“The company next month plans to demonstrate a new version of its widely used Windows operating system that targets low-power devices and adds support for chips based on designs from ARM Holdings PLC as well as the x86 chip technology offered by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., these people said,” Clark and Wingfield report. “Microsoft will discuss the software at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January, though it isn’t expected to be available for two years, they added.”
MacDailyNews Take: Pfft. Get back to us in two years then, you incessant vaporizers.
Clark and Wingfield report, “Microsoft has struggled to match its dominance in PC operating systems in markets such as smartphones and a new breed of consumer tablets that Apple has come to dominate since introducing the iPad last spring. Chips based on designs licensed by ARM consume less power than most x86 chips, helping to make them an overwhelming favorite in smartphones. Microsoft already sells versions of Windows for cellphones that support the technology, but has remained firmly committed to x86 chips in the mainstream version of the product used in PCs and server systems.”
MacDailyNews Note: Intel is shooting blanks. If investors are paying attention, expect INTC to take a hit.
Clark and Wingfield report, “the effort is part of a broader push at Microsoft to make Windows more “modular” so that pieces of the operating system that are unnecessary for smaller, low-power devices like tablets can be easily stripped away to make the software perform snappily on the gadgets. The strategy is similar to the one Apple has employed with iOS, the lightweight operating system for iPads, iPhones and other devices that is derived from Apple’s full-blown Mac operating system for traditional computers… It’s unclear how quickly Microsoft can deliver a new tablet-friendly version of Windows. The next major release of the operating system, Windows 8, isn’t expected until 2012 some time.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft is perpetually late. They need to get faster copiers. Two years from now, Apple will have sold more iOS devices than there are people in the United States of America.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jax44” for the heads up.]
Like watching a slow motion train wreck….
I’m still waiting for Courier….
I’m going to make a car that can travel in space!!
Well, it might not be ready for 50 years, but I’ll have it.
Ok let’s talk about what we might do in 2 years. Let’s add more complications for the masses to get confused about. We can’t do much right so let’s see if we pretend to work on a stripped down windows if people will come to us.
After all we can’t let apple get the lead because we can show more vaporware then anyone.
Microsoft king of vaporware
Microsoft our passion your frustration
Hey Arnold, I found Ives this morning!
Lmao, they can’t even get their current windows install base to upgrade to 7. Chances are if the computer didn’t come with 7 it runs vista or xp.
MicroVapor 2013, coming soon.
Wow! Go Microsoft! You may be able to release windows phone 8 with copy and paste (blue screen of death included free) by 2025!
Apple FTW!!
SPOILER ALERT
Wait.. dont… tell … me……It… has………..a….. Win……dows…. App…. Market……………….place…………? A…..ma……zing…… where… do…. they… come… up… with…. this…. stuff……..?
Oh my gosh, they used “snappily”, a derivation of our favorite word. MDN readers are influencing the American language! Questions is, is it for the better?
…the software will “perform snappily on the gadgets.”
I’ve heard this term used before…. Can’t remember where…
Introducing Microsoft Perpetuate!
The operating system for those who like to Keep It Like It Is(tm)!
We have copied all the latest features from the Mac OS, while keeping familiar, comfortable features like Internet Explorer security holes and the Blue Screen Of Death. Upgrade for no reason or benefit at all!
So no need to think different when you can Think The Same(tm)!
Coming sometime in the next few years, so don’t buy anything else until then!
Microsoft- we invented retards.
M$, that horse left the barn a very long time ago, and has been winning all the races for years.
“The strategy is similar to the one Apple has employed with iOS, the lightweight operating system for iPads, iPhones and other devices that is derived from Apple’s full-blown Mac operating system for traditional computers… “
So… yet again, they have to wait until Apple shows them how to do it.
This article is reminding me of Mac Lion. It just a few months away, why does it feel so long?
Today’s revelation signals an increased production run from the world’s leading producer of vaporware. Microsoft’s vapor manufacturing facility, located in a 300 sq ft corner of Steve Ballmer’s office, has been ramping up output in recent years in an effort to counter the resurgence of Apple Inc. Microsoft’s once-powerful vapor division has a proud history of freezing competition and conning gullible minds on wall street, although in recent years, the product has lost much of its luster. During the 1990’s the division was given its own product category separate from Microsoft Disinformation Department. The Monopolistic Tactical Division is managed from a separate corner of the MS CEO office and also handles Predatory Contracts/Partnerships/Licenses while still working closely with MS Vapor. In recent years, however these products have also met with less success due to a regime change at the U.S. Justice Dept, and the Outright Theft Division has all but ceased activity due to a lack of exploitable unguarded raw material.
