Vista the End of An Era? 446
mikesd81 writes "The Times Online has an article about the uncertain future of Windows. Even Microsoft, it seems is admitting that Vista will be the last OS of its kind. With the push towards a constant presence on the internet, and the churn that entails, the company has admitted that even with a two year delay 'it is not really ready'." From the article: "Security experts are acknowledging that Vista is the most secure of Windows to date. However, 'The bad guys will always target the most popular systems,' Mikko Hypponen, of F-Secure, the security group, said. 'Vista's vulnerability to phishing attacks, hackers, viruses and other malicious software will increase quickly.' But the current fear is that the Internet will kill Windows, with Google being Public Enemy No. 1: 'Microsoft is way behind Google when it comes to the internet,' Rupert Godwins, the technology editor at ZDNet, the industry website, said. 'Building Vista, Microsoft is still doing things the old way at the same time as it undergoes a big shift to catch up.'"
Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
"Last of its kind"? Fooey (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a hard time believing claims like this (Score:3, Insightful)
millions of lines of code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see an internet OS as the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet = OS? I think not (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, they're pushing "software as a service" now everywhere. They already call upon the "end of operating systems", but I'm asking myself: if they say, the internet IS the OS, what will the internet run on? I don't think Microsoft will switch over to Linux. Or they could build an "OS" that is solely a web browser. IE-OS, anyone?
If this software-as-a-service thing is going to be big in the future, what would they say if anyone would dig up an old machine from this era and find out, that it runs all of it's software without a net connection... Hell, it even BOOTS UP without internet! Awesome stuff, not?
After Vista, Windows will die (Score:3, Insightful)
oh no, not again (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, microsoft *say* it would take les time to make the next windows iteration, the plain fact is that they are no longer working from the position of having no competition. Therefore they have to do a whole lot better then just improve security, they've got to move a long way forward beyond the competition, improving everything and introducing things people can't get elsewhere. Right now Gnome is catching up with the XP interface, I think it's better in fact, and that's free. KDE I don't know about, I barely use it.
GNU/Linux, good though it is, is nowhere near ready to take on microsoft for home users. The simple reason being that in spite of its wealth of applications, it has shitbar games when compared to windows. Game producers aren't building their products in linux for a first iteration. That will be the big problem for linux for a fair few years.
Once games creators switch, or rather, produce for linux too, hardware manufacturers will start working in linux more, and mmicrosoft will see a real challenge.
Then there's Office. OpenOffice is good, but not as good as MsOffice. Well it does compare in many ways, but OpenOffice doesn't have salesmen ready to cajole existing customers and offer vast discounts. We're still at the stage were companies will mention thinking about switching just to get those discounts.
Games are the only thing that keeps windows installed on my machine, I use linux for all serious stuff, but I won't give up my games, and I'm not alone. I gave up Office a long time ago. For simple docs I use Vim, and for complex docs I use Tex.
Round and round we go (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we could just not bother going with the latest fad designed to keep us spending, and preventing us from actually owning anything. As long as the good folks at Debian continue to produce a great distribution, and as long as people are willing to write software, I think I'll stick to what I know (and what I don't have to pay through the nose for.)
"Way behind"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"'Microsoft is way behind Google when it comes to the internet."
What does this even mean?
No one is going to store their porn remotely. (Score:2, Insightful)
When You are King of the Mountain... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only way to stay on top is to defend all of the mountain. That is incredibly time consuming, maintaining and upgrading the fortifications.
Warren Buffet said he would not invest in Microsoft, because he couldn't understand the long term future.
Prediction: Microsoft will break itself up.
God dammit it's true - I saw it on the Internet ! (Score:1, Insightful)
God dammit it's true - I saw it on the Internet !
(just something to keep in mind)
Microsoft and it's own history (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is now vulnerable because they believe things have went full circle. They see people building new ideas and new markets that don't include them - or need their software. What MS misses is that people don't want their software when it doesn't do something of great value. The days of people marveling at the convenience of a multitasking GUI or amazing their boss with a pivot table are over. Problem is that Microsoft's current innovation isn't being driven by customers or users, but by a bad combination of developer arrogance and greed. The result: you get products that people just don't want like Zune. You get a company selling out it's users for a buck they may never get from the music business. You get ideas like Live Update and Genuine Advantage that hurt legitimate users because your bean counters want to squeeze every dime out of their market. You get ideas like threatening patent litigation for ideas that are almost as old as most college grads instead of inventing something worth patenting.
