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The New 'One Microsoft' Is Finally Poised For the Future
redletterdave writes: "The stodgy old enterprise company whose former CEO once called open source Linux a 'cancer' is gone. So is its notorious tendency to keep developers and consumers within its walled gardens. The 'One Microsoft' goal that looked like more gaseous corporate rhetoric upon its debut last summer now is instead much closer to actual reality. No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows. As goes the Windows kernel, so goes the entire company. Microsoft finally appears to have aimed all its guns outside the company rather than at internal rivals. Now it needs to rebuild its empire upon this new reality."
They have a long way to go, one user interface for all idioms is kinda stupid..... that is why they are getting all the bad press with Windows 8.
when I see IE running on Linux ... or people actually WANTING to run IE on Linux...
the 8.1 update didn't fix all the issues with Metro, uh, Modern kicking your desktop and work to the curb when it feels like it. sucks. HULK HATE 8 !!!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
One interface, yes is probably not the greatest idea that they have ever had, but one code base... Actually a pretty good one. It allows for them to iterate more quickly, support a greater range of hardware, apps, and all around capabilities. At the same time it also allows your cell phone to be subject to the same ransomware as your desktop!
One thing this should help with is not making devs afraid to adopt a particular technology from MS, which is later trashed due to it having won a political, rather than technical, battle for promotion. For example, WCF was touted as the only way to do XML/HTTP services replacing the binary remoting protocol for several years, and then WebAPI replaced it. WCF devs are now irritated. Same with SilverLight, though WAY worse - "this is THE platform for Windows 8!", then, "Uh, not really.". I get the sense these teams have to compete for their platform to get noticed and marketed, instead of collaborate and take the advantages from two competing platforms.
"The stodgy old enterprise company whose former CEO once called open source Linux a 'cancer' is gone. So is its notorious tendency to keep developers and consumers within its walled gardens.
I doubt it.
"If you want to use a Microsoft app, you can find it on whatever platform or device you are using, not just on Windows. Running behind everything is Microsoft’s Azure cloud and services."
That sounds more like it, you can have any platform you want, as long as it's running on Microsoft. Seriously, who do they even think they are fooling? It' sounds like an employee pep meeting.
"Time will tell if Microsoft’s overtures to the open source community are a real and altruistic form of doing business"
They aren't altruistic. If you think they are, I am just flabbergasted.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I still dont' trust MS. Once they start getting back large market share the old anti competitive stifling old fart of a company will emerge from behind the mask again.
They need to just continue to wither away. The software industry has never been as vibrant or innovative as the last few years when MS was down.
I am so glad that I quit running windows. I converted to Linux when Windows 3.1 went to Windows 95 and have never regretted it.
Ein Windows Ein SDK Ein...
err sorry.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
"No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT"
Umm, is this honest? If I buy any tablet running Windows 8 now, I can now run any Windows application on it?
They're still evil.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Their motto of "Developers, Developers, Developers" also disappeared with Ballmer's exit. Everything is now getting locked down to the max in their attempt to be like Apple. What makes it worse is that they don't seem to have a direction as far as application development goes. They were strongly pushing portable .NET when there was no need for cross platform applications, but as soon as ARM gets into their mix of products, they drop that strategy and go with a native code strategy. It's all mixed up and extremely confusing. Their complete lack of direction is certainly not welcoming to developers trying to figure out how they should target the Windows platform, and that doesn't even take into account their confusion on user interfaces as well.
Microsoft's previous success was based on offering very cheap products that were friendly to developers. Yeah, their products were buggy and unfinished, but they were a bargain, and you could always "embrace and extend" them as you saw fit. Now, they are trying to market themselves as a premium luxury product like Apple (at least the consumer end) and walling the garden as much as possible. They're locking down the hardware, too, and alienating their hardware partners, who were the greatest drivers of their previous success. It's a big change. Can they do it? Hyundai managed to convert themselves from being a discount car manufacturer to a more upscale brand, but Hyundai didn't have the problem with their brand reputation that Microsoft has. Microsoft has made cheap crap for so long, I don't see how they manage to convince everyone that they are now an "upscale" high quality manufacturer of products and services.
