Longhorn Beta Doubtful This Year

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-5183385.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-518...=feed&subj=news</a><br /><br /></div>"Microsoft's efforts to bolster security in Windows XP will likely delay the release of a widespread test version of its forthcoming operating system until next year, Microsoft's top executives told CNET News.com. Microsoft had said it planned to ship the test version of Longhorn, a major update to the company's Windows operating system, this summer. The company has reassigned a large number of developers working on Longhorn to build updates to the existing versions of Windows to bolster security, said Jim Allchin, vice president of Microsoft's platforms group."<br /><br />Since most of us are Windows users, the coming of Longhorn is a pretty big deal. I'm not terribly surprised to hear that a beta won't be coming out this year, and in truth, I'm happy to see them focusing on hardening the security in Windows XP rather than saying "Screw it, let's just work on the NEXT big thing...". Windows XP is a solid OS, and I'd rather wait for Longhorn to be done right rather than getting a half-baked OS.

[T-Will]

Microsoft focusing on security??? I thought you guys were done posting April Fool's items!!! ;)

Seriously, I'm glad they're doing this, I'd rather have a more secure Windows XP now, rather than a whole nifty new OS in a year or two.

[szamot]

oh, but nifty it is, even as far back as built 4029 it was not that bad. Hell, if you can buy it in the store it's not good enough for this PC. Alpha code is for real geeks :D. I hope they finish it soon though so we can move on to the next best thing and that free hardware Bill was talking about.

[Phronetix]

Windows XP is a solid OS, and I'd rather wait for Longhorn to be done right rather than getting a half-baked OS.

Solid compared to what? 3.1? Win98?

Spending too much time in the snow, Jason? :splat:

Mostly agree with you. They need to get Longhorn right and well tested before even a public beta release. I'm not planning to touch a Windows OS until at least a few months after the GM is released. By then who know what Apple will have brought into play with OS X (or beyond).

From a business standpoint, I wonder is MS will ultimately spin off its OS unit to protect the rest of Billy G.'s Corporate empire should the dleays continue.

Phro

[Jason Dunn]

Solid compared to what? 3.1? Win98? Spending too much time in the snow, Jason?

Solid period. :D XP Rocks! Not going to make fun of Apple here either... :lol:

[rugerx]

I agree Jason.

XP is so far and above even windows 2k.

It is good to see them taking the road to fixing existing products, rather than moving on so soon.

Compare xp to 98se. There is a huge gap in functionality that has been addressed. Security, sure its going to be an issue when 90% of all computer owners use MS products. If you have a newer system, say 1 ghz and up, and are still using 98, you are missing the boat.

You can bet if BeOS or Linux were truly mainstream it would be attacked.


Its a case of the top dog gets the most fleas....

my 2 cents

[guinness]

XP is pretty solid, I thought my hardware was failing until I cleaned out my PC and flipped my RAM sticks around and now it's been real stable since then (although, I'm still looking at the Athlon 64's, and since MS is offering XP Pro 64-bit to try out for free, I'm anxious to test it out).

[Jonathan1]

Solid compared to what? 3.1? Win98? Spending too much time in the snow, Jason?

Solid period. :D XP Rocks! Not going to make fun of Apple here either... :lol:

Solid in terms of stability and reliability? Yes. Solid in terms of security both out of the box and built in NO WAY. Sorry Jason but IMHO XP is an insecure, smoldering, pile where MS's only recourse is to give up patching the OS and focus on building a moat and wall around the OS in hopes of fending off the landslide of security holes that have plagued 03, XP, 2K, and NT. It’s the whole secure the parameter concept Gates and Ballmer have been preaching for a year and frankly I think it’s a copout in terms of security.
This delay was predicted by news.com a few months back and sure enough it’s coming true. So the question remains: When will longhorn come out? It was estimated ’06. Anyone else getting the weird vibe of ’07 off of this? Esp now that MS is talking about an interim release of XP tentatively titled XP Reloaded.
As for Apple. Apple is done. They have been relegated to a niche market simply because Jobs is an idealist. Even some of the high end 3rd party developers are thinking twice about investing in development (Palm, Adobe, others?) and have dropped several key, but not critical, apps for Apple. As their market share continues to dwindle so to will its 3rd party support. I love OS X as much as any Mac head out there. I think it’s a beautifully crafted OS but without some of the big name 3rd party support that has backed away what’s the point?


