Is Windows still relevant?

By Charles Cooper on 09 October 2006
Charles Cooper

In the increasingly Google-YouTube-Web 2.0 age we inhabit, it's become fashionable to dismiss Windows as a relic.

Ask around the office. You'll hear the Gen Xers sneer about how Microsoft's operating system is, well, so yesterday. Even a fair number of IT greybeards are warming to the notion that the times, they are a changing.

And so they are. Before closing the books on the Age of Windows, however, let's not get too caught up in the fashion of the moment. The water-cooler crowd may take a dim view of "Win-doze" for all the right reasons. Still, Microsoft's archrivals continue to view it as a product with a potentially make-or-break impact on their businesses.

In fact, two of them -- Adobe Systems and Symantec -- are lobbying European regulators to get tough on Microsoft. The European Union already has an unresolved antitrust dispute with Microsoft, and Adobe and Symantec would be silly not to play that card for all it's worth.

So this is what they're doing.

The US software makers reportedly want regulators to prevent Microsoft from incorporating competing software for reading and creating electronic documents into the upcoming Vista operating system. Just as bad, from their perspective, Microsoft would include the applications for free. (Symantec has also made the rounds, telling European regulators that Microsoft's designs for Vista will put major hurt on competing computer-security software makers.)

For a moment, I thought I had been transported back in time -- only the names had been changed. In 1997, the roster of tech companies complaining about Microsoft's behaviour was led by the likes of Netscape and Sun Microsystems, with IBM, Intel, Apple Computer and a host of other Silicon Valley names pulling up the caboose. Joel Klein, then the United States Justice Department's antitrust chief, finally was persuaded to file the government's antitrust case, and the rest is history.

Nowadays, it's the European Union's Neelie Kroes, who figures as Microsoft's chief nemesis. She's warned Microsoft not to design Vista in ways that would screw the competition. The EU has already stuck Microsoft with more than US$600 million in fines. Kroes imposed an additional US$350 million because she said Microsoft subsequently refused to change its business practices.

All because of an operating system that so many have deemed to be yesterday's news.

The reality is that Windows remains as important as ever. Web-based AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications may be the tech world's future, but there's a long transition between now and then. In the meantime, software vendors understandably dread any plans to "improve feature functionality" in Windows because they remember Microsoft's history.

At the risk of showing my age, I still recall when memory managers, firewalls, hard drive compression and defragmentation software, and any number of system tools, were sold separately (not to mention, of course, the Web browser). Most of those products -- as well as the companies behind them -- no longer exist because Microsoft has thrown everything it can inside Windows.

I can only imagine that Kroes is getting an earful about Vista. The security guys are seeing red because users will naturally gravitate toward the new Windows security console Microsoft designed for Vista. There's no longer any way that a Symantec or a McAfee can disable that feature. What's more, Europe is home to several antivirus software firms -- such as F-Secure, Panda Software and Sophos -- that share the same concerns.

Meanwhile, Vista's XML Paper Specification could pose tough new competition for Adobe's portable document format. The fact that Microsoft will include free software for reading those documents threatens quite a lucrative business for Adobe.

Companies usually are loath to air their dirty laundry -- especially regarding Microsoft -- but the simmering frustration with the way events are heading was on display earlier this week. McAfee claimed in a full-page ad in the Financial Times that Microsoft was purposely trying to hamstring security software makers by denying them access to the core of the operating system.

Only a week earlier, Symantec claimed that Microsoft had withheld important application program interfaces that security makers need to make sure their products are compatible with the anti-spyware product that will be bundled into Vista.

For the record, Microsoft disagrees with the accuracy of these portrayals and says it's maintaining close contact with regulators in Europe to ensure everything is in order.

However this gets resolved, the dustup speaks volumes about the true state of Windows' relevance. Looks like "yesterday's product" still has a few more tomorrows left.

Topics: microsoft, vista, windows, symantec, europe, window

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Comments (10)

  • Tony commented on 16/10/2006 18:25 Report abuse

    I am currently using the Beta RC1 of Vista and it is the most appealing, easy to use and functional Windows to date. This O.S is not about yesterday, this is definatly about tomorrow. It even looks as such. I would highly reccomend anyone who has the Bandwith to catch a glimpse of this from their web-site, Im quite in awe over it.

  • Lawrence Andrews commented on 14/10/2006 12:34 Report abuse

    As far as I can tell, since Bill purchased QDOS, everything thay have done is just catch up and include the ideas everyone else has thought of. Give it away free and kill the opposition. Those people who think M$ is innovative are wrong. They are, to use an old Australian term, just copy cats.

  • caesar commented on 12/10/2006 23:21 Report abuse

    I cannot understand what's the problem. Why it is so bad that Microsoft includes in it's O.S. that many facilities? I'm not a MS fan but i must admit. If someone is intrigued by these, let him make his own OS and sell his software with it. Why shouldn't I sell carrots along with onions? Just for the sake of the onion-man who cannot sell he's stuff anymore?

