Microsoft Comeback Or – Nail In The Coffin
Vista is dead.
If you purchased a Vista upgrade or ordered a PC with Vista pre-installed, you probably felt the pain that goes along with a severely maimed operating system. Then only to have Microsoft abandon it two years later — in favor of its clone — Windows 7.
Is it over for Microsoft’s OS market dominance? Has Apple scored enough market share during Vista’s follies to get their OSX foot in the mainstream door? Then there’s Ubuntu — did they too [along with Apple] bite into user share for a run on the Microsoft bank?
Hardly.
Microsoft is positioning themselves for a comeback. Right? They socked away tons of invaluable lessons-learned during the Vista episode — lessons that normally would have rolled most other companies under the bus.
Or, did Microsoft [for the most part] simply polish Vista off into the gem we know as their next flagship OS?
The answer is yes — Windows 7 is shaping up as a repeat of Vista. At least at the kernel level.
Chris Flores of Microsoft had this to say:
Windows Vista established a very solid foundation, particularly on subsystems such as graphics, audio, and storage. Windows Server 2008 was built on that foundation and Windows 7 will be as well. Contrary to some speculation, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7.
Then what’s in a name?
Windows 7 — a snappy little product name and a lucky number by most western standards — it promises us an OS that’s just as peppy as its name. Microsoft’s concept is to trim back the restrictive feeling in Vista and allow users to ‘take back’ control of their PC. Then why is 7′s interface eerily Vista-like with Vista-powered under the hood?
Has Microsoft pulled off enough tweaks to give 7 the traction it needs in the current economic slowdown. Can they stay ahead in a very competitive OS market? Will they recover and capitalize on users who now flip-flop between Apple or Ubuntu — dismissive of Windows?
With very aggressive marketing, Microsoft may be able to pull this off. On just 7′s merit alone? Doubtful.
Under what conditions would you make a move to Windows 7?
The thing that I think a lot of people miss out is that Microsoft, while yes, they've made follies in the last decade and a half since the release of Windows 95 (is there even a flagship they've made that hasn't been met with a reasonable dose of criticism or negative press?), they've always got an uphill battle to face. While nobody else is really doing anything paradigm-shifting or massively incredible elsewhere of note (yes, there are features elsewhere that are great, but something new, unique, or revolutionary to the way we use computers is fairly a skint list), Microsoft have the added burden of having to try to do that while still keeping inside of the anti-trust regulations that they fell afoul of just under a decade ago. And to make that even harder, their userbase is still much, much larger than anything else so they've gotta appease an exponentially large amount of people with their product.
I doubt they're really aiming to win any users back from Jobs and Co. because as we all know that is a losing battle, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're right now targeting themselves to keep the userbase they already have satisfied enough to not jump ship. If they can pull that off, it allows them a little room for movement as time goes on…
From what I read in this article this is all about bashing Windows 7, thus I do not like it.
I tried the Windows 7 beta and I liked it, it was fast, not annoying and the interface was better than Vista ( even though it looks similiar ).
The reason they did not make a new kernel is because of compatibility issues. Besides, every OS X version is based on the same kernel, but nobody is bitching about that ? Microsoft is still the biggest OS company and I do not think Apple will beat it, nor do I think Ubuntu will even come close to it.
Yorick, you make a great point on Apple using the same kernel. We could easily say that Apple's upgrades are similar to what Microsoft is doing with the upgrade from Vista to 7. But what we don't see is Apple marketing 'version' upgrades as a new OS — like what we're seeing now from Microsoft.
Windows 7 begs this question: Could MS have wrapped up its new Windows 7 features under future service packs for Vista? Maybe keeping R&D monies focused on a truly 'new' OS?
Or Is Windows 7 just a revenue generator for MS?
Good point about nobody doing anything truly revolutionary in the operating system space. Microsoft, Apple, Ubuntu, et al are really just polishing their OS while adding new features here and there – by and large there is no paradigm shift taking place yet. I think we're years away from such a move – there's no compelling reason for a paradigm shift yet.
So far I've been impressed with Windows 7 in my testing. It is far more usable than Vista without all the annoyances and some added features. I really wonder how the masses are going to react and what type of market share Windows 7 will take away from OS X, if any. Apple has the mindshare of the current generation so it is going to be interesting methinks.
BTW, thanks for stopping by Newks. Was not expecting to see you around this part of town. ;-)
Completely agreed on the Windows 7 interface, especially compared to the Windows Vista interface. I never was a fan of Vista however the minor nuances modified in the interface appear to make Windows 7 a much more usable product over its predecessor.
The reason nobody is complaining about the OS X kernel is because with the introduction of OS X Apple had switched the entire operating system to a brand new system based on BSD. There is no real compelling reason to make major modifications to the existing OS X kernel. Why do you believe Apple should make changes to the kernel?
I've just got the beta ISO off of the Microsoft site to give it a whirl in x64, and I'm really definitely interested to see how it stacks up against Vista SP1 as a day-to-day system in terms of ease of use and practicality. If we're completely honest though I've never really had a struggle with Vista because I'm so familiar with the Windows platform (been using it for going on 17 years), but time will tell if that rings true for everyone.
