"Beleaguered Microsoft!" w00t w00t

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21898/

"Microsoft is dying"

Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead!

They committed suicide when Vista came out. They just haven't decomposed yet.

Wild merrymaking please ensue...

 

http://macdailynews.com
Yeah, as if I am going to believe macs news.
MS isn't dying the single bit. Win7 is just awesome, macs are just jealous.

 

Ha! Me laugh at your puny OS!

 

How about we avoid OS wars on a forum devoted to a cross-platform product?

--Eric

 

At least windows doesn't need silly mac bashing commercials, unlike mac needs.

 

Agreed.

 

Seriously, guys/gals. Use the tool you like.

We all use Unity and the computing platform hardly matters. I like my Macs and the MacOS and I think Windows 7 looks promising. Microsoft has had nowhere to go but down for a long time. The competition from Apple and Google and Mozilla has lit a fire under Microsoft and everyone is competing hard. This is great for ALL of us.

Now we have a little thread for people to call each other names and mock each other's purchasing decisions. :roll:

Can't we all just enjoy it, together?

 

Eric wins.



Perfect.

 

Seriously, if this thread turns into a pissing match about Mac vs. Win then it'll get locked in a hurry.


Besides, that article is skewed quite a bit. Sure, M.soft's sales/revenue might be down and Apple is on a surge but that doesn't mean M.soft is dying. Apple has done a smart thing with all their "lifestyle" products (iPod, iPhone, etc.) as that's bolstering their bottom line nicely. It's entirely valid for M.soft to note the global economic issues as a factor as it is for many business sectors.

 

Having been a Apple user since 1981 or so, I could say something about predictions of companies "about to go out of business any time now." <cough>

Anyhow, I rebooted into windows last week to play some L4D with some friends. Somehow my firewall turned itself off. In very short order, without having navigated to a single porn site or even launched a browser, my computer was suddenly throwing up dialogs from AVG all over the place. Something about 67 infestations of such and such rootkit trojan horse. True story!

 

There hasn't been a good OS since AmigaOS

 

Linux is still good.

 

Greatly exaggerated, etc.

I've been hearing this for a while now, first with IBM's OS/2 Warp 3, then with Java, then with Larry Ellison from Oracle with his beloved Network Computers, then how they were going to become irrelevant through the .com craze up to 2000, then with the Year of the Linux Desktop, then when Google starting putting out apps.

At least CodeWeavers, the maker of the CrossOver products, has the sense to see these things in the right light:

http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20090724/

 

They are joking, aren't they? If not, I feel sorry for them

 

Chcek the first milestone in their increased revenue graph if there are any doubts.

 

The Codeweaver guy knows how silly his chart is and is having fun with it while using the opportunity for some nice promotion.

If I was going to make an educated guess about the future of operating systems, it would be that the choice of operating system will be far less important to most people in the future. Instead, you will choose a web/internet platform to run all consumer and office apps. Operating Systems will be things that professionals --like us-- will care about for their complicated apps and computing environments.

Look at Unity. The most exciting feature for most people is that you can run games in a web browser without compromise. Why do we want that and what does that tell you about the future of the OS?

All that said, it will take a while.

 

Oh, a downturn wouldn't be at all because of the worst recession in 70 years now, would it?

No no, I'm sure its totally unrelated. Microsoft is dying, nobody else in the world went downward at all.

Oh wait, the other one.

Never trust a Mac user, their heads are buried up their ass. Now if you'll excuse me, I need continue swearing at the mac for making copy paste Windows + C rather than Ctrl + C (drives me f'n bananas).

*Squish*

 

Most mac users are just jealous and that's why they are so stubborn. You can't hate stuff that you paid money for, so they keep lying to themselves

 

It was getting interesting for a minute there, I thought the collective was fighting for the good here, but oh well, the name calling and pettiness is back. I'm leaving this thread, now.

(SO hard not to comment about the ctrl-c lamenting... SOOOOOOO hard. lol.)

 

OS X is like AmigaOS 5.0. Needs datatypes though.

Aside from that, stupid childish comments about operating systems, in a forum devoted to a cross-platform product, make those who make them look bad and unintelligent, and make this topic a waste of time. There should be a "no OS wars" rule....

--Eric

 

Brad Peebler mentioned on a modcast one time that there are people who scout the modo forums, finding out what people are like in a public setting, before they hire them. I think this kind of thread is great for discovering the people you'd never want to deal with in your personal or work life.

 

Sorry for igniting an OS war here, just wanted to get some opinions.

HiggyB, feel free to lock this down.

if you can read this, you don't need glasses

 

@JTBentley: spot on! That right there made me look at that whole article as rubbish.

It started a little rough, we brought it back on track, now it's teetering again... I don't mind discussions about business and whatnot, I liked that this conversation might have started to go the route of "what's the future of operating systems?" as that is very important to the likes of us (content developers wanting mass distribution to users of all types). That to me is exceedingly interesting as we begin to allow Jane/Joe User at home to stop thinking about Mac or Win and more about the tools they way, abstracted from the underpinnings of the machine they bought. Can that really happen? I think so as the web world is an order of magnitude more powerful (features, functionality, capabilities offered) than even just 5 years ago. What lies out there in another 5 years? I can't say for sure but I'm certain that it's gonna rock our world!

