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Microsoft have a long history of this sort of thing. Back in the Windows Phone days they banned third party non managed applications but made it clear to Adobe that Adobe would be allowed to use native code for Flash if they wanted to

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/...

Update: The latest on this is that Microsoft's Charlie Kindel says that Adobe will have special native access for Flash, but that no other vendor will have that privilege. This still does not make sense to me. Let's suppose that Windows Phone 7 is a big success. What justification could Microsoft have for supporting the Flash runtime but not the Java runtime, for example? I suspect that Microsoft is chasing the Flash checkbox to one-up Apple; but if Adobe gets native access, others will no doubt follow.

Adobe declined the offer. And amusingly all those technologies are now more or less extinct - Windows Phone's Silverlight and XNA APIs were killed off, and Flash is pretty much dead now too.

The only reason Skype ran on Windows Phone is that Microsoft bought the company so they could deploy Skype's Win32 code signed with the Microsoft key. And then they did a rewrite using ReactXP.

https://microsoft.github.io/re...

Microsoft killed off Windows Phone, but Skype is bundled with Windows 10 and runs on Android and iOS. Android and iOS got the horrible ReactXP rewrite replacing the original native app. I'm not sure if the Windows 10 version is the original Skype Win32 C/C++ code, a WinRT C++ hack of it or the the ReactXP rewrite.

Visual Studio has been a veritable breeding ground for bad design decisions, particularly the ALL-CAPS menus and monochromization of the entire interface in Visual Studio 2012. The now-fully-expected Microsoft PR cycle materialized: a salvo of Delay, Defend, Deny... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visual... ...followed by an admission by Visual Studio product manager Brian Harry: "The implementation of the new UI in 2012 was a mess" ( http://www.itwriting.com/blog/... )

Probably the most damning quote from Harry is this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry... "...there was a bit of a 'cone of secrecy' around the new UI because we didn't want it 'leaking'. Even I didn't get to see it until months into it." That seems emblematic of the era when the Metro design team going full steam ahead with Metrofying every Microsoft product before, during, and even after Windows 8's buildup, launch, and colossal customer repudiation, as well as the ouster of main Metro proponent Steven Sinofsky. And yet even now, we continue with an MS PR demeanor that could be charitably described as "proselytizing" (yes, that's normal for PR, but that's only one part of their job; another part is to listen to customer feedback).

My Nook has had a web browser since shortly before that, and the policy with B&N was exactly the same. It's for use on WiFi only and they reserve the right to charge for data if you try to use the 3G for that.

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2929-new-amazon-kindle-with-webkit-browser-and-free-3g-internet.html/comment-page-1

Oh, I won't bet against it. Until recently, software from the company I worked for used to dump configuration data (which may be changed during everyday operation) into the application directory. That is C:\Program Files\$INSTALLDIR or something similar, again depending on OS language.

But with Vista and Windows 7, the "Virtual Store" feature makes the behavior of writing to this directory pretty difficult to predict. See also http://www.itwriting.com/blog/141-peeking-into-vistas-virtual-store.html. The rules are somewhat complicated.

So I pushed for changing that on the project I was responsible for, and at least the .ini-file moved to CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA. I can only hope the rest of the project will follow.

He's probably thinking of articles like this:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/541-mshtml-layout-engine-completely-rewritten-for-internet-explorer-8.html

Interesting article here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

"[netscape killed themselves by rewriting]
Well, yes. They did. They did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch."

Joel's argument is "code doesn't go bad. it is better to sand it and polish it because a given code base has already had a lot of bugs found and removed. writing a new codebase brings you back to bug rich code".

Major League Baseball Advanced Media totally botched the transition not once, but twice. When switching from Flash to Silverlight last year their new Silverlight-based streaming player didn't work, leaving paying customers without service for days. This year they decided to switched back to a Flash-based player ON OPENING DAY. Unfortunately, the new player doesn't work either, and in many ways was worse than the silverlight player, requiring additional installation plugins for HD capabilities, and left these same paying customers without the opening day experience they're paying for two years in a row.

New York Times Reader was a different case. It worked fairly well, but NYT got thoroughly flamed for introducing the reader for windows only, basing it on WPF's FlowDocument capabilities which aren't available for the Mac. Similar text features are eventually going to make it into Silverlight, but things like Printing are a much higher priority for the SL guys. The silverlight version of the reader used a complicated templating system rather than true adaptive text layout. Adobe's Text Layout Framework may not have been the first to market, but that + Flex + AIR are the first to bring it to a wider audience and may ultimately resonate more.

Also I'm sure politics played a prevalent role in both cases, especially in the case of NYT where the Mac User's vitriol for anything microsoft played out.

