Apart from bloody Balmer the economist running a tech company...
I want to make one thing clear.. Windows 7 is the best operating system to have ever been released by Microsoft..
Windows 8 is the worst piece of shit in the whole history of microsoft and i can probably guess theres some kind of espionage thing going on where they convert all user hate mail about the new ui to positive reviews.
Anyway --i think this is the best for everyone because now we can all buy macs. Awesome!
I'm by nature an optimist, but petrossa's scenario is what my money would be on. Who's/what's to stop them? As soon as Adobe is locked out of the MS garden, they'll have no choice but to adapt and pony up. They won't be able to survive, let alone grow, selling legacy apps indefinitely.
I agree with Mason that companies will avoid upgrading in order to maintain access to & use of such apps, but machines have a finite lifetime and MS intends to stop making Win7 available. My guess is it's only a matter of when.
I don't think so. The desktop API and the "Modern" or "Metro" API are different. I think the desktop model is going to stay if no other reason than to accommodate the third party business developers. I don't think MS is going to screw over the developers that badly.
Yeah but they can go to great lengths to make the desktop hidden and impossible to find and/or use.
I'll believe it when i see it. There are far too many legacy applications that millions of their customers use and will continue to use for decades and beyond that require the desktop UI. If the new OS won't allow them to use their programs, they will not upgrade (just like i would have thrown the w8 out the moment i discovered i can't run any of the applications i'm used to). Doing that MS would shoot themselves in the foot. There's a reason why people haven't embraced alternative OS's like Ubuntu, even tho that one's desktop is almost indistinguishable from a windows UI to an average customer - it does not run their programs.
As for the "It makes no sense to keep two completely different UI's in one OS" - it makes perfect sense if the same OS is meant to be used on two devices with completely different control schemes(PC's with mouse&keyboard and tablets with touchscreen).
it could happen. the switch from OS9 to OSX or from DOS to Windows was far bigger.
but i am not sure wether Microsoft will go that way. if Windows 8 and the Surface continue to sell as bad as it does, the Windows team will loose a lot of credit. will be interesting to watch. i don't think everybody at MS likes Windows 8. the Office team pretty much sabotaged it by not doing a Metro version
WinRT is Replacing Win32One of the confusing bits about WinRT is, well, everything. But after conferring with others and studying Microsoft's documentation, I can make the following general statement: WinRT (the new Windows Run Time) is not a replacement for Silverlight or .NET, it's a replacement for Win32. And that means that it's the new native runtime for Windows, and not a managed code layer that sits higher on the stack. And that means further than the layers that do sit on top of WinRT--XAML/C# (and other languages), HTML/JavaScript, and DirectX--are far less abstracted from native code than was previously thought.
http://winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/windows8/winrt-replacing-win32-140605
Say bye bye to win 32. Not today, not tomorrow. But it will be gone. 100% sure. Enjoy it while you can.
I'm not sure about the switch being 'bigger'. I never used OSX, but the switch from DOS to windows did not prevent people from running their DOS applications. Even today, many are still using them on their computers(heck, the software our accountant uses at my workplace was originally written for DOS and she still uses it today, talk about ancient). It's true DOS programs aren't as easy to run today as 10 years ago but that is as much due to hardware incompatibilities (today's computers being too fast) as it is due to any OS incompatibilities.
In fact, i think this is a nice analogy. Originally, windows was just a graphical UI on top of DOS OS. Later MS removed the underlying DOS and made windows itself into the OS - however that did not prevent DOS programs from running, the OS simply spawned a DOS window for them to run it. It's very similar to how, when i today start a non-metro application from within the metro UI, windows 8 first fires up the old desktop and then loads the application into it. I have no reason to believe Microsoft won't keep this functionality for decades to come.
Think about it. First windows was released in 1985, and today, 28 years later, it is still possible to run DOS programs on it. The penetration of personal computers into our lives has increased hundredfold since then. If not alienating their customers by preventing them from using their programs was important enough for MS 28 years ago, not alienating them is hundredfold more important today.
That would be corporate suicide on MS' part... totally!!! Too many business and home users depend on it for their day to day business and activities for Win32 to disappear. Besides, Microsoft would lose ALL its 'legacy' partners, who have invested billions in software development... and while MS is the 'core' business, it is nothing without its partners. I mean, who is going to shell out hundreds of dollars for an operating system that is... well just that and nothing more. It'd be like that Meatloaf song... 'All Revved Up And No Place To Go'
While I quite like the Metro/ModernUI for phone and tablet use, I certainly wouldn't want it as the only method of interacting with my desktop PC. I do things that require legacy applications on a multi-tasking desktop, so if MS were ever to release a ModernUI only OS I would simply refuse to purchase it... period. And I am only one of billions with this mindset.
