“The next two years will be crucial for software giant Microsoft. Under attack on numerous fronts, it could falter – or fight back to become even more dominant,” Tim Weber writes for BBC News.
“Welcome to Microsoft’s wireless ‘M.home,’ on a leafy street in London’s Ladbroke Grove. “‘This is not the home of the future,’ says Cynthia Crossley, who is in charge of Microsoft’s Windows operating system in the UK. ‘All the technology can be bought off-the-shelf and fits subtly into your home.’ Driven by Microsoft’s Media Center software, the showcase home lends credibility to the promise of Microsoft boss Bill Gates that in a few years’ time his company will deliver a ‘user-centric’ digital world,” Weber writes.
“Alas, the M.home is a far cry from real life: where few computers link up to hi-fi and television, where complex software, hardware and competing media formats drive users to despair, and where setting up wireless home networks is a black art,” Weber writes.
MacDailyNews Note: Unless you have a Macintosh.
Weber continues, “Security is another issue. Millions of computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system are under constant virus attack and riddled with spyware. ‘Microsoft is in its most vulnerable moment in history, just like IBM in the 1990s, says George Colony, the chief executive of technology research firm Forrester.”
“The fate of ‘Longhorn’ is a case in point. The much-heralded successor to Windows XP is badly delayed and key components won’t be ready for launch. ‘We are working hard to get it on the market in 2006 and scale our ambitions to fit with that,’ Mr Gates admits. Thus users will have to wait until 2007 for Longhorn’s revolutionary filing system, designed to help find information buried in ever larger hard drives. Once ready it will be deployed as part of a Longhorn service pack, says Alistair Baker, boss of Microsoft UK. But Apple’s brand-new ‘OS X Tiger’ operating system offers this kind of functionality today,” Weber writes.
Full article here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Mac vs. Windows war rages on – May 08, 2005
EarthWeb: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is a ‘serious enterprise operating system, a pivotal release’ – May 06, 2005
RUMOR: Apple to release Mac OS X 10.4.1 Tiger Update by mid to late-May – May 06, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system’ – May 06, 2005
The Guardian: Mac OS X Tiger a powerful solution while Microsoft’s Longhorn remains on drawing board – May 06, 2005
Chicago Sun-Times: Mac OS X Tiger shows ‘there’s never been a more compelling time to switch to Mac’ – May 05, 2005
Dan Gillmor: ‘With Mac OS X Tiger, Apple is plainly in the lead today’ – May 05, 2005
Jupiter Research VP: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘runs rings around Microsoft Windows’ – May 04, 2005
The Independent: Apple’s ‘faster, smarter, simpler’ Mac OS X Tiger ‘a must-have’ – May 04, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger review for a Windows PC audience finds Tiger’s ‘far, far better than Windows XP’ – May 03, 2005
Longhorn mentioned in nearly every Apple Mac OS X Tiger review to assuage Windows masses – May 02, 2005
Boston Herald: Mac OS X Tiger should compel Windows PC users to think about switching to Apple Mac – May 02, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger will likely improve performance of your Macintosh – April 30, 2005
PC World review gives Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger 4.5 stars out of 5 – April 30, 2005
Forrester analysts: Apple should advertise Mac OS X Tiger on television and in movie theaters – April 29, 2005
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – April 28, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system around’ – April 28, 2005
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – April 28, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’ – April 28, 2005
InformationWeek columnist: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘a compelling upgrade’ – April 28, 2005
NY Times: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is the most secure, stable and satisfying OS on earth – April 28, 2005
Wired News: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘full of welcome surprises’ – April 27, 2005
Apple Macs are less expensive than Dell PCs – April 25, 2005
Apple Macs are less expensive, more secure, longer-lasting than Windows PCs – April 21, 2005
Apple posts QuickTime movies of Mac OS X Tiger features in action – April 13, 2005
Switching from Windows to Mac? Save money by asking to ‘crossgrade’ your software – April 12, 2005
Please wait while world weeps.
………….
[crickets chirp]
………….
No one at Micro$it is loosing any sleep. They know that there is an unlimited number of idiots out there that will continue to labor in the M$ gulac.
So what’s next after Tiger?
Setting up a wireless network = black art? On a PC, yes. It took me 2 days of tinkering to get my wireless PC network set up AND running. And then it would stop working every other day. When I got my iBook, I also got an Airport Extreme base station. On the web in 5 minutes.
Microsoft is still the standard and leader for all technology.
Nothing has changed; the “real IT world ” is not moving to an unproven, non-compliant OS such as OS X.anything.
The enterprise environment is the leading edge of technology and Microsoft is the premier vendor of cutting edge technologies for the enterprise market. Home users will look to the experts in the press and the “real IT world” to help steer them through the murky waters of computers. And the bottom line is: Apple computers are not being recommended by any serious players in the media or the enterprise technology realm.