MLB 2008
http://www.pcworld.com/article/144035/mlbs_web_video_strikes_out_on_opening_day.html

MLB 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/major-league-baseball-str_b_185158.html

NYT:
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1424-new-york-times-switches-from-wpfsilverlight-to-flash-for-reader-2.html

It's nice that music from ITMS can play on anything, but if Apple were interested in interoperability at all I could sync any music player with iTunes, or conversely sync my iPod with any software I choose. Sadly Apple seem to be making quite an effort specifically to prevent this, so it would seem they aren't as friendly as many try to make out.

And Windows has only 90% of the computer market, not 100%, so does that mean it's also not a monopoly?

Windows 7 has an option to link user accounts to an "online ID provider"; and when I asked what this meant, I was told it is OpenID. If so, could give OpenID a boost. More details here:

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1134-openid-embedded-into-windows-7.html

Tim

I posted an MP3 player for sale. I was told I must offer PayPal and ONLY PayPal.

See here for screen grab:

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/708-ebay-insisting-on-paypal-only-in-the-uk.html

Tim

Not FUD. This doesn't apply to Firefox, but you can see how it works with .NET assemblies here: http://www.itwriting.com/dotnetmem.php

Windows does not accurately show how much memory is being used by applications using managed memory.

I did my own small experiment with a phishing email that came my way. You can see the results here:

FireFox 2.0, IE7 both fail phishing test

plus linked posts. FireFox was better than IE (but not much better on its default settings); but in both cases there was a delay of several hours before the filter worked. I imagine the effectiveness of a phishing attempt tails off rapidly after its first appearance, so the delay is critical.

I also worry about the false reasurrance folk may get from a site appearing to check out OK in this phish-sensitive browsers.

Tim

Vista Ultimate Edition's default user has administrative rights.

This is true but needs qualification. By default, processes initiated by the default user do not have administrative rights. They run with standard user rights unless elevated; and they can only be elevated (AIUI) by passing a dialog.

This is to my mind a significant advance over Windows XP.

Tim
Tech blog: http://www.itwriting.com/blog

sorry for the EMPTY! thingie. /. seems to be suffering from some annoyance rules almost as bad as java's unwritten ones... ;)

• 40GB storage - that's a lot of hours at 192kbs
• Trivial to transfer files over USB 2.0
• Multi-function device, also useful for data backup
• Cataloguing - storing and organizing digital files on a hard drive just makes more sense than piles of plastic gathering dust
• Playback and editing - a zillion utilities exist for editing sound files, normalization, playback at varying speeds

The only advantage of my old MD player that I will concede is that it takes standard AA batteries as an option. However, that is incidental. The iRiver can happily record a full day's conference, for example, on a single charge.

It also does a good job with music and can record to uncompressed WAV. I use the same mic as I did with MD, a Sony that uses plug-in power.

I am not advocating this particular device, which is sadly no longer made. But it would take a lot to persuade to go back to removeable media of any kind.

Whereas a device that would transparently stream to internet-based storage in the background over wifi might catch my interest...

• 40GB storage - that's a lot of hours at 192kbs
• Trivial to transfer files over USB 2.0
• Multi-function device, also useful for data backup
• Cataloguing - storing and organizing digital files on a hard drive just makes more sense than piles of plastic gathering dust
• Playback and editing - a zillion utilities exist for editing sound files, normalization, playback at varying speeds

The only advantage of my old MD player that I will concede is that it takes standard AA batteries as an option. However, that is incidental. The iRiver can happily record a full day's conference, for example, on a single charge.

It also does a good job with music and can record to uncompressed WAV. I use the same mic as I did with MD, a Sony that uses plug-in power.

I am not advocating this particular device, which is sadly no longer made. But it would take a lot to persuade to go back to removeable media of any kind.

Whereas a device that would transparently stream to internet-based storage in the background over wifi might catch my interest...

Not many everyday users care about surround-sound. It's meaningless for personal listening (earbuds, cans), and only a tiny minority of living rooms are set up for 5.1 or whatever.

Me, I'm encoding everything as MP3 because I know it will play on everything for the forseeable future. I'm also using Flac 'cos I like lossless.

Support for MP3 and Flac is why I like Robert Fripp's music download store.

I should think the RIAA may be correct from a legal perspective, though I doubt it is cut-and-dried. There's a powerful "fair use" argument that says, if you buy a CD you can expect to be able to play it, and that "play" in today's world implies ripping to PC or MP3 player. I was interested in Robert Fripp's (he of King Crimson fame) DGM Live download store which offers uncompressed, unprotected downloads for purchase. When I blogged about this and questioned exactly what I was purchasing, I got an answer first from the DGM Live programmer and then (indirectly) from Fripp himself. He said, ""...in response to Tim's I sort-of assume that I can make reasonable personal use of the downloads the quick answer is yes. The longer answer is act rightly..." I very much like the DGM Live model and would like to see it widely adopted. My worries would be first, that its legal basis is all rather vague; second, that it would be abused too widely to make commercial sense outside the progressive-old-fart niche; and third, that the industry just won't be willing to risk it.