The new captain has set a new course, one that veers away from the rocks. But this ship will take a long time and a lot of leeway to make that turn.
(Of course, I thought the old captain should have been 'relieved for cause' years ago, but since personally I'm neither a customer/user nor a direct shareholder in MSFT, it really wasn't my business :-)
Microsoft: Yesterday's Technology Next Week
They always reminded me of Yoyodyne Industries from Buckaroo Banzai, where the future begins tomorrow.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One Microsoft to rule them all, One Microsoft to find them,
One Microsoft to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
What on earth are you talking about? Windows 8 is all about forcing people to get software from Microsoft's store. That's exactly opposite of leaving behind walled gardens.
Nothing about Microsoft has changed except its PR spin. It remains the same morally bankrupt skofflaw monopolist it has always been. Puff piece.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
One code base is just the first step. The problem is how tightly the presentation layer is tied to the kernel. Microsoft would have been in a better position if they broke it out more like the linux pyramid with a common kernel at the base, plumbing in the middle and a display manager on top. Then, the presentation layer in that display manager could be swapped out as needed based on the form factor involved.
KDE did this with their netbook and desktop interfaces. Regardless of which one you use, it is still all KDE underneath. One Microsoft should be about have "one" Windows with interfaces tailored to specific use cases, not "one" interface for all use cases.
Windows operating system will be free for devices under 9 inches
EOM
love is just extroverted narcissism
I heard that when source code for older versions of windows were "leaked", it was quite pristine. Do you have links to this "disaster area"?
But GPL is indeed cancerous, intentionally so. Interacting with GPL code is a mine field if you don't want to GPL your code as well, there was no lie in that.
You make is sound like a bad thing.
Even for a windows vibrator?
I would have thought they'd want a kernel optimized for small devices driving the phones and a different one for desktops. Maybe have them implement the same API. But isn't the kernel something you'd want optimized for the device family?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
> No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows.
Maybe not right now, but soon. And that's a good thing how?
> As goes the Windows kernel, so goes the entire company.
Um, yep. And again, that's a good thing how?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't care about a limited 2 aps at once, or touchscreen. The one thing Windows needs is the ability to fearlessly run applications. Windows should have been virus proof back since 98 when the Internet was becoming a big thing. It isn't as hard as you'd think to make an OS virus proof if that is what you're designing for.
.exe from the Internet. We're even wary of .png and .mp3s because of buffer overflow exploits. This should have never been the case.
The moment your platform becomes a fearless platform to try new software, people will try software as a hobby. The way Windows is now, before aps are catching on, no one in their right mind is going to download random
Now aps won't catch on really fast because only Windows 8 does Aps. If Microsoft was smart, they would have allowed all versions of Windows back to XP use aps. That way more people would make aps. It would have caught on a lot faster. And since Microsoft probably has an "ap store", they'd have made more money even. The short term money isn't what wins you control over the Internet through which gives you the long term money gain. The key is you want more people to buy your OS over a MAC which word on the street says is harder to get viruses.
Aps could be a good thing for Microsoft's future, but they didn't do enough to have them take off with initial velocity. My guess is there's some self proclaimed genius at Microsoft,"Everyone's gonna love aps, they're going to buy new copies of windows just to get aps. If we make old versions of windows use aps, we'll just lose sales!"
God spoke to me
meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
This would happen to any group that gains market control.
IBM, Microsoft, Apple...
Not at all true. IBM and Apple both are strong contributors to many open source projects, so as they gain power lots of tooling and frameworks are produced that benefit everyone outside those companies.
Microsoft traditionally had contributed little to open source, with everything being worked on held internally. That's changing to some extent, but that was the reason why the industry suffered under Microsoft dominance, because so much work was locked to Microsoft and only usable by them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can "interact with" GPL code just fine, as long as your proprietary code isn't a derivative work of the GPL code in the copyright sense.
So you can exec() it, you can call it from the shell, you can send packets to it and receive responses, in some cases you can even have proprietary code as a module/plugin being called by the GPL'd code.
They still need fix the core problem.. the NT kernel. :)
The links have long disappeared due to DCMA takedowns.....
