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Windows is doomed as soon as: - there is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office on the desktop. This doesn't mean one that gets most of the way there; LibreO

Windows is doomed as soon as: - there is a viable alternative to Microsoft Office on the desktop. This doesn't mean one that gets most of the way there; LibreOffice and company, Office on mobile, etc. don't quite cut it. Macro jockeys and VBA scripting are huge game changers for corporate clients, especially in the finance and accounting worlds. - common CAD software has been entirely ported to a new platform and has complete feature parity. Considering how conservative engineering/manufacturing firms can be, this will likely never happen. No large engineering corporation will ever risk, or run the risk of ever having to run the risk, of even the slightest of hiccups in a large software migration. The only big swinger even making an attempt in this department is Siemens NX, and even we're still quite far out from feature parity for even that single package. - Active Directory has a viable counterpart for a competing operating system. Some people are trying, none are truly succeeding. Those three points alone are enough to prop up Windows for the next couple decades. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Windows, Microsoft, their business practices, or many of their ideas on how things should be done. However, it drives me up the fucking wall when people make dumbass claims that Windows will die within any reasonable timeframe (20-30 years). EDIT: As a quick clarification, I bring up CAD not because it attracts a large userbase (it doesn't), but because switching away from Windows means that the manufacturing base of the entire world will undergo a massive change that could prove fatal in many ways. This means that any company with a significant CAD userbase will be using Windows, even if the HR, IT, etc. doesn't, in an attempt to consolidate overhead. This also means that many companies that work with engineering/manufacturing companies will stick with it for compatibility's sake. Many people are commenting that CAD/manufacturing doesn't account for many users, but that's beside the major implication. Engineering and manufacturing customers alone could ensure at least a workable level of Windows support, all while indoctrinating most of their employees in to Microsoft's ecosystem.

