Can he do it? More than Bill Gates, more than Steve Ballmer, it's Allchin who must convince opinion makers and the all-important OEM community that Longhorn, the code name for the next major operating system from Microsoft, is worth the wait. And then the rest of us have to be convinced that Longhorn is the next must-have product in their lives.
Mac owners--yours truly among them--will no doubt chuckle at the audacity of some of the coming claims. Rest assured there will be no paucity of hyperbole in the remaining year-and-a-half run-up to the operating system's debut (assuming Microsoft hits its self-imposed deadline.)
The company, which plans to unleash a massive marketing blitz around Longhorn, needs to create a bigger stir than when it last rolled out a "major" OS upgrade in 2001 with Windows XP. Through no fault of its own, Microsoft's launch coincided with a tech spending slowdown and an accompanying economic recession. The bigger problem: XP was only marginally more interesting than Windows 98 and no amount of marketing hoopla could convince otherwise.
Microsoft began publicly discussing the Longhorn project in 2002, but its engineers were already tinkering before then. Work on some parts of the OS (like the recently excised WinFS) actually dates back more than 10 years (roughly coinciding with Allchin's stewardship of Windows).
When Allchin came to town last week, he was in prime demo form. One thing Microsoft does well--Allchin, in particular--is demonstrate its products. (The one time that wasn't the case happened to take place in inconvenient public view at the company's antitrust trial in Washington.)
Two big challenges remain. Microsoft has rarely shipped its operating systems on time and Longhorn is no exception. Allchin's final legacy at the company rests on his ability to pull this one over the goal line on time. Without getting into details, he suggested that Microsoft would make sure OEMs have copies in hand well before the December 2006 product debut. An entire industry will be planning around that promise. If that date slips, you?re talking about disaster.
Microsoft also needs to turn out a "wow" product with as many useful bells and whistles as it can. This is part computer science, part guesswork, but Microsoft still hasn't produced a "wow" version of Windows. If Longhorn doesn't produce the goods, not even a gazillion dollars in marketing funds will make a difference. This is about more than managing the message.
Biography
Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
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WinXP was, and still is, a hit. It is sold, MS still has huge profit. They can buy Apple with an year profit. And it seems that with all the hoola about Apple and Linux, they still go on and on and on. They must be doing something right for this to happen. With all the noise around iPod and the MAC thing the desktop is still theirs and there is no seeing this will change.
Linux is a pretty good desktop OS, but people seem to think that you have to compile some things to get it running, which is plain wrong. But it is a good thing they think so, stupidity is kept away from linux this way.
Mac? Well, when you have to wait 5 weeks for a mac mini, your just no productive. They will never be more than a cult and hobby thing. In rest, don't know anything about a MAC.
FreeBSD? Server, they are good, I like them. Desktop? Well, that's were you have to compile a lot because of the the ports package management. Still, once running, a pretty impresive desktop/workstation.
supporting Windows machines as well as Macs and if I had a
say in the matter I would ditch the Windows machines in an
instant. You need 1 tech for roughly every 50 Windows
machines you have, but you only need 1 tech for roughly
every 150-200 Macs you have. Why? Because the Mac OS is
more stable, more solid, and much less prone to problems
and breakdowns than Windows machines. For sure, XP was
an improvement, but when it comes OS technology and
innovation, Macs still rule the roost. And when it comes to
servers, nothing I have used (including Server 2003) comes
close to the power, simplicity, stability, or effectiveness os
Mac OS Server, and with Tiger Server next week, it promises
to still get even better.
Microsoft will sell Longhorn well because they have a built-in
user base, not because it is a better technology. Beta-max is
superior to VHS, yet we all use VHS. Why? Because VHS was
better marketed and once it obtained market dominance
there was no turning back for Beta-max. The same could be
said for Windows. It has been, in the past, marketed much
better than anything else and as a result has achieved market
dominance, but that does not mean it is the better system.
