Microsoft CEO Wants One OS To Rule Them All

[exfileme]

The next version of Windows will merge three platforms into one.

Microsoft CEO Wants One OS To Rule Them All : Read more

 

[Merry_Blind]

Well that's good and all, but I thought we already knew this since Windows 8 was 'officially' the first step into this whole process.

 

[canadianvice]

Or, you could have a mobile OS and a desktop OS.
Even Apple doesn't have the audacity to try and merge desktop and mobile into a single platform because it doesn't work.

They're too diverse.
Unless a disc comes with both, and the option to install them is diverse. I'd like to see a Windows disc with the necessary files for both, but three options:
Mobile
Desktop
Both

That would mean you don't waste HDD space on the part you don't need.

 

[Avus]

This <mod edit> idea again...

<Mod Note: Watch your language>

 

[shiitaki]

For me, one of the reasons I love my iPhone and iPad is that I DONT have the baggage of Windows. Microsoft really doesn't get it. Apple is going to continue to dominate because they are doing the obvious and integrating all of the devices in to a coherent system that just works. Microsoft is trying to put Windows on every device,that only works with it's self. Research in Motion sat on it's ass without a clue. Chrome gets a little better, and Apple gets a little cheaper, and there won't be any where for Microsoft to hide except the IT department. Microsoft keeps screwing their core customers on the desktop chasing some fantasy utopia that only exists in Redmond, they might even loose the corporate desktop. The last thing anybody want's is a phone or tablet with a restore partition, patch Tuesday, or System Restore. The fact is we don't want those on our desktops either!

 

[Zepid]

Or, you could have a mobile OS and a desktop OS.
Even Apple doesn't have the audacity to try and merge desktop and mobile into a single platform because it doesn't work.

They're too diverse.
Unless a disc comes with both, and the option to install them is diverse. I'd like to see a Windows disc with the necessary files for both, but three options:
Mobile
Desktop
Both

That would mean you don't waste HDD space on the part you don't need.

But that is 100% incorrect. Apple has a different OS on mobile because they literally can't design an OS to save their lives. This is apparent when Apple dropped the last shred of original in-house code when they ditched OS9 and instead skinned FreeBSD for OSX. They are talentless hacks who put a new coat of paint on existing open source products.

 

[xenol]

As long as the OS understands what device it's on and can adjust it's GUI accordingly.

Apple also basically has one OS... if you say the kernel is the OS. iOS is built on the same kernel as Mac OS X.

 

[Onus]

This article is aptly titled. This "one OS for everything" idea needs to be cast into the fires of Mt. Doom.
Over the next year or so, I believe there's a hard lesson coming, and that is that to become OR remain successful, a business must deliver what the Customer wants, not what it thinks the Customer should have, particularly for the sake of ongoing revenue.

 

[tom10167]

Would this mean that the operating system would take up as much space on a phone as on a PC?

 

[de5_Roy]

i read the headline as "Microsoft CEO Wants One OS To Ruin Them All". anyway, the idea is nice and all, but not worth pushing. ms can't have x86 applications run on arm-powered devices. xbone has the same underlying uarch as desktop pcs so it's not a stretch. all they can do is facilitate file accessing and modifying compatibility across a wide range of devices. other than that, the idea only benefits microsoft, not the users.

 

[daekar]

A few thoughts in no particular order:
1) Weren't they already doing this with Windows 8? Why on earth were they still working on non-unified core pieces?
2) Isn't this entirely predicated on mobile devices with x86 processors?
3) I'm really hoping they get it right. The day when your phone IS your computer, and simply docks to a keyboard/mouse/monitor are not far away. If MS does things right, my next phone could be a Windows Phone that replaces my desktop and runs x86 applications.
4) The rapid rate of Windows releases puzzles me. Windows 9 is on the horizon already?

 

[RCguitarist]

Looks like i'll be holding onto my copy of windows 7 until all this non-sense passes over. See you all in 10 years.

 

[yuneek0ne]

For me, one of the reasons I love my iPhone and iPad is that I DONT have the baggage of Windows. Microsoft really doesn't get it. Apple is going to continue to dominate because they are doing the obvious and integrating all of the devices in to a coherent system that just works. Microsoft is trying to put Windows on every device,that only works with it's self. Research in Motion sat on it's ass without a clue. Chrome gets a little better, and Apple gets a little cheaper, and there won't be any where for Microsoft to hide except the IT department. Microsoft keeps screwing their core customers on the desktop chasing some fantasy utopia that only exists in Redmond, they might even loose the corporate desktop. The last thing anybody want's is a phone or tablet with a restore partition, patch Tuesday, or System Restore. The fact is we don't want those on our desktops either!

