Very bad example, though. The above is fantastically usable... find me a GUI app that can accomplish the same purpose as quickly and easily
It's a good example, but not for the reasons you are thinking. GUIs don't do this because it's a completely uncommon task. (If anyone actually cared, it would be easy to add a "save as text" button somewhere in a filemanager.)
However, the CLI Fanclub can't get past the the idea that a GUI is crippled because it can't do the stuff nobody really wants to do anyway. They are completely confused between the concept of a "user" interface (make everyday tasks easy) and a "programmatic" interface (be infinitely flexible).
(Now someone's might come at me about how they use grep/find 300 times a day, but do they really do that more than simple directory browsing or copying random files from point A to point B?)
I think the original poster was being a little extreme, but you do get the idea that Unix Filemanagers are developed for "other people" and not for "us" or "everyone".
I'm probably alone here, but the task-based Windows XP interface does work really well for new users, while maintaining the standard conventions for old Windows users. It might not be perfect, but it was an evolution towards "better".
Most power-users turn off some/all of the "Fisher-Price" XP stuff, but then they tend to complain about the Windows UI being disjointed, or fall under the spell that MS hadn't really changed anything in 10 years.
Linux GUIs seem to be going in the opposite direction -- taking Win95 and then laying on the Power User features.
The old "UI Hall of Shame" site was largely attacks on obscure RAD applications, so people do complain about it. These UIs are terrible for the same reason many open source apps are -- the project is run by programmer primadonnas who thinks their shit doesn't stink, so they invent "new" UI Paradigms where they weren't warranted.
(horrible kludges in the back end that seeped into the UI is really a different problem all together.)
Also, you'll rarely get user feedback which says "Your UI is overly complicated". Instead it's hard to parse stuff like "You should have a toolbar like in Excel. I like Excel.", which leave you scratching your head because your app is nothing like Excel. (Translation: "I can't figure out how to use your app.") And if someone does come in and say "I don't get it", it's too easy to say "Dummy! RTFM! Get Training!".
If you want a category of mainstream apps with nearly uniformly bad Super-Wonk UIs, check out Newsreader software.
Anyone who uses any non-Microsoft setup on the desktop... has almost certainly put some thought into the choice of operating systems and hardware
Not really. I know a few people who use Macs because (A) They've always used Macs, and (B) Everyone they know uses Macs, and (C) They use Macs at work. In short, they use Macs for the exact same reason everyone else uses Windows.
I think Macs used to be a lot more mainstream than they are today. I got through college (late-80s/early-90s) without barely seeing a PC -- I knew one guy with an XT Clone, and there was a lab for business students, but other than that my world was 90% Mac and 9% Sun. It was easy to get sucked into the Apple World and stay there.
Also, the average messageboard Apple Fanatic bears little relationship to the majority of the Mac userbase.
Apple's comparative cost/performance strength has always been on their high end machines, and I don't think that will change any time soon. For consumer products, people expect to pay a premium for a better overall computing experience. Some customers will pay this premium, while most will not.
This gets close to my great fear: There is only a fixed number of Mac users in the world, and Apple knows it, and has given up trying to change that. So, they price/position their hardware to reap maximum profits from their hardcore pro user base at the expense of the consumer/office users. Because, lets face it, most of the traditional Photoshop/Quark work does not require a top-end workstation any more, and any "mainstream desktop" could severe cut into 'Creative Pro' PowerMac sales.
Meanwhile, Apple has this installed base of really old machines, and that's not a real positive. If Apple can't get those folks into the store to upgrade, eventually they will get sucked into the much larger PC "ecosystem". I've seen it happen to many friends of mine who used Macs in the 90s -- they had this mental image of a low-end Pentium POS running Win98, but a cheap, fast PC running XP suddenly looks Not So Bad when compared with their blueberry iMac running OS9. (Maybe if you are in Higher Ed, it looks like Apple is growing, but where I sit [lower-end creative users], they are slowly shrinking.)