For someone who has admittedly rarely used Macs, I find it
hard to believe how you could justify or qualify your remarks
about them. Macs are not a toy. They may seem like a fad
to you, but underneath that veneer is a true workhorse that
can trample underfoot any current Windows creation.
no productive."
No computer catches all the errors but spelling "you're just not
productive" as "your just no productive" does not give a good
impression.
Surely you are not suggesting that a shortage of supply is a
negative comment on the quality of a product? It would seem to
indicate higher than expected demand. Further, in the case of
the Mac Mini, you are referring to a brand new product intended
to replace PCs. You do, after all, need a monitor, keyboard and
mouse so it is unlikely that this will be your first computer. In
that event, your productivity point would seem to suggest that
five weeks of being left with a Windows machine would be
largely unproductive.
"They will never be more than a cult and hobby thing."
Having recently completed a review of supercomputing facilities
I can perhaps surprise you by informing you that the number 7
(in the world) facility uses Apple XServes while the number 1 and
number 4 facilities use the same PowerPC processors as Apple.
This is neither cult nor hobby stuff.
The only real reason Windows XP is sold is that people want to
improve on older versions of Windows. You can't suddenly
switch to diesel if your car runs on petrol, nor can you readily
switch your computer to run Mac OS when it uses and x86
architecture. Legacy hardware is the reason Windows sells that
and the army of PC makers supporting it. I can't blame MS for
that strategy, it seems to have worked. Perhaps if Apple had
taken that approach years ago we would be talking about
competitors to Mac OS. (I for one am glad they didn't, however,
as I believe that controlling the design of both hardware and
software is one of the reasons for the higher quality of Mac's). If
Apple were to port a version of Tiger for Intel platforms I think
you'd find a much higher uptake rate. The success of the Mac
Mini would seem to support that view.
The cost of onwership of Macs is lower. People quibble over
purchase cost but most Mac users will keep their machines for a
long time and updates to OS X typically make things run faster
as opposed to requiring enormous upgrades in RAM and
processing capability. Anti-virus companies like Symantec would
be out of business if everyone used Macs. I have a virus scanner
on my Powerbook but I leave the auto-protect function turned
off and will probably not renew my subscription when it comes
due. In all the monthly scans I have run I have found precisely
one virus and it was for PCs. Microsoft have spawned a huge
"repair" industry that simply isn't needed for Mac's. What does
that say about quality? The reason Mac users appear smug is
that we can't understand why Windows users put up with it.
For reference I have a Windows XP Pro laptop that I have retired
in favour of an Apple laptop about a year ago. I still use it
sometimes but that periodic use causes me more grief than a
year of using a Mac. I honestly could not believe how quickly I
completed the switch. Initially I actually felt a strange sense of
loss that I wasn't going to be continually tweaking and patching
things. My days seemed empty. I came to terms with it though.
Don't regard this is an "us and them" thing. We are all users but
those of us in "Mac-world" seem to be happier with our
purchases.
of others) using only Mac and Adobe products for the past 20
years in the graphic arts/publishing/advertising industry. An
industry by-the-way, where, due to their obvious short-
comings, there is no such thing as a PC. The overwhelming
majority of print and on-line ads you see are composed on
Macs. Pick up any brochure, catalog, magazine, poster or book
produced during the last two decades and there's a 95% chance
it was created on a Mac from composition stage to printing plate
output. Some hobby, huh?
I honestly don't think that any other OS will overshadow LH (cosumer market-wise)
former employer is still using NT.
"Microsoft allowed a significant period of time to accommodate
companies? demand to test and validate Windows XP SP2 within
their IT infrastructure,? said Steve O?Halloran, managing director
of AssetMetrix Research Labs. ?Based on our research, a
substantial number of companies have yet to decide whether to
accept or embargo Windows XP SP2. To date, we have observed
that 40% of companies using Windows XP have actively avoided
upgrading to SP2, and only 7% have actively accepted it. The
other 52% of the companies showed no direction or policy
towards SP2, and may find themselves having support issues by
allowing multiple editions of Windows XP to exist in their
infrastructure.?
