Microsoft's desktop prowess: Blessing or curse?
"The die is cast," declared Julius Caesar, anticipating Microsoft's fateful decision to protect its Windows cash cow at all costs.
Years later, as Joe Nocera eloquently opines in The New York Times, Microsoft has tethered itself to its Windows operating system and almost certainly lost its way on the Internet as a result:
Windows is already dying a death by a thousand cuts. Yes, Microsoft still makes billions by selling pre-installed Windows via computer manufacturers. But ever-so-gradually, the Internet is upending its business model just as surely as it has upended models for the music, television and newspaper businesses....Bill Gates saw this coming many years ago.... But in the subsequent decade-plus, the company has been unable to keep it from happening. Think about it: do you really care anymore which operating system you use?
Microsoft opted to try to harness the Web to accompany its desktop monopoly, but the Web is too big to serve as handmaiden to any one company's monopoly. Microsoft needs to learn to serve the Web, not the other way around.
The more Microsoft seeks to protect its past (i.e., desktop monopoly and all the revenue that comes with it), the less relevant it will be to the future. Microsoft hopes to straddle the two, and maybe it will succeed. But its desktop anchor may well end up sinking the ship.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
The Web is the platform by which Windows is one way to serve it up.
Windows is not the only way to the Web.
Therefore putting Windows first means that the Web is second for them.
The conclusion is that they will never win the Web because there are competitors such as Google where the Web is number 1.
If you are going to compete on the Web, then go all out.
Microsoft is not no1 on the Web because they half-heartedly develop for the Web because there focus is elsewhere.
We are NEVER going to have a computer that solely has it's OS on servers somewhere else in the world, because there is always the possibility that those servers will go down or become unreachable. Now, will we have LESS stuff to download onto the smaller OS's on our computers? The answer to that is yes, and that is one thing that even as a Microsoft fanboy, I get on MS's case about: their software is BLOATED.
Not with applications, persay..... it's more bloated with drivers for devices that are EONS old that they should offer online if anyone needs them, not on their software disks. That is where the main bloat is coming from.
There is a little other bloat with other stuff: Windows Mail, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Internet Explorer, etc. that I wish that they would allow me to choose or not choose to install on my PC. But, they have a very good reasoning for not allowing me to do that, and all together..... they take up a pretty small amount of my hard drive, compared to even other programs on my computer.
How long it takes before they are dead or whether or not being consigned to a small corner of the computing world is death is up for debate.
Microsoft is irrelevant. They copy others, and are not longer feared among OEM's(which is where most of their power came from).
If you are a company that is irrelevant you are at the very least dying.
that is pure BS. And every time they post yet another record profit, it shows.
Irrelevant? You've never worked in the real world, have you?
Anyone who has would laugh in you face.
Your wishful thinking doesn't make the world go around.
Really? Who hasn't copied others? Apple - nope stole from Xerox. MS - stole from everyone's ideas. IBM - steals everything it can. Google - hmm, either 'steals' or simply improves upon (chrome is very much built upon others work, the search engine itself is just a better version of say Alta-Vista). Oracle just buys everything it can't crush.
"They are dying, that is indisputable."
Well, Office is stil the standard. Windows is still the most commonly used OS. Hotmail is still kicking, although not winning. Xbox is very popular. IE is still dominant And whether are still using XP or Vista guess what, they still are stuck to the Windows platform.
"If you are a company that is irrelevant you are at the very least dying."
Just a few years ago Apple was having obituaries published weekly, and all they needed was the iPod to become relevant again. MS still HAS those products. And unless or until something completely supplants Windows or Office they will continue to be hugely relevant. What they aren't is a terrifying monopoly anymore.
MS has a luxury only a few other companies have - cash to throw at new markets. It is also hobbled by anti-monopoly lawsuits and other issues. Your vague argument that Windows is irrelevant is not because they tried to hijack the web, but because they can't dump everything into a PC that Apple can dump into a Mac. Our Mac laptop came with some cool and some useless software that Apple has thrown in, making it seem like a complete solution. In reality, though, buying a new PC for 500 and adding Office Home for $80 and Norton for $50 is all most people would ever need.
The OS will never go away. Too many things the operating system has to take care of in the background. All users might see is the UI, but there is so much more. My Blackberry gets on the net for me, and has become my net appliance of choice, but it can't print to my HP ALL-In-1, it cant accept a scan of a document, nor allow me to install any of the powerful programs I *might* need to use (photoshop, fireworks, flash, etc) or do a simple task of photo manipulation or burn a CD. And yes, many of those functions could theoretically be handled on the cloud, but why? Even it though is running an OS - BBOS 4.5. So MS just needs to find its next big thing.
BTW, with all the fuss about how 'cool' the newest Apple products are, MS has been successful in creating a sub-cult of their own. The Xbox has developed some serious cred in the gaming world. To them, the Xbox IS cool, and once MS learns how to leverage that on the web or PC side, it will be the preppy cool Apple kids vs. the alt. cool MS kids.
MS isn't my favorite company, and I know this is just a blog, but this article is posted on a journalistic site with absolutely no journalistic work being done. In fact, my reply has been in-depth than the original article, which isn't saying much.
John
A year ago I may have answered no but yes I do care. Especially now since I recently bought a Mac Book Pro. Although a lot of stuff I do now is on the Web, I still look for my OS to give me the necessary tools and platform to make me productive. The ease of use of the Mac OS has been a real eye opener for me. A lot of the day to day stuff I do is much simpler now.
I don't think we have reached a point yet where the OS is transparent to us.
- by TxemiC September 9, 2008 8:00 AM PDT
- Do not discount Windows so easily.
- Reply to this comment
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(14 Comments)See this post and its conclusion:
http://tech-talk.biz/2008/09/08/eee-pc-linux-or-xp/