You can bet if BeOS or Linux were truly mainstream it would be attacked.
Its a case of the top dog gets the most fleas....


Yes but at least in the case of Linux the dog has already taken a flea dip. XP and 2K have horrid out of the box security. In fact its practically non existent. As someone stated in another thread run a security scanner on a newly installed 2K or XP system with NO patches. The scanner will go nuts with alerts.
Do the same with OS X and see what comes up. Default security in Linux and OS X is MUCH tighter then any NT based system. Can you shore up that security? Sure. But it takes, at least for me, an hour or more to run the basic security policy templates on Windows. Then disable all the various hidden shares. The enable the firewall. Antivirus software. Adware repellant, alternative browser to ensure a secure browsing experience and on and on and on.
It can be done but for those who don’t want to dick with it you have OS X. and for those who are into pain you have Linux. :p

[sponge]

You can bet if BeOS or Linux were truly mainstream it would be attacked.
Its a case of the top dog gets the most fleas....


Not to drag this off-topic, but what's the #1 web server out there? Apache. Which program do we hear about all the security issues with? Microsoft's IIS.

http://news.netcraft.com/

It's an issue of the dirtiest dog getting the most fleas, not the top dog.

[guinness]

OS X is just UNIX (BSD) with Apple's GUI. UNIX has been around for what 30 years? More time to hash out bugs and holes. But most UNIX/Linux variants aren't really fit for the average desktop, there always seems to be a tradeoff between usuability and security. If set up right, 2000/XP are secure and stable, but nothing is fool-proof. As for IIS, it's just garbage anyway, Apache had the inroads long before MS stepped into the ring.

[sponge]

Agreed, can't beat a good, properly setup, hardware firewall/router, and that goes for ANY OS.

[Jonathan1]

You can bet if BeOS or Linux were truly mainstream it would be attacked.
Its a case of the top dog gets the most fleas....


Not to drag this off-topic, but what's the #1 web server out there? Apache. Which program do we hear about all the security issues with? Microsoft's IIS.

http://news.netcraft.com/


To be fair IIS for Windows 2003 (Sorry I don't know the ver #) is drastically more secure then previous versions. Again is comes down to out of the box security. Windows 2000's version of IIS had next to none which caused massive problems where the Admin didn't know what they were doing. Windows and IIS can be as good as other platforms but it take a hell of a lot of tweaking to do it.

[szamot]

OS X is just UNIX (BSD) with Apple's GUI. UNIX has been around for what 30 years? More time to hash out bugs and holes. But most UNIX/Linux variants aren't really fit for the average desktop, there always seems to be a tradeoff between usuability and security. If set up right, 2000/XP are secure and stable, but nothing is fool-proof. As for IIS, it's just garbage anyway, Apache had the inroads long before MS stepped into the ring.

well at least Longhorn will look pretty, assuming it will look like this in its final version, that's got to count for something, yes, no, maybe? Although I must say 1024x768 just won't cut it for this baby. 1400x1050 seems to be a good match, which will be no go on most older laptops or flat panels.

http://www.ilookisee.com/junk/longhorn1.jpg

[Aerestis]

I think longhorn looks nice and all, but... Seriously... The wanna-be dock on the side is such a space waster. I've used something similar called sysmetrix, you can design the way it fits to your screen and so on. Well, it's a waste of resources and it's huge if you want it to be useful at all. I'm dissapointed with such non-innovative approaches to the ui.

On the topic of security, I really hope things get cleaned up a bit before longhorn is finished.

[Jason Dunn]

I think longhorn looks nice and all, but... Seriously... The wanna-be dock on the side is such a space waster. I've used something similar called sysmetrix, you can design the way it fits to your screen and so on. Well, it's a waste of resources and it's huge if you want it to be useful at all. I'm dissapointed with such non-innovative approaches to the ui.

