Microsoft Sees Linux As Bigger Competitor Than Apple 596
Facetious writes "It seems Microsoft doesn't believe the data from Net Applications regarding Linux any more than Slashdot readers do. In a recent presentation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed a slide showing, from Microsoft's internal analysis, that Linux client use is clearly ahead of Apple's."
Embedded Difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple OS != Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, it's not.
AFAIK it's a Unix-like environment running on top of the Mach microkernel with a BSD-ish userland. The unix-like varnish over the microkernel is very modern, but I find the BSD userland rather primitive.
The GUI is good. Most Mac users never leave it.
They aren't in the same business (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple sells hardware.
While there is certainly a small amount of overlap in their product lines, they aren't really in direct competition.
Has Linux long been ahead of Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps after the success of the switch adds Apple inched ahead of Linux on the desk top. But if you look over the last 15 years, I believe that there has been more Linux on the desktop than Apple OS's.
It hasn't been in anyone's interest to say that. I think that is even true of the Linux companies. For a long time they wanted to be under the radar under dogs. Perhaps because they didn't want a fight to the death with Microsoft.
Linux is more widespread (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:They aren't in the same business (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple sells hardware and software. You may have heard of Final Cut Pro, or Aperture, just to state a few high end products of theirs.
Microsoft sells software and hardware. You may have heard of the Xbox360 or the Zune.
The generalization that Apple sells computers and Microsoft sells software is a gross one, to say the least.
Its beyond just the numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux cannot be dealt with in that fashion. The business model is different. Microsoft can pull a Novell or a Xandros deal, but that either 1) ends up helping those distros, or, more worryingly, 2) does nothing to fight the multiheaded hydra that Linux is. Add the fact that it cannot be bought or threatened with any serious lawsuits, its a major headache for Microsoft. All Microsoft can do, is to slow down its rate of adoption, through a combination of tactics, and that is what they have been doing for the past 10 years. This is also good for Linux, as it is giving the developers breathing time and space to improve the quality. In looks department, they are already comfortably ahead of anything Vista or Leopard throw up. The only missing pieces of the puzzle are UI workflow design (where Apple has a superior product) and apps (where Microsoft is ahead). The latter is changing, while the former, is IMO languishing a bit for Gnome, though KDE4 has made some notable improvements.
Microsoft's overall domination of the PC is currently not under threat, but Linux's success is forcing it to slash profit margins and do other things that it would rather not have do. The reason is that unlike Apple, Microsoft's userbase is full of people who want quality for a good price and don't want to be fooled into paying for pricy stuff they really do not need.
It is not the year of linux on the desktop yet. But its coming, and that is giving people in Redmond sleepless nights.
Trademark and copyright loss: no problem (Score:5, Interesting)
What if they offered Linus Torvalds a billion dollars for the trademark and the copyright to his code?
And assuming Linus accepted, of course...
Then we'd fork the latest version of the kernel (and git, and * FROM code WHERE copyright_holder = "Linus") and hack on.
To deal with the trademark, we'd have to rename the kernel. We could always use Linus' original name, Freax, or name it after some other maintainer... Mortonix? Coxix?
And then there'd be happy hacking all around.
Fair enough points (Score:4, Interesting)
OK so Apple's share of the worldwide computer shipments is 7-10 million units.
Funny thing is, there are other ships floating out there in them competitive waters Mr. Ballmer.
Witness: iPod, iPhone, iTunes, and notably WebKit
I see a much lower percentage share of IE on sites I manage and barely a blip of traffic from Chrome with Firefox and then Safari taking places 2 & 3.
We don't need to discuss how iPod/iPhone has affected the landscape.
I'm more interested in how WebKit plays in the equation.
Webkit is more than just plain old eyeballs, it's increasingly driving standards with support for CSS,/HTML specs, and, offline db support that make content development less dependent on proprietary tools like ActiveX plug-ins or Flash and more dependent on a web browser (typically not one from MSFT).
He's a cocky bastard and he just got lucky. Wonder if he'd do as well as Paul Allen outside of the MSFT play pen?
Not to mention that fleet sales are what propped up Detroit for a long time ... now what's happening to them? I mention this because the ultra low cost and low cost devices are equivalent to fleet sales.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, but unless you REALLY know what you're doing, you risk locking yourself out of your computer and/or losing access to files.
