Autor: AZ (piisa_at_ran.es)
Data: Sun 10 Dec 1995 - 17:28:31 MET
At 23:18 8/12/95 +0100, you wrote:
CIACH
>>Poziom technologiczny danego systemu jest
>>tu maloznaczacy - przraza mnie ten fakt, pojawia sie bowiem
>>pytanie dokad to prowadzi ?
>
>Do sytuacji, w ktorej bedziemy wszyscy kupowac coraz gorsze oprogramowanie
>za coraz wyzsze cene. Na pudelkach juz nawet nie bedzie pisalo Microsoft
>bo po co, skoro innych nie ma? Mozna oszczedzic farbe.
>
>Grego
>
Miejmy nadzieje, ze do tego nie dojdzie. Pozwole sobie zacytowac urywki z
artykulu z pisma Business Week z 4 grudnia "The Software Revolution". (jesli
ktos z Panstwa chcialby kopie calego artykulu to prosze przyslac mi swoj
adres albo nr faxu i postaram sie wyslac).
THE INTERNET CHANGES EVERYTHING. COMING SOON: CHEAP, WEB-READY
MINI-PROGRAMS. NO WONDER THE GIANTS ARE JUMPY.
Imagine that to read this magazine, you needed a special program for the
text, another program to view the photographs, and yet another to look at
the charts. Or, to watch your favourite TV shows, you needed a CBS viewer to
watch David Letterman and an NBC viewer to watch Seinfeld. Oh, yes - you'd
also wind up buying a new, "upgraded" viewer every year or two. And to make
sure that viewer does its best, you'd buy a new TV, too.
You wouldn't stand for it. But this is precisely what computer users have
been doing for years. At the root of this situation is the way that software
is created, distributed, and consumed. Programs such as spreadsheets or word
processing packages are written for a particular type of hardware and
operating system - so your Windows Excel spreadsheet won't work on your
Macintosh ... Your spreadsheet package can't deal with the text fro your
word processing package, and vice versa.
One way software makers have gotten around this is by creating "bloatware" -
ever-fatter packages that throw in dozens of new features. With each
upgrade, the customer has less need to look elsewhere. ...
This may not be the best solution for computer users who just want a better
way to get at the information they nees. But it's great for PC and software
makers. The escalating demands of bloatware drive sales of
ever-more-powerful computers, creating an unholy alliance between software
and hardware makers. This fall, for example, millions of consumers who want
Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 operating system will spend billions to trade
up to PCs using Intel Corp.'s speedy Pentium chips.
Why do customers go through this? They have few alternatives. The "Wintel"
standard (PCs that run Microsoft Windows and use Intel processors)
represents 80% of PCs sold, providing a standard "platform" of hardware and
operating-system software that hundreds of PC makers sell. ... But even with
Wintel, computer buyers are locked in to the platform: They get advances
only when Microsoft and Intel deliver them, and they pay whatever Microsoft
and Intel determine they should.
What if this cycle could be broken? What if you could find the information
you're after without having to take into account what kind of program to
use, what computer it runs on, or what kind of format it's in? ...
Well, that's exactly what's beginning to happen - and at a pace nobody in
the computer industry anticipated. The force .... is the Internet and its
graphical subnetwork known as the World Wide Web. First, the Internet's
TCP/IP communications standards made it possible for tens of millions of
computers using different operating systems and applications programs to
"talk" with one another... Then HTML ... gave all these computers a lingua
franca for displaying information in graphical "pages".
... The same Web document is accessible to anyone with HTML browser, whether
it's on Unix workstation, a Windows PC, or a Macintosh. ...
Suddenly, the barriers that have kept information from flowing between
different brands of computers and software have begun to cramble. The next
step will be critical: using the Web not only to make the same information
available to all wired machines but to let them share the same programs. If
that can be done, ther will be a basic shift in the software business no
less seismic than the fall of the Berlin Wall. ...
