Windows 8

[Terxpahseyton]

People who buy Windows as a standalone OS, or computers without an OS are negligible.

The overwhelming majority of consumer PCs are sold with Windows OEM, where Windows 8 is going to be the only option.

Enterprise sales are going to be Windows 8 regardless of what they plan on using, since Windows comes with downgrade rights.

Good points, but I actually thought of upgrades, which I am sure are not negligible. PCs can last for quit a while in many households.
But good points because Microsoft may just decide to suck it up for its grand scheme until pre-win8 isn't relevant anymore.

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/...11/27/windows-8-40-million-licenses-sold.aspx

40 million licenses sold in the first month, outpacing Windows 7.

I wish my software products could fail this badly.

Win7 was also only for the pc

 

[Zelig]

Win8 is also only for the PC.

 

[innonimatu]

See this?

The end of the Microsoft monopoly on personal computing ins on the wall. They're failing - hard - at getting a foot outside the PC/x86 space, and they're bleeding share even in the increasingly less relevant PC market. That will break their negotiating powers, therefore revenue, therefore capacity to even hold on to what they have.Once that like of loop starts with a big lumbering company like Microsoft they can be finished quite fast.

 

[Zelig]

All that graph shows is a lot of sales of cheap Android devices.

 

[Iranon]

Is that what people are buying or using? Not the same thing +/- time lag, because average use cycles are very different.

As long as people don't use a fondleslab as their only computer, that part of the market doesn't threaten Microsoft; at worst it's a missed opportunity.
If the average customer gets 3 Android devices (with royalties going to Microsoft for each) in the time they use one Windows-powered PC, that's no failure.

The PC market is mostly saturated, the smartphone/tablet market is getting there quickly; expecting current trends to continue to a post-PC era any time soon seems naive.

*

And if the desktop (or full-size laptop) remains relevant... who's going to displace Microsoft?

Apple seems to have little interest in expanding beyond the high end of that market with their Mac product line, or to decouple software from hardware (they tried that once. It didn't work out well for them).
I think Apple and Microsoft are both happy with their current market shares - Apple because they can keep skimming from the top, Microsoft because they don't get more from the high end (yet) and increasing market share would mean more trouble with regulating authorities.

Linux is enjoying its successes by being a free, modular, somewhat technical operating system that scales well from embedded devices to supercomputers.
But people don't just want an operating system, they want a consumer platform. Hard to create one from scratch without centralised leadership and big marketing budgets.
Also, attempts to streamline it for average consumer desktops are fractured and already cause plenty of irritation in users and developers who like Linux open-ended and geek-friendly.

 

[Zack]

See this?

<snip>


The end of the Microsoft monopoly on personal computing ins on the wall. They're failing - hard - at getting a foot outside the PC/x86 space, and they're bleeding share even in the increasingly less relevant PC market. That will break their negotiating powers, therefore revenue, therefore capacity to even hold on to what they have.Once that like of loop starts with a big lumbering company like Microsoft they can be finished quite fast.

I didn't realize people were buying smartphones to replace their computers.

Also, that graph is ugly and terrible.

 

[innonimatu]

I didn't realize people were buying smartphones to replace their computers.

Also, that graph is ugly and terrible.

Developers, developers, developers...

No longer can Microsoft, by force of its installed base, gotten through the success of early versions of windows combined with deals with OEMs to exclude rivals, cause software developers to aim first and foremost for their platform. Other, cheaper and more ubiquitous platforms are available. And Microsoft's business model cannot compete in price with those. It's not even apple, it is indeed android, and every other linux-derived system that may be done in the future. On the server side no one is "innovating" in Microsoft platforms: all the new stuff is being done on top of Linux because it is free as in freedom and as in beer. First it was clusters, then storage systems, now the ever-larger "clouds" and server-farms in dedicated datacenters, and yes, all the visualized systems within those clouds - because it's so much easier to work with such on-the-fly created systems: no licensing crap (and also no fear of having your service copied and your business destroyed by the 800-pount gorilla that holds the keys to the system you use, and your own software subtly sabotaged within the system). Windows server is strictly for legacy enterprise stiff (they're moving to run on top of linux) and for managing Windows desktops - so long as those remain relevant... Microsoft server-side is on the same position Novell and the old UNIX proprietary systems were a decade ago.

