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Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

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Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#281

Post by microtonal »

72deluxe wrote: post #264
bitwize wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, with windows 10, my security updates will come bundled with my unwanted OS changes. Had this experience with Mac OS X. For 10.4 they switched to a new, dynamically linked libstdc++ that used the new Itanium C++ ABI. 10.3 had a statically linked libstdc++ and the old ABI. They pushed out an OS update that installed the new libstdc++ on 10.3, breaking linking against libstdc++ with standard cxxflags. You see the…

Very informative, thanks. I write software for my daily job on OSX and I get the feeling that if you're not "current" then they don't care. Look at how they handled the recent security update and left all Mavericks users in the lurch by not back-porting the fix. (Does anyone know if they ever did?)

Which vulnerability?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

I was under the impression that they are currently updating 10.8 to 10.0 (if it affects all these releases).

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#283

Post by ladzoppelin »

aleem wrote: post #250
someear wrote: post #191

Entirely an enterprise play - gone are those firms that essentially say "we'll stick with XP". They'll either be forced into a subscription model or will switch off to another platform. This is also a huge win for not having the need to support super old OSes, which is a huge tax in not just support cost, but also testing and designing for backward compatibility.

I think this goes far and beyond Enterprise play or anything of that nature. There is a lot at stake here. This is a response to a bigger paradigm shift that is the web and software as a service and Mobiles. If you are on Windows XP and windows 7 rolls out, you have the option of upgrading, not upgrading or switching to a Mac (or similar). Gmail versus outlook is another good example. With Outlook you would need to s…

Actually 8/8.1 runs better than 7 even on the same computer and Outlook.com is free. To be honest Chrome has killed my offices productivity this year with random hangs and high cpu on at least one person per day who sits in my area. Its a huge problem especially since a large amount of the web requires Chrome and some Google apps issue warnings unless you change the user agent.

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#284

Post by castell »

gambiting wrote: post #266
castell wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are alternatives to "Windows 10 as a service" - WINE on Mac/Linux and ReactOS. ReactOS is an attempt to build an open source version of Windows XP/7. It uses source code from WINE and it aims for better compatibility with legacy apps and drivers by developing a WinNT-like OS-Kernel: http://www.reactos.org/screenshots

It's not an alternative. At least not for a lot of companies. I work at a games studio and we exclusively use Windows - PS4, Xbox One, Wii U sdks and tools only work on Windows and only with Visual Studio(well, PS4 and Xbox One), and it's extremely unlikely that you would get them to work under Wine. So now our company will have to pay a fee to Microsoft to continue using windows, instead of a single flat payment whe…

ReactOS re-implements the WinNT series (XP+) OS kernel (you can compare it with UNIX vs. Linux) and WINE provides the user mode layer.

Visual Studio 2010 and the dotNet Framework work fine in WINE: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio... . VS run as early as 2003 in ReactOS: http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/wordpress/wp-con...

As ReactOS also supports the Windows graphic card driver from NVidia, AMD and Intel - it's for sure an upcoming alternative to Windows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReactOS . Beside that more and more Indie-game-developers support Mac & Linux (PR via Humble Bundle), and beside Indie: GOG and Steam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(hardware_platfor... ) are going strong too.

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#286

Post by 72deluxe »

microtonal wrote: post #281
72deluxe wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very informative, thanks. I write software for my daily job on OSX and I get the feeling that if you're not "current" then they don't care. Look at how they handled the recent security update and left all Mavericks users in the lurch by not back-porting the fix. (Does anyone know if they ever did?)

Which vulnerability? https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 I was under the impression that they are currently updating 10.8 to 10.0 (if it affects all these releases).

Specifically, OS X Yosemite v10.10.3 and Security Update 2015-004 Admin Framework Available for: OS X Yosemite v10.10 to v10.10.2 CVE-2015-1130 : Emil Kvarnhammar at TrueSec

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204659

https://truesecdev.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/hidden-backdoor-...

Are they backporting this?

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#287

Post by chrismartin »

aleem wrote: post #250
someear wrote: post #191

Entirely an enterprise play - gone are those firms that essentially say "we'll stick with XP". They'll either be forced into a subscription model or will switch off to another platform. This is also a huge win for not having the need to support super old OSes, which is a huge tax in not just support cost, but also testing and designing for backward compatibility.

