“The 20-year death grip that Microsoft has held on the core of computing is finally weakening—pried loose with just two fingers. With one finger you press ‘Control’ and with the other you press ‘right arrow.’ Instantly you switch from a Macintosh operating system (OS) to a Microsoft Windows OS. Then, with another two-finger press, you switch back again. So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac’s iPhoto. And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange,” Gary Morgenthaler reports for BusinessWeek.
“This easy toggling on an Apple computer, enabled by a feature called Spaces, was but an interesting side note to last fall’s upgrade of the Mac OS,” Morgenthaler reports.
MacDailyNews Note: We’ll, the toggling, yeah, but you really need to be running Windows via inexpensive virtualization software from Parallels or VMWare in one of those Spaces to do as Morgenthaler describes.
Morgenthaler continues, “But coupled with other recent developments, the stars are aligning in a very intriguing pattern. Apple’s (AAPL) recent release of a tool kit for programmers to write applications for the iPhone will be followed by the June launch of iPhone 2.0, a software upgrade geared toward business users.
Morgenthaler reports, “Taken together, these seemingly unrelated moves are taking the outline of a full-fledged strategy. Windows users, in the very near future, will be free to switch to Apple computers and mobile devices, drawn by a widening array of Mac software, without suffering the pain of giving up critical Windows-based applications right away. The easy virtualization of two radically different operating systems on a single desktop paves a classic migration path. Business users will be tempted. Apple is positioning itself to challenge Microsoft for overall computing dominance—even in the corporate realm.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we have been saying for years. It’s nice to finally see it in the pages of a mainstream publication such as BusinessWeek.
Morgenthaler continues, “It all started with Mac OS X, the multi-core, multi-processor platform officially released in 2001… The modular new OS allowed Apple to condense its core task management function into a tiny computing kernel [which] has proved easily adaptable across the entire Apple product line, from highly complex servers all the way down to the relatively simple iPod Touch. Such modularity allows Apple to add whatever functions are necessary for each product environment—all while maintaining cross-product compatibility.”
Morgenthaler reports, “By contrast, Microsoft has held on to an OS tethered to the 1980s, piling additions upon additions with each upgrade to Windows. With last year’s arrival of Vista, Windows has swollen to 1 billion bytes (a gigabyte) or more of software code. The ‘Mach’ kernel of the Mac OS X, however, requires less than 1 million bytes (a megabyte) of data in its smallest configuration, expanding modestly with the sophistication of the application. This bloating has saddled Vista users with increased costs and poor performance…”
Morgenthaler reports, “As corporations become increasingly mobile, the pressure will build to make them Apple-centric from top to bottom. Rising sales of Apple laptops and iPhones will make the Mac OS only that much more mainstream and acceptable to corporate IT departments. By 2010, the number of iPhones in use could approach 100 million. It’s possible that the iPhone’s share of the U.S. smartphone market (28% in the fourth quarter) will soon approach the 70% share iPod now holds in the MP3 market.”
Much more Apple and Mac goodness in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Norm” for the heads up.]
Everyone, 1, 2, 3……NORM!!!
@DLMeyer
I grew up at DEC and when I saw NT for the first time, I was disappointed that I did not see any VMS influence. Whatever influence there was, it was hidden from the user. I was looking for the same print, file, and batch queue management that you had with VMS. I have yet to see it today on any OS.
“So, the battle ahead seems clear: It’s Apple’s seamlessly integrated software strategy, minimally sized and maximally efficient, competing against Microsoft’s strategy of multiple incompatible, bloated, and fragmented operating systems. It’s Apple’s growing customer acceptance vs. Microsoft’s rising customer pain. By failing to modernize its operating system in a timely way, Microsoft has left its flank wide open for an all-out assault from a once-vanquished rival.”
This paragraph from the article says it all. Nice summary.
@DLMeyer,
I think the article meant to say that OS X has been multi-processor aware since the beginning. Dating back to NEXTstep even???
If not for that slap in the wrist and continue to monopolize the business market approval, MS would be in deep Zune Doo Doo by now. So many companies would benefit with Mac… too bad they are locked in and can’t get out.
Switch to a PC for corporate email? Hmmm.. don’t see the point of that. Other than being a little garish to look at at first, Entourage 2008 is pretty nice. After spending a few days with it, the over-designed icons get easier on the eyes.
@C1….except Entourage 2008 no longer has the convenient ‘enlarge text’ buttons in the toolbar anymore. That was stupid to take out.
