In the increasingly Google-YouTube-Web 2.0 age we inhabit, it’s become fashionable to dismiss Windows as a relic. Ask around the office. You’ll hear the Gen Xers sneer about how Microsoft’s operating system is, well, so yesterday. Even a fair number of IT greybeards are warming to the notion that the times, they are a changing.
Is Windows Still Relevant?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The question is rhetorical since the even the article goes on to say “The reality is that Windows remains as important as ever.”
But in some senses the gen Xers are making a good point. You don’t have to use Windows – and certainly not your copy of Windows – to participate in a host of increasingly sophisticated things on the web. You can use Apple, Linux, BSD, whatever, from anywhere, and as peripherals like mobiles and consoles improve you aren’t so tied to a PC anyway.
Second, Vista might well represent the end of Windows as a huge, monolithic enterprise that takes years of pain to develop, costs billions in R&D and almost breaks the company that does it. Even Microsoft must be thinking there’s a better way to approach OS design.
yes, you are absolutly right!
Sorry, in what sense has Vista ‘almost broken’ them? Are they now skirting the shoals of bankruptcy? More on-the-point, are you further suggesting that it won’t be the massive cash-cow they envisaged?
Vista’s supposedly troubled gestation is not that different from its predecessors, it’s just extrapolating on all the trends from one release to the next: time-and-budget-overshootin’, feature-cannin’, management-reshufflin’, but ultimately …
…profit-makin’.
As much as I loathe Windows saying that it is irrelevant is pretty fscking dumb. In what offices do people say this? In bizarro world?
For sure no-one I know or work with say it but maybe that’s because they’re are not morons totally removed from reality.
I guess there’s always people who think the latest over-hyped tech (*cough*Web 2.0*cough*) is the best things since sliced bread (what’s so great about sliced bread anyway?) and that it will change everything forever.
*cough*Web2.0*cough* *cough*is*cough* BULLSHIT*cough*
To be hones, anybody mentioning Web 2.0 in their articles lose any credibility in my eyes.
However, I think people consider sliced bread so good because you don’t have to slice the bread yourself.
Not that I can see any particular problem with slicing it yourself, but what else could it be?
Anyway… Honey Ale from any microbrew easily beats sliced bread
…
Back to the article. It was pretty much a lot of irrelevant nonsens. No true content. No jabs at Microsoft, no jabs at anyone, no nothing at all.
I don’t think web services will _ever_ replace running local applications on a stand-alone pc. They will keep supplementing each other, but that’s it.
I don’t think web services will _ever_ replace running local applications on a stand-alone pc. They will keep supplementing each other, but that’s it.
Moving entirely to web services would require a level of quality service guarantees and bandwidth that simply isn’t possible right now.
Personally I have doubts it will ever be possible. There will be always be a need for applications capable of running without having network access.
True, the need may decline, but it will not disappear. Anyway, I think people should concentrate on making the “worlds” supplement eachother even better, enhancing both of them.
Usually great break-throughs come from combining technologies and not replacing them.
Sorry, its just not there yet. Ajax etc. is baby steps in terms of on-demand software, but anyone who has worked with Ajax, or tried to model (or work with!) an extensive HTML/Ajax based user interface will tell you it’s not even close to what you can get from a true OS.
But some things are showing promise. Flex 2.0 is outright great, and faster broadband lines will of course make rich on-demand user interfaces more common. But as a replacement for your everyday work, it is neither ready nor getting there soon.
Windows is far from dead. In fact, I think .NET, C# and Singularity shows very promising development for the platform. Let’s just hope the Linux world starts being truly inovative soon (today it is largely copying stuff, sorry), and give Apple and MS some real competition!
Let’s just hope the Linux world starts being truly inovative soon (today it is largely copying stuff, sorry), and give Apple and MS some real competition!
The Apple and MS worlds are also largely just copying stuff, but as someone who uses Linux and home and Windows at work I’m constantly seeing little innovations from the OS side that I wish I could make use of at work. You have to have blinders on not to see them.
Some features that are being announced for closed Operating Systems have been available in open ones for years, yet get called innovations. The term is just completely abused.
