I think Gartner is right on. Apple geeks may have been pissed off about the loss of OS 9.x especially in light of 10.0 - but it was the smart move on Apples part. The classic layer was brilliant too.

MS needs to do the same kinda thing. I was hoping that Vista would have been the first step, but that is not the case.
Heck, MS Server 2008 is a much bigger change and better for it!

Time will tell. MS isn't dead yet and won't be for a long while, but for them to be come the truly dominant desktop OS, they will have to drastically change windows.
Yes, you troll idiots, Windows is the majority desktop, but Vista is indeed only incrementally better than XP and nothing more. Had MS written DirectX10.x for XP, even fewer folks would be running Vista.
That is onerous.

Imagine the billions of dollars Apple wasted on XBox, Zune, that internet on TV thing, and the ill-conceived OS called Vista.

Imagine if instead of throwing that money down the drain they talked to their enterprise customers and said "Folks, Windows is obsolete, your legacy apps are obsolete, so we will rewrite Windows from the ground up and your apps too. It will be painful but in the end both of us will benefit. And it will cost you no more than a normal upgrade because we have these billions of dollars set aside to test the new software thoroughly before releasing it and to help you through the transition. You only have to pay for the new OS and we will update your apps to the new OS for free. Yes, were risking losing your business to Linux, Sun, and Apple but we're confident we will win your business all over again because we will offer the most advanced software technology and the tremendous resources of Microsoft (which none of our competitors can match) to back it up."

Things would have been a lot different, huh?

But Microsoft couldn't help but be fat, lazy and dumb like any other long-time monopolist.

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Guest wrote:
Imagine the billions of dollars Apple wasted on XBox, Zune, that internet on TV thing, and the ill-conceived OS called Vista.

Dead on, it is much easier to sell the same old stuff with a different wrapper rather then sucking up a little pain and doing a visionary thing.

but, I think that Microsoft's only solution is a two-tiered solution. Their real problem is all of their IT customers who cry and whine everytime that Microsoft tries to change anything--because it will break all their heavy investment in software. So, my suggestion would be to 1. Give a long-term roll-out battle plan, including setting the APIs and such early enough so that those who can, can start preparing for the new, 2. Offer a long-term support for the current OS--5-to-7 years, but with the foreknowledge that, after that time, either all support is off--or the cost of support will increase dramatically.

Many, if not most of Microsoft's consumer customers don't really have so much invested that they can't upgrade--sheesh, we Apple users have done it three times --once to PowerPC, once to OS X and lastly, to Intel--so the consumers can do it--it's just thos big houses that cannot--so a two-tiered solution, it would seem, would be the best way to go--but that's my amateur's opinion.

-Jon

..I think MS will weather this fine (I am not a fan of MS BTW - I have no Windows machines at home nor Office for mac etc)

Where I work, we buy various computer/hardware based products and use them in broadcast. They look great at the demo shows and then we try to use them for real. Most of our systems are now several years old and are still being 'fixed' - the manufacturers have ways of selling us upgrades which address issues, but at the end of it all, the products are not perfect, but as good as they will be until they can sell us something new.

This is the modern business model, as much as I hate it - what is the point of selling something which is perfect when you can keep selling imperfect 'new' things with minor updates so that people upgrade to the new one.

MS can keep selling new OSes and apps - sure they will lose a bit of the user base through some migration, but so many organisations have so much invested in their systems that changing to new platforms is not an overnight quick decision thing. Yes they will have to change, but does this not give them 'new opportunities' to sell more stuff.

Sadly so much business these days is not about having a passion for your product or craft, but a pursuit of money/power.

Not sure how many times I've read this in the past decade. It didn't seem to come true after Windows 98 (which was a step backwards from Windows 95), and I don't see it coming true now. One big factor for people not seeing a reason to upgrade to Vista is that it is more advanced than the hardware and software that is currently being used by most people. Gamers have no real reason to upgrade until games start using dx10, but once game shops start writing to dx10, you bet Vista will fly into the hands of gamers. Just one example of the point. Vista demands nice hardware, most people aren't at the point where they will use that kind of hardware yet. It's an OS of tomorrow, not today, that is all. It's a Friday, so I guess it's just time for yet another doomsday prediction for Windows that never comes true. Only a shift away from the PC model will derail Windows.