Is ~10 years the life span of operating systems? The phoenix effect

[telomoyo]

About every 10 years a new, revolutionary OS appears. Then this OS goes through refinement, polishing, stabilization, and improvement. However, after about 6-8 years, it starts to look outdated. Meanwhile other OS maker spends it's time creating another new, revolutionary OS.

For example, Palm, Blackberry, and Microsoft, had very stable OSs about ten years ago, but looked outdated. Apple and Android created the OSs we see today, which arguably are stable systems, but have began to show their age. Microsoft appears to be raising from the ashes to become that new, revolutionary OS I referred to at the beginning.

Now the cycle repeats. Microsoft appears posed to dominate again, probably will spend a lot of its resources polishing Windows 10, making it better, but not necessarily innovating it. I can imagine that Apple is probably already at the drawing board beginning that next OS. What do you think?

 

[Sarveshwar]

What do you call a 'Revolutionary OS'? One that is very ground-breaking in technology or the one that is popular among the masses?

As for your question's answer, I do not think so in either of the cases. Just look at the history. Nothing happens overnight or out of a sudden. Refinements happen all the time. Modules/features are added or removed from the same core OS either one or few at once. There is no such thing as revolutionary OS - except its invention. And Unix, Linux, Windows or Mac were all 'invented' just once. Features keep on changing.

 

[telomoyo]

What do you call a 'Revolutionary OS'? One that is very ground-breaking in technology or the one that is popular among the masses?

As for your question's answer, I do not think so in either of the cases. Just look at the history. Nothing happens overnight or out of a sudden. Refinements happen all the time. Modules/features are added or removed from the same core OS either one or few at once. There is no such thing as revolutionary OS - except its invention. And Unix, Linux, Windows or Mac were all 'invented' just once. Features keep on changing.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, probably poor explanation on my part. "Revolutionary" was meant in the sense that it's something new, wasn't there before and now it's here. I would say that going from Windows XP to 7, then to 8, and now to 10 is considered a new OS since Windows 10 has very little of XP in it. I do get the concept that this did not happen overnight, however. The old Palm OS to WebOS, is another example of creating a new OS, even though it's from the same company. People tend to move from what they'd consider "old" to "new." This is probably what I really meant with the 10 year lifespan. Do people only have about 10 years to give a system before they tire, and move to another system?

 

[Xingularity]

Considering how fast computers evolve, I don't think you would want to run a current OS in a system that is 10 years old. For the most part most consumer systems aren't worth much after 5 years. By then the hardware can't keep up to the software. One exception to this is enterprise and business class systems. I have both a Dell Latitude and a Dell Insperon from 2006 and the Latitude does much better with Win10 than the Insperon.

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