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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 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.
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
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
This, right here.
The original rationale for Windows in the enterprise began when companies wanted cheap "personal" computers in the workplace. They wanted those computers with a drop-stupid UI and a cheap OS on them. Windows was perfectly poised to fill that need (Apples cost too much, GEM had issues, and Amiga was too much like an appliance to be flexible.)
Nowadays, if W8/Metro is what Microsoft expects the planet to use, they may be in for a shock. No serious enterprise will touch it (outside of certain "Platinum Partners" who drink Redmond-flavored koolaid by the tanker-truck), since it (currently) hampers the hell out of work. When home users buy a PC, they want a frickin' PC - and not some over-spec'd tablet with a keyboard lashed onto it.
While I won't say that Microsoft is dead meat, I will say that they're making one hell of a potentially fatal mistake here. They don't have room to bork things up like they used to (see also Steam's decision), and Apple is smart enough to stay expensive enough to make a serious profit, but just barely cheap enough to be within reach of anyone who could be considered a decision-maker.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
the only reason they became accepted into the enterprise is because that is what consumers were familiar with
Sorry but you're talking out of your ass. If a "consumer" owned a PC at all at the time that Windows started to make inroads to the enterprise it was either Apple, Atari or Commodore. Windows made inroads because MS-DOS was the defacto standard thanks to IBM and when the GUI was ready for primetime Microsoft was already embedded in the culture. Whoever modded you up doesn't know jack about computing in the enterprise. It's kind of pathetic when you stop to think of it.
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.
It's going to rot? Really? Show me where MS's domination on a production platform is threated. Do you honestly think that people using Android phones and iPads are a threat to full functioning computers that aren't just running a bunch of small apps? Please. And Windows will still be the largest marketshare (by far) for the home user who still decides to support a PC into the next decade.
Windows 8 marks the beginning of the fall of Microsoft.
I seem to recall hearing the same thing around here when Windows ME was about a year old too. Lo and behold, the next release from MS made Microsoft more money and embedded them further into the end user culture more than any other product ever has.
I'll do all my gaming on my PC. I listen to music on my PC. I watch TV and movies on my PC. My friends do the same. I'm 19. The PC isn't dead in anyone's eyes but those of marketers who want to sell to cheap to build tablets for the price of a fully functional PC.
That would be false. The enterprise embraced OS/2 and Windows NT while the consumers were using Windows 95/98. Likewise, consumers were not using Exchange. One could reasonable argue that what made them accepted was not Microsoft at all, but IBM which introduced their enterprise customers to relatively low priced desktop computers compared to their offering of mini and mainframe computing back in the 1980s.
Once Intel PCs were established in the enterprise, when the GUI was becoming standard, the question became which one Mac OS (not OS X), OS/2 and Windows NT. OS/2 was the favorite until Microsoft and IBM had a major falling out and Windows NT and OS/2 went their separate ways. Since Windows NT worked on IBM hardware plus all of the clones and IBM OS/2 mainly worked on IBM hardware (meaning the PS/2 line), Windows NT won out. Then NT became Windows 2000 and after that Microsoft merged their business and consumer products into Windows XP.
Along the way, there were numerous failings - Windows 3.0, Windows 95 (while successful, was buggy) Windows ME, Windows Vista. Each time it was supposed to be the end of Microsoft, but that never happened. Why not? Because Microsoft also is exchange server which many businesses depend on. It is also SQL server and Office and a whole lot more than simply Windows. That is only the tip of Microsoft's iceberg.
Does that mean that MIcrosoft will continue to reign supreme, no of course not. Neither will Apple. Both of them will succumb, like IBM did before them to somebody else. The problem is that when you are at the top of the heap, there is nowhere else to go but down. But even if they are no longer the dominate force, that doesn't mean they still aren't a force. Again, look at IBM as an example. Of course, IBM did have to take a hard look at the role they wanted to play in the industry. Whether Microsoft is willing to do that or not is yet to be seen.
As for Windows 8 failure to launch, there are two reasons, at least in the corporate world. 1st, it is different and being different means money spent on retraining workers and increased tech support costs. Different is fine if it leads to productivity gains or something along those lines, but that gives us point 2 - Windows 7 is good enough. Windows 8 doesn't increase productivity and in a typical business setting often decreases it. Some argue that Windows 8 was a tablet design forced on a desktop. Maybe, maybe not. However, there is no doubt that it is a consumer design that corporations aren't pleased with as it doesn't fit their needs. Corporations don't buy into the consumer marketing hype. They have bean counters that look at the bottom line and things like ROI. In that scenario, Windows 8 doesn't cut it.
The irony is that Windows 8 contains some great technology. The reason it has failed is not because of the technology or the engineering. The reason it failed is because Microsoft misread its market and produced a product that it's largest customer base (corporations) didn't want or need. If they get it right with their corporate customers with Windows 9, then Windows 8 is just a good product that nobody wanted. Maybe Microsoft should follow Canonical and have LTS versions that favor corporate use and use the intervening years to experiment with the interface. Those things that work and are accepted make it into the next LTS those that don't, well, don't.
I suspect it was Vista that marked the beginning of the fall.
Actually wasn't what is being said about Win8 identical to what was said about Vista? And before that XP was a failure until sp1 was released, ME before that and 95 before that. I think Bob and Clippy were also the death knell for Microsoft too. Oh, and the ribbon in Office, can't forget that one. Granted, they can't keep screwing over their customer base with every other release continually. But they still hold a lot of market share. They just don't have absolute dominance like they once seemed to (not that that was necessarily ever true).
While well thought out, there is a very important aspect that you neglect. It was hinted at, but not bluntly called out. That aspect is that a huge part of the reason Windows went into the workplace was because people were familiar with it at home. Marketing played it's part too mind you, but not as much as an exec being able to do everything at work he did at home in the same way.
The same can be said of applications. MS gave Word away. It was horrible compared to competitive products, but it was free. Everyone became familiar with it. Word Perfect required extra knowledge that a home user didn't have. The same exact statement can be said about Excel compared to Lotus 1-2-3.
When MS loses dominance on home devices, people lose that familiarity. It will certainly impact the approach businesses take to OSes and Devices. In fact I'll state it already has, since most large companies are trying to develop any-device anywhere platforms.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
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 >+