“So anybody who thinks they want to be in the intellectual property innovation business needs to ask, ‘How do I differentiate myself from this [open source] thing?’ It has to be through innovative work and through integrated innovation. The non-commercial world doesn’t move that fast. Linux is a clone of UNIX. Linux hasn’t blazed the trail, new approaches to security, new approaches to program development. Even program development in the UNIX world, the sort of trail-blazing, is quite broadly being done by BEA and IBM and Sun and the Java crowd. […] But at the end of the day, it’s about innovation. It’s about competing. And it’s about building up enough of innovative intellectual property to have a good business.” Ballmer told Always-On.
Ballmer: Linux is not Innovating
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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“At work I miss Tabbed Browsing, Multiple Desktops, Pkg_add, Make Install, and “minimizing windows to the titlebar”. At home I miss nothing.”
Use Mozilla, Firebird or Opera if you want tabbed browsing in Windows. I am also having multiple (4) virtual desktops open on my Windows XP box right now. You can either use the multiple desktop utility from Microsoft that comes with the Powertools package (and sucks) or you can use the nView Desktop feature (which rocks) of the latest NVIDIA drivers for Windows.
“At work I’m forced to use MS. At home I use OSS.”
When I use OSS, I miss:
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Office XP
Diablo 2: LOD
GTA and GTA: Vice City
Warcraft 3
NFS: Hot Pursuit 2
and god-knows-how-much-more stuff
Who cares if <enter favorite OS here> is innovative or not? I’m not going to pay for / donate to an OS just because it’s innovative. What I care about is: 1) does it work 2) can I use it.
–sig plagiarized from some employee of M$–
If I can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.
Anonymous says:
Use Mozilla, Firebird or Opera if you want tabbed browsing in Windows. … you can use the nView Desktop feature (which rocks) of the latest NVIDIA drivers for Windows.
Ballmer says:
Even program development in the UNIX world, the sort of trail-blazing, is quite broadly being done by BEA and IBM and Sun and the Java crowd.
Therefore:
To paraphrase: Even programming development in the Windows Browser world, the sort of trail-blazing, is quite broadly being done by the Mozilla and Opera crowd.
someone at MS should innovate a dictionary program so the MS CEOs can look “innovate” up see what it means.
“you keep using that word, i don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Linux was first with 64 bit file support
NTFS had this over a decade ago.
linux has added better thread suport.
“Better” than what ?
Linux was first to support 64 bit AMD Processors.
But NT was available on more platforms first.
When I use OSS, I miss:
Adobe Photoshop
Microsoft Office XP
Diablo 2: LOD
GTA and GTA: Vice City
Warcraft 3
NFS: Hot Pursuit 2
You do know that all of these – save for Need for Speed – can be run on Linux, right? I myself have Photoshop and Warcraft III installed on my Linux system (I’m decided against buying Office XP, using Office 2000 instead, but Office XP is supported as well by Crossover Office).
Windows is, as a whole, not innovative. Neither is MacOS. Neither is Linux. Most software is a clone of something else; possibly with a few innovative features, but usually not even that.
There are innovative apps available for every major platform Many innovations get miscredited to whatever popular platform they first become widely known on.
That said, Linux does have some pretty cool features; I do not know for sure whether, say, SELinux is innovative, or how much credit on things like gcc’s propolice and stack protection are actually from linux or a unix-like OS originally, but I would say that it’s possible to lock down security and thwart buffer overflows far more effectively on Unix-like operating systems than on Windows at the present.
X11 is old; it’s still a pretty nice system. Modular design and small tools are old; I’m not sure how many -decades- ago they were innovated, but they’re still useful.
I’d rather use Linux than something “innovative” just because it’s innovative; if it has a feature or design I really like, great, but innovation produces at least as many awful things as great ones.
started out making basic & cobol compilers
nothing innovative about that
then moved into os with dos by buying qdos which was cp/m like
nothing innovative about that
developped windows 1 through 3 which ‘borrowed’ heavily from gem & apple
nothing innovative about that
Win95 arrives after os/2
nothing innovative about that
You could argue about winNT which is loosely based on vms, but even id NT were REALLY innovative what about all the years before ?
