Microsoft is pushing users and vendors to Macs and Linux
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
Switch to Mac because MS is making their own (non-exclusive) hardware? Really? Has this guy forgotten the OS/hardware deal that you get with Apple?
Windows 8 is dead because enterprises aren't planning to upgrade? Most just got to Windows 7, they don't like change, so they'll stay there for another 5-10 years.
I doubt the writer believes anything he's written, but this is the nature of tech "journalism".
This. The client I work for is still _testing_ Windows 7. Rollout won't happen for a while yet. Windows 8? Might get looked in 2016, I guess.
I mean, how insane is it when people have to work with technology on their job they've ditched 5-10 years ago at home for being too outdated to be even be give away? There comes a point where enterprise IT loses all credibility.
At this pace, during my lifetime homeless people in third world countries will have phones that are more modern and powerful computers than office workers will have at their desk. The practices enterprise IT currently still holds on to don't seem sustainable to me.
The hype about Windows 8/enterprise now is hopefully just the company line when really the consumer side is who its initially trying to evolve for.
Windows 8 tablets? Same story. Why would I as a consumer want to spend $600 to get a tablet with so many unknowns? What does it provide that the iPad currently does not provide? I keep wanting to find a good set of reasons but I can't. You just know what your $500-600 is getting you when you go to iPad and Android. Unless MS lowers the price point to $150-200 it will be a tough sell in my opinion.
The software side of things are very different though. Being a .NET developer for years (after coming from UNIX) I find myself using Java and open source languages more and more often.
If you are an ISV/entrepreneur I am just not sure if it is a good idea to bet the future of your organization on Microsoft's mercy. They keep changing languages/platforms like they change clothes lately.
Nonetheless, the next three-four years will be fun to watch.
There will be 0 unknowns a month after they get released. There are unknowns now because it is an unreleased product. Using that as a point against the success of the system is moronic.
Will 3rd parties support it? Well, does it have users? Will it have users? Well, is there third party support?
Either the customers or the 3rd party developpers have to make the first gamble.
Face it, they are really late in the game this time.
And how often do you need to ask a geek a question about an iPad? There isn't much of a learning curve, and anybody who has owned one can probably answer most questions. Hopefully (I haven't used it myself) the Win8 tablets are similar in that regard. In my opinion, it'll mostly depend on whether they do the 8-levels-deep-control-panel and features with no visible interface (like the desktop's start menu and sidebar).
I believe if there was a strong use case for tablets in the office, businesses would have bought iPads by now and many enterprise apps would have appeared, the compatibility in iWork is really good and it has all the hardware you could need. It's not like all managers are waiting for Windows 8 tablets as their savior, I think it's a fantasy that the world is waiting for Microsoft to enter the tablet market.
And it's not just a matter of solving OS problems, the geeks I know are usually in the position in which people go to ask if something is good before they buy it. If people come to ask me about a tablet with Windows 8 today I'll answer "I have no idea idea if it's good, but I have an iPad and it's great. Here, try it.". What do you think they'll do next?
I feel that people who keep comparing Win 8 to vista really have no idea what Win 8 even is. The quality bar is very high. I believe it'll do well.
I think it's a mistake to believe that people will choose Windows 8 in their tablets and phones just because it's Windows. Otherwise it would have worked wonders with Windows CE and Windows Phone, and it didn't. There are other factors in play, and as I said in another answer, the world is not waiting for Microsoft to catch up.
It is missing some big names like instagram, but the fact that many of the major app names have decided to adopt WP7 should also stand for something.
Not having to be tied to the Apple ecosystem. It's the only reason I own slightly inferior Android devices.
Except that you'll then be tied to the Microsoft ecosystem. It's like changing the contractor for your soul from Satan to Lucifer.
I can ditch Apple within 24 hours if need be.
Ironically, it was using Windows until the late 90s before moving to Linux that taught me the value of avoiding vendor lock-in.