For cutting edge affordable worry free computing you need look no further then Windows XP and the soon to be released Longhorn OS. Additionally Longhorn is going to blow everyone out of the water.
Furthermore with the new “widget based exploits” plaguing the Apple OS now is not the time to become a “switcher”.
©
Follow the trail and you will find Sputnik is actually Bill Gates. No wonder things have slowed if Billy spends all his time reading MDN.
Ah Sputink – a view that deserves a good laugh!
spuntik, you want a mac. Otherwise, what are you doing in a mac forum? trying to convince us? or to convince yourself?
Pretty good article; interested in reading the next installment on M$ plan to beat its rivals.
Damd iCon is and crew are savvy! Unix variant for the core that is open source. Then you get the whole world of talented programers developing your core while you work on the top layer stuff like ‘Spotlight’.
Sheer genius! {he sobs from a heavy heart}
M$ proprietary model is screwed. Oh well.
Sounds like Sputnik has been in orbit a little too long!
MS is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Large businesses with dominant IT departments will stick with MS until increasing nonproductive hours on patches and problems drive them out of business. The other direction is to follow the trend to more Web services based on open standards and not MS proprietary standards so as to gain the cost advantages of Linux servers.
For consumers and homes, the PC has become a web access and communication tool, and a media center. For the former, Windows is either dangerous or time-consuming (for maintenance), while the Mac safely simplifies use of the Web, chat, wifi, and bluetooth. For the latter, while MS wants to put you to put its PC in the living room (while paying a premium for MCE) and focus on old-media television; Apple is making an integrated system of iTunes, the iTunes Store/IPTV, Airport Express, and the iPod the place for your media.
Another 18 months to wait for Longhorn is a long time. 18 months ago, there was no iPod mini, no iPod shuffle, no Airport Express with AirTunes, no Mac mini, no iWorks, no Garageband, so who knows what we’ll see from Apple before Longhorn and the next major Mac OS X upgrade arrives.
Sputnik, go sell crazy someplace else. We’re all stocked up here.
Your FUD wouldn’t even make it into the pages of Pravda in its reality-distorting heyday. You make Baghdad Bob look like Walter Cronkite.
Nevertheless, happy Victory Day, comrade.
Sputnik is a Mac user who is just trying to jerk your chain. He succeeds admirably…
Sputnik fell out of orbit years ago. It crashed and burned. Is this the second coming? Back to the Gulag.
Heyyyy, all of you leave Sputnik alone. Come onnnn, it’s not fair. It’s de same reason no one picks on Katie Couric or Regis: You’re not supposed to pick on de retarded.
Wintermute wrote: “Follow the trail and you will find Sputnik is actually Bill Gates.”
No way. Gates is infinitely more intelligent than Sputnik. Even he wouldn’t say Longhorn is “soon to be released.”
Aaaahh, Triumph! How true, how true!
Sputnik is boring.
Less is More,
Lions & Bears. Oh, my!
I love Sputnik’s posts. They are consistently bizarre and funny! Then again, people with similar attitudes actually do exist.
Macdailynews-Take: Unless you have a Macintosh.
Damn Right. HDTV connected over second DVI-Slot. 2 Notebooks running on Airport. It’s alle here baby and it’s all good =).
Check out my setup:
http://kiddo.macbay.de/Kiddo.mov
Re -setting up a wireless network.
I just bought a G4 powerbook for my brother and it took 5 MINUTES to setup his wireless network.
Now considering I have only ever done this once before – 3 years ago!
It was literally 2 clicks of the mouse!
Simple as that – now someone explain to me how brain=numbingly complex it is to setup a similar network on a Windblows POS?
Simple as that – now someone explain to me how brain=numbingly complex it is to setup a similar network on a Windblows POS?
—
Quick, tell your friends before they find out you’re a zealot and stop taking advice from you.
mac users have been ‘sharing’ the mac experience for years.. it just sounds too good to be true i guess..
the truth is.. while MS calls themselves the biggest software company on earth, Apple is one of the best, if not the best, software maker out there. Bottom line, you buy a mac for the software (os x, exclusive apps) not because it has a neato case.
I have PC friends that still think the iMac 97 resurgence of Apple was because of the cool colours.
I love Sputnik’s posts. They are consistently bizarre and funny! Then again, people with similar attitudes actually do exist.
—
Okay, you’re giving this guy too much credit for what is essentially pure sarcasm. That’s clever? A 5 year old knows what sarcasm is. I think Thurrott’s lies are more hilarious.
Sputnik: An obsolete piece of junk that did nothing but spin in circles and chirp about nothing in particular.