The new software order will reflect the character of the Internet itself.
Barriers to entry will be minimal: Anybody with a network link can play.
Costs of goods sold will be the price of sending some bits down the wire.
Bloatware blockbusters costing hundreds of dollars may give way to software
on demand - snippets of new programming that come across the Net like
E-mail. ...
WINTEL'S DISCONTENT? What of the old model? In the face of the Web - a truly
universal standard - the prevailing Wintel standard doesn't look so
unshakable. ... Since September, the hardware business has been buzzing
about low-cost "Internet appliances" that will challenge Intel PCs.
Now, Microsoft is in the hot seat. On Nov. 16, Rick G. Sherlund, the
influential Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst, dropped Microsoft from the firm's
recommended list ... The Web, he noted, "is a serious threat to Microsoft's
ability to set standards for important parts of the industry".
... Despite this dramatic reversal on Wall Street, William H. Gates III, the
first software billionaire, is not exactly on his way to oblivion. All the
Internet software upstarts combined are a mere speck compared with his $6
billion empire. ... Gates has made it clear to all his troops that the Net
and the Web are now Microsoft's highest priority.
All Microsoft's products, from Windows to Word to Excel, are being extended
to embrace the Net. ...
... Microsoft finds itself in a position similar to that of IBM a decade
ago, when the PC revolution began threatening the mainframe business: Even
as he (Gates) tries to move into the new market, he can't afford to let up
on efforts to stay on top of the old industry. ...
Meanwhile, thousands of programmers and computer designers are racing to
prove that on the Web, there's a better way - a chance to end software
lock-in forever and perhaps make bloatware obsolete. The breakthrough
technology? It could be a programming language from Sun Microsystems called
Java.
Once a computer - no matter what brand - is equipped with Java "client"
software, it can run any Java application that comes across the Net. Click
on a hyperlink to your bank to check loan rates and you'll get the data as
well as a Java "applet", a special application program to calculate what
your monthly payments would be for different amounts and different loan
lengths. Soon, little Java programs may hit your PC the way E-mail does. ...
JAVA'S MASSIVE BUZZ. Java embodies two key attributes of the new software
business. It is designed specifically for the Net, and it is an
object-oriented programming tool, based on the object language C++. ...
Object programming is ideally suited for the Net era ... "The result of this
is that software takes its place as a means rather than an end," says
Clifford J. Reeves, director of IBM workgroup architecture.
While Java is generating a massive buzz in the computer industry, it is just
one of many new programming schemes that have suddenly become practical on
the Web. NEXT Computer Inc., for instance, is reorienting its
object-programming software for the Net. ... IBM and Apple Computer Inc.
have been promoting a distributed-object scheme called OpenDoc. ...
There will be Java rivals, too. While considering licensing Java, IBM is
working on its own "Web-executable" language. ... Netscape - which will
bundle Java into the next release of its Navigator browser - has its own
language, called LiveScript. It's based on Java, but easier to use. And
Microsoft says it will have a Java equivalent in its Visual Basic language -
once that is adapted to the Net.
>From tiny one-person shops to startups staffed by prominent Silicon Valley
executives, the Net is teeming with new Web software companies. Most
wouldn't have a prayer in the conventional software market. But the Net
represents a green field where no software maker dominates. ...
Start with something as simple as distribution. ... spend huge sums of money
to crank out disks, put them in appealing packages, ... spend millions more
on advertising ... On the Web, a customer simply clicks a few onscrean
buttons, and the software comes back across the line. ... Today, it can take
anywhere from several minutes to several hours to download a program, but
high-speed communications will make electronic distribution more practical.
The way you pay for software will change, too. ... For example, software
companies may offer subscriptions that, for an annual fee, entitle you to
unlimited usage and the latest updates to a program or group of programs. At
the same time, all sorts of network services - stock quotes, digital photo
archives, bill-paying services, and the like will be delivered online, along
with software to use them. "What you're really selling is a service ... the
software comes for free," says John Landry, a former Lotus executive and now
an IBM consultant.