“It all started with Mac OS X, the multi-core, multi-processor platform officially released in 2001… The modular new OS allowed Apple to condense its core task management function into a tiny computing kernel [which] has proved easily adaptable across the entire Apple product line, from highly complex servers all the way down to the relatively simple iPod Touch. Such modularity allows Apple to add whatever functions are necessary for each product environment—all while maintaining cross-product compatibility.”
Like I said… This is why Apple will win. And it’s why Windows will be hobbled until MS rewrites an OS from ground up and moves legacy compatibility to a virtualized layer, just like Classic. Windows will NEVER get better until this happens.
With the news today that Windows 7 will be out ‘sometime next year’, I doubt this is in the cards for a long, long time.
And once VMWare and Parallels work out how to run a graphics hardware-accelerated session inside a Space then even Bootcamp will become redundant.
@ Buster
Oh yeah… I hadn’t noticed.
Okay, I take it back, total fail.
To increase the type size just type Command – + and for smaller press Command – Hyphen(-) Easier than clicking the menu bar.
Yay! I’ll finally be able to dump this Windows support job and work on MacOS systems again.
@C1…I needed it because being over 40….ok..ok,..being over 50 (just barely) my eyes are getting worse. This explains all the typos when I post.
That is my story and I am sticking to it.
@Whatever….I already do that but I disagree…clicking on the button was far easier.
@ChrissyOne
Writing a new kernel ain’t nuttin’ but a sammich…
That can be done splickitty lick.
Compatibility layer? That’ll take some time BUT, of course, the OS part of that is already done. Bloated, yes, but tons of that code is for maximum compatibility – if they were merely to try for minimum compatibility, well, that would speed things up considerably. Get finished in, I dunno, ten years or so?
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Seriously, less than 2 years is doable. Whether they do it or not isn’t moot – it’s do or die time. The masses are no longer asleep at the bloated code-devouring wheel…
M$ will move to a Linux foundation, similar to Apple’s move to UNIX. It might not happen with Windows 7, but it should after that. Linux will be used:
A] b/c it will be bad times at M$ when they will be forced to do this, and low/no overhead open source will look like the most cost effective option for their operating system’s future,
B] following Apple’s lead is one thing, but being too ‘me-too’ about it (by going UNIX, BSD or otherwise) will not be a ghost that they’ll risk having haunt them forever,
C] by going Linux M$ will hope to scoop up the pre-existing geek following that already enthusiastically uses it, and thus will attempt a ‘buy in’ to the cult following that Apple has fueled itself with (through both boom & bust years), and which provides costless and effective word-of-mouth for their products.
But mainly they’ll do it b/c what else can they do? Building a sophisticated OS from the kernel on up to the GUI is something they’ve shown little aptitude for, and someone in there will realize that for a project that important, they can’t afford to screw it up. And of course the bean counters – who have a lot more influence in M$ now that Bill’s leaving- will probably (and quite rightly) say ‘Why do it all ourselves anyway, when there are so many ‘pre-invented wheels’ out there to choose from? Just stick to the UI and the virtualization layer for Old Windows, and get it out the door ASAP, before we lose any more market share.’
That’s how I see this shaking out. The only question left that still classifies it as a crap shoot for me is, when will the decision makers within M$ realize that this is their best option? How long will the die-hards fight the future, continuing to insist on trying to fix the unfixable, or on keeping the whole reconstruction project an ‘M$ Only’ affair, and how effective will they be in that fight? Idiocy is like gravity – sometimes it’s ability to pull something down, or alter it’s trajectory, is irresistible. On that one, only time will tell.
@Odyssey67: A well thought out post. But think about the length of time you’re talking about. Let’s say that Microsoft stops being Microsoft, does everything you say and does it right. The system they create will have to be an order of magnitude BETTER than whatever Apple’s most recent OS incarnation is. Why? Because people will have to move either from Windows or OS X either way. And they are not going to learn a new operating system unless it is BETTER than what the competition offers.
I know it sounds completely nutty to say this a company than nets about 250 Billion a quarter, but I think Microsoft is in a deep, deep hole.
In the dark days of the late 90’s, who would have ever guessed that they would read this article in Business Week.
As I keep saying: the tsunami is coming. It keeps getting closer to shore. When it hits, the Windows village will be left in shambles–replaced by Apple.
How sweet it is!
“It all started with OS X…”
I’ll never forget seeing the Macworld 2000 OS X demo with Steve Jobs showing off what Apple had been working on for the new OS. I said then that “Damn, Apple’s trying to take over!”
This was pre-iPod, pre-Intel, pre-Mac mini, pre-iPhone, pre-Apple retail, pre-everything. We’re talking JUST THE OS. What I saw was the dock and Aqua alone providing the differentiation from Windoze that even the most hard-core M$ user would be able to see (remember Windows 2000, which was out back then?)
