Microsoft Ponders Windows Successor 320
InfoWorldMike writes "Before Vista is even out of the gates, a Microsoft exec was talking Wednesday about Windows' replacement at a VC conference. Speaking at The Venture Forum conference, Microsoft's Bryan Barnett, a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group, said multicore architectures are of particular interest when weighing what to put in future operating systems at the company. "Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," Barnett said. Well, with Vista in the pipeline as long as it has been, you must admit it is not surprising Microsoft is taking the long-term view. And it won't be built overnight: There is no timetable for a Windows successor right now. But early work on this effort has not yet been organized, with five or six small projects afoot in various places throughout the company, Barnett said."
Vapour? (Score:4, Insightful)
The three states of matter are solid, liquid, and this announcement ;-)
But seriously, does anybody think this announcement was intended to dissuade businesses and government agencies from trying the alternatives to Microsoft Windows that exist now? And will it work?
Re:In other Words... (Score:3, Insightful)
Processing Power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Operating systems are suppose to use all our processing power?
Re: Windows Ponders Successor (Score:2, Insightful)
good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In other Words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NT architecture not even utilized (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the key point to keep in mind here is not that Microsoft is looking for a successor to Windows, but that these statements came from "a program manager for external research programs in the Microsoft Research group". This is what Mirosoft Research does. They come up with blue-sky ideas like replacing Windows entirely, and then the product groups integrate those ideas into real, shippable products. As an example, the "Drivatar" [microsoft.com] AI used by Forza Motorsport [forzamotorsport.net] came directly out of MSR. The researchers had grand plans for the technology (get real motorsport "legends" to generate drivatars based on their driving style, learn from the player as he's playing, etc), while the implementation in Forza was more practical (the main AI was based on pre-release training and didn't learn from watching the player, there were no "professional" drivatars, the player had to actively train his drivatar in specific sessions rather than having it learn while he plays, etc). That's not a bad thing, and it's still a damn sight better than most other racing game AI out there (Gran Turismo, I'm looking at you. Damn retarded bumper car AI ...). Researchers are good at coming up with crazy ideas and sample implementations that don't take into account the rest of the system (back to Forza, there's only so much processing available in an Xbox to handle all of the physics and AI, which means that real-time drivatar training wouldn't be feasible). If you know what to look for, you can see many Microsoft Research contributions in shipping products (speech, grammar checking, natural language processing, etc in Office; anti-phishing in the MSN/Windows Live Toolbar and IE7; pretty much the entire backend for MSN/Windows Live Search; and so on), but it's only bits and pieces. Go poke around [microsoft.com], look at the many areas of research going on at MSR. Take a look at their sample code. And then remember that when you see a similar but less-grandiose feature 5-10 years from now in a real, shipping product.
Note: I'm neither a Microsoft researcher nor a Forza developer, so all of the information above is what anyone can deduce from the sources I cited.
Microsoft has already done this to a fair extent with Terminal Server. The main thing to keep in mind is that the main bits in kernel space really are drivers, not the UI framework (and even that's changing with Vista). Terminal Server is very much Microsoft's X. Do you remember the "Fast User Switching" feature in Windows XP? Yeah, that's Terminal Server, and what it really means is that every time you use the Windows UI (in XP and 2K3) you're actually interfacing through a local Terminal Server session (just like X!). Of course, TS will have its little differences when running over a network, like not supporting video overlays or 3D acceleration, but in most case
Re:Is it possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If they want to do some long term research (Score:3, Insightful)
MSFT has been doing just that for several years, and it's a pretty impressive project. It's called Singularity [microsoft.com].
Windows successor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Child of my Child? (Score:4, Insightful)
I just couldn't stop asking myself: they spent 5 years building THIS?
Given the availability of user-friendly Linux distros (SuSe, RedHat, Ubuntu), and given that Apple's OS X.5 runs flawlessly on x86, I am drawn to conclusion that MS is fatally late.
