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Post by thurstan on Jun 22, 2006 11:55:53 GMT -5
Well seeing as Bill Gates has been there since the beginning pretty much, thought would poll to see peoples views on him stepping down from his day to day role at Microsoft.
Microsoft is pretty much the cult of Bill, so will the fact he is not running the show mean the beginning of the end for Microsoft? Vista to be the last great OS from Microsoft?
Is this good for the industry?
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Post by miner2049er on Jun 23, 2006 5:42:37 GMT -5
I think it will take a calamitous mistake to lose such a grip on market share.
Let's face it, he's staying on as Chairman anyway.
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Post by thurstan on Jun 23, 2006 6:25:20 GMT -5
yeah he said staying as chairman for as long as possible. I hope that Microsoft will improve with the new leadership structure.
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Post by Golan Klinger on Jun 23, 2006 11:38:36 GMT -5
It's Steve Ballmer who needs to go and I expect his departure will happen around the same time. He just isn't important enough to the organization or the investment community to warrant giving a few years notice. I imagine he'll continue to sit on the board as he is destined to ride on the coattails of his college buddy forever. Ray Ozzie is the one to watch. He's clearly the most important person in Microsoft's future which is unfortunately, or fortunately depending on perspective, not as secure as it one was. I could go on but I suspect I would end up boring everyone to tears. Sorry, you can take the boy out of business school but...
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Post by miner2049er on Jun 23, 2006 16:27:16 GMT -5
Ray Ozzie is the one to watch. He's clearly the most important person in Microsoft's future which is unfortunately, or fortunately depending on perspective, not as secure as it one was. I could go on but I suspect I would end up boring everyone to tears. Sorry, you can take the boy out of business school but... The intital question asked whether this was good for the industry, so.......... let's hear it preppy btw. wasn't Ozzie hand picked by Gates?
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Post by Golan Klinger on Jun 23, 2006 17:52:29 GMT -5
You're right that Microsoft is, to a degree, a cult of personality so I think Bill Gates' retirement is bad for Microsoft and is therefore, good for the industry. Microsoft's growth has already begun to slow and as their control over the industry is diminished, there will be opportunities for others. A good example of this is Firefox. As the non-technical masses grow more and more frustrated with the idiosyncrasies of Internet Explorer, Firefox's market share grows. Scarier still is the growth of Apple which seems capable of breaking Microsoft's strangle-hold on operating systems in a way that OS/2 and Linux were never able to do. If that weren't bad enough, they're losing focus. They're now fighting a video game war with established companies Sony and Nintendo and they're shaking in their boots at the boogey-man that is Google. Their only saving grace is that they still dominate the productivity suite market and if a legitimate competitor shows up, they're really going to be in trouble. Microsoft faced marginalization once before with the explosion of interest in the Internet in the mid 90's. It was Bill Gates and his total control of the company that saved them when he issued his now famous memo, "The Internet Tidal Wave". They have matured as a company since then but I still think that without Gates' leadership, they're in no position to deal with the multiple tidal waves about to hit them. How's that?
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Post by miner2049er on Jun 25, 2006 10:48:25 GMT -5
How's that? Very succinct and probably very accurate too. I don't think they ever entered into the console war with the aim of destroying Sony and Nintendo. What they are after, and are willing to lose money to achieve, is to own the box which sits in everybody's living room beneath their TV. While I, and people like me will use a home cooked method of media management such as MythTV etc, most will go for a Media Center PC and XBox. People want Tivo without the lockdowns, and though Microsoft are pushing DRM, you can stream content among their bespoke systems. The future of O/Ss I think lies initially in the dual running of MAC and Windows. People love the security and d**n good looks of MAC OS but they buy Windows boxes, not for the Windows OS, but what they can run on it, which is pretty much anything. Boot Camp is all well and good, but rebooting to a different OS is not going to catch on. Parallel running is. What then happens is perhaps a merging of the OSs or survival of the fittest. Having said that, if 90% of the world run Linux or MAC, 90% of hackers write viruses for them, so .......................
