Five Ways Microsoft Could Change After Gates

Might Squirrel noted a perfectly mediocre story to chat about on a boring post-holiday weekend Monday. This one is a look at 5 ways Microsoft could change after Gates. From accepting Open Source to serious interoperability work, there are definitely 5 things on that list there. Nothing about my solid gold rocket car.

Comments

Re:Don't expect any radical shift

[bmajik]

The superior technology of Linux and MacOSX will keep them alive long after Windows' architecture crumbles, and Vista is the first huge sign that's happening.

I think the claim of superior technology is a bit dubious. What do you base that on?

I think it is telling that Linux, since I first started using it with _kernel .98_ has been trying to acheive feature parity with windows for basic home user and desktop tasks. Every year it is announced that linux has "finally done it" yet every year there continues to be more work to do and more projects undertaken. Either linux and the various desktop systems that run atop of it aren't quite there, or windows continues to make progress.

I also think it is unreasonable to discount a lot of the technology that goes into the windows stack.

OSX is on much less sure footing than linux, maturity and technology wise. Apple has a narrow use-case defined and it excels in serving that customer segment. Compare using a Mac with a windows box with no mouse plugged in. It's actually nearly impossible to operate a mac with no mouse. Certain dialogs (like shutting the machine down) are not KB accessible. When you plug an unrecognized keyboard into a mac you have to use a mouse to configure they keyboard (iirc).

Compare the availability of screen readers and other assistive technology devives between Mac and Windows. Or, talk to the accessibility folks directly: http://www.afb.org/afbpress/pub.asp?DocID=aw060505

Linux has all kinds of rough spots, which, if a user decides to try fixing it, leads them into a rats nest of competing technologies (i.e. X11 font families and font renderers) and disparate configuration surfaces. There's a lot of technology there, but it's not clear that it is especially novel, superior, etc.

If I had to make a poor generalization, I'd say that Apple is specialized enough that it does a few things excellently, Linux is generalized (and undirected enough) that it does nothing especially well but offers tremendous flexibility to power users, and Windows is kind of this broad sweet spot of functionality and applicability for a wide range of tasks for a wide range of users. Putting a usable facade over all of the baked-in technology is something windows does quite well and linux does less well.

I think for certain use cases, Linux and Apple are "good enough", and for some cases, Linux and Apple are probably demonstrably better. Underlying these advantages, however, I don't think you'll see some _fundamental_ technology advantage.

I think you'd be hard pressed to name some new technology in an Apple or Linux system that Windows doesn't have an analog of (with the windows function often being considerably more complex in implementation to support its edge-case features.. usually around central management or assistive technology support, yet still easier to configure and use on a daily basis)

I guess my summary is that I don't think someone can claim a technology advantage over windows by either OSX or Linux as a matter of settled fact. For starters, it's not even clear what that means.

Re:Don't expect any radical shift

[bmajik]

Linux runs on more platforms

[Needs Citation]

with more features

[Needs Citation]

and higher performance

[Needs Citation]

CPU architectures Windows has never even booted on native

[Needs Citation]

This flexibility and power keeps Linux dominating markets Windows and MacOSX can't even enter.

It's not clear to me how with 100% of Windows and Apple desktops now running some variant of the x86 architecture that this is a critical or relevant point, or that it addresses my original post in anyway whatsoever. Even if it were factual.. which it isn't. There are a fair number of Microsoft offerings up and down the stack, from componentized windows down to Windows CE.

I think the folks at NetBSD and Wind River would like to talk to you about your apparently expert knowledge of embedded systems performance and operating system portability.

fwiw, Windows NT booted and ran on the Alpha, MIPS, and I beleive SPARC processor families before Linux did :)