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Windows: Not Doomed Yet
Nerval's Lobster writes "Earlier this week, ZDNet columnist Steven Vaughan-Nichols wrote an article, 'Windows: It's over,' that sparked a lot of passionate online debate. His thesis was simple: Microsoft's dominance of the computing market is coming to an end, accelerated by the incipient failure of Windows 8. Make no mistake about it: there's no way to fudge the numbers in a way that suggests Windows 8 is proving a blockbuster. But maybe it's not doomsday for Windows or Microsoft. After all, the company still has a lot of really smart developers and engineers, a whole ton of cash, and the ability to let its projects play out over years. So here's the question, Slashdotters: Is Windows really doomed? And, if not, what can be done to turn things around? (No originality points awarded for a 'Fire Steve Ballmer' response.)"
Of course Microsoft isn't doomed, and neither is Windows. In the enterprise world, Exchange-Office will still dominate for many years to come.
The problem is on the consumer end, where Windows is heading quickly to irrelevance.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Fire Steve Ballmer
the only reason they became accepted into the enterprise is because that is what consumers were familiar with, But now that model is going to rot from the ground up, at least three other major players have good inroads to eat Microsoft's lunch. Windows 8 marks the beginning of the fall of Microsoft.
The only thing that could doom Microsoft (not Windows) is the lack of necessity for a new operating system. Microsoft makes money selling Windows, so they NEED to release new versions every few years. The need for a new operating system might not be a pressing issue for the end user and this will slow down the demand for new versions of Windows, not Windows itself.
that'll take care of everything.
Just buy heavier chairs.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The regular desktop PC, and even notebooks, are becoming more and more irrelevant. Yes, there is still a long way to go, but we are seeing more and more of a convergence between platforms, what with cell phones, tablets and whatnot becoming more prevalent and main business tools.
Heck, I'm an IT geek, and I rarely carry my notebook around anyway. I do most of my work from my cell phone (hardware qwerty keyboard).
I keep seeing more and more people ditching their notebooks for tablets.
And I sincerely don't think Windows can survive outside the PC market.
morcego
No big move required, but they need to do a few things .exe
- Allow the return of the Start Button for those who prefer it.
- Allow start to desktop
- In multi monitor setup, allow one sreen to be locked to Start Screen and/or metro applications
- Make it easy for developper to target Metro and Desktop within the same
- Make apps that with great value in metro, but they need to still show a status icon when in desktop
- ex: if in desktop mode, the skype app need to show the alert if there is an unread message, particulary when we get back from a game
From what I see in friends and family, the consumer section of Windows is really doomed. I know the next time I buy a computing device for say my parents, it won't be a Windows PC. Maybe a tablet, maybe a Chromebook, but the average consumer...moms, dads, students, kids, etc. has probably had enough of Windows. Microsoft has effectively ceded the consumer market. They had a chance with Surface, but blew it on bad (expensive) pricing. Nokia and windows for the phone is their last, slim chance to reignite the consumer, but prospects are dim.
On the corporate side...the horizon for Windows is much longer. All it takes are one or two key windows apps and the entire company is locked into the platform. Even if those apps are only used by only some of the employees, the IT staff are loathe to run a mixed desktop environment. So it would take a big shift, a real progressive initiative to move from Windows, at least at my Fortune 50 company. And Fortune 50 companies are not generally known to do that sort of thing...
It would be nice if they would just ask us professionals what we need, and then proceed to deliver that, instead of doing all this trend-surfing.
Who cares if people say Mac did feature X/Y first, or if it looks like a phone, or has / doesn't have some sort of fancy transparent chrome? Make it modern-looking but don't let that be the major selling point. I have to get work done on it.
All I care about is that I can sit down and work efficiently, and that my computer doesn't interrupt me with idiocy. I don't care if I have to learn how to use something new - I'll do that - but efficiency means that I want it to stay out of my way, present the current state of operations clearly to me (something both Windows 8 and MacOS/X fail at), and not demand that I use it like a phone! I already have a phone, I'll use that if I want to use a device like that, but I want to use a desktop computer more productively.
I know, I know... I'm using a Web browser and posting on Slashdot. Meanwhile I have a VS2012 situation happening on another screen and it is not pleasant.