X2 4400+ getting 1.2 'performance' rating, I didn't know whether to cry or to laugh. Maybe I just got sucked in by all that talk about 3D interface, aux.display support during sleep, new printing subsystem, and revolutionary user security framework?
Re:A successor to Windows (Score:2, Insightful)
People have a love-hate relationship with Windows. Just like feuding couples won't easily split-up if they have kids, the market will stick with Windows.
Windows Successor? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is it possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. There are files everywhere in a root drive called C:\.
Windows has tried forever to make the drive structure opaque (or at least translucent) to the user... Witness the obnoxious "are you sure" dialogs when you go into C:, C:\Windows\ or C:\Windows\System32... pathetic at best, obnoxious at worst. But short of revamping the entire drive structure to make "the bad bits invisible" it'll be awhile before Windows makes it look as seamless as the Mac.
2. When my computer boots I see all these grey characters, bios, IDE info, etc. etc.
Yup. There's that issue of the hardware and software separation. OEM's don't seem to want to make the process less nasty-looking. I commend Apple on their move to the Intel platform (albeit EFI, not BIOS-based) without making it look crappy like a PC. If only a Wintel BIOS-based PC could look as good.
3. Some applications, when installed, seem to be "everywhere"... they aren't just single little entities.
That's the Windows "state problem". Little turds of system state, user state, and application state, all scatter-gunned around the system. Bits in the registry. Bits in leftover ini files. Bits in inf files. Bits in other random-ass config files. Without a rewrite of Windows that completely throws out compatibility, that will never get better.
4. There are thousands upon thousands of files, where you don't know what they do.
See 3. There are other OS's with the same problem - but at least they usually store state better (more logically or more hygienically separated) than Windows.
As far as your final comment... agreed.
Re:In other Words... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with everything you said except for that last one. Trying to adapt to run Windows programs is what killed OS/2, which at the time was a much better OS than Win3.1 (what wasn't?). A true object oriented, multi-tasking, 32-bit operating system that ran circles around Windows, except of course in running Windows apps. Why should anyone even bother to develop for another OS if any new one will just try to run Windows apps as well as Windows? If that's what you want well, then just get Windows!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:good grief (Score:5, Insightful)
But that does present a serious problem for MS: It costs arbitrarily close to nothing to build all that when you spread the cost over a few hundred million people. From an economic standpoint, there is no reason to have commercial operating systems any more. The only thing that has them on life support is artificial barriers to entry, and the market hates those, so they're not going to last.
The same is true of any common software. It has already happened to web browsers, email clients, IM, and many others. It is happening to office software now. The money is in small-market, big value applications like AutoCAD, custom enterprise software, and software that enables particular business models (eBay, PayPal, Facebook). Proprietary commodity software is the walking dead.
A successor to Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft is, or will be soon, in the same boat. There are fewer and fewer reasons that one needs Microsoft. FOSS is becoming more and more viable. At some point ATI and NVIDIA will have to start playing nice with the open source community. Microsoft will be faced with the choice of evolving or fading away into obscurity. Usually companies fade away when thwacked upside the head by a disruptive technology (like Linux).
Talking about a successor to Windows just shows that they haven't realized the magnitude of the problem yet. (Or maybe Bill has and he's bailing out.)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A successor (Score:2, Insightful)
Games
When games I buy at the store can be popped into my Linux system and installed with no fuss... Linux will have arrived. I want to install a linux os in a few minutes, run an OS updater, install several random top shelf games, and have them all run flawlessly (no matter what type of hardware I have). Until that happens linux will ALWAYS be a novelty OS.
Video games drive what OS is used for a majority of users. That is the way it has always been, and the way it will always be.
I run Windows XP-64. I would love to run linux instead, but I know I will not be able to run DDO, WoW, Doom3, etc etc without some major headaches with compatibility, drivers, libraries, etc.
For now, I satisfy my linux cravings by running linux in vmware.
MS needs to compete against itself (Score:5, Insightful)
In 1983, Apple's latest and greatest was the Apple IIe. Although Lisa/Lisa II tanked, Apple did OK with a new machine it rolled out in 1984.