Up until OS X hit, the unwashed masses really thought that as of Windoze 95, M$ had “caught up” with the Mac OS. Now after Cheetah/Puma/Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Intel Tiger/Leopard, even the mainstream press has to give it up: “Yo, M$ is in trouble vs. Apple.”
It did indeed start with OS X, with Steve and the guys at Apple being brave enough to scrap all the legacy code and create from the ground up a brand new, shiny, mainstream OS for the 21st century. OS X is the FOUNDATION for it ALL.
Sweet vindication for us old-school diehard Mac-heads! We’ll be seeing lots more stories like this in the next few years.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
The article is rather fact-challenged. “While Apple’s “multi-touch” screen innovation made its debut with the iPhone, it appeared on the MacBook within 60 days.” Huh? did I miss something? He means the iPod Touch, I assume…
@84 Mac Guy: I for one would have never predicted the Apple resurgence. There have already been business books re-written by the Apple story. A company was not supposed to be able to come back from such a fall. But Apple’s appeal was deep, not broad. A core of fanatics kept the flame alive. Unlike the mass media, I am not insulting these customers and suggesting they are weak minded cult followers. What I mean is that Apple earns customers and inspires loyalty. The turn around could not have happened without the genius of Steve Jobs, but Jobs would never have gotten the chance to turn Apple around if he had not engendered an endearing base of customers in his first go around. It’s an amazing story. And with Apple’s continuing success, literally dozens of business books will try to explain the Apple resurgance and pretend that they knew it was going to happen all along.
fuck you alll,………
Falkirk says:
“@Odyssey67: A well thought out post. But think about the length of time you’re talking about.”
I am. I’m thinking about a totally in-house project called Longhorn/Vista which tried the lipstick-on-a-pig approach, and which went from a 2-3 year development to deployment schedule to … what was it, 5 years? Longer? I don’t even remember anymore. Using the Linux kernel is not going to be any walk in the park, especially for M$, but the length of time for that kind of project vs one where they try to do it all themselves from scratch would not even be comparable, with their own history as a guide.
“Let’s say that Microsoft stops being Microsoft, does everything you say and does it right. The system they create will have to be an order of magnitude BETTER than whatever Apple’s most recent OS incarnation is. Why? Because people will have to move either from Windows or OS X either way. And they are not going to learn a new operating system unless it is BETTER than what the competition offers.”
I don’t disagree that this will be their stated goal, even if just for public consumption (‘Tell em it’ll be the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then we’ll do what we can’), but again I use their own past as a guide; can they make it as good as you insist it must be on their own? Or will their chance of succeeding there be greater if they use an already proven foundation?
Apple asked themselves that same question in the late 90s and, even with their superior talent level, found using a UNIX base the surer way to go. M$ might ignore that lesson, but I think there are enough people over there more than willing to heed it, given how embarrassing Vista has been for them.
I’d also add that I’m not sure ‘WindowsX’ has to be completely and obviously superior to whatever version of OSX is out at that time. It would help, but the Office suite will still be there as a major revenue stream, and they seem more capable of keeping that competitive going forward. More important from M$’s perspective regarding the OS side, I think, would be to just get something out that doesn’t suck, and then build on it from there. Again, OSX was not a home-run at the time it debuted – it became a winner through consistent improvement to a solid base. That strategy seems timeless to me.
“I know it sounds completely nutty to say this a company than nets about 250 Billion a quarter, but I think Microsoft is in a deep, deep hole.”
Their signature product is an industry joke, and consumer spending is likely to take a nose dive for the next few years, so I’d agree on that things won’t be rosy for them. But, as you mention, they make a lot of cash – on Office and on the habitual Windows users – for now, and probably will be able to maintain operations at a high enough level to pull something like an OS revamp off. If they don’t make a radical change with Windows 7, and it indeed is a Vista-like turkey, it will hurt them badly on that side of their business but they can probably weather it. If what comes after that takes a similarly long time, and isn’t based on something solid, I see them getting out of the OS business entirely.
Make no mistake – if I was advising M$ I’d insist that whatever has been planned for Windows 7 should be scrapped for an OSX-like project immediately (I see Linux as their best bet, but any of the Nix’s would work for them). I say that they could probably weather it if they don’t do that – 90% market share and ingrained attitudes will do that for you – but frankly I can foresee things going south for them much faster, worse case scenario.
For example, iPhone is a game changer in a way that not even the iPod was. If similar interface technologies migrated throughout the Mac line at a rapid (1-2 year) pace, that would make any misstep with Windows 7 fatal for M$’s future as an OS company IMO.
But hey – I figured one speculative post was enough
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