Apple is the pinacle of inovation. At least from the end user perspective.
You do know that all of these – save for Need for Speed – can be run on Linux, right? I myself have Photoshop and Warcraft III installed on my Linux system (I’m decided against buying Office XP, using Office 2000 instead, but Office XP is supported as well by Crossover Office).
Don’t even get me STARTED on the horror that is Wine.
Mr. Ballmer can point out Linux all he wants but Linux may not be the OS that takes customers away from Windows.
BSDs and Linux were designed to take advantage of small computers. Before those two OSes, you could only run Unix on big machines. Linux is a clone in that it was created to follow the published Unix standards. But Linux was completely created from scratch. BSD was an off shoot from AT&T Unix to run on small computers.
Even though BSD/Linux were not mainly created to compete with Microsoft, they are indirectly doing so.
A GUIed Linux/BSD does not compete directly with Microsoft. It is more of an indirect competition. KDE/Gnome are striving to make working with Linux/BSD easier. It does not matter that Microsoft exist. KDE/Gnome would still be here.
BSD/Linux would still be here if Microsoft didn’t exist.
BSD and Linux mostly follow the ‘improve what has already been done’ model. But there are innovations happening in the OSS community.
Could Microsoft provide a Live CD like Knoppix, Suse and Slackware? Could Microsoft enhance security like OpenBSD does? Is Microsoft capable of creating a web browser that not only follows standards but comes up with new features like tab browsing and mouse gestures?
OSS does not need to compete with Microsoft but Microsoft needs to compete with OSS. OSS is here to stay and will always be around.
1. A senior exec from a big company said his company and its products are wonderful and their competitors products derivative. (No surprises so far).
2. The highly passionate supporters of one competitor took this badly. Like a red rag to a bull in fact. (Still no surprises).
3. People who like Big Company’s product say unkind things about competitors. Argument starts. (So far so normal)
Wake me up when it’s finished.
From the Websters Dictionary:
in·no·va·tion
1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
[1540–50; < LL innov!ti$n- (s. of innov!ti$). See INNOVATE, -ION]
By this definition every OS or project that is active is INNOVATING. Period!
That is creating something new. They all do so Linux does not innovate more or less than MS. They all do innovate.
I think the TERM that should be used is
INVENT
From the same dictionary:
in·vent
1. to originate or create as a product of one’s own ingenuity, experimentation, or contrivance: to invent the telegraph.
2. to produce or create with the imagination: to invent a story.
3. to make up or fabricate (something fictitious or false): to invent excuses.
4. Archaic. to come upon; find.
[1425–75; late ME invented (ptp.) found, discovered (see -ED2) < L inventus, ptp. of inven#re to encounter, come upon, find, equiv. to in- IN-2 + ven(#re) to COME + -tus ptp. suffix]
—Syn. 1. devise, contrive. See discover. 2. imagine, conceive. 3. concoct.
I think this is a better term that we can use to measure the similarities and differences between different OSes for this debate.
And if you use this term you will see that again most of the OSes are INVENTING. Linux has invented in the past and is inventing now. Mac OS has invented as well and even MS Windows has invented.
Examples abound no question.
So if this is the case then what is with this FUD from MS you may ask?
I think it’s nothing surprising. I think this is one area where MS does not invent. They are predictible at throwing out FUD and troll bait.
You have to see what they will have to gain if people even listen to them. And then tell it how it is to the same people. Let the people decide. They will know who is BSing and who is not.
Now back to you people.
Maybe they have started innovation by starting all over again!
1) Steve talking about low TCO with Windows: Don’t make me laugh, I make a living (with many others) trying to keep that crap running.
2) About only a few people not liking MS.: Most users do not know better, they accept things as they are. MS creates a huge ‘industry’ of people who are depending on their bugs for their living. (IT people, proud of their knowledge of an insane OS) or people who can do years of writing to figure out how the mess is put ‘together’. (The Press).