Now, the killer thing is that OS X really has given them all of this techie/developer momentum. However, Omni Group and even Microsoft are assuming that a cool OS will sell more machines which will make their investment more profitble. If Apple can't/won't deliver, they're going to be disappointed and scale back. Fact: Capitalism relies on growth.
So, I'm really hoping that Apple will see the "G5 iMac" as opportunity to break this cycle, as something that will really be a market hit rather than just scoring virtual style points. And that means that Apple is just going to have to give the people What They Want -- something relatively cheap, much faster than the G3/G4 installed base, semi-expandable, and, again cheap.
OTOH, if we get another Cube/iMac expensively constructed design piece, and "YOU WILL USE AN EMAC AND LIKE IT" (see other reply), myself and many others will draw the conclusion that Apple is retreating into their "legacy" niche and letting Wintel win the war.
An entirely predictable Macinista response, but I should have been more clear:
Apple currently is a mainstream alternative to Wintel because they enjoy good developer support (although not nearly as good as it was 10-15 years ago). However, that situation is by no means guaranteed forever, especially if Apple is making very little effort to move mainstream machines.
I'm not predicting the "demise" of the Mac, but surely even you will admit there's some marketshare or salesfigure point at which the remaining major ISVs will decide Apple is irrelevant and scale back Mac development.
And the *facts* of the matter are that Apple's sales have been flat for years, and they are not keeping up with the overall growth of the market, and if things keeping going this way eventually they'll get to that point. Don't try to paint a pretty picture on it -- Apple doesn't even have a mainstream desktop for sale right now. Not good!
Anyway, I'm a Mac fan, and I don't want to see Apple become one of those wierd Be/Amiaga-like platforms where everyone says "Who needs BrandNameSoft! Fred's Shareware is better!!". I'd also like to see them offer a machine that I would buy! (I will give Apple credit for taking on the "UNIX" market in high-ed & science. First 'new' Mac market in years.)
Unlike BMW, Apple has to maintain an "Ecosystem", which includes things like 3rd party software developers, diverse user bases and so on. In order to do this, they really do need to sell some computers. (It seems obvious, but Mac Fans will frequently argue the point.)
Sometimes I wonder that after the G4 Debacle happened, Jobs just sorta gave up and they decided that they were only going to sell interior design pieces to Graphic Designers and slowly disappear into the night.
I'm not expecting Apple to take on Dell (Chevy), but when the mainstream high-end PC is a ~$1000 3-Slot Minitower, and Apple refuses to sell one of those, you have to wonder if they even care anymore. If the new iMac is positioned and priced the same as the G4 iMac, I have to take it as a sign that Apple sees no chance of ever seriously being an alternative to Wintel.
Even BMW keeps their model lineup and pricing competitive with everyone else, AND is trying to increase marketshare.
Microsoft could just "lease" Office 2003 until the end of time. Some customers might prefer having a stable + supported platform for a decade or so (see IBM).
As I said in the other post, Office is becoming more and more of a server-side product. In a lot of ways, Office really is the middleware, and as usual, that's how MS will draw people into the NET thing. For many shops, this could provide the sort of value that they'd be willing to to upgrade to (rather than dancing paperclips etc). And if this means that lower-end customers go to StarOffice, that's fine too, as long as they can increase profit from the hardcore Microsoft people.
This really isn't a reinvention at all, because it plays to their classic Microcomputer Software base of small/medium businesses and the desktop folks in large corps.
Back to the main point, which is that in high-growth times it pays to be the monopoly. But that's not necessarily true in slow-growth times, especially when the opposition has a head of steam going and you can't beat them on price.
If you are unwilling to talk Office Politics, you also should be unwilling to discuss IT management costs, as they are inexorably related. There is no magic bullet. The fact that you don't get the point about the laptops proves this -- it's not how many, it's who has them and how much direction over IT they have.
In summary: Linux does not have traditional PC Network Management Tools. (Only real point I was trying to make.)
I would say Access/MSSQL is a good example of MS migrating people from a $100 product to a $3000 product -- even if MSSQL hasn't beaten Oracle, it has totally beaten Jet, XBase and Paradox (rather than those users fleeing to MySQL or something). Furthermore it's a much bigger foothold for MS than their old desktop spaghetti.