I think this goes far and beyond Enterprise play or anything of that nature. There is a lot at stake here. This is a response to a bigger paradigm shift that is the web and software as a service and Mobiles. If you are on Windows XP and windows 7 rolls out, you have the option of upgrading, not upgrading or switching to a Mac (or similar). Gmail versus outlook is another good example. With Outlook you would need to s…

Unfortunately, the 'continuous upgrades in the background' model removes the user's choice of when to upgrade.

In some cases, I want to stay on an older version because a new release breaks compatibility with plugin X, or upgrading would require me to change a workflow that is working well, or because I have muscle memory built around the UI of the existing version, and I don't have to think when I use the app. If an older version still gets security and bug fixes, then I might only upgrade when the benefit (new features and improvements) outweighs the effort/cost required to adopt the new version.

It also encourages frequent, fad-driven UI refreshes, and this is worst seen with web applications like Facebook and Gmail. Every so often, Google Maps plays hide and seek with the terrain view button.

Sometimes, stability and a slower release cycle (while still providing timely security updates) is good. It prevents the developers from playing fast and loose with the UI, and gives them time to work out compatibility issues with the larger ecosystem.

How do you place the decision to upgrade in the user's hands, while avoiding a situation where 17% of computers in the world still run Windows XP [1]?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#288

Post by castell »

rhengles wrote: post #214
bunderbunder wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Microsoft makes much money off of shrinkwrap copies of Windows. Almost everyone I know just sticks with the version of Windows that came with the computer, and when they switch to a newer version it's because they bought a new computer that comes with it preinstalled. The probable advantage to Microsoft is that they have a less disjointed platform to support. For example apps released for the app store…

> and apps that work on Windows 7 and earlier can't be put on the app store. They announced that win32 based apps will have the possibility to be on the store - in one of the videos from build they even used Photoshop as an example.

Apple did that too with OS X. And a year later, the forced you to add the application to their store. Opening a third party application that is not blessed from Apple/store shows a warning to the casual end user. It's up to Microsoft to go the same route, or not.

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#289

Post by toddan »

castell wrote: post #284
gambiting wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an alternative. At least not for a lot of companies. I work at a games studio and we exclusively use Windows - PS4, Xbox One, Wii U sdks and tools only work on Windows and only with Visual Studio(well, PS4 and Xbox One), and it's extremely unlikely that you would get them to work under Wine. So now our company will have to pay a fee to Microsoft to continue using windows, instead of a single flat payment whe…

ReactOS re-implements the WinNT series (XP+) OS kernel (you can compare it with UNIX vs. Linux) and WINE provides the user mode layer. Visual Studio 2010 and the dotNet Framework work fine in WINE: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio... . VS run as early as 2003 in ReactOS: http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/wordpress/wp-con... As ReactOS also supports the Windows graphic card driver…

Visual studio 2010 and dotNet surely works fine under wine. But there are lots of small cornerstones in the tools and software companies use that does not work so great.

If there was an real free alternative to windows where all the specialized software worked i am dead sure companies would start to use it. But at this moment there is no such alternative.

Re: Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions

#290

Post by mchaver »

aleem wrote: post #250
someear wrote: post #191

Entirely an enterprise play - gone are those firms that essentially say "we'll stick with XP". They'll either be forced into a subscription model or will switch off to another platform. This is also a huge win for not having the need to support super old OSes, which is a huge tax in not just support cost, but also testing and designing for backward compatibility.

I think this goes far and beyond Enterprise play or anything of that nature. There is a lot at stake here. This is a response to a bigger paradigm shift that is the web and software as a service and Mobiles. If you are on Windows XP and windows 7 rolls out, you have the option of upgrading, not upgrading or switching to a Mac (or similar). Gmail versus outlook is another good example. With Outlook you would need to s…

I think the biggest problem I have with the App Store model is that it seems to go hand in hand with planned obsolescence. Older versions of programs are no longer available for download (maybe not true for all app stores?) and older hardware gets quickly forgotten.

I still use an iPhone4 and my biggest mistake was upgrading to iOS7 (I suppose I could jail break it and downgrade it but doesn't that make it more of a pain for development?). It would be nice if there was an option to downgrade via Apple, but all old versions seem to get thrown out. That would not have been be a problem with the previous models of updating because I would have a physical copy of the software.

I understand that they just want to support the latest hardware because it makes things a lot easier for them and keeps costs down a lot, but it just seems so wasteful to purposefully break hardware with an upgrade.

If there was a choice between paid upgrades (with access to previous versions) and free forced upgrades, I would pick the former, but it seems like things are moving toward the latter.

Edit: "That would be a problem..." corrected to "That would not have been a problem..."

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