The Times They Are a Changing

My take on the OS landscape over the next few years is thus:

Microsoft:
My guess is that Microsoft shops will stay Microsoft shop sites. At the risk of loosing home users (where they are currently loosing) they will focus less on the user interface aspects and more on the core things that excite corporate users. The main people using Microsoft as a non-server system are MSDN members. They will of course continue to use Intel chips and AMD will be around for a while based on price/performance.

Solaris/Sun/Linux/IBM/Unix in general:
Sun and IBM will merge settling on Linux as the OS of choice for Unix based corporate users. Since they are IBM and Sun they will build some kick ass processor that will crush anything Intel makes, but it will only run on the SunBM* chips. They will continue to work along the Java J2EE front because they are strong supporters and because it is ubiquitous in the the non-MS shops and it works as it helps to prevent a lot of developers from writing the "hard code" such as transactionality and the like. This also means that Eclipse and NetBeans will merge and actually have a kick as dev tool that takes cave of the mundane code, where it is easy to make mistakes. The NetBeans GUI tool (now for Swing) will turn into some XHTML/Ajax tool that will take of building web interfaces nicely.

Apple/Sony:
Sony and Apple will merge into a company named iSnApple*. They both have the high ground as far as marketing and home consumer perceptions go. All home users will have a Mac that works with their Sony cameras and Camcorders, as well as their iPhones (the Walkman brand will be dropped and rolled into iPod) [as it stands Sony Ericsson and Apple are competing for a space that the merger would own]

Nintendo:

Nintendo will own THE gaming platform as Microsoft will abandon Xbox in their desire to focus on the corporate world. iSnApple will be over priced (much like the Wii/PS3 battle) Oh sure the PlayStation brand will exist and will be "technically" better than the Nintendo offering much like this video explains being fun and cheap is better than being advanced


*my proposals for the merged names