Of course, this means forgoing some of the wonderful features Apple offers in exchange for some less elegant solution, but I can live with that.
It's not unthinkable that Linux could be made to run Windows XP vintage applications better than Windows 8 can.
Disclaimer: Microsoft employee (not really relevant, but just in case ...)
Being a better Windows than Windows is hard. Companies are tied to the Microsoft legacy they committed themselves to - account management, desktop policy enforcement, Sharepoint... It's not just running VB apps better than Windows. The problem is much, much larger.
For corporations, building web apps and running them on non-Windows infrastructure is a good first step to free themselves from the whims of Microsoft, but it's only a first step. Freedom doesn't come for free, specially after you already lost it.
In the 90's, it would be very hard to change, but currently two trends are converging into MS's perfect storm: users are doing more and more through web interfaces to remote servers running their apps and holding their data, and FLOSS is fast becoming a very viable alternative to what most PC users use their machines for.
Every time I debate this with my friends who work for Microsoft, they seem to think the only way to install a printer on Linux is still to open a terminal and edit a configuration file with vi, if not compile the driver yourself.
The only situation where a Windows box is less pain than an Ubuntu one is when corporate IT installs it for you and drops it onto your desk.
And don't forget the part where you have to enter a 25 character, alphanumeric CD key. If you have a couple of machines in the house, hopefully you remembered to mark which key you've already used! I sure didn't.
I think Linux is a better 'work' OS for development, but Windows is better for a home consumer OS. But it's not worth booting back to Linux just to work on my side projects, so I just develop in Windows.
My impression with the Surface is that it was Microsoft's way of showing the world an example of how Windows 8 devices should work. I did not come away thinking that Microsoft is now fully into the PC manufacturing game.
Could it be Microsoft's way of jump-starting OEMs into creating the types of devices that are needed to make Windows 8 successful? And not the first round of war between Microsoft and OEMs that this article (and others) claims it is?
Everyone else wants Windows because they are used to it and it runs all their programs.
It might motivate vendors to, for instance, sell Ubuntu PCs. It's quite user-friendly. Who knows. I don't think it's likely, though.
Open office and etc are all pretty poor replacements.
These types of setups are perfect for the living room. With more advanced Kinect-like devices it will not even be necessary to touch the screen anymore.
Windows 8 on a large touch screen in the living room is perfect. Small keyboard and mouse available when necessary for work, but most interaction is done via a remote or the screen itself.
I actually think, the whole metro + clasical desktop (why choose) will at least make win8 somewhat relevant in the high end of the market.
(It doesn't.)
And then the battery meter is broken. The remaining life estimate is forever "coming soon".
And then there's unity. We'll put the menu bars on the top of the screen for all your programs. Except your word processor, but that's ok, end users don't use word processors that much.
Whatever little fault GNU/Linux has is immediately regarded as an absolutely crucial flaw that will forever prevent it from being usable by anyone but a fat, smelly nerd living in his mother's basement.
This is completely ignoring that Windows is far from faultless, too. It's also inconsistent as hell, it's buggy, and drivers also don't always "just work".
If anything, the current popular DEs on GNU/Linux are more consistent than anything Microsoft has ever produced. They work better out of the box than any crapware-laden computer you can buy at a store. If you're not using absolutely obscure hardware, it should be usable. In fact, the Linux kernel probably supports more hardware and does it better than Windows ever has.
My point stands: GNU/Linux is perfectly usable on the desktop and has been so since years. One of the major things hampering its adoption are people like you who spread FUD about it.
Ubuntu 12.04 is nice, but it is already "abandoned" in the sense that new versions of apps that came out after 12.04 dont generally offer 12.04 packages.
You can get Windows exes which work on 12 years old XP, but there is no binary for an Linux OS that was published 4 damn months ago.