For my part, I switched recently, and despite buying new hardware (I had to upgrade anyway), it's been an easy, smooth transition. The used computer I bought had Vista on it, and I installed Ubuntu 8.10 over it. I was surprised at how easy it was to install the OS and change settings. For wi-fi, all I had to do was plug in a USB adapter I had up and running on my previous computer and entire the password.
They've come a long way since three years ago when I ... didn't get it to work out. Of course, I haven't yet tried to move over my previous computer's hard drives or critical files like email.
Re:Of course! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
The economy is in the dumps. Would you be worried about the over priced guy with no net book or the guy that's infiltrating the netbook space quite well when that's a fast growing sector?
Frankly, I would be very worried about a competitor who is growing in double-digits despite being considerably more expensive than I am. Very, very worried.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
The kernel is too big.
It might work with smaller projects. But the kernel has had thousands of contributors, some of which won't sell for any price, some that can't be found anymore and some that are now dead. Just figuring out who holds the copyright over which parts of files patched by 50 different people over its existence would be a nightmare.
Then there are tricky questions. Such as, who owns the copyright for a line where the first contributor did the general concept, the second patched the off by one error, and the third added a check for the return value? How much must a block of code change to determine that the original author's code is now gone if it retains the functionality?
Re:Apple OS != Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
To a home user, no.
To a developer, consultant or corporate decision maker, it says that certain standards can be relied on and many assumptions can be seen as a given, which removes a lot of headaches and initial barriers to adoption.
Essentially, it doesn't make the sale, but it does get you on the shortlist.
At least quote accurate prices (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple dekstop with OS X (cheapest I could find in
And one more thing:
1 year RHEL license for desktops: $80
So, in short, you do pay more to acquire Apple products, and there is no valid reason to deny that. You can try to claim that Apple products are better and therefore should cost more, but that is an entirely different argument.
Re:At least quote accurate prices (Score:3, Interesting)
Dell: $394
Apple: $599
Cool and Free (Score:1, Interesting)
It's easier to contend against cool, when your option is less expensive.
But when the competition is cool AND free, you have a serious problem.
I've been a Mac user for over 20 years, and now that everyone and their brother has a Mac at the university, you now see the "cool kids" running around with Linux laptops (I'm guessing they boot into Windows when they need Word).
The Mac is looking a little less like "the little guy" and more like "the man" these days.
Re:Duh (Score:2, Interesting)
That's worth thinking about (there's a link in the article to another article about this very thing. I haven't read it yet, but it's worth reading before we start swallowing the numbers Apple publishes to its stockholders whole hog.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
The real core of the threat is emerging markets, and this is where their "piracy is number 1, linux is number 2" thinking comes from.
There are hundreds of millions of people in India and China who will be getting enough income to purchase a computer or computer time in the next decade. Windows at $100 a pop is a much bigger deal to them than it is in the US, when that could be a full month's salary.
Almost all of the massive piracy statistics you here are coming from those areas. You can buy pirated copies of windows at normal shops for a dollar or two.
In fact, one could easily argue that pirated copies of windows are one of the largest barriers to Linux adoption as well.
These areas of the world hold the largest potential in this sort of field, where there is already large amounts of market saturation in western countries. And that's why they don't consider Apple a threat - it is very likely you will never see copies of mac os x being sold in shanghai for a buck each.
Re:Microsoft confirms it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple just isn't a threat. They fill a niche, and because of the strong OS-centrism the users who go with Apple there's just no wrestling them away, but they're also a selective breed. Anyone can use a Mac, but not just anyone wants to. It's still a centralized ideal in proprietary software.
F/OSS changes the game completely and if it were to succeed Microsoft just couldn't fight back, there's no way they'd survive selling mice, consoles and 'Office Productivity Software'. It would be the death of the software giant.
Proprietary software is restrictive, Free software is, well, free! It's so easy to spin proprietary software as evil and free software as good, but if free software were already the accepted norm, how could you possibly break it claiming proprietary software was good?
Microsoft and Apple compete with each other. GNU/Linux just slowly assimilates as necessary or as remotely useful. If anything, Microsoft should be supporting Apple's ass to keep afloat the competition they can pull the same rope with.
Re:Linux has survived but not prevailed (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't think Linux would survive. I thought that Linux and its users would be slaughtered. It has, and it has grown and improved. I am honestly astounded at the level of advancement that Linux has made
Any proprietary platform with the kind of market share that Linux has would be dead by now. It happened to OS/2, it happened to the various proprietary Unices, and many others (BeOS etc.). Hell, even Apple would have died in the 90s had it not been saved [apple.com] by, ironically, Microsoft.
