual and migrates their "expertise" to their new operating system.

At home perhaps

[Oxy the moron]

I can see this happening rather quickly at home. It hasn't been hard to convince my family members to get away from Windows. While my wife is probably more computer savvy than most, she hasn't had any problems switching from Windows to Linux, and actually likes it more. It's been more difficult for others I've gotten to switch, but in general the result has been positive.

The corporate world is a completely different story, though. Many large, medium, and small companies have committed vast resources to development in .Net. And while a good chunk of that can be run on Mono in a non-Windows environment, it's not entirely the same, and transitioning to something else, from a OS or software perspective, is going to take even more time and money in an economy where money isn't readily available.

Additionally, while you can probably count on your IT staff to have a reasonably easy transition to something other than Windows, your non-tech employee base is almost certainly going to have a great deal of difficulty. Add in the fact that lots of small and mid-size businesses use "friendly" accounting software that runs solely on Windows, and I think Microsoft has a much larger buffer for error than most people think.

Will it happen? God I hope so... but I'm not optimistic it will happen even in the next 5-10 years.

He's not all anti-Microsoft

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Michael Silver, it should be noted, is fairly neutral in his coverage of Microsoft. Here is a link to his past papers:

http://www.gartner.com/Search?op=16&f=2&keywords=&bop=0&op=16&sort=73&archived=0&simple1=0&n=8332&authorId=8332&resultsPerSearch=0&dir=70&sort=73&dir=70

The problem, as I see it, is not Vista itself. Rather, it is the slow but steady migration from PCs being central to computing tasks to reliance on servers for processing power and storage. Although Outlook client may run on your PC, the real work managing your company's mail is handled in the backrooms on server hardware. They aren't running client Windows back there.

So on the front end, as McNealy and Ellison have been saying for a decade, computers require less and less individual computing power, and backend servers need more and more. This is the problem for Windows because the growing requirements of the OS to do all the cool things that users like is outstripping the pace at which the needs of the users are growing. Translation: Vista does too much unnecessary stuff (however cool and flashy it might be.)

Apple does this too, but their hardware requirements are automatically met by virtue of them selling the hardware themselves. Linux, OTOH, is both a low-end client and a high-end server. It fills the roles needed by users without bringing with it a hefty cost per unit.

The upshot is that the PC as a computing platform is ailing. It will always have its place, and it will hang on for quite a while longer. However, the general trend towards less necessary functionality on the client end and more stability and power on the server side means that alternative systems now have a lower hurdle to gain a foothold in the upcoming paradigm shift.

We have already seen a huge shift away from laptops as the mobile computer towards dedicated devices like the Blackberry and smartphone. As we progress, many of the roles that the PC plays now will move closer to the user so that the usage scenario no longer is sitting in front of a glowing monitor but rather sitting back and doing the same job faster and more easily than currently performed. I, for one, welcome our new embedded overlords.

And the IMF says we're in recession ...

[charlie]

Of course Windows is going to decline.

The International Monetary Fund just announced that the sub-prime crisis has tipped the USA into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. During recessions, the first thing to get cut back on is unnecessary infrastructure replacement -- and PCs have been marketed on the basis of planned obsolescence for around a decade now. So the PC replacement cycle will be hit, hard.

Vista is a resource hog, Ubuntu is just about coming up to mass market usability, and a lot of places are going to stop replacing their PCs annually or bi-annually in the next couple of years. Unless Windows 7 is as comparatively lightweight as XP, it's going to crash in the "upgrade your OS" market -- only new PCs will ship with it. So Microsoft will have two poor sellers in a row -- which is enough, in the mind of the fickle public, to establish a trend, and with Apple chowing down on 25% of the high-end laptop market already, they're in danger of being squeezed between a high-end competitor and a low-end one.

But.

Windows is so big, with such a huge established base, that its decline will resemble that of the old IBM mainframe environment -- which is still doing fine, decades after the death of the mainframe was predicted. This ain't going to happen overnight.

Why I'm still with Windows

[elrous0]

I would personally love nothing better than to be able to cut the strings and ditch Windows myself. It's expensive and the target-of-choice for virtually every piece of malware, spyware, and virus. But every time I try, I always come back. Why?

Because Apple is even more expensive and just as proprietary as Windows, won't let me build my own system, and is poorly supported by software developers. If Apple dominated the market, there is every reason to believe they would be just as heavy-handed as MS, if not much worse.