Actually, when you think about the prevalence of wide-screen displays, we have more width that we know what to do with, to the side dock makes sense. I'm sure you can turn it off anyway...

[Janak Parekh]

Solid in terms of stability and reliability? Yes. Solid in terms of security both out of the box and built in NO WAY.
I think Microsoft finally realizes this, and that you'll see boxed XPSP2 shipping before very long.

An interesting sidenote: I've heard if you install Fedora Core 1, there are hundreds of megs of updated packages. 8O

--janak

[jimski]

Solid compared to what? 3.1? Win98? Spending too much time in the snow, Jason?

Solid period. :D XP Rocks! Not going to make fun of Apple here either... :lol:

Solid in terms of stability and reliability? Yes. Solid in terms of security both out of the box and built in NO WAY. Sorry Jason but IMHO XP is an insecure, smoldering, pile where MS's only recourse is to give up patching the OS and focus on building a moat and wall around the OS in hopes of fending off the landslide of security holes that have plagued 03, XP, 2K, and NT. :p

I guess you also figure that car companies should guarantee that you are not going to get hurt when you are in an accident, or better yet you are not going to get into an accident. Microsoft's the big dog, so attacks are always going to be directed at them.

They are doing what they are doing, maybe not as fast as some would like them to, but they are doing it. My guess is that thier marketing people don't like picking up the paper and reading about their security leaks any more than we do.

Why don't we get some of this energy and stop this defensive stuff and go on the offense. You know what they used to do with horse theives. I don't want a defensive firewall. I want something that will identify someone trying to probe/attack my system and zap them with some delightful code that will render their system useless followed by a message like, "This is BillG and you have been erased. Have a nice day". Otherwise, this security updating will never end.

[Aerestis]

Actually, when you think about the prevalence of wide-screen displays, we have more width that we know what to do with, to the side dock makes sense. I'm sure you can turn it off anyway...

You can, but I wish they would give something neater to play with. I also found that using those sort of docky things takes up a LOT of resources. One I used was very customizable, as I'm sure the Longhorn one will be, but if you had it full-featured it would really make the rest of your system laggy (My computer is around the standard right now, but I guess when longhorn is around the standard will be around 2.8 ghz/512 ram). But I guess microsoft is probably right in the end not to go too far into innovation of the gui... I'm not too sure that many people really notice a huge difference. I think xp was enough to make people happy, even for some os x/xp users.

whats is it with 1280x1024 anyhow? What a silly resolution. I am a HUGE fan of wide screen stuff :)

[tthiel]

Mac OS X 10.3 is already better than Longhorn by a long shot. Wonder how much better it will be in three years?

[tthiel]

Ha ha wrong. BSD with Mach Kernel and the best GUI ever devised. Features that can be found on no other OS abound. A consisten gui, stability and ease of use. Time has nothing to do with it. Unix was designed from the start to be a multi-user system so it does not allow all the crazy **** that Windows allows. Windows is patched hacked code on top of patched hacked code. The only reason Windows users think XP is stable is because they are comparing it to earlier versions of Windows. By those standards it is stable.

OS X is just UNIX (BSD) with Apple's GUI. UNIX has been around for what 30 years? More time to hash out bugs and holes. But most UNIX/Linux variants aren't really fit for the average desktop, there always seems to be a tradeoff between usuability and security. If set up right, 2000/XP are secure and stable, but nothing is fool-proof. As for IIS, it's just garbage anyway, Apache had the inroads long before MS stepped into the ring.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Solid compared to what? 3.1? Win98? Spending too much time in the snow, Jason?

Solid period. :D XP Rocks! Not going to make fun of Apple here either... :lol:

I agree myself... Windows XP is solid, but I refuse to switch back to Windows until these security issues get fixed. In fact, recently I converted the entire biomedical engineering lab I manage to Linux and OS X machines. No more Windows for a long time. Tired of dealing with updates every other day.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Solid in terms of stability and reliability? Yes. Solid in terms of security both out of the box and built in NO WAY.
I think Microsoft finally realizes this, and that you'll see boxed XPSP2 shipping before very long.

