Where is Microsoft going today?
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Or rather, in the future. I have an idea... Ditch legacy and create a lean system (that you can still dual boot to legacy or includes a decent VM) then you should be able to come up with an OS that will fly. Long term yes, with some risk yes, but otherwise I think Microsoft is well down the path of diminishing returns on desktops. Elaine (slightly provocative fluffy tigress) The tigress is here :-D
MacOS? (hides) -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
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Trollslayer wrote:
Ditch legacy and create a lean system (that you can still dual boot to legacy or includes a decent VM) then you should be able to come up with an OS that will fly.
One might have said that competition and a free market would eventually create the conditions for that to happen, but I don't think that will happen. Yes, Microsoft is well down the path of diminishing returns on desktops and there's no way to avoid that, even with the bubble that will occur now that you can dual boot a Mac with XP, and with the forthcoming release of Vista. So instead, what Microsoft needs to do is to eventually move out of the desktop OS business and figure out what the next revolution is going to be. I honestly don't think thin client is it. There's too many people working without highspeed connections, working off the net (and also off the grid) becomes difficult, and security is a perceived problem. Personally, I feel it's going to be information management and retrieval. There's a glut of information out there, and it's hard to search, categorize, index, cross reference, maintain, and re-access. If I were Microsoft, that's what I'd focus on. Because soon, we're going to transition from being information creators to becoming information analyzers. Sure, there will be still be people who create information, but there will most likely be big business in searching, combining, and processing the glut of information already out there. I guess the Empire known as Microsoft is reaching a Seldon Crisis. :) Marc Pensieve Functional Entanglement vs. Code Entanglement Static Classes Make For Rigid Architectures Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 9:11 Thursday 6th April, 2006
Marc Clifton wrote:
There's too many people working without highspeed connections, working off the net (and also off the grid) becomes difficult
As one of the few who has a LARGE set of computers off the net, and a few off the grid completely (self contained power to the building/vehicle, no interlink but sneakernet), I agree! _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -- modified at 10:32 Thursday 6th April, 2006
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Trollslayer wrote:
Ditch legacy and create a lean system (that you can still dual boot to legacy or includes a decent VM) then you should be able to come up with an OS that will fly.
One might have said that competition and a free market would eventually create the conditions for that to happen, but I don't think that will happen. Yes, Microsoft is well down the path of diminishing returns on desktops and there's no way to avoid that, even with the bubble that will occur now that you can dual boot a Mac with XP, and with the forthcoming release of Vista. So instead, what Microsoft needs to do is to eventually move out of the desktop OS business and figure out what the next revolution is going to be. I honestly don't think thin client is it. There's too many people working without highspeed connections, working off the net (and also off the grid) becomes difficult, and security is a perceived problem. Personally, I feel it's going to be information management and retrieval. There's a glut of information out there, and it's hard to search, categorize, index, cross reference, maintain, and re-access. If I were Microsoft, that's what I'd focus on. Because soon, we're going to transition from being information creators to becoming information analyzers. Sure, there will be still be people who create information, but there will most likely be big business in searching, combining, and processing the glut of information already out there. I guess the Empire known as Microsoft is reaching a Seldon Crisis. :) Marc Pensieve Functional Entanglement vs. Code Entanglement Static Classes Make For Rigid Architectures Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 9:11 Thursday 6th April, 2006
The next thing is TV. And Media. Thats why MS are putting so much into Windows for TV.
Marc Clifton wrote:
information management and retrieval
Google and others are already there. But, they are going to distibute Media in the future too, TV, music etc. Nunc est bibendum
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I disagree. This is the stance that Netscape took, which ultimately made them a nonplayer - they went from Market dominance to being an ankle bitter. Rewriting a large system from scratch is rarely a good idea, and if attempted, those attempting had better continue to allocate resources to the old system. Here are a few reasons why I think doing so is a bad idea: 1) The system is too big for a small group of people to understand well, so there is probably a LOT of small, seemingly insignifant lines of code that addressed one of the numerous bugs discovered over the years. That code is the product (albeit not perfect ;-) of years of realworld use. 2) Developing from scratch drastically reduces a business's ability to adapt to changing market conditions; a certain foundational threshold would have to be obtained before a lot of the feature set could be built. 3) Inevitably it would have an incremental release where funtionality is lost, possibly alienating users accustomed to having that functionality. 4) Nothing is any good until version 3 anyway, at which it would be bloated and time for yet another rewrite. ;-) Daniel Wilson
Daniel Wilson wrote:
Nothing is any good until version 3 anyway, at which it would be bloated and time for yet another rewrite.
hey!!!! I am at Version 2.94 and I disagree! ;P But we are skipping 3.0 and going to 4.0 just in case.... :laugh: (actually 3.0 will be considered internal release as it already exists, just not at the same scale as 2.94 because it is a redesign) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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So you think it's best to continue the bloat? For how long? "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
You have to retire old code, but slowly. I would recommend that Microsoft retires old stuff support in the speed of my most conservative customers. :cool:
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighist -
Imagine if other industries took this stance. :omg: Just because CPUs are faster and they have more RAM at their disposal, that in no way should mean sloppier programs.
