1 billion? The most I ever heard they spent on marketing was 200 million USD and that resulted in alot of funky ads but also they were selling 1 million copies at retail( Nov 1994 - Feb 1995 ). They could only get a few OEM's in Germany to pre-install and Microsofts power came down on OS/2 in full force during 1993-1995.
I was at Comdex 1994 and OS/2 was not on those HP desktop PC's just like the court papers said. I don't really know if 1/2 of the PC's had OS/2 the night before but I wouldn't doubt it.
Granted, IBM didn't really have a GREAT marketing team working on OS/2 but tell me one company with a threat to Windows which had successful marketing strategies? There are none. IMHO.
MS write and have written software for a number of platforms. Office for Mac, MSIE for Solaris, CLR for FreeBSD to name but a few. Bill and Microsoft do what they do because they believe it will generate the most value for their shareholders - if the competitive landscape changes, so will they. Look how fast they changed their Internet strategy, for example.
And Microsoft did these things( Office for Mac, MS IE for Solaris, and CLR for FreeBSD, etc ) for shareholder profits? The numbers don't show that. IMO, MS IE for Solaris was a way to pay the company that did the port so there would be one company who could afford to license the Win32 APIs and kill all the others. Remember the Bristol court case? As far as MS Office for Mac goes, that was provided only because of the DOJ case AND more importantly to get Netscape and Java off of the Mac desktop.
Microsoft only makes shareholder profits by illegally leveraging it's OS monopoly. IMHO. Palm still has a huge marketshare but when they were at +80% marketshare did you ever see a MS product? You saw Microsoft do a microAccess for WinCE though and with less than 10% marketshare. IBM, Sybase, and others had microDatabases for PalmOS. Their OS monopoly makes them money. period.
Because the only way Microsoft will start selling software for Linux is over Bill Gates' cold, dead body.
This is a true statement IMO.
You got it. It's the OS that is key to Microsofts existance and that is why they will only port to another OS, which competes against MS Windows, when they are half the size they are today. IMO, they will continue to use every legal and illegal trick in the book to keep the Windows monopoly intact.
Windows is their pot of gold and I doubt they will give that up for a bag of silver. Think about it. Everything they make or even lose money on leverages the Windows OS. When Microsoft makes apps for Linux it will be a great day indeed but only because it will mean the end of the evil empire.;)
I seem to remember that MS Visual J++ was transfered to Rational. Was it transfered with a "hot potato" clause and Microsoft gets it back? Or can IBM pull the plug and bury it?
From what I've heard, this purchase of Rational by IBM can only be good news since the Rational products need some major tuning.
I also wonder if this doesn't have anything to do with Borland purchasing TogetherSoft( and getting TogetherJ )?
I could care less about seiko but always looking at everything like it's a nail because you have a hammer is just stupid. I'm referring to Microsoft BTW. People need to figure out what they need and find a solution instead of waiting around for someones PR department to decide it's time to promote some new re-invention.
The multiple responses were because they applied to different comments and I don't have the default view set to flat. sorry bout that.
If you NEED the processing power of a laptop it would be just dumb to think you could use a Palm PDA to do the same task. Your assumption that I think that... well, you're wrong.
The tablet PC's are a niche product and always will be. There will be people who can used them and because I say they are dumb and a MS marketing ploy to make it look like there is actually ANY innovation coming from Microsoft, doesn't mean some guy in some corner of the world can't find them useful. THEY ARE ALREADY BEING USED and MICROSOFT DIDN'T INVENT THEM.
Come on, the PalmOS is eating Microsofts lunch and they took the idea of a big PDA and said Microsoft invented it. BFD.
BTW, they PARENT poster said he thought combining text input with line drawings was really cool. I just wanted to get the point across that you don't need a big expensive tablet to do that. If you must run a full blown office suite for taking notes at a meeting, then you are stuck using a Windows PC of some format as long as MS Word/Office is your suite.
I've used a PDA and a portable keyboard for tons of work and then brought it into my desktop for formating later. It all fit in my pockets( well, kinda ).
