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Microsoft Sees Linux As Bigger Competitor Than Apple
Facetious writes "It seems Microsoft doesn't believe the data from Net Applications regarding Linux any more than Slashdot readers do. In a recent presentation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a slide showing, from Microsoft's internal analysis, that Linux client use is clearly ahead of Apple's."
Apple is dieing..
Makes sense... a PC user can switch to Linux by downloading a LiveCD (or whatever) and installing or just running from the disk. A PC user has to buy new hardware to switch to Apple.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I think thats sort of a "duh" statement when you consider server usage as well as desktop usage.
Mac servers can't be much of the server market.
Could Microsoft be accounting for embedded distributions of Windows CE versus embedded Linux compiled into his numbers? I think that might give it an edge over Apple's. Ballmer's presentation is just citing "use." Which could be pretty accurate while Net Applications analysis is also accurate for desktop/notebook/server situations. Don't see a lot of explanation past the charts on either of these links.
My work here is dung.
Of course they're worried! If Linux (and the rest of the open source projects) become even slightly common, Microsoft have lost. They can't buy Linux, they can't do deals with it. They don't seem to be able to out perform it either. Short of zapping every magnetic and (some how) optical media on the planet, Microsoft cannot kill an open source project of a large magnitude; there'll always be community members willing to take over where one was "bought" by Microsoft.
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
Of course not. Apple has a different model (Linux is GPL and Apple is closed source). Apple is still proprietary and paid-for while Linux can be shared freely. Just because they have similar origins from a software standpoint doesn't mean anything when you consider their market viability. They're completely different beasts in that respect.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Actually, OSX is certified Unix.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
OSX can only realistically come from one over priced manufactuer where as Linux is free and can be installed on any machine.
The economy is in the dumps. Would you be worried about the over priced guy with no net book or the guy that's infiltrating the netbook space quite well when that's a fast growing sector?
The day the manage to lock out piracy, a lot of that group will switch to Linux, not pay full prize full Windows licenses.
I can understand why they see Linux as a bigger threat. Linux is something completely different than Windows, MacOS is "just" another proprietary closed source company controlled desktop OS. These days, more and more people see the advantages of free sofware, and Microsoft will never be able to catch up with Linux on that one.
An operating system's installed base is not the same as the market share.
Market share is measurable because it's based on percentage of sales over a given period of time.
Installed base is difficult or impossible to measure, because it's the percentage share an operating system has over the entire population of computers. This means the market share of Macs and Linux machines is underestimated. Macs, because they last on average 2 years longer than Windows PC's. Linux, well, because hardly anybody pays for Linux since they can legally get it for free.
So, essentially, market share figures are highly inaccurate for estimated the installed base of any given operating system.
This space left intentionally blank.
Apple sells hardware and software. You may have heard of Final Cut Pro, or Aperture, just to state a few high end products of theirs.
Microsoft sells software and hardware. You may have heard of the Xbox360 or the Zune.
The generalization that Apple sells computers and Microsoft sells software is a gross one, to say the least.
There are Apple products that compete directly with Microsoft ones. Both Apple and Microsoft make keyboards and mice. I regard Microsoft keyboards and mice as the nicest products they sell.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
SQL Server comes as a distant third, BTW.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Linux is a more fundamental threat than Apple. Apple, fundamentally, is another commercial vendor - one that can be dealt with, cajoled, threatened, and God forbid, even bought. Plus, Apple's focus is on hardware.
Linux cannot be dealt with in that fashion. The business model is different. Microsoft can pull a Novell or a Xandros deal, but that either 1) ends up helping those distros, or, more worryingly, 2) does nothing to fight the multiheaded hydra that Linux is. Add the fact that it cannot be bought or threatened with any serious lawsuits, its a major headache for Microsoft. All Microsoft can do, is to slow down its rate of adoption, through a combination of tactics, and that is what they have been doing for the past 10 years. This is also good for Linux, as it is giving the developers breathing time and space to improve the quality. In looks department, they are already comfortably ahead of anything Vista or Leopard throw up. The only missing pieces of the puzzle are UI workflow design (where Apple has a superior product) and apps (where Microsoft is ahead). The latter is changing, while the former, is IMO languishing a bit for Gnome, though KDE4 has made some notable improvements.
Microsoft's overall domination of the PC is currently not under threat, but Linux's success is forcing it to slash profit margins and do other things that it would rather not have do. The reason is that unlike Apple, Microsoft's userbase is full of people who want quality for a good price and don't want to be fooled into paying for pricy stuff they really do not need.
It is not the year of linux on the desktop yet. But its coming, and that is giving people in Redmond sleepless nights.
Do you know whether it's POSIX-compliant?
Yes.
Is it proper to refer to it as a "Unix" or is it a "Unix clone" or "Unix-like system" like Linux?
OS X is a certified UNIX.