If people only knew…
At the end of the day I still use OS (Linux, FreeBSD and others) because the features that they provide fit my needs both on the desktop, server and embeded hardware I own and/or I work with. Ant they do that at I price _I can_ control.
The same is with my car. I still use my Golf although I can buy an Audi A8. It will be a burden to pay off the A8 and I can use my monetary resources for something better like house improvements or vacations or whatever. The point is _I am not rich_ and the price of my Golf _I can_ control.
I’ll probably never buy an Audy A8 and I’ll probably never buy a MS piece of software but that does not mean they are not good. They are not affordable and in the case of software it comes with too many strings attached.
Again back to you.
Maybe… But XP is an OS/2 clone in a clown suit.
The “horror that is Wine”? I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about? At this time and point in Linux usage, Wine is great! It enables one to use the most popular MS programs without needing a Windows license, and within a Linux environment.
Wine isn’t a “horror”, it’s an outstanding (if still evolving) achievement. In any case, it’s already proven to be good enough for the marketplace, as Disney animation studios uses Crossover Office so that they can run Photoshop on their Linux workstations.
What exactly is it about Wine that you find so horrific?
123 comments already at this point.
Microsoft announces a new and revolutionary pop up blocker for Interent Explorer and suddenly they are innovating!!!! Guess what Steve, everybody else (Including Mozilla, Safari, etc, etc, etc.) has a pop-up blocker in their web browsers except Microsoft. This is just one of many examples where Microsoft tries to reinvent the wheel and they call the technology “the best thing invented since sliced bread.”
Give me a break!!!!!!
with as much cross platform consulting that i do, where are you guys?
i find the linux “passionate” at the lug meetings.
but you microsoft monkeyboy wannabes…where are you in real life???
those making over the top pro microsoft statements would be left a smouldering pile of rediculed ashes, after i was done with you.
-nt admin since 96, -linux admin since 2000
“Certainly the open-source world has proven it can do a certain kind of work, even if it’s not what I would say is the most innovative stuff out there.”
That’s about the same as my idea about Microsoft.
Open source is not as focused and wastes too much effort creating different products for similar purposes.
You don’t mean the 100s of text editors, maybe the 100’s of email clients? Linux does offer a stable alternative to MS. The comunity does need to come together & linux needs standards.
Linux is not innovating. Linux has been biting the tails of Microsoft for god knows how long. All they do is try and produce product of the same or better quality as MS. The real innovators are Apple.
I was at a Microsoft Office event recently and had to endure the keynote suit’s stock FUD line about security concerns, particularly intrigued by how unconvincing said suit was while obviously reading the FUD (about Red Hat Linux 9, by the way).
This gave me pause to think about how the folks at Microsoft EVER got to where they are now, considering that way back when the BASIC interpreter was their claim to fame.
Lest one forgets (OEM intimidation and forced client-side preloads aside) Microsoft took over market leadership in the organization on the server side (from Novell) largely by effectively marketing NOT to system administrators but to management (who, being both non-technical and naturally risk averse with their funding decisions, were complete push-overs for the Redmond hype, which largely amounted to bullet points about a future that was yet to occur while pushing a next-generation “nobody will get fired going with Microsoft” line to replace the old saw about IBM purchasing being safe for one’s career).
At this time NOBODY who was technically savvy would pick Microsoft over Novell on technical merits at the server, but they MIGHT consider Microsoft for greater client-side (Windows) connectivity simplicity.
The pointy-clicky method of system administration also appealed to management, because anybody who could marginally operate a Windows computer (i.e. managerial secretaries) could perform simple system administration tasks. Management likes to save money at EVERY turn, and if specialized (expensive) administration skills are NOT absolutely required, then the mean cost of system administration drops precipitously (cost savings rule a manager’s thinking).
Add to this Microsoft’s willingness to create any sort of friendly corporate customer support presence and this package bought significant management mindshare (NOBODY prefers one-stop shopping like management).
This is past, but remember that past is prologue. And prologue IS necessary.
Especially since this prologue represents a significant reason for the current state of lock-in that exists with Microsoft products, the ONLY networked computing experience quite a few organizations have EVER known.
