I don’t think Microsoft will ship another Operating System after Vista launches. I believe that a combination of technical difficulties and changing markets will prevent it from creating a product that is relevant in the market. Consider this, if the latest shipping dates are to be believed, it will have taken Microsoft over six years to get Windows Vista out the door and to its consumers. And based on past events, it is safe to assume that Vista will require at least one service pack before it is truly ready for use. Of course, factoring in the normal Microsoft delays for producing patches, such a comprehensive service pack will probably take another year before it can be released to users. That would mean that it will have taken Microsoft 7+ years to make a usable operating system.
Now consider how long it could take Microsoft to produce Vista’s successor. If the added complexity of this new OS increases the development time by only 25% (not an unreasonable figure) of what it took to make Vista, then it will have been in development for almost 8 years. That means if Vista comes out in 2007, it won’t be replaced until 2015. To put that into perspective, if Apple continues on with its release cycle of OS X they could, counting Leopard, release 4 to 5 new operating systems by the time Microsoft releases one.
I’m waiting for all the Apple haters to claim that OSX point releases are only equivalent to windows service packs.
well that is somewhat a valid though. I’ve been using tiger on a work laptop for the past 6 months or so, and from what I read about the release changes from 10.3. -4 etc it really is on the scale of a big service pack like windows does.
and I’m certainly no hater. I’m a huge fan and a recently labeled apple fanboy
It seems to me that we are finally ready of an OS that is, basically, a web browser.
I’d buy a “browser appliance” right now if it was, lets say, $300.
I’d still, personally and professionally, need full-blown OS but not my family. They could do everything on the web.
The price needs to be right but — more importantly to me — it has to be easy and robust.
Although my experience with Apple is short-term — I only switched about 15 months ago — that brief period included one point move. That experience tells me the point move was essentially dedicated to providing additions to the OS rather than corrections or bug fixes.
More critical between the two approaches is Apple’s hard-nosed willingness to drop support for out-of-date earlier versions. The question faced by users is no less expensive in practice than, say, a “new” version of Windows. Plus, the Unix base for OS X now makes further improvements while continuing support for earlier work — practical.
Microsoft’s decision to back away from new avenues from their own developers because they conflict with old packages is one of those marketing decisions that I happen to think is a mistake. But, then, vive la difference.
I think XP is the end of the line…
“I’d buy a “browser appliance” right now if it was, lets say, $300.”
You’re looking for Radio Shack’s Personal Internet Communicator.
The notion that XP wasn’t usable until SP1 is silly. I’ve been using it since it was beta, and it has always worked for me, with not a single blue screen. I’m not saying XP is a great OS, but it isn’t total crap either.
And since BootCamp convinced me to buy a Mac, I don’t spend much time in Windows anymore.
#1. Nothing about being an Apple hater to make that point. In fact, point releases usually add more new goodies to the OS than a service pack, and Apple manages to get way more of these releases out the door many times more than Microsoft (six years, only XP SP2 is out????).
THe downside for Microsoft is that Vista, after having all the goodies removed power users wanted (WinFS, etc), all this is is just Windows XP+. Actually, the best OS Microsoft put out was Windows 2000 Professional, of which XP is actually Windows 2000+ (so Vista is double plus good (sounds like newspeak to me)).
If they would stick to upgrading one OS it could be great If Windows 2000 was tweaked over all these years and features added, it would be a very stable and very usuable system. But here comes XP, next Vista, which rebuilds much of the work taking them back one (or more) steps interms of stability.
Course with MS it has never been about being better, just getting people to buy it. That is going to be harder than ever for them coming up, and unless they recreate their business model they will go the way of IBM.
The reason Microsoft rules the computer market right now is because they own the desktop. If they stop creating the OS they will lose their huge market advantage. How can anyone think that abandoning the OS would be a legitimate tactic.
If it takes 8 years to put out an OS then they will have to re-engineer their process, not abandon it. One way they could reduce development time is to be willing to eliminate some of the quality.
I agree with Ascii King. Their domination of the OS means that MS apps are the path of least resistance for the majority of non-techie people. Without it the rest of MS software just disappears.
Microsoft, like IBM in the past has reached a size that it generates it’s own inertia. Regardless of the success of Vista, Microsoft will have a few more shots at getting a successor OS to market. Once you make the club that allows you to play in very large scale corporate and governmental arenas where size matters, you may still fail, but you won’t fail quickly. There are some good reasons for this, if an IT manager has the responsibility of selecting, 25,000 PCs and an OS for a company-wide upgrade and is given 6 months to complete the job, they have very few places to go to get it done. In those situations, the first thing you Google is “800 pound IT gorillas”. CIOs, large consulting firms and management in general become the most conservative buyers on the planet in these situations.
There’s a good reason for this when you get down to the actually buying process. Probably, no more than three companies are left in IT that can answer the question of “exactly what resources do you have in place nationwide to install 25K PCs and software?”. Well, more than three would try to answer the question, but when you hear the answer you will think you are watching Comedy Central. Sure, they all would outsource most of the work, but just being large enough to have an existing management structure in place to oversee a project at this scale is rare. Granted there are differences in the issues of software and hardware installations, but low risk will always be the driver, and MS is still seen as that.
Microsoft has an additional advantage in that they have made the “800 pound gorilla” club in both the business and home markets. Corporate shops may be slow to adopt changes, but a large section of the home market is positively tortoise like in even making themselves aware of alternative technology. Microsoft also has a track record of surviving things like ME, so maybe Vista will be just a bump in the road.
