Survey: Windows loses ground with developers
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Windows platform is losing traction as a target for application developers in North America but still is the dominant platform, according to Evans Data survey results being released on Tuesday. A survey this spring of more than 400 developers and IT managers in North America found that the number of developers targeting Windows for their applications declined 12 percent from a year ago. Just 64.8 percent targeted the platform as opposed to 74 percent in 2006. "We attribute [the decline] largely to the increase in developers beginning to target Linux and different Linux [distributions]. Both Novell and Red Hat are the two dominant ones right now," said John Andrews, the CEO of Evans Data. The arrival of Windows Vista likely only kept the numbers from being even worse. "I think Vista probably offset some of the decline," Andrews said. The share for Windows is expected to drop another 2 percent, to about 63 percent, in the next year, Andrews said. The targeting of Linux by developers increased by 34 percent to 11.8 percent. It had been 8.8 a year ago, according to the survey. Linux targeting is expected to reach 16 percent over the next year. Evans views the situation as a battle of Windows versus open source with open source maturing, Andrews said. Windows remains tops, though. "They're still dominant, there's no doubt about it," said Andrews. Use of Windows on the development desktop remains steady. The survey, featuring developers at enterprises and solution providers like system integrators, covered both client and server application development. Evans Data said the shift away from Windows began about two years ago and is accelerating. Linux is benefiting as are nontraditional client devices. Evans Data also surveyed developer plans for such platforms as Unix and Mac OS but did not release those numbers. A Microsoft representative said Monday no one was available from the company to comment on the Evans Data report. Andrews said the verdict still is out on the full impact that open-source software is having on the commercial software market but noted that there will always be a place for both paradigms. In other findings in the Evans Data Spring North American Development survey, Evans found that JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language. It has more than three times the users of PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), Ruby, or Python. But Ruby usage is expected to increase by 50 percent within the coming year. Also gathering steam is virtualization. A third of developers surveyed are writing applications that support virtualization with 42.5 percent expected to adopt it within the next year.
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When Steve Sinchak's new Intel network card became "really slow" after upgrading his Windows Vista PC with a pre-release version of Service Pack 1, he tried uninstalling its software driver and replacing it with a new one.But to his dismay, the Chicago-area technology author and blogger found himself "stuck in a loop" during the InstallShield-managed process -- unable to replace his sluggish older driver with a new, peppier one."It's messed up to the point where I may have to use brute force to uninstall the driver, or wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows Vista completely," he said.Sinchak's is an example, admittedly an extreme one, of the driver problems that forced Microsoft to take the unusual step of holding SP1's availability to users until March even while announcing its release to manufacturing (RTM) on Monday.Not even the hundreds of thousands of people who have already been testing Vista SP1, nor the many Windows developers accustomed to being able to download software on Microsoft's MSDN or TechNet Web sites immediately after RTM, will be able to get SP1 for another 6-8 weeks.And if you are one of the unlucky Vista users using a driver known to break and need reinstallation after the upgrade to SP1, Windows Update will quarantine you from getting SP1 until the driver is fixed."We want all of our customers to have the same good experience," said Microsoft senior product manager, David Zipkin, in an interview Monday. "That's why we're erring on the side of caution."Cancel or allow or shut up already?Service Pack 1 remains the milestone by which many companies and consumers judge when a Microsoft product is truly bug-free and mature enough to deploy. Any delay in SP1 could have an adverse effect on Vista uptake, which has been generally strong -- more than 100 million copies shipped -- despite a lukewarm market response.Zipkin points out that most drivers, once re-installed after the SP1 upgrade, should work properly.That was the experience of several Computerworld readers.Zipkin blames hardware vendors for failing to strictly follow Redmond's instructions on how drivers should be installed."The issue is that the drivers were not written per the spec we have on MSDN to ensure successful updates," he said, a spec that "has been around since the XP days."Zipkin declined to elaborate or comment on Sinchak's case. And neither Intel nor Macrovision, maker of the InstallShield software, immediately responded to requests for comment.But some experts think that the problem must be related to under-the-hood changes in Vista SP1, especially those concerning security and user privileges, which can directly affect how applications and drivers are installed."Microsoft looks like they are monkeying around with a lot of lower-level stuff," said Paul Morris, a project manager at QualityLogic, a Moorpark, Calif. software and driver testing firm. "In my mind, you've got to treat SP1 as an entirely new OS."Vista's overhauled security model had two major changes. First, local users who were formerly granted administrator access by default are granted standard access in Vista. Second, a new feature called User Account Control, or UAC, prompts users to verify whenever a new application or driver is about to be installed.Both moves help to prevent viruses and malware from taking hold. But UAC has been criticized by some users for its overzealousness, though UAC pop-ups decrease dramatically after the first month, according to Redmond.Moreover, moving