Windows Vista Beta 2 has come out, leading to much fevered speculation about its prospects, but predicting the future is still a fool’s game.
There are countless examples of flawed prognostication. Some people thought the United States would be a province of the Soviet Union by the 1990s, and made careful preparations for a guerilla-based rebellion. A man named Paul R. Erlich predicted a worldwide famine would strike by 1985 due to population growth. In the 19th century William Miller, an evangelical preacher, predicted with absolute certainty and conviction that Christ would return on October 22, 1844.
Yet as of June 15, 2006, the United States has yet to succumb to the Soviet menace, the world has had many local famines but no world-wide collapse, and Rev. Miller’s prediction of the Second Coming of Christ has been off by one hundred and sixty-four years and counting. The people making these predictions were certain, were knowledgeable, and were wrong, wrong, wrong.
So I’m not going to predict whether or not Windows Vista will flop or fail. Microsoft has had enormous successes in the past (Windows 95, the Office suite, and XP), and some pretty hideous failures, as well (Windows ME, Microsoft Bob, and God help us, Clippy the Office Assistant). Instead, I’d like to take a look at possible futures, what might happen, and the potential consequences.
Vista is a smashing success:
After five years of toil, setback, and failure, Vista comes out at last, and is a major hit for Microsoft. The improved user interface, increased security, and enhanced multimedia features lead to widespread adoption. Furthermore, the multiple versions of Vista, scalable to various users’ needs, lead to further adoption that would have happened otherwise.
What does this mean for Microsoft? For the past five years, Microsoft has been in an increasingly precarious situation. Their flagship product, Windows, runs on most of the computers in the world. Yet that product has not received any significant upgrades for almost six years, and open source competitors have been picking away at Microsoft’s market share. Firefox put a dent in Internet Explorer’s domination, OpenOffice.org became a viable challenger to Office, and Apple, flush with iPod revenues, has made something of a resurgence. The success of Vista will rejuvenate Microsoft’s stranglehold on personal computer OS, perhaps for another ten years.
Apple and Linux will not go away, but the success of Vista will put a serious hamper on their ability to grow and compete with Microsoft. Needless to say, this is the outcome Microsoft wants very badly.
But on the other hand, Vista could fail catastrophically:
Vista’s development cycle has suffered some serious, well-documented problems. Group projects with that many internal difficulties and delays rarely turn out well. To make matters worse, many features that were to be included in Vista, such as the WinFS file system, were cut. Add that to Vista’s high system requirements, and many users might decide not to buy the expensive new hardware needed to run an expensive, unproven operating system, especially one with such widespread developmental woes. The tech world has changed drastically since the days of DOS and Windows 95, and it may no longer be possible for a single company to enjoy near-ubiquity in all aspects of computing.
What does that mean for Microsoft? If Vista flops, Microsoft’s monopoly will not vanish; sheer inertia alone will see to that. But it will erode at an increasingly rapid rate, especially if aggressive contenders, like Ubuntu Linux and Boot Camp-equipped Intel Macs, can make inroads. The failure of Vista would not doom Microsoft-Office alone would see to that-but Microsoft might well suffer a serious loss of power and influence.
So is Windows Vista a coming triumph for Microsoft, or a catastrophe in the making? Which potential future do you see coming true?
Loading ...
June 15th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
just fyi : Microsoft claims that Vista is the most secure OS (compared to *nix and Mac).
From the people who have used Vista beta, I hear that the 32 bit version is really nice and no freezes so far. I must tell you that I am excited about this bad boy.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
I’m a little unclear how Boot Camp-equipped Intel Macs harm Microsoft. The idea behind Boot Camp is that you can have MacOS and Windows on the same machine (Your Mac). However to do this you need both a copy of OSX (Comes with your Mac) and a copy of Windows(Guess who you had to pay for that!). Boot Camp actually expands the number of Windows copies Microsoft can sell not the other way aaround.
October 2nd, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Wow only 2 comments since June? I thought this would be a hot topic.
Yeah I think Microsoft is really sticking the gun in it’s mouth with this one. I had a friend that saw a demo of Vista in a room full of tech guys. The MS rep demonstrated how Vista was so clever that when you go to make a system change it says something like “Vista has determined that you have changed a system setting that you probably shouldn’t have touched, and has reset it to system defaults”. This was recieved with a chorous of shreiks and groans and nay-shaking heads. Windows is hell to administer and obviously not going to get any easier.
Symantec and Mcaffee have not been too excited about the changes to the Kernel. Symantec told them that their Kernel was flawed by design, so Microsoft rewrote it. Symantec took another look at the revised version and could only shake their heads in shock and disbelief. I heard today that Microsoft has now said that the Kernel was going to be entirely closed to third party developers, and that Kernel security was going to be handled internally (can you say Monopoly?). I don’t know about the general consensus but I think Microsoft is completely retarded about Internet security. Don’t trust me on this just take a look at the weekly/daily vulnerability reports being released by MicroSoft.
The value and importance of being able to run a 20 year old program escapes me, when this also allows the 20 year old computer virus to also run. I laugh about this BootCamp software to load Windows onto a MAC. Apple computers didn’t used to get viruses or exploits or even NEED virus protection… UNTIL NOW! Only Microsoft could ruin something as beautiful as a well engineered MAC, by making it vulnerable to over 72,000+ viruses, and counting.
