[Note: This item comes from friend John McMullen. DLH]
From: "John F. McMullen
From the New York Times --
ex=1338696000&en=72dc39267cc479eb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss>
Competing as Software Goes to Web
Can two bitter rivals save the desktop operating system?
by John Markoff
In the battle between Apple and Microsoft, Bertrand Serlet and Steven
Sinofsky are the field generals in charge of competing efforts to
ensure that the PCs basic software stays relevant in an increasingly
Web-centered world.
The two men are marshaling their software engineers for the next
encounter, sometime in 2009, when a new generation of Macintosh and
Windows operating systems is due. Their challenge will be to avoid
refighting the last war and to prevent finding themselves outflanked
by new competitors.
Many technologists contend that the increasingly ponderous PC-bound
operating systems that currently power 750 million computers,
products like Microsofts Windows Vista and Apples soon-to-be-released
Mac OS X Leopard, will fade in importance.
In this view, software will be a modular collection of Web-based
services accessible by an array of hand-held consumer devices and
computers and will be designed by companies like Google and Yahoo
and quick-moving start-ups.
The center of gravity and the center of innovation has moved to the
Web, where it used to be the PC desktop, said Nova Spivack, chief
executive and founder of Radar Networks, which is developing a Web
service for storing and organizing information.
Faced with that changing dynamic, Apple and Microsoft are expected to
develop operating systems that will increasingly reflect the
influence of the Web. And if their valuable turf can be preserved, it
will largely reflect the work of Mr. Serlet and Mr. Sinofsky, veteran
software engineers with similar challenges but contrasting management
styles.
[snip]