Comment by js4all

People are praising BSD like it was all hot and new. OS X is built on a BSD which has it's roots in 60's and 70's OS design, just like the VMS roots of WinNT.

OS X didn't change the world by bringing some great new underlying architecture to the table. In fact, their kernel and filesystem are arguably getting long in the tooth. The value that OS X brought to the table was the fantastic Carbon and Cocoa development platforms. And they have continued to execute and iterate on these platforms, providing the "Core" series of APIs (CoreGraphics, CoreAnimation, CoreAudio, etc.) to make certain HW services more accessible.

There's very little cool stuff to be gained in the windows world by developing a new kernel from scratch. A quantum leap would not solve MS's problem. The problem is the platform. What's really dead and bloated is the Win32 subsystem. The kernel doesn't need major tweaking. In fact, the NT kernel was designed from the beginning such that it could easily run the old busted Win32 subsystem alongside a new subsystem without needing to resort to expensive virtualization.

Unfortunately, the way Microsoft is built today it have a fatal organizational flaw that prevents creating the next great Windows platform. The platform/dev tools team and the OS team are in completely different business groups within the company. The platform team develops the wonderful .NET platform for small/medium applications and server apps while the OS team keeps crudging along with Win32. Managed languages have their place, but they have yet to gain traction for any top shelf large-scale windows client application vendors (Adobe, even Microsoft Office itself, etc.) Major client application development still relies on unmanaged APIs, and IMHO the Windows unmanaged APIs are arguably the worst (viable) development platform available today.

What Windows needs is a new subsystem/development platform to break with Win32, providing simplified, extensible unmanaged application development, with modern easy-to-use abstractions for hardware services such as graphics, data, audio and networking. This is starting to come to fruition with WinRT, but the inertia in large scale apps is unbelievable.

The NT-based kernels were not as big a problem for Microsoft as CE-based OSs were. Nokia transitioned away from a Linux-based smartphone OS to Windows Phone 7, based on Windows Embedded CE 6. It is clear that Windows Phone 7 was uncompetitive with other smartphone OSs. That put Nokia in limbo for a year when they could least afford it.

Now the problem is not so much the kernel, but all the cruft a Windows-based OS drags along with it. The most visible symptom is the amount of storage used up by stuff that adds little or no readily apparent value to Windows RT.

Windows OSs are heavy compared to Android and other Linux-based OSs. That means inexpensive tablets and phones won't run Windows, and Windows is shut out of mobile device markets in India, Africa, and other developing areas. These markets are how Yulong (who??!!) became a top 10 mobile OEM.