Microsoft to fall over in 2006? pfft!
A new year and tired old predictions of the demise of Windows and Microsoft. I worked in the Windows world for too long. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen the corporate world become more - not less - dependent on Microsoft. I’m sorry to burst the bubble, but Windows is so entrenched in the corporate world that it would be easier to convert the USA to right-hand drive, than to remove Windows from the corporate world. It may happen one day in the distant future, but it’s that pundits seem to think it will happen overnight - and even quicker with the arrival of the Intel Macs - that amazes me. Take off the rose colored glasses, please.
And, ironically, some folks think that OS X will replace Windows as the OS of choice. Excuse me? The corporate world is going to free itself of the restrictive, suffocating, monopolistic grasp of Microsoft and replace it with Apple, a company that is even more closed shop, a company that have a long history of being control-freaks? Hardly!
If the Windows demise does eventuate, it will fall to the Open Source movement (of which Apple only have their toe in the water). But the Open Source movement have got to get their act together first, and that looks like taking a while longer yet.
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It’s about time someone said this. I my self am a windows developer. In the beginning of this year I was very interested in developing for Linux. As the year went on I was also using .NET on windows. I discovered that developing for Linux is very cumbersome. There are just too many choices and not all of them work with every flavor of Linux. It just took to long to develop on Linux. I don’t think Windows is going down anytime soon or even in the future if Linux keeps going down this path. Supporters of Linux need to concentrate on the developers. Make things easy for them. The more Linux apps that are out there that can work on all flavors of Linux. The less reasons people have not to switch to Linux.
While I think Apple will continue to make huge strides in the hone/consumer market in 2006 ... I agree that this will not happen in the corporate world any time soon (and I don’t think they are Apple’s focus anyways) ... the corporate world is too dependent on MS whether they like it or not.
The corporate world is run by people that know nothing about technology; that’s the real reason things take so long to improve there. FYI, small businesses ARE moving away from MS at a much faster rate than most people know about. Their advantage is that they can, and people usually running these are most tech informed and make decisions based on ‘technology’ and not ‘favors’, ‘politics’ and so forth. Bigger companies are run by ass-kissers who look for the cheapest solutions to impress the big boss (someone who knows even less tech wise) on the books. Companies that don’t rely on MS have way less wasted tech related costs and that’s a fact.
The only thing MS is good for is making companies like mine profitable when we provide support for other companies that use their stuff. We’re there regularly simply because nothing ever works right. And we charge by the hour, so yes, MS is a good thing in that sense, and I hope it always stays are shitty.
Absolute drivel. Far more people drive automobiles than use computers so the notion that it’d be easier to convert Americans to right handed driving is just sheer stupidity. I mean is this kind of ignorant statement supported by Apple Matters staff? This is Apple Matters not Microsoft Matters!
OMGWTFLOLBBQDRINKTEHVODKA
Apple is at the forefront of real corporations using and contributing to open source. Show me another high volume desktop vendor that has taken as active an approach to OSF as Apple has. Oh that’s right, you can’t.
As for Apple being “more” proprietary than Windows - that just again demonstrates pure ignorance. The guts of Apple’s OS are open source, period. MS has to be forced to “open” so-called “standards” by government bodies.
I don’t think many think that Apple will take over the world but it will provide a much more competitive system against MSFT now that the playing field is level. Maybe even some significant market share.
I agree corporations have become more dependent on Windows than they were but facts are facts and UNIX is still favored over Windows in the corporate market. Facts are facts - Mac OS X shares a hell of a lot more in common with Unix than Windows ever could. Ease of portability directly relates to cost and the companies looking to replace aging Unix systems will look at Apple whether you believe it or not.
A long history of being control freaks? Now this is the about the most ridiculous statement in the “article”. At least make some citations. Such as Steve Jobs wanted the Mac to be a “closed” architecture because he wanted to provide reliable computers.
The fact that so many people are looking for a way to get out of using Windows, and they are en masse, means that Steve was right in terms of the long-term effects of reliability on the end-user. When Apple has exercised control over IT’s technology it usually provided some real and tangible benefit.
When MSFT hides something it isusually to cover crap code in their OS that renders it as insecure or “open” as a door frame with no door.
OSF on the desktop is a joke and will continue to be a joke until somebody actually does something new with the display system. X11 is a crock, useful, but a crock nonetheless.
If the Macintels can ultimately run Windows .exes in a window similar to how Classic/OS 9 apps (anyone still use those?!) were run, then this could help increase Apple’s marketshare.
