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| Windows 8: the next twenty years |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-10-16 15:47:28 |
| Casey Muratori dissects the consequences of Windows 8's closed distribution model. "But how realistic is the assumption that the Windows desktop will still be a usable computing platform in the future? And what would be the consequences were it to disappear, leaving Windows users with only the closed software ecosystem introduced in Windows 8? To answer these questions, this volume of Critical Detail examines the immediate and future effects of Microsoft's current certification requirements, explores in depth what history predicts for the lifespan of the classic Windows desktop, and takes a pragmatic look at whether an open or closed ecosystem would be better for Microsoft as a company." The section that details how none - none - of this year's greatest games (or last year's fantastic Skyrim) and only one of this year's Emmy-nominated TV shows pass Microsoft's rules sent chills down my spine. |
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| RE[2]: ReactOS |
| By Lennie on 2012-10-17 00:58:08 |
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Why do you think it is a moving target ? It seems Microsoft wants this RT and .Net universe or whatever it is. That means Win32 is legacy, but that also means development on that API has pretty much stopped. Thus it isn't a moving target anymore. |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE: I doubt games would be banned |
| By Lennie on 2012-10-17 01:01:34 |
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Microsoft answer to gaming is simple: xbox. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[2]: Vote with your Wallet |
| By Lennie on 2012-10-17 01:03:49 |
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That will happen soon enough ? In a year ? Because this is their deadline: Mainstream support until January 13, 2015 |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: So long, Windows. |
| By franksands on 2012-10-17 02:27:17 |
|
> But they are providing a way out. Plenty of osx developers and apps do not use the app store. MS is pushing people hard to Metro by making the regular desktop paradigm harder to use, yet it isn't providing a way out to create apps for an open system. Apple is still providing a way out. But, as I said, who knows for how long. The way OS X is being dumbed down, I wouldn't be surprised if a future OS X version forced to only install applications through the Mac App Store. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE[3]: Vote with your Wallet |
| By Morgan on 2012-10-17 04:34:18 |
|
You may be right. For Vista, end of retail sales was nearly two years before end of mainstream support. For XP, it was less than a year. So far Microsoft says "to be determined" for an end of sales date for 7, but based on their current pattern, I can see them dropping sales of 7 any day now. Then again, they know for a fact that 7 is the best OS they've ever put out, and while they may be betting the farm on 8, I have a feeling they may keep 7 alive long enough to gauge the market for 8. We may still be able to purchase 7 for a few more years yet. Edit: Source: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-... Edited 2012-10-17 04:35 UTC |
| - Score: 3 |
| Comment by ilovebeer |
| By ilovebeer on 2012-10-17 04:53:31 |
| Anyone who thinks the desktop is going to disappear any time soon is a complete fool and anyone with any common sense already knows that. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Comment by ilovebeer |
| By Alfman on 2012-10-17 06:17:31 |
|
ilovebeer, "Anyone who thinks the desktop is going to disappear any time soon is a complete fool and anyone with any common sense already knows that." Define "soon", the article is actually looking some 20 years ahead. The article is really worth reading in it's entirety since it gives a lot of historical context that should not be ignored, but the following quote seems especially relevant here: "Now, clearly any prediction about the future is uncertain. Many people out there probably don’t believe there’s any way the future of desktop computing looks like a much-revised-and-refined version of the new Windows 8 UI. But if you take a step back and realize that people thought the same thing about Windows 3.0 when it came out, I hope you can appreciate how real a possibility it is." |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE[3]: ReactOS |
| By moondevil on 2012-10-17 08:19:27 |
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I for one am looking forward to Win32 becoming legacy and say goodbye to Hungarian notation (which Microsoft nowadays admits it was an error to make use of). If that really becomes true, and Windows Runtime becomes available for desktop applications as well, that would mean that C++ would be the only way to do native applications with Microsoft Languages. Adding to that, Microsoft's stance on C support, this means C is pretty much dead on Windows, at least from Microsoft's point of view. Looking to the past, they may take as many years as they took to get rid of MS-DOS, CP/M, Win16, Win32s APIs though. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Interesting article marred by silly hyperbole |
| By Tony Swash on 2012-10-17 10:07:59 |
|
I think the article is interesting and raises some valid points but is marred by the general portrayal of the app store model as being somehow fundamentally bad. In reality the huge success Apple's app store, which pretty much set the whole big app store dynamic in motion, is a very good thing for consumers and developers. Consumers were, and are, far more worried about their computers crashing due to crappy software and getting infected by malicious code than anything else. For consumers the effect of the app store has been to vastly increase the amount of cheap, useful, imaginative, and above all safe, software for their devices. For developers the app store, at least Apple's one, has been a huge success, triggering revenues counted in billions and opening up the process to many new developers. The article descends into absurdity when a link labelled "haphazard and capricious permission of Apple." leads to someone moaning about the lack of Flash on iOS in a two year old article. Flash is a failed technology on mobile platforms which Adobe itself has abandoned and which Apple had the courage to be the first to call out as crap it didn't want on it's devices. If Flash was so great and if consumers were crying out for it then it would be thriving on non-Apple devices: it isn't. Trying to portray the curation mechanism of the app store as generally dysfunctional weakens the valid arguments in the article because it is untrue hyperbole. The Apple app store curation generally works pretty well given how rapidly it had to scale to a monumental size due to the success of the App Store model. |
| - Score: 0 |
| RE[4]: ReactOS |
| By Lennie on 2012-10-17 10:35:31 |
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> Looking to the past, they may take as many years as they took to get rid of MS-DOS, CP/M, Win16, Win32s APIs though.[/q>] Maybe more, but that does mean the development of the Win32 API will stall, which is a good thing for Win32 API support in ReactOS and WINE. Actually, if you look at DOS, Microsoft stopped supporting it, but dosemu and dosbox seems to deliver pretty good compatibility. |
| - Score: 2 |
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