Thus, absent Microsoft, said network integration would have been impossible (at least as defined by the folks from Redmond, who have successfully framed these issues in the minds of management).
In fact, Microsoft successfully defining the thought patterns of so many management teams (especially in the pre-Internet era when Windows-based infrastructure was not necessarily a foregone conclusion) is probably their single greatest achievement as a company.
Anybody open to Redmond alternatives who has had to repeatedly combat the, “Does Microsoft offer that?” questioning from management knows what I am talking about: every IT budget line item became Microsoft’s to lose.
As a result of this success, Redmond is now in the position to leverage management mindshare plus the natural resistance to change (oh so common to the human condition) in the latest effort to maintain the lock-in.
However, Redmond faces something new. Given the current economic climate, management is quite open to alternative means to maintain IT performance while still cutting costs.
Unlike any threat to Microsoft hegemony before it, Free Software/Open Source Software is a MOVEMENT, not a discrete corporate competitor that can be brushed aside or bought out.
This particular movement offers possibilities simply not available with the latest upgrades to the same old lock-in products, which exist solely to perpetuate the monopoly.
Organizational IT freedom and choice, plus outright independence from any single vendor, along with dramatic cost savings are suddenly possible, and these create a significant problem to the marketing wizards at Microsoft.
Previously designed marketing strategies designed to defeat another corporation have simply not played out all that well, either.
Clearly those charged with designing the next set of winning strategies do not appear to be succeeding, which is why the constantly changing nature and degree of vitriolic FUD from Redmond is so stark.
Microsoft now has to exist in an environment where it is unfamiliar, where gloss and shine matter less than before and promises that something better is in the pipeline due some time from now will be worth the wait–and cost.
Microsoft has to demonstrate WHY staying locked-in according to their script (give us your money and do what we say when we say) is beneficial, and this translates badly to Excel charts and PowerPoint presentations.
While Microsoft can claim to have clients saving tens of thousands of dollars per year staying locked-in while those freed from Redmond’s control can DEMONSTRATE saving many times that figure (usually on CAL savings alone) then in tight economic times, who stands to win?
The abject panic in Redmond is that the mindshare carefully cultivated but now intimidated and abused (forced upgrades, strong-armed licensing, etc.) may NOT simply comply lockstep to the latest monopoly marching orders.
Management is now willing to listen to non-Microsoft ideas, and Free Software/Open Source Software is the most threatening idea of them all, because it offers freedom from the very lock-in Redmond requires to survive.
Intimidation continues as the modus operandum these days and innovation is the marketing buzzword of choice. It’s high time to work with management to help them see the fact of the former and the emptiness of the latter, to see the truth that remaining locked-in runs counter to the organizational charter.
This quote merely shows that Balmer is very desperate.
First, he flatly dismissed OSS as a threat, then he began to take it more seriously (possibly while examining Windows to see if it’s actually competitive), and now he’s spreading some pretty nasty FUD. It can only mean that he’s worried that Windows can’t stand on its own merits, and now he has to go around bashing OSS to take the spotlight off his company.
Sad.
A lot of revisionist historians have painted a very negative picture of Microsoft and innovation, but in truth Microsoft has been in the forefront of innovation since it’s inception.
It all started back in the early 1980’s when Microsoft first wrote DOS. Seeing how good DOS was, AT&T and a horde of universities copied it and called it Unix. It wasn’t long before Microsoft saw it’s grip slipping and realized it needed to innovate. The obvious solution was to innovate Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word. However, within days of their creation, a group of hackers pieced together Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. Again, Microsoft got shafted.
At this point, they decided to differentiate themseleves from the competition and invented a graphical windowing system. They would call it Windows. But before it could take off, a company called Apple ripped off their idea and released MacOS. At about the same time, Microsoft had also came up with the idea of a business presentation tool called presenter. However, Forethought Inc. copied Microsoft, beat them to the punch and released their version of Presenter. However, Forethoughts version was horrible and Forethought realized that it was impossible to compete. So they decided to do a hostile takeover of Microsoft, but retain the Microsoft name. They renamed their merged product PowerPoint 1.0.
