Apple is a great company, but they are not large enough to build their own search engine, advertising platform, and back end services to run them. Microsoft's search (bing), advertising platform, and back end services are all designed for partnering - its the core business model.
of course, Microsoft will compete with Apple in the phone space at some point in the future (we are clearly uncompetitive now...), but if Apple is going to be in bed with a competitor, its much better that it be Microsoft rather than google - better for both companies.
I mentioed this to Symbolset in a
post here.
Happy new year! Its been the Christmas and New years holiday. I've
been on vacation. So has almost anyone else I'd need to talk to about
this.
We're all back now, but we're all very busy getting going after the
Holidays.
Be patient:) Ill get to this. I just dont know when.
I think I can get back to you by mid February, but it may be March.
Oh, right - I have another question for you. How often do you update your
hosts file?
By the way - I met Symbolset in person recently. He's quite a pleasant
and reasonable fellow. You would probably like him. Let me
know if you are ever in the Seattle area - I'd be happy to buy you a beer. (or
whatever..)
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Were all back form
the Hollidays at work and Ive been a bit busy.
Got it - thats what I thought you meant by Telepresence. Yes, thats
going to be a killer feature in phones and other highly portable devices.
I actualy use it often for personal stuff via
Windows Live Messanger quite a bit. On a scale of 1 to 10,
its about a 6.5. Sometims its a bit glitchy and the
audio-video sync slips a bit. The WLM team is working on this
and they understand the major issues.
Microsoft Office Communicator R2 also supports telepresence. It works
very well, about a 7 or 8 on a 10 point scale. It uses a different
stack than WLM. This is used day to day inside MSFT.
Almost everyone has a decent web cam on the main desktop and/or in the laptop.
For example, we have a team in Beijing - we use this as our primary way to work
with them.
Ya - the only reason I need to use iTunes is to backup my phone.
I use Napster for most of my music purchass, also in MP3.
Yes, office for he MAC is still around. Its pretty much the only
viable office suite for the MAC. Apple doesnt sell one any more.
Its quite compatble. The MAC-BU (Macintosh Business Unit) removed VB from
Office 2008 for the MAC. This all had to do with the Macintoshs move from
PowerPC to the Intel Architecture. You can find all the gorey details
here. Here is another
related
article. It seems
like they are putting back in for the next revision.
Agreed on the Tablet front. Things are getting
interesting. Apple may be able to do what we havent - spark
the tablet market. Well see.
Ill stick with my prediction - if the new iSlate (or whatever it is they are
calling it) is Intel based and is essentilay a MAC, then it will be sucesfull.
If its ARM based, and thus really a big iPhone, then it will be a very cool, but
niche product. this has nothing to do with ARM, and everyitng with
what people can do with it.
Not much on the phone. Windows Mobile is not at all competitive and hasn't been for a long time.
In terms of usefefullness and coolness, the Blackberry, iPhone and Android past
it like it was standing still.
Im not sure what your point is about the netbook. We certainly
havent done anything to inhibit them. We like them quite a bit,
most of them ship with Windows. Linux is said to run well on them, but I
havent tried it myself. I do know that W7 runs great on them. My
friend just bought a Asus for his daughter. Single core Atom, 1GB memory,
Intel 945G graphics - runs W7 just fine. I ask his daughter how
often she plugs it in. She said "at night, like my phone".
Well there be a market for something less capable that doesnt run Windows?
Say something with 512MB of memory, a 16GB SSD and something like the
Intel GMA 500 Graphics? I dont know. We shall see....
Consumers want general purpose computing devices - even as phones.
Apple has proved that. Palm proved that with their original Pilot
device.
On the tablet space, Microsoft has been the leader there for a long, long
time. Have you tried W7 on a tablet PC? I have it on a
Toshiba M4 and its really good. Despite the crappy hardware (and
them M4 is crappy), it works extremely well. Systems like
the
Lenovo tablet are really, really good.
The Windows handwriting recognition is excellent. No funny
virtual keyboard needed. My daughter writes entire papers for school
on it with ease and accuracy
The Multi-touch in W7 is pretty good too - especially considering its first
generation.