For MS to come back all they have to do is recognize reality: people actually do like and use their software. Focus on what you can add (or remove) that will make it better. And remember that USERS not the music, movie, media or any other industry makes the buying decision. When you add a feature to the OS, make it a benefit to the USER. Everyone is in love with the idea of being a landlord. MS would be wise to remember that they made their way to success by putting the landlords out of business.
Re:After Vista, Windows will die (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Compare XP and KDE on Linux circa 2001.
2. Compare XP and KDE on Linux in 2006.
3. Compare expectations for Vista and KDE 4 on Linux in late 2007.
4. Extrapolate the relative improvements in Windows and KDE and Linux to 2010.
I don't care what resources Redmond has. They simply cannot compete with a bunch of determined individuals. No one can. It's just a matter of time.
KDE 4 running on Windows will probably speed things up, but even without it, Windows' days are truly numbered. The people at MS aren't stupid. They know this, which is why they've started fighting Linux more coherently this past year. They must be very, very worried about what Microsoft is going to look like 10 years from now. Any sensible person in their position would be.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobodies seriously arguing that "OS'es don't matter," or that OS'es will somehow magically, poof, up and disappear, somehow. If you think that's what the message is, you're almost certainly misinterpreting.
There will always be stuff that people will only entrust to their own computer, and run on an OS, and so on. Like the fellow who replied to you first said: "I don't want to authenticate, just to edit a word document." Quite right.
What they're saying, or one of the things they're saying, (since "they" are quite large and nebulous,) is that the era of the super-important dominance of the OS is at an end.
That is, that software developers, around the world, are never going to go back to the heady days of 1995, where every new platform change to Windows or Apple was the compelling subject of the magazines.
It's sort of like in Linux. Who cares what happens to the kernel anymore? It's all about the desktop efforts.
Sure, the old stuff never went away: There are still innovations in the Linux Kernel, and, there are communities of people who keep up with what's happening in kernels and so on, and the myriad activities and so on. Even exciting things still happening there. But it isn't the focus of the discussion.
The primary discussion, the things businesses and users and developers and so on are concerned about, is something different.
So, this is the context in which you interpret: "The net is the OS."
They mean something very big and complex, but when you put a message into the political sphere, it's gotta be short. You have to apply the context to decipher the message.
Re:oh no, not again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Way behind"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Summary misleading (Score:5, Insightful)
where "the company" is implied to be Microsoft. However, from the article:
I think that's a rather important distinction.
Heard it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Way behind"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I have a hard time believing claims like this (Score:5, Insightful)
What about Windows ME?
I think you'd find a lot of people disagreeing with you on that one.
Re:oh no, not again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I have a hard time believing claims like this (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right. Microsoft has been talking about taking a radical new approach ever since Windows 95, which actually was a radical change from Windows 3.1. I remember when Windows 2000 was going to have a totally different interface, filesystem, etc. Little by little, news came out that the more radical changes were going to be pushed out until the next version, and Windows 2000 would focus on transitioning to the NT kernel. Same with XP, and same with Vista.
You want to know, what? I don't think it's the worst thing. Really, I love it when someone comes up with something incredible and revolutionary and new, but incremental improvements are good too. Just so long as the improvements are real and helpful. It helps is the cost of upgrade is proportionate to the usefulness of the improvements.
Re:oh no, not again (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, look--a hasty generalization!
Count the number of home desktops last year. Count the highest-selling PC game last year (sold-through, not sold-in). Compare. I bet the second number is at least an order of magnitude less.
I honestly think... (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft(r) has been on fire for a while, I don't think they're going to crash but I do think that some reorganization needs to take place or these swift, small and much more elite groups of talented individuals such as it was with Google(tm), will continue to stay focused and move products through the market much more efficiently, with respect to their development process and organizational structure while their products expand and user base grows along with that.
I think the last rock solid thing to come from Microsoft(r) was Server 2003.
