“Why do businesses cling to the idea that the Microsoft stack and Outlook/Exchange are essential cornerstones of modern business life? I predict that 2006 will be a time when it becomes increasingly obvious that businesses are going to move away from Microsoft, and not return. Aside from the missteps and design flaws of Microsoft software itself, here’s why,” Stowe Boyd writes for Corante.
– Web 2.0 — new online applications will provide capabilities that match Office and other Windows apps at a fraction of the price. Expect big announcements in areas like on-line presentation, online web conferencing, CRM, and other traditionally business-oriented sectors.
– Apple and the Battle for the Living Room — I am predicting that Apple’s Kaliedoscope project, which couples a souped-up Mac Mini with DVR software and iPod docking station, will destroy Microsoft’s hopes for living room/entertainment center dominance. This product will be a huge, iPod-sized hit, and all of a sudden millions of American hopes will have a Mac in the living room. Game over.
Boyd writes, “It will become obvious that Microsoft is a dinosaur, that a better Windows won’t be enough, whenever they get around to releasing it, and the company will be looking at a long tail business plan, supporting all those companies to slow to transition to the LAMP stack and Macs.”
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews article:
Microsoft Windows’ Zero-Day WMF flaw threats widespread; Macintosh unaffected – December 29, 2005
2006 the year of the Mac? It could happen, but only if the Apple OS X people are as careful as they should be about intel mac vulnerabilities such as this one that MS has do deal with. BTW, Steve, when you ship the tivo like Mac, I’ll buy a few of them.
Why do people keep assuming that once Apple integrates Intel chips into their board designs, that Macs will face the “same vulnerabilities” as Windows??? It’s the OS people, not the Chips! Unless someone can show me proof positive that Intel Chips will make Mac OS X just as vulnerable as Windows, then can we drop this canard?
Very well said, DakRoland!
Yeah, a chip is a chip. MS is vulnerable because of their shoddy code, not the chip.
DakRoland, I wish the masses were as smart as U and I.
Let’s not say it’s going to be the year of the Mac, unless Steve says so!
Duh!
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Intel does not mean much, again, unless Steve says so!
Happy New Year
“Why do people keep assuming that once Apple integrates Intel chips into their board designs, that Macs will face the “same vulnerabilities” as Windows??? It’s the OS people, not the Chips! Unless someone can show me proof positive that Intel Chips will make Mac OS X just as vulnerable as Windows, then can we drop this canard?”
Well for one thing PowerPC chips have much better protection against buffer overflows than Intel chips. Given that buffer overflows are one of the easiest methods to crack a computer, there should be some cause for worry about the move to Intel.
Of course even with that, Mac OSX is clearly still going to be massively more secure than Windows.
January 10th is going to shock some people. Not those of us who stay informed about the potential directions (though even some of those people were caught unaware by the Nano)…but as the story points out. When you can combine home entertainment and PVR capabilities at a VERY reasonable price point it is GAME OVER. Have you SEEN and PRICED a “Media Center PC” lately. How stupid can these people be? When a Tivo is now as cheap as it is..and a mac mini is as cheap as it is…isnt’ it obvious that merging these kinds of capabilities for under $800 is going to sweep away the competition? There’s a very cool book you might want to read called Blue Ocean Strategy. It’s a business book, said to be a favorite of Rob Glaser at Real Networks…it is basically about creating new markets that make the old competition irrelvant and making powerful strategic moves..just as Apple often does. Worth reading.
He talks about the Kaleidoscope project as if Apple has already told us all about it. It’s purely rumor. I hope it comes to pass, but I hate how these guys report rumors as if they’re fact, and then people who don’t know any better look at the absence of it at MWSF as a failure on Apple’s part.
Steve Jobs declared 2005 as the Year of High Definition. So what happened?
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What is “the Microsoft stack”, as mentioned in the first sentence of this article?
pog: Well for one thing PowerPC chips have much better protection against buffer overflows than Intel chips. Given that buffer overflows are one of the easiest methods to crack a computer, there should be some cause for worry about the move to Intel.
Pog, thank you very much for explaining that. One thing I was wondering about is the rumors abounding lately about intel producing exclusive processors for Apple’s computers. I doubt it would happen, but given Apple’s history and their experience with Power PC chips, wouldn’t intel be able to improve their designs to reduce the vulnerabilities to Buffer Overflows? One can dream.
Why is AAPL tanking lately
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What ever happened to Vingle?
Wasn’t the year of the Mac 1984?