Did you even see that I mentioned using the SmartPad for drawing input? And if your eyes are so bad you can't read text on a PalmOS screen then go ahead and do whatevery you want. Me, I don't carry a laptop around anymore because either a PalmOS device does what I need or my Sharp Zaurus does the rest. Everything else gets done on the desktop.
This kinda stuff fightens Microsoft because if the PDA's start doing too much, the Windows based desktop stops becoming the center of the world for most people. Go ahead and carry a MS TabletPC around, and use your MS Xbox, and your MS Windows XP desktop, your MS PocketPC. That's what Microsoft wants so you can start getting all your news and entertainment from MS XXXXX and MS YYYYYY.
oh, I guess I must have said that somewhere in some town there can't possibly be a use for a tablet PC.... That's not what I said or ment. The PARENT poster said he thought combining text with line drawings was fantastic and a good reason for the MS TablePC. I was just saying that there are other solutions to THAT problem and I took a jab at the fact that I THIHK that the MS TablePC is a niche product which Microsoft is peddling as it's own invention and another end all, be all solution to everybodies computing needs. It ain't. IMHO.
Sorry but I didn't mean that the Palm by itself could replace what this guy was doing. Just that they already have an app that does this and with alittle software, the SmartPad or something like it could be used to solve that the PARENT poster thought was useful about the MS TablePC.
That really would be foolish to think the Palms processor could do handle something which might require a 800MHz+ x86 CPU. Saving line drawings with some text doesn't take much.
Try a Seiko SmartPad and a PDA and save about $1000+ . What you are saying is that the MS TabletPC brings to the table is a place to draw and a piece of software that lets you combine text and drawings. Geesh, the Palm m100 lets you do this in it's memo app... The Seiko Smartpad gives you the same functionality but with a larger drawing area and higher resolution. Both are WAY cheaper then this "new" invention from Microsoft.
The MS TabletPC is obviously just another way to sell the MS Windows OS since it really doesn't solve any problems that were not already solved by cheaper tools. Maybe a Handera 330 with WiFi or Bluetooth( or the new Palm with Bluetooth ) could get the wireless connectivity solution in there too?
You've got to be kidding. Microsoft doesn't even use it's own class library for it's apps? Either they don't believe OOP is easier to develop and maintain, they use some internal framework, or they strictly use the Win32 API's directly. If it's Win32 API's then they probably throw tons of monkeys at it to keep it updated and would explain alot of the bugs in Windows in general.
They sure do have alot of the worlds money so they can throw a heck of a lot of monkeys at the problems.
So, if Microsoft itself does not eat it's dogfood , in MFC, why do other companies fall prey to the MFC tie-in? Will this.net stuff be the same thing? Makes sense. They'll be telling people to use the.net cross platform stuff on other systems but their clients and servers will be compiled directly to Win32 and then they'll hold up this performance flag. Kinda sheds some light on things doesn't it?
I would guess that things like MFC libraries are already loaded because they are used in the OS and in MS Office. Also, it's likely that other libraries get autoloaded at boot time when MS Office has been installed.
OpenOffice/StarOffice should have a boot time module loader IMHO. Let it get swapped out if the apps aren't used and memory gets tight but atleast make it an option.
I found it strange that StarOffice 5.2 starts quicker than OpenOffice 1.0.1 considering OpenOffice was supposed to trim down the apps by separating them. It's painfully slow on a dual 333 Celeron, 7200RPM IDE, 384MB RAM.
I really don't think so. This is in Europe anyway so what does the anti-trust case have to do with it?
Microsoft will tread lightly with regards to licensing of Windows but MS Office is open game because Microsoft was able to get the US States to drop their case against MS Office and concentrate only on the Windows OS.
When you see the US OEMs bundling StarOffice, OpenOffice, or Corel Office on business systems, THEN there's something going on at Microsoft.
well yes it was. What Sun/Sony is doing is different in that Sony is but one OEM and it's their system. Now Microsoft came in and bundled apps in the OS and told every OEM that if they don't keep the bundled apps they will lose their license to sell the MS Windows OS. There is a big difference here. Atleast if the OEMs can decide what their customers might want, users would have choices among OEMs for the hardware and software features they want prePackaged.
Without choice and competition, Microsoft has been able to dictate what is popular and what's not.
