The Assault on Software Giant Microsoft II

The second part of this article has been posted. Not as much info as the first piece, but still interesting. The article outlines six “battles” that Microsoft must face: Sort out security, Get into the living room, Get them young, Go mobile, Serious software and Open source. They have been focusing on security for some time now, but still have a long way to go in this department. Will Longhorn be as secure as they claim? Too early to tell of course, but getting it truly secure without changing the paradigm of how Windows works, and therefore confusing the “average” user, is certainly going to be a challenge. They are doing well in the living room and the new Xbox2 should help that quite a bit. So far their Mobile attempts have been lackluster at best, especially in the cell phone segment. The one ironic statement in the article came from Bill Gates. When discussing Open Source, he said: “Such software, Bill Gates tells customers, might not be “interoperable”. Is he really trying to say that Open Source, which is almost always based on open standards, is somehow less “interoperable” then Windows and the other Microsoft products? Comments like these have to make some Microsoft employees cringe.
–jeremy