I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about recent developments in IT lately, and with a few excess dot joinings, I’ve come to some conclusions about what may happen in IT this year, or at least some big stories.
With the recent raft of underwhelming presentations on Windows Vista and the gradual loss of originally planned features in it, and Apple Macintosh moving to Intel processors, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to see Macintosh gain ground this year, here’s how I think it will happen.
Microsoft will release Vista with their usual marketing hype, claiming that it is fantastic and probably bring back the “10 reasons to upgrade”. Apple will release their next version of Macintosh with a lot of marketing along the lines of “most of the stuff in Vista we had five years ago, and look what we’ve got now…even better, it runs on YOUR PC“, effectively canning their “Mac Box Only” pseudo-restrictions. Apple, with their increased presence, thanks to the iPod, will gain customers with the more secure, and more impressive OS.
I am really gaining the impression that Apple have lost their “also-ran” status from public perception with the iPod and iTunes and their general “nice guy” appearance, this will help them win customers from Microsoft. Also I think the general public are starting to wake up to the fact that, despite Microsoft claims, new versions of Windows are rarely more stable than the last, and the “new features” aren’t all that exciting after all. Whilst the general public will see this as a way to escape the MS security problems, IT people will see it as a way to make vulnerabilities less attractive to “malicious users” as they won’t have the same large scale effect.
I forsee Open Office using this to their advantage, perhaps making a deal with Apple to include Open Office in Mac OS.
As much as I love Linux, I don’t think 2006 will be the year of the penguin, although Linux will undoubtedly gain ground with the mass exodus of Windows users finding new operating systems. I guess many Linux distros will semi-emulate the look and feel of Mac instead of Windows, or (more likely) offer a choice between the two.
Later this year, if I remember, I might see if this has come true or not.
Samuel