Comments on: Going long on Longhorn

CNET News.com's Charles Cooper explains why the upcoming OS is so important to Microsoft and the rest of the tech industry.

[Clues]

Microsoft's Anti-Apple Marketing Campaign

Microsoft can't compete with Apple on features, security, quality
or reliability with it's XP OS and it's clear LongHorn may only be
slightly better and possibly worse. They have already admitted,
they are going to loose market share to Apple, and it's
happening now. Last quarter Apple gained 43% in their market
share in computing platforms. All indications are this is rising
quickly and could compound to a few hundred percent gain per
year in the near term and potentially increasing further out.

The development of Tiger the new Mac OS cost $40 million to
develop and took 18 months. Microsoft over the next 18 months
will spend between $200 million to $800 million on advertising
to combat Tiger with a carpet bomb saturation marketing
campaign for XP a five year old NT update. If LongHorn actually
ships in 18 months they intend to spend even more to promote
it than they have ever spent on any "new" OS introduction, much
less an incremental update to the XP OS, which is what
LongHorn has now become after all the major features have
been gutted.

Your probably asking yourself why they don't just buy a stable,
secure, modern operating system and slap an imitation of the
Mac GUI on top so they can rid themselves of the abomination of
OS foundation they now have. This would rid them of hundreds
of thousands of holes in their OS as well as starting over from
scratch with no viruses and malware.

The answer has been researched deeply at MS. The bottom line
is the only game would be to adopt a UNIX base for their OS.
That would make them just like everyone else and they couldn't
leverage and extort those who are currently trapped on Windows
XP. This would also then mean competing on merit. Microsoft
has never won in any market where they have to compete based
on the quality and functionality of their products. There's good
reason for this. They have never demonstrated any vision and
have such poor implementation, quality and speed wise that
they would simply be exposed as a joke and go into an
immediate death spiral. Research has shown they have NO
CHOICE but to keep going with Windows as it is and crank up
the disinformation campaign even more. At some point even the
blindingly stupid will catch on but since there is no choice for
survival they must continue the charade of duping as many
drones as possible.

Even with more extorted money than God they can't buy
creativity, vision nor speed. Their skills lie now as ever wholly in
extort, extinguish and deceive. Changing to a proper OS based
on UNIX would have unmanageable problems for Microsoft.
Every other current OS would have an enormous jump on them
of tens of years and there wouldn't be one single application to
start with that works on the new Windows. For Microsoft being
equal isn't an option, because if people are forced to change
they will change to something that already works and has tens
of thousands of top notch applications and is secure. That
means Apple and or other UNIX based OS.

So deception and keeping their OS scam running is Microsoft's
only choice, and like a strung out crack head they are desperate.
Their options are extremely limited, because there is no
treatment program for the money addiction and the source of
their money would be stopped immediately if they attempt to
make real change. They are working to have Windows run in
emulation so some backward compatibility is possible if they are
forced to move but that still leaves them with no applications for
the new OS if they can buy one. Using open source isn't an
option because non-proprietary means choice and that is not
something they can choose. If forced by market abandonment
they are trying to establish a fall back position.

One would think that Microsoft's greatest asset is their software
but this is NOT the case and they are well aware of this. The
greatest asset that Microsoft has is public opinion or ignorance.
They will do anything, say anything and spend any amount of
money to keep the truth from being accepted by the average
company and to a lesser degree the general population. That's
why Microsoft is a Marketing company and that is their greatest
legal and some would say ethical skill. So people must believe,
drink the cool aid, and for those who have moved up to reality
without the lies the whole Microsoft deception scam being
swallowed by the average drone on Windows looks pretty
pathetic.

So, will the Microsoft house of cards, deception continue? That is
really up to the general population being bright enough to
gather the facts for themselves. This has started to happen and
it has Microsoft scared ********. Hence the enormous marketing
campaign presently being rolled out to keep the stupid stupid.
Their very existence depends on this lack of knowledge and
discernment. Why else would they be rolling out this enormous
marketing effort for an antiquated XP OS which is simply a bit of
lip stick on the pig that is NT.

[Llib Setag]

Citizen Gates is the Marlboro Man riding a virtual bull

THANKS FOR SUCH A GREAT RESPONSE & DOSE OF THE TRUTH!
Ever seen those anti-tobacco monopoly ads by "The Truth" at truth.com?

Citizen Gates is the tiny Marlboro Man riding his virtual bull around trying to cover his tracks.
Big Tobacco & Microsoft have many things in common:
Both are obsolete relics of the past "cool age".
Both spew cancer, viruses & cause you to crash & burn.
Both have manipulated the government with their billion dollar lobbyist & power plays.
Both have lied to the Goverment for years about how "safe" their products are.
Both have dug the tenticles deep into the masses & make it very difficult to go "cold turkey".
Both have done whatever it takes (legally or illegally) to keep their monopolies in power & crush the other guys "butts" there by snuffing them out & keeping their cash flow going from the little people to the corporate fat cats.
MS & Big Tobacco are bith cancerous, nip them in the bud or roll your own.

[marvin25]

Longhorn

I would like to say that is based on the standards it will built for the Internet. If it can't control the standards and has to follow the standards that Firefox is doing then there is no need for longhorn as it will not sail. It has to be improvement over it current OS and right now there is no showing this to be the case. Since we are going all web based in the next couple years the OS will be meaningless as it will be the OS and Firefox will cause to standards or else, So the people will able to use any OS as it will all be standards and not Microsoft. Yhe growth of Firefox is showing this to be taking place. We don't need Longhorn unless it stays with the standards in soceity and not Microsoft standards.

