As part of the 2nd International Anti-Wintel day on 23rd June 2005, I wonder what the future in 2020 will be like if Microsoft and Intel win. A few weeks ago computer industry heavy weight Steve Jobs announced Apple will stop making PowerPC based computers, and instead port Mac OS X to Intel x86 based PCs (using the IBM architecture). The new Apple PCs will not appear for a while and it is as yet unclear what will happen but, people are talking about the Osborne effect. One Slashdot reader comparing it to Star Wars (Episode 3: A New Hope, when Alderan is blown up by the first death star), said their is a disturbance in the network as if millions of Mac users cried out and were silenced. After the shock, our space craft is being pulled towards something "That's no moon"
Mr Jobs decision looks like an odd one given the present copy of Computer Active (the best selling computer magazine in the UK at 280,000 sales) has an article about how Apple hardware sales are rising thanks to things like the Mac Mini. In the early 1980s the Macintosh was launch by an advert at the Superbowl, by director Ridley Scott. It showed a group of men looking at a large screen, under the control of Big Brother (IBM). Then a young woman runs in chased by security guards and throws a sledge hammer at the screen braking it, we were then told Apple would stop our 1984 being like the book 1984. Apple's Macintosh line were the only serviving computer platform in the PC space, other than Wintel, delivering what they had promised thanks to first popular GUI, a strong starting position and great products (iMac etc). Another person on Slashdot said Geogre Orwell was right, just wrong about the year. All this while Microsoft have moved from the x86 to the PowerPC for the next Xbox, Xbox 360.
So what is the worst that will happen if Wintel win, forget the following as they will not exist Sony PlayStation, Nintendo game consoles, Palm, Symbian, UNIX Workstations and Servers, Mac OS, Linux, AS/400, IBM Mainframes, and Google. Imagine the development of the Web with Bill Gates in charge, first, Tim Berners-Lee and the people who created Gopher (a HTML alternative, that lost) both used NeXTStep computers. This would not happen, Jim Clarke who made money by creating UNIX vender SGI that funded Netscape would not exist. Sun and therefore Java would not exist, this would also mean no Javascript, VB script and ActiveX with all their security risks would replace them. The Internet itself would not exist but be AOL or MSN. W3C would not exist and MIT (like every other university world wide) would teach C# and Visual BASIC. If the web existed at all it would be more like Flash, except controlled by Microsoft. HTML would be a binary fornat changing with each version of Frontpage and not documented. In the first edition of his book "The Road Ahead" Bill Gates outlines the future of computers but hardly mentions the Internet. People ask what can I not do if Microsoft runs everything, at present they cannot be secure, at least 3 of the four candidates that saved their deposits in the 2005 general election in Norwich South including Home Secretary Charles Clarke have have had the PCs security compromised. According to another anti-Microsoft website some versions of Windows secretly record every website the users visits and the text they enter on thoses site, e.g. search strings on Google. I have been able to verify this.
Forget using normal programming languages like C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, etc Microsoft will make people use there languages and compilers. Thanks to DRM (Digital Rights Management) only the output of approved compilers will work on Windows. DRM will decide what you can and cannot run, while software patents will limit programmer freedom (there will not be Linux users trying to save us next time). Television and radio will arrive via the Internet, which will be search by MSN Search. Microsoft owns CBS (while NBC is now called MSNBC) while controlling the information the world receives even senior Republicans are worried by this. Microsoft have been know to take part in politics, so you think shortwave radio will save you. A lot of people will think piracy will stop the worst problems. All commercial programs in future maybe be taxed, as will Internet traffic. That VoIP telephone call about an anti-Wintel demonstration, will not get through, just as newsgroup postings are being stopped. Already my ISP (NTL) say I should not be using the service because I am not using Windows or Mac OS, in the future they may actively inforce this.
So how will we get there, Lintel (Linux on Intel) will under cut UNIX workstation prices making the last modern available hardware alternative computer architextures gone. Linux and Mac OS competing on Microsoft home territory will lose, when IBM cuts funding. Microsoft money will buy the the PDA and game console markets.
China and India may hold the last hope of choice alive.
This a battle for freedom.
They said it was not a monopoly because we had the Apple Mac,