@ammoQ said:@MasterPlanSoftware said:I think it has more to do with they don't NEED to. Linux and FOSS is it's own worst enemy. You cannot blame anyone else for Linux's failure so far. Microsoft did not make Linux not ready for the desktop.
It's obviously very difficult to break into the desktop market, no matter how well a system is made. Millions of programs have been written for Windows, many of them don't run on Linux even with Wine. Most users depend on one of those programs or another. Plus many users are unable to adapt another system at all. They fail when an icon is not at the same place as the day before.
Anyway, Linux is slowly, but steadily making progress. And now that the eeePC and similar devices, many of which are Linux-powered by default, have hit the market, MS NEEDS to do something. Vista is obviously no choice for such devices, and XP is getting old.
True. It isn't the actual quality of the rival OS market, but that people have been deeply ingrained into "the Windows way" that they dislike any kind of change.
Funny thing is, I distinctly remember that back in the 80's, the desktop market was dominated by Apple. Contrary to morbiuswilters' beliefs, Apple's stuff was vastly superior than the mediocre IBM-PC offer back then, even when they still ran the 680x0 chipset. My 1986 Mac Plus had integrated network capabilities, sound support and SCSI hard-disk support. Even if LocalTalk isn't that good, it did have this out of the box, while PC's required buying an external Ethernet (thicknet/thinnet) card, and a separate soundcard. System 7 0wned pretty much everything out there, for ease of use; I even remember reading a feature comparison with Windows 3.1 (or was it 3.0?) and showing the hassle that using Windows 3.x was. In fact, the nice look and feel for the Office suite came to life in the Macintosh years before Windows even existed.
Apple got ran over because of pricing and lack of "cheaper compatible Macs", while PCs were being sold at vastly lower prices. Of course, the Windows 3.1 GUI wasn't good enough to win users over, but this changed with win95. With all of the bugs win95 brought, it was the first Windows to actually come up to par with System 7. Ok, maybe System 6, or 5; but at least it was more Mac-like. (Where do you think they got the "Recycle Bin" idea?)
By the time Apple actually opened up the Mac-building market, the masses had already flocked to the PC, and Windows was already eating away the market. Back in the early-to-mid 90's, the best games came out for Mac (Populous, Myst, the nice versions of Wolf3D and Descent, even SimCity was born here!). So did most "nice-looking" desktop applications.
The sad thing is that what saved Apple was that big MS buyout back in '97, and Jobs returning to the helm, which lead to:
- Killing off the Mac clones (Power Computing's license revoked)
- Turning the Mac into a snobby fashion appliance.
Mac OS X may be great, but I just don't like Apple's philosophy anymore.