Microsoft

Apple and Microsoft are fighting for the mindshare of consumers as both companies prepare to roll out upgrades to their operating systems later this year.

Apple on Monday showed Worldwide Developers Conference attendees Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X. Apple has been very open about the fact that Snow Leopard is meant to be an under-the-hood maintenance release, focusing on performance enhancements to the operating system.

Windows 7 is essentially Microsoft's maintenance release for Vista, that according to many accounts was a failure for the company. Putting aside all of the back and forth between the two companies, one industry analyst feels it comes down to the consumer.

"It's really immaterial the degree of the rewrite in the operating system," Ross Rubin, director of analysis for market research firm NPD, told CNET. "The key is the consumer benefit."

Apple introduces Mac OS X Snow Leopard at the WWDC.

(Credit: Jim Dalrymple)

While early testing of Windows 7 seems to bear out improvements in the operating system, Microsoft is coming off a very bad consumer experience with Windows Vista. That is not a trivial obstacle for it to overcome.

Microsoft will have to fight the industry perception that Windows 7 is just Vista with a few fixes. That could certainly lead to slower adoption of the new operating system out of the gate.

Apple on the other hand is coming off one of the most successful operating system launches in the company's history. Mac OS X Leopard was a solid release, packed with features. Overall, Leopard had relatively few problems throughout its life cycle.

Apple doesn't have to fight off that negative perception from its users or the industry. Macs have been selling better than ever and there is no sense that will slow down anytime soon.

Typically, Apple sells its new operating systems for $129. That's a flat fee. Everyone gets the same version that includes all features and enhancements. However, Leopard users will be offered an upgrade to Snow Leopard for $29. Microsoft has yet to release its upgrade pricing, but it is expected to be much higher.

"The OS war is on in a big way," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Strategy and Analysis at Interpret. "Charging $29 won't win Apple any converts, but Microsoft is going to look really bad with its upgrade pricing."

It's clear that Microsoft has a much bigger channel to push Windows 7 to customers, but we've seen with the Vista release that doesn't always mean success for an operating system.

Apple is coming from a strong position with Mac OS X Leopard, so upgrades to its newest Snow Leopard release should be very strong.

Apple said Snow Leopard is expected to ship in September. Microsoft will release Windows 7 in October.

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

A new survey reveals that 84 percent of IT pros don't have plans to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year and that half of respondents are considering alternatives. But it pays to parse a few nuances.

The survey, which was conducted by Dimension Research and commissioned by KACE, a systems management appliance company. The survey had 1,142 respondents and 99 percent of them had a Windows operating system installed at their companies.

(Credit: Dimensional Research/KACE)

The spin here has been that it's somehow bad that most IT professionals won't jump to Windows 7 in the next year.

However, Windows 7 is still in beta and hasn't been released yet. Of course, 84 percent won't upgrade to Windows 7 in a 12-month time frame. If you go April to April and Windows 7 is launched in October-ish, that means IT pros would have just six months to make the leap. In the OS upgrade world, that speed just doesn't happen.

Cast in that light, the figures in the pie chart to the right actually look pretty impressive to me.

So within two years, 59 percent of IT pros plan to upgrade to Windows 7. The good news: that's some pent-up demand. The bad news: Vista is the reason there's pent-up demand.

But what really caught my eye is the secondary headline about Windows alternatives.

(Credit: Dimensional Research/KACE)

The headline: 50 percent of IT pros are considering a move from Windows. Operative word: considering. You'd be dumb not to consider a move. In fact, I'd argue that the other half of IT pros aren't doing their job: you should always assess alternatives.

If you break down the 50 percent considering a move away from Windows, 14 percent are actively making a jump. That's up from 11 percent in 2008 and 9 percent in 2007. You can determine whether the money quote here should be:

• 36 percent are staying, i.e,. Microsoft is still winning.
or
• 14 percent are bolting, i.e., alternative operating systems are gaining steam.

The truth is probably in the middle.

Another nuance to ponder. Apple's OS X is the most likely platform to replace Vista or Windows 7, with 27 percent eyeing the Mac platform. The rub: that percentage is down from 29 percent in 2008.

Perhaps the headline should be that Vista, Windows 7 and OS X are in decline--and that Ubuntu is on the rise.

In any case there's a lot of fun to be had with numbers in this survey.

(Credit: Dimensional Research/KACE)

There's a Snow Leopard on Live Search for sure. But could Live Search be inside Snow Leopard?

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET Networks)

Those of us with too much bandwidth and too little life (yours truly included) are wondering just why Microsoft chose to make a snow leopard the backdrop photo on Live Search on Thursday.

Even though Microsoft puts a new picture on the site each day, surely it hasn't exhausted all the images that are not references to competitor's products.

As TechFlash points out, the fact that Microsoft has the mascot for Apple's next operating system could be cluelessness on Microsoft's point. Or it could be hubris.

But another crazy thought crossed my mind. What if Microsoft has landed a deal to make Live Search the default in the next version of the Mac OS. For a long time now, Apple's Safari has had a Google search bar built-in. I don't know how much traffic that generates for the search giant, but it would seem to be at least as significant as some of the PC deals that Microsoft is paying good money to get.

