Recently, I was looking at release candidate reviews for Windows 7 and Mac Snow Leopard 10.6.  The reviews seemed a bit glowing, for both products, though both still thought the verdict would still be in the release.  Still, I could not help but wonder what could happen if Windows 7 were another bust.

For those who don’t know, a release candidate is a pre-release version that software manufacturers use to make sure that their software does not have bugs in it before the official release.  Now, it is great that they do this, but sometimes, these pre-release versions might not have all the functions built in.  Sometimes, they may be trying to “protect” these features from being copied too quickly, and sometimes they might still be trying to get them to work.  Either way, it does tend to color the reviews.

So what might happen if Windows 7 is a bust?  For many years, Microsoft Windows has been the defacto operating system for many people.  But each time an operating system fails, it opens a window for its competitors.

Apple’s Mac line is poised to be the one to step in, should Microsoft falter.  It may not happen overnight, but users may start switching to Macs with each failure at Microsoft.  As more users switch to Apple, more software makers will be making more software for Macs, and you’ll see the availability of software for Mac and PC start to even out a bit.  That has been one thing hindering the switch to Apple for some users.

But there is another player starting to make inroads as well.  That is the world of Linux users.  Right now, they make up the minority of users.  And there are a number of factors that currently put them way behind Apple for a piece of the pie, but a stumble by Microsoft, and some of the dissatisfied users could seek out this option, which in many cases is either free or much cheaper than the other Big 2.

Even with a stumble in this next version of Windows, I don’t see the demise of Microsoft happening anytime soon.  For one thing, though founder Bill Gates is no longer CEO of the software giant, he is still heavily involved.  I don’t think that he will sit by idly and let Microsoft completely falter while he can do something about it.  But the growth and the maturing of open source programming combined with the inroads Apple has been making, Microsoft could easily be finding itself slipping even more with another failure.