Day: 26 April 2004

That’s why they call it market *share*

PCWorld cites an IDC study where Microsoft operating system market will drop to 58% by 2007. Neowin members mostly responded derisively to these findings.

Why is change so hard to stomach? The article is may be optimistic, but by no means misinformed. Windows has a strangehold on the PC market right now, but it’s not so in other faster growing fields – game consoles, PDAs, smartphones, Internet appliances, etc. All these devices need operating systems, and they are getting more powerful and versatile every day. There is a growing shift in demand from PCs to these convergent devices.

MS has been trying to gain footholds into these emergent markets via the Xbox, WebTV, SPOT Watch and a bazillion Windows XP branded OSs – Media Centre, TabletPC, PocketPC, Embedded – but are no means the dominant player in any of these markets, even after years of effort. They’re running up against companies that are equally large and powerful and hungry and smart – not to mention the modularity of Linux, which has appeared in everything from TiVo players to Volvo dashboards.

Of course, it’s not wise to discount MS out of hand – they have a lot of smart cookies working there – but it won’t be an easy battle for them.

Many people still cannot take portable convergent devices seriously – sort of how minicomputer users refused to take personal microcomputers seriously when they appeared in the early 1980’s.

Eventually wireless, whether it’s Wi-Fi or 3G or WiMax or its grandchildren – will become so advanced that network access will be ubiquituous and network bandwidth will approach system bus speeds. When that happens, AGP, PCI and USB will be replaced with pure IP, and we’ll never have to fiddle with DVD-Rs and flash memory cards again. A future MP3 player could access your music from your home PC’s file storage as fast as it was on your person. A portable videogame player could outsource its 3D graphics work to your PC’s videocard while remaining inexpensive, small and light.

We have better beer too

“Contrary to the conventional wisdom it appears that Canadians, not Americans are more willing to innovate and take risks, at least in public policy.” So says David Morris in the Alternet article O Canada; Oy Vey United States.

It’s always flattering to get compliments from Americans, but I think there’s a bit of “grass is greener on the other side” effect happening here. It’s true we enjoy certain freedoms that Americans have been denied, especially recently.

Some people think Europe has a one-up on the US these days too. In Robert Kagan’s controversial book, “Of Paradise And Power: American and Europe in the New World Order”, he has a few choice words [via NewsScan]:

“Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Immanuel Kant’s ‘perpetual peace.’

Meanwhile, the United States remains mired in history, exercising power in an anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable, and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might.”

But it’s not all fun and games; our healthcare may be mostly free, but we also have longer lineups. We still have to rely on company benefits to cover essentials such as eyeglasses and dental checkups.

Then again, we Canadians actually get real sugar in our soft drinks and desserts, instead of corn syrup.

I was born in Canada. I once asked why my parents immigrated here to raise their family. The answer was simple: the United States at the time had a military draft to send soldiers to Vietnam. They simply didn’t feel that a country that believed history was made with the barrel of a gun was a suitable place to raise a child.