Give up on the OS? RIM has the only real time kernel on the market. Everyone else is using a server kernel adjusted for the desktop and then readjusted for the phone. The OS is one of their few remaining strengths.
Android (Google) had very little to do with the LTE. Samsung, HTC, Motorola did just find with LTE. And yes as the RIM CEO indicates in the interview they thought it was going to come out more slowly, they were focused on smaller markets and missed the boat.
Yes they do. They've created a market which is change resistant the people who like change have moved to Apple or Android. But to maintain their hold on the consumer space they are going to have to upset the apple cart. There is a whole ecosystem that needs to change and Windows 8 is a crucial first step.
Exactly and Balmer agrees with your assessment. Microsoft won small business and consumer first. They spent the 90s working to capture enterprise and the first decade of 2000 working to capture more enterprise apps. They are now in danger of losing consumer and that's why the focus of Windows 8 is so heavily consumer.
t if they can't figure out which of those could lead to a marketable product... they might as well not be doing the research.
Most of the research isn't directed at new products but innovations for old ones. Mostly what Microsoft does is has a full hand of possible enhancements, so that if they needed to start improving their products rapidly they could. The thing is that mostly their so/so products are highly marketable, and drastic change would put that at risk. And they aren't wrong there BTW. For example the NET compiler is possibly the most sophisticated compiler on the market, vastly more complex and innovative than the Visual Studio 6 compiler was. But the shift from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic.NET lost them something like 80% of their marketshare.
and they sure as hell haven't been able to come up with any "disruptive" technologies that make people go "oooh, I gotta get me some of that".
Well XP, the merging of Windows ME compatibility with the Windows NT kernel. Dynamics a full fledged ERP/CRM that uses Office (which is known universally by accounting / finance people) as its interface. The mixture of mail, calendar, task management... in Outlook..NET which allowed for the abstraction of high level libraries with the performance of native code and a degree of language independence no one else matches. And if it works, Windows 8 the first interface to allow for seamless transition from keyboard/mouse to touch plus complete scalability The network abstraction layer in the Windows kernel that allows for all sorts of complex management while still permitting gigabit throughput with heavy CPU load.
That being said, I agree they have been far more conservative than I would have liked.
No I live in the world. What other people has substantial impact. It makes no difference if I like a technology if that opinion isn't shared by enough people to create an ecosystem of development. Microsoft and their choice of direction have tremendous impact on the technology field. My opinions don't.
I understand the feeling. I've been a Unix guy since 88. That being said though, Microsoft sets the tone. Microsoft more than anyone else helped companies slash IT budgets and stagnate after Y2K.
Microsoft for almost a decade has had a really spectacular (arguably the best) implementation of OCaml and a great functional language tied to.NET. Ballmer's feeling at the time was the wrong sorts of people loved it. In his mind people don't buy Microsoft for cutting edge or exciting they buy Microsoft for the ability to maintain a low TCO. Ballmer never wanted the project to go forward because it would create a situation where some programmers were using techniques which required base learning to understand.
Something like
let rec fibs = Seq.cache <| seq { yield! [1; 1]
for x, y in Seq.zip fibs <| Seq.skip 1 fibs -> x + y }
is simply not understandable to someone who's never seen functional syntax.
In the last year though Ballmer has shifted. Because since he sat on F# that niche got absorbed by Scala and runs on the JVM.
They already do that. Apple doesn't have anything like Dynamics or Universal Communicator. Apple doesn't offer infrastructure like a database (SQL Server) or an authentication encryption solution like Forefront. The problem Microsoft has is they are losing to Apple where Apple does have products not where they don't.
Don't forget Microsoft got where is today via. winning the small business market and then sneaking into to enterprise desktop to overturn the Mainframes and Minis. Microsoft understands fully well if they are knocked out mostly from consumer by 2020, by 2030 things could look very different in enterprise.