optimuspaul 9y ago
I don't disagree with your thesis, but I think that your bullet points are weak. But I do think that is illustrates the real point. It's going to take a lot of little things to change before windows is doomed. However, I do see it as a possibility that windows being doomed as a consumer OS might happen in our lifetime. As more things move to service oriented and more devices become connected it's very plausible that the majority drop their desktops and laptops and rely on mobile and chrombook level devices.
- jbob2000 9y ago
  Moving the entire world's manufacturing processes is not a "little thing to change". Same thing with Active Directory - millions of people work through this system, it's no small task to transition them to something else. It's not doomed as a consumer OS. People want to use the same OS at home that they do at work, it feels familiar to them and they already know how to get stuff done.
- Kurtz79 9y ago
  If you think that having a real alternative to Office is a minor point, than you haven't worked in a corporate environment, and I'm not talking about Internet companies, but traditional medium-sized engineering companies, accounting, legal studios, government agencies etc... Millions of professionals very good at their jobs, but with no particular technical proficiency, have been using Word and Excel for years, and convincing them to switch to something else would take much more effort that any IT manager with a budget can possibly muster.
bhouston 9y ago
> common CAD software OnShape is a viable online replacement for SolidWorks but it is hard to transition people from their favorite software package. CAD is not the biggest deal and is not a major factor, even if some people think it is. Less than 1% of corporate office computer workers are CAD and it is probably way less than that even. Office and Active Directory are a big deal though.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  CAD isn't the only major program though. Adobe Suite is another major factor: Wacom Tablets are still superior to iPad Pencil and Surface Pen (although the Surface Pen provides a cheap entrypoint for these programs). And nothing on iPad has the featureset of Photoshop (or Manga Studio or whatever you prefer) Non-CAD programs like Blender, or Maya and whatever, are still best on a PC. ---------- And as long as you're using PC software, you'll need an IT department that supports enterprise PC operations. Active Directory and Group Policy really does make life easier for any IT Administrator who is in charge of 100 to 1000 computers.
  - kec 9y ago
    Both the adobe suite and Wacom tablets work on Mac, not sure what you’re trying to say here.
- seabird 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but OnShape doesn't even come close. We don't even have to start talking about the functionality. The fact that there's no sane PLM options instantly kills it for corporate customers, and it will stay that way until there is.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
"Windows is doomed" doesn't mean windows is going away. As long as its market is stagnant and it isn't picking up new domains while it's competitors (linux, OS X, android) are, it becomes just a piece of legacy technology that has to stick around but isn't going anywhere. There are very good reasons why Windows tried going with mobile, IoT, and AR/MR for its future growth. "Doomed" means a slow eventual death, not an immediate one. This reminds me of how people were so busy knocking down strawmen with the whole post-PC thing.
- msl09 9y ago
  I think that a significant reduction to the user base may actually lead to Microsoft actually stopping all further development of windows, because I believe that the cost of developing, updating, and securing windows is massive.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    They have enough market to justify continued development at a slower pace, but windev (OSG?) is no longer going to have growing profit and they would probably cut back on R&D and focus on ASG and C&E where profit growth is happening. Reading the article, the problem becomes more obvious: without mobile, they have a huge gap in their offering and have to embrace competing OS's (Cortana goes nowhere with a non mobile windows).
    - msl09 9y ago
      Pardon my ignorance but what's OSG, ASG or C&E?
- seabird 9y ago
  If "doomed" means a slow eventual death, absolutely everything has been doomed from the start.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Yes, death is inevitable. The trick is, can you tell where your life rise ends and your fall begins? Doomed is typically identified at or after that point.
mikeash 9y ago
Do the official online versions of Office qualify as viable alternatives, or could they potentially be in the future? Obviously this would require Microsoft themselves to undercut Windows, but Office is such a cash cow for them, they might see it as worthwhile.
- dspillett 9y ago
  I think they'd be quite happy to undercut Desktop/Mobile Windows in favour of Office. Long term Office may be the most viable product. There are already online and mobile versions that don;t require anything Windows related (they aren't feature complete yet by any means, but that will eventually change). Even Server Windows to an extent if their other on-prem cache cow (SQL Server) does well on Linux. Windows is not their core priority these days. The Azure platform is, and Windows is just a part of that which could be swapped out. Maybe Windows will just become a free (though obviously not Free) product, with the money coming in from Azure + SQL + Office.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Exactly my thinking. Office probably has more legs. Attempting to keep it tied to Windows in order to save Windows could end up bringing both down, and I think they know this. Back in the bad old days, Microsoft could barely be convinced to keep a Mac port of Office going, and that was basically to keep the government at bay. But they seem to be more open now.
endorphone 9y ago