Already MS Office is going the same way, from pure desktop stuff to something that's more hybrid groupware/KM/CMS/etc with the expected seat licences. I don't doubt MS's ability to leverage "Microsoft Shops" onto this server software, the same way Outlook pushed Exchange everywhere despite any technical merits. Anyway, it's clear that they aren't just sitting there while Open Source reinvents the desktop wheel.
Yeah, the PS/2-OS/2 thing was more symptomatic of what was wrong with IBM rather than the real problem -- which was that their high-end ware was not selling against UNIX.
I don't see the Service|Product thing as being a big issue. Like IBM, Microsoft can really play it both ways. Furthermore, eventually the tech business will get another hit idea like The Internet, and MS will be there to get the upgrade revenues.
As far as all MS's revenue coming from Windows and Office, this is really a byproduct of them continually giving away the cow to get you to buy the milk. A lot of what makes up Windows/Office would be a seperate "middleware" product from someone else (for example,.NET vs J2EE app servers), exept that MS is trying to keep the value where people can see it.
I have to disagree. Thinking that Prism/Mica would saved DEC is like thinking that AS/400 saved IBM. It might have helped, but it really was just more of the same.
I actually thought that DEC was on the right track in the 90s -- riding the commodification wave towards Wintel and Lintel, except with "enterprise services". If they hadn't blown so much capital on Alpha, they probably would have survived and would be a playing a similar role as HP today.
(Although, I know a guy who bought a house with his Digital/Compaq stock, so I don't think anyone is really complaining except the fanboys.)
I'm not denying that centralized management is cheaper, just pointing out that you are trying to remedy a Political Problem with a technology product (Linux), and it ends up being a Apples/Oranges comparison.
As natchoboy points out, people can and do manage 3rd party apps with ActiveDirectory and some scripting. Or with the better Novell (etc) products. The question is not necessarily the lack of AD Tools, it's the lack of any tools at all -- even Netscape 4 had a deployment kit. "Just Centralize It" isn't always the appropriate answer.
(I realize that Firefox is a bit of special case because Netscape/Mozilla has always had a hot poker up their ass about Windows and therefore doesn't use the registry. Which means normal group policies aren't as easy.)
Yes, Linux is hollowing out Sun and RS/6000 in the DB market. The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter to MS if they don't get 100% of the DB market, so long as they can garner higher profits from the base of customers that really integrate SQL Server.
This is very similar to the IBM Strategy, where folks rarely walk in the door and buy just DB2 for a couple grand, they generally get sold on the whole stack of IBM software & services for $$$$$.
I believe you're thinking of "Steve Jobs", not "Apple". Apple was a goddamn basket-case by the early 90's
No, Scully put Apple on a high-end tact, which is basically where they are today. Their problems in the 90s were mainly related to poor execution and not entirely fundemental positioning problems.
Oh, I'm not denying that IBM executed well, only pointing out that they had more than a decade to ride on old products and customers while adapting themselves. Microsoft is performing a similar long-term change (IMO), although many of their detractors don't realize it yet. It's similar to how Sun and HP declared victory over the Mainframe in the mid-90s without realizing that IBM had out-flanked them.
Although, I think IBM is primarily an example of a marketing victory -- taking Mainframes/SNA/CICS/DB2 and turd polishing it into Linux/Java/eBusiness-on-Demand/etc was genius work. And something that most slashdotters seemed to have swollowed hook-line-n-sinker. Don't underestimate MS's marketing prowness.
(As for DEC, they kamakazied themselves on the Alpha. Hard to make an analogy to Microsoft there.)
"Unix is cheaper to admin than Windows!!! (except mumblemumble you have to completely change your management philosopy mumblemumble mumble)"
The fact is that centralized management can be and is implemented on Windows as well (Citrix and centalized home directories are old hat in the Fortune 500). Furthermore, most Windows networks are set up they way they are due to political constraints -- the old PC "It's my computer" mindset. Now, if Unix is going to be a "replacement" for Windows, it has to work in an environment where wannabe bigwigs carry their laptops around, and that's probably going to end up looking a lot more like a Windows network than LTSP.