And OSS copies from closed source, it’s just one big incestuous copy-fest. Trying to ignore the copying that OSS does is an example of those blinders you are talking about.
“And OSS copies from closed source, it’s just one big incestuous copy-fest. Trying to ignore the copying that OSS does is an example of those blinders you are talking about.”
Yes and I never said OS doesn’t copy stuff. I said closed source vendors *also* copy stuff.
Actually, you didn’t:
“The Apple and MS worlds are also largely just copying stuff, but as someone who uses Linux and home and Windows at work I’m constantly seeing little innovations from the OS side that I wish I could make use of at work. You have to have blinders on not to see them.
Some features that are being announced for closed Operating Systems have been available in open ones for years, yet get called innovations. The term is just completely abused.”
>>Let’s just hope the Linux world starts being truly inovative soon (today it is largely copying stuff, sorry), and give Apple and MS some real competition!
Yeah, we all know how Windows was years ahead of Linux in being ported to AMD’s innovative x86_64 platform.
😆
Linux isn’t about copying stuff. Actually Microsoft is copying Linux by now, and have been doing that for years. The difference is that Microsoft is now even copying Linux in regard to the desktop.
However, I agree with your first two paragraphs.
Well, what are they copying in particular?
Indeed, I would like some specifics here as well.
It might just be me, but I find it humorous when in the same paragraph you tout .NET and C#, yet at the same time complain that Linux just copies stuff.
Maybe if .NET and C# were called MSJava, it would be more clear.
There will always be an operating system, and in case of WinNT/ReactOS this is an state-of-the-art operating system design, in contrary to some old-style-unix imlementations which are hyped (literally) to dead.
AJAX is just a PR name for an non-standard ECMA-Script (javascript/jscript/etc.) features.
AJAX may arise a new advanced way of website development, but it can by no mean make operating systems obsolete! You need an operating system and a web-client (a browser or what ever).
In near future, companies may sell gadgets similar to current mp3 players but provide more functions. e.g. a game-console-style internet apps, just 2-4 buttons as interface, for people who love ipod & co. a great thing.
Online applications will never replace the traditional variant because well, they still need a browser and thus OS in order to run.
Other than that, web apps are slow and unreliable. Would you hand over your important presentation slides to an online web app, relying on t3h 1nterw3b to work in your presentation room?
I sure as hell would not.
Me neither. And even though I don’t work on anything anything super secret, I still would be very nervous about handing over control of my work to some megasite where I can’t even tell who’s accessing it.
Posting this article is a guaranteed way to ignite a flame war.
That “article” might as well have been called, “Summary of why people side with the EU and not Microsoft” for all it had to do with the relevance of Windows yesterday, today and probably the next five years.
That article had about 5% to do with relevance, 80% to do with how Microsoft ships Windows and 15% worth of unless fat.
Ooohh!! Another “Windoz Suxx” headline!
Who cares if the article says something different…
Loli-Queru, I think everyone who follows this site kows your opinion already. Thank you, I have better ways to loose my time than reading again and again the same stuff.
Well the truth has to come out sometime, since most are in denial. I mean look at all the people that are going to buy Windows Vista Ultimate.
Loli-Queru, I think everyone who follows this site kows your opinion already. Thank you, I have better ways to loose my time than reading again and again the same stuff.
Eugenia actually uses Windows XP as her main operating system…
And more over : Eugenia just linked the article. Her articles are way better than the one posted in the link.
I knew the “has just linked the argument” was coming out
Let’s just say I’m not in love of “past the first paragraph” style. I’m not saying there’s an easy way to avoid it, too.
Just please, do we really need to get noticed about an article which is 60% sensationalistics and another 40% which is easily summed un in “but a lot of people will use it anyway”?
I’ll try to be constructive then: has there already been a discussion on not-reccomanding an article? (negative vote)
Then don’t read the article, sheesh, it’s your time, manage it
While I don’t think that desktop OSes are in general irrelevant, the line between home and Internet fades. Internet becomes THE platform, more and more applications are designed in the web-frontend <-> server database backend way. You still need the desktop OS to access them, but the application makers don’t have to care about win32, glibc, cocoa etc, anymore.
