Tag: microsoft

Ford vs. Microsoft

Post ImageFellow blogger Larry Borsato and I have a friendly little discussion taking place in which we’re comparing Ford and Microsoft. It started with Larry’s comments on Microsoft’s $100 million campaign promoting the new version of Office and the comment I made on that post. Larry then posted a pretty indepth comparison of Ford and Microsoft:

He has an excellent point, and though it is difficult to compare the tangible Ford truck with the less tangible software, I feel it necessary to try.

And he does a pretty good job too, but there’s a few things I felt it was important to point out. Let me start with some of the things I disagree with.

Not Quite!

First of all, I guess it is technically correct that software doesn’t “wear out” in the same way a mechanical product does. On the other hand, the “platform” that your Ford truck requires to work will change very little in say, 20 years. What do I mean by that? Well your Ford truck requires roads and highways to operate on. Your operating system and by extension the software applications that run on top of it require a computer with certain hardware components. In 20 years, roads won’t change much, but your computer hardware sure will.

I’m not sure this is really a software issue:

So let’s use my laptop that died the other day as a basis for comparison. So basically my Ford truck has just stopped working, and a bunch of indicator lights are lit. The laptop indicated that the system file was corrupt; that I should use the Windows XP CD to restore it. Ok, but I didn’t get one with my PC, so now I had to buy a copy for $129.

Why didn’t you get a restore CD? Almost all major computer manufacturers provide a restore CD with their computers, so in the worst case, you can restore your machine to the state it was when you purchased it. And they work quite well too! I just restored a Sony laptop for a client last week, and it was extremely simple. Not having a restore CD isn’t so much a Microsoft issue as it is a vendor issue. It’s kind of like buying your Ford from a dealer that neglected to give you a spare tire (or donut spare). You can still use the truck, but if something goes wrong, you’ll likely need that spare tire.

I think patches are kind of like oil changes. You need an oil change once in a while to keep your vehicle running smoothly, just like you need a patch once in a while to keep your software running smoothly. I realize that an oil change doesn’t “fix” anything whereas a patch is usually repairing some problem, but intuitively they are the same – something that needs to be done once in a while. And in XP, Microsoft has made patches pretty painless with Automatic Updates – you can’t have your oil changed automatically.

The other argument is that a Ford truck never requires something like Service Pack 2, where the guts are changed and improved. While that’s true, think of it this way. If Ford decides to change the interface of the truck to make something easier, you have to buy a new truck to get it. With SP2, Microsoft made many things much simpler, like wireless connections for example, and they made it available for free (unlike Apple). That’s a feature thing though, what about problems? Well vehicles are not immune, and there have been many recalls over the years. Faulty tires, driving columns that would catch fire, etc. How to fix them? You’ve got to take your vehicle in to have it serviced. With your computer, you’ve just got to download and install a service pack. It’s fairly unobtrusive by comparison.

Room For Improvement

Now there are many areas that software, and in particular Windows, can be improved. One such area is in backups – they are far too hard. Restoring your computer from a CD may allow it to become operational again, but all of your data is lost. This is a problem, and it needs to be easier! Unfortunately, part of the problem lies with hard drives, which are not the most reliable pieces of machinery ever invented. Software plays an important role though too.

Most of all, a year after I buy an F-150, Ford may try to entice me with a new Ford based on more power, more features, or new body styling, just like Microsoft. But they won’t tell me how stupid I am to have bought last year’s model; that I’m a dinosaur because I’m not buying the newer model. In fact, Ford is proud of the fact that their cars are durable.

Good point. Microsoft doesn’t seem very proud of their old operating systems, but it is kind of related to what I mentioned above – the roads are still the same, but the computers are quite a bit different.

Software reboots need to be eliminated! So far the stuff I have read about Vista shows that progress is being made in this department – fewer reboots required when changing operating system files. This needs to get to zero reboots, but that will take time.

And my truck won’t start driving more slowly as the day goes on. Provided I get regular oil changes of course.

Too true. The operating system needs to do a much better job of keeping things running smoothly. In the software world, the “regular oil changes” are akin to defragmenting and memory management, both of which a user should never have to see. They should just happen automatically in the background.