They've been innovating and not creating products. Microsoft has been very conservative. Go to http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/ and you'll be shocked how many cool ideas aren't seeing the light of day because they've been strategically focused and conservative. If Microsoft is willing to start taking risks again, and Windows 8 so far surely qualifies, I think it might get fun in tech again.
There are problems in 1st party apps too. For example one of the setting box in an IE 8 wizard doesn't scale properly. But if someone wanted to say that these are getting few enough to just consider them bugs rather than make broader claims I could live with that.
I think the thing you are missing is the connections with Windows based software. Literally millions of applications that do not yet have any sort of tablet interface. 5 more years and the important ones all will, but right now today I can't do enterprise applications on my tablet. For example right now EMC and TSG are developing initial Enterprise Content Management viewing solutions for tablets. Essentially all of the fortune 1000 have multiple ECMs and no one but Windows has interaction software for even a substantial fraction. The enterprise applications on Apple tablets are so far rather light.
As for sales, the advantage is integration with Windows sales tools: CRM / Sales management, existing presentations, ordering system.... As for Apple integrating with Windows, I don't see it and I own the iPad3.
And that's over and above the manageability arguments.
The issue isn't so much the UI change for the OS as it is the UI changes for applications. Applications if they are going to work seamlessly have to support:
a) Vector only graphics for functional graphics b) Touch screen & Keyboard/mouse
Which means that every application's UI needs to be redone. And this applies equally to Windows end user apps like Internet Explorer. Further the Windows 7 API's don't support the new types of variable interfaces. So rephrasing your question to, "why should moving every application to vector based with touch support require me to move away from a bitmapped based OS UI, with no touch support?" I think makes the answer obvious.
If this change is going to happen at all in a sane amount of time, Microsoft is going to have to push very hard. Hardware partners need to know with certainty that it makes sense to start bundling the expensive hardware required to make touch work. That Microsoft isn't going to allow them to be undercut by cheap laptops built the traditional way. Applications developers need to know with absolute certainty that Microsoft is going to make Windows 7 style interfaces unpleasant enough to use that their end users are going to welcome upgrades from mature / vetted interfaces that they are fully trained on, to substantially different interfaces which will require a learning / training.
People like you who hate the idea of a mixed interface are the rule not the exception. When this: 1) Drives up the cost of your next computer by several hundred dollars 2) Forces you to get expensive paid upgrades to all the applications you commonly use 3) Forces you to spend valuable time adjusting
you are going to like it even less. But... if Microsoft is right you will soon find these new applications will leave you so fully integrated that you feel you have no choice but to buy Windows phones, Windows tablets and Windows laptops for home to go with your workplace Windows machine.
Keeping the OS itself uniform between platforms is fine, but the UI should be more appropriate for the design of the machine you are using.
That's Apple's argument. You run different applications with a different UI and get data integration but not application integration. Microsoft is offering people a real alternative.
I understand your point. That was Apple's position. It is however not Microsoft's. Microsoft doesn't want there to be desktop PC or smartphones or tablets. They want to move towards a world where these devices blend into one another. All laptops and desktops have high quality touch enabled screens. Companies have docking stations for phones and tablets. The cloud is used to boost the computing and storage powers of phones. And applications are written to use the hardware they are on, and pass seamlessly from keyboard input, where they can expect heavy typing, to on screen keyboard, where they need to keep the typing light.
A world where as an end user your phone, computer, tablet, television, laptop and desktop all blend.
I don't know that there would be one. The last quarter century of Objective C development have all been driven by Cocoa at NeXT & Apple. Objective C never found a niche outside of Cocoa. Cocoa is, for all practical purposes, part of the language itself.
Balmer is leading the Windows 8 charge. Most likely the Office people, are going to one of two things:
a) Move office out of consumer and strictly into enterprise. That means much closer integration with SharePoint, Dynamics, Microsoft Universal Communicator.... The Home version becomes Office365 or some stripped down version which relies on 365 for the interconnections with Enterprise apps.
b) Port office to Metro.