Microsoft management, however, stands by the quality of its vapor products noting a steady improvement of fictitious product specs, and make-believe market projections.
This is so exciting!!!!
Yet-to-be released products by Microsoft are always the best, representing the state-of-the-art, with perfectly executed features every customer wants and rivals can only dream of matching. Yessir, this is going to be awesome! (Until they actually release it. It’s going to suck then.)
MDN Magic Word: doubt
New Windows 8 “UP”
More crack,
Less pane…
Microsoft sees a stock sell-off coming.
They’re jettisoning all meaningless press releases now, in an attempt to lighten the ship enough to keep it afloat a little longer.
Talking about a fantasy OS that won’t see the light of day for another TWO YEARS?!
That’s acrid, sweat-stained desperation.
Microsoft may as well talk about wishful products, with release dates in TEN years. And it won’t surprise me if Microsoft does just that.
Microsoft’s hope is that their marketing department can create in consumers, a perpetual state of anticipation for something good from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Intended Effect:
Windows User: “Hmmm. I’m really tempted to switch, but I heard that the next Windows OS will be good this time. I heard it’s coming soon, just a year or two more. Maybe I should hang on.”
Microsoft Investor: “Isn’t it time to sell my MSFT shares? (scans headlines on her iPad) Oh, look, Microsoft just announced some upcoming products that sound pretty good. Maybe I should hang on to these shares just a little longer …”
Microsoft’s Corporate Mission:
“Fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. Repeat.”
BFD SOS
2 YEARS? Two years! This tsunami shift away from Microsoft will be almost done by then. The halo from the iPhone and iPad to the Mac, along with cloud computing and what ever the Google and HP Web OS’s are will take Microsoft Windows # off at the knees leaving it as road kill.
2 YEARS! You have to know Ballmer will not be there that long.
It used to be that a mere announcement from Microsoft would freeze out competitors because IT doofuses would happily wait. But now we’re looking at a situation where a firm will cede real advantage to a competitor using Apple (or even <gag>Android</gag>) devices. Can microsoft and the legions of corporate drones continue to get away with this? I think not. This move smacks of desperation. Only a matter of time now. Balmer T. Clown ousted at the next shareholder’s meeting.
In light of their performance with Vista, 7, even XP it is clear that the only way MS can accomplish a new OS working on multiple platforms before the heart death of the universe is to take Darwin and put a thin candy coating on it (now that’s real innovation – M$ style) or perhaps start with LINUX and work from there. Any other path dooms the project to total failure. Either path dooms M$ to total destruction. WHich way will Balmer go?????
“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized, with a plan? I’d say it is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine… So, I, I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy. I like it a lot.”
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 17 January 2007
This quote will NEVER get old
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Watch out, here comes Windows 8, code name, ‘The Ocho’ or is that the ‘The Oucho’?
no talk about adapting windows 7 to tablets?
man, they must be getting desperate
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” />
@TT
hahahah good one
Hey, how about…
Windows 8
Less pane
More wind
or
Windows 8
(That is Crapware spelled backwards)
I like their persistence… I just wish they would focus on what they are good at and leave what they are not good at to the those who are.
MDN said: “Get back to us in two years then, you incessant vaporizers.” Had they put a “rush team” on it the minute iOS was first released they might have had “something” for their latest mobile phone offering, and something better for current tablet offerings. Don’t criticize their lag times!
And then: “Intel is shooting blanks. If investors are paying attention, expect INTC to take a hit.” You DO remember who is designing and building the CPUs for the Mac Pro, the iMac, the Mac mini, the MBP, the MB and the MBA … yeah? We switched sides, remember?
Finally: “Microsoft is perpetually late. Two years from now, Apple will have sold more iOS devices than there are people in the United States of America.” Finally something I can maybe agree with. Something I can hope for.
Maybe….. JUST maybe the new Windows strategy will Squirt Better and More! Their Slogan…
The NEW NEW Improved Windows now Squirts More!
“…, though it isn’t expected to be available for two years, they added.”
Two years? You have got to be kidding me.
@m159 – Excellent take. Thanks for the yuks.
When Ballmer is ousted, we should all meet in our respective regions and raise a toast to him. He’s done more for the rise of Apple than anyone besides Jobs and Ives. I nominate the Happy Gnome in St. Paul as the Twin Cities meeting spot.