It Takes Time

Ford wasn’t always very reliable (and some would argue they aren’t today either when compared to Toyota). It took time for Ford vehicles to get to the point they are at today – over 100 years in fact. By comparison, we’ve really only had ten years of widespread operating system use, since Windows 95. What will software look like in another 90 years?

Read: Larry Borsato

Using Firefox? You're not safe!

Post ImageI have said it before, and I’ll say it again: Firefox isn’t really all that secure! It only seems more secure because it doesn’t have a large enough market share to warrant attacking. Fortunately, some other people have noticed this and done some excellent analysis, like George Ou and ZDNet:

Now that Firefox has become the first viable contender to Microsoft Internet Explorer in years, its popularity has brought with it some unwanted attention. Last week’s premature disclosure of a zero-day Firefox exploit came a few weeks after a zero-day exploit for Internet Explorer appeared on the Internet. Firefox not only has more vulnerabilities per month than Internet Explorer, but it is now surpassing Internet Explorer for the number of exploits available for public download in recent months.

In the post, George shows that since March of this year, Firefox has encountered 40 vulnerabilities, compared with Internet Explorer’s 10. And since April 2005, there have been 11 exploits for Firefox compared with only 6 for Internet Explorer. One could make the case that Internet Explorer 6 has been around longer and thus many of it’s problems were fixed prior to March of this year. It would be interesting to see some data on that. Of course, Firefox shouldn’t have had any of the same vulnerabilities though, as it was released after IE6 and should have been able to learn from it’s mistakes, right?

A new report from Symantec found similar results, but also noted that hackers still focus their efforts on IE – no doubt because of the size of IE’s market share and installed base:

According to the report, 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for the Mozilla browsers during the first half of 2005, “the most of any browser studied,” the report’s authors stated. Eighteen of these flaws were classified as high severity. “During the same period, 13 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for IE, eight of which were high severity,” the report noted.

The average severity rating of the vulnerabilities associated with both IE and Mozilla browsers in this period was classified as “high”, which Symantec defined as “resulting in a compromise of the entire system if exploited.”

See the browser wars aren’t really Firefox versus IE at all. No, the browser wars are hackers versus vendors.

OneNote 12

Post ImageI really love OneNote. I think it’s probably one of the single most useful applications ever created. Of course, it works best on a Tablet PC because you have a pen and are thus able to handwrite notes, but there are ways to handwrite using your PC too. So what’s coming in the next version of OneNote? Chris Pratley, one of the application’s designers shares some of the new features:

One of the long term visions for OneNote is to bring together “your information” and make it findable and reusable, regardless of format. When we look at the types of info we try to help people organize, it is obvious that a lot of it lives outside the digital realm: Business cards, handouts, receipts. People always have a collection of paper that accompanies their PC because it is hard to include that stuff in their digital storage. Beyond paper, there are other analog forms of information such as speeches (audio) and “performances” (video). You hear and see things today, but all you have are your memories of that, or maybe a recording on tape or mini-recorder. As you know from the current release of OneNote, there’s a lot of value in just being able to capture various kinds of information in one place: text, HTML, ink, photos, audio/video recordings. In OneNote “12”, we’re going to go even farther.

More or less, anything you put into OneNote 12 becomes searchable.

I was instantly amazed that OneNote could search my handwriting without having to first convert it to text – definitely a major wow feature. Now it’s going to be able to search everything else too? Crazy. If you read his full post, there are more details on how the various searches work, and he mentions that OneNote 12 will in fact use the new Windows Desktop indexed search engine, which means a search should be pretty much instant.

If you haven’t yet tried OneNote, I highly suggest that you do. You can download a free trial here.

Read: Chris Pratley

Microsoft to buy AOL?

Post ImageA number of publications including the New York Post and Reuters reported this morning that Microsoft is in early talks to make a deal with the AOL unit of Time Warner:

“There have been talks on ways Microsoft and AOL assets can be better leveraged and they’ve taken place over the normal course of business …,” the source said, calling reports of a joint venture “way overblown.”

Although the talks, which have taken place over several months, could advance, nothing was imminent, the source added.

Low-ball estimates for AOL are about $10 billion with improvements possibly doubling that valuation, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Fulcrum Global Partners, said.

