Zoli Erdos and David Berlind both separately looked at the dismal debut of Microsoft’s Vista “upgrade”, and put into words what Microsoft has understood for some years – that the operating system just doesn’t matter anymore.
After some initial dismay in the reading public, Ryan Stewart clarified this meme with a headline that said it all: The desktop OS will still matter, just not which one
User interfaces in the applications that we use are now so mature, and our livelihoods are so specialized into specific fragments of the total computing landscape, that the operating system is no longer relevant to our lives compared with the tasks we have to get done.
As David Berlind, who like many of us spends most of his working day in a browser, reports:
I often find myself being slowed down by Vista.
And as Zoli nails it:
why would anyone want to buy stronger hardware just to run a new Operating System?
I think the same as everybody else, that the OS is just the power we’ll need to turn the wheel that dips the bucket in the well of our particular craving at the time: the bucket of course is the browser, and its related desktop cousins, which surely will evolve into greatly more intelligent collection devices.
And I’ve said that Microsoft believes all this too. The Redmond developer plays across many fronts, and it’s easy to lose sight of where in any particular curve it aims to intersect. For a nice view of this read Microsoft Beyond the Operating System.
The fact is that Microsoft is spoofing everybody with its upgrade jive, and the company is quietly conscious of this. Two elements make up its game in this field.
For the first element we go to ZDNet again, for the insight from Larry Dignan last month to the effect that Microsoft is cutting the clothes of its operating system to suit the cloth of the markets:
Soon you’ll have Kitchen Windows, living room Windows, car Windows and perhaps even garage Windows. Each version will take the core Windows and tailor it to specific devices and applications. – Pondering a world of way too many Windows
And for the second element we let Nicholas Carr have the final words, and beauties they are when it comes to understanding Microsoft. He wrote a piece exactly three years ago that spells out the tragic dilemma of the software developer who has it all:
Machinery breaks down, parts wear out, supplies get depleted. But software code remains unchanged by time or use. For software companies to grow, therefore, they have to give buyers good reasons to throw out perfectly serviceable versions of programs and install new ones in their place. – Microsoft Is Dead. Long Live Microsoft.
Three years later, after Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie gave some interviews this April where he opened up on the company’s strategy, Nicholas Carr’s state-of-play report – which you really should click through to – includes this summation, which I’ll take as the finish line for my opinion on this matter today:
To maintain its growth and profits, it has to focus for the time being on promoting the new versions of Office and Windows, even though they are, by Ozzie’s own implication, relics of the past
What Microsoft is counting on is that the transformation of the software business will proceed at a measured pace, that the company will be able to continue to reap large profits from its traditional products even as it slowly and steadily changes their nature. – Ozzie walks the line
