Gartner, whose business it is to write lines like “For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable,” believes that “for Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable.” Essentially they find that Windows is so full of junk code and accreted features that it will soon collapse under its own weight. For example, while working on Vista they dropped most of their work and used Windows Server 2003 instead, completely scrapping their work. That’s why Vista is stable and pretty yet still a dog for most people.

Is Windows really collapsing? Not really, but it’s nice to say so. MS needs to completely rewrite Windows from scratch, much like Apple did with OS 9, and go from there. Or go completely online and make every machine a dumb terminal. Either way, they’ve got to move but the situation is definitely not untenable.