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Microsoft's only choice to move forward is to throw the Win32 baby out with the bathwater. And that brings us to the introduction of Windows 10 S.
Windows 10 S is just like the Windows 10 you use now, but the main difference is it can only run apps that have been whitelisted to run in the Windows Store. That means, by and large, existing Win32-based stuff cannot run in Windows 10 S for security reasons.
To bridge the app gap, Microsoft is allowing certain kinds of desktop apps to be "packaged" for use in the Windows Store through a tooling process known as Desktop Bridge or Project Centennial.
The good news is that with Project Centennial, many Desktop Win32 apps can be re-purposed and packaged to take advantage of Windows 10's improved security. However, there are apps that will inevitably be left behind because they violate the sandboxing rules that are needed to make the technology work in a secure fashion.
"A casualty of those sandboxing rules is Google's Chrome browser. For security reasons, Microsoft is not permitting desktop browsers to be ported to the Store."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:41PM (17 children)
Good luck with your business model - trying to sell a desktop/laptop OS to the crowd that actually really only needs a smart phone for their "computing needs". People who require actual computers - business, developers, science, engineers, gamers, government - well we'll find another OS.
No, you won't. Quit your ridiculous grandstanding. You're going to buy and use Windows S whether you like it or not. All these people you cite, especially scientists and engineers nad government people, don't actually choose their computing platform, it's chosen for them by corporate IT departments, and they're going to choose Windows S because that's what the Microsoft salesman recommended to your IT department head over a round of golf, right before he gave him some box-seat tickets to the Superbowl. The gamers are going to use Windows S because that's what all the AAA games are going to continue to run on. And businesspeople will never give up Microsoft Office no matter what, and of course it's only going to work on Windows S in the future.
People and businesses have already proven that they prefer the SaaS and rental models, as seen with modern Adobe products like Photoshop, and that they prefer to get apps from a walled garden, as proven by the iTunes store. Developers all seem to prefer Microsoft environments from what I've seen (aside from some malcontents who like Linux, but most of the Linux devs these days have abandoned desktop Linux and switched to Macs), and all the engineers I've ever met like Windows, and gamers especially are very hard-core Windows fans. (US) Government is tied at the hip to Microsoft, and that's never going to change.
If there's ever any really serious resistance to MS domination, it'll have to come from somewhere outside the US. From what I've seen, it sure as hell isn't going to come from Europe, because they're all too happy to just send all their money to Redmond instead of nurturing their own companies. Last I heard, the famous Linux installation in Munich was being converted back to Windows after Microsoft set up an office there and had some "talks" with the Mayor.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
My company is strictly windows 7 only.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:07PM (1 child)
Good luck with that. Win7 is nearing EOL, and it also doesn't even run on the latest hardware (though some 3rd party came out with a patch for that, for now...). Sooner or later, your company is going to be forced to change: the software will have massive security problems, or 3rd-party software you rely on won't work on it, or you'll be looking on Ebay for old hardware to run it on because new hardware won't, etc.
Try running Windows XP now for serious business use; it's really impossible. Win7 is going to be like that before long; it's already a decade old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:04PM
Windows 7 * Service Pack 1 January 13, 2015 January 14, 2020
2020, so a little more then 2 and a half years left for MS to pull their heard from their forth point of contact.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)
My company is strictly windows 7 only.
My company is Linux/BSD only. And buying microsoft WILL get you fired.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @04:45AM
You must not do CADCAM.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Thursday May 11 2017, @04:45PM (5 children)
You're going to buy and use Windows S whether you like it or not.
The salesman is having a hard time selling Windows 10. Which EVEN GIVEN AWAY FREE for well over a year,as well as force-installed on every new computer OEM, not to mention all the DIRTY TRICKS Microsoft used to SWINDLE people into installing it - has barely reached 28% market share. No don't fucking kid yourself that suddenly they're going to be able to convince IT departments to buy their shitware which has zero support for legacy apps and probably even less than zero support for specialized apps and hardware.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by LoRdTAW on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:41PM (1 child)
You're fooling yourself. IT departments have this little problem of inertia called software. We can all think we have absolute control over our networks but the software which does the actual work dictates the platform. I'd love to switch my shop to linux, BUT: our ERP is windows only, CAD software windows only, and machine specific software windows only. Not to mention the fact that everyone NEEDS office because that fucking salesforce plugin for outlook is absolutely necessary.
We can pretend we can shed the chains of MS but the inertia behind the platform is so great that it's cheaper and easier to bend over for redmond. The golden age of computing is dead and the open computer platform in its death throes. I weep for our children. "Dad is it true you were once allowed to run any computer program you wanted to and freely create your own?" "Yes, my son. The good ol days they were. Compilers as far as the eye could see."
