

Microsoft is pushing users and vendors to Macs and Linux - tanglesome
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-is-pushing-users-and-vendors-to-macs-and-linux-7000002280/

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IanDrake
Pure link bait.

Switch to Mac because MS is making their own (non-exclusive) hardware? Really?
Has this guy forgotten the OS/hardware deal that you get with Apple?

Windows 8 is dead because enterprises aren't planning to upgrade? Most just
got to Windows 7, they don't like change, so they'll stay there for another
5-10 years.

I doubt the writer believes anything he's written, but this is the nature of
tech "journalism".

~~~
rickmb
Is it somewhat realistic to assume enterprise IT is increasingly becoming
irrelevant when it comes to the desktop?

I mean, how insane is it when people have to work with technology on their job
they've ditched 5-10 years ago at home for being too outdated to be even be
give away? There comes a point where enterprise IT loses all credibility.

At this pace, during my lifetime homeless people in third world countries will
have phones that are more modern and powerful computers than office workers
will have at their desk. The practices enterprise IT currently still holds on
to don't seem sustainable to me.

~~~
moheeb
How often do you get a new stapler?

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sourc3
I agree with this. I am not sure if I see a compelling reason why Win8 on
desktop should take off for businesses. It will be a transitionary version
just like how Vista was.

Windows 8 tablets? Same story. Why would I as a consumer want to spend $600 to
get a tablet with so many unknowns? What does it provide that the iPad
currently does not provide? I keep wanting to find a good set of reasons but I
can't. You just know what your $500-600 is getting you when you go to iPad and
Android. Unless MS lowers the price point to $150-200 it will be a tough sell
in my opinion.

The software side of things are very different though. Being a .NET developer
for years (after coming from UNIX) I find myself using Java and open source
languages more and more often.

If you are an ISV/entrepreneur I am just not sure if it is a good idea to bet
the future of your organization on Microsoft's mercy. They keep changing
languages/platforms like they change clothes lately.

Nonetheless, the next three-four years will be fun to watch.

~~~
Metrop0218
"get a tablet with so many unknowns?"

There will be 0 unknowns a month after they get released. There are unknowns
now because it is an unreleased product. Using that as a point against the
success of the system is moronic.

~~~
Shamanmuni
Are you sure? iOS has 5 years in the market and plenty of apps, Android 4
years and also plenty of apps. Both have matured and you probably know a geek
or two who use them and can answer your questions. Windows 8 will be a
newcomer with less apps at your disposal and probably no geek nearby to ask
questions. Lots of unkowns for me.

Face it, they are really late in the game this time.

~~~
wlesieutre
For business use, how many apps do you need? They're going to sell it to
enterprise users by Microsoft Office, which is a safer bet for
interoperability than Numbers/Pages/Keynote on an iPad. Apple beats them
handily in number of 99¢ games and Instagram clones, but it's much more even
in the areas that matter in enterprise.

And how often do you need to ask a geek a question about an iPad? There isn't
much of a learning curve, and anybody who has owned one can probably answer
most questions. Hopefully (I haven't used it myself) the Win8 tablets are
similar in that regard. In my opinion, it'll mostly depend on whether they do
the 8-levels-deep-control-panel and features with no visible interface (like
the desktop's start menu and sidebar).

~~~
Shamanmuni
The future will tell, but I don't think tablets are very enterprisey. All the
people I know use tablets casually, for work a larger screen and a good
keyboard are golden.

I believe if there was a strong use case for tablets in the office, businesses
would have bought iPads by now and many enterprise apps would have appeared,
the compatibility in iWork is really good and it has all the hardware you
could need. It's not like all managers are waiting for Windows 8 tablets as
their savior, I think it's a fantasy that the world is waiting for Microsoft
to enter the tablet market.

And it's not just a matter of solving OS problems, the geeks I know are
usually in the position in which people go to ask if something is good before
they buy it. If people come to ask me about a tablet with Windows 8 today I'll
answer "I have no idea idea if it's good, but I have an iPad and it's great.
Here, try it.". What do you think they'll do next?

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astrodust
Microsoft's strength is that Windows 7 runs a corporation's crusty old legacy
Windows applications better than any other operating system. If this somehow
fails to be the case, corporations will switch to whatever platform provides
this support better.

It's not unthinkable that Linux could be made to run Windows XP vintage
applications better than Windows 8 can.

~~~
dpark
Windows 8 is still Windows. You can run all your "crusty old legacy Windows
applications" just as you could on Windows 7.

Disclaimer: Microsoft employee (not really relevant, but just in case ...)