[digantasaha]

Nicolaie Ionut: Macs for cult and hobbyists? Is that so...

Even though I agree that for the foreseeable future that
Microsoft will dominate I take issue with your unnecessary
inflammatory remarks.

First your comment: "Mac? Well, when you have to wait 5 weeks
for a mac mini, your just no productive". When any product is in
high demand it takes a while for production to catch up.
Whether it be Mac Mini or Sony PSP. If this was a problem 2-3
months after its initial debut then I would agree that this is not
good. However, your example is a poor one and your comments
show your prejudice against Apple.

Saying that Macs will only be for cult users and hobbyists is
myopic and uninformed. Five years ago people would have said
the same for Linux and FreeBSD platforms. So I advise against
using such broad labels for a platform that sells more seats than
any Unix flavor or Linux distro.

Using your criteria for Mac users I guess the following people are
cultist or hobbyists in your book:


Bill Joy: Founder of Sun Microsystems
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/billjoy.html

James Gosling: Father of Java and former Sun employee
http://www.apple.com/pro/science/gosling/

MIT research group buying Powerbooks
http://paulgraham.com/mac.html

Scientists: The Latest Mac Converts (90% of NASA's JPL on Macs)
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32837.html

A Visit from the FBI.
http://www.securityfocus.com/cgi-bin/sfonline/columnists-
item.pl?id=215

Former Cyber Security and Counterterrorism czar, national
security counselor to three presidents, until May 2003. Richard
A. Clarke, shown on PBS Frontline documentary "Cyber War"
using a Apple Powerbook.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cyberwar/

Computer Scientist Amit Singh uses an Apple Powerbook for his
day to day activities. He is an IBM researcher working on Linux
and formerly worked at Bell Labs.
http://kernelthread.com/mac/osx/

Standford Medical: Mac OSX cosolidates three desktop systems
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/stanfordmedical/

A Perfect X: Bioinformatics
http://www.bio-itworld.com/archive/030805/perfect.html

A critical edge for NASA 3D rendering
http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/
riacsnasa.html

Penn State Computer Science switches to Macs
http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/pennstate/

What Are the Alpha Geeks Telling us Right Now?
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/05/14/
oreilly_wwdc_keynote.html?page=2

SecurityFocus staff use OS X
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/21/apples_big_virus/

Computer clusters. Here are a few of them...

COLSA Corporation and the U.S. Army
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/colsa/

Virginia Tech
http://www.tcf.vt.edu/systemX.html

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.cse.uiuc.edu/turing/

Guess there are many hobbyists and cult members in
goverment, industry, academia and especially research.

[orfeu_niko]

5 years ago

I had many friends that were using Linux, as desktop or server. Now there are even more of them. I see lot of Linux desktops in small bussiness. I and my colegues develop in Linux. We have some Windows desktops for Macromedia and Adobe Photoshop.
I never saw Apple taken under consideration. Never. Only by the curios ones, and they had problems because they had to put linux on them to be able cu coup up with what was at work.
And as far as I know Apple always had this problem with supply. Even in their dark times they had about 1 bilion in demands, but weren't able to provide. At work, if I have a problem with a computer or a server, I can go and in max an hour I have the mising component.
I'm not against Apple, I'm just tierd that every time I'm asking a sane quistion, I have a replay from one of this guyes that prise that much this platform that I just don't want to be as him. A computer is a computer, a tool, not something that my live should gravitate around it.

[Chaossabbath]

Examples?

Try 90% of America
www.firstgov.gov

[djugan]

Look to the stock price to gauge reality

M$FT's share price has been travelling east and west for nearly three years and shows no likelihood of heading north in the mid-term.

Here's where the rubber meets the road. And M$FT, by most accounts where the big boys (and girls) play, has badly lost its grip.

[Chaossabbath]

Stock?

What do you think happens when a giant reaches the top, it cant go any further! Where would apple be without it's ipod...

[kms007]

ignorance is bliss...

...it's Mac, not MAC.


It's funny when people compare OS's like religion. It's a
computer, folks. Use what you use and quit bad-mouthing those
that use something different. Honestly, do we even see people
do this to other items (like clothes, cars, and the like?).

-Krishna

Redmond paid advertisement

Every release of MS OS has bluffed it's user and it becomes less problematic only after applying a continuous series of Service Packs. End user should not worry about Longhorn. Let them first release it and then wait for another year for it to become usable.
-Santosh

[PolarUpgrade]

But who can AFFORD all this?

I doubt we shall ever see another Windows buying frenzy as per Windows 95.

In the Windows 95 era software was freeLY COPIABLE if not LEGALLY free. In the time of Longhorn, end users cannot get real value out of the over-priced Windows XP by simply using it on several PCs, as it is copy-locked via Activation.

With Activation precluding any kind of cost-effective OS use, and with Activation also ending the era of freeLY COPIABLE software (which is what made PCs affordable), we must wonder whether there's a viable Windows market out there.

Clearly this is why a slump exists now, and is only going to worsen as more key apps are copylocked.

Has anyone noticed the number of companies that have "Acitvation"-locked their products only to be swallowed up months later by other software firms that are still making some money?