As an administrator of several hundred desktops, I have seen the system requirements for Windows grow and grow, and the performance on Windows machines shrink and shrink. Now they are recommending 256MB Video Card and a GIG of RAM just to run Windows Vista! This is way more than double (like 16 times) what the requirements were for Windows XP. I have a whole fleet of 3 GHz machines, but people still complain that they are slow. I say it’s no wonder they suck they have Windows on them, duh, Windows is a patchwork quilt made of rotten fabric! Just wait until Vista comes out and you’ll see powerhouse machines just struggling too keep up.
I often wonder how we as a society got into this situation of being so reliant and dependant on such imperfect creations such as Windows and Office. How did we get locked into the MicroSoft “buy the new and ‘improved’ version” cycle when the products were never that good OR that well supported to begin with? Ignorance never solves a problem! Cut the cord on these dead technologies and lets get a good system on our PC’s. Vista is going to cost like a Trillion dollars to develop, and is going to totaly BOMB imho! At least it will give the smaller guys a chance to develop a truly innovative system.
Check out Ubuntu Linux! I think the open source community has proven itself time and again with products like Apache. I can do pretty much anything with Ubuntu that I can do with Windows, except get my closed-source close-minded wireless network card to work (down with BroadCom!). p.s. it’s free! with free updates!
December 5th, 2006 at 8:55 am
The pricing scheme for Windows Vista for the household with more than one computer is out of this world. As long as this operating system has been out. Also, all the different editions. Someone on another message board commented that one should not buy an extra edition that they don’t already nead. Well, what happens if Ultimate has a feature that I need down the road. Also, why do I want all my computers to be running different editions. The desktop has the Rich (Ultimate) version, but the laptop gets stuck with the 3rd world country version (Vista Basic). With 3 computers it would cost me around $300 - $500 or more depending on how I do the upgrades. This is rediculous. Just because they have the right under our so called capitalist system to price their product doesn’t give them the right to gouge the living crap out of everyone. If I had the money to buy a Mac Pro with the 199 dollar household upgrade (5 user license, I’d crapcan all my PC’s.
December 5th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Oh yeah, and the piracy thing. Instead of trying to shut down the Asian markets for pirated copies which sell hundreds every day, Microsoft installs a more robust activation scheme to go after good ole’ grandma who is trying to pay her bills online. It shows how Microsoft and the American government really feel about people. If the American government cared about the people, legislation would be passed against such crap.
January 28th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Vista ain’t gonna flop. Not because it’s so good or the new features are what the world has been waiting for. It’s because M$ with all its power, marketing and influence will simply shove it down their hardware partners’ and consumers’ throats. That’s all.
Linux still has some mileage to go to be a really viable alternative for Joe User, who does not only want to do simple word processing and web surfing, but also use unrestricted multimedia and play new and cool games without having to fiddle with the system, use emulators or download some Windows-codecs from some obscure website in order to get all media formats playing in Linux.
Mac OS X is good, however, gaming is practically nonexistent on this platform.
Hence, there is no OS that could fill the gap for the consumer market on short notice should Vista really fail.
So, in the end people will but up with all that DRM, content protection and trusted computing crap.
January 31st, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I’m going to find flaws… They are always flaws…
Lorenzo, No Code Inc.
February 17th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
by the way Microsoft owns 49% of apple computer i wouldnt be getting to proud of my mac if i were you and in case you think MS has stolen from mac then you better think twice,same programmers are working on the same os’s.of course there going to look alike.by the way macs do get viruses ,i have no idea who saying they were virus free but they are wrong,and as far as firefox goes try logging into forums in nuke,,,,firefox has alot of glitches also,
February 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
winVista this, winVista that. When an OS DEMANDS the latest technology to barely get it running, i turn my head. That is the job of game developers! (what are the requirements for UT2k7 anyone?)
Linux can fly circles around any windoze OS, in functionality, stability and maintanability. The Debian/GNU project has proven this with a lovely program called apt-get.
The future is Open; Open minded, Open sourced. Why do hardware manufacturers still make their closed-sourced drivers? Are they secretely being paid by M$ to only have them run under their weak OS?
As for Ubuntu… are they not doing something with proprietary codecs? Besides, KDE is also bloated, requiring a lot more to run the Fluxbox or Enlightenment. Then again, simple minds prefer all that GUI.
‘in a world withought walls, why do we need windows or gates?’
March 9th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
so much security its choking the processor, too many sub-menus, too many processes running in the background..looks nice but I hate it
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
vista just sucks
July 9th, 2007 at 7:26 am
i have had vista installed on a few machine there are many flaws with it even with the loads of update you have to do. It is so much a mem hog and cpu usage while static is rediculous. ms says this is not a extention of xp but a whole ne kernal.
can anyone say winME here this os will have so many complaints give it about 1 yr and they will release a new replacement. Fo all the problems xp had it is getting very stable now and they have found most the hole in it’s code now we got to go through it all again with vista. also with xp there was pro or home now we have 3 diffrent styles of vista. i reallythink ms has dropped the ball on worse then ME worst of all ms arrogance to say vista is more secure than xp. that because the hackers have not released thier full fury against vista and rumbelings from security experts lead me tobelive there will be a calm before the storm for now any machine that leaves my shop still have xp and as long as i can get it i will install it.
August 13th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Now why, and what Idiot wants to run WINDSUCKS on his perfectly good Mac…………….. DA!