Computer Science Stuff

I love Apple products and really love their branding but one thing I hate is to see the truth and completely over look it when just because you love it. Lately I have been coming across information detailing that Mac OS X is not secure it is just not attacked as much as Windows. I don’t know if you ever came across a competition called PWN2OWN. It is a competition is which people are competing against each other to hack computers with different operating systems and different browsers. The first browser to come to submission was safari on the mac.

The only browser that wasn’t cracked was Google Chrome on the windows operating system. This came at a surprise to me but after researching the Google Chrome sandboxing feature along with Windows randomization feature it is more secure than windows but it is attacked way more. For mac users I wouldn’t draw any concern over it now but when apple reaches a higher market share I think they will be in trouble.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Over the past few months I have been testing out Windows 7  (64 bit Build 7100) and I must say I’m impressed by their level of effort. It seems as though their desperation borne nice fruits of labor. Instead of putting out products just for making money, they are putting out products that people like which actually makes even more money. Seems like they have a nice equation system going on. So let’s get down to business.

Windows 7 release candidate 1

What I look for in an operating system is ease of use, speed and stability. So I will give you a run down:

Ease of Use

Window 7 ease of use hasn’t really change compared to Vista to the common user. It seems as though make have gotten better with administrative tasks and putting forth a better attempt making a user more aware of getting antivirus programs and backuping programs. Thy also have advertise that they have better device management but all I see is that they made the icons bigger. I’m not impressed in this area.

Speed

Speed has increased nicely! I everything moves way faster and opens up so much quicker! It is almost like your old computer has turned into a new computer if you move to Windows 7. If you check the benchmarks windows 7 shows who moving in Zdnet benchmark.

Stability

Windows 7 is amazingly stable, I haven’t seen a blue screen of death or having incompatibility problems with hardware. It runs smooth and each windows explorer window is allocated the same amount of memory for each process. Even when I run multiple programs like photoshop, dreamweaver, eclipse, firefox and windows media player I do not see any stutter in my performance. I use hibernate alot and vista will so a stutter in my performance with windows 7 you couldn’t even tell that I use the hibernate function. I would even leave windows 7 on for hours on end get on program and let other people that don’t even know how to use the computer play around. So for stability I must say windows are on it.

Also remember this is still not the final version so when it is released we will see a true showdown between Windows 7, Windows Vista, Linux and Snow Leopard.

Also remember before using (This is from Microsoft Website)

Remember expiration dates: Please plan ahead for the Beta and RC expiration dates. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. Windows will notify you that the expiration process is beginning and two weeks later your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. The Beta expires on August 1, 2009, and bi-hourly shutdowns will begin July 1, 2009. The RC will expire June 1, 2010, and the bi-hourly shutdowns will begin on March 1, 2010. In both cases, you’ll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Of all the years I have been on this planet have never seen Microsoft get so desperate or feel the need to compete at a great level. Now that it is becoming more and more prevalent that they are no longer the big kid on the block anymore they are going on all out attacks now against Google and Apple. This is all because of their steadily declining market share.

Market Share lossage and to who

1. Internet browser(Internet Explorer) – lossage to Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari
2. Operating system (Windows) – lossage to Apple Mac OS X and Linux
3. Search Engine (live.com) – lossage to Google and Yahoo

Not even mentioning other competitors such as Adobe (Multimedia) Flash vs Microsoft Silverlight and Sony (Game Consoles) Ps3 vs Microsoft XBOX 360 vs Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is really feeling the effects of spreading themselves thinner and thinner and producing products of lesser and lesser quality. Even some of the competitors who they are going against have a focus and produce so very nice products. Now they are spending more money creating attack ads against Apple and Google. People see it as strategy but I see it as a act of desperation before the giant falls. If you want a good website for identifying market share go here to see the information for yourself.

What can Microsoft do?

Being that they still have the upper hand in most of their markets they need to create reliable products that cannot be compromised so easily. Firstly with windows it is known for viruses and its price. There are other products out there that are free and becoming easier to use for example linux. Or have little to no viruses and good quality, people go to apple mac os x. So if they can increase the quality of their product, include a higher level of security and speed and present it well I think we can see a nice increase in their market share. To even further back it up ask people who played around with Windows 7. They are impressed with the usability and speed which has increased alot of people’s curiosity and confidence. Now if they can launch a full-spectrum campaign on increasing quality of their products and decrease prices on licenses I guarantee we will see change in market share but only going up.

Popularity: 16% [?]