If Microsoft were to buy the assets, you can bet they’d merge it with the MSN unit. Otherwise, the deal could simply be some sort of cross-advertising agreement, which would be good for Microsoft as they’d probably acquire access to the vast content that Time Warner owns. AOL has been dying a slow death for years now, so I’m not sure what Microsoft would want with the company besides advertising and content possibilities.

Read: CNET News.com

Xbox 360 Launching November 22

Post ImageIt’s finally official! Microsoft has announced that the new Xbox 360 will be launched on November 22nd, just in time for Christmas (via Engadget):

Fueling global anticipation for the arrival of its powerful new video game and entertainment system, Microsoft® today announced that Xbox 360™ will arrive on store shelves Tuesday, November 22 in North America, Friday, December 2 in Europe, and Saturday, December 10 in Japan. The announcement, made on the eve of Tokyo Game Show 2005, marked the first time that a game console will be launched in three territories in the same time frame. In preparation for what is expected to be massive worldwide demand for the new system, Microsoft also announced that Xbox 360 manufacturing is under way, with state-of-the-art facilities producing millions of units ultimately bound for frenzied gamers’ homes from Osaka, Japan, to Oxford, England, and Orlando, Fla.

I want one of these things in the worst way – and it’s not really because of the games. It’s more because of the social element Microsoft has added to the console. And I think that’s very smart. Maybe it will be the beginning of the end of the “you need killer games to sell consoles” attitude.

Read: Xbox.com

The new look of Microsoft Office

Post ImageI wish I was at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week, but fortunately there are tons of announcements and resources and information being posted online. One such announcement was the first public demo of Office 12, with a completely redesigned user interface:

Thousands of software developers at the sold-out Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 today got a preview of a new, redesigned user interface (UI) that will debut in several core applications of the next version of Microsoft Office, code-named Office “12.”

While the Office applications have increased tremendously in power and added functionality in response to customer needs, the core UI has remained substantially unchanged for nearly 20 years. The command bar in Microsoft Office Word 2003, for example, looks much the same as the command bar in Word 2.0 did in 1998. In fact, the new UI is the biggest, most visible change to the way the core Office applications work since the introduction of the toolbar in 1997.

The first thing I saw related to the new UI was this PressPass article and screenshots. And to be honest, my very first reaction was “what?!” I didn’t like the new look of the applications based on the screenshots, but I think that’s mostly because I didn’t understand how it worked. After I checked out the Channel9 video, my opinion completely changed. Screenshots just don’t do the new interface justice. It is, quite simply, amazing! Check out the video and see what I mean – demos start around 10 minutes in. Office 12 has no drop down menus or toolbars. Instead, there is a new “ribbon” control along the top that makes the commands in each application readily available in an organized manner. There’s also live previewing – hover over an option, and it will appear in the document before you make the change so you can see what it looks like.

So far Outlook only makes use of the new interface for writing emails, not in the main application. I can see why, but I don’t think it’s a great idea for Outlook to be different from the other applications. I also wonder if OneNote and other Office-family members will make use of the new interface too. I hope so.

It’s still a bit shocking, but I think Office needed a new interface. Far too many commands made the interface cluttered and difficult to use. Menus and toolbars are familiar, but they aren’t the most powerful interface in the world. The new “ribbon” controls are just sweet, and definitely a useful improvement. And who knows, maybe the new interface will finally convince corporations to upgrade.

I can’t wait to play with the new Office now!

Read: Microsoft PressPass

Office 12 Feature Request!

Post ImageAccording to Scoble, there’s a ton of cool stuff that will be announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) next week. One of the new applications that we should find out a lot more about is Office 12, the successor to Office 2003.

I haven’t been paying attention to Office development at all lately, as it’s just really outside the day-to-day stuff for me. Working in Word 2003 this afternoon though caused me to think of something I want to see in Office 12: every single Office application should have OneNote style “saving”. If I am working on a document in Word, I shouldn’t have to click save, or have the application attempt to auto-save every now and then. It should work exactly like OneNote! As soon as you type it, it’s saved.

Also, Visual Studio Tools for Office should be extended to every application in the family, not just Word and Excel! It will be interesting to see what is announced next week.

