Posted on 04/11/2008 6:50:11 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The researchers damn Windows in current form, urge radical changes
Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.
In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts.
"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve."
Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft -- frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating -- hit the "reset" button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.
"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."
Other analysts, including those at Gartner rival Forrester Research Inc., have highlighted the slow move toward Vista. Last month, Forrester said that by the end of 2007 only 6.3% of 50,000 enterprise computer users it surveyed were working with Vista. What gains Vista made during its first year, added Forrester, appeared to be at the expense of Windows 2000; Windows XP's share hardly budged.
The monolithic nature of Windows -- although Microsoft talks about Vista's modularity, Silver and MacDonald said it doesn't go nearly far enough -- not only makes it tough to deliver a worthwhile upgrade, but threatens Microsoft in the mid- and long-term.
Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced -- and low-powered -- hardware. And increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications," the two analysts said in their presentation. It takes too long for Microsoft to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the innovation arena, and in the future -- perhaps as soon as the next three years -- it's going to have trouble competing with Web applications and small, specialized devices.
"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.
"Windows as we know it must be replaced," they said in their presentation.
Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization -- specifically a hypervisor -- is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.
"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."
Backward compatibility with older applications should also be supported via virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not, as needed."
Silver and MacDonald also called on Microsoft to make it easier to move to newer versions of Windows, re-think how it licenses Windows and come up with a truly modular operating system that can grow or shrink as needed.
Microsoft has taken some new steps with Windows, although they don't necessarily match what the Gartner analysts recommended. For instance, the company recently granted Windows XP Home a reprieve from its June 30 OEM cut-off, saying it would let computer makers install the older, smaller operating system on ultra-cheap laptops through the middle of 2010.
It will also add a hypervisor to Windows -- albeit the server version -- in August, and there are signs that it will launch Windows 7, the follow-on to Vista, late next year rather than early 2010.
To be honest though, if Apple would ever sell OS X as a standalone OS that wasn’t tied to the machine I’d buy it, I believe most would.
Truth be told, MS wouldn’t be what they are now if Apple had only did that 20 years ago...
Vista's SUCCESS??? What are they, blind?
Apple was able to do their System 9 emulation on OS-X well enough to make a decent transition. Microsoft has virutalization tech in-house already that should be able to run the old OS in its entirety if need be, and move their architecture to something much more protected from crashing, and much better suited to a multiuser environment. A better driver architecture, file system, and sleep/hibernate modes that actually work would be a must for the next rev. Killing off the outdated, bloated, POS API would be icing on the cake.
I see. I know that .png is used where I work for clients web pages.
“”There is no plan to extend sales of other editions of Windows XP beyond June 30, 2008,””
Does anyone know if I buy a copy of XP just to hold on to in case I buy a new computer with Vista and want to put it on the new machine, will Microsoft allow me to register it or is the 6/30/08 date firm for authenticating the OS as well?
>> Oh please, I’ve upgraded all of my home machines with no problems at all, and the thruput on my DSL line has increased significantly due to the IP6 layer.
Windows XP SP1 has ipv6. I don’t think the networking has changed much since SP2.
>> If you put enough memory on your macine...
And there’s the reason for slowness. Microsoft never should have allowed Vista stickers on anything less that 2GB of RAM.
To each his/her own!
I have an Imac at home and run games fine under Bootcamp. Call of Duty 4 runs great, no lag at all. A slight nuisance to have to reboot into another OS but otherwise it's fine. But, as you say, to each his/her own.
When it comes to Mac vs Windows, they are not comparable. People don’t normally weigh the two options against each other. I build my own boxes so I would never look at a Mac. I would use Linux instead.
I use Macs on campus and they seem wickedly fast compared to a PC. We would save a lot of money by banning Windows on campus because it costs so much to deal with pwn3d boxen. We are constanty going into the dorms and yanking wires out of PC’s. When studentsmove into the dorms, the first thing they do is pull down the firewall.
Alright, you can’t blame Windows for user stupidity.
That’s like blaming guns for murder.
And they should have never allowed 3.1 on anything with 640K. People figured it out. 2gb costs about $70, it may be time to upgrade.
You can actually architect around that. If the filesystem had advanced permissions and the OS didn't require every user to run as an Administrator, you could have administrative applications protected, and each user in their own sandbox, unable to write to other users or the administrative area. The administrative area could then back up documents that could be wiped out by a harmful program, and if there were a problem, restore them on boot.
Of course, that would mean every administrative application would have to be signed by Microsoft, and drivers too for that matter. And there would have to be a way to have lower applications stored to another universally accessible section of the drive, and all applications would have to save preferences and other user changable data to their sections. It's a big change, but it could be done.
Windows was designed to be easily owned. It’s part of the ease of use feature. You can run a program from the email client. You are handing an idiot the means of his undoing.
Not only that, you encourage the user of the box to run it as root.
I think the new version of Parallels is supposed to work better with games.
3.1 ran with ONLY 640K. We had machines with 28 meg of RAM and they still ran out of resources.
Never had a problem with pictures, and I send a ton of them; it’s a standard format. Are they using jpegs? If it’s tifs, she can set her default to Windows and it will work on both platforms. Or perhaps it’s her camera format.
If she is sending a screenshot that’s a png file unless converted, dunno if that’s the problem.
Office works fine on Mac, so does the full range of Adobe apps. Of course email, browsers..
Obviously if you have an app you must run and it only runs on Windows, you have to have a Windows box - or you can buy a Mac and run both Windows and MacOS.
There are some apps that require Windows, but outside of specialized business apps and small highly specialized apps, these are pretty rare.
If you’re a heavy duty computer gamer, you should be in a PC.
Yeah, but you work cheaper than the Taiwanese. :)
You got that right. I do some side work for a client, and he was forced to buy a new PC from a retailer. Vista was his only option as XP wasn't available on the new OEM computers. I told him to buy an XP Pro disk. I go to install XP on his new computer, and it wouldn't even get passed the initial installation steps before bombing out. HP said the computer would only run Vista, so we were stuck with it.
Setting the computer up for the guy was dreadfully painful. It was slow, having to 'think'(this is on a brand new fast machine that was designed for it, mind you) for a few seconds to do just about anything. The interface and layout of the OS is inefficient. Doing even the simplest administrative tasks require too many clicks and navigation steps. You almost have to go through hell just to configure a network adapter. lol Turning off the UAC makes using Vista not as frustrating, but even then it still sucks badly.
Microsoft had better get this heaping pile of bloatware junk out of the way fast, or they are gonna take a beating. I just can't believe how a company as big as theirs can do something so unbelievably stupid in releasing such an OS. Who in the hell working there could have actually thought Vista was a good idea? I wonder if they still have a job? LOL!!
Yes and if you spec the identical components vs. Dell, the Mac is cheaper.
So you’re paying that premium for the privilege of using St. Steve’s OS.
No, you're paying more for that spiffy Dell logo. :)
One thing OS-X got right was revamping it's painting system to be up to date with modern video cards. When windows overlap in Windows (XP), they really overlap, and sections must be repainted. Video has to use overlays that the video card takes care of, but it's very limited. Move a window on a Mac and there is no problem, no delay. Move a window in front of other windows in Windows, and you will see each window underneath slowly repainting itself, even on a blazingly fast machine. I believe Vista fixed this, but they tried to do too much and sent the hardware requirements too high for many computer buyers.
Nope. And photos aren't an internal app. I photo uses standard formats, and screeenshots are pngs. I haven't seen .pict in many many years.
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