A:Re-release Win XP, and call it Windows 9.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Keep Ballmer.
Whatever.
Yeah, Windows is dying. Just like this is the year that Linux takes over on the desktop. Or is this the year that Apple takes over? Or CP/M makes it comeback? OS/2? I forget, I've heard them all so often.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Anyone who thinks the PC is in any sense dying hasn't worked in an office that does business with other companies. There is a *huge* amount of work that consists of physically typing stuff into databases (purchase orders anyone?) and retrieving stuff from databases, and all of this work is done with a keyboard and mouse. Spreadsheets. Forms. Stuff still gets printed out and filed! Nobody wants a tablet to do this. I think there might be room for tablets out in the warehouse, but even those are likely to be Windows based. Mac? Sorry, businesses look at the price difference and can't stomach paying nearly twice as much for the hardware. I'm certain that home PC sales are diving, and that's probably a good thing, but in our office we're expanding the number of PCs because we want access to information everywhere, and more data entry everywhere, and they're cheap! PCs are the work-horse of enterprise data. So what if we're buying them with Windows 7 Pro on them instead of Windows 8? MS still makes money.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Gotta remember when Carly came to HP. It didn't doom HP. What it did do, was turn HP into a typical fortune-500 company: that is, the compost heap of companies failed.
HP is still around, and will still continue to take over failed companies, and compost them, losing value the whole way. Moreover, they will still be the "standard" for government agencies and colleges, regardless of value.
And yes, they will continue to have bright people, and waste their prime years in irrelevance.
Microsoft will be the same. Shoot, I expect Google to become that, too. After a certain size, good management is highly improbable; bad management is highly probable.
But that doesn't mean they won't have occasional blockbusters again, and won't be a "force to be reckoned with". They are, and will be. They'll just be of marginal value to anyone who deals with them.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Innovation does not come from a company it comes from competition!
The issue here is that Microsoft has killed the competition, No longer does innovation flow through competition.
Back before windows 95 we had Windows 3.1 and Dos. Dos was produced by Microsoft (MSDOS), IBM (IBM DOS), and Digital Research (DrDOS).
As one would come up with an innovative feature and gain some market share, the others would follow and add a new feature of their own. Each to try to regain the lost share and expand their market. When Microsoft combined Windows and DOS to create Windows 95 they killed the other dos manufactures. Thus creating there market dominance. From that point on they continued to flounder with few major innovations and more and more redesigned of the GUI or adding features that no one wanted or used.
The money they have along with the "really smart developers and engineers" do not matter, they have no real competition. Linux is the closest thing they have had to competition in years and it has never really grabbed enough market share on the desk top to spur the innovation and product life cycles that Microsoft would need to keep going. Dont get me wrong, Linux is stellar and I run it everywhere I can but without the pressure there is no market force to force the innovation.
On the server side, you can see Linux forcing innovation with Microsoft's announcement that admins should learn command line as Windows server GUI will be going away, as well as many of the server advancements that Linux has and Microsoft is implementing.
Do I think Microsoft desktops will survive, no. I see a slow erosion to obscurity. What replaces them may be Linux, Mac, or something completely new designed to use the new technologies that are emerging. I do however see Microsoft continuing for many years, struggling with the desktop and pushing more and more to servers and the cloud.
Is there a difference?
But maybe it's not doomsday for Windows or Microsoft.
Of course it isn't! They always retain the option of releasing a Linux distro. :)
So here's the question, Slashdotters: Is Windows really doomed? And, if not, what can be done to turn things around? (No originality points awarded for a 'Fire Steve Ballmer' response.)"
Just because "fire Steve Ballmer" isn't a particularly original insight doesn't mean it is not correct. He's been a lousy CEO, and the manner in which he has jeopardized the company's vital enterprise business in a fit of Apple envy proves that he's the wrong man for the job.
A large number of home users with modest IT needs (web surfing, social networking, simple games) have already switched to iOS and Android for most of their computing needs. That horse has left the barn; that ship has sailed. These users are not coming back to Windows. And the truth is that Microsoft can survive without them. What Microsoft cannot survive is the loss of business users. This is where the bulk of their revenue comes from, and it's also the least threatened area of their business. Legacy lock-in, the fact that most people are already trained on Windows/Office, and the interdependence between various MS enterprise products (Windows, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, MS SQL Server, etc.) means that businesses will find it difficult and expensive to leave the Windows platform. And most of them don't really want to, since it serves their needs where a smartphone/tablet OS would not. This is why Windows 8 was such a strategic blunder. Microsoft alienated the people whose support it needs in a failed attempt to reclaim low-margin, low-volume customers who already left.