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @05:42AM
"What are you talking about? I can still run any software I want. I just go into the store, pick something I like, and click install?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:26PM (2 children)
There's a big difference between home/personal computing and business computing, and this divide seems to be growing. As LordTAW elaborates here, businesses are sticking with Windows because of enormous inertia (and also laziness IMO; they should be pushing their vendors to make Linux versions and having experiments to try switching some functions to it, but that decreases short-term profit so they don't). But on the consumer side, there's now several choices: Windows, Mac, Linux, tablets, and cellphones. Consumers are moving more and more to the latter two exclusively. Those that still want a more serious computer for various reasons (screen size, ability to do "real work", etc.) are basically stuck with Windows or Mac. They're not using Linux except for people like the ones on this forum. Macs are expensive as hell; you can get a Windows laptop for $200 or so now, and you'll never see a Mac that cheap ($1k minimum I think). So some of the richer people might get a Mac, but everyone else is going to get Windows. No one's getting Linux; several companies tried marketing desktop Linux directly to consumers years ago and they all failed unfortunately: Lindows/Linspire, gOS, etc. So basically, MS can do whatever it wants here, because while the market seems smaller (due to some people dumping PCs and just using tablets), they have a lock on the portion of the market that wants a "real computer" and either can't afford or don't want a Mac. So adopting the walled-garden approach actually makes sense here, even if a bunch of people complain; what are they going to do, switch to Macs (which is largely the same, just more expensive)? They're not going to switch to tablets because they just can't do the stuff PCs do (and they're limited the same with with app stores). And they're not going to switch to Linux because.... well for the same reasons they haven't switched before now, whatever those reasons are (it's for "geeks", it's not mainstream, they never heard of it, it's not advertised/marketed to them, everyone else uses Microsoft so I should too, "it's too hard", "who do I call if I have a problem?", "I can't buy it at Walmart", etc.).
Now of course, getting a bigger share of a shrinking market is generally seen by MBAs as a bad thing, but the market isn't going to shrink that much: almost everyone needs a computer, and many of those aren't going to be satisfied with a phone/tablet, and Apples aren't going to ever have low-end offerings. And by adopting the walled-garden app store model and preventing software outside this venue, they'll get a huge cut of all software sold for that platform, just as Apple does with their iTunes store, which is much more than the cut they were getting before, which was 0%. They weren't making much money on consumers before anyway just with Windows licenses. Even if this move alienates some users, they'll be making far, far more from the ones who remain so it should be much more profitable overall. Plus they can increase revenues even more by forcing ever-more adware on these machines, to sell users more crapware, and also selling their private information to other companies thanks to the spyware baked-in.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54AM (1 child)
I've been using Microsoft os's since I was six. I would like to try a Linux, but there are so many to choose from and they all have different problems. Also from what I can find out, none of them will run any of my CADCAM software, the using of which is pretty much whatI do. So really, unless I change careers I'm stuck with Microsoft.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday June 03 2017, @06:12AM
There are some CAD software used on IRIX, HPUX, SunOS etc.. old but it was the best at the time. Maybe you can get it running using emulation (because computers can do that really good now).
And there's some BSD/Linux versions.
I think it boils down to how professional it needs to be and the exchange of files.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @05:07PM (2 children)
That hasn't been true for me for almost 20 years. Every computer I've owned, every team I've equipped, every platform call I've made. And the more things live in the cloud, the more that becomes so.
Windows lock-in is such a distant memory, in fact, that whenever I hear assertions such as yours (which is increasingly rare as the years go by), I feel like I've stepped through a time warp to 1998.
Look, FLOSS these days is as robust, if not more robust, than closed source. The tech support is better, too, because you can always find good discussion with actual experts online, for free, than you could ever get from a top dollar support contract from closed source whatever, who nearly always arrogantly tell you they don't support that feature or that flaw might possibly be patched 6 months to a year from now, if the company deems your reported issue worth fixing. The heck with that, with FLOSS, modify it now, how you want, and share your modification with the community.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:09PM (1 child)
Obviously, I was generalizing. Not *everyone* is going to use Windows S; Macs are still around, for instance, and not likely to go anywhere. And there've always been people that never used Windows at all.
But the point is, if you're working in a corporate or government job, you're most likely going to have to use Windows S in the future, or find another job (or none at all). I've been waiting for almost 2 decades now for Linux to become a viable alternative, and I've been using it myself for most of that time too, but I don't see it happening, in fact I see things getting worse, not better. I remember when a lot of devs used to use Linux on their desktop/laptop machines. Not any more; now they've all switched to Macbooks. I sure don't see any major corporations or governments adopting it en masse, and instead, Munich Germany, a famous adoption case, (last I heard) gave up on it and is switching back to Windows.