Not that I'm ANY kind of business tycoon to say the least, I just use their products and I can tell when their attitude began to affect their product quality directly. They lost focus on what makes a good piece of software, and much like AOL, it plagues them with every release of software they produce.
Vista has been nothing but a corporate sponsored spawn of monopolistic evil with a ridiculous amount of YOUR system resources being used to keep ridiculously idiotic counter-piracy measures. Microsoft is dancing to the tune of the media giants and the OWNERS OF THE COOKIE JARS they have their hands in, they're using their user base as advertising 'meat'.
I think most of us can admit that the windows 2000 line was an amazing upshot in stability as far as a Microsoft product was concerned, yes previous NT was solid as well. Some will say that windows 98 was an incredible upshot, and yes it was, but perhaps we can consider the spot-light of this to be on networking configuration and accessibility.
The Microsoft(r) today, doesn't innovate; it regurgitates.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I hear California is already proposing a 5 day waiting period for computer purchases.
targeting a popular system makes less secure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the main problem here. All this 'never' talk merely concerns our current generation. And maybe the generation after us. Do you think your grandchildren will know DOS?
What would have happened if you told the people in 1800 that in 1876 bell would invent a telephone which would make it possible to talk with everyone in the world. Would they have believed you? No. What if you told them, that only 100 years later everyone would have such a telephone, only then it would be called cellphone and you could carry it around with you and even see the person you're talking to. They would have laughed at you. Would someone have believed you in 1900 when you would have told people that in only a few years, there would be television. Soon in color. Transmitted via satellites in the sky. And small silver discs where they could fit several movies on. They would have taken you for a poor lunatic.
Do you believe people now when they say in 100 years you won't sit in front of computers anymore because they're wired into your neural system and use wireless power? Or that we will have colonized several planets?
Re:I have a hard time believing claims like this (Score:1, Insightful)
Vista Ultimate full retail will be over 300 pounds in the UK. At that price I'd expect it to felate me, not bend me over the DRM barrel.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
So, given that, tell me again, what is the fuss all about today? How is it new?
Re:millions of lines of code? (Score:2, Insightful)
So instead of building Windos Vista, Bill Gates could have funded the first and second Mars expeditions?
LOL
Re:After Vista, Windows will die (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's somewhat unlikely.
(Don't debate with analogies. A single relevant difference is enough to invalidate your argument. And this single relevant difference was a doozie. Also, it was obvious.)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MS needs a change. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not a MS fan, or really anti-MS - (read my other posts) but Microsoft are stuck here, they cant simply adopt a radical new operating system (even with virtualisation) and throw out all legacy support. They have gone as far as they can with Vista (which really isn't a re-write, its a mash up and an attempt to address some of their major problems). With legacy support they will continue to have the same security problems that have plagued them since the inception of windows.
The reasoning is simple, if Microsoft adopted a *nix like kernel and re-wrote everything then they would have an OS with little or no software support, little or no Hardware support, and they would find themselves competing directly with Linux / Solaris / BSD etc...without the benefit of already having a huge installed user base with a clear upgrade path. There would be one additional exception, their offering would not be free (unless they would simultaneously go down the software as a service route and make their OS free.. which throws up even more issues see My other post [slashdot.org])
.Microsoft wont change their core OS not because they cant, but because if they do they are committing suicide. Even with coercion of hardware and software vendors, there will be a point when the Hardware and software vendors will simply have to decide whether it is cheaper for them to try and port / support the new Microsoft OS (which would be completely new, untested and unproven) or put the effort of supporting Microsoft's new offering into supporting a *nix, which already has all the features of this new Microsoft OS, and much longer pedigree and larger user base (assuming the initial Microsoft user base as 0 after all).Re:millions of lines of code? (Score:2, Insightful)
My point, which was obvious to nearly everybody who didn't reply, was that the post about lines of code was a rather shallow way to look at it and that there's definitely more to it.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)
The average user isn't as much like us Slashdotters as we like to believe. The average user doesn't care about filesystems, directory structures, magnetic media, etc. The average user just wants it to work. This is a general rule, and of course there are exceptions.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:4, Insightful)
We might not have a Enterprise or BattleStar in 80 years. But what about 2000 years? Humankind has come from arena fights with lions and bears to a super technological race in 2000 years. Or what about 50.000 years? In 50.000 years we have developed language, fire, the wheel, built houses, villages, cities. What about 100.000 years? 100.000 years is a long time. We looked like monkeys 100.000 years ago. Or half a million years. The face of the planet has changed a dozen times in the last 500.000 years. Races have emerged, others have become extinct. One million years. A timespan most of us can't even begin to imagine. Mammals exist for more than 70 million years. Round it up to 100 million years. 100.000.000 - just look at that number... It's 1000 times longer than mankind existed. And yet, considering the age of our planet, it's not much. The earth is nearly 50 times older - 4.570.000.000 years to be exact.
