[LINK] Microsoft is dead

Alastair Rankine arsptr at internode.on.net
Sun Apr 8 16:25:01 AEST 2007


On 07/04/2007, at 5:44 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:

> Microsoft is dead:
> http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

Concludes thus:

> I already know what the reaction to this essay will be. Half the  
> readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable  
> company, and that I should be more careful about drawing  
> conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little  
> "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain  
> that this is old news.

Count me among the older half.

Graham's premise is that web-based applications are going to make the  
desktop -- and hence Microsoft but curiously not Apple -- obsolete.  
All clever Ajax-y tricks aside, does anyone really think this is  
going to happen for all applications? They will all be rendered into  
the browser from some hosted service somewhere?

Actually I agree with another of Graham's (actually Tim O'Reilly's)  
premises, namely that we should be looking at alpha geeks to see  
where the future lies. And it seems obvious to me that the alpha  
geeks *are* currently tied to their desktops; this is where they run  
editors, compilers and debuggers, in order to create the next great  
web app.

It seems obvious to me that the desktop *does* matter. Custom desktop  
applications that make web applications better (I call these "hybrid"  
web/desktop apps) are common now and will become more so in the  
future. (More here: http://girtby.net/articles/2005/9/6/ical-ucal-we- 
all-cal )

Windows will become irrelevant if it fails to attract enough  
developers to produce these hybrid apps. There is no sign that  
Windows is lagging in this respect.

Microsoft certainly should be worried that the alpha geeks are all  
running MacOS or Linux these days. But Microsoft still has a long way  
to fall.


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