Simply put, MS would have so few customers who'd view the 'ModernUI' as a viable alternative, it would have no option but to revert to 'legacy' a desktop purely to remain alive. But frankly, I don't see it ever getting to that.... because MS' partners, as a combined force, would not let it. They have far too much to lose... as does MS. For example, Adobe's content creation suites are far too complex a piece of software to place in an app or 6, or 10, they need a more powerful legacy desktop in which to function, and Adobe, along with scores of other 'legacy' developers, will fight MS tooth and nail to ensure their products have viable futures.
As for the 'Cloud', while it may be a viable delivery platform to some multi-billion dollar corporations, it would be an enormous undertaking to place entire content creation/editing suites in the Cloud, and many of the smaller, yet still powerful, companies would not be able to afford to mount such a mammoth operation. For a start, the costs of servicing billions of customers worldwide with entire cloud-based software suites would be so enormous it would preclude many developers, that's if they could afford the initial setup costs to begin with...
Yes, some developers, such as Adobe, have made use of the Cloud as a distribution point, but that is more an alternative sales point to those who prefer it, rather than a complete shift in that direction. I mean, seriously, which company could, realistically, service [say] 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 even 10 - 12 billion 'Cloud' customers, all using very powerful and complex content creation suites all at the same time? No, companies like Adobe, Corel, Nero will still distribute their software via download or hardcopy because it is more cost effective for them... because the majority of consumers want what they pay for physically on their machines, not off in some intangible 'cloud'.
The other reason we may be saying bye, bye to legacy Win32... legacy Win64, which is faster and more responsive, is taking its place.
I hope you are right in this assumption. But I remain uneasy about how much third-party leverage really exists. MS really, really, really wants their walled garden where they can take a cut of every transaction like Apple, the difference being they want to extend it to the desktop/productivity market, not just mobile.
We are not talking a year or 2 here. It's a long term vision. But it's 100% certain because it makes perfect sense. That is how a well designed cashcow should work. Apple became very rich by it. This open system is not in MS's interest now that the desktop monopoly is caving in.
Ms is in it for the money, not to be nice and give everyone an OS practically free of charge. So if it can't come in one way it has to be another way. Simple business sense. And the only way they can approximate the staggering profits they made by monopoly abuse, is by monopolizing the applications.
In order to do that you need a subsystem that only runs stuff you allow it to run, and with this OS as is that's impossible. So either this subsystem goes, or MS goes. Broke.
The way I see it, without 3rd party developers, MS has no business. The purpose of an operating system is to provide the user a platform within which he/she can perform daily tasks/functions with the their tools of trade... so without access to 3rd party apps, users have no need of an OS, particularly businesses, whose livelihood and very existence depends on legacy software. Sure, Win 8 RT tablets are a great platform for content absorbsion, but I can hardly see a programmer/developer using one a a major creation tool... not to mention professional graphic artists. No, that kind of work requires a legacy desktop environment, and compared to all the 3rd party devs and billions of users who depend on legacy applications, Microsoft, for all its power, is but a speck in the ocean. It would be at its own peril if MS ignores this and goes ahead with a Modern OS that forsakes the legacy desktop.
That, in some part, has been Apple's undoing... and hopefully, MS will learn from it. Yes, there may be a handful of Apple fanbois who will continue to brown-nose the company and its products, but that fan-base is fast shrinking because of some Apple decisions and failures, while a majority of people view Apple as a self absorbed and greedy company that seeks to serve only itself, not the consumer... not to mention the myriad of lawsuits intended to stifle competition not going down at all well with too many. Ordinary people don't like that sort of thing, especially when it impacts on their choices and ability to buy.
Besides, Apple did itself no favours with its 'walled garden', with many more users now refusing to participate, so hopefully MS will wake up and realise that the concept is fast becoming undesirable and/or unacceptable to consumers across the board. My niece and a number of her uni friends ditched Apple products because they became disenchanted, suffered that locked-in feeling and discovered there were equivalent or even better products out there. And how word gets around! There are several campuses across the region, not to mention 6 other universities, and it seems the trend away from Apple products is gaining momentum, thanks in part to my niece daring to show up shamelessly with an Android tablet and phone at school one day.