Of course, there is TONs of hype about the new Apple iSlate.
Well see how that works. Is it just a big iPhone? Or will it
be a general purpose computing device? For example, will it run
Windows office for the MAC. Here is my prediction: If it does,
then it will be a hit, if not then it will be a niche produce. But
if you believe the speculation, then it will be a MAC, but look a lot like the
iPhone. The
puported specs are very PC like... Apparently well see on Tuesday.
One thing Apple does great is engender customer happiness and loyalty.
Heck, my direct family has five iPhones! We love them. (note,
iTunes surely truely sucks, the Zune software is light years better....)
Wikipeida says that through Q2 of 2009, Apple had sold a total of 21.17 million
iPhones. Thats pretty spiffy. To put things in perspective:
Apples iPhone
hhas topped Microsofts Windows Mobile in U.S. market share of smartphone
operating systems for the first time, putting it in the No. 2 spot, according to
a report from ComScore released Thursday. [
cnet
december 2009 ]
Its phenomenal that the iPhone went from zero to #2 in three years. But as
awesome as it is, it is still just now #2 with Blackberry still being #1 and
Windows Mobile a close #2. People tend to forget that its not the
dominant smart phone - its one of three.
Im not sure what you mean by diction, but I think you mean voice
recognition. That hasnt yet arrived as a technology.
But its starting to be pretty useful. Have you tried Bing on the
iPhone? Its better than Google on the iPhone and it has server based voice
recognition. I think its based on the Tellme technology we
acquired in 2007. Microsoft has long invested heavily in
speech
recognition research. The stuff in Vista was actually pretty good -
better than Dragon Naturally speaking. The W7 stuff is better still.
But! Its still not ready for prime time like on the Jetsons or Star Trek.
But its getting there: Of course we are running the lat
Ya, But if you built a lap top out of your old desktop parts (theoretically) It would be a lot heavier than your netbook because it would need a couple truck batteries to run as long as the netbook.
In essence, you get what you pay for. The small size and low cost get you a much less capeable system. But they are small, cheap and have pretty good batter life (depending on usage).
Yes, it was the very first '286 computer from Compaq. I could only get 128KB
and at the time. Of course you are correct - the computer was capable of
utilizing more than 128KB. I did add another 128KB couple of months later
- if memory serves, it was about $800 and it came on a card.
And since - as you point out - this is Slashdot, the better word is picayune rather than
pedantic:)
I agree. I don't think that 'phone like' devices will ever be much larger than the current iPhone. I sceptical that mechanicle designs that flip or slide open will change the upper limit you mention.
Stuff we cary around needs to be operable with one hand.
:) hahaha - thats pretty good... nope, my family likes them so they all got one this fall. I was tired of WinMO on my phone and everyone wanted an iPhone so we switched to AT&T. Love the phones, at AT&T.
It did for me... it gives me bunch of links that point to things Ballmer said about 3 screens. Feel free to use Google if you'd like. In my recent experience, Bing works as good as, or better than Google. I tried both here and while they were a bit different, they pointed to mostly the same things.
Note, I'm not just saying that because I'm a MSFT guy. MSFT search sucked for a long time. I use non MSFT stuff - I'm using FireFox right now and my family has five iPhones.
Perhaps - though we do see technology becoming cheaper and more powerful over
time. My first Intel 286 based PC was $2,500 and had a whopping 128KB of memory.
Today, my iPhone has orders of magnitude more processing power, memory,
storage and screen pixles. Its just a few hundred bucks.
I think we are heading to more powerful, small and cheaper devices. One of
the defining things will be physical screen size (not pixel resolution). I think
there will be four first order sizes:
The pocket/portable sizes. Things like phones that you can carry all the
time. There will be various sizes, but there is an upper limit -
perhaps something a little larger than todays iPhone.
A range of mobile sizes - these are (and will be) more laptop like
devices - clam shells and slates. These wont be pocket able, but they
will range in size from 10" screens on up to 14 or 15 inches.
Desktop and mobile devices with larger screens, 17" on up for mobile,
and 20 on up for desktops.
