Windows and the utopia of software convergence

by
in microsoft on (#2S7N)
story imageWindows Phone; Windows 7, 8, 9; Windows RT; Windows CE; and not to mention all the different variations of Windows boxed OSes (Pro, Basic, Home, and so on): there have been a lot of different products that bear the name Windows, and someone has probably decided it's time to simplify.
The idea would be that, in the mind of the consumer, Windows is just Windows, and that all of these different names and flavors are just confusing ("Why is it called Windows Phone if it can't run my Windows programs?"). Getting rid of all that complexity and returning to the old way - where Windows is synonymous with personal computing - would certainly be a coup for Microsoft. But just as it shot itself in the foot with Windows RT, consolidating on just "Windows" could be fiscal suicide if Microsoft's various operating systems don't indeed come together as one harmonious platform.
The folks at ExtremeTech have noticed a shift in nomenclature and marketing focus these days, as several products have simply discussed Windows, with no emphasis on anything other than that single word. The challenge here is that what marketing wants can't be delivered by the technical teams behind all those different versions of Windows operating systems, as they are not just different codebases, but extremely different code bases.

Re: More of the Same -- Ballmer a Dullard (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-10 14:32 (#2S8A)

That was really good. I suggest you swap that in as the summary for the article up top. :)

I'm guilty of NRTFA but I don't understand how one can call-everything-Windows and mean it without rewriting EVERYTHING that isn't i386 desktop and server. It just seems like something that is Not Going To Happen by definition. It's taken them over 20 years to keep rewriting Win 3.x and NT into something usable (and then breaking it again) so I don't really see how they're going to squeeze it down to these other platforms they've managed to screw up so badly. That's why I said it sounded like more-of-the-same Ballmer idiocy.
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