Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
The Death of Microsoft?
- Thread starter Bwilky
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hopefully with the launch of the new I-phone, we may see something. Licensing active sync for the new i-phone was a fantastic decision. I'd love to see more intergration with windows - You're never going to take them down in one fail swoop, so little steps are the answer. We've an apple device that slots perfectly into a windows infrastructure. Now, make a Mac play nicely on a pure windows network and you've driven another wedge into the enterprise market. Then your ready to do battle on the serverside.
It's no good pointing and saying "we've already got leopard server", because you're not going to convince a 50 seat SME to throw out his 50 PC's and SBS server just because "Mac is better". People tend to stick with the devil they know.
I have used Linux. Specifically Ubuntu and Red hat.
Linux is great if all you're going to do is type up papers and browse the Internet (then again, any modern OS, including Windows, will do the same job just as well). But if you want to install any programs outside of Ubuntu's repositories, you're generally in for a headache, especially if you have to compile the program from source. You have to first try and compile it. Often times it won't compile the first time around, but you still need to try and compile it so you know what packages from the repository you're missing. So, you then have to load up Synaptic Package Manager and find all the packages you're missing and install them. Then you have to try and recompile again. Often times, you're on some Linux forum reading a post. It's a pain in the butt. If something goes wrong, you're screwed. You might as well reformat.
If you've ever gotten advice from someone who knows a lot about Linux, they will almost always tell you that you should create 3 partitions. 1 for your swap, 1 for your Home directory and 1 for your system files. The reason being, the odds of you having to reformat your OS is relatively high if you mess up badly.
And if you have a Windows specific program, Wine is pretty much your only hope, and often times, it's a dim one, unless you want to run MS Office (which you have Open Office as a decent replacement, unless you need absolute Office compatibility).
Linux is a great OS, and I'm not trying to bash it. It has definitely come a long way, but it's not as user friendly as Windows or Mac OS X (but is has made a lot of gains, and it continues to).
The Xbox 360 is losing ground to the Wii because its a different take to gaming. Its losing ground to the PS3 because it got the software right but not the hardware at launch, whereas the PS3 was the other way round. Unfortunately its easier to fix the software than the hardware.
And its also missing business level support
.Seriously I think they may well release their OS for licensing with 10.7.
I think dynamicv know's what he's talking about on this
. The only missing thing is probably weaker consumer software support than OS X/Windows.Are you suggesting Windows is?
The Flashing Fi makes a great point about Linux being fine for those that want to browse the Internet and type up documents, which pretty much describes 95% of the business market from my point of view. As for home users, they fall into two categories, those that fix things themselves and those that buy in support. Both could be just at home with Linux as they are with Windows.
I also think that Synaptic and the package repositories are a big advantage for most users. Search for what you want, select it, install it, and keep it up to date and secure automatically, all from one application. There's nothing equivalent to that on either the Mac or Windows.
I think dynamicv know's what he's talking about on this
That one big, huge missing thing. Consider that the knock against the Mac for years has been "there's no software for it." How many times have we heard this one? While it's never really been true, the perception of a lack of Mac software has mattered -- a lot -- to how acceptable the platform has been to the public at large. And this perception has lived on for decades, even through periods of respectable Mac market share, and with Apple aggressively marketing the Mac product, promoting software development, developing key applications themselves, and actively countering misperceptions.
Linux has none of these advantages. The Linux advocates will tell you that these inherent disadvantages and then some can be made up through the power of the grass roots and the free software community. I've been hearing these claims for well over ten years now. During all of this time, Linux was supposedly always "just on the verge" of becoming an important consumer OS -- the Microsoft slayer we've all be waiting for. It never happened.
Meanwhile, the Mac has been slowly but surely clawing away at Microsoft's market share. The results aren't earth shattering, but they are measurable. If you consider how much effort and money has gone into Apple's (albeit limited) success in competing with Microsoft, you can begin to appreciate the extremely daunting task facing the free software community and their very limited means for achieving it. I believe this is why the promise of Linux has remained unfulfilled, and probably always will.
I was speaking to a woman at work this week: she's about 40, married, two kids. And their desktop Windows PC has a virus or trojan. She was asking me what anti-virus I use and I said:
"When I had Windows it was the free version of AVG but I've got a Mac so I don't use any."