As numerous books and articles have detailed, the Macintosh development unit was given preferential treatment, many resources, and an impossible mandate. The result was a computer that radically altered the personal computer industry. The hardware was new, the OS was new, the applications were new - everything about it was new. Nothing like the Mac had been seen in the computer market.
Microsoft already has competitors, in the form of Apple, Linux, Google, and web app vendors who want to kill the desktop altogether. One more competitor, loaded with cash, unencumbered by a requirement to maintain backward compatibility with Windows, and given a well-articulated mission might be able to come up with something radically new and better than anything currently available.
If MS doesn't recognize that their golden goose is fast becoming a lead albatross, they're going to continue to lose their ability to shape the market. Getting by on marketing and control of PC OEMs isn't going to cut it any more. They need to put some of that massive stockpile of money into something truly bold. The question is, are they organizationally equipped to do so? Is it in their DNA, or have they become too atrophied?
Obsolesence of native code (Score:5, Insightful)
It works great for DRM, because sandboxed code cannot manipulate other code. If implemented correctly, something that Microsoft has shown to be possible with the 360 (though with native code), it would be unbreakable other than at the hardware level. Microsoft would make it so that only Microsoft-signed programs are allowed to run natively, whereas
This is terrible and I hope Microsoft meets a lot of resistance.
Melissa
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:3, Insightful)
Got a cite for that?
All the reports I've seen are that Vista relies almost entirely on native code. What little managed code there was has actually been REMOVED. Vista -supports-
Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really no mystery, you're comparing the needs of a tiny market versus a vast one.
After the initial 4 year MacOS X development span, it's been incrementally revved to address the needs of a niche user market. Most of these users aren't businesses with extensive numbers of Macs. If they have Macs, they're integrated into other systems (Windows, most likely). On the support side, several thousand existing apps need to be supported, the developers of almost always do whatever Apple asks them to do (like switch to XCode, Universal binaries, e.g.). Apple also uses a considerable amount of OSS, like GCC, Konquerer, SQLite, etc.
Windows, on the other hand, has several hundred million users and tens of millions of existing apps. While only a handful of companies have ever developed their own "enterprise" systems on Mac, millions have done it on Windows. Not only does this need to work for those users, but Microsoft needs to sell it. Apple has the Cult o... I mean captive audience who will pay for $130 upgrade because it has "Dashboard" and "Spotlight". Sales like that are not as easy for Microsoft coming from a business perspective, many of which still run Windows 2K.
For business, Vista's strongest selling points are
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you nailed a big part of Microsoft's problem there. It's software written by a creative bureaucracy. IBM is like that, except their aim is functionality and reliability not the nebulous "user experience". The former is a collection of software "artists" and the latter is a more scientific and testable approach. When a few artists collaborate, the result can be something dramatic (OS X), but if you have too many you generate little visionary fiefdoms where their goal is a smaller portion of the whole. Thus, feature FOO may be quite clever in it's methods and interface, but breaks completely when feature BAR (built by another fiefdom) is enabled. You also get wars between the fiefdoms that change the direction of the end product (interface versus security). Worse still, MS has grown to behemoth proportions in such a way that even the fiefdoms themselves are bloated and approaching the same state as the whole.
MS can't revitalize itself (or windows for that matter) without downsizing, IMHO. They won't do it though. They are probably afraid that it will be perceived as weakness by the public and the stock market.Re:In other Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Vista may not end up being the best thing since sliced bread, but let's act as introduced geeks on the subject and not compare Vista to xgl.
xgl is a layer for the window manager, Vista is an operating system. Graphics subsystem. Operating system. Apples. Oranges.
I mean, does xgl come with the BitLocker technology? Does it let Linux make use of USB memory sticks as virtual RAM? See also its new features [wikipedia.org]. I know, many features are already shared by Linux distros, but that still doesn't make an xgl <-> Vista comparison any less idiotic. Compare with Aero as you like, but not Vista. You don't compare KDE with e.g a full distro often, now do you?
