10 Biggest Microsoft Surprises of 2005

IZ Reloaded writes "The Microsoft Watch has a top 10 list of the biggest Microsoft surprises of the year. Among the surprises are Internet Explorer rising from the dead, Microsoft gets RSS and Microsoft Office team blogging. From Microsoft Watch: MS 'gets' RSS: While some folks were less than overjoyed that Microsoft was tinkering with the "little orange RSS box," Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."

Comments

I dont 'get' RSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or do other people not get RSS?

It seems to me to be very limited, only useful to be able to quickly read headlines from peoples blogs.

Sorry to piss on your blogfire, but most people have better things to do that keep up to date with blogging.

I realise its Web 2.0 and all that, but is RSS really important enough to put into the OS?!

Re:I dont 'get' RSS

[vadim_t]

It has many uses. Just not everybody needs it.

For example, I have a Subversion post-commit script that takes the changelog, formats it, and posts it on a blog on tikiwiki. This serves as a nice permanent record, and anybody who just wants to keep track of my progress can subscribe to the RSS feed.

Another nice use is security updates. Maybe I don't want to open the page for every distribution I use every day. It's a lot easier to see that something new appeared in the security folder.

But yeah, if your daily usage consists in going to slashdot every day, RSS makes little sense. It's most useful when you do not want to do that.

Re:I dont 'get' RSS

[Achoi77]

The big benefit for me is speed. I can get lots of different news articles and titles consolidated undeer one app, which I can scan over real quickly and cherry pick the ones I would be most interested in. It's amazing how up to date I can be on the topics that pique my interest, and at the same time by scanning thru the headlines real quick have some cursory knowledge on information that may not normally interest me initially, but may develop into something later. The downside to this is that you have to be regularly checking your aggregator, otherwise if you take a week off it, you'll be overloaded with like 600 articles to read when you check it again. Incidentally it also slowed down my constant refreshing of /., causing me to participate less (prolly also got something to do with the way /. does it's RSS feeds - pretty slow). Today I've decided to do something different and just read /.

Yeah yeah, I'm an RSS speed junkie. But i like my news, and I like it fast. Within 5 minutes of hitting the web, I'll know about it. I also listen to podcasts which I get fed, but I only do that at work. I do miss the discussions on /. when I just have my RSS feeds, but on the flipside, I can get a lot more work done! :-)

Number 7 is not really a suprise now is it.

[SmallFurryCreature]

7. Redmond still can't find a way to shake its shoddy security image: In 2005, Microsoft spent lots of time, energy and Webcasts detailing its plans to improve security. But at the end of the year, as security expert Bruce Schneier put it so succinctly: Internet Explorer sucks. Here's hoping Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.0 improve things a bit.

Who here honestly believed that MS would really put some effort in cleaning up the crap that is IE? Oh sure, they might make some fixes to the next version but what do you expect? The people at MS are not insane or stupid, they do not produce shoddy code on purpose. It is just the MS always adds so many features to its product that on release it turns out there are a whole lot of open holes because of all the features. The best way to make IE more secure is to rip out activex. Not going to happen.

You can in theory do the best more secure development in the world and if you then have some idiot decide that it would be really cool if unknown code could have free access to the system (html/javascript email) none of it matters. It would be like trying to design a safe and have markelting insist on a nice clear glass panel in the outside wall so people can see how save their money is.

Fanboydom Shilling

[eyepeepackets]

Hard to tell from the hyper "This is all _so_ cool" attitude of the writer, but
every indicator I've seen in the past year says that more and more Americans
(not sure about the Europeans) have wised up to the MS process of whipping up
some alpha-level code, throwing it on the market all the while marketing said
code as the greatest thing since sex. The experience of the consumer after she
gets her pretty new Dell does not match the picture presented by Microsoft and
Dell as to what the experience will be.

I talk with a lot of folks from grandmas to IT people and the one constant across
the board is that people are sick of Microsoft's junk because of unreliability
problems, whether due to security or stability or scalibility, etc, etc. ad
infinitum, ad nauseaum.

The only reason Microsoft has managed to get away with pushing their junk on the
market is because most of these folks were coming into the PC realm for the
first time and didn't know any better. Well, they sure as hell know better now:
They've been burned repeatedly by lousy MS junk since the middle of the
1980's and they are actively looking for alternatives.

Look for Apple and F/OSS to have a banner year.

Cheers.

Re:Fanboydom Shilling

[eyepeepackets]

"That is so 2000 of you. Everything you say used to be true..."

Well, let's see what the coming year has to offer and revisit the conversation
this time next year? Since you suggest that I am out-of-date and thus
out-of-touch with the sentiment of the PC using public, let's see what the coming
year's results say is the reality of the matter.

Microsoft is indeed offering up an alternative to their own mess this coming
year, perhaps people will adopt the new/old Vista/XP in mega-droves of crazed PC
users looking for solutions to the Microsoft mess in which they currently
subsist. After all, everyone knows nothing works like the hair of the dog that
bit you, eh?

I would suggest you be careful extropolating from your own experience as
concerns the general public's experiences. I'm not just whistling Daisy when I
say I've spent the last year talking with a broad spectrum of computer users,
and I'm not "extending the truth" when I say folks are sick of their PCs
continously singing Daisy when using Microsoft's products.

Let's call it the Year of the Measure. Who knows, perhaps Microsoft can buy a solution some where, some way, some how. Perhaps.

Happy New Year

WGA plug-in for Mozilla

[anarxia]

The Windows Genuine Advantage validation plug-in was the biggest surprice for me. In the download page they even have step-by-step instructions with photos on how to install it on Firefox.

MS gets RSS

[Excelsior]

MS 'gets' RSS: While some folks were less than overjoyed that Microsoft was tinkering with the "little orange RSS box," Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."

Microsoft is adding RSS features years after they have become standard in other browsers and email clients. Microsoft is blogging years after others started. MS adds RSS feeds to its websites years after others. And this means MS gets RSS?

MS was slow to RSS just like they were slow to understand that the Internet was important. But they will probably dominate RSS just like the Internet.