An interesting sidenote: I've heard if you install Fedora Core 1, there are hundreds of megs of updated packages. 8O

--janak

Yeah, I've been messing aroung with Fedora Core 1. Trying to see if my lab needs to upgrade to that from Red Hat Linux 7.3. Well, it's very pretty and all, but I'm having weird problems such as LDAP and Kerberos user authentication and stuff. I think I might try out Debian instead.

[Zack Mahdavi]

As for Apple. Apple is done. They have been relegated to a niche market simply because Jobs is an idealist. Even some of the high end 3rd party developers are thinking twice about investing in development (Palm, Adobe, others?) and have dropped several key, but not critical, apps for Apple. As their market share continues to dwindle so to will its 3rd party support. I love OS X as much as any Mac head out there. I think it’s a beautifully crafted OS but without some of the big name 3rd party support that has backed away what’s the point?

Jonathan, I didn't quote all of your comments, but I absolutely agree with everything you say.

Unfortunately, I also think that Apple is done. Sure, they make an awesome operating system and great hardware, but because Jobs insists on the best, Apple's market remains small.

I always read on Mac forums how "Dell is stupid" and "their hardware stinks." While it's true some of their laptops and desktops are pure junk (look at the build quality of those $800 laptops), people still buy them because they're cheap. That's by far the biggest selling point for computers these days, in my opinion.

Sure, Steve Jobs says that the reason why they won't sell cheap computers is because users won't have the full Mac experience (the digital hub experience). However, not everyone has a digital camera... not everyone wants to edit home movies on their computer. In fact, I believe that most people just use computers for checking email and shopping online.. that's it.

So why would someone buy a $1400 Mac over a $500 Dell? It's easy.. they wouldn't. I just don't understand why Steve Jobs is like that.

Here's what I'm thinking. I read about two years ago that Windows Longhorn is going to implement an operating system-wide digital rights management protection system, where unauthorized mp3s and video files will be unplayable by the operating system. I'm not sure if Microsoft is still planning on unleashing that feature, but if they do, customer satisfaction will come to an all-time low.

This is where Apple should come in. They should sell Mac OS X for x86 machines. People say that Apple wouldn't be able to make money like this, but if Apple is able to sell 15 times more copies of Mac OS X vs. the number of computers they sell in a given year, I think Apple can be majorly profitable.

What will this mean? Massive 3rd party support for Mac OS X. If Apple can get a dominant market share, then Unix will be the most widely used operating system in the world, network security issues won't be nearly as bad, etc...

Will this happen? Probably not... oh well... 8O

[Mojo Jojo]

Most people would tell you that Apple is a hardware company first, and software second. Apples core profit comes from hardware. To open their software to the x86 would stiffle sales of their hardware. Would you buy a $500 x86 or $1400 PowerPC model to run OS X?

So to open an advantage on one side and lose out on another, is like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The same model is can be seen with iPod and iTunes. iTunes does not make money, neither does the music store, but they sell a lot of iPods. Times when Apple is high is when they innovate and have a product that is not duplicated. Their PC line has not offered anything innovative that cannot by replicated cheaper, and they were in decline.

If you look at the industry as a whole (all computers) the market is actually slowing down. As stated a vast majority of people use their computers for e-mail and surfing the web. Business users, programers and such are becoming the next niche market.

As profit from computer shrink faster and faster companies have to find the next money maker. Apple has chosen digital entertainment AND business class servers. Microsoft has xbox and is working on tv 'computer' versions. The home PC market is drying up.

Don't get me wrong it is still aways out there but the fat lady is warming up and the graffiti artist is shaking the can and eyeing that wall.

[Jonathan1]

I guess you also figure that car companies should guarantee that you are not going to get hurt when you are in an accident, or better yet you are not going to get into an accident. Microsoft's the big dog, so attacks are always going to be directed at them.

They are doing what they are doing, maybe not as fast as some would like them to, but they are doing it. My guess is that thier marketing people don't like picking up the paper and reading about their security leaks any more than we do.