Microsoft needs to accept that it's a mature company now and that it isn't going to post stunningly high profits or make major innovations on the OS front. It should focus on incremental improvements to the Windows platform. If they bring back the Start menu and the option to boot directly to the Desktop in Win8.1 as has been rumored, it will help mitigate the damage.
Companies in general ought to focus on their core competencies, and under Steve Ballmer, this basic rule of business has been forgotten at Microsoft.
Windows might be in trouble, but who is going to replace them? Android and iOS are pretty limited platforms and not exactly fun to program. OS X is getting very long in the tooth, has very limited hardware offerings, and Objective-C is less pleasant to develop for than C#. And just as Gnome/X11 looked like it was going to provide a fairly stable desktop platform, the Gnome, Wayland, and Ubuntu developers have screwed things up big time again. Much as I loathe Windows 8, I think it's still going to win by default on the desktop.
If it's so fucking wonderful, why can't they sell Surface and Surface RT devices? They're getting their asses kicked by iOS and Android devices. Hell, I'd say they're not even a meaningful competitor in the market place.
Clearly iPads and Android tablets (especially critters like the Nexus 7) do everything users want, because they're buying them in fucking droves.
Hell, I bet Kobo is selling more fucking Arcs than Microsoft is tablets.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
After all, the company still has a lot of really smart developers and engineers, a whole ton of cash, and the ability to let its projects play out over years.
And really bad management, clinging to stupendously dysfunctional and wasteful project management practices.
Windows is pretty much competing with itself at this point, and Win8 isn't offering compelling reasons to upgrade. Metro is a compelling reason not to upgrade. Windows Phone is doomed to be an also-ran, no matter what MS does.
Tablets are a fad in the consumer space which will fizzle out in 2 years. Microsoft won't be able to break into this market, just like their other consumer-oriented efforts (Zune, Kin, Windows Phone... everything except XBox) failed. However E-readers will continue to sell. Tablet equals fancy electronic clipboard... if you don't havea sue for a clipboard, you have little use for a tablet. In certain vertical business markets, tablets can make sense. In the end, tablets are for consumtion, not production, and touch UIs are a step backward. The PC isn't going to die any time soon.
I suspect the OEMs are already looking for ways to hedge on Windows. They'll push back harder when their windows distribution agreements come up for renewal, because Win8 is a failure and MS is encroaching on their turf with the Surface. The big OEMs will start seeking partnerships with major Linux distros soon, preparing to launch hardware with Tux stickers in 2015 or 2016. And all of them will be begging Valve to let them pre-install Steam. Pressure from the OEMs will force AMD, nVidia, and Intel to get their Linux video drivers up to snuff.
The units will be slightly more expensive because the OEMs won't have libraries of crapware at the ready, but most people on /. will agree that's totally worth it. Even now there's little reason for the average person not to drop Windows for a real OS, and by the time all this happens, it'll be even easier.
After all, the company still has a lot of really smart developers and engineers, a whole ton of cash
...and an idiot management team directing it all.
If I've learned anything working for big companies, it's that it doesn't matter how great your grunt workers are, or how great your budget is.
If you have shitty management/leads, you will fail.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Root cause of the problem for Microsoft is that the truly committed talented players of the early 1990s, working hard to win marketshare and who had to implement just good enough software on puny little machines, have either burned out, or cashed out. Leaving behind mainly empire builders, insecure pointy haired bosses. These guys were promoted to high positions commensurate with their political abilities. Company is too big to manage, and there too many incompetent managers.
Add to it the most screwed up compensation model. People who get promoted beyond level 64 are termed partner level, according to my sources. They get paid a fraction of the revenue stream of the product lines they manage. So partners often have a fundamental conflict of interest. Sacrificing a little bit of revenue in a product line like Office may be needed to squelch the upstart competition, but some partner level managers planning early retirement would rather squeeze what they can for the next three years instead of taking the long term approach. That is why they kept sticking the windows os everywhere. It is Rahul xyz or Sergey ABC who gets a cut from windows stream who sabotaged all competition from the inside.