I'd also be interested in anything explaining why they went with a Mach microkernel and whether that has any non-negligible impact on performance (i.e. message-passing overhead, switching from kernel to userspace, etc). I'd appreciate anything you are able to explain since I'm honestly rather ignorant about OSX.
The message passing overhead is fairly high compared to other systems like Linux or other BSDs. Unlike monolithic kernels, the Mach based one that Darwin (The UNIX part of OS X) uses actually has to do a full context switch when one makes a system call. That can be slow, especially with TLB flushes and such.
Wikipedia and Apple have some pretty good docs on how it works.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
What if they offered Linus Torvalds a billion dollars for the trademark and the copyright to his code?
And assuming Linus accepted, of course...
Then we'd fork the latest version of the kernel (and git, and * FROM code WHERE copyright_holder = "Linus") and hack on.
To deal with the trademark, we'd have to rename the kernel. We could always use Linus' original name, Freax, or name it after some other maintainer... Mortonix? Coxix?
And then there'd be happy hacking all around.
To this discussion that has absolutely no relevance: linux is dangerous because attacking a single vendor is useless and because no single vendor needs to become 'huge' for linux to grow... and this is all a result of being free software
OK so Apple's share of the worldwide computer shipments is 7-10 million units.
Funny thing is, there are other ships floating out there in them competitive waters Mr. Ballmer.
Witness: iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and notably WebKit
I see a much lower percentage share of IE on sites I manage and barely a blip of traffic from Chrome with Firefox and then Safari taking places 2 & 3.
We don't need to discuss how iPod/iPhone has affected the landscape.
I'm more interested in how WebKit plays in the equation.
Webkit is more than just plain old eyeballs, it's increasingly driving standards with support for CSS,/HTML specs, and, offline db support that make content development less dependent on proprietary tools like ActiveX plug-ins or Flash and more dependent on a web browser (typically not one from MSFT).
He's a cocky bastard and he just got lucky. Wonder if he'd do as well as Paul Allen outside of the MSFT play pen?
Not to mention that fleet sales are what propped up Detroit for a long time ... now what's happening to them? I mention this because the ultra low cost and low cost devices are equivalent to fleet sales.
(to microsoft)
Listen, and understand. That linux is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
A lot of the more traditional real UNIXes were crap too, from what I've read. Being certified as Unix probably isn't all that useful.
I revently took a course in Microsoft AD after having been a linux guy since RH 5. I couldnt in my wildest dreams think that Microsofts server products are such pile of manure that they are. The more i learn about Windows the more surprised i get that people stand for all the shortcomings, the bad usability, the lack of customer centric solutions and the costs.
In my mind there are just some small things that needs to be pieced in for Linux to be a really dangerous threat to Windows. Most of the things already exists for a Linux solution to completely replace a Microsoft centric network.
I have run Linux Terminal Servers, Linux Fileservers, Linux webservers, Novell, Windows various solutions and Novell Linux solutions. The only thing really needed is an easier and faster way of setting a Linux solution up. Novell and Windows is very hard and tedious to manage once setup but its really easy to get a minimal system up and running. Linux on the other hand is very hard to setup but very easy to manage on a daily basis.
If someone packages a solution where you can get a file, print, ldap and policy handling up and running without much fuss i think Linux would explode. Windows integration is from my view overrated, its much more important of making it easier to get up to speed with a pure linux network. Right now to much work is put into following Microsofts whims around with AD and whatnot instead of building a better solution on linux. A copy can only be so good as its original.
HTTP/1.1 400
Do you know whether it's POSIX-compliant
POSIX is a subset of the Single UNIX Specification. Any system that is UNIX(tm) is also POSIX, but not every POSIX system is UNIX.
I'd also be interested in anything explaining why they went with a Mach microkernel and whether that has any non-negligible impact on performance
Because, in 1988, when they designed the system, Mach was the state of the art. NeXT used it and so did OSF/1 and a few other systems. Everything since then has been incremental improvements. There is almost no message-passing overhead in OS X because Mach is just used as a hardware abstraction layer, and most of the stuff runs in the BSD single server.
If you want to know more about how OS X works at a system level, Amit Singh has written an excellent book about it.
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When I was a kid, I had an Apple IIgs and a DOS box. The Apple was a nice machine, but the DOS box felt a lot more like a computer. At the time, I had a full instruction manual for DOS. That manual included descriptions of all the COM and EXE files on the system, their switches and examples of how to use them. Apple lacks that raw computing experience. It is there in the terminal window, but you don't need to go there to use the OS. Linux on the other hand still has that natural and exposed underbelly that geek kids can get into. Some kids are curious and those kids like figuring out how things work. Those kids don't need mommy and daddy to shell out $1000 for a computer that runs OSX because they can get Linux for free and run it on a 486. Those kids are a lot more likely to go a school that will move toward open source as a cost saving measure, as opposed to a school that will come up with a lot of money to pay the Apple tax.
