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Surely it's time for a fundamentally new OS from Microsoft?

With tens of thousands of employees, they must have the resource to create a more modern operating system than to keep tarting-up Windows NT? Are they working on one and when will it be released?

Just to be absolutely clear: I'm talking about specific, major subsystems with demonstrable flaws. As I understand it, the kernel itself is well regarded. It is clear from everyday use, however, that many of the important subsystems within Windows appear to remain largely unchanged even in Windows 7.

Two examples:

First, as I understand it WPF is Microsoft's answer to Quartz. Why then, is Quartz pervasive in OSX and WPF is not in Windows 7?

Second, the security model of Windows appears fundamentally flawed in comparison to the UNIX underpinnings of OS X and/or Linux (witness the prevalence of viruses). Why have Microsoft chosen to update the existing architecture in Windows 7 rather than make fundamental changes to fix the root cause? This decision impacts users significantly in that they have to run resource-hungry virus scanners, whereas OSX and Linux users largely do not.

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Vista was a kernel rewrite. KDE and Gnome are wannabe windows. – John Gietzen Nov 7 at 19:49
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KDE and Gnome aren't operating systems and I wonder why you bring them up in the first place. – Manni Nov 7 at 19:58
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Why would Microsoft create a fundamentally new OS? In what way would it help Microsoft's customers? Presumably a fundamentally new OS wouldn't run existing Windows applications which I would think would be bad for customers... – Larry Osterman Nov 7 at 19:59
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Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered! Nothing to see here. Move along now. – Diago♦ Nov 7 at 20:15
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The short answer is, possibly never. As Larry Osterman points out, why should they? A 'fundamentally new' OS is unlikely to be binary compatible with older applications - a decidedly bad business move. If you look at the "big players" in the commercial OS market: Windows, Mac & *nix/Gnu-Linux, nothing 'fundamentally new' has been developed since the 90's. Mac was doing their own thing for a while & had an OS 'fundamentally different' from Unix & Windows. Eventually this became more of a liability than an advantage & they ended up creating a proprietary BSD variant for themselves. – DaveParillo Nov 7 at 20:16
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closed as subjective and argumentative by MarkM, Diago♦ Nov 7 at 20:14
It's impossible to objectively answer this question; questions of this type are too open ended and usually lead to confrontation and argument.

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