Just think: the one machine could boot OS X, dual-boot into Windows, and/or possibly run Windows programs alongside Mac apps with no performance penalty, AND triple-boot into open-source Linux goodness. Plus if they get Dell style volume discounts from Intel, the machines may not cost more than a few hundred extra, if that.
With these benefits as a hardware choice, Intel Macs have a chance of getting in the door of the corporate world. And once inside, the possibility to switching more and more to Mac native apps becomes higher.
Microsoft won’t fall, but Apple can rise!
dotmike,
Actually Apple’s Mac OS X is a better UNIX environment than Linux so there really isn’t a need to dual boot. Most Linux software can be compiled and used on the existing Mac OS X platform. Windows blue-box style compatibility would be nice.
Rather - no need to triple boot.
We’ll definitely see some sort of virtual machine architecture akin to VPC or VMWare.
People tend to gloss over why corporations stick with Windows:
- Corporations can usually get everything they need inexpensively in Windows, something they can’t easily or cheaply do in Apple or open-source.
- Most middle-size and large corporations have IT departments developers to build the custom solutions the business areas need. The real reason Microsoft has been so successful in business is that it had VB, an easy-to-use (some would say too-easy), business-oriented language that made it possible for businesses to build in-house applications without too much trouble. (Sure it led to lots of bad code, but not all of it was bad, and besides, most users and managers don’t care about the internals of code so long as it works).
- Neither Apple nor Linux offer anything with the sort of business support and ease of use of Microsoft’s current .NET solution.
JD,
1. Cocoa is probably one of the best RAD platforms out there. Apple can easily provide inexpensive custom solutions through the Cocoa platform.
2. VB is crap. Calling VB a “business” language just makes you look dense. Basic is far from a business language. COBOL OTOH is a business language.
3. Cocoa makes me laugh at .net - and oh, ever heard of mono? Ease of use? And you are talking about Microsoft? How much did they pay you to advocate MSFT developer solutions on blogs?
I agree with JD. For corporate development, nothing beats the ease-of-adoption of Microsoft’s products, even if they are crap. Everything from sales organizations to cheesy 3rd-party add-ins to temp hiring agencies, is optimized around the Microsoft product. And lets not forget the popular alternative to Microsoft in the corporate world. No, it’s not Apple, it’s Java.
It may be laughable compared to Cocoa, but a better product will not win this game.
Actually, Apple’s track record at pursuing and supporting corporate and federal customers is abysmal. They wouldn’t even support their education ones properly. Also, those small coups at high performance computing are lacking continuity, frankly. Apple is clearly disregarding those markets and concentrating on the premium consumer electronics and AV content creation ones.
This whole Open Source usage thing is rather misleading, too, as I see it: even OSS powerhouses as IBM implement it as long as it allows them to promote their NOT open source products such as WebSphere. The same goes for Apple: Darwin is quite the least interesting OSS item around, as the truly relevant OS X’ APIs are all proprietary.
And then, as interesting as OS X is, Apple’s HW and SW consumer electronics-style policies are not well suited for enterprise computing: no features stability, no public roadmaps, no flexibility… and yes, they being such control freaks. Apple wants to be a Sony while corporate costumers need a Dell. The only move that would make OS X a tempting product for them is, quite simply, licensing the OS (and even so OS X would need some tuning to get up to speed with Unix and Windows in tasks such as web server ones).
(Actually, Basic is as fine a business language as anything else. I was a PICK OS programmer some years ago, and Basic was key to making it such an easy platform to develop for)
innate,
Ease-of-adoption? I picked up a copy of MOSX Server - the first edition many years ago. Heh - I was writing decent Cocoa apps the first day I snapped up a copy of the original Mac OS X Server. Ease-of-adoption for languages is a joke when the platform comes with so many headaches.
The simple fact is corporations generally go with what their IT staff tell them to go with. Most techs like having jobs so they recommend the only platform they know reliably self-destructs. Mac OS X is, if not as easy to break, just as difficult to troubleshoot as some other, more popular operating systems that will go unnamed.
I’m quite aware of Java. Remember WebObjects? Pure java these days - began much as Cocoa did. In fact Cocoa was quite cross-platform in older variations and likewise was well-respected in the corporate world. I code as readily in WO/Java as I do Cocoa/Obj-C.
juanxer,
Apple isn’t Apple anymore. It’s Next. Next had mad corporate respect.