I think it's perfectly fair for the guy to say "Hey, I can't fundementally change how the network is run, now where's the Deploy and Policy tools for Firefox/StarOffice/etc?" If the tools aren't there, that's a big gap for Linux.
(As Novell moves their stuff over to Linux, this situation should get much better in the next few years.)
Like I said -- you guys are still fighting the old 90s battle (marketshare) and I think MS is fighting the next one (high-end vs IBM/Oracle). In 5-10 years you might get your 30%, but the victory might be somewhat hollow.
Another good example (besides IBM) is Apple. In the 80s, they stopped making "the computer for the rest of us" and concentrated on making $5000+ workstations. They survived just fine with lots of cash in the bank.
It gives me warm and fuzzy feelings to see the same argument now being made against them. Not just in databases but virtually every other product they make too.
You know, Microsoft probably knows this and doesn't care because they're set for life. Look at IBM -- They survived the wrath of the entire industry and the loss of their monopoly, and you can bet MS can do similar.
In fact, it's a somewhat smart strategy: spin off the "low-value" customers to your competitors and keep the high-value/high-profit ones that want and use all of the integration points. (eg: It's more profitable for Microsoft if someone switches to StarOffice instead of staying on Office 97 forever.) Meanwhile, take all of those people who still think of MS as the "cheap" provider and ride them out as long as possible. Anyway, Ballmer is probably watching you guys cheer on every 1% marketshare gain and having a good laugh.
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Very bad example, though. The above is fantastically usable... find me a GUI app that can accomplish the same purpose as quickly and easily
It's a good example, but not for the reasons you are thinking. GUIs don't do this because it's a completely uncommon task. (If anyone actually cared, it would be easy to add a "save as text" button somewhere in a filemanager.)
However, the CLI Fanclub can't get past the the idea that a GUI is crippled because it can't do the stuff nobody really wants to do anyway. They are completely confused between the concept of a "user" interface (make everyday tasks easy) and a "programmatic" interface (be infinitely flexible).
(Now someone's might come at me about how they use grep/find 300 times a day, but do they really do that more than simple directory browsing or copying random files from point A to point B?)
I think the original poster was being a little extreme, but you do get the idea that Unix Filemanagers are developed for "other people" and not for "us" or "everyone".
I'm probably alone here, but the task-based Windows XP interface does work really well for new users, while maintaining the standard conventions for old Windows users. It might not be perfect, but it was an evolution towards "better".
Most power-users turn off some/all of the "Fisher-Price" XP stuff, but then they tend to complain about the Windows UI being disjointed, or fall under the spell that MS hadn't really changed anything in 10 years.
Linux GUIs seem to be going in the opposite direction -- taking Win95 and then laying on the Power User features.
The old "UI Hall of Shame" site was largely attacks on obscure RAD applications, so people do complain about it. These UIs are terrible for the same reason many open source apps are -- the project is run by programmer primadonnas who thinks their shit doesn't stink, so they invent "new" UI Paradigms where they weren't warranted.
(horrible kludges in the back end that seeped into the UI is really a different problem all together.)
Also, you'll rarely get user feedback which says "Your UI is overly complicated". Instead it's hard to parse stuff like "You should have a toolbar like in Excel. I like Excel.", which leave you scratching your head because your app is nothing like Excel. (Translation: "I can't figure out how to use your app.") And if someone does come in and say "I don't get it", it's too easy to say "Dummy! RTFM! Get Training!".
If you want a category of mainstream apps with nearly uniformly bad Super-Wonk UIs, check out Newsreader software.
Any chance we can get the raw XML?
(Could care less about the HTML fads, but a data interface would be nice.)
Right, I want to buy a machine from Apple, but they aren't selling it. Instead someone else sees my money. Very good reading comprehension.
Anyone who uses any non-Microsoft setup on the desktop ... has almost certainly put some thought into the choice of operating systems and hardware
Not really. I know a few people who use Macs because (A) They've always used Macs, and (B) Everyone they know uses Macs, and (C) They use Macs at work. In short, they use Macs for the exact same reason everyone else uses Windows.