The difference is that a free platform can advance even with a very small userbase, as long as enough skilled volunteers are willing to contribute. Linux probably represents more total man-years of work than Windows, even though its market share is much smaller. That's because Linux can easily recruit volunteer developers for free, whereas Microsoft has to pay huge salaries to attract top talent.
It's a mistake to judge Linux by the same standards as other commercial vendors. Free software really changes the rules of the game, and that's why Microsoft is on its heels.
Re:Fair enough points (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember that WebKit is FOSS, too. It's being remerged back into KDE4, giving it a significant presence on Linux desktops (and with Linux developers, as well).
Re:Its beyond just the numbers (Score:2, Interesting)
not really.
Linux progress is based on the number of developers, not the number of users.
sure it need users, but stupid users that need the type of help some windows users need do not necessarily help the platform, although they might make it more profitable for support companies which *might* lead to some more developers. but it also could lead to stupid resistance to change that would hold the platform back.
Having more users might make drivers a little better, and definetely put pressure on companies to have decenet drivers, and hopefully the GPL will hold and these drivers will be GPL too. (this is based on how true to open-source principals distributors, and users/developers, are)
I dont think big market share is at all enccicary for Linux, but it is for Microsoft, so it can snowball into a disaster for Microsoft, which i think they see coming.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:3, Interesting)
MS could certainly bash Linux in commercials if they thought is was worth their money, but at this point it would just provide name recognition and credibility to mention Linux as competition in a commercial. I think they've only taken on Apple, because the PC vs. Mac commercials were making them look bad (They still don't attack Apple, lest more people realize they have a choice.) They'd much rather spend money on locking in their current customers and reducing unlicensed copies. Business as usual still pays pretty well.
Re:Apple OS != Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike monolithic kernels, the Mach based one that Darwin (The UNIX part of OS X) uses actually has to do a full context switch when one makes a system call.
If by "a full context switch" you mean "a context switch to a separate process", that's not the case. It's just a standard trap into the kernel, with the system call code executed on the kernel stack for the same thread that made the call; no address space switch is done.
I.e., it's not a "microkernel" of the sort where most if not all system services are performed in userland server processes - or even kernel-mode server processes. It would not look unfamiliar to people used to monolithic UN*X kernels.
Re:Not suprising (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Its beyond just the numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably worthwhile to recall that Microsoft did not start out in the OS business. They were more interested in providing compilers. Gates didn't want to get into the OS business, either. But, IBM needed an OS, so Gates and Allen bought one.
Windows makes a fortune for Microsoft today, but lets assume that Linux completely undermined the Windows franchise. Seems to me Microsoft could offer something like
Think of it this way: My company runs Windows servers on VMware, which is Linux. So what are we running? All of the predictions of Microsoft's demise based on the increasing acceptance of Linux take a very, very narrow view of the possible outcomes.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't even consider the software piracy as a threat to Microsoft. The corporation benefits hugely from high level of piracy in emerging markets. Only because of pirates it is able to hold absolute monopoly in many countries without spending a penny for it.
They get full regions of the earth which are dependant on Windows and have built Windows-only software ecosystems for free!
They don't want to fight piracy -- people will still be able to buy XP or Vista for 1$. And pirated DVDs which are sold now are more like Linux distributions -- they have all the software you might need: MSO, Photoshop firewalls antiviruses etc. Very convenient and Linux is very hard pressed to top that offer. That way Microsofts monopoly will remain for years to come.
What the company really want is to milk those markets, to go after government institutions, companies and OEM's -- big targets which can be forced to pay (especially the governments).
Re:Linux IS a real threat. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ebox Platform [ebox-platform.com]
Re:Microsoft confirms it! (Score:2, Interesting)
When looking at where else all those unlicensed users would go if they didn't become legal Windows users, Apple doesn't really come into it much.
Well put. This actually happened to me recently.
My home PC had a volume licensed version of XP on it that I got from the company I worked for a few years back. Suddenly, about a month ago, my Windows Genuine Advantage started failing and my PC started nagging me about it the whole time.
I have used Linux a lot in the past but I've never had it installed as the main OS on my primary PC.
This incident was the last bit of motivation that I needed to switch to Linux. I have now been running Kubuntu 8.10 for two weeks and I love it. I can't think of any reason to switch back.