She looked completely non-plussed and I explained and she said:
"I didn't realise you could have a computer with something else on it?"
Some people out there don't even KNOW about OS X and Macs- you've got to make people like that aware of the existence, let alone convert them to the idea of switching. I would've thought the popularity of the iPod, iPhone and iTunes would've done that but apparently not.
I didn't even mention Linux to her. She'd had enough shocks for one day
"When I had Windows it was the free version of AVG but I've got a Mac so I don't use any."
She looked completely non-plussed and I explained and she said:
"I didn't realise you could have a computer with something else on it?"
Some people out there don't even KNOW about OS X and Macs- you've got to make people like that aware of the existence, let alone convert them to the idea of switching. I would've thought the popularity of the iPod, iPhone and iTunes would've done that but apparently not.
I didn't even mention Linux to her. She'd had enough shocks for one day
Are you suggesting Windows is?
The Flashing Fi makes a great point about Linux being fine for those that want to browse the Internet and type up documents, which pretty much describes 95% of the business market from my point of view. As for home users, they fall into two categories, those that fix things themselves and those that buy in support. Both could be just at home with Linux as they are with Windows.
I also think that Synaptic and the package repositories are a big advantage for most users. Search for what you want, select it, install it, and keep it up to date and secure automatically, all from one application. There's nothing equivalent to that on either the Mac or Windows.
Linux : I'm pretty techy but after having spent a couple of hours getting a wireless card to work in an Acer laptop under Ubuntu ( after massive internet research) I simply absolutely know it's not ready for the mainstream. Synaptics is great but 'your mom' wouldn't know what the heck it was and certainly wouldn't install anything remotely sounding of Gnomes!
Windows : I can't believe more people aren't simply just bored of endless little Windows hassles by now.
OSX : I'd love to see the app store app on the mac...but I find http://www.apple.com/downloads is a far more enjoyable experience than synaptics as far as finding new apps is concerned...
I have to disagree with that. Vista's unusability is why I have a mac. For most people vista will work fine but for hardcore users who are doing tons of data backup, iso creation, cpu intensive tasks the freezeups and slowness of the system makes it unusable. I know I have more machines at my disposal to test with then anyone in this forum and this is a problem I found with most (not all) of the vista machines I've been on. For some of us it truly is an unusable OS. But, I truly thank Vista because without Vista constantly crashing in the middle of large data transfers I wouldn't have a mac today
(Not to mention Vistas problems keep me employed.)Everyone seems to be deliberately missing my comment about business usage. Already IT departments spend months tailoring Windows builds to the particular needs of their users. Now as I'm working amongst IT people I'm noticing a definite trend. Senior IT management are very pro-Windows whereas the smarter techies are very pro-Linux. In a few years time these smarter techies are going to start getting into decision making positions. They aren't afraid of Linux like the current crop of managers who cut their teeth in Microsoft-only shops. I'm telling you now. Linux will start making serious headway into the corporate world before you know it.
Then I think you're missing my point too, which is that I've been hearing precisely the same prediction for over ten years. Linux has forever been right on the verge of major breakthrough.
True, its a bit deal, probably the most important part of a computer IMO.
Is this still happening with SP1, they've improved the file IO a lot...
@dynamicv, I'll respond to your posts on business tomorrow when I'm less tired.
And what you ALL fail to remember is that hordes of OEMs work on making Windows work out of the box on a multitude of PCs.
Apple works on making Mac OS X work out of the box on their Macs.
Aside from the neutered Xandros derivative on eeePCs and such, Linux doesn't SHIP, FACTORY INSTALLED ON ANY CONSUMER COMPUTERS.
You have so many problems because YOU installed it, likely on a device with at least one totally unsupported hardware component(i.e. Wifi). How much hardware support do you honestly think Windows or Mac OS has before the developers MAKE it fit onto the device?
The comparison between Linux and Windows/Mac that you all make is totally unfair. Try something like an EmperorLinux machine or another company which preinstalls Linux on computers(Dell Latitude + RHEL, etc.) and gives full warranties before you comment on the "usability" of these OSes.
No I got that. However, as I've already posted Linux has recently matured into something that is worth having now rather than a maybe for the future. Working as I do within large corporate IT departments virtually anyone in them with a brain is now Linux-savvy, and thanks to VMWare's ESX server it already has its foot in the server room door. Only management inertia is holding it back.