Until that _fundamental_ flaw with Linux software distribution is fixed, Linux as an end user OS is going nowhere. No sane user is going to install an OS, or even worse, buy a computer with an OS, for which there is no standard way to update or upgrade apps other than reinstalling the OS.
It will take some time to adopt this model, but I think that's what Ubuntu is aiming for.
The menu in the word processor is a work in progress, but in the meantime it hardly makes Linux impossible to use.
Anyway, the claim wasn't that the linux desktop can be made ready. It was that it's ready right now.
I think we'll see businesses simply hold their versioning until either the bulk of ISVs change their focus to Mac/Linux, Microsoft caters (more?) closely to businesses, the last critical piece of software refuses to run on 7/Vista/XP, or the company bites the bullet and upgrades. Now, honestly my experiences are 100% anecdotal and I'm can't see into every business's structure. However, I've worked in quite a few IT offices and when Microsoft upgraded to both Vista and 7, there was a lot of working around to either delay the update to the new system or have a trained workforce that was more comfortable to work with it, but we never once thought we should switch our entire system to Linux or OS X.
Now, you might be wondering "We're talking about vendors, not the end users". True, but vendors follow demand, whether we like it or not. If Acer doesn't sell Windows computers, they'll be missing out on a lot of sells to larger entities.
But the main point I want to make is, why does it even matter? What is Microsoft competing on? The locked-down ARM Tablet. That's it. We aren't talking about stand-up or laptop computers. These will likely not be used in the corporate or government markets on the high-end. The Windows 8 ARM Tablet is really nothing more than a consumer device and is designed to compete with the iPad and Android Tablets (to a lesser degree). It has business-y functions, but I don't see the corporate sector adopting it any time soon.
Is Windows 8's "Metro" interface going to detract consumers? Probably not, or at least as much as SJVN is arguing. If businesses don't like it, they'll probably just stick with 7 or whatever is doing just fine right now.
Linux will probably see more usage thanks to Google and some other developing entities, but not to the degree that is inferred by this article or for the reason described.
this can be written just by person who wants to lie. MS backward compatibility is unmatched for this size of company. I still can run apps written 10+ years ago. In most cases I can find same menus and options where they were 10+ years ago. Try this trick with Mac. I recently switched to Mac to do development... so have not big but experience in both worlds
It's easy to use, complete, and has friendly people at any apple retailer to help you onboard yourself on to the system.
They may even die in the end, but they'll certainly try other things before it comes to that.
Hardware >> Software >> Support.
All from one manufacturer.
Apple is screwing over its customers like this.
Both of them are pushing the tabletification of computing. I see how that works for the vast majority of users, but it isn't really for me. Sadly, the workstation companies have mostly died out. Sure, you can probably get a PA-RISC machine from HP or a POWER box from IBM, but those are mostly servers for the legacy market.
Really don't want Win 8 to fall, my soon-in-beta new text editor (with a Firebug-like UI, called LIVEditor) is designed for Windows only...
At the very least it will probably be big in Japan, China and Korea since "8" is a lucky number.
But this change will be a lot slower than we would like it to be. It'll come, but it'll take some time.
We saw similar changes in the browser and the phone markets recently, it went faster there because it's an easier change for non-technical users.
It's rather great that the floodgate is now open and that open source is slowly overtaking their proprietary software and operating system counterparts. It's also a fact though that Microsoft and surely others are trying to close them again, one approach is the "secure boot" nonsense for example. One can only hope (and of course, work on open source whenever possible) that they won't succeed in that.
I'm begining to feel sorry for MS's Windows product. Its a damned if you/damned if you don't scenario. If they don't innovate and do something different then they'll be criticized for being stale. When they do innovate they're criticized for confusing users and not sticking with the same tired WIMP formula.
I get it, these critics are biased, but lets at least wait until the RTM gets in the hands of users before we call it a disaster. It might very well work out for MS. Win8 went from a joke on these forums to a brave OS after the MS surface announcement. Public opinion is quite fickle isn't it?