I'm sure having too many architectures had something to do with it but hardly as much as the OS itself. Maybe they are getting closer today but a year ago a friend told me the company he worked for purchased 5 iPaqs so they were sure to have one working when it was demo time. He said it was the OS which prompted this since any crash would erase all the drivers installed and they'd have to be reloaded. Microsoft dictating what the screen format was didn't help either.
The fact is that they've had over 5 years at this and still only have around 25% marketshare and lost loads of money still. If they tried to provide a product that filled the customers needs instead of building a product to protect Windows, they might have something. Instead, they keep hitting people over the head with their hammer saying, YOU WILL LIKE THIS, YOU WILL LIKE THIS.
Maybe the Linux crowd is better at porting than the Windows crowd. Look at the Sharp Zaurus. It's been out for less than 8 months and there are hundreds( and maybe into the thousands ) of apps that have been ported or created for it. In two years, it'll be interesting to see what Linux/Qtopia is doing since vendors are allowed to use it how they see fit to solve problems.
That's the difference between a closed system that's designed to protect a monopoly and an open one that's designed to solve problems.
IMHO, WinCE failed because Microsoft designed the screen layout wrong and the OS was/is unstable. Now they've changed the screen format but the OS is still Windows under the hood.
I see this being very much like MS-Bob. Nobody really backed it in the industry so Microsoft went out and found well-known faces to help promote it. Ask any of those people now about their thoughts on MS-Bob and you'll be lucky if you don't get smacked.
MS couldn't get any of the established phone companies to use their OS so they had to go out and find/pay someone to build a "Smart"phone. Too bad for that companies employees and shareholders. The reason I say this is because MS makes no money on anything which doesn't leverage their PC OS on the PC. They are all losers.
how many companies will lose millions over this? Remember when Microsoft released Windows CE 5 or 6 years ago? Three years later more than halve of the WinCE device manufacturers killed their products and it was due almost entirely to the OS. Today, WinCE only has about 25% marketshare and it looks like Microsoft is paying these vendors to stay in business.
If it's not a Wintel PC, only the foolish "partner" with Microsoft. Heck, even on Wintel, only the foolish "partner" with Microsoft.
5 years from now when fuelcells are powering handhelds and chips have more than twice the current density, MAYBE a phone can actually be a phone AND run MS Windows. In the mean time, get a PDA with Bluetooth and one of those Erickson phones with Bluetooth. A phone should be a phone and a PDA a PDA. IMHO.
yup, once apon a time, software development tools were successful when they made our jobs easier and producted better applications. The best product could win because the market made the choice. Those companies still were in business to make money and please shareholders but it was done by building the better mousetrap.
Today, that really only exists in the OSS arena because for the most part, it's not money that's driving the projects, it's mostly solutions to problems.
I agree 100% but notice how anything with reall OO abstraction gets opposition from Microsoft? How did they feel about CORBA? How did they feel about OpenDOC? How did/do they feel about JAVA? I thought I read recently that MS Visual C-- is only around 40% ANSII C++ complient.
Abstraction is what enables the computer hardware industry to keep building cheaper and more complicated designs year after year. When was the last time you saw a 555 or RS232 interface and thought about building it with transistors and R/C's? Abstraction makes development easier and will develop standards via market acceptance. That is, in a free market...
I think it all boils down to an industry standard component model. Not a desktop one by a company which is hell bent on protecting it's monopoly and not one by a company that is hell bent on eliminating that monopoly. One that works across systems.
IMO, the reason Linux and UNIX work so well is because they are built from smaller elements which can be used or removed depending on capabilities or bugs. For the software industry to grow that has to happen there. It was thought that "C" could do that and to some extent it has. C++ was another "enabler" and it got close til MS killed all the framework vendors with below cost MS-Windows-only tools and by faking out the UNIX people into porting to Win32 and then killing the Win32 on UNIX ports. CORBA and JAVA have done better but JAVA got thrashed on the desktop. Today there's still JAVA but Micrososft is pushing it's RPC over HTTP (Web Services) but it's not a distributed object model and like everything before, Microsoft will Windows-ize the tools or specs one way or another.