The Office team will be busy for the next few years.
In the consumer space? Fine. Consumers bought Vista at a good clip, not a great clip but there was no massive drop off. The resistance was from enterprise and no expects enterprise to like Windows 8.
If customers, because of 20 years of practice want a start menu... why not just give it to them.
Because they need to demote Windows 7 /.NET & COM to essentially a hosted operating system to force change. They reason they need to force change is because they want to support much more diverse hardware like phones and tablets. And that means in particular moving to vector not bitmapped based interface standards which effects all windows applications.
Microsoft is fully aware the users don't want to change. The problem is that when they do want the change it will likely be far too late for Microsoft. That's the nature of disruptive technology. What users in effect want to do is slowly move away from Windows and towards phone/tablet based ARM systems. Microsoft is making a real play to stay in the consumer space and that means not letting consumers do a switch over.
The cheap knock-off Androids aren't going to be precise enough for drawing. The hardware would be sending a mess to the software. No one is making screens good enough. However http://www.tenonedesign.com/bluetiger makes a stylus that would work with a 7" tables. They are targeting iOS first but they originally intended to target the Playbook, which has a 7" tables. There are drawing apps for the playbook, sketchbook among them.
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Give up on the OS? RIM has the only real time kernel on the market. Everyone else is using a server kernel adjusted for the desktop and then readjusted for the phone. The OS is one of their few remaining strengths.
Android (Google) had very little to do with the LTE. Samsung, HTC, Motorola did just find with LTE. And yes as the RIM CEO indicates in the interview they thought it was going to come out more slowly, they were focused on smaller markets and missed the boat.
Certainly the future is cloud connected small devices. Even Microsoft sees that. They just want those devices to be running Microsoft software.
Look at their vision of the future to see how small and how cloud they want things to be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0
Yes they do. They've created a market which is change resistant the people who like change have moved to Apple or Android. But to maintain their hold on the consumer space they are going to have to upset the apple cart. There is a whole ecosystem that needs to change and Windows 8 is a crucial first step.
Exactly and Balmer agrees with your assessment. Microsoft won small business and consumer first. They spent the 90s working to capture enterprise and the first decade of 2000 working to capture more enterprise apps. They are now in danger of losing consumer and that's why the focus of Windows 8 is so heavily consumer.
t if they can't figure out which of those could lead to a marketable product ... they might as well not be doing the research.
Most of the research isn't directed at new products but innovations for old ones. Mostly what Microsoft does is has a full hand of possible enhancements, so that if they needed to start improving their products rapidly they could. The thing is that mostly their so/so products are highly marketable, and drastic change would put that at risk. And they aren't wrong there BTW. For example the NET compiler is possibly the most sophisticated compiler on the market, vastly more complex and innovative than the Visual Studio 6 compiler was. But the shift from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .NET lost them something like 80% of their marketshare.
and they sure as hell haven't been able to come up with any "disruptive" technologies that make people go "oooh, I gotta get me some of that".
Well XP, the merging of Windows ME compatibility with the Windows NT kernel. .NET which allowed for the abstraction of high level libraries with the performance of native code and a degree of language independence no one else matches.
Dynamics a full fledged ERP/CRM that uses Office (which is known universally by accounting / finance people) as its interface.
The mixture of mail, calendar, task management... in Outlook.
And if it works, Windows 8 the first interface to allow for seamless transition from keyboard/mouse to touch plus complete scalability
The network abstraction layer in the Windows kernel that allows for all sorts of complex management while still permitting gigabit throughput with heavy CPU load.
That being said, I agree they have been far more conservative than I would have liked.
No I live in the world. What other people has substantial impact. It makes no difference if I like a technology if that opinion isn't shared by enough people to create an ecosystem of development. Microsoft and their choice of direction have tremendous impact on the technology field. My opinions don't.
I understand the feeling. I've been a Unix guy since 88. That being said though, Microsoft sets the tone. Microsoft more than anyone else helped companies slash IT budgets and stagnate after Y2K.
