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The End of Windows

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Re: The End of Windows

#131

Post by asveikau »

alkonaut wrote: post #102
asveikau wrote: post #33

I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle. One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store. Even though Win10 attempted correctiv…

They bet the farm on “store”. Why? Because they must have done the math and realized that the enterprise and “creative pro” desktop with classic expensive desktop apps is a dead end. Was that calculation correct? Who knows. But I have to think they did that analysis very carefully.

I think it's more likely that there was a team or more likely several teams looking to make a name for itself, and they concluded that forcing everyone in the Windows desktop monopoly to use its stuff was the way to get that work noticed. I am sure that a bunch of the people responsible were praised as top performers and rewarded for their victory. When the original people are cycled out there is already inertia and it doesn't really occur to people that the previous blunder needs to be rolled back.

Re: The End of Windows

#132

Post by cptskippy »

djsumdog wrote: post #81
ynniv wrote: post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense. There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server. With Android being a clusterfuck of vend…

I agree with what you're saying and I think they need to keep Windows 10 around at least for a little while longer.

Everyone hates when Microsoft changes something core and foundational about Windows and thus there has been little change in certain areas of the OS for the last two decades. That build up of cruft has become untenable and Microsoft attempted to address major pain points like the Control Panel with Windows 8, then 8.1, and still in 10. The problem is that rewriting something like the Control Panel would consume 100% of developer resources for an entire OS Dev cycle. Can you imagine if Microsoft announced Windows 11 and the only difference between it and 10 was a new control panel?

Windows 10 is the perfect opportunity to start fixing cruft. It's already controversial but not universally hated, they got the majority of people to adopt it through free upgrades, and they've introduced the semi annual upgrade cycle that allows them to gradually introduce foundational changes gradually. With each release of Windows 10 they introduce a bunch of new crappy apps that are completely forgettable AND they improve a core feature silently.

Re: The End of Windows

#133

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

twoquestions wrote: post #2

So are mom and pop businesses using Chromebooks and Ipads to do their accounting now? Last I checked Windows was still pretty dominant in both Enterprise and midsize businesses, though I could see a food truck being run from a phone (theoretically).

Anecdotal I know but my business employs 4 people and a few (including myself) are full time Linux users. I use Xero for our accounts and I'm very happy with it.

Re: The End of Windows

#134

Post by tootie »

Spooky23 wrote: post #5
twoquestions wrote: post #2

So are mom and pop businesses using Chromebooks and Ipads to do their accounting now? Last I checked Windows was still pretty dominant in both Enterprise and midsize businesses, though I could see a food truck being run from a phone (theoretically).

Windows 10 is really difficult for businesses entrenched in Windows to deal with. The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client computing in different ways.

Haha. I'm living this right now, but we're getting there. We'll have a few thousand PCs on Win 10 soon and will finally deprecate IE8 for Chrome :p. I'm dead set against using iPads for anything serious although I keep losing that battle.

Re: The End of Windows

#135

Post by ams6110 »

djsumdog wrote: post #81
ynniv wrote: post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

I agree. I wish Microsoft would focus on Windows 11 and not think of Win10 as the last Windows, thereby flooding it with adware non-sense. There are still a lot of tech heads and gamers that depend on Windows and will continue to buy into the platform. I even know hard core Linux devs who've switched back to Win10 and just work off of the new Linux Subsystem and an X11 server. With Android being a clusterfuck of vend…

How is Android relevant? It's not a PC OS, and doesn't seem like a real Windows alternative in the same breath as MacOS or Linux.

Re: The End of Windows

#136

Post by shmerl »

walterbell wrote: post #130
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General Purpose Computing using PC's is a thing because of Microsoft (and IBM). Without those two there would have never been a PC in the first place. The forces against general purpose computing are to be found on 1 infinite loop and 1600 Amphitheatre parkway.

The Microsoft of the 1990s and the “Microsoft” of today are very different. The modern version is trying to copy closed ecosystems, instead of building on historical strengths in stable APIs, backward compatibility, diverse hardware and ISV licensing models.

Different, but only partially. In many ways they still cling to their bad habits like lock-in and standards poisoning.

Some good exceptions exists (HTML5 and AV1), but many things are as bad as they were for a long time (Outlook, DirectX and etc.).

Re: The End of Windows

#137

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

ckaygusu wrote: post #87
ynniv wrote: post #48

This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they…

> macOS isn't business-level stable. Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.

> As far as stability goes, macs are top notch.

My MBP and its periodic gray screen of death begs to differ. Apple really needs to shore up its QA.

Re: The End of Windows

#138

Post by pjmlp »

jacquesm wrote: post #119
pjc50 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too remember the QnX demo disk with a web browser and desktop environment on a single floppy. But Linux still doesn't do this kind of isolation, partly due to philosophical opposition. Edit for the audience: http://toastytech.com/guis/qnxdemo.html

In the famous Torvalds - Tanenbaum discussion Torvalds got it terribly wrong, but Linux was good enough to get off the ground anyway so in the longer term might made right. But a microkernel based Linux would have been a serious game changer rather than a re-run. After all we already had plenty of free Unixes back then, and the descendants of those are all still more or less alive today. The major sticking point in t…

Tanenbaum was certainly right, given the adoption of micro-kernel like architectures across the industry, specially on embedded.

Even containers are a kind of workaround for achieving the same goals.

Re: The End of Windows

#139

Post by jacquesm »

walterbell wrote: post #130
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General Purpose Computing using PC's is a thing because of Microsoft (and IBM). Without those two there would have never been a PC in the first place. The forces against general purpose computing are to be found on 1 infinite loop and 1600 Amphitheatre parkway.

The Microsoft of the 1990s and the “Microsoft” of today are very different. The modern version is trying to copy closed ecosystems, instead of building on historical strengths in stable APIs, backward compatibility, diverse hardware and ISV licensing models.

I don't think they are all that different. They have just shifted their lock-in strategy to a different front that they didn't have access to back in the day now that their milk-cow is drying up.

Microsoft missed the mobile revolution in just about every way they could have, so now they have to make a number of forced moves.

Re: The End of Windows

#140

Post by cptskippy »

SonicSoul wrote: post #127
ynniv wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Established businesses aren't going to put their data in someone else's datacenter. Small to medium businesses perhaps, but all it takes is one downturn that tightens the purse strings, or one critical event that reveals their absolute dependence on a third party. SAAS solutions are fair weather, and while we've had a lot of good weather I don't expect them to be used for critical business functions in the long term.

they can still take advantage of existing cloud technologies running on their own servers. And guess what, the CTO and CFO and COO will very much care about licensing cost of each CPU running windows or sql server, vs FREE on Linux.

This is where Microsoft is going with Azure. Compared to other platforms, setting up a local instance of Azure is pretty painless and allows you to spin up resources locally that are identical to the Cloud.
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