Microsoft's attention to developers is why they continue to lead - you simply can get several times as many applications for Windows as for other platforms, because it is so darned easy a platform to write for!
Mozilla is too.
I'm writing all these on a slackware workstation were a develop in java, with tomcat and postgresql. It is good, but it was pretty hard to make java work on, unlike on fedora, and then there is no postgresql etc. On Windows it would be very easy to get it running and instead off losing a day for get it working, spent 1 hour on get everything instaled and configured.
Still, Linux is a very good system. I use Slackware, but on other distributions would be pretty easy.
overabundance of useless junkware.
Windows is indeed a fertile field.
I can't wait to see the tons and tons of applications that will be developed for this platform and what it will make possible.
Have you ever used OSX's IDE? Looked at it? Have you used the OS at all? Coding for it is rediculously simple, and cheaper as well. The standard OS comes with a compiler, for free.
You can actually use it to create a cheeseball text editor a la notepad, without writing any significant code. This includes being able to add spell check, (which is a system-wide service), and many other features. This is why, for example, many OSX apps offer spell check in useful places, this dialog box for example, while I have yet to see a Windows based Web Browser offer that. This is because on OSX adding value added features is trivial.
Futhermore OSX has the best multi-language support I have ever seen. This is why Cocoa developers can ship a copy of an application that contains 10 to 30 languages in a single version of the application. You can actually add languages after the fact without a recompile or even looking at the code. You simply add the appropriate directory to the applcation bundle and put the translated entries into the XML values. This is in fact so easy to do that power users can be taught to add new languages to an application without ever knowing anything about programming at all!!!!
Apple even offers a cluster framework (which I have not used) which I have heard rave reviews about. BTW does Visual Studio do network compiles?
Please don't confuse developer mindshare/ignorance of a platform with the ease of development for a platform.
Where Microsoft excels, is at developer hand-holding, and simply pure amounts of developer information available. They are better than Apple at providing mountains of documentation. If you send them enough money, they will almost write your code for you. Apple on the other hand does not do this. Their support, while adequate in my opinion, is limited to helping people who are willing to do some research.
They are not better at providing code, since you can download 70% or so of the OSX source for free. Last time I heard, aside from the NDA business, it was around $50,000 per .dll where Microsoft was concerned.
The other place where Microsoft is superior is in the position of pure ubiquity of system calls. They have an API for everything. They have some framework for everything you might imagine. They also have has a much more stable API in the recent past. I cannot comment on the stability of whatever the Classic Mac API was, since I have never used it, and have no interest in it at all.
the marketplace is. You cannot conclude from that that Windows
is easy to write for, you need more information.
I once wrote to a software company (Mindjet) asking if they
would be creating a version of their software for what was then
Epoc (now Symbian). The reply was that they'd love to as it was a
better designed system than either Palm or PocketPC but there
simply wasn't a large enough sector of the market to justify the
development cost.
Similarly I remember when the PS2 was in the works a whole
bunch of developers whingeing about how hard it would be to
write for. They're doing it now of course because these
companies want to make money.
In conclusion the most likely reason for so many people writing
for Windows is because Windows already has the largest market
share. It says nothing about the quality of the OS or how easy it
is to write for. A popular habit among Windows apologists is to
blame application developers (perhaps correctly) for a large
proportion of Windows crashes. Not exactly suggestive of an OS
that is easy to write for.
- Win98 is built on the old 16-bit DOS platform, XP has its lineage with IBM & NT.
- The hardware support in XP is amazing. I can plug in any USB, firewire, or internal device and I don't need to install additional drivers. Trying this in Win98 only worked 50% of the time.
- I have always despised MS, but XP has turned me around somewhat. XP is the most stable OS I have ever used. Win98 is one of the least stable I have ever used (Win 95 was much worse, however).
