Will 2007 be the year of Leopard, Linux or Vista?
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
2007 promises to be a seminal year for the future of operating systems, with all major players releasing significant new features and much ‘eye candy’ in their new releases. At the same time the position of the front runners and new entrants may mean that 2007 points the way to a very different course, with Microsoft, Apple and Linux all jockeying for position.
The end of November saw the limited, business release of the much-awaited version of Microsoft’s latest offering of Vista. The much-hyped OS has been in the public eye for nearly five years after it’s first outing under the code name ‘Longhorn’ in 2001.
The original feature list of Longhorn was rich, promising a new and bold direction for Microsoft. Since then the IT world has changed dramatically, the proliferation of the Internet has exposed Microsoft’s weakness in the face of continued attacks from viruses and hackers. Over the five-year period the promising features have been dropped one by one. Today Microsoft sights security and ease of maintenance as the key benefits of moving to Vista – hardly something that will set the world alight.
The most aesthetic elements of Vista are its inclusion of multimedia and its glass-like ‘Aero’ interface. Vista does indeed look pretty, but most commentators have pointed out that the ‘experience’ is still the same as Windows XP and that there are few real enhancements ‘under the hood’ in terms of usability. There is also an issue that the entry-level version of Vista doesn’t contain the Aero feature and effectively looks like XP.
The consumer version of Vista will hit the streets at the end of January 2007, though due to high costs of the upgrade and requirement of higher specification machines, the uptake is expected to be more muted than previous Microsoft OS launches. In the business world Al Gillen, a research analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass said "Companies don’t need to be told when they need to upgrade," “Many eventually will make the leap,” he said, “but probably not until 2008.”
So it’s already beginning to look like 2007 will not be the year Vista takes off.
While details of Vista were starting to emerge, it fell upon Apple to spoil the hype by releasing details and showing off its next version of operating system, Leopard.
Apple had already beaten Microsoft the aesthetic game many years prior, with its glass-like interface and renowned ease of use. Coupled with the bold move to a Unix like core, Apple has forged ahead relentlessly with innovative features and seamless transition to the Intel platform.
Leopard leverages off this head start with improvements to the interface, increasing its fluid like appearance and adding a whole host of improvements to usability, such as backups and communication.
Leopard is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2007 and will see rapid take up of upgrades and, of course will ship on all new Macs.
The head to head comparisons of Leopard versus Vista puts Vista in the shade, but there is one big catch – in order to run Leopard the user will need to own or purchase a Macintosh. Apple has not taken the bold move to allow non-Mac PC users to run its OS. Whilst we expect Apple’s shipments to grow off the back of Leopard, the anchor of the hardware will limit it’s real potential.
Waiting silently in the wings is another contender for the 2007 honours – Linux.
Over the last few years Linux has been silently chipping away at the corporate world, building momentum in the IT basement running servers. In fact just under a quarter of all server shipments for 2007 are expected to be running Linux according to market forecasters IDC.
With recent deals and announcements from Oracle and Microsoft, Linux has once again been pushed into the news.
More interestingly, the Linux world itself is moving past the point of adolescent growing pains to gain a confidence of its own. Whilst much work has been focused on providing a stable secure platform (hence it’s rapid adoption rate in the server market), recent focus has been on getting Linux onto the desktop. The introductions of rapidly growing distributions like Ubuntu have seen dramatic but quite adoption of Linux on the desktop in the last few years.
Linux has mapped the improvements of Macintosh and Windows in a limited manner. Though this year has seen a dramatic focus on the user rather than the IT manager. Distributions of Linux are moving out of the domain of the techie and increasingly becoming easier for end users to install without help or detailed technical knowledge.
More importantly though, Linux distributions will match the glass-like look and feel of Vista and Macintosh with new releases around the first quarter of 2007. At the same time, the rate at which Linux is improving usability is likely to outpace Microsoft and catch up with Apple.
With the choice of new desktop platforms falling to IT managers in many organisations the timing of Linux and Vista may prove critical as these managers review upgrade costs and security. We suspect that this year will be the first point that many businesses will seriously consider Linux as a viable and cost effective alternative to Microsoft Vista.
Expect a proliferation of hardware vendors to seriously offer desktop Linux options for the first time this year. Expect independent software vendors such as Oracle, SAP, BEA, Adobe and others to jump on to the bandwagon as well, as increased adoption rates become apparent.
In the consumer space we expect Linux to be the ‘hidden OS’ of choice, for example Tivo runs on Linux, though it’s not apparent to most Tivo users.
When we enter 2007 we expect that it will appear to be the year of Vista and Leopard, as we leave the year and look back we expect that it will become clear that in fact 2007 was the year of Linux.
According to the Financial Times, Microsoft’s attempt to enter the iPod market faltered before the product even left the starting line. And now sales are starting to flag according to observers.
Microsoft has had a long time to ready itself for the much delayed roll out of its latest Vista operating system. With Bill Gates slipping slowly into the background it was left to Microsoft’s Chief Executive, Steve Ballmer to utter the superlatives and hyperbole.