The Future of Windows will be...

[gosh]

http://technologizer.com/2010/03/08/future-windows/

20 experts discuss where windows is going, including journalists from CNET and includes many familiar names. I was surprised by a couple ideas i havent heard of before. Great read

[Tripredacus]

Also interesting is this article linked from that one:

http://technologizer.com/2010/02/07/mistakes/4/

[Fredledingue]

It's interresting that more than one of these specialists told "simplify, simplify simplify", make it simplier to use, simplier in the code, simplier in its structure, simplier at every level. That means in practice lighter, leaner, faster etc.

Many also said that the tough-screen and portable device will bring a new revolution in how windows is designed. I'd nuance that.

Content and inevitably applications must be adapted to specific devices, but the OS is only there as an invisible platform. The touch screen, for example is not that far from a mouse. A palm-style device is only a screen with a smaller resolution and smaller HD etc.

Poeple who think that mouse and keyboard will disapear are wrong.

IMO nothing fundamentaly different between Windows 3.1 and the last multimedia phone OS. But it's here that simplification and unbloating, starting from top bloat Vista down, become important.

I disagree with those who think that the next big thing is the all-internet based environement, that software will have to be ultimately online.

While that might be true for Google stuffs since Google is at the start an internet based service, it may not be true for Microsoft.

Windows is a Hard Drive based platform, making it internet based would mean a totaly different product, Microsft is not specialized in.

Technicaly internet based softwares are much less efficient, and open the door to thousands of hacker tricks.

I also don't see the point of running legacy software in a sandbox, or under special mode. To strip out old APIs, they'd better find which APIs are the least used and eliminate them. I'd bet that hundreds of API's are never called in any program ever, simply because they are unkown from the developers. It doesn't mean that the oldest are the most obsolete.

Like it or not, backward compatibility is key. Poeple will never buy an OS if they can't run their 10 years old software on it.

It's up to the 10 years old software to be updated or for the market to offer equivalent alternatives. But MS can't remove 10 years old or 20 years old APIs just because they are old.

Edited April 22, 2010 by Fredledingue

[Guest degenerationxxx]

Processors and Windows Vista

Vista's impact on the CPU is both obvious and subtle. It's obvious because Microsoft wanted processors with features that would enable them to do certain things. It's subtle in that CPUs were evolving in these directions even without Microsoft. The processor architects at AMD and Intel have been busy designing CPUs, with some input from Redmond, but have also been feeding information to Microsoft so that the next generation of Windows could take advantage of these features.

The Athlon 64 X2

click on image for full view

Core 2 Duo

click on image for full view

The obvious example is 64-bit computing. Intel was first of the major PC suppliers to ship a 64-bit processor, with Itanium. But Itanium's cost and somewhat checkered history led AMD to develop and popularize x86-64. This proved far more popular among end users, and was adopted by Microsoft in both Windows XP 64-bit edition and Windows Vista. Thus, Intel had to follow suit; first reluctantly, then full-bore. The new Core 2 CPUs, including the mobile versions, are true 64-bit processors, as are AMD's Athlon 64 and Turion 64 lines. CPU vendors' move to 64-bit influenced Vista, and Vista's support influenced CPU vendors.

Perhaps a little less obvious is the move to dual core. The hardware makers' push to dual core happened partly because the CPU companies were running into a wall when trying to increase the performance of single-core CPUs. But Windows itself is a heavily multitasking environment, and the presence of additional cores is proving to be a significant asset.

The strong push from the major CPU suppliers towards multicore meant that Microsoft had to do some tweaking of its own. In particular, the boys in Redmond have put substantial work into improving the Windows scheduler to work more efficiently with multiple CPU cores.

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Chairs

Edited May 11, 2010 by Tripredacus