Does Windows matter anymore?
At ZDNet, Jason Hiner (Editor in Chief of TechRepublic) opines that we have reached a time when Windows or whatever operating system (OS) is used is becoming irrelevant. It’s the Web that matters. He concludes:
Twenty years ago, we thought the computer was the revolution, but it wasn’t. The advent of the Internet – and the Web browser as one of the ways to harness it – has shown us that the revolution is actually in communications and the dissemination of information. The computer will be to the Information Revolution as the assembly line was to the Industrial Revolution. It will simply be one of the catalysts that helped make it happen.
In the same way, the computer OS simply doesn’t mean as much as it once did, or at least as much as we once thought it did. But, then again, all of us (including Bill Gates) knew this day was coming.
I certainly agree with Hiner in theory and have often expressed a view that we have lost sight of what an OS was really supposed to do. In an environment that uses a lot of local software and networks such as a business or institutional system, Windows may have its place. But, from what I have observed, most home PC users obtain very little from Windows that a simpler OS couldn’t offer. At Computerworld, Michael Horowitz asks, Who cares about Windows 7?, and says:
Microsoft wants Windows to be a front and center thing. But outside of the IT world, it’s not, it’s just the foundation. Like any foundation, it belongs out of sight.
Non techies care about their applications, not the underlying operating system.
However, in practice, Microsoft’s domination of the entire PC ecosystem means that Windows is not about to go away. Too many companies, vendors, retailers, and others are tied to Windows. Microsoft is already said to be at work on Windows 8.
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