Doomed in this context doesn't mean "is extinguished from all use". For instance, CAD is an absolutely tiny usage of an OS. Minuscule. Office...I'm in finance and massive numbers of people are either working on ancient versions of Office, or they've transitioned to alternatives. Office is absolutely enormous in scope, but it's one of those things that is detrimental to many workflows because of its powers. Many shops prefer webapps and on-demand generated consumables. Even Excel is very rapidly dying. The criticality of Windows has absolutely imploded, and is nothing like it was. If someone wants to use Linux, or OSX, or Android, or whatever, in most cases it fits in many workflows with absolutely no issues. On the home front the single thing keeping Windows running in most home situations is game compatibility. A massive number of home users never go outside of the browser, and those that do usually do just for games.
- greenscale 9y ago
  I definitely fall under your last point. As soon as I can play my entire Steam library on a Mac or Linux, I'll make the switch. Until then, I'm stuck on Windows.
roenxi 9y ago
Just for fun; I recorded a macro in LibreOffice Basic that sets the text in a cell. This is a sample: dispatcher = createUnoService("com.sun.star.frame.DispatchHelper") dim args1(0) as new com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue args1(0).Name = "ToPoint" args1(0).Value = "$C$7" dispatcher.executeDispatch(document, ".uno:GoToCell", "", 0, args1()) That first line is confusing and obsolete. Sun doesn't exist any more, it is two generations of branding from being StarOffice, and good luck figuring out why the service is named after a card game. Even a programmer isn't going to figure all that out without knowing the history of the project. Now in MS Office I'm pretty sure this would be something like ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 5) = "foo". There is nearly no discovery for the LO Basic equivalent 'sheet.getCellByPosition(3,16) = "foo"'. It really is worlds apart. I don't see how a moderately sophisticated user can learn to write LO macros without finding a reference manual and investing hours orienting themselves. I've seen people teach themselves to a useful standard using MS Office macro recordings. EDIT More importantly, a novice wouldn't necessarily understand that the recorded macro isn't the accepted way to select a cell. Even realising that a cell can be selected with one line is hindered by the LO macro recording.
- m-p-3 9y ago
  They really need to make an easier and modern way of scripting in LO.
- endorphone 9y ago
  Macro-programming Office documents is one of those things that should immediately elicit the question "Is there a better solution?" There almost always is. Office documents are an extremely poor workflow and a terrible artifact for data. Which is why replacements seldom have more than the most trivial of automation -- the people who are making the move usually change their workflows. The offices that built around Office 95 are, however, still doing things the way they always do. EDIT: What a changed world when this is a contentious comment.
  - sclangdon 9y ago
    What is a "better" solution? If a macro-programmed office document is doing its job, what constitutes "better"?
proyb2 9y ago
If we could run entirely in a web browsers, it's a real alternative for everything. Probably Web Assembly might be the answer.
Retric 9y ago
COBAL was doomed 30 years ago, it's still not quite 100% dead yet. But, it might as well be. Windows is on the same path in part from the windows 10 fiasco, but also from the stagnation in computing hardware. Consider Direct X with ever improving hardware it's was a hard target to keep up with. But, now they would have to make changes for the sake of change while providing backward compatibility...
ryanackley 9y ago
Most CAD programs work on Mac. It's just 2x-4x more expensive to buy comparable Apple hardware that runs it. I agree that the scripting is a moat around Window's dominance but most small businesses run Windows because the hardware is more affordable and a lot of people are comfortable with Windows. Office is also super cheap now and free alternatives kind of suck and they address common pain points incrementally better than they did 10 years ago. In other words, it doesn't feel like free Office alternatives are keeping up. For example, LibreOffice stopped trying to improve compatibility with MS Office documents. I get the philosophical reasons but if you want to migrate end-users, you have to care about things like that. At my son's public school, he was being taught to use Google Docs because (of course) it's more affordable than buying a bunch of copies of Microsoft Office for the kids. He was doing homework one day and he was trying to do some common formatting thing in Google Docs. Can't remember specifics. After a few minutes of trying to help him figure it out, I was like "let me introduce you to this little program called Microsoft Word". It blew his mind after using Google Docs.
michrassena 9y ago
I think CAD is a great example, because CAD products do exist for Mac OSX, which at this point is the only viable competitor to Windows, even including a 2015 port of AutoCAD. BIM exist, like ArchiCAD. It's not that the Mac is a complete dead end, but the resources required to target the Mac are non-trivial and it has to be worth the investment. For years high end Unix workstations dominated in the 3D graphics and design field, in engineering, industrial design and fabrication, basically anywhere a computer+engineer generated the kind of income which justified a $50,000 computer (epitomized by SGIs and Dec Alphas) plus equally or more expensive software licenses. What happened is the bottom dropped out of the hardware market. The Pentium Pro came along, Windows NT 4.0 was released with OpenGL support, Nvidia brought powerful 3D to the consumer desktop, computers with 256MB or more of RAM were commonplace, and all of this was available for a few thousand dollars. Over time, almost everyone making software for these platforms either jumped ship or went broken. So while there's a historical precedent for this same migration in the computer field, something's different this time. There's no room at the bottom.