Forget year, I would think that starting 2006 it will be the decade of the Mac.
AAPL:Why is AAPL tanking lately?
Ballmer: Because Apple is DOOOOOOMMMED!
“Why is AAPL tanking lately”
Tanking? Please you can’t be serious. It if was under 60 it would be tanking but its not even under 70 and its high was only 75.
The small dip is late year proit taking. It’s not tanking.
Okay, Ballmsey. Tell us: Why has Microsoft’s stock flatlined the last few years????????
You don’t know the meaning of “tanking”. This is the end of the year stocks are usually sold off to balance accounts. This is a buy opportunity!
It will never be the Year of the Mac until such time that Steve sees fit to aggressively advertise the Mac is some intelligent way (and by that I mean ads that do NOT show some guy being blown out of his house by a G5, but ads that show people WHY they should own a Mac).
Hope Steve drops by for a quick read.
The more wildly positive all these journalists become about Apple the more nervous I am getting. Could be a big flop on the way. I like to underpromise and over-perform not the other way around. Some of this stuff is WAY to optomistic. Especially in the short-term.
Dak, let me explain it for you.
All executable programs have to be interpreted by chips in order to execute. The executable form is what is created by a compiler, I’m sure you’ve heard of those. Some executables are chip specific (x86) and not OS specific (win32). These are things written in assembler, running in binary, or in forms more fundamental to the chip than those.
When someone clicks on a web address or views a graphic or clicks on an email link, they are giving the computer permission to interpret that file whatever it may be. For the most part, this results in normal behaviors, pictures pop, emails email and so on. But if you attach some of this running code to one of these gestures, then gotcha! You’ve been attacked. If your OS allows write permission to areas that can run programs (like windows) you now have a new backdoor, or you’re now a new zombie PC on someone’s network, or you now have a root kit installed.
Now it’s true, this job is a little harder on unix pc’s, linux pc’s and will be harder therefore on Apple PC’s. But it is not impossible.
This is what Apple OS writers must defend against.
In the previous two stories, Mr. Ottellini commented that he is very excited about Apple’s innovation when he noted how Apple put out five releases of OSX in four years. Ottellini also stated that the “think different” vernacular is beginning to take root inside Intel.
Comments to the previous two stories pointed out that Ottellini is probably quite frustrated with the mandates of Bill Gates for backwards compatibility. Such requirements put significant limits in chip design.
All of this suggests to me that Intel doesn’t plan on sticking with the same old x86 architecture as we currently understand. I suspect that Intel engineers are working closely with Apple to incorporate the best features into their new line of CPUs (including protection against buffer overflows).
This and all other journo’s talking like this is going to HELP make it happen. People need reassurance and reading this gives it to them. THEN remember the most important thing when it comes to stock prices and often, success, perception IS reality.
No need for nervousness guys, we have after all been predicting this was going to happen for the last four years..
Go Apple!
<i>When someone clicks on a web address or views a graphic or clicks on an email link, they are giving the computer permission to interpret that file whatever it may be.</I.
WRONG!!!!
You are asking a PROGRAM (I’m sure you’ve heard of these) the instruction to ACT on that file and do whatever the program does with it.
Try opening a JPG with a text editor. You won’t see the picture you expected. (By text editor, I mean something like TextWrangler. TextEdit is a light weight word processor and makes too many assumptions about files.)
Security is a function of programs. Operating systems are programs. Windows is a poorly written program (OK, collections of programs). OS X is a much better collection of programs, because it is based on Unix. Deep in its heart of hearts, Windows is a single user system, and was not originally designed with securioty in mind. Unix, since its start in the early 1970’s, was designed as a multiuser system, and always was designed with security in mind.
It has nothing to do with the chip.
Unix/Linux on Intel have no viruses that spread the way they dow under Windows. What there is under Linux/Unix are socially engineered attacks, requiring the system administrator to give the malware permission to run. The “Opener” attack on OS X is the same thing. You can infect one Mac, but it cannot spread without the permission of a human to infect the next Mac.
BTW, compilers (since you don’t know much about them) are OS specific. An OS X cannot generate code for Windows, and vice versa, regardless of the underlying processor.The compiler has to know to call system service routines, which vary with OS. Input is a system servie routine, and that is the usual vulnerability.
Can malware be created for the Mac? Never say never. But I’m not worried about it happening.
I’ve been a software developer for over thirty years- since befor Apple was started.
I.. love…. LAMP. I love lamp.. I love lamp!