... An example might be an electronic catalog that includes a Java applet
for ordering. When you hit the "buy" button, the program will execute on
your computer - then vanish when the transaction is complete. Scott McNealy,
Sun's CEO, calls it disposable software.
Bloatware, on the other hand, is just about the opposite: It's big, it's not
cheap, and it requires a long-term commitment. ... The latest Microsoft
Office suite, for example, needs 55 MBs of disk space and a Pentium-class
computer to run at peak form. ...
For corporations, this helped to push the annual cost of supporting a PC
user to about $8,000... This year, many corporations are taking a go-slow
approach to Windows 95 because of the huge costs of upgrading. ...
The Web may be the method to stop this maddness. Instead of waiting two
years for the next massive update to your favorite office suite, you may get
the latest features instantly off the Net. Or, ... you may be able to rent
it. ... Think of it as just-in-time software.
The same concept may also extend to operating systems - with serious
consequences for how hardware is designed. If schemes such as Java catch on,
computers might no longer need ever-bigger operating systems - or the
expensive Intel chips they use today. ... Oracle has developed an operating
system that takes up just 1 megabyte of main memory, ... vs. as much as 8
MBs for Windows 95. He says (Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle CEO) the program
will be given away by Internet services providers and built in to computers
and consumer-electronics gadgets by next summer. ...
... Microsoft, too, may be a prisoner of its own success. ... Leading the
assault, Sun is busily seeding the Java software market. It's selling Java
licences ... Licences include Oracle, Macromedia, Toshiba, Borland and
Spyglass. Sun is also making Java freely available for research, education,
or evaluation purposes.
The Java mania grates on Gates. "What's new about [Java] vs. other
programming languages? Why is Business Week writing about Java?" he says.
... But ... Microsoft is "looking hard" at licensing Java, since the market
is clamoring for it.
For now Microsoft is racing to get its own Web software going. ...
...
SEEDING THE BROWSER MARKET. In its own way, Netscape hopes to gain the type
of leverage on the Web that Microsoft has with the Wintel lock-in. ... it is
feverishly adding extensions to the HTML standard so that Web pages
programmed with Netscape software will look their best only when seen with
the Netscape browser. ... That creates the potential for locking in
operators of Web sites with the Netscape server. ...
...
Microsoft could afford to lose the browser market. But it's determined not
to give Netscape the strategically important server business. It is testing
a Web-server program, dubbed Gibraltar, that it expects to release early
next year. Gibraltar is based on the two-year-old Windows NT but adds
features for handling HTML documents. Another product due next year, called
Catapult, will add security features. ...
...
Microsoft isn't the only software maker to feel the effects of the Net
software revolution. Lotus, now an IBM subsidiary, is furiously attempting
to adapt its inforamtion-sharing Notes program to the Web - before cheap
Web-based products diplace it. ... A likely next step: drastically cutting
the price of the Notes "client" software.
"RECREATING WINDOWS" ... The next version of Netscape Navigator 2.0, due in
December, will include tools for developing Web applications, E-mail, and
workgroup software gained from the company's purchase of Collabra Software.
In addition, Netscape will bundle "plug-in" programs, including Java,
Adobe's Acrobat document viewer, and the Real Audio player. Netscape is also
exploring other areas, including such applications as word processors. The
danger: In its attempt to be more like Microsoft, Netscape could succeed -
in the wrong ways. "Pretty soon, you end up recreating Windows" says Sherlund.
So who will come out on top in the new software business? Perhaps no single
company. If the Web revolution really creates a level playing field, then
the days when a few giants call the shots could be gone forever. Let the
games begin.
To archiwum zostało wygenerowane przez hypermail 2.1.7 : Tue 18 May 2004 - 12:28:14 MET DST