In the 1990’s, due to the increased importance of data, Microsoft needed some kind of data storage software. They invented the idea of SQL and created Microsoft SQL Server. Again, it wasn’t long before IBM and Oracle copied them. A company called Sybase was so bold that they even copied Microsoft code, line by line.
Then with the maturation of the internet and emergence of email, Microsoft came up with the idea of a graphical email system and a graphical browser. They created Outlook and Internet Explorer. Not long after, Netscape released Navigator and Eudora release Eudora Pro.
Well, Microsofts proud history of innovation and creating competition continues to this day. Just look at it’s new directory services and C# / .Net idea of running in a middle layer. After their latest innovations, Novell is creating their own directory service and Sun has a new product on the horizon called Java.
“Say what ? How is Linux *not* a clone of unix ?”
Um well, actually clone implies exact copy. Otherwise it’s not a really a clone, just an “offshoot”. If it’s a clone then it should be fully compatible with Unix, right? And all those guys (and gals) at OSDL are sitting up there playing Fallout: Tactics all day. And even though Sun, SGI and IBM already have Unix, they’re sinking into time and money into this other Unix (cause two Unixes are better than one)?
Let’s face it, “clone” is the wrong word to be using here. Haven’t we all seen Attack of the Clones by now, notice just how much alike they all were?
Are you kidding??? Let me set you straight on just three of your so-called facts concerning MS history.
1. Microsoft did not write DOS, they bought it (or perhaps stole and reverse engineered it, I’m not sure which), itself a clone of CP/M.
2. AT&T began work on UNIX in the late 1960s, well over a decade before Microsoft acquired DOS.
3. Apple, another producer of a DOS (AppleDOS, to be exact), came out with their GUI about 1984, several years before Microsoft released Windows. And the GUI in MacOS was itself a clone of work done by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
As for your other claims about WordPerfect being a rip-off if Word et al, I cannot comment. But owing to the blatant inaccuracies in the above examples, I’m inclined to conclude that all your ‘facts’ are all complete fabrications.
An now that I think about it, I can believe I fell for this flame. But I feel better pointing it out. Now go do some real history research, Slash.
Microsoft don’t innovate, they dominate thru sheer marketing power and anti-trust tactics.
Every time I see a MS commercial about how MS want to revoltionize my life and provide me tools to help me realize my potential, I want to throw up.
Microsoft is not my *friend*, they’re a business. And Balmer is a marketeer first and for most. So of course he’s going to play MS products up and down play any precieved threat to MS’s market share. His “reality distortion field” is probably just as big as Steve Jobs.
Everytime I hear some CEO of some company talk these days, they all sound like rabid military people. We’ll “dominate”, “compete”, etc etc… As long as these people have this mindset, the world will never see true innovation because all these guys are in defense mode.
And meanwhile, Bill G. makes another billion dollars while half the world starves to death or dies from dieases that should have been wiped out a century ago.
It saddens me really. These guys spend all their time making millions of dollars, more then anyone could possibly spend in a lifetime, when all that talent and intellect could do something really useful for humankind
Why is anyone bothered about such a nebulous thing as ‘innovation’?
As long as I can get work done on my computer, browse the web, send email, play games, movies and music I’m happy. Both Linux and Windows do this, though Windows still has the edge for audio apps…. But for that to be solved requires a few companies to port their programs to Linux, it does not require any ‘innovation’.
How will anyone ‘innovate’ a movie player? I rarely use more than ‘play’ and ‘stop’.
Does anyone think that anyone outside fairly hard core computer fans care about innovation in their OS?
It’s just Microsoft trolling (and very successfully too!).
“Microsoft don’t innovate, they dominate thru sheer marketing power and anti-trust tactics.”
That’s the one place Microsoft really does innovate. When it comes to business tactics, there are few who are the match of Gates. He made fools out of all of them at one point or another, whether he was “borrowing” from them, out-manuevering them or running them through when they were already down to make sure they stayed down. Bill is a living testimony to Corporate America.
My favorite response here that has the word “innovate” in it is the one that quotes “The Princess Bride.”