I think Macs used to be a lot more mainstream than they are today. I got through college (late-80s/early-90s) without barely seeing a PC -- I knew one guy with an XT Clone, and there was a lab for business students, but other than that my world was 90% Mac and 9% Sun. It was easy to get sucked into the Apple World and stay there.
Also, the average messageboard Apple Fanatic bears little relationship to the majority of the Mac userbase.
~$600 for a 500Mhz G4? Ouch. A consumer G5 would solve that problem pretty quickly, I think.
An ancient G3 PowerBook. However, I'm not pretending that it's nice to use anymore.
Apple's comparative cost/performance strength has always been on their high end machines, and I don't think that will change any time soon. For consumer products, people expect to pay a premium for a better overall computing experience. Some customers will pay this premium, while most will not.
This gets close to my great fear: There is only a fixed number of Mac users in the world, and Apple knows it, and has given up trying to change that. So, they price/position their hardware to reap maximum profits from their hardcore pro user base at the expense of the consumer/office users. Because, lets face it, most of the traditional Photoshop/Quark work does not require a top-end workstation any more, and any "mainstream desktop" could severe cut into 'Creative Pro' PowerMac sales.
Meanwhile, Apple has this installed base of really old machines, and that's not a real positive. If Apple can't get those folks into the store to upgrade, eventually they will get sucked into the much larger PC "ecosystem". I've seen it happen to many friends of mine who used Macs in the 90s -- they had this mental image of a low-end Pentium POS running Win98, but a cheap, fast PC running XP suddenly looks Not So Bad when compared with their blueberry iMac running OS9. (Maybe if you are in Higher Ed, it looks like Apple is growing, but where I sit [lower-end creative users], they are slowly shrinking.)
Now, the killer thing is that OS X really has given them all of this techie/developer momentum. However, Omni Group and even Microsoft are assuming that a cool OS will sell more machines which will make their investment more profitble. If Apple can't/won't deliver, they're going to be disappointed and scale back. Fact: Capitalism relies on growth.
So, I'm really hoping that Apple will see the "G5 iMac" as opportunity to break this cycle, as something that will really be a market hit rather than just scoring virtual style points. And that means that Apple is just going to have to give the people What They Want -- something relatively cheap, much faster than the G3/G4 installed base, semi-expandable, and, again cheap.
OTOH, if we get another Cube/iMac expensively constructed design piece, and "YOU WILL USE AN EMAC AND LIKE IT" (see other reply), myself and many others will draw the conclusion that Apple is retreating into their "legacy" niche and letting Wintel win the war.
As for the 10% that do need to add whatever cards, Apple doesn't need to sell computers to them
Well, that's me. And I've been an Apple customer for 20 years. Thanks for letting me know Apple doesn't want my business anymore.
An entirely predictable Macinista response, but I should have been more clear:
Apple currently is a mainstream alternative to Wintel because they enjoy good developer support (although not nearly as good as it was 10-15 years ago). However, that situation is by no means guaranteed forever, especially if Apple is making very little effort to move mainstream machines.
I'm not predicting the "demise" of the Mac, but surely even you will admit there's some marketshare or salesfigure point at which the remaining major ISVs will decide Apple is irrelevant and scale back Mac development.
And the *facts* of the matter are that Apple's sales have been flat for years, and they are not keeping up with the overall growth of the market, and if things keeping going this way eventually they'll get to that point. Don't try to paint a pretty picture on it -- Apple doesn't even have a mainstream desktop for sale right now. Not good!
Anyway, I'm a Mac fan, and I don't want to see Apple become one of those wierd Be/Amiaga-like platforms where everyone says "Who needs BrandNameSoft! Fred's Shareware is better!!". I'd also like to see them offer a machine that I would buy! (I will give Apple credit for taking on the "UNIX" market in high-ed & science. First 'new' Mac market in years.)
Thank god someone gets it.
