Right now, I believe Microsoft's big mistake is their arrogance. I especially see this in the Corporate world. MS seems to be following the path IBM blazed..
re: why windows releases take so long, i think there are two issues there:
1) much more varied hardware to test on. ie: thousands of variants of PC clone components, vs apple's controlled hardware platform.
2) the house of cards effect arising from the need to "patch" all the existing security holes. analogy being a house that wasn't originally designed to resist invasions by rats. going back and trying to patch the foundation and walls to keep out rats is a monumental task, especially when many of the engineers who wrote the original code have moved on.
that said, MSFT has a ton of money and legions of programmers. if they can achieve a stable foundation driver- and security-wise, then they can focus more energy on new features. XP was pretty robust driver-wise. security was it's major weakness. service pack 2 addressed security a bit, and longhorn is striving to be much more secure.
only time will tell how well they succeed, but assuming they will never catch up to/surpass OS X in functionality is a very precarious premise.
that said, OS X is still offers a far more visually pleasing and enjoyable interface. longhorn is slated to support quartz-like rendering, but if MSFT continues to use graphic design paradigms that remind me of preschool (eg: " XP's default UI skin, "luna"), then apple design will likely remain apple's edge for a while going forward.
if they can achieve a stable foundation driver- and security-wise, then they can focus more energy on new features. XP was pretty robust driver-wise. security was it's major weakness. service pack 2 addressed security a bit, and longhorn is striving to be much more secure.
There's already a (proof of concept) virus for Vista. As a result, MS has to leave out (or switch off) functionality to counter this (the Monad shell-tool).
There you go. It's only beta 1 and they found a major hole in the new 'super-secure' OS already.
The original poster's mistake was not knowing how to spell "devastate".
Maybe if this post was actually something that took priority over the rest of my life, would I have actually took the timed to spell check or proof read.
Regardless, I misspelled about 12 words in a 702 word post.
12/702 =about 1.7%. Wow. Heaven forbid I mispell a few words.
Comments
1) much more varied hardware to test on. ie: thousands of variants of PC clone components, vs apple's controlled hardware platform.
2) the house of cards effect arising from the need to "patch" all the existing security holes. analogy being a house that wasn't originally designed to resist invasions by rats. going back and trying to patch the foundation and walls to keep out rats is a monumental task, especially when many of the engineers who wrote the original code have moved on.
that said, MSFT has a ton of money and legions of programmers. if they can achieve a stable foundation driver- and security-wise, then they can focus more energy on new features. XP was pretty robust driver-wise. security was it's major weakness. service pack 2 addressed security a bit, and longhorn is striving to be much more secure.
only time will tell how well they succeed, but assuming they will never catch up to/surpass OS X in functionality is a very precarious premise.
that said, OS X is still offers a far more visually pleasing and enjoyable interface. longhorn is slated to support quartz-like rendering, but if MSFT continues to use graphic design paradigms that remind me of preschool (eg: " XP's default UI skin, "luna"), then apple design will likely remain apple's edge for a while going forward.
aka: folks don't buy ferraris for their engines.
Originally posted by imiloa
if they can achieve a stable foundation driver- and security-wise, then they can focus more energy on new features. XP was pretty robust driver-wise. security was it's major weakness. service pack 2 addressed security a bit, and longhorn is striving to be much more secure.
There's already a (proof of concept) virus for Vista. As a result, MS has to leave out (or switch off) functionality to counter this (the Monad shell-tool).
There you go. It's only beta 1 and they found a major hole in the new 'super-secure' OS already.
Originally posted by mrmister
The original poster's mistake was not knowing how to spell "devastate".
Maybe if this post was actually something that took priority over the rest of my life, would I have actually took the timed to spell check or proof read.
Regardless, I misspelled about 12 words in a 702 word post.
12/702 =about 1.7%. Wow. Heaven forbid I mispell a few words.
Originally posted by e1618978
...
In short, Microsoft is trying to become Apple (but with bigger market share). Apple and Sony had better be ready.
But then, they no longer are called "microsoft".
"Microhard", hm, i just can hear the inevitable
"ahm, let me play with ya microhard..."
my2dirty cents