I can’t see Microsoft not making another OS. For better or worse (and believe me, in a corporate environment, it’s worse), Windows is the OS of choice in the majority of workplace environments. They have that momentum behind them. I don’t know about 8 years, but they could easily not release another OS for 6 or 7 years, and the corporate world will be fine with it. It will take most of them at least a year to migrate to Vista once it’s finally released anyway.
I agree with Jeff about XP – though I greatly prefer OS X, I too have been using XP since the beta days and find it to work just fine – at least on my systems at home. Where I see problems are in corporations where they have custom builds of everything and constant security patches and updates. Bigger corporations muck with it and make their employees computers slow and unreliable. Windows needs treated with kid gloves for this not to happen.
I disagree John. It will be possible for Microsoft to release expanded capabilities on top of the Vista engine and call it a new version. Think 98, 98 SE and (*gag*) ME. That said, what may be true is that Microsoft may not again built an entirely new architecture.
IMO, there are only been four architectures: DOS, Windows 3x, NT and now Vista. I do not consider Windows 9x a new architecture as it was really a hybrid of DOS and NT. The GUI that went with Windows 3x, even though it was on top of DOS, was an architecture to itself. One could argue that NT 3x was architecturally different than NT 4x in that NT 4x moved the video drivers into the main kernel (a mistake IMO) but beyond this change the architectures are very similar. For those that don’t realize, Windows 2000 is just NT 5.0 and Windows XP is really just NT 5.1. Thus, to say that you like Win2k but not WinXP is silly. IMO, there are no serious architectural differences between Win2k, Win2k3 and WinXP but rather a great deal of refinement of existing functionality.
Thus, where I see Microsoft going is a platform to deliver newer, smaller mini-OS updates that they’ll label as a new OS but will provide more user-centric functionality (fancier graphics, better organization of music, better management control for businesses, new tools for developers etc.) rather than deep core architectural updates.
Hey. I agree this COULD be the last OS.
But remember this.
M$ has guaranteed Windows 2000 support thru 2010 , and winXP support thru 2014
I personally will not be upgrading unless a new machine comes with it…
I will be keeping W2k on ALL my machines at LEAST thru 2009/2010, which will have given vista time to have at least 1 or 2 service packs
BTW, APPLE will not be the victor. A desktop distribution (open source) will destroy Micro$uish
The ammount of if, nmaybe, possibly, and then maybe if something else happens gibberish in that article is hilarious.
Lets all have a go shall we?
If [x] is true, and [y] continues the way that [a] predicted, then if [b]’s developments in [i] happen [c]’s product will blow [d]’s out of the water in [n] years!
Fill in the blanks, have fun and write your own technology article.
Why on earth would MS dump Windows? Its one of its major cash cows, and it owns the market, so people will wait for new versions (or just not upgrade – it happens). The possiblility has been raised that they’ll never majorly change the core architecture again – ridiculous – these things get outdated – would you still run something with xp’s consumer features, and 3.1’s underpinnings? I don’t think so – it’d be a complete piece of crap. Bottom line, as long as there is a Microsoft, there will be new OS’s
Yup…end of the line for Vista and OSX. Gonna get my grubby hands on one of them UMPC’s!! Yeehaw!
M$ probably won’t release anything major until about 2010. In the mean time I see them branching their OS into two divisions. One will go after their core market; medium and large corporations. The other will go for the individual computer.
The larger will be a commercial OS sitting on a server. All PCs will tie into a net and share RAM and cycles. The OS will contain all common apps including browser, email, calender, Office suite, and any other indispensable application. You can bet your booty that this will be secure, stable, and instant on.
The second release will be very small and geared to the home market. There will not be a registry included and even possibly be a successor to Mac. It will be geared to compete with Linux. By 2010, Google and Oracle will have versions of Linux that are small, fast, easily tied to outside apps like Google and Yahoo products. Apple will be talked about in the past tense, like Packard, Gateway, IBM, and Compaq.
Just a fanciful prediction.
Once again outside of calafornia and university towns you can barely buy a mac let alone get support. That said my old ME machine is still running the show at my house. I have two xp pro machines but the old ME box is still being used daily. while the xp machines basicly are for support.
SN >> You’re looking for Radio Shack’s Personal Internet Communicator.
Wow, thanks for the heads up. It DOES look perfect. I see that it has four USB ports… I wonder if it prints? That’s the one extra feature I must have.
Even without using it, I’ll say that this thing is totally the right direction for the future of computers. Internet appliances are not for everybody but they’re a better solution for a whole lot of people. Most people, probably.
If this gizmo is around when my 80-year-old mother needs a new computer, I’m going to get one for her.
I would find it interesting if you could relate this to the prediction that Apple will drop Mac OS in favour of Windows. If windows also will fail, what will replace them both? Web based apps? Some open source OS?
Otherwise I agree that MS is starting to have big difficulties handling the complexity of their platform.
Uh, Bruce, you do realize that you are running at least 10 year old technology with XP right?
The logic behind the argument that Microsoft will abstain from making another major architectural shift is that the market itself is changing. The definition of an OS is becoming muddier to the point that it may become the case that the OS becomes a cheap commodity.
Mr. Old Time Fusion,
Put down the crack pipe. There will never be a release of Windows that does not have the registry and/or some variant thereof. In fact, with the .NET Framework, there are really two registry structures: the main registry and a global assembly cache that contains a system-wide repository of libraries.
People that are still running ME…wait…people that ever *installed* ME are insane. An elephant balancing on a sewing needle is more stable than ME. That people A: still have an instance of ME installed and B: it is still running and C: doesn’t crash is as close to a miracle as we will see in our time.