Unlike BMW, Apple has to maintain an "Ecosystem", which includes things like 3rd party software developers, diverse user bases and so on. In order to do this, they really do need to sell some computers. (It seems obvious, but Mac Fans will frequently argue the point.)
Sometimes I wonder that after the G4 Debacle happened, Jobs just sorta gave up and they decided that they were only going to sell interior design pieces to Graphic Designers and slowly disappear into the night.
I'm not expecting Apple to take on Dell (Chevy), but when the mainstream high-end PC is a ~$1000 3-Slot Minitower, and Apple refuses to sell one of those, you have to wonder if they even care anymore. If the new iMac is positioned and priced the same as the G4 iMac, I have to take it as a sign that Apple sees no chance of ever seriously being an alternative to Wintel.
Even BMW keeps their model lineup and pricing competitive with everyone else, AND is trying to increase marketshare.
Microsoft could just "lease" Office 2003 until the end of time. Some customers might prefer having a stable + supported platform for a decade or so (see IBM).
As I said in the other post, Office is becoming more and more of a server-side product. In a lot of ways, Office really is the middleware, and as usual, that's how MS will draw people into the NET thing. For many shops, this could provide the sort of value that they'd be willing to to upgrade to (rather than dancing paperclips etc). And if this means that lower-end customers go to StarOffice, that's fine too, as long as they can increase profit from the hardcore Microsoft people.
This really isn't a reinvention at all, because it plays to their classic Microcomputer Software base of small/medium businesses and the desktop folks in large corps.
Back to the main point, which is that in high-growth times it pays to be the monopoly. But that's not necessarily true in slow-growth times, especially when the opposition has a head of steam going and you can't beat them on price.
If you are unwilling to talk Office Politics, you also should be unwilling to discuss IT management costs, as they are inexorably related. There is no magic bullet. The fact that you don't get the point about the laptops proves this -- it's not how many, it's who has them and how much direction over IT they have.
In summary:
Linux does not have traditional PC Network Management Tools. (Only real point I was trying to make.)
I would say Access/MSSQL is a good example of MS migrating people from a $100 product to a $3000 product -- even if MSSQL hasn't beaten Oracle, it has totally beaten Jet, XBase and Paradox (rather than those users fleeing to MySQL or something). Furthermore it's a much bigger foothold for MS than their old desktop spaghetti.
Already MS Office is going the same way, from pure desktop stuff to something that's more hybrid groupware/KM/CMS/etc with the expected seat licences. I don't doubt MS's ability to leverage "Microsoft Shops" onto this server software, the same way Outlook pushed Exchange everywhere despite any technical merits. Anyway, it's clear that they aren't just sitting there while Open Source reinvents the desktop wheel.
Yeah, the PS/2-OS/2 thing was more symptomatic of what was wrong with IBM rather than the real problem -- which was that their high-end ware was not selling against UNIX.
.NET vs J2EE app servers), exept that MS is trying to keep the value where people can see it.
I don't see the Service|Product thing as being a big issue. Like IBM, Microsoft can really play it both ways. Furthermore, eventually the tech business will get another hit idea like The Internet, and MS will be there to get the upgrade revenues.
As far as all MS's revenue coming from Windows and Office, this is really a byproduct of them continually giving away the cow to get you to buy the milk. A lot of what makes up Windows/Office would be a seperate "middleware" product from someone else (for example,
I have to disagree. Thinking that Prism/Mica would saved DEC is like thinking that AS/400 saved IBM. It might have helped, but it really was just more of the same.
I actually thought that DEC was on the right track in the 90s -- riding the commodification wave towards Wintel and Lintel, except with "enterprise services". If they hadn't blown so much capital on Alpha, they probably would have survived and would be a playing a similar role as HP today.
(Although, I know a guy who bought a house with his Digital/Compaq stock, so I don't think anyone is really complaining except the fanboys.)
I'm not denying that centralized management is cheaper, just pointing out that you are trying to remedy a Political Problem with a technology product (Linux), and it ends up being a Apples/Oranges comparison.