IMO, OpenDoc was the revolution waiting to happen and JAVA might have been able to replace it. That is until Microsoft pulled all stops to kill it on the desktop.
There is extreme opposition to following enginering practices in software from management. That has to change... Here's a little story:
I worked on a smaller project with only 3 people involved for a low level subsystem for the applications people to build on. There was one analyst, the project lead/coder and myself/coder. Estimated as a 3 month project we spent 2 months on requirements and design but our department head was going nuts because we hadn't started coding 1.5 months into the project. By the end of month 2 he was going balistic. It took us 3 weeks to code to the design. Since our design spec'ed out the api fully we were even able to hand off a couple of sections to 2 different developers who had a free day do to a meeting delay. Those coders didn't do any unit testing but still it only took 1 week for integration testing and release. The applications people were given the api's after month 2 but did nothing with it until we released the code at the end of month 3. You see, they "knew" that the api would change so they waited. A couple of weeks later I asked the project lead how the applications people where doing and what was going on since I'd not heard from them and she said they had 2 bugs which she fixed in a about an hour.
It was a fantastic little project and only worked because all 3 of us were willing to oppose managements insistance on us getting started on coding before the design was done. Larger projects would require coding and protottypes before a full design is complete but even then, most likely management will insist getting LOCs is more important than design documents. If management comes from the hardware side, he/she might agree more on the importance of requirements and design but from my experience, because he/she can't really physically see software, they have a difficult time scheduling it.
This is my limited experience working for companies with pure software solutions and companies working on in-house hardware/software solutions. Software can be engineered but too many consider it FM and to some extent, developers like this.
I do think that an industry standard component architecture would do tons to take the magic out of FM, it's not going to happen while Microsoft dominates the client.
In software we keep inventing the wheel over and over again. IMHO, it only serves one company that this keep going this way and that's Microsoft. And who sells the most development kits? Don't they also sell the most operating systems AND applications for THAT operating system?
Yea, software is magic, that's a good one. Go back and find every place in the last 15 years where there was a move to abstraction in software and you'll find Microsofts PR costs grew to meet the challenge. C++ frameworks, CORBA, OpenDOC, JAVA, etc
Software isn't magic but Microsoft is a great illusionist. IMHO.
Wasn't this guy asking why the software industry has not grown to a enable a system which uses components and off-the-shelf parts?
There are always going to be good and bad places to work. It's the industries direction of never being able to get a component architecture off the ground so others can build on. Please don't bring up DDE/COM/ActiveX/etc since it doesn't work in the enterprise where MS-Windows isn't EVERYWHERE.
I really thought we were getting there in the early 1990's with all the C++ frameworks around and CORBA. So what ever happened to DCOM? Is that now MS-Web Services...
We seem to be running in circles and every loop around seems to require a toll at the Redmond Toll Booth.
Just as the hardware industry has grown from abstracting commonly used circuits into chips, what occurs is the creation of building blocks on standard designs. In the software sector, that would equate to a component architecture which keeps building on what's been done in the past. The big problem here is that if ANYBODY starts trying to hide anything in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft eliminates them from the market. C++ frameworks were very popular in the early 90's but they all but disappeared as Microsoft provided their C-- (object like) way of doing things at a financial loss. Borland was a leader in the C++ dev tool market but their work hide MS Windows API's so much you could start building applications that recompiled on many different operating systems. MS gutted Borland of it's top level design engineers and paid Borland a tiny fee to settle out of court. CORBA was another framework for building applications across a network of different operating systems and languages. We got 3+ years of intense MS-DCOM press coverage and CORBA eventually faded. I worked on a project which was to use CORBA for a large military hospital system but 1 year into it we were told to stop and start using MS tools and languages with no explainations. Java did/does the same thing( OS/API abstraction ) and it too was fought by Microsoft with incredible gusto.
As long as Microsoft holds the major share of the desktop computing platform, they will not allow anybody else to decide what's to become a standard software component or API. And changing this every 2 years or so keeps the $$ flowing from your pockets into theirs.