Well a good example I know specifically was the X# (later F#). http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/fsharp/
Microsoft for almost a decade has had a really spectacular (arguably the best) implementation of OCaml and a great functional language tied to .NET. Ballmer's feeling at the time was the wrong sorts of people loved it. In his mind people don't buy Microsoft for cutting edge or exciting they buy Microsoft for the ability to maintain a low TCO. Ballmer never wanted the project to go forward because it would create a situation where some programmers were using techniques which required base learning to understand.
Something like
let rec fibs = Seq.cache <| seq { yield! [1; 1]
for x, y in Seq.zip fibs <| Seq.skip 1 fibs -> x + y }
is simply not understandable to someone who's never seen functional syntax.
In the last year though Ballmer has shifted. Because since he sat on F# that niche got absorbed by Scala and runs on the JVM.
They already do that. Apple doesn't have anything like Dynamics or Universal Communicator. Apple doesn't offer infrastructure like a database (SQL Server) or an authentication encryption solution like Forefront. The problem Microsoft has is they are losing to Apple where Apple does have products not where they don't.
Don't forget Microsoft got where is today via. winning the small business market and then sneaking into to enterprise desktop to overturn the Mainframes and Minis. Microsoft understands fully well if they are knocked out mostly from consumer by 2020, by 2030 things could look very different in enterprise.
They've been innovating and not creating products. Microsoft has been very conservative. Go to http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/ and you'll be shocked how many cool ideas aren't seeing the light of day because they've been strategically focused and conservative. If Microsoft is willing to start taking risks again, and Windows 8 so far surely qualifies, I think it might get fun in tech again.
There are problems in 1st party apps too. For example one of the setting box in an IE 8 wizard doesn't scale properly. But if someone wanted to say that these are getting few enough to just consider them bugs rather than make broader claims I could live with that.
Take for example the PCVantage screen shot ( http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/ASUS/ZenbookPrime/UX21A/pcmarkvantagescaling.jpg )
You can see the fonts are actually clipped unable to fit into the box at all.
Or on the retina one ( http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/2116/200pct4.png ). Look at the size of the text in the screen from adobe relative to the text in the address bar and the tab.
They had the technology. They haven't worked it out end to end on the ecosystem. Here are some very recent examples on the Asus zen: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5843/asus-zenbook-prime-ux21a-review/4
If things get even weirder like on the Macbook retina you can see the same sorts of problems with Windows 7 itself:
http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/2116#1
I think the thing you are missing is the connections with Windows based software. Literally millions of applications that do not yet have any sort of tablet interface. 5 more years and the important ones all will, but right now today I can't do enterprise applications on my tablet. For example right now EMC and TSG are developing initial Enterprise Content Management viewing solutions for tablets. Essentially all of the fortune 1000 have multiple ECMs and no one but Windows has interaction software for even a substantial fraction. The enterprise applications on Apple tablets are so far rather light.
As for sales, the advantage is integration with Windows sales tools: CRM / Sales management, existing presentations, ordering system.... As for Apple integrating with Windows, I don't see it and I own the iPad3.
And that's over and above the manageability arguments.
The issue isn't so much the UI change for the OS as it is the UI changes for applications. Applications if they are going to work seamlessly have to support:
a) Vector only graphics for functional graphics
b) Touch screen & Keyboard/mouse
Which means that every application's UI needs to be redone. And this applies equally to Windows end user apps like Internet Explorer. Further the Windows 7 API's don't support the new types of variable interfaces. So rephrasing your question to, "why should moving every application to vector based with touch support require me to move away from a bitmapped based OS UI, with no touch support?" I think makes the answer obvious.