The Office/Exchange monopoly exists because they remain the king of the hill and all others work around the bugs, restrictions and the lack of features. But continually changing api, file formats security model, OS support etc to keep the upgrade treadmill going is going to grind to a halt soon. At some point people are going to say, if the next version of Exchange server can not be supported by Android XYZ or iOS ABC version, we are not going to upgrade. Already it is facing a severe revenue crunch due to the proliferation of Google Apps and other services. If the next version of Word does not work with Google Apps, guess what?, they are not going to upgrade.
Microsoft has fundamental problems. But it is too big to fail immediately. It will wallow, evaporate and decay into irrelevance in its own sweet time.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Business markets and consumer markets are wildly different. If they decide to continue on the consumer market, they MUST do a better job of actually paying attention to basic human psychology. It's not brain surgery. A superficial familiarity with virtually any college text on human factors would have prevented the whole interface fiasco. I was taught the exact principles that would have prevented this in the 70s. Three mile island was our favorite example. The meters that provided feedback were across the room from the controls, facing away from the controls. Kind of like the properties window being at the bottom of the screen relative to what you're clicking on.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Certainly! Capitalism is exploitation of man by man.
In Communism it is the other way around.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been thinking about the saying "A poor workman blames his tools" a lot lately.
My conclusion after a lot of thinking is that it isn't that the workman who doesn't like his tools isn't skilled, or doesn't take care of his tools Maybe his set of tools is just worn out and it's the workman's duty to acquire a new tool set. The tools change over time.
I'm a SQL Server DBA. SQL Server as a product is great. The tools, however, suck. Random crashes. Random issues. Inconsistent UI. Example 1: Mouse wheel doesn't work in a combo box. Why? Who decided that was "OK"? Lots of other piddly issues that just tick me off all day long. I hate my tools. It's probably time to try something else. This really came to roost when we put Windows Server 2012 on a box so we could do cross-subnet clustering. Love the cross-subnet clustering. The UI, however, is Metro. "Go hover over an invisible spot on the upper-right-hand corner of the UI to get to something sorta-like a start menu so you can run SQL Server Configuration Manager". Why? Why?
The user interfaces, now "improved" through the use of Visual Studio integration, are absolute crap.
I'm getting tired of being stressed on poor tools when I'm stressed on a ton of other things that actually I should be stressed on, like data integrity, performance, and efficiency. Instead I get to spend a ton of time figuring out how to start applications? Every single day I start working and I find something new that makes me go "Why do these guys think they can make good user interfaces that work consistently? Who allows them to do this?"
We can't convert our enterprise from Windows because we still have some critical in-house and off the shelf apps that are windows only. But in the meantime, we still need to procure or develop new apps and services to meet changing market demands and requirements. But, we are not going to buy or develop those solutions for non-windows platforms because we don't have the backend support systems to service a complex multi-platform environment. So, we have to get windows based solutions for now. In a couple years, those new windows based solutions that started out as stop-gap measures have now become critical and we can't stop using them. Rinse and repeat.
Consumers fleeing the Microsoft boat, sure might happen.
Corporations fleeing the Microsoft boat, not nearly as likely.
Or, The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to appear foolish in retrospect.
Charter Member of The Committee Group For The Elimination And Eradication Of Repetitive Redundancy
Microsoft is no more doomed now than IBM was 20 years ago, but like the IBM of the past, their dominance is fading. I think Microsoft might be around for a long time, but they won't be as ubiquitous as they once were.
Proverbs 21:19
So, speaking of frustrating Microsoft OS's, anyone else tried Server 2012?
It seems to be quite a bit faster than 2008 and set up to run as a VM well. HOWEVER... it has taken a giant step backward in usability. No Start menu? Ok, I can adjust to that. However, getting to all the tools to administer a system is frustrating at best. What the f*ck were they thinking? Right now our average 2012 desktop consists of 20 - 30 shortcuts to administrative tools so we can get into things as basic as a control panel or an Event Viewer.