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Post by Golan Klinger on Jun 25, 2006 16:13:26 GMT -5
Boot Camp is all well and good, but rebooting to a different OS is not going to catch on. Parallel running is. It's funny you should use the world parallel because there is a program called Parallels which is a virtual machine for OS X and it allows one to run Windows applications on the Mac desktop. It's a new product and it works relatively well. The industry leader, VMWare will soon be releasing their product for OS X and perhaps the most interesting development is that Apple themselves are rumoured to be integrating virtualization functionality into the next version of the OS. The whole issue of avoiding the Mac due to the need to run specific Windows-based applications is on the verge of being rendered moot. While there is some merit to the security-through-obscurity argument, it doesn't tell the whole story. Linux, and when I say Linux I mean all the free UNIX-like operating systems as well as UNIX itself and OS X, which is one of those UNIX-like OSes I just mentioned, are inherently more secure by design. By most measures, Windows is a very poor operating system and at the risk of being accused of being either a zealot or living in a fantasy-land where I don't need to run Windows apps [1] I can't understand why anyone would choose to use it. I also don't understand why most North Americans drink crappy beer but that's a discussion for another day. [1] Both statements are true, to a degree.
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Post by thurstan on Jun 25, 2006 16:24:08 GMT -5
Non IT people I know don't like OS X because they can't run the applications they want and are not prepared to put the effort in to learning how to use OS X. The very few that make the effort love it and will never go back to Windows.
For me OS X will not offer me anything different or better than my Windows XP install. Sure I love the look, design and whole philosophy behind it but there is no reason for me to use it, unless I can easily run any Windows application on it.
You're right about Steve Ballmer (I dont agree with his views or opinions, but he is a big personality and love his enthusiasm), he doesnt really add anything creative to the future direction of Microsoft.
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Post by miner2049er on Jun 26, 2006 3:35:53 GMT -5
Linux, and when I say Linux I mean all the free UNIX-like operating systems as well as UNIX itself and OS X, which is one of those UNIX-like OSes I just mentioned, are inherently more secure by design. That's pretty much at base level too. The UNIX family have a root user for administration, and you are advised to always run as an ordinary user. However, Windows takes the opposite stance, and unless you run as Administrator all the time, you can barely run a program.
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Post by thurstan on Jun 26, 2006 5:56:02 GMT -5
I just wish that someone would produce a version of Linux that was as easy to use as Windows. Then it would slowly make inroads into the home market. I have had a computer since I was about 8 and I still have problems installing applications under Linux!
Maybe Microsoft could get over their fear of open source software and slowly Linux-ify windows?
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Post by gmoon on Jun 26, 2006 7:21:22 GMT -5
I just wish that someone would produce a version of Linux that was as easy to use as Windows. Then it would slowly make inroads into the home market. Ubuntu is getting close! Amazing that it's based on Debian. I've had nothing but frustrations with Debian--and I LIKE difficult distros like Slackware! This debate would be over if Micro$oft had released Longhorn/Vista on time. From a desktop perspective, Linux suffers from a lack of a unified direction/vision (of course, many would say that's Linux's strength.)
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Post by miner2049er on Jun 26, 2006 15:04:56 GMT -5
I just wish that someone would produce a version of Linux that was as easy to use as Windows. Once Linux is set up and running, it can even be skinned to look like Windows. Office staff can use it and barely feel the difference. However, when it breaks........... it breaks.
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Post by Golan Klinger on Jun 26, 2006 15:24:47 GMT -5
I just wish that someone would produce a version of Linux that was as easy to use as Windows. Apple already has; it's called OS X. Okay, it isn't based on Linux but as an end-user who finds Linux confusing, the subtle differences between Linux and BSD are meaningless and invisible. OS X offers the wide variety of commercial applications and ease of use of Windows with the power and security of a UNIX. It is the best of both worlds.
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Post by thurstan on Jun 27, 2006 5:01:06 GMT -5
lol good point! I always feel a bit uncomfortable using OS X for some reason, no doubt down to the fact I never get to spend any time with it.
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