“Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes,” Larry Dignan blogs for ZDNet.
“That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows,” Dignan reports.
“So what does Microsoft need to do? For starters, Windows should create versions for specific uses. These modules would be able to swapped out depending on the customer,” Dignan reports.
A few key redesign ideas from Silver and MacDonald:
• Windows should be able to be tailored to specific applications
• Better security
• Make migration to new versions easier
• Simplify licensing to focus on specific devices
Dignan reports, “The bottom line for Gartner is that Windows needs to be replaced, lock-in needs to end and product schedules need to be more predictable. Windows should also be more manageable.”
“Will Windows 7 become this adaptive thing that Gartner describes? Probably not. Gartner argues that Microsoft should use virtualization to solve the backward compatibility issue plaguing Windows,” Dignan writes. “Will Windows 7 jettison its current kernel for multiple versions? Not likely.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
but will it blend? that’s what I wanna know!
“Windows should create versions for specific uses.” – please dear Jobs make it so. This will insure OSX dominance in the long term.
Long as it’s snappy.
Are they suggesting versions that can work with each other or that can’t work with each other? How many? How specific? In Microsoft’s hands this idea could go very very wrong.
Apple has two versions of OS X on the market: Mac OS X and iPhone OS X. They seem to play together nicely.
Windows will never improve as long as Microsoft keeps hiring rather than firing people.
“Should create versions for specific users?” Doesn’t that sound a little suspiciously like the “Vista Home Basic/Home Premium/Enterprise/Ultimate/Ad-Free/S&M;Edition” fiasco?
Also, how is this outlook “sobering” at all?
The “key redesign ideas” look exactly like what EVERYONE has been saying about Vista for months, if not XP for years.
Notice the request for different versions of Windows comes from IT Managers. This just goes to show that today’s IT Managers are nothing but “I know Windows therefore I know everything about computers” people. They’re as useless in today’s and tomorrow’s technology world as the Atari 2600 is for serious, future gaming.
Titanic, Hindenburg and Microsoft. They will make great history companions. They have many similarities.
“So what does Microsoft need to do? For starters, Windows should create versions for specific uses. These modules would be able to swapped out depending on the customer,” Dignan reports.
Yeah Balmer, ask Heinz how to do it.
“Better security” ?!
How much do these analysts make a year to come up with such insightful recommendations?
“Apple has two versions of OS X on the market: Mac OS X and iPhone OS X.”
and OSX Server?
Mac OS X comes in two flavors: Client and Server. The variations which power the iPhone/iPod aren’t for sale separately, but are nevertheless variations tailored to the hardware they’re on.
So the different flavors of OS X seem to fit point 1 in the list above (tailored to specific applications) – “applications” in this case I think meaning “purposes”, rather than programs.
Microsoft’s current confusing mix of Vista flavors is more of a marketing/antitrust-avoiding strategy, and not necessarily reflective of the purposes they’re used for, or the needs of the hardware or people using it.
What’s the difference between Microsoft and the Titanic.
Scroll Down
The Titanic had a band.
Splitting windows into more variants will be even more confusing.
Apple have one client and one server OS for computers. That’s how it should be.
M$ need to start from scratch like Apple did. Build the compatibility where it is needed.
Of course they can’t do that. And that is why they are screwed.
If they can’t get one version right, why would you want multiple versions?
It’s all that legacy support going all the way back to DOS and Windows 3. Microsoft really should have done what Apple did with the transition to OS X: Make an entirely modern Operating System, with legacy support as an optional feature that can eventually be chopped off.
I really wish Windows was better. I would still use Mac, but I can’t help but to feel bad for all those Windows sufferers.
Windows should be buried just like any other dead animal.
Microsoft needs to scrap every line of code and start from line 1.
Will never happen of course.
Windows is sold in many confusing versions. All share the same basic faults. So the answer is to sell it in even more confusing versions. Yep that should solve the problem. God forbid the day that IT managers actually run the World rather than just think they do.
@ Pat
And it’s Captain had dignity!!!!
The really cool thing about OS X 10.0 etc., was that Apple was able to keep OS 9 for those who needed/wanted it and create a new operating system that we know today. Now OS 9 really isn’t needed anymore.
Microsoft will need to do the same. In other words create a new operating system (maybe based on Unix:) and have the legacy code added on, (I thought they might have already done this with Virtual PC) for a few years until the new code is widely used. There you go Redmond, start your copy machines.
If anyone really believes that the listed items are going to improve Windows OS then they’re just kidding themselves. The very first thing that Windows needs to actually begin “radically” improving is to not be the default OS for the planet – really. In case anyone has lost track, this is capitalism folks, not technocracy, (well, actually it is, and that’s precisely Window’s problem). It’s just the way that it works, and that’s the primary reason, plain and simple, why Windows doesn’t really work now, nor will it ever, in any variation of its current form factor.
Window’s missing ingredient is competition – period. Without that nothing is really going to change for Windows users – bottom line. Oddly for Windows, it will first have to become much less ubiquitous before it can really even improve – much less “radically” change. Hidden in the title of this MDN post is the actual key to improving Windows.
I still dream of living in a world where three or more OSes actually compete, and with a tipable market share between the three of them – You can bet all of our collective behind’s that we’d see technological innovation unlike anything the human race has here-to-fore been accustomed to. But that’s just a dream.
Laughable. So instead of 7 version, lets make 24!! ahahahaha
If history is any judge, Microsoft will do exactly what these guys want. Microsoft’s history is to copy whatever Apple did last, so …
Windows 7 will be a whole new modular OS built on top of an open source BSD kernel. This will help them to work better with all the Open Source guys they have to cosy up to in the near future, and (finally) give them cred in the security arena.
Then they only have to scrap DirectX and replace it with OpenGL and you have something that might actually work.
@ Tommy Boy
“Windows will never improve as long as Microsoft keeps hiring rather than firing people.”
Yes!!
@Mr. OS X
@Gabriel
Oops. You’re right of course. Mac OS X and OS X Server, which run on the big hardware, and the other OS X (does it have an official name) which runs on the small hardware. Desktop/laptop—same version. 32bit/64bit—same version. The big hardware versions and the small hardware version have so much in common they mesh very nicely. Is this what Silver and MacDonald mean? Windows already has more versions than this to much less effect.