The writing is on the wall indeed. Because the "desktop PC" itself will continue to be miniaturized. Is a console or media server a personal computer? Yes! Consoles are not Windows based. Media serves are not (despite Microsoft's attempt to enter that market) windows-based. Is a portable phone a personal computer? Yes! Portable phones, its application and its developers do not use the "windows ecosystem". And the personal computer of the future will soon arrive in the form of a mobile-phone you stick into a docking stations. It will run Some android version, or some other linux fork by some other manufacturer. No one (apart from some insane finns) wants to be tied to Microsoft and pay them tribute (until the inevitable backstab by them) if they don't need to - and they don't.

Microsoft is a dinosaur marching into irrelevance. With its installed base it's going to take very long, but they're on the way out. A new crappy UI is not going to save it. The real issue, consumer-device side, is also (as with the server-side) the licensing model, the business logic of the company. They no longer have a unique or compelling product. The new OEMs no longer need or want to deal with Microsoft. Why pay fees for the software? Why be locked into an undifferentiated product? First it was the mobile phones that slipped away, then the "ultra portable computers" (Microsoft had Windows CE for ages and it didn't went anywhere, now it has tried and discarder several other small device oriented OSs to no avail), then the tablets and it has now hit the laptops. Even the "desktop pc" form factor is feeling the impact of this shift and it's only getting more intense. The margins demanded by Microsoft are simply not acceptable for manufacturers or cheap devices, and even if they were the lack of flexibility of its licensing scheme isn't acceptable either. With android or any other home-grown linux derivative they can do whatever they please and that's the way they're going.

 

[Zelig]

You obviously don't do much work in the enterprise sector.

I'm a portable phone application developer who uses the windows ecosystem.

Portable phone you could stick into a docking station arrived two years ago from Motorola and was discontinued a few months ago due to lack of interest and general suckiness.

Touting Android as a model of free and open software is a joke, Google is an advertising company dumping free software onto the market in order to push ads and using their influence to prevent anyone from using Android in ways they don't want. (See Acer with Alibaba) Alternatives trying to bypass the Google app store are either barely passable (Amazon) or awful (everyone else).

 

[dutchfire]

Stick it to the Big Companies, buy Google!

 

[Quintillus]

I know a grand total of zero people who only use Android/iOS for their computing needs. Zack is right, no one is buying a smartphone/tablet only to throw their computer out the, umm, window. The PC market may be fairly mature, but it isn't disappearing anytime soon.

But even more certain than that is that haters are gonna hate.

Stick it to the Big Companies, buy Google!

Google is a big company now. They weren't in 1999, but this isn't 1999 anymore.

(Can't quite tell if you were being sarcastic or not - if you were, well done)

 

[innonimatu]

You obviously don't do much work in the enterprise sector.

You would be surprised...

I'm a portable phone application developer who uses the windows ecosystem.

Oh... has any museum expressed interest already?

Portable phone you could stick into a docking station arrived two years ago from Motorola and was discontinued a few months ago due to lack of interest and general suckiness.

When PCs arrived minicomputer producers like DEC dismissed them also. But the march of miniaturization went on, indifferent to their established businesses. There is a time for every paradigm shift in computing, and the time for the move towards true pocket computers (which is what these new multi-core phones with HDMI outputs and the like are already) is coming now. Motorola suffered from trying it a little too early.

Touting Android as a model of free and open software is a joke, Google is an advertising company dumping free software onto the market in order to push ads and using their influence to prevent anyone from using Android in ways they don't want. (See Acer with Alibaba) Alternatives trying to bypass the Google app store are either barely passable (Amazon) or awful (everyone else).

You are either confused or being deliberately obtuse. I did write a lot, and that was in the intention that I wouldn't be misunderstood. Judging by dutchfire's attempt at sarcasm I just can't hope that people will actually pay attention to what they read.

So, short version: linux (a OS kernel) is free and open source. Manufacturers will, because of that, use it, adapt it to their goals, and replace the old proprietary third-party operating systems with their own modified (forks, as I mentioned) linux kernels (which must also be open) and software distributions on top. This has nothing to do with sticking it to the big companies, not did I ever imply that. In fact I pretty much stated the opposite: the big hardware and media companies are the ones killing Microsoft's monopolies, for their own motives, obviously.

Yes, it can and has resulted in some "walled gardens" already. That detracts nothing from my argument, which was not about any particular use of Linux being a model of free and open source.
The argument was that Linux is a better choice for manufacturers of the new more popular computing devices in the consumer area, and that because the kernel and so many applications are there "free for the takers" it is inexorably replacing Windows. Microsoft's business model cannot compete with this.