optimuspaul 9y ago

I don't disagree with your thesis, but I think that your bullet points are weak. But I do think that is illustrates the real point. It's going to take a lot of little things to change before windows is doomed. However, I do see it as a possibility that windows being doomed as a consumer OS might happen in our lifetime. As more things move to service oriented and more devices become connected it's very plausible that the majority drop their desktops and laptops and rely on mobile and chrombook level devices.

jbob2000 9y ago
Moving the entire world's manufacturing processes is not a "little thing to change". Same thing with Active Directory - millions of people work through this system, it's no small task to transition them to something else. It's not doomed as a consumer OS. People want to use the same OS at home that they do at work, it feels familiar to them and they already know how to get stuff done.
Kurtz79 9y ago
If you think that having a real alternative to Office is a minor point, than you haven't worked in a corporate environment, and I'm not talking about Internet companies, but traditional medium-sized engineering companies, accounting, legal studios, government agencies etc... Millions of professionals very good at their jobs, but with no particular technical proficiency, have been using Word and Excel for years, and convincing them to switch to something else would take much more effort that any IT manager with a budget can possibly muster.

bhouston 9y ago

> common CAD software OnShape is a viable online replacement for SolidWorks but it is hard to transition people from their favorite software package. CAD is not the biggest deal and is not a major factor, even if some people think it is. Less than 1% of corporate office computer workers are CAD and it is probably way less than that even. Office and Active Directory are a big deal though.

dragontamer 9y ago
CAD isn't the only major program though. Adobe Suite is another major factor: Wacom Tablets are still superior to iPad Pencil and Surface Pen (although the Surface Pen provides a cheap entrypoint for these programs). And nothing on iPad has the featureset of Photoshop (or Manga Studio or whatever you prefer) Non-CAD programs like Blender, or Maya and whatever, are still best on a PC. ---------- And as long as you're using PC software, you'll need an IT department that supports enterprise PC operations. Active Directory and Group Policy really does make life easier for any IT Administrator who is in charge of 100 to 1000 computers.
- kec 9y ago
  Both the adobe suite and Wacom tablets work on Mac, not sure what you’re trying to say here.
seabird 9y ago
I'm sorry, but OnShape doesn't even come close. We don't even have to start talking about the functionality. The fact that there's no sane PLM options instantly kills it for corporate customers, and it will stay that way until there is.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

"Windows is doomed" doesn't mean windows is going away. As long as its market is stagnant and it isn't picking up new domains while it's competitors (linux, OS X, android) are, it becomes just a piece of legacy technology that has to stick around but isn't going anywhere. There are very good reasons why Windows tried going with mobile, IoT, and AR/MR for its future growth. "Doomed" means a slow eventual death, not an immediate one. This reminds me of how people were so busy knocking down strawmen with the whole post-PC thing.

msl09 9y ago
I think that a significant reduction to the user base may actually lead to Microsoft actually stopping all further development of windows, because I believe that the cost of developing, updating, and securing windows is massive.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  They have enough market to justify continued development at a slower pace, but windev (OSG?) is no longer going to have growing profit and they would probably cut back on R&D and focus on ASG and C&E where profit growth is happening. Reading the article, the problem becomes more obvious: without mobile, they have a huge gap in their offering and have to embrace competing OS's (Cortana goes nowhere with a non mobile windows).
  - msl09 9y ago
    Pardon my ignorance but what's OSG, ASG or C&E?
seabird 9y ago
If "doomed" means a slow eventual death, absolutely everything has been doomed from the start.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Yes, death is inevitable. The trick is, can you tell where your life rise ends and your fall begins? Doomed is typically identified at or after that point.

mikeash 9y ago

Do the official online versions of Office qualify as viable alternatives, or could they potentially be in the future? Obviously this would require Microsoft themselves to undercut Windows, but Office is such a cash cow for them, they might see it as worthwhile.

dspillett 9y ago
I think they'd be quite happy to undercut Desktop/Mobile Windows in favour of Office. Long term Office may be the most viable product. There are already online and mobile versions that don;t require anything Windows related (they aren't feature complete yet by any means, but that will eventually change). Even Server Windows to an extent if their other on-prem cache cow (SQL Server) does well on Linux. Windows is not their core priority these days. The Azure platform is, and Windows is just a part of that which could be swapped out. Maybe Windows will just become a free (though obviously not Free) product, with the money coming in from Azure + SQL + Office.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Exactly my thinking. Office probably has more legs. Attempting to keep it tied to Windows in order to save Windows could end up bringing both down, and I think they know this. Back in the bad old days, Microsoft could barely be convinced to keep a Mac port of Office going, and that was basically to keep the government at bay. But they seem to be more open now.

endorphone 9y ago

Doomed in this context doesn't mean "is extinguished from all use". For instance, CAD is an absolutely tiny usage of an OS. Minuscule. Office...I'm in finance and massive numbers of people are either working on ancient versions of Office, or they've transitioned to alternatives. Office is absolutely enormous in scope, but it's one of those things that is detrimental to many workflows because of its powers. Many shops prefer webapps and on-demand generated consumables. Even Excel is very rapidly dying. The criticality of Windows has absolutely imploded, and is nothing like it was. If someone wants to use Linux, or OSX, or Android, or whatever, in most cases it fits in many workflows with absolutely no issues. On the home front the single thing keeping Windows running in most home situations is game compatibility. A massive number of home users never go outside of the browser, and those that do usually do just for games.

greenscale 9y ago
I definitely fall under your last point. As soon as I can play my entire Steam library on a Mac or Linux, I'll make the switch. Until then, I'm stuck on Windows.

