__/ [ Rex Ballard ] on Sunday 27 August 2006 17:28 \__
>
> clangnuts@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> Microsoft are preparing their next operating system (on account of the
>> whole planet has already bought Windows XP). Buy a new computer, or
>> upgrade the one you have. Why? Because Microsoft need your money.
>> People being happy with what they have, is a really bad business model
>> for one of the worlds richest companies.
>>
>> http://clangnuts.blogspot.com/2006/08/windows-vista-ready-pc.html
>>
>> Clangnuts
>
> Despite the awkward grammer of English as a second language, this is an
> excellent article, and really covers the fundamentals extremely well.
>
> Microsoft appears poised to do exactly what it did in Windows NT 3.1.
> It was not possible to run Windows NT 3.1 on the machines that had
> previously run Windows 3.1. The OEMs assumed that this would lead to a
> sudden, perhaps even instant replacement of hundreds of millions of
> PCs, possibly within a year. They expected EVERYONE who had been using
> Windows 3.1 (about 400 million at the time), to immediately go out and
> buy the new hardware.
>
> Unfortunately, the increased cost, the brand-new 32 bit flat memory
> model, and inability to communicate using the shared memory DLLs used
> in Windows 3.1 threaded single-process environment, meant that about
> 80% of the old 3rd party applications didn't work on NT. It took
> Microsoft nearly 2 years to recover and release a lighter, smaller, and
> more compatible Windows 95, and in the meantime, Microsoft's biggest
> competitor was Windows 3.1 itself. People and corporations were
> unwilling to upgrade, and the PC industry nearly collapsed. Many PC
> companies did not survive, and those who did, feasted off the carcasses
> of the corpse companies.
>
> It took Microsoft nearly 10 years to fulfill most of the marketing
> promises of NT with XP, and even then, Windows never achieved it's goal
> of being superior in every way to UNIX, of being "A Better UNIX than
> UNIX".
>
> Ironically, that misstep, combined with Microsoft missing the explosion
> of the Internet, created an opening for Linux that Microsoft has never
> been able to completely stifle. Even worse, the success of Linux and
> BSD gave Apple the courage and incentive to introduce their own Unix
> based operating system.
>
> Microsoft appears to be looking at a major redesign of their kernel
> based on the principles of Linux and UNIX, a project called Singularity
> - but implemented in C#, which they appear to be planning, possibly as
> late as 10 years from now. Perhaps we will even see "Microsoft UNIX".
> I seriously doubt they will call it that.
>
> What is really ironic was that it was Microsoft's experience with UNIX
> in the form of Xenix, that may have made IBM willing to consider using
> Microsoft for the operating system for the PC in the first place.
Allow me to ask you this: with planned releases of future versions of Windows
(as well as queued up names... you know, like the hurricanes), how do you
reckon that future cycles will be handled? And how does this align with
strategy, as presented to investors and clients (putting aside the
advancements of GNU/Linux and the staffing/offshoring woes at Microsoft)?
What about security which clogs up the Internet? Will Microsoft face the
public after Vista and say that Vienna is on hold until Singularity emerges?
And will it be phased in gradually? Or thrown away to be replaced by
acquisitions (e.g. BSD code)? What about Ballmer's promise that Vista's
scale of delay will not recur? Another Servise Pack for XP (4th one)? And
what about the conceded features? I have more questions than I have answers
and proper speculations. But I think that Apple and the OS community should
be aware of what shall happen on the other side of the fence in the next few
years...
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Double your drive space - delete Windows"
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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