Read: Microsoft Office

The MsgPlus Petition

Post ImageI just got an alert in MSN Messenger saying that MsgPlus, the popular add-in which I have installed, needed my support. With my curiousity piqued, I clicked on the alert, and found myself at a petition page. From the explanation that precedes the actual petition letter:

In a recent update of Microsoft Anti-Spyware, the threat level of Messenger Plus! was lowered from 3/5 to 2/5, which was a good thing, however, the program itself, msgplus.exe, is now detected immediately at system startup or whenever run manually by the user, and the following message is displayed in bold red: “Warning, Messenger Plus! Software Bundler is trying to install!”. In addition to discouraging anybody in their right mind to click “Allow”, this message is, to put it simply, a lie. Messenger Plus! is not a “threat” and it certainly is not trying to “install itself on your computer”, it’s already been installed at this point and the program is just trying to run and do what the user expects it to do. Why is that important? because the main argument of Microsoft so far against this case has been “the policy of Microsoft Anti-Spyware is to flag all installers which bundle spyware/adware as being potentially dangerous”.

I really like MsgPlus, and I have been using it for a very long time. It is, in my opinion, one of the best software add-ins ever created, not just in terms of MSN Messenger, but in terms of all applications period. It integrates so smoothly and does exactly what you expect it to. I also really like Microsoft’s AntiSpyware. I used to be an Ad-Aware user, but I find AntiSpyware finds just as many threats, if not more, and integrates nicely into Windows XP. I also particularly like the warning messages and alerts that the program displays.

Having said all that, I can’t bring myself to sign the petition, and for a couple reasons. First off, MsgPlus does have the capability to install adware, so I don’t mind that AntiSpyware flags it as a potential threat. Secondly, I really don’t like how Patchou has positioned the petition as a “save MsgPlus” gimmick. I don’t believe for a second that AntiSpyware is enough of a problem to stop work on MsgPlus. Thirdly, and most importantly to me, I have run both applications side by side ever since AntiSpyware was released by Microsoft. The first time I ran a scan, it flagged MsgPlus, and I simply told AntiSpyware to always ignore it. I have never, ever encountered a problem, nor has MsgPlus ever been flagged again. I suppose another reason is that looking at this from Microsoft’s side, caving in to the demands of one developer could mean problems with other developers. Pretty soon all the effort is placed on appeasing developers instead of protecting consumers.

So that’s why I am not signing the petition. I am surprised to see that since August 17th, there have been 82,498 signatures. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Read: MsgPlus Petition

Xbox 360 Stores

Post ImageLooks like Microsoft is getting serious about the Xbox 360 launch, with rumors of plans for two new Xbox 360 stores:

Looks like Microsoft is the last to get into the game with plans to open an Xbox 360 store in New York City’s Times Square. At least, rumour has it that they’re looking into prime real estate for that purpose. And by prime they may indeed truly mean prime, as in the 18,000 square-foot space that is One Times Square.

And the second store, in Tokyo:

The timing couldn’t be any better on this one — ITmedia snapped some pics of the construction shielding surrounding what they suppose is an Xbox 360 store.

I don’t know why a console needs its own store, and such a big one at that, but you have to admit it’s pretty cool 🙂

Read: Engadget

Why the WebOS won't happen!

Post ImageInteresting post by Jason Kottke on a so-called “WebOS”. Speculation about such an operating system, that is powered over the web, has always been around but seems to pick up whenever Google releases something new, like Google Desktop 2 last week. Granted, Jason does talk about having local applications too, but then I question how things are really different than what we currently have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – it’s not going to happen! So, whenever you feel the urge to dream about an operating system powered completely over the web, just refer to this handy list of realities:

  • We don’t have “wireless everywhere”, so sometimes you need to be able to take content offline.
  • Games need horsepower – processors, memory, graphics, etc.
  • I can do a lot with photos on Flickr, but it’s not even close to replacing Photoshop. Applications like Photoshop need (extensive) local resources!
  • One interface is dumb! What about viewing my content on a mobile device? Or on a device with a tiny screen? Or in my kitchen? Or in my car? Accessing everything through a browser is absurd. Web services solve this problem by allowing many rich interfaces to use the same data, with a high level of code re-use.
  • Security, security, security! It’s a lot harder to secure everything when it’s all online!
  • Privacy, privacy, privacy! How can you really be sure no one else is looking? If the OS is on the Web, there’s no longer a power switch.

There are probably more reasons! Have any you’d like to add?

Read: Jason Kottke