If it does prove itself to be worthwhile, perhaps I'll even consider buying it this time around properly. I think a lot of people may, simply due to XP's redundancy and the slow adoption rate of Vista making it more practical.
I guess ultimately it comes down to this: people will move across if they have no other options. In my mind that would mean something catastrophically bad beyond the realms of comprehension to force a major shift, so much so that the price of a total migration of hardware and software would become feasible for both home and business environments. Of course this means to the Macintosh platform, there is no real viable alternative as we speak.
As for a total revolutionary way we think about computing.. I think there's a few things waiting to be let out of the bag. With things like desktop web integration and multi-touch usage, it's only gonna be so long before the totally immersive computing experience is upon us.
And I figured I better stop by, this seems like the hot button for a lot of tech-heads.. :P
I've got real high hopes for Windows 7. Because with 200 XP systems on my network, I desperately need an upgrade path that doesn't include Vista. From what I hear, Windows 7 will have a framework similar to that of OS X where they offer modular backwards compatibility without sacrificing performance of the new OS. Fingers crossed!
Still pondering just how long you can put off upgrading any form of Windows. I'm a gamer and that's all that really ties me to Windows anymore.
I used Ubuntu and then worked with Gentoo's high learning curve in favour of an OS that customizes itself to *my* system, not to Joe Name Brand system that will rarely be able to grow out of its hardware, or upgrade without loads of hassle.
If Windows' greatest flaw were to be pointed out, I think it's how they seem to be 5-10 years behind what a real user wants out of their system, or could want. The only thing it has is multimedia on its side, but in the end, I think it may not be enough to really pull them out of their old fogy image.
Gentoo rocks. Been in love with that distro ever since it was first released. Too bad it's kinda gone to the dogs lately.
Windows 7 IS the nail in the coffin, at least for me, I'm tired of Microsofts bullshit so I'm building myself a mac.
That was really my only actual complaint about Vista to be honest, the lack of immediate compatibility of some programs. There were workarounds, like modifying the version number that the OS reported to the software which offered no real performance drop, but all were still a hit-and-miss and a major pain in the ass. Although since having used it as an everyday platform for the last.. 2 and a bit years? However long it is since the original RC was released I've not really encountered that problem except using certain legacy software which is very infrequent. I do hope that 7 does have that reverse ability though, it'd surely make it stand out above and beyond what it's being built from.
I've gotta hold high hopes for it, I don't like to believe that their goose is cooked. To me it's like the AMD-Intel thing. Sure, AMD have dropped a lot over the last few years, but they're slowly inching their way back up after a few bad business decisions. Microsoft is much the same in my mind – since Steve Ballmer took the helm it's been a series of bad decisions and critical errors (both in hardware and software aspects). I just hope they've got a little bit of that proverbial phoenix left in 'em.
"Windows 7 — a snappy little product name… — it promises us an OS that’s just as peppy as its name."
Oh, you very one funny guy you!! Bwaaaaaaaahahahaha……..brrt.
I've been using Microsoft since the days of MSDOS 2.1, but after the Vista boondoggle I finally switched everything to Ubuntu and am Loving It!!!
Have tried most of the top ten Linux distros and my moneys on Ubuntu as best all-around replacement for windows.
Tried Gentoo, ran it for about a year, and concluded that it's fine for home hobby use, but too time and resource intensive for business use… not practical to spend hours recompiling every time you want to change/upgrade something.
Ubuntu runs out of the box, it needs a few tweaks such as removing the awful Totem player and installing VLC, but this is very easy to do. I used to use vmware for those apps that “just had to be windows”, but now that vbox has finally matured I find it is actually better than vmware. Wine works surprisingly well for many things too.
One of the things that impressed me most about Ubuntu was how fast it is. After all that bragging/boasting by Microsoft about their cool visual effects… yeah where/what? and horrid speed of Vista. I took a modest computer that was running XP and set up Ubuntu to dual boot. And wow the speed difference was substantial. I had not expected that Ubuntu would be so much faster than XP on the same hardware. And if you want to see some outta sight cool 3d graphics, just turn on Compiz! it runs circles around Vista graphics any day. Microsoft should be ashamed….
The real key to switching the operating system is to first migrate your users to http://www.OpenOffice.org and Firefox. Once you've done that the os becomes mostly irrelevant because those apps are cross-platform. Then the move is easy.
As a software designer, I now do all of my development work on Ubuntu and then port it as needed to Windows and Mac. Having been badly burned by Microsoft's callous and routine abandonment of compatibility, I refuse to ever again get locked in to designing software for a single platform.
Don't be fooled by Microsoft's constant churn and change for the sake of change. They are deliberately breaking compatibility in the hope that they can keep you locked in to their products, and they expect you to pave their way with your gold. But in reality the constant obsolescence is a knife in the back to their customers. You try explaining to the CEO why they must spend thousands of dollars to convert their perfectly good existing office docs into Microsoft's “brave new format” so that they can be used with a “new and improved” word processor that offers no perceptible improvement in functionality over the old one, but instead incurs huge upgrade and training costs.