Um no.
I think from a business perspective Linux has more chance, but Office 2007 is very nice, and nicer than Open Office 2.0 or 3.0, so that seems like a fairly major missing feature.
I forgot about those because... I don't know of anyone who actually bought them! They're A. only $50 less than their Windows counterparts, and B. HIDDEN on the Dell website. Grandma won't find them, Dell hides them under "open source", like they're ashamed or something.
The point still stands, are the Linux detractors stating their experiences of Linux based on the Dell-buntu they purchased? No: once again I know of nobody with the know-how to find them on the Dell site, know what they were buying, and be satisfied with an Inspiron.
Get them onto the Best Buy floors, or even somewhere visible on the Dell website, and then lets talk.
Which is reasonable as that is roughly how much Windows costs to OEM's
I'm aware of that, that wasn't the main point.
The fact that they're hidden is a big problem, the biggest problem is the same one that keeps people from switching to the Mac, they just don't want to try something new. Letting them know it exists is the first step though.
It'll take a long time for them to 'die' more likely just fade out given the large market share they still have will take other companies a long time to slowly chip away at their market share.
Given that gates is leaving, and that Microsoft doesn't have much share of the internet market will leave them behind in years to come as the amount of things that can be done on the internet increases year-by-year.
Given that gates is leaving, and that Microsoft doesn't have much share of the internet market will leave them behind in years to come as the amount of things that can be done on the internet increases year-by-year.
Only management inertia? You might as well say gravity. Seriously, at the risk of becoming repetitive, this, along with software support, has always been one of the main barriers to the adoption of alternative computer technology. It always has been for the Mac, which you'd have to admit, is the more mature platform and has a longer track record of support and development behind it. Still, the enterprise penetration is (like Linux) very limited. Given the long history of overly-optimistic predictions for widespread Linux adoption, I'd have to say I'll believe it when I see it and not before.
On one issue I suspect we agree, which is that Microsoft is more vulnerable now than they were just a few years ago. Their grip on the OEMs isn't as tight as it once was, and the recent growth of the Mac's market share strongly suggests that people are more open to alternatives today than they were five, ten or even 15 years ago. This is all to the good.
To save myself a fair amount of typing I'm just going to say I pretty much agree w/IJ. When people who *aren't* techies/IT guys/computer enthusiasts start saying, "Hey, Linux is pretty sweet and much easier to use than Windows" then I'll entertain the thought that Linux has finally turned the corner into a viable, mainstream alternative to Windows and OS X.
Lethal
Lethal
Exactly. Linux is not ready for prime time use. Although versions like Ubuntu are getting better all the time, they still lack driver support that Windows provides and Open Office still lags behind Microsoft Office.
While it is easy to bash Microsoft of it's OS'es, when you consider what they must support hardware wise, they do a great job at it.
As you say, when the average customer changes their perception, then Linux will have hit the mainstream as a viable alternative.
But they'll never say that. Everyday users will NEVER be excited about technology. The non-technical users for whom I've installed Linux like it, they have no complaints, but they don't scream about how awesome it is and how easy it is to use.
It gets their work done(Office work included) and they never get viruses and it never crashes on them, and the applications are stable too, and its just as fast as it was when I first installed it for them. They're glad the computer doesn't complain about things they don't understand anymore, but nothing more: which is all you can hope for from these people.
P.S. To clarify, I agree it's probably not going to "take over" the desktop market, simply because it's not a whiz-bang product. I'm just saying it is ready for prime time, if it were given a chance by everyone.
Lots of everyday people are excited by Apple's technology.
To the best of your knowledge have any of the employees that were switched to Linux machines at work switched, or expressed an interest, in switching to Linux at home? If someone did express an interest in running Linux at home what would be your advice in regards to setting up a Linux box and finding compatible hardware and software to run on it? If someone wants a Windows PC they can go to Best Buy, Circuit City, or Dell and pick from a plethora of machines, accessories, hardware options, and applications to run. If someone wants a Mac they can to Apple.com, an Apple Store or a local Apple Reseller like Best Buy for their hardware and software needs. Are their comparable retail solutions if one wanted to run a Linux machine?
Lethal