If I were Microsoft and I was focused on the next generation of geeks, I'd be scared shitless of Linux.
Actually there is far more money in clients than in servers. The profit margins on server software (and hardware) tend to be higher per sale, but in terms of both gross revenue and total profit clients wins hands down.
Heck, that's why Microsoft is the 800 pound gorilla of software. Windows makes truly ridiculous amounts of money, and the fact that Microsoft controls the end user experience at a very low level gives Microsoft a great deal of leverage.
Microsoft has a very profitable server software division, but its profits are barely a third of Microsoft's Client division, and MS Office (another piece of client software) generates nearly as much profit as Windows.
The client rules, plain and simple.
Ok, in a nutshell:
OS X uses Mach's CPU scheduling and memory management. The rest of the code in the kernel (the process model, the network stack, etc) is a combination of *BSD code, code developed in-house (like the IOKIt), and vendor-supplied code (like the video drivers from NVIDIA and ATI). Below the GUI, there's code from many, many projects, such as the shells, Python, Ruby, sendmail, and so on. The 3D graphics library is OpenGL, with in-house additions. The 2D graphics library is all Apple-developed code, except for some licensed implementations of pieces like the JPEG2000 decoder.
If you have the developer tools installed, have a look at /Developer/Documentation/Acknowledgements.rtf for a full list of the organizations from whom Apple has licensed code that they include in OS X.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Perhaps after the success of the switch adds Apple inched ahead of Linux on the desk top. But if you look over the last 15 years, I believe that there has been more Linux on the desktop than Apple OS's.
It hasn't been in anyone's interest to say that. I think that is even true of the Linux companies. For a long time they wanted to be under the radar under dogs. Perhaps because they didn't want a fight to the death with Microsoft.
This is an excellent observation and it lies at the heart of Linux's success. Anyone who fails to grasp this point is not even in the right ballgame.
In terms of economics, the most important difference between free and proprietary platforms is that free platforms do not require a large userbase in order to thrive. The number of skilled developers willing to work on Linux for free would remain very high even if Linux's userbase were to drastically shrink. (This is incidentally the main reason why Microsoft cannot win against Linux, at least not by any means available in the marketplace.)
By contrast, a proprietary platform requires a large userbase in order to even survive, since the only way for a proprietary platform to get developers is to pay them a salary, and salaries require money, which requires users. There are no volunteer developers who are even able, let alone willing, to contribute code to Microsoft Windows for free, because of the locked-in nature of the platform.
That's why proprietary vendors routinely inflate their usage numbers. Larger numbers are necessary in order to convince new users that the platform is worthy of adoption. If a proprietary platform does not have a lot of users, then it has no future, and rational users would not risk selecting that platform. That's why OS/2 died, and that's why Solaris (despite being made free recently) is about to die.
We thus have a situation where every vendor, other than the Linux vendors, has a huge economic incentive to inflate the reported size of their userbase. I don't necessarily mean illegal activity here; there are well known legal methods by which usage numbers can be inflated. For example, Microsoft counts every Vista OEM license as a Vista sale even if the user exercises downgrade rights to XP, and so on. In any case, it doesn't surprise me at all that the actual market share of Linux is far higher than what is being reported.
Two reasons: Apple is smaller because it requires specialist hardware that is fairly expensive. NOTE this does NOT mean I am claiming Apples are overpriced, just that you can't turn an obsolete PC into a perfectly fine linux server or desktop.
Second reason is that Apple is a straight competitor. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer ain't enemies, they believe the same thing: Software should be paid for and the end user does NOT get to own the piece of software let alone use it in any way that they want to.
Linux on the other hand says "Here is all this great software, use it, don't pay for it and do with it what you want how you want to for as long as you want to." EEK!
Or to keep it simple, an Apple buyer might be persuaded to buy MS office for the Mac. A linux user is a far thougher sell and might even use something like OpenOffice or even worse Abiword (remember that OpenOffice is as complex as MSOffice but Abiword, that is so scary because it says "not only am I not going to pay for MSOffice but I don't even need all that it offers").
Apple is a competitor, Linux is an assault on the very principles that MS thinks should govern software.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You're wrong, Apple is in the business to sell hardware. Apple's software exists to sell hardware. Final Cut Pro? That is sold to get studios to replace their high-end Avid editing stations with Macs. It all goes back to their hardware. Their latest release of Logic Pro even removed the dongle copy protection requirement, which tells you how little they care about software piracy as long as you're using Macs. iWork '09 requires little more than a serial number which you can enter into the downloadable trial version to unlock the full program.
If Apple was a hardware AND software company, their software would be available for Windows. iTunes doesn't count because it's free and exists to sell iPods. Are you sensing a theme yet?