Comment Articles

What Microsoft should do with its pot of gold

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 29 Jul 2003 11:58 BST

Microsoft said last week it plans to hire 4,000 to 5,000 new workers and to increase research spending by about 8 percent, to $6.9bn (£4.24bn) per year. The company also said it has $49bn lying around collecting interest.

So what should Bill and Steve do with these wondrous resources? My suggestion: Start over.

Yes, I think they should build a new operating system, as much from scratch as necessary, to solve Windows's most intractable problem: it's not all that easy to use and really isn't getting any easier. It's also bloated with features and controls that most people never need, further weakening its ease of use.

In short, we need a new Microsoft OS that's actually easy to use, runs easy-to-use applications, and adapts itself to each user's specific digital environment -- the other computers, phones, music devices, video gear, still cameras, etc., with which most of us surround our PCs.

There's ample precedent for this. Apple has, after all, started over twice -- once in 1984 with the original Macintosh and again more recently with the Unix-based Mac OS X. Of course, many would say Apple's whopping 2.3 percent market share would be more than ample argument against starting over.

Still, I think real ubiquity -- that is, computers everywhere that everyone can use -- will never be achieved with Windows as we know it today. If anything, Longhorn looks like it'll add complexity, not remove it.

We need an operating system that's smarter and presents a less bewildering array of options and choices than today's Windows. We need more of the OS -- especially network setup and access controls -- hidden under the hood, where users never have to see them.

We need an operating system optimised for home and small business users and another with enhanced functionality for large businesses, or maybe just one OS that self-configures itself based on what it sees on the network.

The various flavours of XP point in this direction, but neither Home nor Pro meet the basic requirement of being both simple and powerful. There's much in the Pro edition that home business users might find useful; Media Centre Edition is built atop Pro, suggesting that advanced consumers would find the Home Edition pretty useless.