12.11.10
Microsoft Windows Weakness on Desktops and Phones
It’s vapourware time
Summary: Microsoft talks about Vista 8 [sic] and mobile patents rather than existing products, which simply don’t sell so well
A FEW days ago we showed that Vista 7 adoption was actually quite poor, but Microsoft dishonestly reported false figures. The post “Cost-ineffective “7″ Deployment” helps explain why the operating system just doesn’t make sense for a business, based on economic terms:
That looks like -$1250 and you get nothing for the expenditure… How is that cost-effective? Any possible benefit is just a wash, about the same as the last system that you are chucking while still viable. One could go to Debian GNU/Linux and be free of most of these costs. Really. If you can get all your machines to boot PXE, you can slap GNU/Linux onto hard drives in 20 minutes or so and you are done. One re-boot and the system is working, free of malware and not slowing down until there is a hardware or network failure. If the machines are really old, you will be better off using LTSP, a package in many distros these days, to boot them and users run applications and sessions on a powerful new machine that can please dozens at once.
Microsoft understands that Vista 7 adoption will be slow and businesses see no reason to use it. Some might even move to another operating system. In order to “freeze the market” — as Microsoft's Nathan Myhrvold once put it — they are dropping a name as a form of vapourware. They say that the mythical Vista 8 will have an interface called “Wind” but provide no proof:
As of now, all of these are mere rumors as there is no way to confirm any of them. So take them with a pinch of salt.
According to previous leaks from Microsoft, we are two years away from knowing if any of these are true.
Based on this confidential Microsoft document [PDF], Microsoft uses vapourware (speaking about future versions or products that don’t yet exist) only when the competition is too much to bear. In the mobile arena, for example, Linux/Android beats Windows very easily and “Microsoft Doesn’t Expect Windows Phone 7 Sales To Catch Up To iOS or Android Any Time Soon,” says this one headline. Glyn Moody links to this other article where Microsoft continues to avoid answering the question about number of sales. Microsoft carries on collecting more patents because Vista Phony 7 [sic] seems as though it’s not much better than the “KIN”, just better advertised. Microsoft explained that it would use patents to monetise mobile phones and what it means by patents is racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (demands without disclosure, backed by threats). In the coming years Microsoft will be more of a leech owing to the broken patent law. It’s already happening. █
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Agent_Smith said,
December 11, 2010 at 5:23 am
2 things here: people wants the softwares, not the OS from M$. Then, one thing I’m working in my job is to make Virtual Box run the softwares folks need. So, one can run the programs and lock M$ out.
The other thing is, whatever this “wind”(could be called Vapour interface, for that matter) is, and my hunch it is something like the Kinect controlling the computer, Linux already robbed the thunder from it. If M$ says you can control your computer with gestures in the air, with Winblow$ 8, Ubuntu and Linux already do it now. So, when Winblow$ 8 launches, Linux will have at least a 2 year head start.
twitter said,
December 11, 2010 at 10:55 am
Ah, Microsoft vaporware. Remember the 2007 “Minwin”? Longhorn? Cairo?
It must be that Vista 7 is starting to outlive Vista 7 hype. By now, everyone realizes that Windows 7 does not run on cell phones or netbooks, eats battery life on laptops and is just as bloated and insecure as Vista was. They also know that it breaks their working software can causes lots of headaches while delivering a truly underwhelming user experience. If Windows 7 had virtual desktops, people could compare it to older gnu/linux desktops like KDE 3.x or Gnome 1, which it superficially resembles.
Will said,
December 11, 2010 at 2:21 pm
When I saw the new interface announcement, the first thing that came to my mind was that “Wind” would probably end up looking like some cheap ripoff of either Unity or Gnome Shell. Since that’s basically what Windows 7 did with KDE 4.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 11th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Yes, one of my friends thought so without even having background in GNU/Linux. He saw KDE4 and then Vista 7 [sic].
twitter Reply:
December 11th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
These comparisons give too much credit to Windows 7, which is five to ten years behind gnu/linux. They have yet to implement virtual desktops, something that’s been around gnu/linux for more than 13 years. Their use of native transparency and compostiting lagged by at least five years and their menu system is still primitive and inflexible. Finally, their toolset is extremely poor compared to free software which offers dictionaries, graphing calculators, weather applications and many other toys as integrated parts of the system. Windows has always relied on “third parties” for functionality and left it up to OEMs and users to do the work of making the Windows distribution worthwhile.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 11th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
They didn’t feel like they needed to improve if they could keep the market share. It’s just like IE6.