It is just a matter of time a version of writely comes out, with no connection to google, but your corporate server instead.
The future will be connected:) and the number of people using more than one computer daily (and yes computer here means cell phone, ipod, car-stereo:) is growing.
Sooner or later we won’t accept having access to our data (fun, music, pr0n) only from one of them…
The day web apps replace my desktop apps is the day hell freezes over. It seems like the whole ‘web apps taking over everything’ is simply a wet dream in the minds of most analysts, and I hope it stays that way.
I’ll agree that web applications make a lot of sense in cases where you don’t need a lot of functionality, but the LAST thing I want is to be running all my apps in a f**king web browser.
Right now, I’ve got a PIM (calander, todo list, notes, etc) that doubles as an ‘outliner’ app running in my system tray, and it consumes just 3.5MB of RAM. I’m not sure if you’re ever going to get that kind of performance out of a web app, especially if it’s written in Java or .NET
Saying that Windows is becoming irrelevant is slightly premature. There are an awful lot of applications written for it, and people depend on formats written for software that runs on it.
The problem is bringing computing to the wider world, and getting people to use a computer when they’re not even realising it. Microsoft’s futuristic home thing is a bit funny there, because they have Windows on multiple panels in the home, Windows on the kitchen surface, Windows in the television……. The weakness with Microsoft’s business model is that they make money purely from Windows, and then Office. Nothing else. Everything else is close to irrelevant, and at best provides a nice revenue boost, but even they depend on Windows or Office.
Microsoft’s business model just does not scale to this extent, because do you have to have a license for every flat panel in your home and every kiosk in a city centre? Who pays for it? If it’s based on a subscription, who pays for it? There’s simply no way that Microsoft and Windows is going to go very far beyond the PC world. What’s required is a method of creating a system, being able to give it away for free and fund it at the same time, and allowing new devices to be created with no overhead.
What we’re seeing is the beginnings of Windows and operating systems simply becoming part of the required infrastructure, like sewers, railways roads. In order to allow that to happen, which Microsoft wants to, things are going to have to get simpler and cheaper, and Microsoft will conversely fight it because it’s not in their financial interests. From then on it’s only a matter of time until someone finds a way of making this happen, and then Windows will become irrelevant.
“Saying that Windows is becoming irrelevant is slightly premature. There are an awful lot of applications written for it, and people depend on formats written for software that runs on it. ”
You hit the nail here. One of the main reasons to use Windows nowadays is to keep compatibility with proprietary file formats, most notably those of MS Office. But there’s a growing trend towards open formats, and it looks like Microsoft is being gradually forced to support them:
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/
After all, you can do all those things from Apple OS X, GNU/Linux, Windows, … the title should be “Is OS still relevant ?” It just seems that is better to attack Windows in this site, isn’t it ? Just my couple of cents.
Well no, Linux/BSD are constantly evolving and thats hardly true of Windows, after all XP is over five years old. Would you be happy with a five year old mobile phone?
“Well no, Linux/BSD are constantly evolving and thats hardly true of Windows, after all XP is over five years old. Would you be happy with a five year old mobile phone?”
If it does all I want, heck yea! Dont change it if it’s not broken. One of the large reasons that Linux is evolving is cause stuff still doesn’t work easily, and there are still more compatibility issues, and other stuff to be ironed out. It’s a permenant work in progress.
Back on the windows side, you know what would make a perfect Vista? WinXP with kernel redone for security. That is one thing that would make it an OS to last a lifetime. All the other crap they added, like the interface that slows down your computer while making your computer look silly, and whateve the heck they did to get BF2 and a bunch of other games to run 25% slower than in XP… that is all garbage.
Theres nothing wrong with the ‘kernel’ security. Its the userland that is/was/whatever so horrendous.
Windows is also constantly evolving, just not at the pace that you think is useful. Most business don’t want major changes in thier OS every 18 months, they want stability, and ROI, for both the software, and the training. Also, Vista would ahve been out 18 months ago if not for MS dropping the ball
I might be wrong here but I read somewhere that the base version(the one that no one will buy) of Vista had no ability to connect to the internet via LAN or Dialup.
