“In the battle between Apple and Microsoft, Bertrand Serlet and Steven Sinofsky are the field generals in charge of competing efforts to ensure that the PC’s basic software stays relevant in an increasingly Web-centered world,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times. “The two men are marshaling their software engineers for the next encounter, sometime in 2009, when a new generation of Macintosh and Windows operating systems is due. Their challenge will be to avoid refighting the last war — and to prevent finding themselves outflanked by new competitors.”
“Many technologists contend that the increasingly ponderous PC-bound operating systems that currently power 750 million computers, products like Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Apple’s soon-to-be-released Mac OS X Leopard, will fade in importance,” Markoff reports. “In this view, software will be a modular collection of Web-based services — accessible by an array of hand-held consumer devices and computers…”
Markoff reports, “Mr. Sinofsky’s approach, he said, is meticulously planned out from the beginning, with a tight focus on meeting deadlines — a crucial objective after the delay-plagued Vista project — but with little room for flexibility. In contrast, the atmosphere inside Apple’s software engineering ranks has been much more improvisational.”
Markoff reports, “Mr. Sinofsky, 41, who joined Microsoft in 1989, is the senior vice president for the Windows and Windows Live engineering group, a position he assumed a year ago after running the company’s Office team of programmers. Mr. Serlet, 46, Apple’s senior vice president for software engineering, left Xerox’s fabled Palo Alto Research Center to join Steven P. Jobs at Next Software in the late 1980s and has headed software development at Apple since 2003. ‘Under Sinofsky, the culture is, you plan and stick to the plan,’ said Steven Capps, a former Apple and Microsoft programmer who has designed operating systems at both companies. ‘At Apple you see what you’ve got.'”
The potential risk in the Microsoft approach, he said, is that “they’re like the test pilots who won’t pull up when they see the tarmac.” …After struggling for more than half a decade with Vista, its most ambitious development project ever, Microsoft has begun work on a reportedly less ambitious successor under Mr. Sinofsky’s leadership
Markoff reports, “Mr. Serlet’s programmers are planning to integrate Apple’s consumer products and its personal computers more closely with the Internet, according to several people briefed on the company’s plans. Indeed last week, at an industry conference, Mr. Jobs said that an infusion of Web services for Macintosh users was imminent.
“Apple is expected to add a networking capability to its next-generation iPod music players. In addition, the software for its next big product, the iPhone, is based on the core of OS X, the operating system for the Macintosh. The approach further blurs the line between the computer and other devices — as well the distinction between the device and the Internet as the place where programs and data reside,” Markoff reports.
More in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jamie” for the heads up.]