Thread: Lol @ Microsoft

Originally Posted by Epy

MS is lucky that there are important business applications that are Windows only to keep its worthless ass alive.

If they keep it up with the current trend, not for long. It is just an universal inevitability that any action calls for a reaction. And so many actions can only sustain a trend for so long until something changes.

Look at what it did to me and my company... 5 years ago, if you had claimed that in 3 years I would be using Linux exclusively at home and had changed my business entirely to be based on the linux ecosystem, I would call you nuts, lunatic, a raving mad troll. And while some may be too quick to call my experience simply anecdotal, I would advise against it. In Asia, in particular, Linux adoption rates by corporations have been steadily increasing over the past decade. And my own experience here in a 3rd world country shows the clear advantages of staying away from Microsoft increased costs in infrastructure, constant training, and bandwidth footprint (remember, one 1Gb upload or download in Africa can cost you as much as 7 USD).

Meanwhile I've been getting feedback on many companies who simply don't want, plan, or predict, they will upgrade to Windows 10 in this decade, or next. Microsoft, once again fractured its market and is poised to turn Windows 7 into the next XP. At least for corporations, government and public systems (like ATMs and whatnot). All these attempts at forcing Windows 10 down people's throats are exactly their way of trying to counter what they knew they were starting with Windows 10.

This telemetry disease that caught hold of Microsoft, this immense desire of the company to create a data backbone that can eventually get it into Google's market, this forceful push towards a core technology that will move the Microsoft software ecosystem into a walled online market, all of this is being done at the expense of their operating system. They obviously trust that the market, with the help of advocates and apologists the likes of Peter Bright on Ars, will adapt and slowly cede its natural tendency to resist these type of invasive changes. They are right in a way because the years have shown us that conformism is the real weakness of consumer rights. But other changes are taking place that may affect Microsoft in ways that it couldn't expect. Projects like Vulkan, for instance, have the power to take a large nab of the current DirectX market, with the potential to remove from Microsoft a large group of the one community that has remain loyal to it (out of lack of other choices); PC gamers.

Originally Posted by Epy

I was kind of hoping for that reaction 10 years ago, but here we are still. Hope you are right though. Things like AutoCAD, SolidWorks, RSLogix keep our work using Windows unfortunately. The applications are so big and complex that I don't even want to try wine with them.

There will always be a market for Windows. Not just those corner cases, but even in the mainstream PC market. Microsoft is however taking a path that has the potential to lead to a loss of market that may dramatically change the current PC OS pie chart.

And that is a good thing. Because the Microsoft operating system does not offer anything special that forces specialized software into it. It's its history and its culture that has kept companies from developing similar and equally powerful software on other operating systems. Naturally, a loss of market by Microsoft can change all of that. Linux software already operates nuclear power plants, submarines, nuclear weapons, CERN, FAA traffic control, the NYSE. It's just the commercial market that is still historically dependent on Windows. Not technically dependent, but simply culturally and economically.

O_o

Wow.

I wonder if Microsoft will next change the dynamic linker to report every time a module loads.

Soma

The amazement never stops. If there was an alternative to Windows, I'd change to it in a heartbeat.

> The amazement never stops. If there was an alternative to Windows, I'd change to it in a heartbeat

You should look into OSX and use Xcode. We (work company) used it last year to build part of
a tool set for an application in C. Loved the speed and stability of the application. Yes I know
Macs are still over-priced but they are so worth the additional cost.

I will never put my hands on an Apple product. Ever.

* Becuase I don't like their UI
* Because I don't like how overpriced their products are
* Because I don't like how they physically design their products
* Because I think it's a disgusting company (the way they treat their employees, or have treated them in the past)
* Because they're lagging behind in innovation (well, at least on the mobile side)
* And more I probably can't recall at the moment

* Becuase I vehemtely disagree with their business practices (locked down ecosystem, controlled app store, etc). Anything that takes away our freedom of expression is evil. For example, there's just no way to get nudity onto their mobile platform. Nudity is a form of an expression, but because they say so, it's not allowed. It isn't illegal, so what gives them the right to dictate what we can and can't do in this regard? Or maybe I just made a messenger program, and Apple has their own. Now I'm actually competing with their built-in messenger, so I'm suddenly not allowed to publish said app because Apple thinks it might compete with them (yeah, they use this excuse all the time).