The influence of mobile on Apple and Microsoft’s software is clear, but their approaches are different. Which one is better?
Gary Wicker, Technical Director/Software Engineer, Qhorus, Inc. thinks:
«No one knows for sure, but my observation is that the market is waking up and realizing that newer desktop Linux distributions like Ubuntu have rendered the 25-year-old model of cheap commodity hardware + expensive OS and productivity suite obsolete. The new model will be 80% cheap commodity hardware + free OS/productivity suite + optional service contract, and 20% premium hardware/software solution such as the one Apple provides. Microsoft needs to realize this and create a new game rather than playing the one that they won so big at in the 1980s and 1990s.»
Jared Kligerman, Witz Education has another point of view:
«I think OS X Lion will win on the consumer front as there is a trend towards Mac’s right now. However, in the business world, I think it is highly dependent on the industry and the software being used. For example, up until recently Autocad (engineering software) was PC only, making Windows the preferred OS in most firms. QuickBooks is still one of the most widely used accounting software and it is PC only. Video editors, on the other hand, often use Final Cut Pro, which is Mac only. I have seen an increasing number of small to medium size businesses switching to Macs as the OS and Server become easier to troubleshoot but the upfront cost is still lower with PC’s.
All in all, users need to be comfortable using the platform. If you grew up with Windows, you’ll probably stick with it and vice-versa!»
Darryl Balaski, Unix/Linux Engineer & Analyst at General Physics Corporation:
«Well, That depends.
In the Business market: Businesses are conservative and resist changes due to long term technology investments (such as business applications, training, etc). I think you’ll see Windows still a strong contender in that world, especially in Financial and Regulated industries …. In areas outside of that, you will tend to see it position weakening –especially with embedded systems.
In the Home User Community, I think this landscape is changing greatly. This being due to our mobile electronics — Smart Phones, Tablets etc. These embedded systems are changing our computing profile. We are seeing more and more Linux. (Thanks To Google Android and Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions.) .
Who Wins — it doesn’t really matter IMHO — its intermediary overhead to people — Who supports the most useful client applications in a secure environment will be the winner .
We’re a long way from that yet.»
Please, share your opinion in the comments bellow.
Apples marketing is different then Microsoft. They sell hardware with their own software. Apple can never get 50% of the market. If they did anti trust laws would chop them into more pieces then Humpty Dumpty.
So the main fight is between Android and everyone else. The smart phone companies are not in love with Google so what we will see is of course Apple, all the small names with Android, and Sansung, Nokia and such trying to get their own systems in.
In other words we are back to world with many operating systems.
That means that cross platform systems like HTML5 and Java will be the future