TVs
Some people collapse the 2nd and 3d categories into one and talk about
"Three screens". This is how
Ballmer currently sees things,
What a troll. Any point or argument based on assumptions is very weak. Here there are two: "..Let's assume this to be..." and "...assuming a conservative ratio of 10...".
What? The scheduler for Larabee doesnt run on
the host - it runs on the graphics chip (cite).
Note, this is different from scheduling that happens in the traditional
graphics driver (shader compiling etc). Even if it did run on the host,
it would have its own scheduler, just like DirectX10 adapters do today with WDDM
drivers, and just like OSX.
What is so special about Grand Central Dispatch?
It is a decent thread pool implementation. NT has had one of those for a LONG
time (cite).
The.NET base class library supports it directly (cite).
We have some really cool stuff in Parallel LINK (PLINK).
C# 4.0 (and.NET4.0) provide a set of very sophisticated mechanisms for data and
task level parallelism (cite,
cite,
cite)
.
Said another way, Windows has supported task level parallelism
for a long time and.NET makes it super-duper easy to use. (the Win32
stuff isn’t as clean as it could be..., but it works just fine and isn’t terribly
difficult to use).
Talk about dominance, Qualcoms chip sets and software are way, way more
proprietary and closed than anyting from MSFT. I have a friend who
is a mobile developer (doesnt work for MSFT) and it just drives him batty how
controlling and closed Qualcom is with their stuff.
Ah! I just figured out how to solve this... I'm setting my Slasdhot preferences to only send me mail for replies that score a 2 or better. So no more APK mail in my inbox, but I'll still get notifications of Symbolsets mail.
APK - I ask you, politely, not to nag me about this. While you are free to do so, posting a reply to almost all of my posts is tiresome. I'm asking you again, politely, please stop it.
Its anoyong, and fills my in box with spam. This behavior is casting you you in the role of a spammer in a very real way.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, Microsoft is never a pawn. We screw up from time to time, but the pawn? Nope, not in any scenario.
Yea! Wow, now that I think if it, you are right. its all SO easy! I guess that is what you are doing and you will soon be a billionaire.
Apple is a great company, but they are not large enough to build their own search engine, advertising platform, and back end services to run them. Microsoft's search (bing), advertising platform, and back end services are all designed for partnering - its the core business model.
of course, Microsoft will compete with Apple in the phone space at some point in the future (we are clearly uncompetitive now...), but if Apple is going to be in bed with a competitor, its much better that it be Microsoft rather than google - better for both companies. I mentioed this to Symbolset in a post here.
Deal!
Dearest Symbolset :) don't make stuff up. You just made that up.
We have many special friends :)
Hi APK :)
Happy new year! Its been the Christmas and New years holiday. I've been on vacation. So has almost anyone else I'd need to talk to about this.
We're all back now, but we're all very busy getting going after the Holidays.
Be patient :) Ill get to this. I just dont know when.
I think I can get back to you by mid February, but it may be March.
Oh, right - I have another question for you. How often do you update your hosts file?
By the way - I met Symbolset in person recently. He's quite a pleasant and reasonable fellow. You would probably like him. Let me know if you are ever in the Seattle area - I'd be happy to buy you a beer. (or whatever..)
Lastly is this really your photograph?
Thanks
-Foredecker
Hey Symbolset :)
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Were all back form the Hollidays at work and Ive been a bit busy.
Got it - thats what I thought you meant by Telepresence. Yes, thats going to be a killer feature in phones and other highly portable devices. I actualy use it often for personal stuff via Windows Live Messanger quite a bit. On a scale of 1 to 10, its about a 6.5. Sometims its a bit glitchy and the audio-video sync slips a bit. The WLM team is working on this and they understand the major issues.
Microsoft Office Communicator R2 also supports telepresence. It works very well, about a 7 or 8 on a 10 point scale. It uses a different stack than WLM. This is used day to day inside MSFT. Almost everyone has a decent web cam on the main desktop and/or in the laptop. For example, we have a team in Beijing - we use this as our primary way to work with them.
Ya - the only reason I need to use iTunes is to backup my phone. I use Napster for most of my music purchass, also in MP3.