  • Tony commented on 11/10/2006 07:43 Report abuse

    I agree with the couple of posts I've read saying that it's because of MS's past security history that we even have antivirus products to begin with. I also agree it's clearly better for everyone using Vista that the OS core is locked out for any programs. Although I doubt it will be locked for very long. Unfortunately I think the real argument/worry here is the lack of trust in Microsoft by anyone. My opinion of the company offering it's own "protection services" is basically compared to the shoddy car mechanic down the street. The guy that you take your car to for an oil change and he screws with the timing so you have to bring it back. I don't think MS should be legally allowed to develop antivirus software. I think it should be relegated to 3rd party developers simply for providing a check and balance on the company. Maybe it's just a pessimistic, paranoid opinion, but that's me.

  • Scott commented on 10/10/2006 22:52 Report abuse

    I was disappointed with article as a whole... where exactly did you cover any information that actually relates to the relevancy of Windows? The closest you came was mentioning AJAX and browser based applications in passing, but those browsers need an operating system to run on. All the applications you mentioned aren't "Windows"... they're applications bundled with it. And let's be fair, there will always be a CHANGING market for OS Enhancement products like defraggers, mem managers, and security software. I'm frankly just a little tired of the A/V companies whining that MS is locking down the OS the point that their apps can't access the core of the OS. Ya know what? GOOD! Nothing should be accessing the core of the OS. The only reason the A/V companies have a business in the first place is MS's shoddy security history. If MS is cleaning up it's act (debatable, I know) and making it less necessary for certain niches of products to exist, that's fine by me. There's bound to be OTHER niches to be filled. And as for Adobe... Hell, they have the market on open document formats damn near cornered... If they're worried about MS enticing everyone over to a new XML Doc standard, then why not just ADD SUPPORT FOR READING IT IN ACROBAT so nobody HAS to leave their product, even if some people do start using the new format? Obviously they won't add support for WRITING it, but that's OK. Whatever happened to good ole' competition driving innovation?

  • Bart commented on 10/10/2006 22:33 Report abuse

    Windows will remain relevant as long as businesses are concerned about proprietary content, and governments with IP. The popularity of Windows cannot be separated from the legalities surrounding DVD copy protection, and all the other media licensing technologies. If a content provider insists on licensing, they are more or less demanding subscribers use Windows. This is because it costs a lot to develop for the 'fringe' of other users. And in fairness, how can you demand a business develop for some minority, or open their content up for free just because some minority have a communistic no-pay philosophy? Linux is great, it is just lacking many plugins that let it interface with the real world of proprietary content. And games...if Linux ran every popular game then OF COURSE people would be happier to install it. Nobody wants to say, "sorry son, you can't play Harry Potter any more because we are political malcontents".

  • Ben commented on 10/10/2006 20:34 Report abuse

    Oluseyi: PDF is an open spec. There is fantastic support for the format on all platforms that I have seen. This is because Adobe offers the complete spec. Microsoft's track record here is not good. They have a history of taking an idea like PDF and twisting it into a Windows-only "feature" that locks out the competition. There are many examples of this: DirectX compared to OpenGL, MS's take on Java, WMA as opposed to MP3. You name it. If they see it as a threat to their monopoly, MS will take the essence of a format or idea and force it into there take on a Windows-only equivalent. Yes, Adobe's PDF reader and writer are bloated and complex, but because they open the spec, we see integrated PDF support for Linux, Mac OSX, other Unix derivatives and even less known systems like BeOS. (Not to mention Windows-based alternatives like Foxit and PDFCreator.)

  • Oluseyi commented on 10/10/2006 03:07 Report abuse

    If Windows is no longer relevant, then neither is OS X or Linux, being alternatives/equivalents for Windows. Yet those very same "Gen Xers" (ugh, horrible term) fawn endlessly over the substitutes. Irony: Adobe claims that PDF is an "open specification," yet it is opposing a competing open specification from Microsoft? I mean, if the specifications are open, then can't you just add XPS support to Acrobat... or allow native PDF support in Office, which Adobe opposes? Hubris: Semantec and Norton do not make systems any more secure, and they can cause significant pain to those of us using our computers in edge case scenarios, such as software development. Microsoft software - separate SKU or built into Windows - at least never hinders developers. I'll take Defender/OneCare/Security Center/Whatever-Microsoft-Is-Calling-It-This-Week, particularly over McAfee.

  • Zack commented on 10/10/2006 02:02 Report abuse

    I personally will always get rid of as much of the default windows protections as i can and use AntiVir and Spybot. What's awful is that companies like Symantec are so much better at business deals than they are at making anti-virus software, they should really shift their focus, as i'm currently forced to weed symantec out of my system every time i use my restore disc.

  • Matt commented on 10/10/2006 02:01 Report abuse

    I am no big fan of M$ but now that I no longer have the youthful energy to protest just for the sake of of it I have come to accept (though not embrace) Windoze. Considering the context of memory managers, defrag utilities, etc. mentioned in the article it seems to me that M$ should be permitted to address those aspects of the Windows platform that it gets beat up for by the Mac and Linux communities-- if the platform is so insecure, let M$ make it secure. If it is prone to viruses, then it should fall on M$ to do whatever it can to prevent viruses. Of course I understand that it may seem foolish to believe that the same company that can't prevent the foibles should be allowed to produce these bandaids and that the focus should be on a bulletproof security implementation in the first place, but would the argument really be any different if M$ fixed the holes via service packs instead of a firewall or AV console? Not really. As far as I am concerned Symantec AV and Firewall on top of Windows is worse than just letting Windows do it. Norton is never going on any of my machines again. Just my two cents for whatever thats worth. Matt

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