Now think time. What mankind did in 2000 years is pretty amazing. Think about what happens in say 1 million years from now. That's a realistic timespan. Unless we kill ourselves, mankind will probably exist in 1 million years. And even that is veeeery far from "forever". We may be able to imagine what technology will be able to do in 50 years. We may even get a few things right when we look at technology in 100 years. But from there on it's pure speculation. And probably very very far from reality.
Linux is a superb gaming platform. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, most computer users don't care about games in the way that you care about games; second, Linux has the games that a vast majority of users care about; third, even if Linux had the sort of games that you care about, it won't see widespread adoption on home desktops in rich countries.
Most computer users don't care about big budget games. They're too complex. They take too long to learn. They're too expensive. I know multitudes of computer users. None of them play big budget games like Half Life, Neverwinter Nights, WoW, or even the Sims. I don't play any of them either.
When eliminating the big budget games that appeal to a small subset of users, Linux has great games. KDE and GNOME both come with the sorts of little puzzle games that people whittle away at for a few minutes each day. They are the analog to Solitare, probably the most popular Windows app of all time. My dad had never used Linux before in his life, but he sat down at my Gentoo box and within minutes had discovered one of the GNOME games on his own. Furthermore, lots of people pass the time at online games at places like Yahoo Games. These run just fine on Linux right inside Firefox.
But, let's set aside the fact that Linux is an excellent gaming platform for the majority of people who just like a simple game every now and again. Even if Linux had a perfect port of every single bloated, big-budget, proprietary computer game out there, we still won't see widespread desktop Linux adoption on home desktops in rich countries. People in rich countries can afford Windows, and they see no compelling reason to switch away. Linux won't provide a compelling reason for most users to switch. They'll switch to Mac before they switch to Linux.
In short, the lack of Linux desktop adoption has absolutely nothing to do with game availability.
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, using traditional tactics, MS might thwart those attempts.
Re:I have a hard time believing claims like this (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree. Many people out there, given the choice between either win98 or winME would gladly choose 98. There are a variety of reasons, but they pretty much boil down to winME being an unstable POS.
Perhaps this is because MS realized they was no future for that branch, but it doesn't change the bottom line that winME was an "upgrade" you were better off without.
Re:No one is going to store their porn remotely. (Score:1, Insightful)
I do.
I used to have gigs and gigs, hard drives full. Then I realized I was always downloading new porn, free, from the web, never even glancing at the enormous archives that I had. So I got rid of the extra hard drives. And I still just keep downloading new porn, deleted stuff after 3 days or so.
Re:No, this is correct, it's about lifcycle time (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh no, not again (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see it now: "Oh, you want to right-click? That's a $15 add-on feature. Can I interest you in a bundle that includes right-click, scroll bars, the Start button, and Excel for $150?... I'm sorry; the Start button is only available with the Excel productivity bundle."
Re:Not gonna happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Another lesson that goes parallel to the one that you mentioned, however, is that the predictions that are made tend to be unrealistic and way off base. I'm still waiting for my flying car, but few people in the 1950's were talking about anything resembling the Internet. One thing that we have learned is that the technologies that we think will exist in the future probably won't, at least in the form we think they will.
You give them too little credit. (Score:5, Insightful)
So anyway, a bright person a century ago would probably have believed, given sufficient explanations, most of the technology we have today. Cellphones are just radios plus telephones; televisions just small movie screens; automobiles are significantly faster but still easily recognizable for what they are. It is only when you start to drill down into the underlying technology and infrastructure that enables modern devices that they truly would astound someone living a century ago.
