“Microsoft has kicked off a research project to create software that will take over when it retires Windows,” The BBC News reports.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s called a DVD dubber. Put Apple’s latest Mac OS X in the tray, load up a bunch of blank DVDs, and dub away. It’s nice to see Microsoft is planning for their (lack of a) future.
The Beeb continues, “Called Midori, the cut-down operating system is radically different to Microsoft’s older programs. It is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC.”
“Midori is widely seen as an ambitious attempt by Microsoft to catch up on the work on virtualisation being undertaken in the wider computer industry,” The Beeb reports. “Darren Brown, data centre lead at consulting firm Avanade, said [that] many companies were still using very old applications that existing operating systems would not run… By putting a virtual machine on a PC, those older programs can be kept going.”
“Michael Silver, research vice president at Gartner, said [that] the big problem that Microsoft faced in doing away with Windows, he said, was how to re-make its business to cope. ‘Eighty percent of Windows sales are made when a new PC is sold,’ he said. ‘That’s a huge amount of money for them that they do not have to go out and get.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Imagine Microsoft actually having to sell Windows on its merits, or lack thereof, without relying on preloading it via the box assemblers. No wonder they see the end of the Windows era. It might even be the end of company itself. Office alone won’t be able to sustain a dying Windows and a bunch of money-hemorrhaging failures.
If there is a God, Jobs will live to see it.