users to standard rather than administrator accounts wreaked havoc on many applications and drivers that depended on full administrator access to install or run properly.If SP1 makes even small changes to Vista's security model, that could cause drivers to break again, according to Ian Lao, an analyst at In-Stat. Why? For one, most vendors took the easier, less rigorous option of patching and modifying their drivers to make them Vista compatible, rather than "rewriting them from the ground-up," said Lao. That makes them more fragile.Moreover, many drivers, unlike applications, can't be completely shut down during an installation process. The upgraded software -- in this case Vista -- may not be able to properly update the drivers, he said. Thus, permissions may be lost during the SP1 upgrade, or resources moved to different locations.Of drivers and ass-kickingsDrivers were a major bane to Vista in its early months last year.Despite Microsoft's claim that more than 1.6 million peripherals worked with Vista at its launch, there were numerous complaints from early adopters, gamers and other power users about non-working devices."It definitely wasn't just a vocal minority that had a problem with drivers at Vista's launch," said Robert McLaws, a blogger who also tested SP1 but didn't face any driver issues.Indeed, driver issues had been on the wane. At its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) conference last May, Microsoft said that 1.9 million devices supported Vista.Microsoft has not updated that number since then. But it says that over 78,000 hardware products are now supported by Windows Update, up from 34,000 at launch.And 17,000 peripherals and devices (see list, IE 6+ required) have passed one of Microsoft's two rigorous certification programs: Certified for Windows Vista, which requires successful testing by a third party such as QualityLogic, and the more self-reported Works with Windows Vista program, which is more reliant on self-reporting."A lot of OEMs did not take the Vista launch seriously," McLaws said. "So Microsoft took their problem reports to vendors and kicked some ass."In a PowerPoint presentation distributed to media last month, Microsoft was confident enough to state "Many device and software problems behind us: Nearly all Windows Vista PCs have drivers for every single device installed, available on WU [Windows Update] or from vendor websites."But Microsoft may have relaxed too soon. Morris says none of vendors that came to QualityLogic for certification of their Vista drivers have returned seeking the same service for SP1."They may be hammering on them tooth and nail internally, but they're not asking us to touch it," he said.The result? Monday's delay.Gregg Keizer contributed to this story.
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Ziff Davis - Microsoft's omission of WinFS from the Longhorn version of Windows may open options for open-source competitors to the forthcoming operating system.
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Many experts say Linux and open-source software is your biggest threat. But is your real competitor a desire for an alternative to Microsoft, rather than any particular product?
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Enterprise developers looking for a guide to test applications against the new Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) are getting some help from Microsoft (Quote, Chart).
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Zawodny  threads off of Scoble  on the IE issue:  "I have to say, when I first read that I nearly fell off my chair laughing. I was thinking "how stupid ARE these IE guys?!?!?!" But we all know that Microsoft is full of smart people who care about what they're doing. So something really doesn't compute here."  "Last time I checked, IE wasn't even close to feature parity with Mozilla's browsers. No popup blocking, no tabbed browsing, etc."  "Does the IE team really not know what their product is missing?"  Perhaps.  It's highly likely that they just don't know.  The bigger issue here is that Microsoft products can't fail and they can't succeed.  Microsoft has 40-50 billion in the bank.  There ...
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Many enterprise IT managers are delaying for months any rollout of Microsoft Corp.&#39;s long-awaited and often-delayed Windows XP Service Pack 2, saying it is breaking too many of their applications.
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Has Microsoft really hit the mark with forward thinkers? Comment A recent management-level survey on IT service delivery threw up the question, "when do you think you are likely to roll out Windows Vista in your organisation?"â¦
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Blog: It's Linux, rather than the Web browser, that's stealing developer attention away from desktop Windows, according to Evans Data.
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After leaving an angry mob of Windows users stranded for weeks with
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JavaScript development goes to the dogs What you can - and cannot do - with your software is often determined by the code owner's license. From not using open source APIs with closed-source digital rights management (DRM) to being barred from fiddling with Windows source code, we've seen it all.â¦Learn &amp; Contribute, Live &amp; Online - The Register Debates Green Computing
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Resistance to Vista was expected among the large companies that have leverage with large PC vendors, but even in the consumer and SMB ranks, the clamor for XP is significant. The beneficiaries? Possibly, "white-box" system builders and direct-sales channels.
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Windows, Linux and Java each fail some basic integrity rules.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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Is the desktop dead?  Microsoft can't even make its updates sexy anymore.
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Some say Win XP SP2 enhancements cause conflicts, don't protect as claimed.
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New .mobi and .jobs, a shift in the ownership of .net