Why don't we get some of this energy and stop this defensive stuff and go on the offense. You know what they used to do with horse theives. I don't want a defensive firewall. I want something that will identify someone trying to probe/attack my system and zap them with some delightful code that will render their system useless followed by a message like, "This is BillG and you have been erased. Have a nice day". Otherwise, this security updating will never end.


Nope. But there is such a thing as due diligence. If a car manufacture had the track record of MS for "safety" problems the gov probably would have had the company take the product off the market for safety concerns.
I don't defend a broken OS. I don't defend Apple, MS, Redhat, BeOS, Palm or any other OS that makes itself out to be some godlike OS and frankly people that do defend MS amaze me. It's amazing the excuses that people come up with for a broken OS. Understand one simple core fact: Some of the biggest holes in Windows have had patches that need to be applied to 2003, XP, 2000, and NT. That is 7+ years and 4 major OS revisions that holes have made it through alive and well. That is neglect pure and simple. No buts, no excuses. Its security following features.
Now lets go back to your car analogy, one that is very popular when comparing MS to the rest of the world, what would happen if a major flaw occurred in say Ford Explorer that was found to apply to all models dating back 7 years. Lets say something that could cause the fuel tank to explode. They would have a responsibility to repair that wouldn't they? And lets say that such major defects occurred on a monthly basis. Ford would lose major creditability and most likely market share because there is true competition there. Bur for Microsoft this doesn't happen because they own the market. For Windows people act as if it's not a big deal when these patches come out. Apply, reboot, and move on. I sit here in amazement that people can be so blasé about something that affects millions of computers that if done right could take down the entire world of NT. MS has a responsibility for the security and "safety" of our systems and until Longhorn debuts IMHO this security and safety will be neglected. MS with SP2 is doing the equivalent to a recall on their OS. A major recall. It’s a Band-Aid fix for a perpetually reoccurring problem. Does this mean I lay 100% of the blame on MS? Obviously no. I see it this way. Your percentages will obviously very.
10% users fault for not patching. But people shouldn't have to patch on a monthly basis esp when you consider a in an enterprise a mission critical server. Do you need to take your car in for a callback on a monthly basis?
40% Microsoft for making security follow features. Microsoft wrote the code. Do we expect perfection? No. But the ability of a WORM to automatically break into a Windows system, embed itself, and spread further is unacceptable. Even Microsoft admitted during the AT trials that they use security by obscurity to allow certain features and functionality to occur in Windows. And if such code were made public a disaster would occur. This is a bad practice.
50% For the ***hat that releases the virus/worm that exploits a security hole.

There is no one person to blame but to say MS is blameless it so far off the mark you'd need a galactic map to straighten yourself out.

[Kiki]

No OS ever has been or ever will be safe. As long as we're all connected, there will be a way. I agree with the other poster, the reason Windows has so many security flaws is because it by far has the most people looking to find them. All other OS'es would have just as many if they had as much attention.

XP is the best no doubt. Nothing else can offer the compatibilty and ease of use. Compatibilty and ease of use are second only to price.

[Jonathan1]

Most people would tell you that Apple is a hardware company first, and software second. Apples core profit comes from hardware. To open their software to the x86 would stiffle sales of their hardware. Would you buy a $500 x86 or $1400 PowerPC model to run OS X?



OK I don't want to wander too far off topic but I've had an idea running through my head for awhile.

I think it would be possible for Apple to have its cake and eat it too. I've imagined this scenario for quite a while:
Apple can stay on the high end scale for Macs and keep that quality that they are "supposedly" known for. (Sorry I've been reading the various forums current Mac hardware seems far from high quality.) The $2,000-$3,000+ arena.
But what if Apple selected one, and only one OEM to distribute a cheap headless (Monitorless.) Mac? Something in the ballpark of $500? HP anyone? IBM maybe? Its the low end systems is where Apple is getting clobbered by the PC world. They are being marginalized out of existence with these cheap systems. This is where Jobs ego and him being an idealist comes into play. Apple needs to dance with the devil to survive.
Yes people keep pointing out time and again that the industry has been predicting the death of Apple for over 20 years. The problem is it’s a slow death. They just keep losing their footing on the rock wall of the industry and slide a little further. The game isn't over yet but in 10 years? Possibly unless Apple takes some drastic action.