No they haven't. You just do not want slashdot readers to read them, because they do not say what you claim.
http://www.internetnews.com/de...
Quote from that article:
One technology enthusiast at Web site kuro5shin noted many of the hacks (additions) to the code base included some colorful comments and creative use of adjectives in noting programming changes.
In this case, the reviewer concluded the code was generally "excellent." But he also noted the many additions to the Windows code to be almost universally compatible with previous Windows versions. And third-party software has "clearly come at a cost, both in developer-sweat and the elegance (and hence stability and maintainability) of the code."
GP is correct, those who took a look at it indeed came away with the impression that it was quite pristine.
You, OTOH, are just lying.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
They DID have a touch screen that worked like a mouse and keyboard...
Windows Mobile. It was VERY hard to use on a phone without a stylus. Once I got out of HTC's skin, i couldn't use my finger to do anything because it was too difficult...
.NET was never cross platform. It was cross platform if you thought there was a difference between Windows XP and Windows Vista. NET was cross language platform. You could write in any language and it got complied down to byte code that was run on a .NET VM. But .NET only ran on Windows platforms.
Mono, the open source implementation of .NET, ran on other platforms which made .NET kind of crossplatform.
If you bought into .NET, you bought into Windows and you didn't need .NET for any other platform. Mono was a nice try, but without Microsoft's imprimatur, is was doomed. Had Microsoft embraced Mono or absorbed it, I think that Java would be dead and Microsoft would pretty much rule the developer world.
.NET was cross platform--at least cross hardware. Yes, it was Windows-only, but a .NET application could run on an ARM machine or any other hardware that might run windows, since .NET was hardware independent byte code. Yes, you were still stuck on some form of Windows OS to use it, but now that they are selling windows on both ARM and Intel, it would seem to behoove them to support a portable hardware application strategy, yet they have essentially abandoned it.
95% of the article has no substance and is clearly a bunch of marketspeak, though it's not clear who the marketspeak is targeted at. Users? They're not gonna care about any of it because it's gonna make sense or doesn't affect them. Shareholders? Maybe.
There's really only two bits that seem to mean anything:
No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows.
That's cool, and it actually means something. But do users care about this? Do investors care about this? How many Apple users know or care that Mac OS, iPhone, and Apple TV all share the same kernel? In general neither users nor investors know what a kernel is.
If you want to use a Microsoft app, you can find it on whatever platform or device you are using, not just on Windows.
That's means something too, but....are you freakin' kidding me? So if I'm making an Windows app, I'm required to design it to work well on a desktop, tablet, phone, and gaming console? What if it's an awesome app that sucks on a little phone screen? What if it's an awesome app that works well on a touchscreen but sucks with a mouse? What if it's awesome with a keyboard and mouse and sucks on a touchscreen? You get the idea...this is the whole thing they're trying to do with Windows 8 and surface and they're failing to hear users screaming at the top of their lungs DO NOT WANT.
the GPL is a choice.
the BSD license is also a choice. Apple's sure built an tidy empire on BSD's lack of restrictions..
Licenses are a choice.
People who cast a pall on the GPL in general seem never to mention that part.
Best tools, best language (C#), best jobs that pay well. Thanks MS!!!
"No longer are there different kernels for Windows 8, Windows Phone or Windows RT it's now all just One Windows. As goes the Windows kernel, so goes the entire company." Seriously what is he talking about? The kernels were already the same on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Xbox One, and Windows RT. This already has been happening for many years now. This is public knowledge that anyone could know if they just bothered to look. By the way, they announced at the //Build conference a few weeks ago that even the app model an WinRT APIs are going to be converged now between Windows, Phone, and Xbox so you can write one app for all of all platforms once.
Bravo! I can't wait for Windows RG!
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
You can't mean Linux+Wine
But if Metro apps work in Windows, no-one has any incentive to write them instead of real apps.
And how long is the 'Window 8 missing start menu' usability bug taking to fix? Note that it was reported long before Window 8 was actually released.
