CALIFORNIA: Apple Computer Chief Executive Steve Jobs thinks the long-awaited operating system from Microsoft – Longhorn – is all mouth and no trousers. He told company shareholders at an annual general meeting: "They are shamelessly copying us. They can't even copy fast."
Longhorn, touted as successor to Windows XP, is scheduled for market launch in 2006.
Microsoft's group vice president for platforms Jim Allchin had charged last week that it is Apple which is copying Microsoft. He said Microsoft had first showcased Longhorn in 2003 and Apple could come out with its 10.4 OS just a year ago.
He said that the number of copies of Windows sold will be more than all the Macintosh computers used worldwide. By the end of 2005, he proudly noted, over 730 million people will be using Windows.
Microsoft has in fact scaled down the properties of Longhorn, hoping it will get an earlier launch. The company’s chief executive Steve Ballmer said at the Management Summit in Las Vegas, that Longhorn has six "pillars" -- support for 64-bit chip sets, search facilities, easy deployment, no complexities and updates to home and mobile computing.
Microsoft plans to ship 32-bit, x64 and Itanium versions of Longhorn server OS. The company had earlier planned to ship both 32-bit and x64 versions of Longhorn client, but did not disclose the hardware platforms these would support.
Bob Kelly, general manager of Microsoft Windows server group, said: "We will support 32-bit and 64-bit. We're in a transition period from 32-bit to 64-bit. We believe that will take a while."
While Steve Jobs may have put forward a convincing argument to his own shareholders it does not change the figures that showed up in a recent survey. Macintosh Operating Systems are used by approximately 8% of users compared with a massive 86% using Windows; although neither exhaustive or definitive, at face value it shows as a convincing victory for Microsoft.