I understand Microsoft wanting to move everyone to using Powershell, I get how powerful the commandline is - I've been using Unix/Linux for 20 years. However, using bash and other commandline tools makes sense. It seems sane and has always been intuitive to pick up. A quick man page look up usually fills in any details that are out of the ordinary. Powershell and Microsoft's objects? Wow.. no idea who designed it but intuitive is not a word I would use to describe it. I suppose the command names themselves are ok, a lot of times you can guess them with a "Set" or "Get" prefix, but the way you pass the object references and the various command parameters are a complete pain the ass. Powershell is a nice feature, but completely ripping out nice graphical tools to do complex and infrequent tasks makes no sense.
----- obSig
With Ubuntu and other OS out there which are FREE, the only way for Microsoft to stay relevant on the PC front is to stop gouging people for money, however, no money, no support, no liabilities, nada, zilch. Use at your own risk.
Also, considering the typical keyboard, mouse, monitor desktop PC configuration, the last thing Windows needs is a new revamp which would make it behave like a tablet or a phone.
The START button IS windows, and that should be back in force.
At the very least, do like Windows 7 and other previous versions and offer the 98 style GUI when you remove all the glitz and bells and whistles.
For now, until desktops and mobile devices are equal in processing powers, they are better off with different types of OS, than trying to do a 'one fits all' OS, which clearly isn't being look well upon.
Here's the awful truth.
Windows 7 will become the new XP. Nobody will want to migrate from it and I can't blame them, because I'm in the same boat!
Those who will get new PCs and Laptops, more than likely, will force their suppliers to put on Windows 7. Reason? "My work uses Win 7 and our apps aren't compatible to Win 8, or something like that.
Microsoft's expectation of people wanting to upgrade their OS every 2 or 3 yrs, is simply ludicrous. Consider the amount of time it takes them to 'get it right', meaning the amount of service packs and updates one goes through, eventually, when you have a stable OS, you stick to it.
Let's not forget the old engineer's motto: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Wrong. Windows 8 has much faster boot up performance, has revamped file operations, has improved text acceleration, geometry rendering, and image performance. These are all performance improvements. Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57478350-75/microsoft-explains-how-windows-8-smokes-windows-7/
IBM is far from not being player in the computing industry. Maybe not the OS segment, but they are doing just fine and they can always fall back on their typewriter patents.
IBM's closing value of $214 billion on September 29, 2011 surpassed Microsoft which was valued at $213.2 billion. It was the first time since 1996 that IBM exceeded its software rival based on closing price. On August 16, 2012, IBM announced it entered an agreement to buy Texas Memory Systems. [34] Later that month, IBM announced it has agreed to buy Kenexa. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter.[35] The deal is worth $1.3 billion dollars and was paid in cash by IBM.[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#1980.E2.80.93present
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think you are on the right track, but I see it flipped. Most people did not have PCs at home. This was a device they had at work. They were trained to use it because it was a function of their job.
Then one day this Internet "thing" arrived and they wanted a device to surf the web. The only device they knew was the PC - by now it was Windows-based. So Wintel PCs spiked in sales. But if we are honest, they really weren't ready for your average person - far too complex. But it was almost the only tool available, so that's what they got.
But now tablets and smart phones let them surf and get email - without a lot of the problems. So consumers are slowly changing to that device. I say "slowly" because the sales curve continues to accelerate.
I believe the end result will be the PC will return to being a mostly-business device. We'll look back on the last 15 years as an odd spike between the Internet land rush and the arrival of the Internet Terminal.
Microsoft's mistake? Users have a tough time with change, and MS upset them greatly by creating a confusing interface. Users are much more willing to learn new controls for something totally different (airplane, boat, tablet) but get mad as hell if you change something they are already comfortable with (car, Windows).
Place nail here >+
Kind of like the decline of oil lamps was because people didn't need them to light their homes anymore, they had electric light bulbs. If the market has indeed changed like this, MS can either try to get into the new markets, which they are kind of trying without a lot of success, or they can accept a dominant position in a smaller market (PCs).
In an office environment it's poison though. I don't know about where you are but I've still got a pile of people that never got used to the "start" menu and if they don't have an icon for something they don't think it is on their computer (sucks with new staff - having to set up a pile of icons for the new user login). Win8 is such a massive change in UI from the XP/win2k mode that they are used to that I'm not going to bother trying to force it on them until they've got used to it at home.