Windows: Not Doomed Yet 737
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.)"
Shrug... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
nope (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Shrug... (Score:4, Insightful)
I kinda remember similar stories of MS and all that being posted on /. back in '00. Didn't seem to happen then either, but MS does need to get it's head out of it's ass and actually listen to what consumers want. They seem to be suffering from the "Big3" mentality of the 70's, where in the auto industry they simply stated: "Consumers will drive what we tell them to drive, and love it." Of course that was pretty damn close to the collapse of the entire North American auto industry, and imports took off.
Simply adjust Metro vs Desktop to remove pain (Score:5, Insightful)
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
All about corporate users now (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Shrug... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't mind fading in to a business which made $16 billion profit last year and still employs over half-a-million people.
Re:Shrug... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all the result of some pageview whores looking to stir up some hits in an otherwise pretty dull period. Yeah, people are buying tablets and smartphones. No doubt about it. Not buying Windows 8 because they're not strongly compelled.
So, they do the death watch, change the CEO trick, pile on the the horrible histories, bring up the traditional rivalries, and rake the muck.
That's you, ZDNet. You listening? Gonna put on the fishnet stockings and red lipstick again? You can do the same thing on Slashdot just by dissing all or any of the Sacred Cows here. The Google Ad revenues must have been stupendous.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Same old song, second verse same as the first (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The PC isn't dying (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Find out what we need to get work done! (Score:4, Insightful)
They asked professionals what they wanted. The answer was "Windows 7, fuck another upgrade".
Windows 8 is aimed at consumers, not professionals. It's not even aimed at making consumers happy, it's aimed at training consumers in Microsoft's touch UI, so the consumers will consider getting a Surface Pro / RT, or a Windows phone.
Microsoft realised, after about 10 years of Apple kind its ass, that touch devices are here to stay. So they are trying to leverage their PC dominance to drive the sales of post-PC devices.
Will this upset professionals? Most of them won't upgrade anyway. Windows 7 is good enough for them.
Re:Shrug... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people don't care about the operating system, they just use it to launch their apps. Businesses don't want to rewrite all their custom software just because they are upgrading to a new OS. Microsoft revenue is still going up.
Not any more than HP (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Yes, fire Steve Ballmer (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:nope (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
forgetting something, are we? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lets finish that statement, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:How relevant is the PC, still? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It is not going bust tomorrow. But ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:nope (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
How does replacing a pop-up start menu with a full page start menu, but otherwise make the OS faster in every way (boot, sleep/resume, use) and fully backwards compatible "hamper the hell out of work". I get that the new start menu can be jarring, and that the need to click once to get to traditional desktop mode can be irritating, but I'm really lost in the Slashdot hyperbole of how extremely bad this is. I agree that metro and desktop could have smoother co-existence, and better defaults to stay with one or the other for the people who want that. But as I have and use Win8 on a new non-touch laptop, I think the exaggerations are ridiculous.
Re:Lack of necessity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lack of necessity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nope (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:nope (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I think the Biz PC drove Home PC sales (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:nope (Score:5, Insightful)
> How does replacing a pop-up start menu with a full page start menu, but otherwise make the OS faster in every way (boot, sleep/resume, use) and fully backwards compatible "hamper the hell out of work".
Well, because it doesn't do that at all. Basic things work radically differently, the visual cues that help non-geeks navigate computers are gone, the fullscreen paradigm doesn't fit well on large dense monitors, and touch gestures don't work well with a mouse. And even if all of these things were surmountable, the training issues alone are nightmarish.
When we (just recently) rolled out Win7, we did some pilot programs and app testing as part of due diligence, but we did not have to do user training or amp up the helpdesk because 7 behaved as people have been led to expect. 8 .... well, geeks can eventually figure out anything, so I'm sure there are alpha nerds out there that have put in the time necessary to learn to make 8 dance, but regular users don't want a GUI challenge, they want to run their apps and get their work done. It ain't gonna happen. We'll wait until something reasonable becomes available. Because 8 hampers the hell out of getting work done, for regular people.
Re:What trend? (Score:5, Insightful)