And I want to make it clear that though the software stack of that OS distribution known is Android is set up to channel users into Google's walled garden, it does not force that. The kernel and other GPL bits distributed by Google must be distributed with unencumbered sources, and there are already plenty of people (and companies) people modifying it, recompiling and distributing it. The rest has been distributed also with an open licence but does not require that other users make modifications available. Some software running on top may be proprietary, so what?

 

[Mise]

The unencumbered bits of Android are nowhere near a complete OS. Like you said, it's just the Kernel and maybe some other bits. Everything else that sit on top of the Kernel are patent encumbered. An OS isn't just a kernel you know.

The Mac OSX and iOS kernel is also free and open source, but as far as I know, nobody is "replacing the old proprietary third-party operating systems with their own modified XNU kernels and software distributions on top".

 

[Zelig]

Oh... has any museum expressed interest already?

I'm gainfully employed and don't develop for any legacy platforms.

The argument was that Linux is a better choice for manufacturers of the new more popular computing devices in the consumer area, and that because the kernel and so many applications are there "free for the takers" it is inexorably replacing Windows.

I think it simply has a first-mover advantage. (As does iOS, but Apple not licensing the OS limits the upside.)

 

[innonimatu]

The unencumbered bits of Android are nowhere near a complete OS. Like you said, it's just the Kernel and maybe some other bits. Everything else that sit on top of the Kernel are patent encumbered. An OS isn't just a kernel you know.

The madness of software patents has not yet spread all over the world. And the whole software stack of Android above the kernel had been licensed under the Apache license, which allows the code to be reused freely. The only limitation is on the use of the brand name "Android". This was, and remains, an essential reason for its success.

I think it simply has a first-mover advantage. (As does iOS, but Apple not licensing the OS limits the upside.)

Tablets, contrary to what Apple would have people believe!) are not new. Microsoft has released several operating systems for tablets, personal organizers (what smartphones are mostly used for), etc long before iOS and Android existed. They lost to Android (just as iOS is slowly losing) because Android did not encumber manufacturers. And the major manufactures (notably Samsung, who sponsors Tizen) are keeping their own Linux-derived operating systems as an option besides Android, to make sure that Google can't pull a Microsoft on future iterations of their Android userland and libraries. Even Meego, which Microsoft tried to kill with its mole in Nokia, is still around, after another name change!

 

[Zelig]

Tablets, contrary to what Apple would have people believe!) are not new. Microsoft has released several operating systems for tablets, personal organizers (what smartphones are mostly used for), etc long before iOS and Android existed. They lost to Android (just as iOS is slowly losing) because Android did not encumber manufacturers. And the major manufactures (notably Samsung, who sponsors Tizen) are keeping their own Linux-derived operating systems as an option besides Android, to make sure that Google can't pull a Microsoft on future iterations of their Android userland and libraries. Even Meego, which Microsoft tried to kill with its mole in Nokia, is still around, after another name change!

None of that requires anything about patents to explain.

Pre-Win8 Windows tablets failed because the OS was completely inappropriate for tablet use.

iOS is dropping in marketshare because it's limited to Apple hardware.

The biggest upside to Android adoption in terms of openness is that manufacturers can release awful low-spec devices and carriers can load it up with crapware.

Samsung would get crushed if it tried to drop Android and Windows Phone in favour of Tizen. Firefox OS has more upside than Tizen.

 

[Mise]

@innonimatu: yes, I'm aware of that, but you can't call Android "linux" any more than you can call iOS or OSX "linux" (or *nix I suppose).

 

[Zack]

iOS's app store is arguably better than Android's, so I'm not even sure what point you're trying to make.

 

[innonimatu]

@innonimatu: yes, I'm aware of that, but you can't call Android "linux" any more than you can call iOS or OSX "linux" (or *nix I suppose).

I can and I do. The kernel is a recent and very similar fork of linux and the changes it carries are slated to be merged back into linux soon. The userland is not linux, of course, but that is true of every linux distribution.

 

[Iranon]

By "Linux", most mean "GNU + Linux + associated ecosystem" unless the context gives a reason to narrow (just the kernel, which is theoretically more correct) or broaden (anything built around that kernel or a fork) the scope.

And I'd say desktop Linux is the tangent of most relevance here...

 

[Mise]

nevermind...