Those are just a few items off the top of my head. To say, "XP was only marginally more interesting than Windows 98 and no amount of marketing hoopla could convince otherwise" is absolutely false!
marginal increase in benefits, and as for XP being the most stable
OS you have ever used, wow all computers with XP i have ever used
were about as stable as a drunk on ice, osx now that is a stable
os...
Windows XP is light years of leaps and bounds beyond Windows 98. Everything from the file system, to security, to usability, to the UI....
MAYBE it was marginally better than Win2000, but Windows 98... that's too much crack talking right there.
First off, that it is Microsoft's fault for the number of security loopholes and problems that exist in the current marketplace. I'll give you that under Windows 3.1 to Windows 9x, security was a joke. Actually, security was all but non-existant. We could even go so far as push NT into that category (despite there being several improvements) but beyond that, you lose your leg to stand on.
The fact that Microsoft is so exploited and assaulted isn't because they can't code. It's because they control close to 80% (or more) of the market share. Why does this matter? Because if you're writing a hack, virus, malware, etc... who are you going to target? Mac, Linux, or one of the other tiny market share holders? No, you gun down the big boy. Give a billion people a crack at your OS and see how well it holds up...
Longhorn, do badly?! Yes, I suppose it is possible. But let's look at the current marketplace. There are only a few options open to users, stay with their current OS, change over to Mac's, and/or move to an entirely new platform (IE. Linux). Given the current state of the internet, with spyware, adware (malware in general), staying on anything pre-XP isn't advisable. Companies will soon be forced to upgrade to protect the integrity of their systems and to not lose valueable hours of support removing various installers from their network. Do you truly believe companies will want to move to Mac's? Not only is the upfront cost great, there is a major re-training issue for the entire staff, not to mention dealing with software compatability. What about Linux? Some shops may move to it, it's cheap and most applications can be made to run on it. But this is a different "beast" to support and run. As such, many people will shy away from the open source market.
If Longhorn is a huge, HUGE, bust then Microsoft runs the risk of losing some of their market share. Nothing like what you make it sound. You're trying to give the impression that if they can't convince the world Longhorn is, better than, sliced bread Microsoft is finished.
Lastly, Windows XP is only marginally improved over Windows 98. I've heard people say this before. It's always been those that were highly uneducated about PC's and operating systems in general. I'm not stating this is the case with you, perhaps you truly feel XP offered little to no advantage over 98. There are some similiarities between the two OS', but that is it. XP offers advanced security, functionality, and stability. All of these have made XP a very desireable OS, at least in the circle of technology that I work in and on the majority of reviews I've pulled up concerning XP.
I strongly disagree with the article and truly feel it is a major misrepresentation of the global environment.
vulnerabale target. MS's practice of 'innovating' features into the
OS, rather than keepingn them as separate apps, created serious
logic flaws in WIndows programming. MS IS responsible for that
vulnerability.
By the way,it's moving to a Mac that involves a new platform.
Linux runs on the old platform, the PC.
Actually, Mac training is much easier than you think. Shifting
from a PC base to a Mac base probably means a company can
get rid of 90% of the IT personnel. They just aren't needed.
That's one hell of a cost saving. ( I know - I saw the reverse
happen when some cockeyed VP decided to shift from Mac to
the PC. It took the company over a year to get an IT department
staffed up and somewhat functionsl. And the smart managers,
engineerrs and secretaries kept their Macs until forced to shift to
a PC.)
If Longhorn is a bust, MS will definitely lose a lot of their market
share. Maybe MS won't be finished, but it sure will be hurting.
I think that you are right about XP being a very big improvement
over Win98. It's even slightly better than Win2K. But it sure isn't
the G-Whiz OS that MS said it would be, even after SP2. And
somehow, I can't really hold out much hope for Longhorn.
Maybe in five years, I'll consider upgradingmy PC's to Longhorn,
but until then, they'll run very ncely on XP.
Two years after release of XP, W32/Blaster worm (8/2003)wrecks
the platform and causes billions in losses. Spyware flourishes
during same period.....phhhhhtttt. Where were you?
"All of these have made XP a very desireable OS, at least in the
circle of technology that I work in...."