If we stay on that then we're golden!



I can read it, I'm rockin' 20/20 vision yo!

 

...I have both a PC and Mac, I like um both.

 

I was really, really hoping that Google would come out with a great OS contender but alas...

As far as Microsoft Dying?


And believe me, after being forced at the time to use Vista (pre SP1) on my last two laptop purchases, I wanted them dead!


-Will

 

I love apple products as much as the next guy, but has anyone else been watching what apple is doing lately?

I'm hoping this thing with them rejecting the Google Voice app is the straw that broke the camels back. Now that the gov is investigating them, it'll hopefully keep them in check. Public opinion of Apple is so high, that they are able to get away with way more than any other software giant would. If microsoft were rejecting random applications because they were offering competitive products and services, everyone would be up in arms. When Apple released an update to iTunes so that it wouldn't sync with the Palm Pre, nobody cared. That would be like microsoft making windows media player work only with the Zune. If microsoft did that, everyone would be screaming bloody murder.

Two years ago, in my eyes, Apple could do no wrong. In the past year or so, they've really started to show their fangs. Hopefully it will improve, because on the flip side, they do make the best products.

In reality, as far as companies go, nothing is wrong with MS. They have really supported the development community and the game development community especially. People just don't realize how much MS has done.

 

As a matter of fact, Zune Desktop does only sync with the Zune, and nobody cares about that either, nor should they. Apple's equivalent of Windows Media Player is QuickTime Player, which has no particular limitations. Let's not engage in double standards here. Apple does provide an iTunes library .xml file expressly for the purposes of making things easier for third party developers, as this file is not used by iTunes itself (which has its own library file).

There's quite a bit wrong with them. They don't deserve a free pass just for supporting game development any more than Apple deserves a free pass just for being "cool". Both companies should be criticized for what they do wrong, and in fact they are.

Um, Microsoft doesn't have their own store yet (Marketplace won't be publicly available until November apparently), so there's nothing for anyone to get up in arms about. Again, you need to compare apples to apples (so to speak ). For all anyone knows, they will in fact reject random applications, and given their history, I don't doubt for a minute that they'll engage in a certain amount of shenanigans of one sort or another.

The truth is that Apple can't really win in this case, nor will Microsoft be able to. For example, the fart apps: when Apple wouldn't allow them, they were heavily criticized for that ("Apple is arbitrarily denying apps, let us have a free store!"), and now that they do, they are heavily criticized for it ("Apple is allowing torrents of worthless garbage to pollute the store, let us have quality control!").

What Apple needs to do is have open and transparent rules about exactly what's allowed and what's not. Right now it's a muddle--the problem is not rejecting applications, the problem is that it's not clear what's rejected and why. When you have cases of apps rejected at first, but then accepted when resubmitted with no changes made--simply because they happened to get a different reviewer that day--you know there's a problem with the process.

--Eric

 

Sounds like the makings of a sequel!

 

It will not be Apple that kills MS but Google

 

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

It's good for Apple if Microsoft does well, and it's good for Microsoft is Apple does well. This is how industry operates...

 

True. Although iTunes does seem to be marketed as more of a generic media application than say a proprietary application for syncing a device. I'd venture to say that most mac users default their audio playing through iTunes. If I was using iTunes to purchase music and then apple makes it difficult to use my purchased media on a device (of my choice) that permits that format, I'd be a bit upset. I'm just saying, it's not quite as comparable to Zune desktop. iTunes plays a much bigger role.

No free pass. The down with MS mentality that has somehow become pop culture, is mostly an unfounded thing. There isn't a real difference compared to any other business trying to be competitive in a rapidly changing market. As someone who has been enrolled in their developer programs and partner programs in the past, I will say that the level of support and free software they give is unparalleled. This is a part of the reason that Windows has been so successful. So many developers have been writing software and been involved in the platform.

More recently Apple has been reaching out to developers and I think that is part of why we are seeing such a boom. Lots of good software is finally available on OSX.

Yes, this is a to be determined thing as far as app stores go. But right now, their mobile devices do not come with a restriction of having apps go through a single network of distribution. So at least as a developer, there are still ways of effectively selling games and apps to windows mobile customers, without restrictions on content.

 

Your idea of 'asking for opinions' is by starting a thread called '"Beleaguered Microsoft!" w00t w00t' and posting a link to a pretty biased article that implies MS is dying?

It sounds more to me like you were looking for a MS bashing crowd and didn't quite find what you were looking for.

 

I enjoy bashing all OS's.

I'm without loyalty, they all have problems.

 

Exactly. Microsoft and Apple might still be 'competing' in the OS arena, but they mutually support each other in many other areas. You'd be hard pressed to find any area of computing where there wasn't at least some influence or connection to Microsoft, and Apple has become a massive player in digital media. It's not hard to see where the two might find a lot of reasons to get along.

Plus the fact that it hasn't been much of a competition in the OS arena for years - each have their established niches that aren't likely to be swayed to another OS, with the only really contentious space left being the upper end of the home user market.