On Feb 9, 5:57 am, "DFS" <nospam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Rex Ballard wrote:
> Disregarding the fact that anyone above the level of chrisv's ability has an
> intrinsic desire to learn and improve, money is a much more powerful
> incentive for improvement than 'helping the community'. Hatred for MS seems
> to drive quite a few Linux morons, but their development talent rarely
> matches their rage.
>
> > And then there's Microsoft. About the only time they make a
> > significant improvement is when Linux or Mac starts dinging their top
> > line.
>
> I think it depends on the product and the time period. Inexcusably, they
> let IE languish until Firefox passed it by in feature set (and arguably
> quality) and took about 15% of the market, but they improved Windows desktop
> and server [both drastically] and Office [a good bit] absent any real
> competition.
When the XP uptake was slow, and companies were seriously considering
how many of their desktops they could convert to Linux, back in 2001,
Microsoft did their typical "Vaporware" tactic, and announced that
"Longhorn" would be out "real soon".
MS-DOS 4.0 vapor-ware promised to match the true multitasking of DR-
DOS.
Windows 1.0 through 3.0 promised to match the capabilities of a MAC
(even 3.1 wasn't as reliable).
Windows NT was vapor-ware to prevent major corporations from going
with Sun and X-Terminals.
Windows 95 plug-n-play was vapor-ware announced when Linux with "plug-
and-play" threatened NT 3.x.
Windows NT 4.0 was announced just as people started realizing that
Linux was more secure than 95.
Windows 2000 was vapor-wared as NT 5, when people noticed that Linux
was more reliable than NT 4.
Corporate customers were even offered free upgrades.
Windows XP was vapor-wared when Linux started to take off in
1998-2000, offering the power and security of NT with the low end
hardware of Windows 95, and Win4Lin offered Windows 95 compatibility
for Linux users.
When Microsoft tried to "Force Feed" XP to users who were happy with
Windows 2000, they started talking about Longhorn, mostly to keep
corporate customers from terminating or lapsing their support
agreements.
Windows 2008 server was vapor-wared when corporate customers started
switching from NT 4 to Linux instead of Windows 2003.
In each case, Microsoft saw the threat very early, quickly isolated
the critical hot-buttons that competitors were using to capture
interest and sales, and crafted a vapor-ware announcement of a new
versions of Windows that would have those hot new features "real soon
now". Usually, the new product was promised for the following year,
then would be announced as being delayed for another year, then
released in very raw and buggy beta form to a select group of people,
and delayed for up to another year, then finally released in beta
versions to MSDN and then to the general public about a year later.
Each vapor-ware announcement, delay announcement, buggy beta, MSDN
beta, and GA release was carefully orchestrated to maximize profits,
by minimizing the number of customers who switched to the competitors,
while also minimizing the number of actual innovations and releases
that had to be rolled out.
If you were a Microsoft stock-holder, you would have to marvel at
Microsoft's brilliance. Throwing just enough bones at the dogs to
minimize the amount of raw meat taken out of Microsoft by competitors.
The irony is that all of the features Microsoft announced, including
those that were not delivered, and those that were delivered late,
were already available in the competitor's products at the time the
announcement was first made. In many cases, features introduced in
Windows 2000, XP, and Vista were available in Linux or UNIX as far
back as 1994. UNIX was doing 3D animations back when Microsoft was
still trying to put multitasking into MS-DOS 4.0.
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