I don't understand how such major flaws in an argument can give a +5 Insightful.
No wait, it was defending Linux.
Nevermind.
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple was using virtualization with A/UX
Re:In other Words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Vista 2, aka XP3 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look what we ended up with.
History repeats itself, repeats itself, itself...
Re:In other Words... (Score:4, Insightful)
is what you yourself wrote a few sentences before: Breaking MS stranglehold on the OEMs. If windos were something that you had to buy extra, people would start looking for alternatives.
Re:Vapour? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes.
And no.
Barnett's quote of "Taking full advantage of the processing power that those multicore architectures potentially make available requires operating systems and development tools that don't exist largely today," is meant to obfuscate the fact that there are OS's that handle multiple processors very well (Linux and OS X, not to mention other unix variants).
Microsoft has a vested interest in not doing PR work for the 'nix community. And they certainly don't want to imply that Vista won't get the most out of the current crop of processors when other OS's will.
Mark my words folks, we're currently watching the Fall of the Roman Empire. Nero (Ballmer) is fiddling (throwing chairs during temper fits, screaming "Developers!" repeatedly, etc.) while the city of Rome (Redmond) is burning to the ground.
I guess the capitalists were right, leave the marketplace alone and eventually it will find a center and select a survivor. In the OS wars, my money is on unix (in any flavor, take your pick) as the eventual winner. I'm sure Bill Gates knows this, that's why he's bailing while he can, just as he bequeathed the empire to Ballmer years ago when the DOJ was breathing down MS's neck. Gates is a lot of things: Stupid isn't one of them.
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is sad, really, since the rest of the world let VMS die long ago.
Re:More of the same... (Score:3, Insightful)
People haven't made full use of a computer's abilities since the 8 bits.
(in those days, the programmers would often use every trick in the book to squeeze every last ounce of capability from a machine)
And when will microsoft realise that "Taking full advantage of a processor's power" is *NOT* something you want an operating system to DO?
An OS is supposed to sit unobtrusively in the background handling context switches, I/O and memory management. It's not supposed to use massive chunks of processor power that should be available to the apps themselves!
Re:In other Words... (Score:2, Insightful)
agree with you so far
Yep - agree here too.
Now this is where I disagree. You made good arguments that the reason Vista won't fail is because the PC builders will all pre-install it and then ignored that fact when making your closing statement.
What will break the cycle is when people can walk into/browse the website of a PC vendor and purchase a PC with whatever OS they want on it. As long as the vendors/manufacturers are locked into agreements with MS then the average PC buyer has no choice and the dominance of MS on the desktop continues. Many PC users are too lazy to install a new browser or patch their existing OS let alone install a whole new OS. Until they can buy a PC without Windows installed they simply won't bother to change. Trouble is few manufacturers are prepared to take the risk (to their profit margin) of challenging their MS agreement and we end up in a cause-effect loop.
Re:Know what would be funny? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What they need is a new File System. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In other Words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Doubtful. Just because there are options doesn't mean that people will go out of their way to investigate them. Or do you really think that, when an average new computer buyer is given the option between Windows, something that they've heard of and have probably used before, or one of the various flavors of Linux, something that they probably haven't heard of and more than likely haven't used, that they won't choose Windows? More likely it'll just be just another additional cost that they'll grumble about and pay anyway - like USB cables with printers or HDMI cables with new DVD players.
I'm not saying that these people are stupid - it's just that there are things more important things to them than the operating system that their computer uses. They care about what it can do, not what it runs. Which is as it should be.
Re:Obsolesence of native code (Score:1, Insightful)
That's just not how operating systems work. That's not how Microsoft works.
It's a completely nonsensical direction for them to head both from a business and technical perspective.
Re:Singularity (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that there are existing commercial operating systems that are more complete and advanced than Singularity (especially with respect to memory isolation, security, etc.), I think this statement goes a little far. It's good that MS is working on this and it sounds like Singularity is taking a good approach to the problem, but hardly the first or most advanced.