Obvious animosities aside, mightn't a deal make sense. Microsoft has talked about needing to spend some money to boost Live Search share.

If it is the case, would Microsoft and/or Apple be crazy enough to tip their hand? It seems unlikely. But, even if that's not the reason that the Snow Leopard is there, would such a deal make sense?

Microsoft researcher Rick Rashid speaks to developers Wednesday at the Professional Developer Conference.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News)

LOS ANGELES--As he began his speech on Wednesday, Microsoft Research chief Rick Rashid talked up his ties, not just to Microsoft's products, but also to those from Apple.

"If you use a Macintosh or an iPhone, which honestly I would not recommend, you would be using code that I wrote more than 25 years ago," Rashid quipped to a crowd of developers at the company's Professional Developer Conference here. In his Carnegie Mellon days, Rashid helped create the Mach kernel that is at the heart of Mac OS X (Note: I originally stated that it was at the heart of FreeBSD, but others have pointed out that's not accurate).

Rashid noted that it's also a testimony to the staying power of core technology ideas.

"If you'd asked me 25 years ago if I thought code I was (writing, would be) running today on a cell phone, my reaction would have been 'what's a cell phone?'" Rashid said.

"It just shows you things really do survive and get used in interesting ways," Rashid said.

Later in his talk, Rashid is expected to show off some of the latest technology from the labs. (I'm betting we see Microsoft's Sphere surface computer, since Microsoft started the keynote Wednesday with a thank you note to the company that makes the display that powers Sphere.)

Update, 9:12 a.m. PDT: Microsoft put out a release noting some of the things Rashid will cover.

Microsoft plans an update to its Worldwide Telescope software and also detailed the Microsoft CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, software developer tools that aim to "make it easier to develop loosely-coupled concurrent and distributed applications."

Microsoft sensor technology is being used to create maps for research and work related to protecting the environment.

(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)

Other topics include: DryadLINQ (a project that enables ordinary programmers to write large-scale data parallel applications to run on large PC clusters), a tool to help kids learn to program known as Boku, as well as Second Light, a surface computing research project I wrote about earlier this month.

Meanwhile, Microsoft researcher Feng Zhao is discussing how computers factor into the world's energy use. In the U.S. for example, computing uses about 1.5 percent of all electricity, according to a 2006 EPA report. However, computers can also be used to make other systems, such as heating and air conditioning, more efficient.

A slide of updated telescope software features.

(Credit: Elinor Mills/CNET News)

Zhao showed a sensor map from Microsoft research that helped chart the temperature in the main convention hall over the last couple of days. He noted that Microsoft uses 10,000 such sensors throughout its data centers.

"It's...good for our customers," he said. "It's also good for the world."

Update, 9:45 a.m. PDT: Rashid discussed the update to the telescope software, which Microsoft is calling the "equinox" update.

The new update, going live now, offers more than double the data of the original release, including 55 new panoramic images from the Apollo moon and Pathfinder Mars missions.

The demos drew loud applause as Rashid showed a wide range of views, including a display of the entire viewable universe.

Computer sales on Amazon.com are not exactly a proxy for the broader retail market. Still, I do think it is noteworthy that of the top 20 best-selling laptops on Thursday evening, just one was running Windows Vista.

That one is an HP mini-notebook that ranked No. 18, trailing behind a gaggle of Macs and Netbooks running either Windows XP or Linux.

On the plus side for Redmond, 10 of the top 20 machines were running some flavor of Windows. And, as I mentioned, Amazon is not a true barometer.

Apple's market share, while growing isn't exactly neck and neck with Microsoft's. And Netbooks, while a rising trend, aren't completely taking over the market.

But while the numbers are skewed the trends are worth paying attention to. Two of the hottest parts of the PC market are the areas where Windows faces its stiffest competition.

The Amazon sales trend was noted earlier Thursday by MacDailyNews, though they used a slightly different measurement.

Canonical's update service for the Ubuntu operating system had more downtime than Apple's or Microsoft's services.

(Credit: Pingdom)

A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.

Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.

"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, however.

The company tested the three services every five minutes.

Although Microsoft officially stopped selling Windows XP as of June 30, retailers can keep selling it as long as they have copies.

Perhaps as a result of its potentially impending scarcity, XP is near the top of Amazon.com's software list, with the full version of XP Home at No. 15 and the full version of XP Pro at No. 21.

The highest ranked Vista edition doesn't crack the top 25, although it does come on nearly all new PCs these days so most people don't need a boxed copy.

For those keeping score, Apple's Mac OS X Leopard is No. 7 on the software list, while the highest ranking Vista version is the update version of Windows Vista Home Premium, at No. 41.

On the bright side for Redmond, Office Home and Student for Windows is No. 1 and the Mac edition of Office Home and Student is No. 3.

For those still looking to get their hands on XP, it doesn't seem like it's all that hard to find. Best Buy had it listed in several different flavors online and noted that it's also available in most stores. Staples, Office Depot, Circuit City, and OfficeMax all listed at least one version of XP on their Web sites as well.