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Microsoft RIP! [abcnews.go.com]
The delay of LongHorn is pale by comparison to some past projects, like the OS/2 presentation manager, Windows NT, Windows 95 (almost 4 years after Win 3.1) and so on. Anyone ever hear of (i think it was called) Omega that never even saw the light of day? Heck, MS Outlook and the full MAPI was way overdue while Lotus beat them to the punch about 18 months earlier, but eventually MS came thru and became the de facto standard.
The only thing that didn't pass the smell test for me was the Chicken Little author of the "microsoft's sky is falling" article. Smelled like something, but the wind wasn't blowing from Microsoft on this one.
Micro$oft hasn't been able to keep up the pace it set in the past. It's lost in court cases regarding it's monopolistic practices. It does seem to have to issue an awful lot of security patches.
Nothing stands forever.
I like another analogy - What's the difference between the Titanic and Noah's ark?
Titanic was built by professionals (Microsoft) while Noah's ark was built by amateurs (Linux).
Microsoft for as long as I've know them have never kept up that "pace" as many of their projects have been long overdue in the past. What you perceive as a "pace" is just the collective output of small army of people that keeps cranking out a variety of products. On one hand you criticize them for too many "patches" then on the other hand you criticize them for being late. Those patches take resources that could've been working on Longhorn, but the millions of businesses and consumers in the field would get hacked, you can't have it both ways.
The quality assuarance testing of all the interoperability between Windows, Microsofts own fleet of products, and the wide variety of 3rd party hardware and software in the marketplace to make sure MOST of it works out of the box is a HUGE undertaking. Additionally, when Microsoft makes changes that do cause interoperability problems with major applications they do seem to give some lead time for developers to catch up.
You think Linux and Apache does all that interoperability testing? NO. The new Linux ships and half my software won't work. Apache 2.0 ships and none of my re-write rules worked right anymore. No clues why, ambiguous documentation that didn't even make mention as to the underlying changes that caused all the trouble, it just didnt work too bad. Took us weeks to get everything working right again and of course mod_throttle (which everyone used) still isn't officially ported to Apache 2 and the author said he had no plans to do so either, so we had to jump thru yet more hoops to find workarounds. It's a big linux hodge-podge of roll your own and pray, not ready for prime time software with it's only saving grace is it's faster than the Windows server software and it's cheap.
Based on your analogy, if Noah's ark was built like Linux the "Water Proof Doors 0.9 pre-release" would've only worked with Ark 1.0 beta, not the release version of Ark 1.0 gold, and Noah, animals and all would've become the future subject of a Jacques Cousteau underwater special. Unless of course you wanted to download some new trees and try to recompile "Water Proof Doors 1.1".....
Not that I'm a big Microsoft fan as I used to work for one of their major competitors, a little company from Cambridge, maybe you've heard of them. However, I didn't spend 2 weeks trying to get my new XP machine back up to snufd. I spent 1 day re-installing all my software on XP and it ran the first time. Didn't have to download junk and compile it, just popped in the CD's and it all installed.
The Microsoft naysayers can say what they will but the only sign of rot that I've seen was that article.
As incrediBILL points out, the Longhorn delay is about standard for this sort of project. Indeed, the reason Windows 95 was called that, rather than Windows 4.0, was to reassure people that it would be released in 1995. Even then it was late.
I don't actually think that Malone understands how markets work and change, and how these processes impact on the dominant firm or firms.
For years I've wanted a Linux primary desktop - it hasn't happened yet. Servers, sure.
I was about to go for a minimac, stopped for thought. In my mind, since Apple won't let us run Max OS on BSD on Intel (Mac OS i/face based on BSD) they are little better, although I do like their box and a very shrewd move.
I love non-proprietory and open source, but I can empathise with IncrediBill.
Ironically, for me, it has taken serious investigation of open source as well as MS' new security stance to decide that for now Windows desktop represents ok value over hours on open source.
1,000 desktops in an office - I'll look at linux. In fact I will anyway... it cannot die!