Pffttt
MDN word: long
“The strategy is similar to the one Apple has employed with iOS, the lightweight operating system for iPads, iPhones and other devices that is derived from Apple’s full-blown Mac operating system for traditional computers…”
What else is new? Copy, copy, copy, advertise as innovation.
What will they call it? WiOS 8? MSiOS 8?
Odd apple has had a /very/ modular os for the past ten years…. and even before that it was pretty modular.
and this isn’t the first time Microsoft tried to move away from intel either. (they tried back around 2000 but failed miserably)
an the whole windows 8 thing? they haven’t even released windows v7 (“windows 7” reports it’s version number as 6.1)
So, we all know two years, is more likely three years at best. And by then, who knows, but perhaps Intel’s Atom and ARM’s latest multicore chip will be powerful enough and energy efficient that Microsoft won’t have to pare down its bloated OS to run. They are so far behind they’ll be irrelevant in the mobile space if this is true. Generations behind. It’s laughable.
The numeric designation says it all..they are at a minimum of 3 years behind. Maybe they should come out with Windows X!!!
That would fix it!
m159
That is one of the best and most amusing rings true posts I have ever read.
Y A W N ………….
@ Scott,
“I’m going to make a car that can travel in space!!
Well, it might not be ready for 50 years, but I’ll have it.”
Scott, they already have a car that can travel in space. You just lift it to orbit. Give it a mighty push… and it just keeps on going. However, turning radius, and general control issues are pretty bad.
Just a thought,
en
“Microsoft is perpetually late. They need to get faster copiers. Two years from now, Apple will have sold more iOS devices than there are people in the United States of America.”
I hope that they sell much more than that. Like European Union and China compined with Filipines and India added with Japan. USA is measily what 310 million? European Union is 501 million to begin with.
MS is totally effed.
By the time they make this work, Apple will have converged Mac OSX & iOS back into a completely unified codebase (look at what they’ve now done with Quicktime X), but with different UI expressions.
MS will be discombobulating their OS at just the time when processing power and battery technology will allow recombobulating desktop & mobile OSs.
Damn add Indonesia to that…
I’m starting to think that the M$ board has a death wish because I’m out of alternative explanations. It’s just too hard to imagine the level of stupidity required to maintain Ballmer T. Clown as CEO. Oh well, it’s good for my Apple stock!
Kind of makes Steve and Apple look pretty smart for having PowerPC and x86 in parallel updates for nearly a decade.
Apple could move full desktop OS X to ARM in a matter of a few months (maybe weeks). Microsoft may say two years, but we all know they’ll never get there.
MSFT used to have a HAL on it’s NT which allow them to run on different type of processors. After they convert to Intel only processor, NT’s code based have been littered with Intel specific codes and even assembly codes. Now, MSFT is telling us they are working on a new type of W7 based OS on ARM. I would not like to be the engineers taked with this horseshit.
Hey, Ballmer-the-loser, stop jerking off under your desk and start to value-add to MSFT.
It will take 2 years or longer, if they are lucky, to catch up to Apple now. Who knows how far behind they will be in 2 years.
Oooooooooohhhhh! I think I just tinkled down my leg! Oooppss! Too exciting!
@RobG
My guess is, they’ll call it:
W8, as in “wait”
Feel free to wait for a few years till they get it out the door… then feel free to W8 until they get it out of beta, then feel free to w8, W8, wait some more while it boots up…
There is no point whatsoever in joining the race that late. They have just announced to the world that they don’t have a practical operating system for tablet computers and that they won’t have one for at least two more years.
When Apple is selling many millions of iOS devices each years, staying out of the race for another two years means that even if Apple just cruised along without any new launches, Microsoft could not hope to ever catch up. But the reality is that Apple are truly innovating ( using the dictionary definition of the word ) and moving forward at an ever increasing pace.
My guess:
some version: Soon
a stable, useful, non resource hog version: about 2 days after never…
Windows 8:
less win, more doh!
As much as I has MS, they are a good whipping post to have around. They are cheesy and low rent, but they blow enough smoke up the skirts of Dell, HP and get their cheesy products in multiple brand devices and gives them all a bad name. If apple were ever to licsence iOS to the same companies that MS would dissapear. Apple already has a big head start, but look at all the copycat iPhones today(none better than iOS). by the end of 2011 to early 2012 the tablet market will be identical to the phone evolution we currently see. So many flavors, but iPad and iPhone will remain Rolls Royce among Accords and Pintos.