There should be some kind of buzzword police… once a word gets used more than four times in one paragraph of rambling nonsense… NO, more importantly: once a word is used as both a noun and an adjective in the SAME sentence… the word must be retired.
Raise your hand if you got slash’s joke. C’mon man! That was such blatent sarcasm it wasn’t even funny! The part about ForeThoughts doing a hostile takeover of MS and renaming themselves MS should have given it away!
linux is a garbage pail of borrowed scraps
windows is to some degree too, but ms innovates a great deal more.
Thanks for sharing this great analysis!!!!11
Anytime I hear anyone from MS using the “I” word, I feel reasonably confident that the rest of their statements are pure bullsh*t.
Ok, hold on…
(smacks himself on forehead)
Doh!
I missed the part about Forethought…maybe I should just go have a beer.
I think it might be wid*w itself.. it is a ultimate virus on which no more innovations are needed at all
Microsoft Inovation History “1976-Present”
1995- Paper Clip
in Office Suite
2001- Fast User Switching in XP
Fell free to add stuff to this list if I skipped over something or these two arent really microsoft inovations.
Apple Inovation History 1976-Present
1983-One Button Mouse
1988-Coined the term Corporate Multitasking
where when one app. crashes, others corporatley crash along nicely
199x- Newton
199x -OpenDoc
1997-2001 Fruity Macs 6 flavours to match your taste
2003-Cheese Grater
*list excludes thousands of abandoned and cancelled projects
Sorry! Forgot Quick Time
So you should give Linux some more time folks. It took Microsoft almost 20 years to come up with something “original” and useful like that paper clip
🙂
I typed “Innovation” into it and it came with.
“I don’t know what you mean,please rephrase your question”
Just what does MS mean by “innovation”? If they are trying to mean “inventive”, the only things that MS has crafted that would qualify as such is the scroll wheel (on the MS Mouse) and their licensing agreements. Otherwise, all they do is copy others’ work and ideas; not unlike the open source software they are trying to FUD. (I think that this is why they helped Apple stay afloat; to keep their unofficial R&D department alive.)
MS in is no position to point out a lack of innovation in others. The UI of their OS is sorely behind what Apple is doing. Internet Explorer still does not support W3C standards as well as it should. They artificially limit Windows XP Pro to ten network connections just to pump up NT4/2000/2003 Server. And then they have the gull to overcharge for an OS when they have a monopoly.
Innovative indeed.
Well, windows is just an apple clone. ’nuff said.
Micro$oft doesn’t innovate. They just take other corporations good ideas and use them as their own. When faced with litigation, they just settle by offering ‘discounted’ licenses. I know this for a fact from an insider of another company.
M$ and this other company had a ‘non-disclosure’ agreement. About a year later, guess what, the technology of the other company appears in Windows.
Well, of course M$ didn’t ‘disclose’ any info, because they won’t release their source code. They settled out-of-court with bribes of discounted windows licenses.
LolZ ROFL, M$ NyHH
Seriously, grow the hell up
I will follow the rules of this forum, because I am grown up.
Read the terms….
And besides, there is nothing immature about stating a fact.
Thank You, and have a great evening.
I probably didn’t make myself clear. Flaming? Hello? Read the terms….
Auf Wiedersehn….
This whole campaign makes me think of this terrific Mahatma Ghandi quote:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Looks like they’ve entered the fighting stage now
All I can say to this is….LOL
Thanks for the laugh
You said…
NOBODY who was technically savvy would pick Microsoft over Novell on technical merits at the server, but they MIGHT consider Microsoft for greater client-side (Windows) connectivity simplicity.
[/i]The pointy-clicky method of system administration also appealed to management, because anybody who could marginally operate a Windows computer (i.e. managerial secretaries) could perform simple system administration tasks. Management likes to save money at EVERY turn, and if specialized (expensive) administration skills are NOT absolutely required, then the mean cost of system administration drops precipitously (cost savings rule a manager’s thinking). [/i]
Add to this Microsoft’s willingness to create any sort of friendly corporate customer support presence and this package bought significant management mindshare (NOBODY prefers one-stop shopping like management).
