09.30.10
Gemini version available ♊︎Not So Keen on KIN2K (Vista Phone 7) and Why Windows Will No Longer Matter in a Mobile Future
Smaller, better, faster, stronger
Summary: Amid progression and transition into a future of mobile devices Windows is unable to keep up and GNU/Linux increasingly matters on the client side; the future of Windows on “the desktop” is doubted as well
WINDOWS Phone 7, aka Vista Phone 7 (it will perform poorly like Vista and the “7″ in it is just Seven-washing), is going to fail just like many Windows Mobile predecessors. We have already summarised many indications that, in spite of half a billion dollars to be spent on marketing, Vista Phone 7 will be hardly more successful than KIN [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It just doesn’t have what it takes to compete against Linux and hypePhone, for reasons that are easy to see (number of applications, cost, brand awareness, and functionality). The Linux-based Android, for example, is quickly moving up the hierarchy of scale, from phones to tablets and sometimes to full sub-notebooks and notebooks (Chrome OS).
“Sadly for Microsoft, the world is going light and mobile right now, sometimes Web-based too (sending workloads to the server side).”Vista Phone 7 is being mocked around the Web for being buggy and disappointing (see these two new screenshots [1, 2]). Notice the target market of Vista Phone 7 advertisements, as well. They target kids. That’s exactly what they did with KIN and we already know how that strategy went.
Sadly for Microsoft, the world is going light and mobile right now, sometimes Web-based too (sending workloads to the server side). Microsoft’s only truly profitable business is stuck on the desktop with a “fat” operating system and “fat” office suite for income. These monopolies cannot be easily transformed and ported to the mobile world. Microsoft spends so much money on Vista Phone 7 advertisements because it cannot afford to give up on this market. If everything carries on the way it already does, then Microsoft may have to split the company and spin off the mobile/Web efforts as separate because they lose too much money and might be worth selling away like Razorfish, if a buyer is found at all (more details in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]).
Wayne wonders about “Windows As An Orphan Product” — basically a situation where access to Windows support is no longer available because of growing debt in the parent company (Microsoft has just approved debt of up to $16 billion).
So in effect, no one really cares if Microsoft goes bankrupt. Oh, Group 5 will hold onto Windows for as long as they can. Group 5 users can be generalized as the lowest common denominator in Information Technology. They know nothing, and they don’t want to know anything. Many of them seem to think that Microsoft invented the GUI (it was invented by Xerox), and for that matter that Microsoft invented the operating system. The Rednecks of the computer world, they’ll happily put up with virii, bad drivers, spam, just as long as they can hold onto their wonderful Windows for as long as possible. They are also the least honest. Everyone else was either willing to pay for their OS, or willing to search for a free one. Windows Desktop users would rather hunt for a crack, so that they can keep using their drug.
A migration from Windows to desktop GNU/Linux is very trivial these days. This good new post mirrors my personal experience, having recently migrated some people from Windows XP to GNU/Linux (PCLinuxOS).
Today at the dinner table my oldest, Paige, blurts out that she cannot use Windows. Not sure I was hearing her correctly I asked her what she said/meant. She indicated that her friend down the street had a computer with Windows 7 and that she, nor her friend, could figure out how to get songs off the web (legally) or off my daughter’s media player (sansa fuze) and onto her friend’s system and media player (not sure what she has).
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What does this say to me? Windows 7 obviously was not made for her. Even more, I throw this in the face to all those who say Linux is not for the masses. Bull crap. It’s not that Linux is difficult, it is that it is more often than not different.
One possible corollary is that children should be introduced to GNU/Linux at a young age. This is something which Microsoft and Bill Gates will not permit as they turn schools into their private indoctrination facilities, which just happen to be funded by taxpayers for Microsoft’s own benefit. Later this week we will publish a long post on the subject. █
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