

New York Times agrees: Windows is toast - fromedome
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/new-york-times-agrees-microsoft-windows-toast

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pg
"Does this mean Microsoft going to keel over tomorrow? Of course not. But as
the rise of the Internet, Apple (second coming), mobile computing, Google, et
al, are demonstrating, PC operating systems are a lot less important than they
used to be."

Literally could not agree more...

~~~
jwilliams
This article talks to Windows, I think one of the biggest exposures for
Microsoft is Office.

It's a significant part of their revenue (a real cash cow) and is the gateway
into the corporate environment.

Now they have two problems: 1\. Competitors (often free) are producing
products that are competing - and even more importantly, are compatible
(enough) with the Microsoft formats.

and

2\. They are running out of ways to innovate in the Office format. The ribbon
in the latest versions is interesting, some of the integration is better...
PowerPoint was significantly better... But really... How much more can they
innovate in the Office Suite format?

Word XP might offer more, but in my experience it's a very moderate increment
over something like Word 2000 (and arguably Word 2.0 for many users). And it
shows - I see many organisations who have no intent to upgrade.

They need to innovate their key planks (Windows, Office) considerably or
eventually they'll either obsolete or commoditised out of the market. How
their current strategy reflects that, I don't know.

------
pragmatic
The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated...

Consumers are one thing, businesses are another. Businesses spend a "crapload"
on computers and many of them are stuck in the Windows world. While home users
with simple email needs can switch, MSFT still has the cash cow business
buyers which are less price sensitive than consumers.

While I like Ubuntu, even our Linux admin just switched his (work) desktop to
Vista b/c it was too much of a pain to interop with our Windows network.
Sometimes it's just not worth the pain.

------
gaius
if MS can come up with a licensing model that makes it feasible to deploy the
CLR as a grid/cloud-computing platform running F# code, then things will get a
bit more interesting.

