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Windows 8 Is Ready
New submitter drinkydoh writes "In an announcement today, Microsoft has finally said that Windows 8 is now complete. Microsoft has begun delivering RTM versions to manufacturers and the general availability of the tablets and computers using Windows 8 will be on October 26th. 'Microsoft's final milestone concludes almost two years of development for its new Metro-inspired Windows 8 software and marks the beginning of the release phase. Microsoft says MSDN and TechNet customers will be able to download it from August 15th. Windows Store will go live on August 15th. Developers will be able to access the final tools and submission process for Metro style apps at the Windows Dev Center later this month.'"
According to The Ed Bott Report on ZDNet, Microsoft is turning over an entirely new leaf in its history by taking cues from Apple and developing its own hardware/software "ecosystem" (I hate that term) and alienating its OEMs which have been just as slow and lackluster as Microsoft has been over the last few years.
If we accept Bott's analysis as at least somewhat valid, Microsoft may be on the road to recovery--at least if they develop and release products that people desire.
They're already copying Apple and Google's consistent theme (copying "Metro" UI elements to their rebranded Hotmail, outlook.com) and they're developing software and hardware together. Perhaps he's right and this will bode well for Microsoft in the future.
However, there is the part of me that says that those people who want that sort of thing had already jumped ship to Apple's own "ecosystem" and everyone else was just fine staying with Microsoft because of whatever reason (cost, support, application support, familiarity, etc).
Personally I think the Metro UI (and the other unified design deals) is ridiculous and meaningless for me to get my work done and it's not going to make me move away from other products I've been using more recently. However, perhaps it will work and their demise as stated by you may be averted for another few years.
I don't think they're killing it off, but it the "new VB". MS has rediscovered native code, so WinRT is entirely unmanaged, the .NET libs have been reworked to simply pass-through to the WinRT functionality and some minor parts removed.
All native and cloud development is moving towards C++ again, so .NET is left as a desktop development environment. Given the performance fixes are not making it back into the desktop versions of the old libs and I doubt any additional features will be ported there (except security), and that the concept is that your Metro code for the PC can also run on a table or a phone, and the native push for those environments, I think you can see how .NET development is now a 'you can, but...' partner, not the primary focus for development.
Too bad the only games that will follow onto the Linux steam platform are games you've already beaten 5 or 6 years ago on the PC.
Best of luck getting Valve to convince other dev studios to port games to Linux at a huge expense, when the audience simply isn't there. Linux on the desktop is dead. It's linux on the "device" that has a chance. I know why Valve is pushing towards Linux because the Windows 8 App store will eat their lunch, but realistically nothing is going to change. Windows 8 has gotten more idiot proof than usual, and that's what draws in people that don't already somehow have a PC.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
It is downvoted because his post is almost certainly a plant by the /. management to wind us up and get us going. First post for a longish piece of writing, with good grammar and spelling, by someone with only three posts ever to his account? I don't believe it.
You use a subscriber account to read the articles early, but use a different account to post shill. Just keep mashing F5 on the main page with your text ready in notepad. That way you avoid the karma hit and recognition as a shill poster. Just make a new one when it outlives its usefulness.
I'm not sure how it can be fixed off the top of my head. Maybe prevent new accounts from getting top post until they've made X other posts?
First, Microsoft usually doesn't view much of anything as a total failure. Like many, they view their mistakes as market research. When they do something really wrong, they learn from it.
Bob may have been a failure, but they learned a lot from it, and it lead to other products like the (also abhorred but largely successful) MS Agent technology (aka clippy, fido, etc..)
Neither ME or Vista were failures per se. ME was never intended to be anything other than a stopgap. MS had intended to transition Windows 9x users to Windows 2000, but when that got pushed back to XP, MS had to come up with a stopgap for OEM's to provide new hardware support. It was held together with chewing gum and twine, to try and extend the life for just a few months more...
Vista, likewise, was not a failure either, in that it was never intended to be a success. It was a "hatchet man", that was put out in order to get ISV's and OEM's to follow the new security rules. It was also intended to be really annoying so that vendors would fix their software to be UAC friendly. MS knew Windows 7 would come along and replace it, and by then the issues would be solved both in vendors and software.
DOS 4 was just a huge steaming pile, though.
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Although I agree that W8 is a clusterfuck of epic proportions, a lot of what you say just doesn't hold water.
That is what has changed, before they were an unstoppable monopoly and now?
They're still an unstoppable monopoly; try buying a PC with a different OS.
I'm not convinced customers are going to be all that happy with what is about to be rammed down their thoat.
Their customers are OEMs and enterprises, not you or me. I'm not their customer, Acer is; I'm Acer's customer. Enterprise customers are likely to skip 8 like they did Vista, we'll see whether or not OEMs start shipping Linux desktops (I, for one, would be happy if they did).
All at a time when their monopoly is threatened like never before.
Their monopoly is in desktop operating systems and office software, where is the threat?
The desktop PC itself is being questioned for most users
For every home computer, there are ten in the workplace, the tablet may replace PCs in most homes, but I wouldn't bet too much money on it.
Office is threatened by Cloud apps
Pure marketing hype. "The cloud" is unlikely to gain traction among enterprise users, even very many home users.
"The post Microsoft future looks like" Mark Twain, who said "reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". Mocrosoft isn't even in the doctor's office, let alone the grave. And if Microsoft went away, OEMs would just use Linux or Android or BSD. Computers aren't going away any time soon.
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