Fat and Bloated is no way to go through life

Fat and Bloated operating systems (regardless of the manufacturer)
is slowly dying. Not that there will be an immediate end to the
desktop, some of us will still need horsepower and processing
capability that high end desktops represent. Yet doom is in the air,
many of us only need a few features, word processing, email, surfing
the web. Many of us simply do not use the functionality that is inbuilt
into many of the systems we use. There are tons of things we simply do
not need, won’t use, and couldn’t use if we tried because they are so
complex. We are moving from fat bloated complex to lean, simple, with
all the complexity well out of the hands of end users. End users are
still working out the idea of computer literacy (take this test to check yours).

Our schools are still clogged with instructors who lack simple
computer literacy skills (I know people who scored 0 on the test I just
sent you to) and that is having its long toll on how we plan our
futures. But it is making an amazing market in the thin client tied to
web services and remote services systems like Gmail, Mobile Me, AWS,
and yes even Microsoft Azure.

The thin client that ties into back end services is popular again
with a legion of people running on hand held or pad style devices with
more coming into the market every day. Simply an Ipad is a front end
client and UI for many services that are run on someone else’s service
or cloud based system. For what it does, it is brilliant, effective,
clean, and my 78 year old mom loves it. It unlike other systems I have
bought for her before the Ipad simply does what she needs it to do,
with the ability to put a fresh app on it for a couple of dollars when
she wants to do something different. My mom sores a 5 on the computer
literacy test.

This entire shift from desktop to remote devices is going to cause
issues for Microsoft. I am a Microsoft fan boy, but I only use
Microsoft products when I have to now, I am a recent convert to Apple
and all that Apple offers. I very rarely need a full featured machine,
and I use a lot of online services now for what I used to spend
thousands of dollars on for software and software updates. My personal
software budget is 90% less than what it was 3 years ago because of
online services, cheap laptops, the Ipad which I use every day. With
this level of change, we are experiencing the convergence of small
portable devices and back end computing services in such a way that all
data is portable, accessible, and usable regardless of where you are
and what you are willing to pay in terms of telecom fees to access it.
With a plethora of free legal open Wi-Fi hotspots
around the world, not having to directly rely on a telecom company for
access is going to be the next best step, and it is also already here.

What then for Microsoft and Windows? While Microsoft is shrugging off the competition in some respects with the Ipad and the idea that Apple now has a larger market cap than Microsoft. Microsoft could end up as the IBM of the 80’s,
and this has been said many times. Microsoft is not dead yet, and there
is still a lot of potential in the company, but like most companies in
their middle age, what do they want to do that will get them to where
they want to go and how Microsoft sees itself?

Apple just might be the disruptive force that Linux has not proven
to be yet. Google Chrome OS is yet one more concern for Microsoft even
if it does not want to say so, as Google is more agile (although people
will debate that statement) than Microsoft is. If Apple takes the high
end PC market and the shiny new toys market like the Ipad, Iphone, Ipod
while Google takes the “works good enough” mid level market, Microsoft
becomes marginalized more so than they have been in the phone market
and the browser market. While Microsoft makes impressive products, and
has an amazing R&D budget, but is only bringing incremental
upgrades to market. Yes, those incremental upgrades are for their cash
cows, but when was something truly new brought to market that made
people see that Microsoft is right there with the bleeding edge?

While some of the tools are impressive, Windows Mobile is cool, use
of the XNA network to create games for three platforms at the same time
with minor tweaks, as I see it, these are enhanced functionality, not
something revolutionary.

If I ran Microsoft begins many good debates and conversations, but
we don’t run Microsoft. We also do not run Apple or Google, but we also
all have opinions, as much as we will have opinions over football and
baseball. As people migrate to small functional hand held devices away
from the standard desktop there are going to be amazing opportunities
in UI design, Multi-tasking design, network engineering, cloud
computing, and the client server model when their client is truly lean
are all things we have seen before. Google and Apple are in the lead,
but don’t discount Microsoft yet. Much like the folks who discounted
IBM, maybe a lot of pain will help Microsoft get to where it needs to
go in the next to last inning of the game.