IMHO, (if this is correct) then this version is about as useless as a … (Add your own example here).
This hardly seems to be a piece of positive evolution, more like a branch that will lead nowhere rather like neanderthal man?
If the likes of Google can pull this off there will be much gnashing of teeth in Microsoft, Intel and AMD offices worldwide. Low CPU spec Thin Clients would be all that were needed.
And before anyone says so, at least 50% of PC users do not play shootem up games! So for a bit of Word Processing, The odd spreadie, web browsing and music downloading, who needs the bloatware that is Vista?
You’re wrong.
The article bouncved all over the place, and didn’t really touch on a lot of issues as to the relevancy of windows in society and on people’s compters. It didn’t address why most of the people use it, and why most of the people will continue to use it, and why windows sets the standards for things. Instead, it talked a lot about court cases of 97, court cases of 06, and a bunch of other stuff.
If you want to see windows become errelevant, get all the games to run (get ported?) on alternate OS’s, without frame losses or fiddling with stuff. Get all the apps (ported over?) to run on alternate OS’s without emulation and fiddling with stuff. By fiddling with stuff I mean going through any kind of additional parameter editing that is beyond the parameters required for seamless install of an application in a windows environment.
Once that is done, I am sure people can start to talk about windows becoming irrelevant.
The only way to deal with flamebaits (“articles”? naah, too strong a word). As an alternative, let users mark with little dancing flames: the more, the worse …
rehdon
Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s ask some real questions.
Is consumers’ choice still relevant?
Is fair competition still relevant?
Is software quality still relevant?
Are open standards still relevant?
Google : most of the Google programs run on windows only. even gtalk, desktop and many other depend solely on windows platform. There must be some reason why google is not developing any programs for linux platform…
you-tube: I don’t know much about this but I know that video conferencing never works well on linux. gnomemeeting needs IP adress to connect other person? forget about flash, java and other animations…and streaming video?? what is it?
Web 2.0 : again compare performance of FF, opera and (IE/konqueror), (MS office/OO) on both linux and windows platform and then se what is relevant.
Google : most of the Google programs run on windows only. even gtalk, desktop and many other depend solely on windows platform. There must be some reason why google is not developing any programs for linux platform…
BlaFUDbla.. Hey what’s that Google Earth doing on my Fedora box? Look, the Eiffel Tower! Hey it happens to be on the iBook too. Isn’t that the Sears Tower I’m looking at? Wow, suddenly gmailchecker is telling me I got new mail! It just dropped down from the Gnome toolbar! Hey, someone’s tryin’ to chat with me.
Yeah, I think I should change my platform.
Don’t forget Picasa.
These are all things that have previously been worked out with better alternatives on other platforms. Google is just filling gaps particular to the Windows platform.
In linux you can manage to have most of the things Windows runs, and some others. But then, would you invest on a platform where a lot of people sees paying for software as a bad thing?
Paying for software is not a bad thing. Paying for software that’s crap is a bad thing. Being forced to pay for software that’s crap is even worse. Being forced to pay for software that’s crap to maintain the illegal monopoly of a greedy, deceptive corporation that doesn’t deserve its de facto monopoly in the first place is worst of all.
Edited 2006-10-10 17:16
Ok… wait while I edit some video on my Web based copy of Avid. LOL
Next! 🙂
I’m actually a bit suprised he didnt mention the “GoogleOS”. Web 2.0 is going to carve out a niche, but it simply does not have the potential to replace the current paradigm. web 10.0 *maybe*.
This is an article by the uninformed, to the uninformed.
“Dear mom,
I went to sleep, and woke up in an alternate reality.
Here Windows is irrelevant.”
congratulations!
Windows is still relevant to view all those DRM’ed media files besides those adamant IE only sites.
I am saying this as a Regular Ubuntu User!!
Well, if you hang out in the dingy backwaters of the web, I suppose. My 2 banks, Etrade, Flickr, YouTube– all work perfectly in Mac.
…now that their share in the market has dropped from 100% to 99%. Windows will continue to be “relevant” as long as it holds the elephant’s share of the user/client market.
Windows 1) networks poorly 2) has horrible security 3) isn’t robust enough for the high-system demand web apps coming down the pike.