Very desireable for those that support XP maybe....job security.
Duh. Problem with most kool-aid drinking PC lovers is that they
are not multi-OS aware. Mac/Linux systems are truly viable and
superior systems.
If you look at web servers, Apache controls 2/3 of the market, with IIS taking up much of the rest. You'd think more Apache sites would get hacked and defaced, but it's the other way around.
Marketshare is not the only factor. Neither is the "quality" of the code. There are design choices, default settings, there's the speed at which patches are written and the speed at which they are applied, there's the matter of just who is *running* these computers. There's the matter of how easy a hole is to exploit and how much damage can be done as a result. (A hole that requires the attacker to already be logged onto the system is less serious than one that can be exploited by clicking on a button 1000 miles away, and a hole that can disable a service is less serious than a hole that can take it over.)
Somehow I'm not convinced that, should Windows and Linux split the market 50/50, they will have excatly the same number of bugs.
and time again. I refer to your comment: "Because if you're
writing a hack, virus, malware, etc... who are you going to
target? Mac, Linux, or one of the other tiny market share
holders? No, you gun down the big boy. Give a billion people a
crack at your OS and see how well it holds up"
You obviously don't appreciate the fundamental difference
between the Mac and Linux way of doing things and the
Windows way. In short, it is MUCH harder to write a real virus
that will actually self-install and run on a Mac or Linux machine.
Macs require you to enter an administrator password before a
programme can install and run... which is the most obvious way
I can think of to prevent a virus. Why would anybody bother
writing a virus that would never be run?
Much easier to write one for an OS that will take and run any old
virus without question...
The bottom line is simple and obvious, if you don't want to have
to deal with viruses, don't buy a Windows machine, period.
I use Macs and PCs all the time. In the past two years I have had
several virus attacks on the PC, one of which needed a system
reinstall to fix. The Mac has not had a single incident. I don't
care if this suggests that virus writers are only interested in the
"big market"... I don't have to worry about my Mac, I know it'll
keep working while I virus scan my PC.
It's not a case of which machine has the better OS (always a
pointless argument), it's a case of which machine is more secure
and less likely to be attacked... the honest answer is the Mac or
Linux or Unix machine...
Office XP has more then enough features to do anything you need to do. It has all the tools I need to get my work done well. Internet Explorer works great now that SP2 is installed, but could use some tabbed browsing.
What else do I need? Nothing.
With XP2 the spyware problem is finally solved for me. Longhorn is going to be a tought sell.
worked for all switched to Macs I'd be out of a job. Nothing
could be further from the truth. I have certification and the
years of experience with both platforms to ensure an easy
transition from one platform to another. As far as training
goes, give a person 1 week with the Mac OS and my
experience is that they will be just as comfortable with that
GUI as they are with the Windows GUI. Further, and I know
this is an oft-used cliche but, there is nothing you can do on
a PC that can't be done on a Mac these days, at least for the
majority of users. Office? Yeah, we've got that. Exchange
support? Yeah, we've got that too. Samba? Yep. WebDAV?
Yep. AFS? Yep. Photoshop? Yep. Acrobat? Yep. The list
does go on.
Also, the argument that there are not virii for the Mac
because of marketshare is an old myth. The reality is that
there have been attempts at creating virii for the Mac but no
one has been able to successfully do it. Cash awards have
been offered to anyone who can successfully do it and it still
hasn't happened. The truth is, out-of-the-box setup of a
Mac is inheritantly secure enough that writing virii or trojans
is a much, much, more difficult task than writing them for
Windows machines. And it is MS fault for those
vulnerabilities. It's called quality assurance, something I'm
sure they have been investing more and more in lately.
One of the reasons more IT managers don't embrace and
even have a disdain for Macs is because they simply have
never bothered trying to use one. Oh, sure, they might have
played around for a few minutes, but hardly what I would
call a serious attempt. They also play a game of political turf
wars. All of their training and experience is with Windows, if
they move to Macs all that becomes irrelevant and perhaps
even themselves. It doesn't matter that study after study
has shown that a Mac environment is cheaper in the long
run, it puts their job at risk and so therefore is unacceptable.