I believe that Apple is working on a multiple size iPads as well as an multiple tablet OS options. Maybe Lion will have a robust new iOS cousin in the near future. Whatever technology Apple decides to unleash is normally Primetime right out of the shoot. Apple is already years ahead in their roadmap than most companies who just scramble to knock off whatever Apple does whenever. This strategy will only bring them short sighted customers of limited ability or capacity for even limited computer skill. The “mainstream” tech savvy consumer will always be the desired audience, Apple caters to this crowd, thankfully.
Ben Dover
You have a good point but we perhaps need a new term for the desired audience. Tech savvy implies the coke drinking, pull all-nighters, unsocial , generally brilliant coder/administrator.
The desired audience comprises those people who can think for themselves, recognize quality, and are willing to support sources of quality. These customers once believed the techies and bought MS since everyone else used it. The wall that is coming down is showing the unskilled in IT but literate and intelligent person that there really is an alternative. These people are not, in the old term, tech savvy. They are savvy. But we need another term to describe what they are savvy about. I am tempted to use social or relational but am open to another term. Perhaps quality savvy might catch on.
Perhaps the best analogy might describe MS as building the model T of computers, requires much knowledge of the internals to get it to work. Apple won’t mind being called the Cadillac, Lexus, or Rolls-Royce of computers, just turn it on and it works.
MS are so consistent about the information they spew out about their vapourware products that maybe we should change the name to ‘bullshitware’.
Vaporsoft – why deliver good software today when we can promise (and fail to deliver) next year?
Apple has “played” Microsoft for the last decade.
First, Apple goaded Microsoft with all the “Get a Mac” marketing, to give up on the ambitious “Longhorn” project and “rush” Vista to market to alleviate the embarrassment of having XP be the latest version of Windows for 5+ years. Then, further embarrassment from Vista’s failure and more amusing “Get a Mac” pressure (especially after the Intel switch) forced Microsoft to devote enormous resources to getting Windows 7 out there to replace Vista as soon as possible.
Microsoft was so focused on Vista and Windows 7 that it practically ignored Windows Mobile and let it languish. Meanwhile, Apple secretly worked in iPhone and released it in 2007. After a year in denial, Microsoft panicked and jump-started its mobile efforts again, eventually expending enormous resources to rush an incomplete Windows Phone 7 to market a few months ago.
But Apple had Microsoft jumping hoops again, because the real prize was iPad. Microsoft devoted its resources to a PC OS and a smartphone OS, as manipulated by Apple. A tablet (as re-defined by iPad) is in between. Windows 7 is too bloated and Windows Phone 7 is too “PDA-class.” Microsoft has nothing to offer now, and Apple’s competitors are desperately trying make it work with Android. It will take at least two years for Microsoft to come up with something, and who knows what Apple is secretly up to right now, as Microsoft scrambles to rework Windows into a tablet OS.
MS is going to Osbourne themselves.
Ken: You are totally right, Apple used MS’s weakness against them…Innovation and prudent planning. There is no doubt that Apple has far reaching plans for it’s OS and devices. It’s all-in-one style has allowed it to do what no other tech co could achieve, to design products that are tailored to the biggest market in the world, the consumer. Through wide spread adoption at the consumer level it is creeping into the business platform simply because everyone knows its a good product. No promises just the proof in your hand.
While the iPad is my first Apple device It has not taken long for me to understand why Mac users are so loyal. in an argument with a Windows user last night I asked him what was the last feature added to your operating system? His response, Windows Live. After spraying my half chewed food across the table in laughter I pointed out that iOS 4.2 added 100 features and improvements to my iPad, he had no comeback.
Whatever Apples grand plan is you can bet your sweet a$$ it’s gonna be the best kit around. With the amount of money going into their backend and online services, they are gonna provide some of the best content and services.
Not sure I could ever go back to Windows. Just doesn’t make sense. (like this announcement lol)
@kenw1
I think you are giving apple way more power than they actually had. You’re looking from a perspective of now to a situation back then. To a company with a lock on 90+% of the desktop market, apple was not overly significant nor was much of anything they did with respect of the desktop OS. Bleeding a few customers to apple really wasn’t hurting microsh*t. Microsh*t’s biggest competitor was itself (getting people off XP). Most people couldn’t tell you anything about the promises that were ditched in longhorn. Nor would most people care. If what you’re saying is true then the exodus to apple would have been enormous. It wasn’t.
Rather good post. I just became aware of your own web site in addition to wished to declare that I have definitely experienced looking your current website posts. All things considered I’ll be subscribing in your give food to so i i do hope you compose once more in the near future!