Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sun 23rd Mar 2008 23:04 UTC
"When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most 'modular' yet. Having never really been comfortable with the idea of a single, monolithic desktop OS offering, Microsoft has offered multiple desktop OSes in the marketplace ever since the days of Windows NT 3.1, with completely different code bases until they were unified in Windows 2000. Unification isn't necessarily a good thing, however; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS. A singular yet highly modular OS could give Microsoft the best of all possible worlds: OSes that can be highly customized for deployment but developed monolithically. One modular OS to rule them all, let's say."
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Member since:
2006-01-16
Yes, there is definitely a good possibility for Linux and Mac to steal some desktop market share. But thats probably not going to happen. Macs are too expensive, especially if most people buy cheap crap rather then spend the extra 100 euros for something good. And Linux, it has a long history of not paying enough attention to the desktop details, ultimately putting average users off.
But then again Microsoft is giving people lots of reasons to switch.
XP and Vista each came with a new interface, forcing people to relearn things they already know.
Vista 64 needs signed drivers, this is expensive and I blame it for the lack of 64bit drivers.
People don't like or understand UAC.
Backward compatibility in Vista isn't all that good.
Talk of turning windows into a subscription based operating systems makes people uneasy. We've heard it before with XP. People and Businesses didn't like it.
And so on.
But back to the article, whats up with the "modular operating system concept" patent? I don't see how this is different from how Linux works. Just because people have to pay for the extra modules doesn't make it a new idea and it shouldn't be patentable!