As natchoboy points out, people can and do manage 3rd party apps with ActiveDirectory and some scripting. Or with the better Novell (etc) products. The question is not necessarily the lack of AD Tools, it's the lack of any tools at all -- even Netscape 4 had a deployment kit. "Just Centralize It" isn't always the appropriate answer.
(I realize that Firefox is a bit of special case because Netscape/Mozilla has always had a hot poker up their ass about Windows and therefore doesn't use the registry. Which means normal group policies aren't as easy.)
Yes, Linux is hollowing out Sun and RS/6000 in the DB market. The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter to MS if they don't get 100% of the DB market, so long as they can garner higher profits from the base of customers that really integrate SQL Server.
This is very similar to the IBM Strategy, where folks rarely walk in the door and buy just DB2 for a couple grand, they generally get sold on the whole stack of IBM software & services for $$$$$.
I believe you're thinking of "Steve Jobs", not "Apple". Apple was a goddamn basket-case by the early 90's
No, Scully put Apple on a high-end tact, which is basically where they are today. Their problems in the 90s were mainly related to poor execution and not entirely fundemental positioning problems.
Oh, I'm not denying that IBM executed well, only pointing out that they had more than a decade to ride on old products and customers while adapting themselves. Microsoft is performing a similar long-term change (IMO), although many of their detractors don't realize it yet. It's similar to how Sun and HP declared victory over the Mainframe in the mid-90s without realizing that IBM had out-flanked them.
Although, I think IBM is primarily an example of a marketing victory -- taking Mainframes/SNA/CICS/DB2 and turd polishing it into Linux/Java/eBusiness-on-Demand/etc was genius work. And something that most slashdotters seemed to have swollowed hook-line-n-sinker. Don't underestimate MS's marketing prowness.
(As for DEC, they kamakazied themselves on the Alpha. Hard to make an analogy to Microsoft there.)
It's tiring to hear this all the time:
"Unix is cheaper to admin than Windows!!! (except mumblemumble you have to completely change your management philosopy mumblemumble mumble)"
The fact is that centralized management can be and is implemented on Windows as well (Citrix and centalized home directories are old hat in the Fortune 500). Furthermore, most Windows networks are set up they way they are due to political constraints -- the old PC "It's my computer" mindset. Now, if Unix is going to be a "replacement" for Windows, it has to work in an environment where wannabe bigwigs carry their laptops around, and that's probably going to end up looking a lot more like a Windows network than LTSP.
I think it's perfectly fair for the guy to say "Hey, I can't fundementally change how the network is run, now where's the Deploy and Policy tools for Firefox/StarOffice/etc?" If the tools aren't there, that's a big gap for Linux.
(As Novell moves their stuff over to Linux, this situation should get much better in the next few years.)
Like I said -- you guys are still fighting the old 90s battle (marketshare) and I think MS is fighting the next one (high-end vs IBM/Oracle). In 5-10 years you might get your 30%, but the victory might be somewhat hollow.
Another good example (besides IBM) is Apple. In the 80s, they stopped making "the computer for the rest of us" and concentrated on making $5000+ workstations. They survived just fine with lots of cash in the bank.
It gives me warm and fuzzy feelings to see the same argument now being made against them. Not just in databases but virtually every other product they make too.
You know, Microsoft probably knows this and doesn't care because they're set for life. Look at IBM -- They survived the wrath of the entire industry and the loss of their monopoly, and you can bet MS can do similar.
In fact, it's a somewhat smart strategy: spin off the "low-value" customers to your competitors and keep the high-value/high-profit ones that want and use all of the integration points. (eg: It's more profitable for Microsoft if someone switches to StarOffice instead of staying on Office 97 forever.) Meanwhile, take all of those people who still think of MS as the "cheap" provider and ride them out as long as possible. Anyway, Ballmer is probably watching you guys cheer on every 1% marketshare gain and having a good laugh.
And how is this handled under Gnome etc? Does one need to manually set up protocol handlers like "ssh://" for every application?
1. I was talking about new copies of Windows 98 retail, not OEM, not upgrade.
2. Your own quote says you can give/sell Windows to someone else.
So I have no idea what point you are attempting to make, nor do I really care anymore.