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Marlin275
10-16-2006, 09:52 AM
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November 2006 • Vol.6 Issue 11

Vista Will Double Apple’s Market Share
Dialogue Box by Chris Pirillo

Chris Pirillo has been a Windows fanatic for over a decade. Lockergnome.com sprang to life in 1996 with the intent of connecting other passionate PC users with helpful information. His personal blog, at Chris.Pirillo.com, has been a bit more platform agnostic. He composed this article in an Outlook 2000 plain text message window, and scribbled this byline in a Microsoft Word 2003 document. The content could easily have been written in any application with a text field. So, why then is he still using Windows? Legacy, we think—he’s not quite ready to switch over to a different evil.

For one reason or another, Microsoft abandoned development of Internet Explorer a few years back, falling victim to the assumption that the world didn’t need anything more from a Web browser. This turned out to not be the case. The Firefox Project provided enough of an alternative to convince users and influencers to switch—with a true cross-platform allure too enticing to ignore. Microsoft executives ultimately decided to begin development on IE7, but its release will likely drive even more people to Firefox. Why? Because it’s too little, too late.

I loved Internet Explorer—loved it. Microsoft even sent me a T-shirt for participating in Midnight Madness with the final release of an earlier IE build some years ago when the world was largely stuck on dial-up. I loved using MSN Search. There were few decent alternatives even when Microsoft started serving pop-up advertisements with my search results. Eventually, I grew tired of these annoyances and turned my attention to Google, which, at the time, looked like an inferior product. But, Google made “search” work better than ever before. Windows Live attempts to reinvigorate Microsoft’s online brand, but few people have bothered to pay attention. Why? Because it’s too little, too late.

The industry hasn’t seen a new desktop OS come from Redmond since Windows XP. We’ve all been waiting with bated breath for Vista to revolutionize the way we . . . what the hell is this?! RC1 feels and looks more like an early beta than it does a final product, and they want me to fork over how much for it?

Off the shelf, Windows Vista Ultimate will cost the user $399 per copy, with subsequent licenses weighing in at $359 each. Upgrade prices for Ultimate are slightly less exorbitant ($259 for the initial upgrade and $233 for additional copies). If you’re planning on upgrading your home network of five machines, you’re going to spend $1,191 for five Ultimate upgrades. Conservatively, if you’re upgrading the same network to Home Basic, you’re going to spend $460. This time? It’s too much, too late.

My mom loads her start page and types “Google” into the search box. My fiancée pulls up iTunes to download the latest Bob Dylan album. My dad asks how he can download Firefox because friends told him it was safer to use, but only after asking how to install the latest spyware definitions, copy photos from his camera, back up all his important files, delete the programs he doesn’t want on his desktop, etc.

I’m a nanometer away from switching my family over to OS X when Apple releases Leopard in Q1 of 2007. It looks clean and elegant. It comes with all the software and services the average user could ever want. It runs on the same hardware. A system will be able to dual-boot between OS X and Windows, and pricing is no longer astronomical. But most importantly? With its UI inconsistencies, Vista feels completely schizophrenic, and that’s enough of a reason for anybody to leave Windows in the dust—just like they left MSN Search and IE.

Yesterday’s arguments don’t really hold water in today’s marketplace, and as a serious technologist, you need to recognize that. Forget the whole “Windows has more software” debate because that’s absolute bunk. More and more, we’re moving our lives online, spending our day in an email client and/or a Web browser (if, indeed, they’re not one in the same). We demand easier, better solutions than those that we currently have.

Remember how you felt when you saw “The Phantom Menace” for the first time? I was overwhelmingly disappointed. That’s exactly how Windows Vista RC1 makes me feel, and that’s not very likely to change between now and when the OS goes gold. Before now, there wasn’t a viable “Google” or “Firefox” for the Windows platform. Between Apple’s Boot Camp and Parallels (www.parallels.com), you’re going to have to make a strong argument to keep people from finally making the switch. And you wanna know the worst part of this entire situation?

Microsoft, in each and every instance, has been its own worst enemy.

by Chris Pirillo

You can dialogue with Chris at chris@cpumag.com

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/c0611/44c11/44c11.asp&guid=8CF5E5CB35CB42E1857F6F42970E2A2C

Formula Jr
10-24-2006, 11:16 PM
Aside from various licencing problems, ie, MP3 and some others, and the device driver problem, you can not distingush System X from Fedora Core 5. The graphical user interface is nearly the same. The available apps are nearly the same level of sophistication, again except in the area of iPodness. If Apple thinks it is going to cash in on Sytem X and dual booting with the new intel DC chip set, then APPLE is even more "Too Little, Too Late" than Microsoft was. Then again, I've been technically right, but horribly wrong more often with what I think the market is going to do. Marketing always seems to win, even if the direction seems stupid. A huge misnomer about System X is that it is intuitive. Like hell it is! Its just as non-intuitive as Linux is. The driver problem is really a non-issue now for the most part. USB leveled the field in a very elegant way. I agree with Chris that apps will be on-line in the future.
Broadband essentailly kills the "on mybox" app. That is a whole other thing to think about. And it does change the auguments in a profound way. Google is way ahead of MS and Apple. Google is the first to try this kind of environment, and we have seen how that works before. Google will market test, and then the powers that be, will take over with out all the expensive experientation. then google will stck crash in a spectactular way. We are returning to "super" VT100s, but in this case, it isn't to a main frame; the net is our mainframe. So who cares what is bundled? DSL is on ALL the TIME. You are paying for it by the month. A while back someone said you can't have a eprom, or Rom operating system: That it would be be too big to fit on a chip. What if you just need a terminal and a huge hard drive?

What Chris alluded to, but didn't drive home, is the most important aspect of your home computer is its browser (we old people that keep our teeth in a jar over night, call this a "terminal") and how well that can be integrated with these future on-line apps.

Google exists because of Linux. All the secondary projects they have and are "trying" are stuff that happened seven years ago. Unix people developed the code that linux people then reverve engineered. In some cases, a whopping 30 years ago.

You see, this is all dejevue again. CP/M - Dos. Xerox Star - Apple Lisa/Mac. Apple Mac- Windows. Unix- Linux. Unix-Jobs/Next Unix-Jobs/System X. Wild card Torval unix-linux.

I have to say, I do love System X's digital device capture. It seems to recognize everything, even very odd stuff without having to load up any third party drivers.