Nothing infuriates me more than an IT person ripping into
Macs but yet have absolutely no personal experience to
justify their claims.
Alright, I'll start by responding to those directly responding to me.
First things first, a change over from Windows to Linux IS a platform change. Changing from one OS to another changes the system platform, just doesn't necessarily mean the hardware changes.
As far as it not being the greatest OS ever, I can agree with that. If I came off as trying to say it IS the best thing since sliced bread, I apologize. It's the best Windows based platform and it's much better than people are willing to admit (to many people have a complete Anti-MS attitude).
Some of the security attacks that have been exploited have already been discussed, this again, goes back to marketshare. Do you target he who controls the market, or the chumps playing catch up. Especially when the gap is so large? You target MS...again, put your OS up against a billion people and see how well it fares. I'd be willing to place some good money down that if Mac's held the marketshare, we'd be having this disucssion about how lax and horrible Steve Job's is.
Now, an excellent point was made by Kelson about splitting the market 50/50 between Unix and MS. Do I believe Unix would be as exploited, no...but there's a reason for this. My Unix experience is very limited so if I misspeak here, I apologize. But, Unix (at my last exposure several years ago) was still a command line based OS. There wasn't a true GUI interface. Windows is a fully functional GUI and, as such, has several lines (I'll leave it at lines and not guess at the extra) of code that can be exploited vs a Unix environment. This gives Unix a deceided advantage, add in the fact that you need to be well versed in Unix to even attempt to attack it...it gives you a great boon to security.
Now, I'm not blindly defending Microsoft here. I believe that they should have, long prior to now, been more active in security. That they should have begun targeting malware when it first surfaced and started assaulting systems.
But don't try and throw up in the air that xxxx (GUI based) interface is better than Microsoft. Each OS has their flaws and gaps, the world is focused on the controller of the market. Whether it be to catch them (by the by, I'm all for another PC based OS to take over a chunk of the market and force Microsoft to become truly innovative and cost effective), exploit them, or to say that they should be better.
As to XP being job security. I've got plenty without supporting a crap OS. If it was horrible and made my life rougher, damn right I'd be screaming. You know what, it makes my life easier. I keep an up to date and secure firewall, patch the OS, keep up to date with antivirus, and install a spyware program (MS by the by) and I'm good to go.
already been discussed, this again, goes back to marketshare.
Do you target he who controls the market, or the chumps
playing catch up." Especially when the gap is so large? You
target MS...again, put your OS up against a billion people and
see how well it fares."
I'm sorry but I definitely must disagree with your statement and
call you out as an MS apologist. You're basically saying the
problem has nothing to do with the inherent design of the
Microsoft Windows OS itself. Anyone who is a veteran IT person
knows MS Windows was poorly designed when it came to
security.
A little education is in order here. Go here for debunking of your
security through obscurity FUD.
http://www.caida.org/analysis/security/witty/
Those open to learning will appreciate the article. Those with MS
bias won't.
From the piece..."Witty spread through a population almost an
order of magnitude smaller than that of previous worms,
demonstrating the viability of worms as an automated
mechanism to rapidly compromise machines on the Internet,
EVEN IN NICHES WITHOUT A SOFTWARE MONOPOLY."
I've added emphasis to the last couple of words in the quote
with capitals.
anymore. The Mac OS, for just one example, is based on UNIX
(FreeBSD actually) and is an exceptionally easy to use OS.
Lastly, just a quick note about market-share for security. For
someone buying a Mac OSX machine today?or some other *NIX
flavor?they get no viruses, few keyloggers, few exploits. If the
Mac OS were to suddenly quadriple it's market-share in the next
five years, you would still be "secure through obscurity" and yet
you would have five years without all the hassles. This, is of
course, ignoring OS design, security features, fast bug fixes, etc.
and pretends that one OS is just as good as any other.
