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.
If you’re emailing, web surfing, looking at and editing photos, or playing games, most probably, you would do better to max out your RAM rather than get the faster CPU.
If you’re doing video editing, transcoding, simulations, etc. You want to get the quad core *and* max out your RAM.
So, what is the magic number, Slapshot68? At what number will the hackers start writing viable and spreadable malware for OS X? Right now there are more than 30,000,000 OS X users. And there are still ZERO viruses, ZERO spyware, and ZERO adware in the wild. There are about ten proof-of-concept Worms and Trojans. . . Which don't work and were based on already closed vulnerabilities.There have been two widely publicized break-ins by hackers using vulnerabilities in third party apps (which, incidentally, were also vulnerabilities in Vista) but both required user psrtcipation to be successful. OS X has been in the wild and exposed for seven years and OS X Server for nine. When are they going to start appearing?
You'd think that with that all time and those large numbers of vulnerable, and mostly unprotected users that we Mac users would be getting our unfair share of the over 300,000 malware apps that are out there. We aren't. Why?
"Security by Obscurity" is NOT the reason Macs (it's not MAC) are secure. It's design.
Just try starting off with a standard windows install from an OEM and try to go for a week without being Admin. You'll quickly see that Windows was never designed to run in low powered accounts.
Interesting. It is expected in a few years that most internet browsing will be done on Cell phones. Now, this does not mean an IE problem, since it is already being hurt by Firefox, etc. The problem is that people will not be using their computers - typically with windows - to do it. As software becomes more generic and less platform specific, there will be no need to get the os everyone else has. When that happens, Microsoft may go the way of another once giant. Sears...
If we're looking at the same thing: The Dell has a slightly slower processor, and a little bigger screen. You need to upgrade the Dell to Vista Ultimate to equal OS X ($150). The Dell also has a bigger hard drive. It has 2 GB of memory, but Vista will render that meaningless (OS X runs just fine on 1 GB). OTOH, the Mac is a lot smaller than the Dell, and you pay for size, or lack thereof, in the notebook market. Competitive, definitely, but neither is an absolute better value, it depends on what you're looking for.
I wouldn't suggest doing that with a Mac Pro. We haven't been able to find the parts as cheap as Apple sells that machine.
If you’ve got all your stuff installed you can easily run for months without admin privileges. Really unless you’re installing or cleaning up (deleting) you can run as guest all of the time.
Windows Administrator == OS X root.
OS X Administrator == sort-of like the old Windows Power User, except it's actually useful.
The standard out-of-the-box on a Mac and PC have you running as Administrator. On the PC this means full control to destroy the box. On the Mac you still need root to destroy it, and almost nobody runs root normally (it's actually disabled by default).
We now know from court documents that Microsoft knew integrated graphics wouldn't run Vista completely at launch time.
Mac has a larger user base than in the late 90s. This larger user base includes a lot of newbies. In the late 90s Macs had around 100 viruses in the wild. None now.
The difference? New operating system.
“Using the RAM Americans won’t use”?
Singularity is an ongoing MS project you may find interesting.
DOS rode on the coat-tails of the market power of the IBM PC, making it a must-have. When clones arrived, you ran DOS to be compatible with the IBM PC ecosystem. DOS became dominant. When Windows came out it was compatible with DOS (actually ran on top of it), making an easy transition for the DOS users. Their new OS, NT, even used the old Windows API to be compatible. Once Microsoft had a 90%+ marketshare, it could ensure that no others could compete. Contracts with OEMs said every computer shipped must come with a Windows license. OEMs needed to sell Windows to survive, but couldn't sell anything else at a competitive price. If you wanted OS/2, you had to buy a copy of Windows and then pay for OS/2 on top of that.
There were other things, but that's the basic picture of Windows' rise to dominance. During this time there were other more stable and more usable operating systems out there.
Yet, before MS Windows, there existed the McIntosh with its very nice and potent graphical interface?
Why didn’t the apple OS take the lead or overtake the Windows systems?
There actually was competition, but the competitors didn’t know how to compete. And, even with that competition, the PC was able to do basically what the people needed, quite simply for the time, and for the right price.
Because only Apple sold the Apple. It might have been a different story if Compaq had not reverse-engineered the PC.
True, only Apple had the Apple. But, Apple could’ve been the dominant PC or API if it had done things right back when it had the chance.
Vista sucks.
My MacBook Pro is the best computer I have ever owned.
I am still getting started with it.”
I’ve been using Ubuntu for three years. I used to have to load some programs and drivers, like Nvidia, from the command linebut when I upgraded to Gutsy it took care of everything.
The ease of MS?, the security of Linux.
I think MS’s server products keep getting better, but Vista is a huge step backwards. Odd that the same company that releases Windows 2003 Server can cough up a hairball like Vista. Perhaps when Vista Sp2 comes out it won’t suck - that’s what it took to make XP bearable.
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