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"There is no death, only a change of worlds." - Native American Proverb
Long time ago I think it was Niklas Wirth who said "Programs get worse faster than hardware gets better"
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighist -
You have to retire old code, but slowly. I would recommend that Microsoft retires old stuff support in the speed of my most conservative customers. :cool:
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighistpeterchen wrote:
I would recommend that Microsoft retires old stuff support in the speed of my most conservative customers.
I still have customers using DOS!! :sigh: "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
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Long time ago I think it was Niklas Wirth who said "Programs get worse faster than hardware gets better"
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighistpeterchen wrote:
...who said "Programs get worse faster than hardware gets better"
Close. His quote was "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"There is no death, only a change of worlds." - Native American Proverb
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MacOS? (hides) -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
*seeks* The tigress is here :-D
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peterchen wrote:
...who said "Programs get worse faster than hardware gets better"
Close. His quote was "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"There is no death, only a change of worlds." - Native American Proverb
"What intel giveth , microsoft taketh away" (Psuedo olde english )
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peterchen wrote:
...who said "Programs get worse faster than hardware gets better"
Close. His quote was "Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster."
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"There is no death, only a change of worlds." - Native American Proverb
Heh - at least I got the name right :-O
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighist -
Heh - at least I got the name right :-O
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighistI had the honor of meeting Prof. Wirth when I was in college.
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed." - Mark Twain
"There is no death, only a change of worlds." - Native American Proverb
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Given that quad-core chips and 1GB memory are going to be standard desktop equipment in next to no time "bloat" is not really an issue. '--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
Given that quad-core chips and 1GB memory are going to be standard desktop equipment in next to no time "bloat" is not really an issue.
Oh so naive. I remember when I went from a 400 mb hard drive to 1.6 gb. I knew then that I was going to be set for the rest of my life. 6 months later mp3's hit and 1.6 gigs was absolutely inadequate. So I went up to 15 gb's in the late 90's. Surely that is enough space, until 1 gb hard drive space consuming video games hit the market....I am now running a mirrored 120 gb harddrive for my media and games, which I built last year mind you, and it's full. Next I will be an absolutely temporary 250 gb mirror. :sigh: The moral, "bloat" will not go away because of hardware advancement unless software makers do something about it.
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Or rather, in the future. I have an idea... Ditch legacy and create a lean system (that you can still dual boot to legacy or includes a decent VM) then you should be able to come up with an OS that will fly. Long term yes, with some risk yes, but otherwise I think Microsoft is well down the path of diminishing returns on desktops. Elaine (slightly provocative fluffy tigress) The tigress is here :-D
Apple has repeatedly tried a version of the rewrite option which has contributed to its pathetic market share. Even with the original Mac OS, the rule of thumb is that an application would last four releases. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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One of the problems I can see with ditching "legacy" support is that they would then be open to much more competition. If with Vista MS decided that it would not support any of the previous code/applications, instead requiring either a dual-boot or running a VM system, then there would be no advantage to running Vista over any other OS - and considering Windows' main competitor is essentially free, I don't think MS would be willing to take the risk. That said, it would be amusing to see Vista running all it's apps in a port of WINE :laugh:
icabod wrote:
One of the problems I can see with ditching "legacy" support is that they would then be open to much more competition. If with Vista MS decided that it would not support any of the previous code/applications, instead requiring either a dual-boot or running a VM system, then there would be no advantage to running Vista over any other OS - and considering Windows' main competitor is essentially free, I don't think MS would be willing to take the risk. That said, it would be amusing to see Vista running all it's apps in a port of WINE
I think the apple solution with the old OS running in a low overhead sandbox for legacy apps would be the proper way to go. MS's Windows on Windows sounds superficially similar to this, but afaik most of win64 is just win32 recompiled to use a 64bit int for pointers. yes I know there;s more to it, but it;s still mostly legacy code with the serials filed off.
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One of the problems I can see with ditching "legacy" support is that they would then be open to much more competition. If with Vista MS decided that it would not support any of the previous code/applications, instead requiring either a dual-boot or running a VM system, then there would be no advantage to running Vista over any other OS - and considering Windows' main competitor is essentially free, I don't think MS would be willing to take the risk. That said, it would be amusing to see Vista running all it's apps in a port of WINE :laugh:
Microsoft already know that their biggest competitor is their previous version. Windows 2000 still has many more users than MacOS. Windows XP is likely to have north of 50% usage share for at least a couple of years after Vista's released. In that context, compatibility with your previous version is a complete no-brainer. Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder
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Given that quad-core chips and 1GB memory are going to be standard desktop equipment in next to no time "bloat" is not really an issue. '--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
Pretty much what glitch177k said. We have been saying xGhz chips and xGb/Mb of memory will solve our problems but they never have. Software always fills the gap. regards, Paul Watson Ireland Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.
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Apple has repeatedly tried a version of the rewrite option which has contributed to its pathetic market share. Even with the original Mac OS, the rule of thumb is that an application would last four releases. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
Apple has repeatedly tried a version of the rewrite option which has contributed to its pathetic market share
How much do you think that contributed? regards, Paul Watson Ireland Feed Henry!
eh, stop bugging me about it, give it a couple of days, see what happens.