Maybe I'm misinterpreting something, but I find the Windows 8.1 flow to be quite coherent. I have a Windows phone, desktop, xbox one, surface RT and Pro. My work and personal emails and files are all available to me whenever I switch between devices. I can be doing something on one device and continue with it on another. I've consolidated and centralized my emails/calendar/contacts with google, yahoo and outlook and the process was not complicated at all. My wife's phone is a moto x with the android versions of outlook, one drive and office apps and they sync just as perfectly with all our devices, giving her the same seamless experience. Yah I guess setting all of it up would require a little more effort, but the end result is fantastic. If they can improve on this then I'm all for it. The biggest challenge will definitely be adapting to/unifying the x86 and ARM programming but that's a hell of a challenge. Probably easier to just push for x86 on all devices since x86 is pretty much on par with ARM in power consumption now and more powerful.

 

[none12345]

One OS to rule them all isn't necessarily a bad thing. IF, and this is a STRONG IF, they keep a few things in mind.

An OS on a phone needs to be light weight, you cant carry all the baggage from a desktop onto a phone.

A GUI on a small touch device needs to be vastly different from a GUI on a large desktop. Touch on a desktop isnt good enough for any serious work, keyboard and mouse will still rule the roost.You cant try to shoehorn either onto either and have it work.

One core is just fine. But they need separate guis(they can be similar, but different). And you cant have every DLL from back to windows 1 in the mobile version. They need to clean out all the old crap from way back to windows 1 that they keep including into the modern versions. Backwards compatibility is good, but it should be on demand, dont install it if you almost certainly don't need it.


Windows biggest problem in my opinion is it has SO much baggage from the past. I would love a clean version designed for the desktop, no touch crap. This is what windows vista SHOULD have been, and what windows 7 SHOULD have been. And what windows 8 SHOULD have been. But they still haven't done it. When they went to 64 bit, it was the perfect time to do this. There shouldn't have been a shred of old 32 bit code in windows 7. They should have taken the time to clean the slate, and port only what they needed to 64 bit, and dumped all the legacy crap. It should have had a virtualized version of xp for backwards compatibility, with all the old stuff. That way they would have had a light weight os for mobile and the heavier desktop with the backwards compatibility.

 

[hannibal]

Apple was the first that did get it devices to talk very nicely to each other. MS is going to right direction. This one os means same kernel in all platforms and some other common features that makes it easy to make same program to all platforms. The UI in different machines will be different. Modern UI is going to stay in desktop windows for many years to come, but tweaks toward mouse usage and windowed programs are coming.
And yeas this has been the direction that MS has been going. It is not easy to combine all features to one kernel, so it takes time to make and bring different platforms closer to each others, but it is happening.

 

[eodeo]

Not sure if it's possible and if it is, if it's viable, but I would love to have the same OS and software running on my phone as well as tablet and desktop.

I'm not greedy. I don't need full 3d at the beginning, just a regular winamp and firefox would be a great start. None of these watered down, same-in-the-name-only, android ones I'm using now.

 

[Altherix]

Holy *&()!

Have they learned nothing!?

MS, had the chance to dominate the mobile market with an OS, their engineers wanted to make a separate OS for mobile and Ballmer vetoed it, he was hot to trot on getting the same version of windows on everyone's devices.

Satya Nadella, must not keep up with current events, but Ballmer stated it was one of his biggest regrets, not letting a separate mobile OS come into being.

If I was an MS stock holder I'd be demanding for Satya to resign or get fired, you got another one with their head up their rear. Glad I'm making plans to migrate my business to Linux in the future.

My god, how do these people get hired and paid?

 

[DookieDraws]

Yes, one operating system with the option to customize our installations. Give us the option for installing the various features and programs that WE want to install. If we do not want Internet Explorer or Media Player installed, or any other Windows program or feature, give us the option to not install them. Don't forcefully install all the "junk" that we don't want or wouldn't use any way. Give us a choice, Microsoft! After all, we're the one using your products!

Also, drop the price of Windows to no more than $30 US dollars. For those of us who need to install on more than one machine, offer us a discounted price for a volume license. Make us happy and we'll make you happy, Microsoft!