Sorry. So where were we? Ah yes. Longhorn. So do we have at least a timeframe for when at least the beta will show up?!?! I didn't see it in the article.

[Jonathan1]

No OS ever has been or ever will be safe. As long as we're all connected, there will be a way. I agree with the other poster, the reason Windows has so many security flaws is because it by far has the most people looking to find them. All other OS'es would have just as many if they had as much attention.


You CAN NOT say that. That is pure speculation. Until Linux or OS X has a trial by fire all people can do is speculate. Linux and OS X have had their share of patches but patches for what? Are the holes easily exploitable? Can a worm exploit it? Break into the system? And spread like in Windows?

All of this is theoretical, AFAIK since I'm not hip to the latest happenings in Linux land but I try to keep my ear to the ground and AFAIK nothing as major as the RPC hole has occurred in recent history on *nix. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
I think the biggest threat has come from someone trying to sneak a backdoor into the kernel source code of Linux. This IMHO is a major issue but has to do as much with code review as the methodology of open source.

[Mojo Jojo]

Something in the ballpark of $500?

I agree, Apple is just getting clobbered by the low price competition. So while I might be shy to the idea of Apple opening up OS x the competitors I do certainly agree that Apple needs to get in the faces of the $500 dollar market. They are getting closer with the $799 eMac but the tech is a little dated compared to intel/amd models currently out that they are competing against.

To bring this sorta back towars the original topic (if a topic is off topic and goes off topic, does that make it an on topic? :) ) I think what we really need to see is the seperation of OS and Apps.

Windows XP and OS X are trying to do the added value and incorporate all the bells and whistles of media players, e-mail, browsers, etc into the base OS. These ties into the OS through calls, dlls ,and what not that can be exploited and I would armchair a guess of about 70 percent of the virusus and worms attack through these methods.

If we are to look at this from a stability and security issue I think it would be wise for the companies to seperate and focus on the core OS and leave the Apps to third parties that would operate on a seperate layer independent of the core.

Scrap the bloat, slim the code, start solid, and have tightly controlled and monitored hooks into the OS.

So I am not suprised it is taking a long time for Longhorn to come out, they have a lot of stuff to hash through to make it solid. I'll reserve judgment on the OS till I see it, but I will be watching from the other shores. Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice shame on me. I see this as round three for Windows and I have moved to a hands-off with the company until they prove they can do better.

OS X, uptime 5 months and counting (had to shut down to do a security update :) ) Zero crashes in the year and a half of operation and ownership. Nothing is full proof though so don't think this is horn tooting, it just works better for me and my needs. Your mileage may vary. My XP machine is for playing games these days.

[Foo Fighter]

well at least Longhorn will look pretty, assuming it will look like this in its final version, that's got to count for something, yes, no, maybe?

Sorry bo bust your bubble, but the final release of Longhorn will look nothing like this. Microsoft is developing a totally new GUI called "Aero", which will most likely not be demonstrated publically until Longhorn hits Release Candidate stage. Microsoft took the same approach with "Whistler" (XP). Luna (the codename of XP's user interface) was not publically unveiled until the final stages of XP's development. Prior to that, the user interface was totally different, something called Watercolor:

http://www.pocketfactory.com/images/wcv.gif

[Foo Fighter]

I spoke with an IT director last weak who told me he and his staff spend more than 65-70% or their time patching systems and fighting viruses. :crazyeyes:

[szamot]

I think longhorn looks nice and all, but... Seriously... The wanna-be dock on the side is such a space waster. I've used something similar called sysmetrix, you can design the way it fits to your screen and so on. Well, it's a waste of resources and it's huge if you want it to be useful at all. I'm dissapointed with such non-innovative approaches to the ui.