If this change is going to happen at all in a sane amount of time, Microsoft is going to have to push very hard. Hardware partners need to know with certainty that it makes sense to start bundling the expensive hardware required to make touch work. That Microsoft isn't going to allow them to be undercut by cheap laptops built the traditional way. Applications developers need to know with absolute certainty that Microsoft is going to make Windows 7 style interfaces unpleasant enough to use that their end users are going to welcome upgrades from mature / vetted interfaces that they are fully trained on, to substantially different interfaces which will require a learning / training.
People like you who hate the idea of a mixed interface are the rule not the exception. When this:
1) Drives up the cost of your next computer by several hundred dollars
2) Forces you to get expensive paid upgrades to all the applications you commonly use
3) Forces you to spend valuable time adjusting
you are going to like it even less. But... if Microsoft is right you will soon find these new applications will leave you so fully integrated that you feel you have no choice but to buy Windows phones, Windows tablets and Windows laptops for home to go with your workplace Windows machine.
Keeping the OS itself uniform between platforms is fine, but the UI should be more appropriate for the design of the machine you are using.
That's Apple's argument. You run different applications with a different UI and get data integration but not application integration. Microsoft is offering people a real alternative.
I understand your point. That was Apple's position. It is however not Microsoft's. Microsoft doesn't want there to be desktop PC or smartphones or tablets. They want to move towards a world where these devices blend into one another. All laptops and desktops have high quality touch enabled screens. Companies have docking stations for phones and tablets. The cloud is used to boost the computing and storage powers of phones. And applications are written to use the hardware they are on, and pass seamlessly from keyboard input, where they can expect heavy typing, to on screen keyboard, where they need to keep the typing light.
A world where as an end user your phone, computer, tablet, television, laptop and desktop all blend.
I don't know that there would be one. The last quarter century of Objective C development have all been driven by Cocoa at NeXT & Apple. Objective C never found a niche outside of Cocoa. Cocoa is, for all practical purposes, part of the language itself.
There are a few areas where Microsoft tablets could be compelling.
1) Enterprise tablets. Both Google and Apple don't even really try for enterprise they are gaining traction by accident.
2) Medical tablets. Most of the people who know how to design electronics for medical are windows OEMs. The Android OEMs don't have a clue, yet.
3) Tablets for sales / presentation.
4) Tablets as a way to consumer enterprise content i.e. light editing of office documents, citrix....
5) Educational tablets for schools that are already Windows centric.
etc...
Balmer is leading the Windows 8 charge. Most likely the Office people, are going to one of two things:
a) Move office out of consumer and strictly into enterprise. That means much closer integration with SharePoint, Dynamics, Microsoft Universal Communicator.... The Home version becomes Office365 or some stripped down version which relies on 365 for the interconnections with Enterprise apps.
b) Port office to Metro.
The Office team will be busy for the next few years.
How well did that work out for vista?
In the consumer space? Fine. Consumers bought Vista at a good clip, not a great clip but there was no massive drop off. The resistance was from enterprise and no expects enterprise to like Windows 8.
If customers, because of 20 years of practice want a start menu... why not just give it to them.
Because they need to demote Windows 7 / .NET & COM to essentially a hosted operating system to force change. They reason they need to force change is because they want to support much more diverse hardware like phones and tablets. And that means in particular moving to vector not bitmapped based interface standards which effects all windows applications.
Microsoft is fully aware the users don't want to change. The problem is that when they do want the change it will likely be far too late for Microsoft. That's the nature of disruptive technology. What users in effect want to do is slowly move away from Windows and towards phone/tablet based ARM systems. Microsoft is making a real play to stay in the consumer space and that means not letting consumers do a switch over.
Thanks for the term. I looked it up. That makes sense. What is your opinion of GP's point?
The cheap knock-off Androids aren't going to be precise enough for drawing. The hardware would be sending a mess to the software. No one is making screens good enough. However http://www.tenonedesign.com/bluetiger makes a stylus that would work with a 7" tables. They are targeting iOS first but they originally intended to target the Playbook, which has a 7" tables. There are drawing apps for the playbook, sketchbook among them.
What did you think of the livescribe pen?