OK we are going to talk about Bob. Bob was Melinda French's idea. Melinda was the Marissa Mayer of her day. Hard body rock climber / magazine model / super genius rock star programmer / usability expert. The paradigm was a sort of 2D representation of the familiar world for the novice user - a VR not unlike Oculus Rift is today. The hardware and software weren't yet up to it. But Bill letting her reach for the stars and getting in a late night scrum with her now and then? Well I try not to hold it against a man that he did the thing I, in his place, would have done. For all the miserable inane products foisted on us by Microsoft, the myriad ways they have thwarted progress, subverted security and manipulated the dialog of computer science until it is a cartoon I hate them. But for me, Bob gets a pass. Bob was a long shot at a transformational paradigm that was just too early. And Mrs. Melinda Gates has still got it goin' on.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You do realize IBM has been a going concern since way before the term "Open Source" was ever uttered?
Yes of course. But IBM has been supporting open source fairly well since 1998 or so. They had a lot of open source Java stuff, including the not insignificant Eclipse...
Apple is one of the most closed computing ecosystems in existence for both hardware and software.
Webkit, BSD, Clang, GCC (before Clang), etc. etc. etc. Apple is one of the most OPEN ecosystems around as far as the OS goes, relying on many open standards to work and which they give a lot of code back for.
Like Goggle they open source some code but don't think for a second they are open sourcing anything might actually result in giving a competitor a chance to catch up.
Webkit and Clang alone prove you very, very wrong.
Their contributions to open source are used to generate good PR in the development world.
Their contributions are for the most selfish of reasons - because then other people and companies can build atop it, and Apple can bring those changes back into the fold. So has it been with Webkit, so has it been with Clang. You don't have to think that any company is a paragon of virtue to strongly support open source, there are fantastic financial and engineering resource reasons for doing so that have nothing to do with PR.
The very notion that Apple care about PR in the development world is frankly laughable. No-one caress about development PR except MAYBE for platforms struggling to get developers, which is not true of iOS or OSX.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Phone and desktop the same.
They got in (the recent) deep shit by making their PCs just like their tablets. Now they're literally the same OS. Great. Now I have to start selling Linux at my shop on 3 years and my 2 degrees are worthless. Fan-fucking-tastic.
But -as you said- it's Windows only.
And that is exactly the core of the problem.
http://hal2020.com/2014/03/03/...
Posting to undo accidental mod.
ASrock 970A Pro 3, AMD FX6300, 64 Gigs DDR3 (starting with 8). Dual-booting Mageia and CAELinux. With Windows 2000, Windows XP virtual machine images.
And why? Five reasons:
1. I'm cheap.
2. Windows 7 looks and behaves too much like a Macintosh. Windows 8 and 8.1 are bad copies of "phones." If I wanted a computer with training wheels, I'd buy a Macintosh. I've already got a phone. It's a Samsung Galaxy S2.
3. I still like playing around with the original NeverWinterNights.
4. The XP version of the hardware development software I use is much more stable than the Windows 7 nightmare.
5. I like menus that behave like menus - not that the "your mouse is a swiper" crap.
The "common kernel" idea is a good improvement, as it makes it possible for a Windows developer to do cross-platform development without having to relearn everything. Of course, Linux was there first. It's only took Microsoft 20 years to figure that one out?
My parents are unfortunately too young and already tainted by such infernal contraptions as the typewriter and the telephone dial (both with buttuns and actual dial)
Quite a pity. I blamte the industrial revolution for that, damn steam engines.
I myself, at my tender age of 50 still have problems trying to type on my iPad... so that's why I'm writing this on an antiquated Keyboard (Microsoct Classic, BTW) and on a normal desktop PC.
I am certalinly in favour of modernity, don't take me wrong: I have tried to talk my boss into acquiring Wacom tablets and touchscreens to replace our old fashoned keyboards, macs and sepcially our Linux servers... I agree, trying to type a lengty one liner in bash with several regexes and a few instances of variable substitution is difficult on a touchscreen or with the stylus, but for the sake of modernity, we must mater this art! No matter how many hours we waste and how angry our customers grow: Modernity is the way to go! Unfortunately our IT dept manager and our CEO don't share my points of view aducing such feeble arguments as "productivity" and "RSI".
Ahh, the tribulations of beeing so young.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
That's gross mate!
-- 29A the number of the Beast