Sure you can do some of this within your own organization but as an industry, the largest software company in the world opposes such thinking. And with $30 billion in cash, they have the power to change the minds and directions of whole countries. IMHO
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1 billion? The most I ever heard they spent on marketing was 200 million USD and that resulted in alot of funky ads but also they were selling 1 million copies at retail( Nov 1994 - Feb 1995 ). They could only get a few OEM's in Germany to pre-install and Microsofts power came down on OS/2 in full force during 1993-1995.
I was at Comdex 1994 and OS/2 was not on those HP desktop PC's just like the court papers said. I don't really know if 1/2 of the PC's had OS/2 the night before but I wouldn't doubt it.
Granted, IBM didn't really have a GREAT marketing team working on OS/2 but tell me one company with a threat to Windows which had successful marketing strategies? There are none. IMHO.
LoB
And Microsoft did these things( Office for Mac, MS IE for Solaris, and CLR for FreeBSD, etc ) for shareholder profits? The numbers don't show that. IMO, MS IE for Solaris was a way to pay the company that did the port so there would be one company who could afford to license the Win32 APIs and kill all the others. Remember the Bristol court case? As far as MS Office for Mac goes, that was provided only because of the DOJ case AND more importantly to get Netscape and Java off of the Mac desktop.
Microsoft only makes shareholder profits by illegally leveraging it's OS monopoly. IMHO. Palm still has a huge marketshare but when they were at +80% marketshare did you ever see a MS product? You saw Microsoft do a microAccess for WinCE though and with less than 10% marketshare. IBM, Sybase, and others had microDatabases for PalmOS. Their OS monopoly makes them money. period.
Because the only way Microsoft will start selling software for Linux is over Bill Gates' cold, dead body.
This is a true statement IMO.
LoB
You got it. It's the OS that is key to Microsofts existance and that is why they will only port to another OS, which competes against MS Windows, when they are half the size they are today. IMO, they will continue to use every legal and illegal trick in the book to keep the Windows monopoly intact.
;)
Windows is their pot of gold and I doubt they will give that up for a bag of silver. Think about it. Everything they make or even lose money on leverages the Windows OS. When Microsoft makes apps for Linux it will be a great day indeed but only because it will mean the end of the evil empire.
LoB
I seem to remember that MS Visual J++ was transfered to Rational. Was it transfered with a "hot potato" clause and Microsoft gets it back? Or can IBM pull the plug and bury it?
From what I've heard, this purchase of Rational by IBM can only be good news since the Rational products need some major tuning.
I also wonder if this doesn't have anything to do with Borland purchasing TogetherSoft( and getting TogetherJ )?
LoB
I could care less about seiko but always looking at everything like it's a nail because you have a hammer is just stupid. I'm referring to Microsoft BTW. People need to figure out what they need and find a solution instead of waiting around for someones PR department to decide it's time to promote some new re-invention.
The multiple responses were because they applied to different comments and I don't have the default view set to flat. sorry bout that.
LoB
If you NEED the processing power of a laptop it would be just dumb to think you could use a Palm PDA to do the same task. Your assumption that I think that... well, you're wrong.
The tablet PC's are a niche product and always will be. There will be people who can used them and because I say they are dumb and a MS marketing ploy to make it look like there is actually ANY innovation coming from Microsoft, doesn't mean some guy in some corner of the world can't find them useful. THEY ARE ALREADY BEING USED and MICROSOFT DIDN'T INVENT THEM.
Come on, the PalmOS is eating Microsofts lunch and they took the idea of a big PDA and said Microsoft invented it. BFD.
BTW, they PARENT poster said he thought combining text input with line drawings was really cool. I just wanted to get the point across that you don't need a big expensive tablet to do that. If you must run a full blown office suite for taking notes at a meeting, then you are stuck using a Windows PC of some format as long as MS Word/Office is your suite.
I've used a PDA and a portable keyboard for tons of work and then brought it into my desktop for formating later. It all fit in my pockets( well, kinda ).
Did you even see that I mentioned using the SmartPad for drawing input? And if your eyes are so bad you can't read text on a PalmOS screen then go ahead and do whatevery you want. Me, I don't carry a laptop around anymore because either a PalmOS device does what I need or my Sharp Zaurus does the rest. Everything else gets done on the desktop.
