Vista's big problem

[WoodPeckr]

Vista's big problem: 92 percent of developers ignoring it

June 16, 2008 6:37 AM PDT
Posted by Matt Asay

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd...

Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP.

Such appreciation for history is not likely to warm the cockles of Microsoft's heart, especially when Linux is getting lots of love from developers (13 percent writing apps for it this year and 15.5 percent in 2009). The Mac? I don't have any equivalent data via Evans Data. But the Mac OS has rocketed by 380 percent as a targeted development platform, Evans Data told Computerworld.

The numbers don't get much better for Vista in 2009: 24 percent (compared with 29 percent for XP). That's a big step up from 8 percent, but is it a sign of momentum to come or just a temporary stopgap while developers wait until Windows 7?

Nor has Microsoft made it easy to develop Vista applications, according to an article in ITJungle.com:
Unfortunately, that improved security posture makes it more difficult for developers to write applications for Vista (read: no more kernel-level access and UAC to worry about), and it also causes compatibility problems with older applications. Ironically, the wave of attacks targeting operating system vulnerabilities has largely passed, and today hackers have moved on to target applications. At the same time, Microsoft has provided iterative improvements in Windows XP security, bolstering its status as "good enough" and further eating into Vista's pie.

Indeed. Microsoft doesn't need to handicap itself on the desktop given its difficulties competing everywhere else. With Linux and the Mac taking ever-increasing shares of the developer pie, Microsoft would do well to shore up developer support for Windows.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, that probably means re-investing in XP and forgetting its "New Coke" moment with Vista.

 

[Cassini]

I think Microsoft lost the "Microsoft is cool" crowd of developers a long time ago. Visual Studio 6.0 and Visual Basic 6.0 still have a large fan-base. I look at the coming challenges in programming, like finding a nice way to program multi-core, multi-processor, and clustered computer systems, and keep thinking to myself: ".NET isn't the solution."

Every survey I read points out that Web applications are fun, Mac applications are fun, Python applications are fun. The hard core coders want to do something different or extreme, and that means Linux. You can't hack the WIndows Vista kernel. Microsoft is trying very hard to prevent that. So if you want to do something cool and hard core, it isn't with Windows anymore.

There is also the "killer application" problem. At this point, you won't make millions writing a Microsoft Office clone. Many custom business applications exist more easily as web (intranet) applications. From a deployment point of view, a web application only needs to be installed on one centrally managed server. This is much simpler than deploying to many desktops. Doing a web interface removes the need for a Windows application.

Finally, if you do have the new "killer" application, you want to write it in the easiest and fastest to develop for platform. Modern business and coding theory says to build the prototype fast. What is fast about Vista software development? A large fraction of Google's software developers use Macs. Google's servers are Linux. Google has the largest pool of top developers out there. Why not copy what Google is doing?

Inertia is keeping Microsoft going at the moment. Microsoft is being attacked at the low end by Linux. At the high end, something like 60% of the high end sales (>$1000) are now Apple Macs. Getting squeezed in a large comfy middle isn't a good strategic position for Microsoft. Microsoft isn't going to die easily, but times have changed.

 

[star_lord1]

Underlying all of this stuff is MS' need for a continuing revenue stream: they make their money on sales of their OS and so need to come out with a new version every few years to maintain their revenue. Linux, on the other hand, is free: revenue is generated by servicing that OS (as IBM and others have discovered) so updates can be incremental, free, and of smaller impact. It'll be interesting to see if MS can adapt to this way of doing things.

Thought for the day: what happens if Windows 7 is less well received than Vista?

 

[WoodPeckr]

Thought for the day: what happens if Windows 7 is less well received than Vista?

I'm sure there are folks at MS worried about that.
With Windows 7 coming next year why even bother with Vista now.
Many may just wait for Windows 7, or stick with XP.

 

[Berlin]

With Windows 7 coming next year why even bother with Vista now.
Many may just wait for Windows 7, or stick with XP.

Actually a couple tech folks I talked to think just that : M$ has given up on Vista. That's just the general feeling from them.

I'm still with XP and 98 for work, and more recently , Linux on my dinky Asus EEE 4G. Not really expecting much from win 7 , honest.