The future belongs to modern OS’s: BSD, LINUX, OSX
I suppose it would kill you to actually detail, compare, and contrast your points, eh?
The majority of posters on here are right: Windows is (unfortunately) still relevant.
Personally I think there’s more chance of Linux completely taking over from Windows in the next 10 years than there is of Web2.0 taking off any more than it has (i.e. basically for tv viewing instead of using a tv card, and worldwide-accessible webmail).
And NO, I DON’T think there’s much chance of Linux “taking over in the next 10 years”. What I think is that in 50 years there will be something else that looks more like Linux/Unix than it looks like Windows.
Of course, that’s assuming there isn’t another breakthrough, such as (for example) people talking to computers the way they do in Star Trek. Until that happens the majority of people will still see computers (no matter what OS they are running) as “hard to use”.
People really seem locked into the concepts of what an application is. How about we change the sentiment from web-based apps to web-based processes? You may not get the same look ‘n feel from a web-based “app”, but you can certianly achieve much of the same functionality if you break things down into what you really need versus what you’d like to have.
My company has a traditional Windows/Office infrastructure for client desktops. But a significant majority of our business processes have been migrated from client-side apps to web-based interfaces. Our JD Edwards/Oracle ERP system is front ended by web based interfaces for things like order tracking and admin. Our corporate reporting is managed by a series of web-based interfaces, including Business Objects. Our customer service and tech support teams use web based front-ends for our traditional ticketing systems. Our internal and external training and testing is delivered by web. Our customers interact with us by a web-based partner extranet for many common admin tasks like invoicing, ordering, tracking, price quotations etc. We are tied into our supplier ERP systems via web and XML interfaces allowing for unified delivery of information both internally and externally. Our CRM is web-based. Our lead tracking is web based. Our corporate email has the typical web-based front end. The vast majority of our typical day-to-day business processes occur without a single dependency on Windows per se.
Sure, we still have the aforementioned Office rich client apps to deal with, but even those are housed on a citrix farm and universally accessible on any platform supporting a citrix client. We have an SSL extranet gateway that supports universal access from any SSL-enabled browser to our core business applications. We even have software from Nokia for optimizing remote access to our business systems from smart phones.
Much of this would have been difficult to realize a few years ago. In the past we used Windows-based applications for things like CRM and ERP, even if they were simply front-ends for server based apps. The few web based applications out there were pretty much depdenent upon IE, which in turns creates a dependency on Windows. Even our traditional IPSec-based VPN software only ran on Windows.
There will always be a need for rich client applications, certain things simply will not port themselves to remote deployment. Even I struggle sometimes with OOo2 as a replacement for Word or Excel, I can’t imagine trying to use a browser. And I can’t even fathom a web-based equivalent for Autocad.
But at the same time, pointing only to those examples as being absolutes and typical of computing in general misses the mark. There is a shift happening, and it’s happening so subtly that apparently many people are missing it.
It may not be as perceptible for consumers and home users, but businesses are definitely cutting the tether to Windows for business processes and applications where possible. In doing so, they are slowly reducing the relevancy of the client OS. So I don’t think this is about eliminating the relevance of Windows itself, just eliminating the dependency on Windows as necessary for general computing requirements. In the example of my own company, though our standard infrastructure as I pointed out is the traditional Windows/Office metaphor, I can happily co-exist on linux with nothing more than a web-browser and citrix client and nobody’s the wiser.
That’s the shift that’s happening. Doesn’t mean Windows is becoming obsolete, just means that Windows role has to change if Microsoft expects to sustain it’s dominance. And they are realizing this, if you note the emphasis they’re placing on services and the data center, as well as thin client computing. Remember that this whole concept is what sparked the original browser wars a decade ago, and while Netscape was probably too far ahead of their time in thinking businesses were ready to migrate apps to a proprietary server with universal web clients, the technology is beginning to catch up. MS won’t be able to turn the tide this time, there’s too much momentum behind it.
All the remains to be seen is how everything is really going to shake out over the next five years. Windows and rich-client apps aren’t going to disappear, but they’re not going to be the anchors they once were, either.
