Not Another Review of Vista
Microsoft’s new operating system Vista becomes available to the general public today. The OS is reviewed here, here, and here, just to name a few places. But I think the reasons that release of Vista is an important milestone in the tech world are NOT Vista’s new look or its new security features, or its new toolbar.
From a business perspective, Microsoft’s development and marketing of Vista will probably be studied in textbooks for decades. Five years and something like 10 billion dollars in the making-an eternity in software-and with many of it’s promised features missing, the operating system is being released to a cautious public, and to an IT environment that is probably more skeptical than anything else. Still, Vista’s commercial success is assured, regardless of how good or bad it is. The “network effect” created by the installed base and an infrastructure reliant on Windows will ensure that all Microsoft has to do is stop selling XP to OEMs like Dell and Sony, and within 2 years, or about the average upgrade cycle for a PC, something like 80 or 90 percent of Windows users will be on Vista. Sure, there may be some defections during that time to Linux and Apple, and that revolution may yet come. But that’s a different topic.
The thing is this: While Vista is an important upgrade, and it has new features that we will appreciate when we use them, take a step back and ask this: Is there really anything that you can’t do on your computer today that Vista will suddenly allow you to do? This question isn’t limited to just Vista-Apple is about to unleash Leopard as well. You can ask the same question about different flavors of Linux. Some things may be easier or may make more sense, or more secure, or look prettier, but the point is that we all use our machines for pretty similar tasks. Internet. Word processing. Spreadsheets. Email. Music. Photos. Movies. Games. A new operating system doesn’t really change in a significant way how we handle any of those tasks.
Think back to the IBM’s classic failure to understand that software was where the value was in the computer business, the blunder that created Microsoft. IBM believed they were in the business of selling hardware, and software was incidental. Fast forward now to the release of Vista: Is this the beginning of a return to this mindset?
Sure, Apple and Microsoft do a brisk business in selling operating system upgrades to their users, but the overwhelming advice being given for Vista this time around is what many people probably do already-wait until you buy a new system, and the OS that is included at that time is your new upgrade. While I believe this has long been the strategy of the less-computer savvy among us, I suspect that with Vista, IT departments will probably be thinking along similar lines. Businesses and home users both have to ask, what can I do with Vista that I can’t do now?
The increasing use of open standards like JPEG files, MP3s, HTML and XML-even PDFs are now going to be an open standard-along with the growth of simpler, web-based applications that eliminate the need to have software installed on a machine might be leading us to an era where it really doesn’t matter what computer we have or what operating system we use. Already I can sit down at an Internet café and read my email with Gmail, check my RSS fees with Bloglines, share my photos with Flickr, and when I am done, I close the browser and I am done. In this scenario, the operating system is truly a background part of the machine. As long as it works the way we expect it to and stays out of the way, that’s all we’ll need.
Perhaps in the end, IBM will be proven right, and the software will be incidental.
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huh, wa you say ?
[…] Original post by Geekfoolery and software by Elliott Back […]
BUT…
That is the way it should ALWAYS have been! The operating system should be an (almost) irrelevant, background part of the process! That is what operating systems are for! It was only Microsoft that tried to change this basic premise, because they wanted to leverage their operating system into All Things Microsoft. And it is looking as though in the long term they have failed, as inevitably they must.
No surprise. Just a lot of pain in the process, that could have been avoided if it were not for greedy and selfish corporations (people).
In the way early days of Apple ][ and DOS and the like, and everything was a command line, there was actually very little talk of the “operating system” at all. You wanted to spend as little time there as possible. The first Mac presented a radical change to this, but even then, it wasn’t seen as “wow, look at this new *operating system*, it was *look at this machine.*
Vista is coming along and really, for the first time, people are saying what will this do for me?
And people who know more about it at a deeper level are asking what is this going to prevent me from doing? Think the activation scheme, the DRM, etc.
We have another Vista review of sorts and it’s on the Geeks network:
http://www.nonpcgeeks.com/2007/02/06/vista-microsoft-and-fanboys-argh/trackback/
Looks like no one is getting Vista at least until SP1…
you said, what is vista going to prevent me from doing?
well i can answer that for you, they a trying to stop the whole “download” thing. they are going to block all websites and P2P software that support FREE music or movies. i am not lying, this is true. we are being pushed, forced if you will, into buying vista. all the new laptops and pc’s are coming out with vista allready installed.
Bob
I didn’t even touch on the whole ugly DRM mess that is in Vista, but you’re absolutely right.
And you’re also right the MS is trying push/force us into Vista (how long til we get the press release that XP is no longer supported, followed by the discovery of really nasty security exploit?). However, as Mac user, I’ll only be spectating, to not participating.