This kinda stuff fightens Microsoft because if the PDA's start doing too much, the Windows based desktop stops becoming the center of the world for most people. Go ahead and carry a MS TabletPC around, and use your MS Xbox, and your MS Windows XP desktop, your MS PocketPC. That's what Microsoft wants so you can start getting all your news and entertainment from MS XXXXX and MS YYYYYY.
LoB
oh, I guess I must have said that somewhere in some town there can't possibly be a use for a tablet PC.... That's not what I said or ment. The PARENT poster said he thought combining text with line drawings was fantastic and a good reason for the MS TablePC. I was just saying that there are other solutions to THAT problem and I took a jab at the fact that I THIHK that the MS TablePC is a niche product which Microsoft is peddling as it's own invention and another end all, be all solution to everybodies computing needs. It ain't. IMHO.
LoB
Sorry but I didn't mean that the Palm by itself could replace what this guy was doing. Just that they already have an app that does this and with alittle software, the SmartPad or something like it could be used to solve that the PARENT poster thought was useful about the MS TablePC.
That really would be foolish to think the Palms processor could do handle something which might require a 800MHz+ x86 CPU. Saving line drawings with some text doesn't take much.
LoB
LoB
LoB
Try a Seiko SmartPad and a PDA and save about $1000+ . What you are saying is that the MS TabletPC brings to the table is a place to draw and a piece of software that lets you combine text and drawings. Geesh, the Palm m100 lets you do this in it's memo app... The Seiko Smartpad gives you the same functionality but with a larger drawing area and higher resolution. Both are WAY cheaper then this "new" invention from Microsoft.
The MS TabletPC is obviously just another way to sell the MS Windows OS since it really doesn't solve any problems that were not already solved by cheaper tools. Maybe a Handera 330 with WiFi or Bluetooth( or the new Palm with Bluetooth ) could get the wireless connectivity solution in there too?
LoB
LoB
"MS Office doesn't use MFC"
.net stuff be the same thing? Makes sense. They'll be telling people to use the .net cross platform stuff on other systems but their clients and servers will be compiled directly to Win32 and then they'll hold up this performance flag. Kinda sheds some light on things doesn't it?
You've got to be kidding. Microsoft doesn't even use it's own class library for it's apps? Either they don't believe OOP is easier to develop and maintain, they use some internal framework, or they strictly use the Win32 API's directly. If it's Win32 API's then they probably throw tons of monkeys at it to keep it updated and would explain alot of the bugs in Windows in general.
They sure do have alot of the worlds money so they can throw a heck of a lot of monkeys at the problems.
So, if Microsoft itself does not eat it's dogfood , in MFC, why do other companies fall prey to the MFC tie-in? Will this
LoB
I would guess that things like MFC libraries are already loaded because they are used in the OS and in MS Office. Also, it's likely that other libraries get autoloaded at boot time when MS Office has been installed.
OpenOffice/StarOffice should have a boot time module loader IMHO. Let it get swapped out if the apps aren't used and memory gets tight but atleast make it an option.
I found it strange that StarOffice 5.2 starts quicker than OpenOffice 1.0.1 considering OpenOffice was supposed to trim down the apps by separating them. It's painfully slow on a dual 333 Celeron, 7200RPM IDE, 384MB RAM.
LoB
I really don't think so. This is in Europe anyway so what does the anti-trust case have to do with it?
Microsoft will tread lightly with regards to licensing of Windows but MS Office is open game because Microsoft was able to get the US States to drop their case against MS Office and concentrate only on the Windows OS.
When you see the US OEMs bundling StarOffice, OpenOffice, or Corel Office on business systems, THEN there's something going on at Microsoft.
LoB
well yes it was. What Sun/Sony is doing is different in that Sony is but one OEM and it's their system. Now Microsoft came in and bundled apps in the OS and told every OEM that if they don't keep the bundled apps they will lose their license to sell the MS Windows OS. There is a big difference here. Atleast if the OEMs can decide what their customers might want, users would have choices among OEMs for the hardware and software features they want prePackaged .
Without choice and competition, Microsoft has been able to dictate what is popular and what's not.