roenxi 9y ago

Just for fun; I recorded a macro in LibreOffice Basic that sets the text in a cell. This is a sample: dispatcher = createUnoService("com.sun.star.frame.DispatchHelper") dim args1(0) as new com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue args1(0).Name = "ToPoint" args1(0).Value = "$C$7" dispatcher.executeDispatch(document, ".uno:GoToCell", "", 0, args1()) That first line is confusing and obsolete. Sun doesn't exist any more, it is two generations of branding from being StarOffice, and good luck figuring out why the service is named after a card game. Even a programmer isn't going to figure all that out without knowing the history of the project. Now in MS Office I'm pretty sure this would be something like ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 5) = "foo". There is nearly no discovery for the LO Basic equivalent 'sheet.getCellByPosition(3,16) = "foo"'. It really is worlds apart. I don't see how a moderately sophisticated user can learn to write LO macros without finding a reference manual and investing hours orienting themselves. I've seen people teach themselves to a useful standard using MS Office macro recordings. EDIT More importantly, a novice wouldn't necessarily understand that the recorded macro isn't the accepted way to select a cell. Even realising that a cell can be selected with one line is hindered by the LO macro recording.

m-p-3 9y ago
They really need to make an easier and modern way of scripting in LO.
endorphone 9y ago
Macro-programming Office documents is one of those things that should immediately elicit the question "Is there a better solution?" There almost always is. Office documents are an extremely poor workflow and a terrible artifact for data. Which is why replacements seldom have more than the most trivial of automation -- the people who are making the move usually change their workflows. The offices that built around Office 95 are, however, still doing things the way they always do. EDIT: What a changed world when this is a contentious comment.
- sclangdon 9y ago
  What is a "better" solution? If a macro-programmed office document is doing its job, what constitutes "better"?

proyb2 9y ago

If we could run entirely in a web browsers, it's a real alternative for everything. Probably Web Assembly might be the answer.

Retric 9y ago

COBAL was doomed 30 years ago, it's still not quite 100% dead yet. But, it might as well be. Windows is on the same path in part from the windows 10 fiasco, but also from the stagnation in computing hardware. Consider Direct X with ever improving hardware it's was a hard target to keep up with. But, now they would have to make changes for the sake of change while providing backward compatibility...

ryanackley 9y ago

Most CAD programs work on Mac. It's just 2x-4x more expensive to buy comparable Apple hardware that runs it. I agree that the scripting is a moat around Window's dominance but most small businesses run Windows because the hardware is more affordable and a lot of people are comfortable with Windows. Office is also super cheap now and free alternatives kind of suck and they address common pain points incrementally better than they did 10 years ago. In other words, it doesn't feel like free Office alternatives are keeping up. For example, LibreOffice stopped trying to improve compatibility with MS Office documents. I get the philosophical reasons but if you want to migrate end-users, you have to care about things like that. At my son's public school, he was being taught to use Google Docs because (of course) it's more affordable than buying a bunch of copies of Microsoft Office for the kids. He was doing homework one day and he was trying to do some common formatting thing in Google Docs. Can't remember specifics. After a few minutes of trying to help him figure it out, I was like "let me introduce you to this little program called Microsoft Word". It blew his mind after using Google Docs.

michrassena 9y ago

I think CAD is a great example, because CAD products do exist for Mac OSX, which at this point is the only viable competitor to Windows, even including a 2015 port of AutoCAD. BIM exist, like ArchiCAD. It's not that the Mac is a complete dead end, but the resources required to target the Mac are non-trivial and it has to be worth the investment. For years high end Unix workstations dominated in the 3D graphics and design field, in engineering, industrial design and fabrication, basically anywhere a computer+engineer generated the kind of income which justified a $50,000 computer (epitomized by SGIs and Dec Alphas) plus equally or more expensive software licenses. What happened is the bottom dropped out of the hardware market. The Pentium Pro came along, Windows NT 4.0 was released with OpenGL support, Nvidia brought powerful 3D to the consumer desktop, computers with 256MB or more of RAM were commonplace, and all of this was available for a few thousand dollars. Over time, almost everyone making software for these platforms either jumped ship or went broken. So while there's a historical precedent for this same migration in the computer field, something's different this time. There's no room at the bottom.