SkaroffBlog

Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find a full article out there besides the one behind the WSJ subscription wall, but apparently the Journal is reporting that about a year ago the Microsoft developers threw out all the code that had been written for MS’s next generation operating system, Vista, aka Longhorn, and started from scratch. If you don’t know (or care) what an operating system is, suffice it to say that this can only be seen as a major setback for Microsoft. The way they made money for many years was by coming out with a new operating system (3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP) and convincing people they needed to upgrade. But none of us have been doing any upgrading for a while.

You may have noticed that Windows XP has now been around for quite a while, and when it’s not getting attacked by viruses and adware, it’s starting to show its age. Longhorn was supposed to be revolutionary and exciting, but with the severe delays that have taken place — expect a 2006 release — everyone else has caught up and passed Bill Gates and Co. If any of you are using Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight or Google Desktop’s Quick Find, you know what I’m talking about.

No way will Microsoft die. It’s a huge company with huge revenues and storied history in the IT industry. However I think we are reaching a tipping point where the power of Open Source, folksonomies, and the Web 2.0 will make MS just another company, instead of THE company, providing technological solutions. I imagine the folks over at Sun and Google would argue we’re already there.

Yes, I did just buy another Apple computer. But that has nothing to do with this post.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 24th, 2005 at 5:13 pm and is tagged as Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.