Do you see my point, the Mac OS is free of viruses and other
problems now! Right now, today, and in the near future.
Windows is going to get worse or become so locked up in
draconian security measures Windows admins are going to
become intimately familiar with Microsoft's hold muzak. I can't
believe how many people trot out the old market-
share=insecurity without recognizing that whether true or not
the Mac OS is still secure.
And will be so, along with the rest of *NIX, until Windows loses
its market-share so badly it becomes the small-fry. Then, yeah
you could be right.
recent JPEG handling issue in Windows precious few of the
security flaws can be exclusively attributed to GUI weaknesses?
In any case the UNIX systems I used 13 years ago at University
all had GUIs so I'm not sure that can be your weakspot. Further,
Windows, until XP (and arguably even then) was basically DOS
with a GUI so the two are very similar in that respect.
Obscurity has also never worked for me as a reason for low
levels of exploits. Symbian cell phones have viruses, why not
Mac OS X? Part of it is in the implementation. You have to enter a
password to make any fundamental changes. Without those a
program cannot run itself. These are simple things to address
and any comparison of OSs from a security standpoint has to
take these kind of factors into account. Windows by contrast
almost demands that you have "super-user" privileges in order
to achieve anything. I understand this will be fixed in Longhorn
but it was fixed in the UNIX based OS X some time ago.
It would seem (as both a Windows and Mac user) that Microsoft
was more interested with bells and whistles than
designing a robust secure system and the security industry it
has spawned stands as testament to that. As I mentioned in a
previous post, UNIX has been robust for years why not learn
from that?
REALITY: of course they do! anything mechanical/electrical will always have a problem or two. to say otherwise is a lie. BUT, let's look at relative stability.
MYTH: the faster megahertz processors are always faster computers
REALITY: if you believe this, you have no business posting here
MYTH: windows has more security problems than macs because windows owns such a large marketshare
REALITY: go and learn something about how windows is structured and how other unix-based OS's are structured. marketshare is part of it, but not the main answer. it's certainly true that with greater marketshare more mac-specific security problems will arise. but, there will be far fewer and they will be much more difficult to produce.
my advice? you should probably know something about both architectures before you start bringing that puerile marketshare-baloney to the discussion. macs aren't perfect, and the article didn't say they were. but let's acknowledge what the article did say - that longhorn has a lot of expectations and it better deliver.
Quality and quantity is not same thing so lot of users will talk on quantity. Moreover quantity and majority in bulk is not always true. Copernicus told earth revolves round the sun but majority didn't agreed with him.
-Santosh Singh
But since I wasn't there, it would be nothing more than a guess. That's why I *asked the question*.
Others have commented on your boner about WinXP being only marginally more interesting than Win98. They didn't get what you were saying: from a marketing perspective XP wasn't "sexy". Fair enough (though, as an IT guru, you know that wasn't the virtue of XP, right?) But when you say that a company with 90% marketshare has to "turn out a WOW product" you must be pulling our collective legs, right Chuck?
Of course, it's the pretenders to the throne that have to turn out the WOW products -- not the installed market leader. They just have to maintain marketshare and defend against critical threats to their dominance (like security issues...). In fact, the more penetration you have in a market the more dangerous it is to introduce features that radically upset the installed base. It's all about *incremental* improvements and backward compatability.
But you knew that, right?
Much of the time that Macs go away, is because the other people around and above me don't like them. IT is kinda strange like that. It's all about group think.
However here's what, from the posts I just read, although the system may be simplified enough for the developers to use it, that doesn't affect the general population which just wants to feel secure sitting behind their boxes. Company revenue depends on enterprise and desktop user sales, I doubt if some cool developer features and fancy applications would make it any better.
Also M$ Windoze has critical flaws in its internal security architecture, and since security wasn't a priority until now for them it seems they came up with a "we will ensure security by controlling your system for you" statement. I wonder if people would appreciate the bi-weekly "hotfixes" after all the hype about Longhorn.