LoB
I'm sure having too many architectures had something to do with it but hardly as much as the OS itself. Maybe they are getting closer today but a year ago a friend told me the company he worked for purchased 5 iPaqs so they were sure to have one working when it was demo time. He said it was the OS which prompted this since any crash would erase all the drivers installed and they'd have to be reloaded. Microsoft dictating what the screen format was didn't help either.
The fact is that they've had over 5 years at this and still only have around 25% marketshare and lost loads of money still. If they tried to provide a product that filled the customers needs instead of building a product to protect Windows, they might have something. Instead, they keep hitting people over the head with their hammer saying, YOU WILL LIKE THIS, YOU WILL LIKE THIS.
Maybe the Linux crowd is better at porting than the Windows crowd. Look at the Sharp Zaurus. It's been out for less than 8 months and there are hundreds( and maybe into the thousands ) of apps that have been ported or created for it. In two years, it'll be interesting to see what Linux/Qtopia is doing since vendors are allowed to use it how they see fit to solve problems.
That's the difference between a closed system that's designed to protect a monopoly and an open one that's designed to solve problems.
IMHO, WinCE failed because Microsoft designed the screen layout wrong and the OS was/is unstable. Now they've changed the screen format but the OS is still Windows under the hood.
LoB
I see this being very much like MS-Bob. Nobody really backed it in the industry so Microsoft went out and found well-known faces to help promote it. Ask any of those people now about their thoughts on MS-Bob and you'll be lucky if you don't get smacked.
MS couldn't get any of the established phone companies to use their OS so they had to go out and find/pay someone to build a "Smart"phone. Too bad for that companies employees and shareholders. The reason I say this is because MS makes no money on anything which doesn't leverage their PC OS on the PC. They are all losers.
LoB
how many companies will lose millions over this? Remember when Microsoft released Windows CE 5 or 6 years ago? Three years later more than halve of the WinCE device manufacturers killed their products and it was due almost entirely to the OS. Today, WinCE only has about 25% marketshare and it looks like Microsoft is paying these vendors to stay in business.
If it's not a Wintel PC, only the foolish "partner" with Microsoft. Heck, even on Wintel, only the foolish "partner" with Microsoft.
5 years from now when fuelcells are powering handhelds and chips have more than twice the current density, MAYBE a phone can actually be a phone AND run MS Windows. In the mean time, get a PDA with Bluetooth and one of those Erickson phones with Bluetooth. A phone should be a phone and a PDA a PDA. IMHO.
LoB
yup, once apon a time, software development tools were successful when they made our jobs easier and producted better applications. The best product could win because the market made the choice. Those companies still were in business to make money and please shareholders but it was done by building the better mousetrap.
Today, that really only exists in the OSS arena because for the most part, it's not money that's driving the projects, it's mostly solutions to problems.
LoB
I agree 100% but notice how anything with reall OO abstraction gets opposition from Microsoft? How did they feel about CORBA? How did they feel about OpenDOC? How did/do they feel about JAVA? I thought I read recently that MS Visual C-- is only around 40% ANSII C++ complient.
Abstraction is what enables the computer hardware industry to keep building cheaper and more complicated designs year after year. When was the last time you saw a 555 or RS232 interface and thought about building it with transistors and R/C's? Abstraction makes development easier and will develop standards via market acceptance. That is, in a free market...
LoB
I think it all boils down to an industry standard component model. Not a desktop one by a company which is hell bent on protecting it's monopoly and not one by a company that is hell bent on eliminating that monopoly. One that works across systems.
IMO, the reason Linux and UNIX work so well is because they are built from smaller elements which can be used or removed depending on capabilities or bugs. For the software industry to grow that has to happen there. It was thought that "C" could do that and to some extent it has. C++ was another "enabler" and it got close til MS killed all the framework vendors with below cost MS-Windows-only tools and by faking out the UNIX people into porting to Win32 and then killing the Win32 on UNIX ports. CORBA and JAVA have done better but JAVA got thrashed on the desktop. Today there's still JAVA but Micrososft is pushing it's RPC over HTTP (Web Services) but it's not a distributed object model and like everything before, Microsoft will Windows-ize the tools or specs one way or another.
IMO, OpenDoc was the revolution waiting to happen and JAVA might have been able to replace it. That is until Microsoft pulled all stops to kill it on the desktop.
