http://atvs.vg.no/nyheter/7334-slik-blir-vista.html

http://digg.com/apple/Microsoft_Norway_Features_Vista_on_an_iMac

This is likely something to do with the cosy little arrangement the Beeb has got into with MS.

Ironically, one of the graphics used to illustrate the piece, showing computer windows listing the benefits of Vista, actually used – yep, you guessed it – Mac OS X windows. Chortle ! Clearly there’s a rebellious Mac user in the graphics department !

I never really had a problem with Windows 2000 Pro in the past. It worked well enough as a development platform and I would always install Cygwin to get a bash shell and some compatibility with Unix tools. For this contract I didn’t install Cygwin because the laptop was temporary and the tools were all Java anyway. I have to say, using XP felt like going back in time by about a decade as a developer.

I was using the same Java development tools that I would probably use anywhere: Eclipse, Java 1.4, Ant etc but the day to day usage of XP took a toll. Things just didn’t work right. Now part of that is probably because the XP Pro install was borked. The “IT” guy was purely incompetent and I wasn’t allowed to do much with configuring the machine. But the oddest things just cropped up. For example, I generally leave the Task Manager open in the task bar so that I have the small performance monitor available in the system tray. But for some reason on this machine it would 3 or 4 launches of the Task Manager for this status display to appear. No reason that I could determine, it just didn’t work 3 out of 4 times or so.

One day, out of the blue for no discernible reason, Wordpad decided that it was not available. This continued until I rebooted and then it happened again a day or so later. I used Wordpad to open Unix formatted files which are quite common when working with Java so this was a nasty problem. So I started to reboot the computer every morning and then deliberately test to make sure that Wordpad would work on the current startup. By doing this, I never had that problem again. Just plain maddening. Wordpad is a tiny application yet it appears to be embedded in the OS in some bizarre way. Why would anyone write applications that way?

The thing was, these problems are endemic across the division of the company that I was contracting for. Nobody in the building used the network to share files. Everyone had a USB thumb drive. I haven’t seen sneakernet used on this scale since the early 90′s. Nobody trusted that their computer would be able to connect to another because of the persistent problems with the local active directory domain(s). Everyone was so used to the problem that they just ignored it and worked around it. What a huge productivity waster.

Like I said, these problems are probably self-induced by the lousy IT in the building but it still felt to me like it was coming from the Windows DNA that pervaded the company.

The final comment is that I heard several people mention Vista over the last few days. No one wanted anything to do with it. These people were convinced that trying anything new with Windows just made everything worse. I can’t imagine that this attitude is unique to this company. I think that Microsoft has a huge problem on their hands. Their FUD worked so well, people really have given up hoping for a better solution, even from Microsoft.

Basically, I’m of the view that Microsoft have the market share they have now because of institutional buyers and the network effect surrounding those, rather than very many people actively choosing “oh I think I’ll have Windows over a Mac, I like it better”. Microsoft has the awesome power of Default, hallowed be thy name!

There is every likelihood of continued growth in Mac sales this year however, as the effect this post is about will be present among some buyers. But the end of Windows this is not. I’m sure Microsoft will be crowing about their OEM sales figures soon enough, as the whole generic PC industry is hyper wired for this and has been waiting so long they’re all desperate to regain what they consider to be new Windows version lag sales.

A more troubling matter for Redmond will be the big buyers (read: IT departments) who have every reason to be cautious about new releases. But the chances of them sticking with Windows is a few orders of magnitude greater than them dumping their whole platform and going Mac. Here lies the great distorting factor between OS X and Windows sales.

Anyway, the MS devs were right. Vista is their Copland and unlike Apple they had no choice (and almost limitless resources) so pushed it out the door at last. Or was it more like OS 8?

Microsoft’s only option for their next OS is to do a REAL REWRITE, not a marketing BS one as everything has been since Windows 2000. They need a new core, they need new frameworks, damn they need an OS X to their System 7.

Running Vista apps in Parallels desktop style direct to hardware virtualisation is definitely the way to go. But MS don’t have a NeXT to buy. Or a Be. They’ve got a lot of work to do. And unlike Apple, they have stark ideological reasons NOT to adopt an open source base, be it BSD or Linux.

I’m not laughing at their expense. In fact I’d like to see them really unleash their coders on a long term project they could relish instead of dread. But let’s just say politics is a huge problem for them, and I don’t expect anything more than service packs and rebranding from them for the rest of this decade and a few years after that as well.

Things I read at the Miini-Microsoft blog give an indication of a company that just can’t manage its people to create great products. I know it’s a very self-selecting survey, but it does highlight a lot of political crap and personal issues flying about the halls of Microsoft.

Apple’s OS X and Classic OS should be considered an example of an OS transition done *right*