Another thing to note is the number of people submitting 'free' apps to the MS store. The number of free apps outnumber the number of paid apps by quite a margin, and if that trend continues, then a 'walled garden' isn't going to be all that profitable to MS.
That may be so, but Apple's greed has been its downfall. It may not be immediately noticeable, but so many of Apple's loyal customers are jumping ship because they no longer like the locked-in feeling of Apple's 'walled garden'. Yeah, those customers tolerated it for a time, because all their 'in' friends were doing it, but the novelty is wearing off fast and these people want more control over their purchases... to be able to shift them from one device to another without having to pay again and again... and [with Apple] again and again.
People will only follow like sheep for so long before someone brighter in the herd says; "Hey look, something better over here." Like I said in my previous post... at its own peril if MS takes this 'walled in' route.
There will certainly be a push to adopt "apple-like features", but if microsoft does to much of that they will be playing a game that apple is better equipped to win than any other company.
That said, one of the things that has been propelling apple is that they can run microsoft software -- in some cases they have been reputed to do a better job of that than microsoft (I am not sure if this is still the case, but I have heard this said of past versions of dev tools, like visual studio, under parallels.)
So... I cannot predict the future, but perhaps microsoft will gain the ability to run apple software, or something? Apple, after all, is built on bsd which anyone can use (though the xcode-based superstructure does seem somewhat arcane).
Anyways, nothing is certain. For all I know, we'll all be running red star in a few years....
And how much money will MS be making when they remove the only reason why their customers were so loyal to them all these years?
Windows is not the most widespread OS because it's good, it's so widespread because people are used to it. They know when they want to upgrade their OS, they have to reach for windows again because otherwise their legacy desktop programs that they use every day will not run. MS would have to be immensely dumb from a 'business sense' standpoint to remove the biggest reason why people would buy their product again.
Removing the support for legacy desktop equals removing their customers' need for windows to keep their software running, and people might start asking why they should pay for an OS at all when they can for free download Ubuntu which also happens to resemble classic windows desktop environment more than Metro does?
No. This would be a business suicide, and will never happen. It is quite possible that MS will indeed remove win32 and replace it with winRT under the hood, but legacy functionality will be kept intact, same way i can now open 'run program' dialog on windows 8, type in 'cmd' and get what's basically a legacy DOS command line interface, 30 years after DOS officially died.
The reason this hasn't been as big a 'deal' with Apple is that they've limited their walled garden to music and mobile apps, nearly entirely consumption markets. Their desktop/productivity market share is so small that there has been little to gain by trying to close that environment. Keeping their desktop/productivity environment open may work to their advantage if MS goes all-in.
You just don't get it. Let's say Windows 9 comes out and the OS is Metro only - no desktop. Simple. You go to that app store, install Photoshop. It occupies a tile on the Metro UI. You click on it, it opens, you use it. After you are done it goes back to the Metro UI. No desktop. Metro replaces the desktop. The resources and code the Photoshop needs are still there for Photoshop to run only you can't see them or tweak them.
That is where it is heading.
Exactly. Well said.
Microsoft will still make money. By nickel and dimeing users for stuff life solitaire or notepad. 3rd party companies will just change their apps to run with the new OS. It's that simple. Use and pay for the new stuff or fall back and use Windows 7 forever and a day. Change is a constant thing.
Yet Apple made record profits last year. I doubt Apple is going anywhere but up and the company is on solid ground.
Very good point. Top that point with the fact that every PC manufacturer has been stuffing Windows down customers throats all these years. No one knows there are alternatives.
And their 3rd party legacy developers... which without, MS has little or no reason to develop an OS at all... not unless it can turn its hand to make competitive content creation and editing suites like CS6; Nero 12; PSPXIV and many, many others.... then convince the Adobe and Nero loyal to purchase them. Me thinks it'd be a cold day in hell before that happens. Like I said before, even the most powerful and sophisticated OS is as useless as a Ferrari without wheels if there are no programs to run on it. People simply won't buy it.
Sure, apps on tablets/phones are a useful little novelty, but at the end of the day, the real work gets done on a PC with some real grunt to ensure no lock-ups due to insufficient CPU/RAM. Don't get me wrong, I have a couple of tablets and a W8 phone, and I enjoy using them when it is appropriate, but when it comes down to the demands of video creation, conversion, editing, I'm always going to turn to my desktop PC, where I am assured of ample CPU power, memory, graphics.