Actually, when you think about the prevalence of wide-screen displays, we have more width that we know what to do with, to the side dock makes sense. I'm sure you can turn it off anyway...

Indeed there is a handy little option that lets you select how you want it docked, indeed if you want it at all, you can also set a custom size or with a click of a button on the lower left hand corner you can make it disappear. Also the user can customize the side bar to their heart content. You could spend a day doing so.

And I agree with Jason we do have a lot of width to play with on the new displays.

[szamot]

Ha ha wrong. BSD with Mach Kernel and the best GUI ever devised. Features that can be found on no other OS abound. A consisten gui, stability and ease of use. Time has nothing to do with it. Unix was designed from the start to be a multi-user system so it does not allow all the crazy s**t that Windows allows. Windows is patched hacked code on top of patched hacked code. The only reason Windows users think XP is stable is because they are comparing it to earlier versions of Windows. By those standards it is stable.

perhaps, perhaps not, but can a Joe six pack install BSD on a brand new PC without going through a flat of brew and pulling all of his hair out - get some applications and start running a business, no he can't! If he wants to compete and be successful in the real business world his best choice is Windows/Office. Playing at home is one thing, doing business is another.

I know Windows is not the best, not the most secure, but kid yourself not, I see more Linux boxes hacked than Win boxes on the net, there are a lot less of them so you don't hear about it as much. Windows is about ease of use which is what Joe six pack cares about. It might be expansive and at times not very stable but it addresses the lowest common denominator which is average skill level necessary to operate it - anyone, and I mean anyone can use it and that seems to be more important to the 90% of the world than reliability or price you pay for it.

[Zack Mahdavi]

Most people would tell you that Apple is a hardware company first, and software second. Apples core profit comes from hardware. To open their software to the x86 would stiffle sales of their hardware. Would you buy a $500 x86 or $1400 PowerPC model to run OS X?

Yes, but I also believe that people would rather buy a $100 operating system for their $500 computer (or get the computer bundled with the OS) rather than paying $1400 for the PowerPC model.

My reasoning is that Apple will be able to sell in much higher volume if they released their operating system to the rest of the world. I also believe that it's cheaper to develop an operating system compared to developing both the HARDWARE and SOFTWARE.

Oh well... we'll see one day when Apple is desperate enough.

[Zack Mahdavi]

There is no one person to blame but to say MS is blameless it so far off the mark you'd need a galactic map to straighten yourself out.

Amen brother! I can't agree with you any more... I remember in 1995 when Intel had to make that multi-BILLION dollar write-off to replace some Pentium chips that had a division problem. The truth is, only the research industry was truly affected by that bug, not your average consumer like you and me. Yet what was Intel forced to do? Replace all the chips....

Fast forward to the software world.... we definitely don't see that, but it's something I would expect. I hope our expectations change in the future.

Back on topic, Windows Longhorn looks interesting. I'm looking forward to trying it out, especially since it will incorporate a bunch of the nifty features from OS X. However, I have never understood why Microsoft is never able to stay on schedule.... :?

[guinness]

[quote=Jonathan1]

Unfortunately, I also think that Apple is done. Sure, they make an awesome operating system and great hardware, but because Jobs insists on the best, Apple's market remains small.

I'm not sure about great hardware, I have an iMac sitting here that's deader than a doornail (it has a fried video board and I'm not going to spend $170 to fix it, it isn't worth it, I'll upgrade my PC instead). BTW, the iMac I got free from the company my mom works for (they upgraded the iMac's with eMac's), so I figured I give it a shot (I can't afford Apple's overpriced wares). But I can't because the older CRT iMac's tend to have faulty FBT's and video boards.

If Apple really wanted to push OS X, they wouldn't charge so much for the hardware, cheapest Mac is $800, I'can build an AMD 64 system for around $500-600 and it'd blow the G5 out of the water. If Apple really believed OS X was better than XP, they'd release the x86 version and watch MS scramble.

[ctmagnus]

However, I have never understood why Microsoft is never able to stay on schedule.... :?

Bill G doesn't use a Pocket PC. Why should anyone else there? ;)