Yes, office for he MAC is still around. Its pretty much the only viable office suite for the MAC. Apple doesnt sell one any more. Its quite compatble. The MAC-BU (Macintosh Business Unit) removed VB from Office 2008 for the MAC. This all had to do with the Macintoshs move from PowerPC to the Intel Architecture. You can find all the gorey details here. Here is another related article. It seems like they are putting back in for the next revision.
Agreed on the Tablet front. Things are getting interesting. Apple may be able to do what we havent - spark the tablet market. Well see.
Ill stick with my prediction - if the new iSlate (or whatever it is they are calling it) is Intel based and is essentilay a MAC, then it will be sucesfull. If its ARM based, and thus really a big iPhone, then it will be a very cool, but niche product. this has nothing to do with ARM, and everyitng with what people can do with it.
Best Regards
-Foredecker
All the MSDN library stuff is free and on-line. See this. Has been for years.
There is nothing like this for Apple, Linux, or any other OS - not even close.
Not much on the phone. Windows Mobile is not at all competitive and hasn't been for a long time. In terms of usefefullness and coolness, the Blackberry, iPhone and Android past it like it was standing still.
Im not sure what your point is about the netbook. We certainly havent done anything to inhibit them. We like them quite a bit, most of them ship with Windows. Linux is said to run well on them, but I havent tried it myself. I do know that W7 runs great on them. My friend just bought a Asus for his daughter. Single core Atom, 1GB memory, Intel 945G graphics - runs W7 just fine. I ask his daughter how often she plugs it in. She said "at night, like my phone".
Well there be a market for something less capable that doesnt run Windows? Say something with 512MB of memory, a 16GB SSD and something like the Intel GMA 500 Graphics? I dont know. We shall see.... Consumers want general purpose computing devices - even as phones. Apple has proved that. Palm proved that with their original Pilot device.
On the tablet space, Microsoft has been the leader there for a long, long time. Have you tried W7 on a tablet PC? I have it on a Toshiba M4 and its really good. Despite the crappy hardware (and them M4 is crappy), it works extremely well. Systems like the Lenovo tablet are really, really good.
The Windows handwriting recognition is excellent. No funny virtual keyboard needed. My daughter writes entire papers for school on it with ease and accuracy
The Multi-touch in W7 is pretty good too - especially considering its first generation.
Of course, there is TONs of hype about the new Apple iSlate. Well see how that works. Is it just a big iPhone? Or will it be a general purpose computing device? For example, will it run Windows office for the MAC. Here is my prediction: If it does, then it will be a hit, if not then it will be a niche produce. But if you believe the speculation, then it will be a MAC, but look a lot like the iPhone. The puported specs are very PC like... Apparently well see on Tuesday.
One thing Apple does great is engender customer happiness and loyalty. Heck, my direct family has five iPhones! We love them. (note, iTunes surely truely sucks, the Zune software is light years better....) Wikipeida says that through Q2 of 2009, Apple had sold a total of 21.17 million iPhones. Thats pretty spiffy. To put things in perspective:
Its phenomenal that the iPhone went from zero to #2 in three years. But as awesome as it is, it is still just now #2 with Blackberry still being #1 and Windows Mobile a close #2. People tend to forget that its not the dominant smart phone - its one of three.
Im not sure what you mean by diction, but I think you mean voice recognition. That hasnt yet arrived as a technology. But its starting to be pretty useful. Have you tried Bing on the iPhone? Its better than Google on the iPhone and it has server based voice recognition. I think its based on the Tellme technology we acquired in 2007. Microsoft has long invested heavily in speech recognition research. The stuff in Vista was actually pretty good - better than Dragon Naturally speaking. The W7 stuff is better still. But! Its still not ready for prime time like on the Jetsons or Star Trek.
But its getting there: Of course we are running the lat
Ya, But if you built a lap top out of your old desktop parts (theoretically) It would be a lot heavier than your netbook because it would need a couple truck batteries to run as long as the netbook.
In essence, you get what you pay for. The small size and low cost get you a much less capeable system. But they are small, cheap and have pretty good batter life (depending on usage).