~~~
takluyver
Unless you get the ARM version, which I believe is called WinRT. I think that
could be the biggest problem for Microsoft. People are used to being able to
install any old Windows application, but if you get the wrong kind of Windows
8, all those x86 applications won't run.

~~~
dpark
Right, and that's a legitimate concern. It's by no means going to drive people
to Linux, though. WINE isn't going to run Windows apps better than Windows 8,
and Linux on ARM isn't going to run x86 apps at all (except maybe in an
emulation, which would be miserable).

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rbanffy
Microsoft biggest problem, by far, is that they think the OS installed on PCs
is what sells them. It's not.

In the 90's, it would be very hard to change, but currently two trends are
converging into MS's perfect storm: users are doing more and more through web
interfaces to remote servers running their apps and holding their data, and
FLOSS is fast becoming a very viable alternative to what most PC users use
their machines for.

Every time I debate this with my friends who work for Microsoft, they seem to
think the only way to install a printer on Linux is still to open a terminal
and edit a configuration file with vi, if not compile the driver yourself.

~~~
pyre
Maybe you should point them to Sun Tzu. Seems like your friends at Microsoft
are basing their opinions off of some anecdotes gleaned from the web, rather
than grabbing a box and attempting to install Linux on it to size up the
competition.

~~~
bcbrown
I did that, installing Ubuntu last fall. It was miles better than the last
Linux distro I installed, Red Hat 6 back in the 90s, but it was still a
painful process.

~~~
rbanffy
I find it rather odd someone considers installing Ubuntu a painful process.
From time to time I have to install Windows machines for testing and, compared
to Ubuntu, it's a slow and involved process. With Ubuntu it's something like
boot, answer questions, install (with updates) and boot-to-useful-machine.
With Windows it's often install (which takes a long time, with several boots),
find, download and install drivers, install updates, reboot, install newer
updates, reboot again and so on...

The only situation where a Windows box is less pain than an Ubuntu one is when
corporate IT installs it for you and drops it onto your desk.

~~~
bcbrown
The installation itself wasn't the pain. It was the usability and
configuration afterwards that sucked. The built-in music player didn't work,
with no hinting towards the problem. There was some other stuff I can't
remember specifically now. I did like, however, how easy it was to get up and
running with Python and Vim. It's significantly easier to install third-party
modules on Linux than on Windows, in my experience.

I think Linux is a better 'work' OS for development, but Windows is better for
a home consumer OS. But it's not worth booting back to Linux just to work on
my side projects, so I just develop in Windows.

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moskie
Is it possible to Microsoft does not plan to have the Surface be a longtime
product of theirs?

My impression with the Surface is that it was Microsoft's way of showing the
world an example of how Windows 8 devices should work. I did not come away
thinking that Microsoft is now fully into the PC manufacturing game.

Could it be Microsoft's way of jump-starting OEMs into creating the types of
devices that are needed to make Windows 8 successful? And not the first round
of war between Microsoft and OEMs that this article (and others) claims it is?

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andthejets
Meh, I doubt it. Vendors can complain all they want but the average consumer
is sure as hell not going to switch to linux. And if they wanted to switch to
OSX then they probably have already bought a Mac.

Everyone else wants Windows because they are used to it and it runs all their
programs.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You sure?

It might motivate vendors to, for instance, sell Ubuntu PCs. It's quite user-
friendly. Who knows. I don't think it's likely, though.

~~~
andthejets
I mean its easy to make a nice interface for people who just browse and such.
But it becomes a problem when people go: "Oh so does it have Word and all my
other office products?"