As about 5 years ago a lot of “analysts” were “predicting” we’d all be using thin clients by now and that the PC would become irrelevant.
I was skeptical about that then, and I am skeptical that it makes any sense whatsoever for the web to be a platform for major applications. (Sure, some things, and many standalone apps can be improved by being more internet-enabled).
I am sure there are some areas in which the web can be utilized in this regard, but just as I prefer a solid threading UUCP newsreader over a browser-based web forum interface, I have doubts that the web will ever provide anywhere near as satisfactory an experience as a dedicated standalone application. For most things, anyway. Even Java applets tend to look like crap on my systems. At best, my reaction to Java apps is surprise when they don’t suck.
I should start my own analyst “group” and tech press dedicated to mocking the fad-idea-of-the-year. Push content, thin clients, profitless “business models”…web as an application platform…I’d be wrong sometimes, but I’d probably be right more often than not.
Of course, it is entirely possible I’ll be eating these words in a few years, but I doubt it.
From my own experience as a user, AJAX is a useful hack around the limitations of browsers and the web as an application interface. To the extent that it has made things like webmail far more usable, I applaud it, but again, to me AJAX simply makes web apps not suck as much – and not much more than that.
It doesn’t fill me with the kind of excitement that others seem to be feeling. It still doesn’t exceed the functionality of the dedicated standalone clients that I use. Maybe in the future I’ll use some kind of web application and feel differently, but, I’ve not encountered anything that has impressed me yet.
Then of course, there are the security ramifications of increasingly complex, internet-exposed applications.
And as for Windows, I don’t think it will be irrelevant for the forseeable future. Even in a worst case scenario where Vista is a disaster, security and stability wise, I’m fairly certain 90%+ of the world will be running on their desktops within 2 years.
Which is irrelevant to me. I’ll still be using Linux two years from now…But I don’t kid myself as to Microsoft’s dominance and the stubbornness with which people resist change or alternatives (and in many cases, because they just don’t have any problems with what they’re already using).
Vista is a year late and it’s still $2 short. I have no great love for it, but I need it for compatibility with the programs I’ve become accustomed to and use regularly (Paint Shop Pro, Ulead VS 10, DVD Shrink, et al, plus a hundred smaller apps).
If ReactOS ever gets off the ground, it’ll be goodbye Windows.
Google + Firefox are my OS. Windows is just a device driver for Firefox, and can be replaced by Linux.
OK, I acknowledge that the above statement is overstating the current state of things, but it is becoming more and more true for me.
The above discussion has focussed on comparing Windows apps with Web 2.0 apps, but also important are cross-platform native (and Java) applications, like Open Office, Picasa, NetBeans IDE, DB Visualizer, Emacs (or vim), Thunderbird, and Audacity. All of these run great on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
Google Calendar sends me SMS alerts to my cell phone. And I can share my calendar. I don’t need to synchronize it between work and home. There’s no way I’d revert back to a desktop calendar program.
I can access email, notes, and calendar from my Nokia 770.
I store notes in a wiki at work and have a wiki for family projects. A bonus is that it allows for sharing and collaboration.
I store source code and long documents in CVS. I can check out code at work and home on Mac OSX, Windows, or Linux. I carry around a small portable 120 GB drive for my photo and video editing projects that are impractical to store in CVS.
Sure I like the eye-candy of Vista, but it won’t seduce me into using Windows-only applications — it’s not worth the cost of tying me down to a single OS platform. Not in 2006. Today’s connected world demands Location Independence. Favor online services with open APIs and cross-platfrom applications. I eventually want all my data stored on servers so that I’ll access from cellphone, Nokia 770, work computer, home computer, and airport kiosk and foster collaboration and sharing.
In what universe does the submitter live in?
My personal opinion is:
That Windows will never go away, and niether will MacOSX or Linux, BSD etc.
and anyone who thinks so is delusional. smart clients intergrated into webservices, and intergrated in network archirtectures are the future, however that happens.
-Nex6
what is web?
place where you need proprietary soft from Adobe to see/listen proprietary format (Flash)?
http://www.youos.com
(and many other projects like it..)
need I say more?