“I’ve got as much reason to hate Microsoft as anyone else does — after all, I use a computer. I need to kill Internet Explorer about 10 times a day because someone at Mr. Softy HQ can’t get things right. My beloved, 10-year-old SCSI devices no longer work the same as they used to because Redmond decided, with Windows XP, to drop a few things into the roadside ditch along the Information Superhighway,” Seth Jayson writes for The Motley Fool. “After this week’s announcement of yet another delay in the next-generation operating system, Vista, I am starting to wonder whether Microsoft isn’t set to disappoint us for a lot longer than I expected.”
“Let’s review the Vista timeline, shall we? Beginning with the folksy-sounding code name ‘Longhorn,’ Vista first surfaced shortly after dinosaurs sprouted wings, roughly 36 Macintosh operating systems ago, or, in the common tongue, some time back in 2001. After years of preliminary work, it was ditched and reworked, and then we were told to look for it in 2006. Then we were told not really to look for the whole thing in 2006, but some of it, though minus the fancy new file system, which we’d see in 2007,” Jayson writes. “Now we’re told that the business version (minus the fancy file system that businesses might like, I think) will make it out in 2006 but the consumer versions are on for January, which pushes it to 2007. Anyone else dizzy?”
“Microsoft cannot afford to lose [the] battle in the living room to the likes of Apple, long rumored to be working on a media ‘convergence’ device. And the delay in Vista, once again, leaves the door open longer than it needs to,” Jayson writes.
Full article here.
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Now is the time Steve, release the hounds.
Is it clear to anyone that Microsoft is broken and can’t be fixed.
Could you imagine this debacle happening at Apple? Beyond a simple wave of firing, Steve would be personally beating the living daylights out of anyone that screwed up this badly.
I wouldn’t bet on his SCSI device working with OS X either.
GO RED LEADER!….GOOOOOO!
“It’s okay to leave them to die.”
I recall the dark days of Apple (Can you say “Copland”? I thought you could.) and even we die hard faithfuls were beginning to wonder if we had made the right choice. I for one was willing to hold out until the end because even what I had was better than Windows, but I must admit that if the Dark Side had come out with a revolutionary product that bettered the Mac experience, I might have been pulled away. I think the same opportunity exists for Apple right now with so many disaffected Windows users (mainly consumers). I haven’t spoken to Steve lately <grin>, so I don’t know what he’s planning, but I hope it’s revolutionary and draws people’s attention to a better way of doing what they’ve probably always wanted to do.
I’ll be sure to mention this to Steve next time we talk.
Apple hasn’t done squat with the “door open” for the past five years. Now all of a sudden something’s different?
Pfft.
I don’t this is going to make a real difference. Most people aren’t suddenly going to buy a Mac instead because Vista has been delayed. If they need a new PC they will buy one even if it has a 5 year old Windows XP on it.
I really really hate all these headlines: “Now is the time for Apple to take down MS”, “Vista slip gives Apple yet another chance”.
AS IF APPLE WOULD DO ANYTHING! Apple doesn’t seem to want a 4%+ marketshare.
Not sure why they are selling iPods to more than 4% of the mp3market, I bet someone will get fired when Steve realizes they are in way over their heads!.
His SCSI device would work with any tower Power Mac prior to the October 2005 revision as all he’d have to do is slap his PCI SCSI card into the box to get it to work. As I recall with the SCSI card I had in my Ice Blue G3/400 (running Puma, Cheetah, and Jaguar) that no third party drivers were necessary.
Nowadays I have no SCSI devices, so who knows whether that’s still true under Panther or Tiger.
Yeah right, Chery is delaying the introduction of its crap-o-la cars in the US and all the people who can’t wait are rushing to Ferrari dealers!!!
The beleaguered Microsoft is still struggling.
Tommy Boy: Just anecdotal, but I have an Adaptec SCSI card connected to an Epson scanner mounted in a PowerMac G4 733 Digital Audio running the last Panther upgrade. Works great with Hamrick’s VueScan.
I thought these cheesy tech writers liked puns. They should be saying that a big Window is cracked for Apple to break in. And that Vista can’t be seen on the horizon. And that Microsoft doesn’t just describe an embarrassing wedding night discovery.
All the self-adulation on this site aside, Vista will ensure the growing dominance of Microsoft – and all the machines that run it – no matter how late it is getting released. Apple is just what it wants to be: a music download company, not a personal computer company.
I can certainly understand why someone would want to sell off their stocks of AAPL. WTF are these people thinking? The stock market is crazy. Day traders are nuts.
Wow! This blog really expresses my feelings about MS and Apple almost perfectly – really.
By the way, “Tommy Boy”, Yes, SCSI is still plug-and-play up to this very day in Beige G3 running 10.2.8, my G4 Dual 250, and work my G5 Dual 2.5GHz running a super fast SCSI-3 external drive with a PCI ATTO Express PCI UL4S Ultra SCSI card – Fast, very fast.
RE-Post with spelling correcting and editing.
Wow! This blog really expresses my feelings about MS and Apple almost perfectly – really.
By the way, “Tommy Boy”, Yes, SCSI is still plug-and-play up to this very day in my Beige G3 running 10.2.8, my G4 Dual 450 running 10.3.9, and at work my G5 Dual 2.5GHz running 10.4.4 and a super fast SCSI-3 external drive with a PCI ATTO Express PCI UL4S Ultra SCSI card – Fast, very fast.
My favorite part of these feedback areas at the end of the articles are the ones that make me laugh, and not even so much the story itself. “Release the Dogs” made me laugh pretty good as i envision, say, mr burns tapping his fingers together, and uttering calmly but firmly, . . . “Release the Dogs.”
Still running a SCSI HD in my B&W G3 running Panther 10.3.9.
Please prepare to change status to DefCon Level 3. The mountain is closing.
Finally Vista versions clarified:
http://macinquirer.com/index.html#unique-entry-id-47
Scroll down to this entry:
Windows Vista: coming soon in Chipotle Flavor!
03/01/06 21:58
I’ll take the last one described.
This was written March 1, but the last paragraph in the entry was right on.
MS has stumbled with longhorn/Vista for 5 years while OSX has charged ahead without significant impact on MS marketshare. I don’t think Ballmer is quaking in his boots just yet over the latest setback.
MDN magic word: inconsequential
RJamison wrote: “Apple is just what it wants to be: a music download company, not a personal computer company.”
This statement is reminiscent of the Enderle snorer a few years back, “Is Apple a hardware company or a software company?” Some people just couldn’t get it though their heads that its both, and that’s its strength.
Apple still has an outrageously profitable computer line, whose sales are growing, profitably. People focus on the iPod and they forget that.
The music business extension fits in exactly to the whole “digital hub” strategy. Since there was no decent protable digital music player in 2001 to fit to the hub, Apple had to create one. They won’t create their own video or still camera (the marketplace is producing perfectly good ones) but they WILL create a phone with PDA and music capabilities. Most everyone agrees cell phones aren’t realizing their potential–feature bloat, bad UI, poor or no synching…so for the digital hub strategy to be realized, Apple will have to create the device themselves. They will do a fantastic job.
Then, I presume, you’ll try to tell us they’re a “phone company, not a personal computer company.”
Whatever.