This is past, but remember that past is prologue. And prologue IS necessary.
Especially since this prologue represents a significant reason for the current state of lock-in that exists with Microsoft products, the ONLY networked computing experience quite a few organizations have EVER known.
Thus, absent Microsoft, said network integration would have been impossible (at least as defined by the folks from Redmond, who have successfully framed these issues in the minds of management).
In fact, Microsoft successfully defining the thought patterns of so many management teams (especially in the pre-Internet era when Windows-based infrastructure was not necessarily a foregone conclusion) is probably their single greatest achievement as a company.
Anybody open to Redmond alternatives who has had to repeatedly combat the, “Does Microsoft offer that?” questioning from management knows what I am talking about: every IT budget line item became Microsoft’s to lose.
As a result of this success, Redmond is now in the position to leverage management mindshare plus the natural resistance to change (oh so common to the human condition) in the latest effort to maintain the lock-in.
A very good analysis of the ‘past’. However you then go on to say…
However, Redmond faces something new. Given the current economic climate, management is quite open to alternative means to maintain IT performance while still cutting costs.
Not really correct. The economy is a lot better, and companies are significantly invested into ‘the M$ way’ which has worked well for all the reasons you mentioned but primarily simplicity of use. The only real problems they’ve had are all these viruses, which they firmly blame on the ‘anti-M$ crowd’ anyway, so why in the world would they want to join that ‘movement’?
Much of Linux was ‘snuck’ in the back door of big IT shops to begin with, and there are no plans to roll it out to normal end users where it’s immaturity would result in disaster. These shops will continue to run it for specialized tasks, but it’s widespread acceptance is nowhere near a reality. And it may never be, since ‘wizards’ and other simple processes that made Windows what it is are so frowned upon by the Linux controllers.
Hey, Steve;
Try to tell those words to LinkSys wireless routers factory owners. Try also to tell Sony not to ship all its new line of car stereo’s on embeded Linux OS, and tell them all to replace Linux with Windows.
Also give it a shot to direct your words to all the Internet service providers that are using Linux & BSD, plus tell SUN microsystems to hide the source code for Solaris on X86 architecture. Do the same to Palm with OpenBeOS.
Also, let me see MS Windows work on MIPS architecture, PDA, PPC, Sparc, and build a few thousand nodes cluster server of every platform you can imagine, including, but not limited to, PS2, Cobalt cube, every Mac including G3&G4, IBM, HP, SUN, DEC, and all of them running MS Windows instead of Linux.
Just keep on selling to the grey haired, corporate ballons- of-igo that you socialize with. They are about to retire in few years, if not retired already. You’ll face a new generation of computer savey users, that needs answers on technology, and knows how to get it on line.
That moment, you better be ready to defend the sloppy source of windows with the claim that “You guys are not supposed to see this, you need to use it blindly and pay me for this house of cards”
Good luck with the next generation, it is just a matter of time before they record Microsoft as the biggest crock on History of mankind. Make sure to hide your coffin deep in the mountains, because everyone got hit by a virus on his machine, would like to spit on your grave for all the lost work and effort that just vanished due to your empty ego and the sloppy code and structure.
Innovation? How about stability and completeness? What MS *still* doesn’t get is that we need software to be reliable and stable most of all. We don’t need more features, bells & whistles. We need a stable code base that features can be added to as needed, once code has been thoroughly debugged. 95% of Windows users only use about 5% of it’s abilities (how many people have computers for web browsing and e-mail only? Plenty!). What the Linux community does understand is that core stability and completeness is much more important that the newest gee-whiz-click-on-this feature that nobody was really asking for. Do they always get it right? No, but then nobody does; this is a human effort, after all. But computers are like cell phones in this regard- most of us don’t need cell phones to take pictures, play the latest Eminem tune when it rings, or have a beach scene as a background- we just want them to work as cell phones! Same for an OS- just provide basic services and a clean API. Get that part done, then worry about being a home theater PC, or including “movie maker” features, or a slick-looking-but-even-kludgier-GUI, or whatever.