A tablet or a PC with a handful of apps on it might be alright for people who just want to check their emails, play solitaire and play silly buggers on the internet, but for businesses and people with higher needs are going to need something more substantial than that... and the sooner people realise that tablets are NOT taking over, they're just an as well as, the better off we'll all be. Okay, tablets may be selling better than PC's at this time, but that's because people who already have PC's are also purchasing tablets to become portable and check email and things while on the go.
As for companies riding on Apple's coat tails and setting up their own 'walled gardens', I'd advise against it. While Apple may be the most valuable/profitable US company now, it has peaked and its bubble will burst sooner than people would expect. Apple had an innovation landslide that made it very wealthy, but despite its best efforts to stifle competitors such as Samsung and LG via legal battles, those and other competitors have not only caught up with apple but have surpassed them with innovation, ingenuity ad marketing. As I've said before, Apple's insatiable greed has been its undoing and has alienated people cross the globe, so no, I would not be hopping on its without Steve Jobs elevator only going down. Give it 2 to 5 years and Apple will be an 'also ran' somewhere towards the back of the pack.
Funny you say that when the professionals use Apple computers to do that kind of work.
first of that this topic is still going and doesnt seem to find an end is pretty funnysecond
Ah, kona, you snuck one in while I was writing....
A suite of programs such as Photoshop is simply too complex and large to occupy something as simple and mall as a Metro app. So while many smaller programs may take that route, there will always be a need the power and versatility of the legacy desktop. And Metro does not lend itself to multi-tasking and having multiple programs open. For example, when I edit and convert video, I can have up to 5 or 6 programs open on the desktop all at once, not to mention WMP, an email client and browser as well, and they're all easily accessible via the taskbar or by clicking and bringing the desired one to the fore... not so in Metro, and people won't be willing to give that up
That nickel and dime stuff is not going to keep MS afloat and developers can only adapt as far as is possible. A 100% Metro OS is not going to be anywhere near adequate or suitable for many developers projects, so a legacy desktop must be retained or that OS will be a non-starter. Apps are a novel and convenient way to access things, but it will be like when widgets and the like were all the rage. Yeah, widgets were going to take over and replace this, that and the other... but they never did. They became an 'as well as' and people ran them alongside their regular programs, and it will be the same with apps... an 'as well as'
That may be true, that Apple's profits last year exceeded all expectations, but Apple has suffered several punches in the gut, losing Steve jobs being one of them, and it will not recover. Believe you me, success on such a scale is finite, and Apple's dream run at the top is almost at an end because too many things are not going its way. For example, the market disappointment with the iPhone 5 and mini iPad; the fact that people are calling IOS stale and lagging behind Android...even portable Windows devices; the fact Apple's China operations have not improved significantly enough in any fair minded person's thinking for those workers; the fact that more and more ordinary people [present and potential customers] are becoming increasingly disenchanted with Apple over its greed and incessant pursuit of legal challenges to snuff out its competition.
That's right, Apple is THE company to hate right now, and a lot of people do. In a year or two that will reflect on its sales/profits because its market share will have dramatically shrunk. You'll see, in 2 to 3 years, Samsung will be the premier electrical/phone/tablet manufacturer across the globe, and Apple will be a mere minnow following in its wake, hoping to pick up some of the scraps. And Remember, you read it here first.
Which doesn't gel well for MS turning away from the legacy desktop, does it! Another reason MS has too much to lose. I mean, Apple's bubble will surely burst, but it will always be around to provide an alternative to Windows, however small a market share it receives
You just don't get it. Let's say Windows 9 comes out and the OS is Metro only - no desktop. Simple. You go to that app store, install Photoshop. It occupies a tile on the Metro UI. You click on it, it opens, you use it. After you are done it goes back to the Metro UI. No desktop. Metro replaces the desktop. The resources and code the Photoshop needs are still there for Photoshop to run only you can't see them or tweak them.That is where it is heading.
What you describe above, sounds exactly like a game console.
Netmarketshare's December numbers just came out. Have a look.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=10&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=167
Yes, you are absolutely right.
An issue that many people in this thread seem to not be understanding is that you can run microsoft applications on apple machines, and that is a part of apple's appeal.
So, anyone taking apple's success to mean that microsoft application compatibility is going away is missing a glaringly obvious aspect of the current situation.
And its appeal is so huge... like 10% - 12% of the personal computer market? While it may be a convenience to Mac owners, it's not likely to ever threaten MS' 'top-dog' status on the market share. Nah, people are reading more into this 'new direction' MS has embarked upon, and while some decisions may be unpopular with some users, MS know what side its bread is buttered on and will retain 'legacy' support.
Its me.
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