 

[sicom]

This is pretty awesome. I'm all for more apps and easier development. Windows Phone 8.1 is rocking.

 

[okibrian]

Not a good idea and this only goes to show that Microsoft is still not listening to its customers. I have heard many of times people complaining about the build size of a Windows tablet. This is due to it being a full Windows desktop load on it and is the reason why about half the drive space is used up before it's even unboxed. Take a play out of Apple's book here and have two OSs. One for mobile and one for desktop. Don't be stupid, listen to your people.

 

[canadianvice]

Or, you could have a mobile OS and a desktop OS.
Even Apple doesn't have the audacity to try and merge desktop and mobile into a single platform because it doesn't work.

They're too diverse.
Unless a disc comes with both, and the option to install them is diverse. I'd like to see a Windows disc with the necessary files for both, but three options:
Mobile
Desktop
Both

That would mean you don't waste HDD space on the part you don't need.

But that is 100% incorrect. Apple has a different OS on mobile because they literally can't design an OS to save their lives. This is apparent when Apple dropped the last shred of original in-house code when they ditched OS9 and instead skinned FreeBSD for OSX. They are talentless hacks who put a new coat of paint on existing open source products.

"Talentless hacks" don't make the sort of money they do simply by copying. A good part was integrated, and you know, it makes sense: if someone has done the work, why reinvent the wheel?

That said, Apple has clearly made significant improvements because FreeBSD is about as far as you can get from a consumer-level OS. OSX, on the other hand, is the epitome of one.

As for my other comment, it's 100% accurate: form factors are way too diverse. How in the hell does a desktop UI make proper sense on a tablet? There has to be flexibility, but my hope is it's flexibility without bloat - take what you need and leave the rest to rot by the curb.

 

[antilycus]

[quote
Apple also basically has one OS... if you say the kernel is the OS. iOS is built on the same kernel as Mac OS X.[/quote]
And this would be COMPLETELY wrong. Apple fanboy-ism at it's greatest. Apple is an expensive FreeBSD Unix platform turned mega expensive w/ Apple throwing their proprietary closed source junk on top. Apple makes Microsoft look open source and good luck running MAC OS X server on ANYTHING.

Android is Java ontop of Linux which makes Linux the most used O/S on the planet. You don't have to like it, but it doesn't change the truth.

 

[antilycus]

2) Isn't this entirely predicated on mobile devices with x86 processors?
3) I'm really hoping they get it right. The day when your phone IS your computer, and simply docks to a keyboard/mouse/monitor are not far away. If MS does things right, my next phone could be a Windows Phone that replaces my desktop and runs x86 applications.
4) The rapid rate of Windows releases puzzles me. Windows 9 is on the horizon already?

#3 was tried as a kick starter and didn't meet it's goal. Right now Apple and MS's largest threat is ARM. Now before you say "Apple put ARM on the map" please note that MAC OS X 1) hasn't change much in 10 years. They sold you the Apple fruit "buy everything apple (for a high price) and we will make life easier" as long as you keep buying patches". 2) Mac OS X actually still has A LOT of serious bugs. It does NOT play nice with others (such as NTFS or SMB).3) Mac OS X DOES NOT RUN ON ARM and even if you go it to work IT WOULD BE SLOWER THEN PPC from 2003.

Apple isn't going to take over the world and MS isn't going to keep it's reign. More than likely 2 things will happen. Java will become crappier / more used and Google will make LINUX (not Unix, Mac of MS) the platform to program for. It's already happening hence why there are over 1 BILLION Android devices ( which is Java ontop of Linux ) in people hands. THat already destroys Windows.

 

[antilycus]

Also keep in mind that Microsoft has not WRITTEN A CORE FROM SCRATCH EVER. ... yes that is accurate...ever. Win 3.1 was GUI ontop of IBM DOS, Windows NT was PURCHASED from IBM. Microsoft paid them bucco bucks for it. That lasted until Windows VISTA which agan, MS paid IBM to patch / update. Microsoft doesn't write kernels, they patch them the best they can...which isn't that well

 

[Bloob]

This doesn't mean they want the same UX on every platform, just that the core pieces of the underlying OS are the same, which they currently aren't even if the kernel is the same. Although this could enable the potential for a platform that adjusts the UX based on how the device is used, much like Ubuntu Touch.