Apple doesn’t support education customers? That’s a joke, right? I just got through talking to a pal who manages IT for an Oregon school distract. The iBooks are running OS 9 and Apple is providing free upgrades for them.
The HPC coups you speak of were based on the Power architecture - no longer Apple’s primary choice of processor. To understand why VT made their supercomputer out of Mac boxen had more to do with the processor than the company. They considered all platforms - Apple provided the best bang for their buck, period.
Regarding Darwin Apple already opened CoreFoundation which is an awesome and powerful set of C APIs. If the trend of open sourcing “Core” API continues we may see CoreImage open-sourced too but don’t quote me on that.
Darwin, from a technical perspective, is pretty keen. Bleeding edge? I dunno but whattaya want, it is free.
While Apple’s current consumer oriented technologies aren’t exactly good for the corporation Mac OS X Server, XSan, the XServe are making inroads.
Apple doesn’t want to be a sony. Apple wants to be Apple. Apple didn’t install rootkits on PCs of iTMS users. Heh, fact is, the settlement offered by Sony does offer songs utilizing Apple’s DRM technology. Sony seems to think they can rely on Apple.
Mac OS X needs very little “tuning” to become a high-end web server capable of handling millions of hits an hour.
Licensing the OS is an interesting notion but just not gonna happen.
And basic is a terrible language - not just for business but for everything! It’s just a piss poor language. True the modern variants are better than what I started with when I was coding on my Commodore some seven years after my birth
but it’s still junk. The acceptance of VB in the corporate market merely means you can sell trash and profit. I’ve a friend that works for a major bank and he grumbles about VB constantly.
Well, let’s put it this way: you are a multinational corporation IT department, you invest in NeXTStep, you see the company failing even if their products are quite great, you see Jobs selling it to Apple, you receive notice of Apple going to redevelop NeXTStep into Rhapsody, which will limit NeXTStep from four platforms to just two (Mac and Windows). A Few years later they just kill the Windows version and force you to go through a Java bridge if you want to keep your NeXTStep apps in anything other than a Mac.
Let’s say you are an HPC client: are you receiving any news from Apple about the future of the xServe products? Are they going to keep a PPC line for a little longer? Is there going to be xServe line at all in the future? What about future support? Wouldn’t you be rather nervous?
Apple, some years ago, decided to rob their VARs their Education accounts. The result was a terrible erosion of their presence in that market. Add to that their usual attitude of not keeping product lines alive and forcing disruptive changes where progressive ones would better apply, plus their usual premium pricing.
(SONY doesn’t offer Apple’s DRM-dependent products)
And I’ll hold that Basic is quite OK
I agree with you, kefka, that Cocoa and OS X are highly productive. Unfortunately that is just one piece in a large puzzle. When I said ease-of-adoption, I was using business-speak. It’s easy for *management* to adopt.
So, you want to use Cocoa in your corporate programming job. First step, buy a Mac. Just call your company’s hardware vendor. Whoops, Dell doesn’t sell Macs. So you have to get your company to approve a purchase from Apple, even though Apple doesn’t offer features stability. “Features stability” is business-speak meaning the vendor guarantees they will sell you a particular product model for a set period of years. Purchasing departments need this, but Apple does not do it, which is one reason corporations don’t buy from them.
So you manage to get a Mac. Now you write some kickass Cocoa apps. Next step, deploy your Cocoa apps. Oops, all 15,000 employees currently have Windows PCs that don’t run OS X software.
Etc., etc., etc.
By contrast, there is a massive supply chain supporting both Windows and Java development in the corporate environment.
If Apple was interested in the corporate desktop they would need to start developing their supply chain. Of course they need to make it easier for big companies to buy Macs (features stability, etc.). They also need higher-profile certification programs so you can hire a Mac flunkie from your temp agency, just like you can hire a Windows or Java-certified flunkie. They also need more tool vendors—all the oddball 3rd-party tools that .NET developers use. And something like .MSI or WebStart for distributing changes. And the ability to buy hardware from more than one vendor. (Even if your company doesn’t buy Windows PCs from more than one vendor, they can put price pressure on the vendor because they COULD switch.) And they need a whole ecosystem of middlemen, a.k.a. resellers, who make commissions by telling lazy managers what to buy.
It is much easier for small and medium-sized businesses to switch to Apple, where they aren’t tied to this huge beaureaucratic structure that I’ve described. But even those businesses benefit from, e.g., having a ready supply of cheap Windows or Java programmers, whereas it’s relatively harder to find a Cocoa programmer at your local temp agency.