Open office and etc are all pretty poor replacements.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You sure? I suspect for most people, they don't use enough features of Word
for LibreOffice Writer to feel much different.

~~~
andthejets
Its not just about the feature set, its about using whats familiar for a lot
of the "average" consumer.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Familiarity is an issue, but the newer generation are quicker to pick up new
technology.

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Posibyte
I think this story is a little in the extreme and not very forthcoming.
However, SJVN regularly reports on stories as such. I remember when he
reported back before Vista was released and said that (paraphrasing) "Vista
will be the push Linux needs to end up on top!" Of course it had only a very
small percentage gain for the Linux community as a whole.

I think we'll see businesses simply hold their versioning until either the
bulk of ISVs change their focus to Mac/Linux, Microsoft caters (more?) closely
to businesses, the last critical piece of software refuses to run on
7/Vista/XP, or the company bites the bullet and upgrades. Now, honestly my
experiences are 100% anecdotal and I'm can't see into every business's
structure. However, I've worked in quite a few IT offices and when Microsoft
upgraded to both Vista and 7, there was a lot of working around to either
delay the update to the new system or have a trained workforce that was more
comfortable to work with it, but we never once thought we should switch our
entire system to Linux or OS X.

Now, you might be wondering "We're talking about vendors, not the end users".
True, but vendors follow demand, whether we like it or not. If Acer doesn't
sell Windows computers, they'll be missing out on a lot of sells to larger
entities.

But the main point I want to make is, why does it even matter? What is
Microsoft competing on? The locked-down ARM Tablet. That's it. We aren't
talking about stand-up or laptop computers. These will likely not be used in
the corporate or government markets on the high-end. The Windows 8 ARM Tablet
is really nothing more than a consumer device and is designed to compete with
the iPad and Android Tablets (to a lesser degree). It has business-y
functions, but I don't see the corporate sector adopting it any time soon.

Is Windows 8's "Metro" interface going to detract consumers? Probably not, or
at least as much as SJVN is arguing. If businesses don't like it, they'll
probably just stick with 7 or whatever is doing just fine right now.

Linux will probably see more usage thanks to Google and some other developing
entities, but not to the degree that is inferred by this article or for the
reason described.

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mcpooh
stopped reading after "Microsoft has always been a “my way or the highway”
kind of company"

this can be written just by person who wants to lie. MS backward compatibility
is unmatched for this size of company. I still can run apps written 10+ years
ago. In most cases I can find same menus and options where they were 10+ years
ago. Try this trick with Mac. I recently switched to Mac to do development...
so have not big but experience in both worlds

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Aloha
I really believe Mac OS is the future of the consumer market.

It's easy to use, complete, and has friendly people at any apple retailer to
help you onboard yourself on to the system.

~~~
rbanffy
Try to convince every other PC manufacturer to leave the consumer market.

They may even die in the end, but they'll certainly try other things before it
comes to that.

~~~
Aloha
Either Apple, or the Apple Model.

Hardware >> Software >> Support.

All from one manufacturer.

~~~
rbanffy
Wouldn't achieve the network effects. They'd probably embrace something like
Android or desktop Linux.

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madoublet
Not this guy again. He is a hack with an agenda.

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jamesmcn
Microsoft is screwing over its customers like this.

Apple is screwing over its customers like _this_.

Both of them are pushing the tabletification of computing. I see how that
works for the vast majority of users, but it isn't really for me. Sadly, the
workstation companies have mostly died out. Sure, you can probably get a PA-
RISC machine from HP or a POWER box from IBM, but those are mostly servers for
the legacy market.

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edwinyzh
The Windows 8's Metro UI is fundamentally designed for a touch screen based
tablet, bad things will happen if MS pushes desktop users to use that UI.

Really don't want Win 8 to fall, my soon-in-beta new text editor (with a
Firebug-like UI, called LIVEditor) is designed for Windows only...

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sageikosa
Windows 8 will take off because it is Windows 7 +1. I for one am glad they are
back to numbering things sequentially instead of trying to come up with poetic
terms or meaningless initials.

At the very least it will probably be big in Japan, China and Korea since "8"
is a lucky number.

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gitarr
I am absolutely sure that a change on the desktop market is coming and that
open source operating systems will gain a nice percentage of the market share,
if not the majority thereof.

But this change will be a lot slower than we would like it to be. It'll come,
but it'll take some time.

We saw similar changes in the browser and the phone markets recently, it went
faster there because it's an easier change for non-technical users.

It's rather great that the floodgate is now open and that open source is
slowly overtaking their proprietary software and operating system
counterparts. It's also a fact though that Microsoft and surely others are
trying to close them again, one approach is the "secure boot" nonsense for
example. One can only hope (and of course, work on open source whenever
possible) that they won't succeed in that.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
This is EXACTLY the same argument when Vista came out, which was a subpar
release, and yet another "Year of The Linux Desktop" was not upon us then nor
is it now. This was also the same argument when XP came out. I remember the
slashdot kiddies saying "Its Win2000 with fisher price colors! Mandrake will
be the new desktop." Err, okay. I love FOSS, but the idea that Joe Sixpack is
switching to Ubuntu because the start button is missing is a little overblown.

I'm begining to feel sorry for MS's Windows product. Its a damned if
you/damned if you don't scenario. If they don't innovate and do something
different then they'll be criticized for being stale. When they do innovate
they're criticized for confusing users and not sticking with the same tired
WIMP formula.

I get it, these critics are biased, but lets at least wait until the RTM gets
in the hands of users before we call it a disaster. It might very well work
out for MS. Win8 went from a joke on these forums to a brave OS after the MS
surface announcement. Public opinion is quite fickle isn't it?