I don't mean to be exacting or hypercritical, but am just stating what is already there and what people are aware of. Microsoft is a good company with deep pockets, rather than just trying to improve on a flawed system I am sure they can spend a few bucks on developing a "new" system more or less from scratch which might earn them some more respect.
Oh and about Quark Express not running well on Mac OS X, could someone explain why the tech support uses Mac on their troubleshooting systems and how they make the app work on it? This is second-hand internal info too.
from the previous release of only 20,000 know bugs. This of
course doesn't begin to take into consideration the unknown
bugs which by all accounts vastly outnumbered the known bugs.
So LongHorn by extrapolation should come with 125,000 known
bugs and conservatively 200,000 unknown bugs.
Currently various malware and viral forms of breaches are rising
exponentially on Windows. With hundreds of thousands of new
gaping holes to walk through and shoot your viral wad in
LongHorn it will be fabulous. I just wish Microsoft could have
kept the major changes to XP for Longhorn instead of it being a
minor update of XP. If they had actually made fundamental
changes we could raise the number of bugs number by another
order of magnitude.
LongHorn can't arrive soon enough for me. It's going to be like a
really crappie imitation of Mac OS 2000 look and feel with a
foundation you couldn't give to the stupid and they will charge
$50.00 to get the whole pile of **** on a single pile.
In the mean time Microsoft is going to spend what $2000,000 to
$800,000 dollars to try and compete with Apples Tiger. Tiger is
the fourth major Mac OS update from 10.0 in 2001 and the 39th
update in total, only four of those were charged for at $129
each.
It's lots of fun to watch the PC drones flailing about in the spin
cycle of the virus operating system and you have to help the
poor buggers when they wake enough to crawl out of the slim to
the dry land of Mac world.
you people stand up and cheer everytime they give them a new
buff job.
you people stand up and cheer everytime they give them a new
buff job.
"Sounds just like the Mac zealots"
Supporting the PC's on our network has never been easier or more secure.
"No security problems at all" "EVER"
The only problems are with the Mac that my boss just has to have as I am always looking for some obscure plugin to get it to do what Windows does out the box.
When he need to get some real work done he commandeers his secretary's PC. If Longhorn comes even close to the hype it will be a big seller.
I for one will be purchasing a number of copies.
I ended up returnig the computer and buying another PC with W98, sent the new PC to the branch and halted all XP implementation.
I waited until the last time to upgrade to XP, I did many tests at the begginging with XP and it ALWAYS failed in some part.. after almost a YEAR! I decided that a heavy-patched XP was starting to be satble enough!. At the end I got a new OS, I had to change the "improved look" of the start button because nobody understood it and I had a beautiful new OS that did the SAME things that W98 , (ok except for the Live Update.. and that's the only "improvement" I saw).
I've had heard a lot of adventures like mine from my IT friends in other companies... so with long horn I'll end up doing the same.. waiting, testing and resisting the IT providers stupid temptation of just having the latest, eventhoug is buggy as hell and it gives me more problems that the ones it solves.
Greetings from Mexico
- Should I thank MS for providing me a job?
- by April 23, 2005 7:14 AM PDT
- Many MS followers believe that the IT people "should thank MS for having a job". What if Windows had the stability of Macs or Linux PCs?, what if there weren't such an enormous bunch of problems to solve from Windows plataforms?, many say "you wouldn't have a job".
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (107 Comments)DEAM IT!! are we, the IT guys so poorly self respected that we have to thank a company for giving us "Windows patch and failures manager" kind of jobs?.
If I handnt had to be worried for reinstalling Windows XP every 3 months in all he company's PCs. (that has been the only real way to have the XP pcs working at 100%) I could dedicate my self to test new technology, learn new tools, make analysis in order to reduce costs do a better IT operation and so on.
This is the real thing guys!! we won't lose our jobs we have so much to offer and to apply our IT knowledge. And at the end if we lose a "senior patch manager" job, and find a more interesting job.. well.. thank God that happens!.
Greetings from Mexico