Because doing anything in Linux ends up with me banging my head against my computer screen. Even Ubuntu, the most user-friendly distro so far, is an endless series of frustrations. "Why can't I just download a piece of software and double-click on it to install?!?!" "What is the difference between KDE and Gnome and why should it matter?!?!" "Why do I have to go to the command line interface to do even basic stuff?" Hell, until the latest release, Ubuntu wouldn't even let me attach a projector without a complicated edit to the Xorg config file. ARGHHHHH!!!

Windows may die one day, but it's going to take a *lot* more work before anyone else is going to slay that dragon.

Gartner is the Jeane Dixon of Computers

[pcguru19]

There are folks that take the word of Gartner like it is manna from heaven and it continues to amaze me. They've managed to position themselves a trusted source by putting products in a 2x2 square after they interview people using the software despite the fact that most of the time they end up being wrong. Like any good psychic, they only refer to their successes at predicting the future and hope people will forget when they missed the mark.

Re:Hacking the setup

[spisska]

1) The kids don't know Ubuntu/Gnome like they do Windows. Once they figure it out, they'll continue trashing them and installing games.

The point is they can't trash Linux since they only have write access to /home/user. Neither can they install games except to /home/user. It's trivial to simply reset /home/user to a default state with every login. Like most changes on Linux, this does not require a reboot.

2) The morons should properly secure the computers in the first place. If user rights were properly limited in the first place, they wouldn't have had any issues with the Windows machines. And if they don't limit them properly on the Linux ones, they'll have the same problem.

Rights are properly configured on Linux by default. Your hypothetical kids in the library won't be able to touch anything system related, or anything not owned by the user. There is no configuration required to enforce this.

That is not how it works in Windows. Yes, you can enforce user levels in XP but some apps will not work, and it is pretty easy to bypass anyway. Maybe Vista is better, but I certainly don't expect to see Vista on a public terminal anytime soon.

Here's what you guys need to do...

[Bones3D_mac]

All of you open source developers hoping for the day that Linux/BSD/etc is taken seriously as a consumer platform (similar to what Windows and the Mac OS have enjoyed for over a decade) need to start banding together now to discuss how to make something as complicated as Linux truly accessible to any user without sacrificing the benefits Linux offers. Until commercial entities like Adobe see that there is a viable audience to market their products to in Linux/BSD/etc, these OSes are going to live out most of their lives as little more than behind-the-scenes grunt-work software or as a niche item on a hobbyist's / enthusiast's computer in some basement.

Somehow, there needs to be some form of interface consistency across the board that is logical, useful and attractive to even the least intelligent of users.

Take the 3D application "Blender" for example. Most of us know that Blender itself is fairly powerful when used correctly by the right person. Yet despite the fact that Blender is both power and free, your typical consumer level user is far more likely to gravitate toward products like Carrara Studio, based almost entirely on it's presentation and interface design. People don't like it when their software intimidates them and they are more than willing to pay good money to avoid it whenever possible.

You also have to consider that time is a major factor as well. While anyone could "learn" to use Blender effectively and efficiently, the time invested in overcoming the learning curve is too much for many of us. If you were to compare Blender's interface directly against Carrara Studio's interface. Most users would again gravitate toward Carrara since they perceive a much lower investment of time involved in trying to "get it". The reality though, is that the core learning curve on either of these apps for most functions is probably identical.

Overall though, it's likely going to be a lot more difficult than it sounds to put a new face on Linux to make it pretty, useful and non-threatening to the average user. Hell, Apple's been trying for nearly 10 years with Mac OS X, and they've only just barely got it right. (Despite the numerous flaws...) It can be done, but it'll take a lot of effort to really pull it off.

Why I'm still with Linux

[R_Dorothy]

"Why can't I just download a piece of software and double-click on it to install?!?!" "What is the difference between KDE and Gnome and why should it matter?!?!" "Why do I have to go to the command line interface to do even basic stuff?"

As a Linux user I have the opposite frustrations when I come to use Windows. "Why do I have to search the web to find a piece of software to download? Why can't I just go to 'Add/Remove Programs', type in the name (or a keyword) and click install?", "Why can't I chose a different desktop environment when I log in?", "Why can't I use the command line to do even basic stuff?"

Different strokes for different folks.