LoB
There is extreme opposition to following enginering practices in software from management. That has to change... Here's a little story:
I worked on a smaller project with only 3 people involved for a low level subsystem for the applications people to build on. There was one analyst, the project lead/coder and myself/coder. Estimated as a 3 month project we spent 2 months on requirements and design but our department head was going nuts because we hadn't started coding 1.5 months into the project. By the end of month 2 he was going balistic. It took us 3 weeks to code to the design. Since our design spec'ed out the api fully we were even able to hand off a couple of sections to 2 different developers who had a free day do to a meeting delay. Those coders didn't do any unit testing but still it only took 1 week for integration testing and release. The applications people were given the api's after month 2 but did nothing with it until we released the code at the end of month 3. You see, they "knew" that the api would change so they waited. A couple of weeks later I asked the project lead how the applications people where doing and what was going on since I'd not heard from them and she said they had 2 bugs which she fixed in a about an hour.
It was a fantastic little project and only worked because all 3 of us were willing to oppose managements insistance on us getting started on coding before the design was done. Larger projects would require coding and protottypes before a full design is complete but even then, most likely management will insist getting LOCs is more important than design documents. If management comes from the hardware side, he/she might agree more on the importance of requirements and design but from my experience, because he/she can't really physically see software, they have a difficult time scheduling it.
This is my limited experience working for companies with pure software solutions and companies working on in-house hardware/software solutions. Software can be engineered but too many consider it FM and to some extent, developers like this.
I do think that an industry standard component architecture would do tons to take the magic out of FM, it's not going to happen while Microsoft dominates the client.
LoB
and that couldn't be said about circuit design?
In software we keep inventing the wheel over and over again. IMHO, it only serves one company that this keep going this way and that's Microsoft. And who sells the most development kits? Don't they also sell the most operating systems AND applications for THAT operating system?
Yea, software is magic, that's a good one. Go back and find every place in the last 15 years where there was a move to abstraction in software and you'll find Microsofts PR costs grew to meet the challenge. C++ frameworks, CORBA, OpenDOC, JAVA, etc
Software isn't magic but Microsoft is a great illusionist. IMHO.
LoB
Wasn't this guy asking why the software industry has not grown to a enable a system which uses components and off-the-shelf parts?
There are always going to be good and bad places to work. It's the industries direction of never being able to get a component architecture off the ground so others can build on. Please don't bring up DDE/COM/ActiveX/etc since it doesn't work in the enterprise where MS-Windows isn't EVERYWHERE.
I really thought we were getting there in the early 1990's with all the C++ frameworks around and CORBA. So what ever happened to DCOM? Is that now MS-Web Services...
We seem to be running in circles and every loop around seems to require a toll at the Redmond Toll Booth.
LoB
Just as the hardware industry has grown from abstracting commonly used circuits into chips, what occurs is the creation of building blocks on standard designs. In the software sector, that would equate to a component architecture which keeps building on what's been done in the past. The big problem here is that if ANYBODY starts trying to hide anything in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft eliminates them from the market. C++ frameworks were very popular in the early 90's but they all but disappeared as Microsoft provided their C-- (object like) way of doing things at a financial loss. Borland was a leader in the C++ dev tool market but their work hide MS Windows API's so much you could start building applications that recompiled on many different operating systems. MS gutted Borland of it's top level design engineers and paid Borland a tiny fee to settle out of court. CORBA was another framework for building applications across a network of different operating systems and languages. We got 3+ years of intense MS-DCOM press coverage and CORBA eventually faded. I worked on a project which was to use CORBA for a large military hospital system but 1 year into it we were told to stop and start using MS tools and languages with no explainations. Java did/does the same thing( OS/API abstraction ) and it too was fought by Microsoft with incredible gusto.
As long as Microsoft holds the major share of the desktop computing platform, they will not allow anybody else to decide what's to become a standard software component or API. And changing this every 2 years or so keeps the $$ flowing from your pockets into theirs.
Sure you can do some of this within your own organization but as an industry, the largest software company in the world opposes such thinking. And with $30 billion in cash, they have the power to change the minds and directions of whole countries.
IMHO
LoB