How will you hold someting in your hand much larger than an iPhone? I use mine one handed all the time.
My point is that if it is much bigger than an iPhone then it is fundametnallly a different device.
Yes, it was the very first '286 computer from Compaq. I could only get 128KB and at the time. Of course you are correct - the computer was capable of utilizing more than 128KB. I did add another 128KB couple of months later - if memory serves, it was about $800 and it came on a card.
And since - as you point out - this is Slashdot, the better word is picayune rather than pedantic :)
I agree. I don't think that 'phone like' devices will ever be much larger than the current iPhone. I sceptical that mechanicle designs that flip or slide open will change the upper limit you mention. Stuff we cary around needs to be operable with one hand.
:) hahaha - thats pretty good... nope, my family likes them so they all got one this fall. I was tired of WinMO on my phone and everyone wanted an iPhone so we switched to AT&T. Love the phones, at AT&T.
Well crap - that was stupid. Sorry about that...
It did for me... it gives me bunch of links that point to things Ballmer said about 3 screens. Feel free to use Google if you'd like. In my recent experience, Bing works as good as, or better than Google. I tried both here and while they were a bit different, they pointed to mostly the same things. Note, I'm not just saying that because I'm a MSFT guy. MSFT search sucked for a long time. I use non MSFT stuff - I'm using FireFox right now and my family has five iPhones.
Perhaps - though we do see technology becoming cheaper and more powerful over time. My first Intel 286 based PC was $2,500 and had a whopping 128KB of memory.
Today, my iPhone has orders of magnitude more processing power, memory, storage and screen pixles. Its just a few hundred bucks.
I think we are heading to more powerful, small and cheaper devices. One of the defining things will be physical screen size (not pixel resolution). I think there will be four first order sizes:
Some people collapse the 2nd and 3d categories into one and talk about "Three screens". This is how Ballmer currently sees things,
What a troll. Any point or argument based on assumptions is very weak. Here there are two: "..Let's assume this to be ..." and "...assuming a conservative ratio of 10...".
Don't make stuff up.
-Foredecker
Did you make that up all by yourself?
What? The scheduler for Larabee doesnt run on the host - it runs on the graphics chip (cite). Note, this is different from scheduling that happens in the traditional graphics driver (shader compiling etc). Even if it did run on the host, it would have its own scheduler, just like DirectX10 adapters do today with WDDM drivers, and just like OSX.
What is so special about Grand Central Dispatch? It is a decent thread pool implementation. NT has had one of those for a LONG time (cite). The .NET base class library supports it directly (cite).
We have some really cool stuff in Parallel LINK (PLINK).
C# 4.0 (and .NET4.0) provide a set of very sophisticated mechanisms for data and
task level parallelism (cite,
cite,
cite)
.
Said another way, Windows has supported task level parallelism for a long time and .NET makes it super-duper easy to use. (the Win32
stuff isn’t as clean as it could be..., but it works just fine and isn’t terribly
difficult to use).
Regarding Snapdragon, the article you linked to on semiaccurate.com is the worst kind of yellow journalism. It is the inter-tubes after all - nobody realizes they are a dog... Windows Mobile has run on ARM forever. Its not exactly the dominant OS.
Talk about dominance, Qualcoms chip sets and software are way, way more proprietary and closed than anyting from MSFT. I have a friend who is a mobile developer (doesnt work for MSFT) and it just drives him batty how controlling and closed Qualcom is with their stuff.
-Foredecker
That was actually me, I had forgotten to log in. So yes 'we' is telling, it means MSFT.
-Foredecker
Ah! I just figured out how to solve this... I'm setting my Slasdhot preferences to only send me mail for replies that score a 2 or better. So no more APK mail in my inbox, but I'll still get notifications of Symbolsets mail.
Cool! lets see if it works...
Rants are fine :)
APK - I ask you, politely, not to nag me about this. While you are free to do so, posting a reply to almost all of my posts is tiresome. I'm asking you again, politely, please stop it.
Its anoyong, and fills my in box with spam. This behavior is casting you you in the role of a spammer in a very real way.
-Foredecker