Of course Linux is better than Windows; this has been true for at least a decade now. But it hasn't gotten much 3rd-party software support from places like Adobe or Autodesk (things that you can't do with a web app), which is essential for business adoption, and businesses haven't pushed it because they're too comfortable with MS Office/Outlook/Exchange/AD/etc. One problem for MS is with family/home computing, where it does seem like a lot of people have either abandoned PCs altogether, or are just continuing to use their ancient XP/7 PC (possibly "upgraded" to 10 back when it first came out and was forcing everyone to upgrade), and have instead bought tablets for their regular web-surfing, Youtube-watching uses. But that doesn't help Linux-on-the-desktop much, except for keeping IE from becoming the de-facto browser standard again.
Right now, I'm the only person I know who runs Linux on the desktop without some kind of VM, except for 2 friends who I set up with some old laptops running Mint KDE (who are both non-technical people and are humming along just fine with them, without having to ask me for anything for many months now; the only support calls were right at the beginning of this experiment for some minor issues and that was it). I just haven't seen any increase in desktop Linux usage at all, and in fact a backslide since the mid-2000s or so. Personally, I blame Gnome3 some of this; it just isn't a good UI for either new users (Windows converts) or for serious techies. It's slow, buggy, non-configurable, works completely differently from Windows and Mac, but somehow it's the "standard" for all of desktop Linux because so many distros have adopted it. It's not helping Linux adoption, and in fact is working against it. The only bright spot is that it's easier than ever to use desktop Linux full-time now because things have mostly gotten mature, the hardware support is great, and so much stuff has moved to the web (even taxes), and IE is dead with Chrome now the leading browser. So it's there for anyone who wants to free themselves from the monstrosity of modern Windows, but it just isn't getting much uptake.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:42PM
I always take a throwaway laptop with linux and use that instead of the work machine they want me to use. I am far more productive with vim and my macros and settings and tools than it's worth quibbling with the bureaucracy that you have to hack through to get the same setup. I thought a lot of linux people did the same, not so much because I.T. dept.s are so hostile to linux anymore, but because traditionally they always have been.
The status quo is fine by me, though. I'm happy with most people trapped in Windows while our jolly FLOSS subculture hums along, getting all the real work done. The former provide a much easier target for nefarious parties than the latter, so they draw most of the criminal intent; it's sort of like the old joke about the two friends who run into a bear in the woods, whereby the one friend says to the other he doesn't have to out-run the bear, just him. It's also job security if your use of FLOSS makes you much more productive than the Windows guys, because when it comes time to downsize you have a better chance of survival if you're more productive than the other guys in the department.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
No, it's not necessarily your IT department "pushing" that. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to kick the Microsoft addiction right in the nads. Except for The One Application. The One that our business is 100% dependent on. The one that ONLY runs on Windows. The one that has no rational alternative. (no, not Office.)
Your IT department is just as hamstrung as you, thanks to a developer who won't give me a platform-neutral version of its' software.
So I pay Microsoft. Unwillingly.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:34PM
Don't forget the part where that One Program (which is also closed source but would take years of in-house development to replace and has no credible competition in the market) has some crazy bug which you've reproduced, documented, and brought to the attention of the vendor repeatedly.
If you're lucky, a couple feminists will blame you for that bug personally, sabotage the things the software actually does right, throw you under the bus to the rest of the employees, nearly get you fired, and tell you that if they'd hired a woman to do your job instead, that bug wouldn't exist. And you didn't even have any say in purchasing that software. :(
Bonus points if you're me and the only reason you took that job as a man instead of as a woman was because you were intimidated by feminists out of transitioning to living as a woman “full time,” which would mean using the women's room, a place feminists had already warned you away from entering as a “crossdresser” on pain of charges for attempted rape. I wish I was exaggerating. :(
I think I'm going to log off and go cry myself to sleep now. :(
(Score: 1) by Noble713 on Friday May 12 2017, @08:08AM
I live and work in Asia, but am pretty experienced with US military IT nightmares. Nightmares like laptops with 4GB of RAM that is at 85% usage after booting Win7 because of McAfee and other security stuff, so you can't even browse a SharePoint portal and edit a PowerPoint simultaneously without the system running like a dog. Last year I started a business developing new hardware and software for some specific government uses, marketing specifically to developing countries. I'm developing everything for Linux/BSD, trying to use ARM64 across the board too. One of my selling points is "You don't want to keep using all that Microsoft /Intel shit. It's all backdoored by the NSA.... And probably China too. Buy my hardware packages, software is included, you're mostly paying for training /support, and the apps run so efficiently you won't need to do a hardware refresh for ages. "
Innovation will absolutely come from this region, which lacks the calcified Wintel IT infrastructure of the US. Like most users here, I've moved off of Windows entirely. CAD is definitely Linux's great limitation (FreeCAD still pretty rough, I miss Autodesk products) , but I know an older version of DSS Catia runs under Wine. I think it's the version that was used to design the Eurofighter Typhoon, so it should be more than capable enough for most people's needs.