The "futurists" of the late 19th and early 20th century predicted many of the technological developments of the past 100 years remarkably well (obviously not in detail, but conceptually in many cases they were right on). You would have to go back further than that, to eras when people were not used to continuous change -- where it was not expected that the world one grew up in would be different than the world one's children would inherit -- in order to find people who would be unable to conceive of our current state.
To be perfectly honest, I think many a person from the early 20th century would be a little disappointed if they were suddenly transported forward to the current day. Although many things have changed, a great many other things have not or are at least recognizable equivalents of devices or activities present 100 years ago. Someone who expected the rate of progress seen during the period from 1800 to 1900 to continue and increase, might find life in 2000 startlingly familiar (and sadly devoid of flying cars).
Can't lead when you're hell-bent on following. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ding ding ding! Seriously, you should get a prize or something.
You can't replace Windows with Linux, when a lot of Linux development seems to be centered around making Linux as much like Windows as possible. As bloated and generally inelegant as Windows is, most people just don't have a very compelling reason to switch away from it. And cost isn't a big factor, since most people don't 'see' the cost of Windows in any direct fashion anyway. (And the people who do see the cost directly -- principally barebones builders -- can just pirate it and always will.)
As long as Linux is trying to 'catch up' to Windows, it can't ever surpass it and provide any convincing reasons for people to switch.
Apple, over the past 5+ years, has done a good job of giving users reasons to switch to their platform, and they didn't do it by trying to emulate the market leader. They picked a few things that they thought they could do better (multimedia, "digital hub" functions, ease of use) and concentrated their effort there. When you use a Mac, you know you're using a Mac -- they don't attempt to 'out-Windows' Windows, and that's what I see a lot of Linux distros trying to do. (Look at KDE's default skin and tell me that's not the out-of-wedlock child of Windows 98 and XP.) The Mac OS, love it or hate it, makes a stand and seems proud to not be Windows-y; many Linux distros seem embarrassed and suffering an identity crisis by comparison.
I'll end with one small anecdote: the most consistently impressive way I've found to show Linux to Windows diehards, is to show them a MythTV/Knoppmyth box. Why is it so impressive? Because it's something that their Windows PC just can't do (admittedly, I suppose MCE+SnapStream is close, but most people have never heard of it). You're not going to win admiration and envy by showing a Linux machine running OpenOffice and editing a spreadsheet; acting proud of that just makes Linux look like a joke. (Again, it's somewhat cool that it's all free, but not that impressive to most people.) But when you show a Linux machine doing something that most people's Windows desktops are just never going to do, and suddenly it looks a lot more interesting. And at that point, you can just drop in "oh yeah, it does all that Office-type stuff, too."
Re:oh no, not again (Score:3, Insightful)
But if *all* software was "leasted", then there comes a point where people have to decide how much money to part with on a *regular* basis. A few lucky companies will remain popular in this model and will be wildly successful because they take the first part of people's money. But many other software companies will barely scrap buy. People won't pay $300
If what you purchase on physcial media costs $200, then rental for a year must be about $30 in order for it to work. Otherwise what'll happen is the few successful software providers will starve the rest of the market of its revenue and then we'll see competitive advantages in physically installed media that doesn't expire (what a concept).
Right now, we are moving towards the age of paying every year for updates. Its roughly the same thing except if you don't pay you don't get updates after your year expires. The only difference between this model and rental is that if you don't renew you don't use the software anymore.
Can OSS compete in this market? Perhaps. If the trend leans towards web based software as a rental model, then OSS can only survive as long as they providers can support the bandwidth.
Time will tell, but I for one won't pay $300
Thanks,
Leabre
Re:oh no, not again (Score:3, Insightful)
Which sector of computer users is it that drives the creation of higher spec graphics cards? was it aol users? corporate desktop users? email/browsing only users? Nope, gamers.....
Re:Opening sentence double-negative correction (Score:1, Insightful)
I realize it was a rhetorical question, but after reading the entirety of your post, plus a few of your journal entries, I don't think you should worry overmuch about your precision. If half the members of this website were half as erudite as yourself, there would be a much better Wheat/Chaff ratio.
(posting as A.C. since this is SO off-topic!?
Every OS is vulnerable to phishing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You give them too little credit. (Score:3, Insightful)