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A too early assesment of the emerging ‘Windows 8’ dev & UX functionality

June 24, 2011 1:45 pm / 9 Comments on A too early assesment of the emerging ‘Windows 8’ dev & UX functionality

Update on the recent craze in mass media to call the new era “post-PC” by Frank X. Shaw Microsoft Corporation [19 Aug 2011 3:37 PM]:

Where the PC is headed: Plus is the New “Post”

In the past year, and again in the past few weeks, I’ve seen a resurgence of the term “post” applied to the PC in a number of stories including The Wall Street Journal, PC World and the Washington Post. Heck, I even mentioned it in my 30th anniversary of the PC post, noting that “PC plus” was a better term.

…

… eReaders, Tablets, Smartphones, Set top boxes, aren’t PC killers, but instead are complementary devices. They are each highly optimized to do a great job on a subset of things any PC can also do. …

…

I’ll be the first to admit that these new “non-PC” objects do a great job at enabling people to communicate and consume in innovative and interesting ways. That’s not surprising, because they were expressly designed for that purpose. But even their most ardent admirers will not assert that they are as good as PCs at the first two verbs, create and collaborate. And that’s why one should take any reports of the death of the PC with a rather large grain of salt. Because creating and collaborating are two of the most basic human drives, and are central to the idea of the PC. They move our culture, economy and world forward. You see their fingerprints in every laboratory, startup, classroom, and community.

At Microsoft, we envision a future where increasingly powerful devices of all kinds will connect with cloud services to make it all the more easier for us social beings to create, communicate, collaborate and consume information. I encourage you to tune into our BUILD conference in mid-September where our vision for this world of devices will become clearer.

Update on development timeframe by Steven Sinofsky Microsoft Corporation [17 Aug 2011 11:48 PM]:

@TrooperKal — we finished Windows 7 in July of 2009 and had started our long lead work on Windows 8 a little before that. That’s similar to how we worked on Windows 7 relative to the previous release.

[Re: TroperKal’s question: “It is pretty obvious from your team structure and the already discussed features of v.8 that work has been underway for some time. Just for curiosity’s sake, when did work properly begin on this new version?” ]

June 20-24:
Windows 8 for software developers: the Longhorn dream reborn? [by Peter Bright, June 23, 2011]

…

Windows 8 will ship with a pair of runtimes; a new .NET runtime (currently version stamped 4.5), and a native code C++ runtime (technically, COM, or a derivative thereof), named WinRT. There will be a new native user interface library, DirectUI, that builds on top of the native Direct2D and DirectWrite APIs that were introduced with Windows 7. A new version of Silverlight, apparently codenamed Jupiter, will run on top of DirectUI. WinRT and DirectUI will both be directly accessible from .NET through built-in wrappers.

WinRT provides a clean and modern API for many of the things that Win32 does presently. It will be, in many ways, a new, modern Win32. The API is designed to be easy to use from “modern” C++ (in contrast to the 25 year old, heavily C-biased design of Win32); it will also map cleanly onto .NET concepts. In Windows 8, it’s unlikely that WinRT will cover everythingWin32 can do—Win32 is just so expansive that modernizing it is an enormous undertaking—but I’m told that this is the ultimate, long-term objective. And WinRT is becoming more and more extensive with each new build that leaks from Redmond.

WinRT isn’t just providing a slightly nicer version of the existing Win32 API, either. Microsoft is taking the opportunity to improve the API’s functionality, too. The clipboard API, for example, has been made easier to use and more flexible. There will also be pervasive support for asynchronous operations, providing a clean and consistent way to do long-running tasks in the background.

DirectUI is built around a core subset of current WPF/Silverlight technology. It includes support for XAML, the XML language for laying out user interfaces, and offers the rich support for layouts that Win32 has never had. This core will give C++ programs their modern user interface toolkit and, at its heart, it will be the same toolkit that .NET developers use too. (DirectUI is a name Microsoft has used before, internally, for a graphics library used by Windows Live Messenger. The new DirectUI appears to be unrelated.)

Jupiter is essentially Silverlight 6; a fully-featured, flexible toolkit for building applications. The exact relationship between DirectUI and Jupiter isn’t entirely clear at the moment. It’s possible that they’re one and the same—and that DirectUI will grow in functionality until it’s able to do everything that Silverlight can do. It’s also possible that DirectUI will retain only core functionality, with a more complete framework built on top of its features. Another option is that Jupiter refers specifically to immersive, full-screen, touch-first applications.

XAML and the WPF-like, Silverlight-like way of developing GUIs are going to be absolutely central to Windows development in the future. Testament to their new importance is a reorganization that occurred at the start of this week. Instead of operating under DevDiv’s roof, the XAML team has been broken into three parts. The group working on XAML and related technology for use in Windows has moved to WinDiv, and the group working on it for Windows Phone, Xbox, and the browser plugin has moved to Windows Phone. Only the group that works on the developer tools—including Visual Studio and Expression Blend—is staying behind in DevDiv. The internal Microsoft e-mail announcing the change notes that the XAML team has been working with the Windows team for the duration of Windows 8’s development; this move simply makes them a formal part of the UI team.

…

What of HTML5 and JavaScript? They’ll be an option too. Microsoft has ventured down the HTML application path before, with its HTAtechnology. HTAs—HTML Applications—are packages of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and other resources that run in a special trusted mode. The normal constraints that regular HTML webpages are governed by—for instance, an inability to access local resources—don’t apply to HTAs: HTAs can write to the file system, access arbitrary network resources, and more. In other words, they’re webpages stripped of some of the limitations that make webpages unsuitable replacements for desktop applications.

New-style HTML5 immersive applications won’t be distributed as HTAs, but many of the same principles are likely to apply. Like HTAs before them, they’ll gain greater access to operating system functionality than regular webpages—so they’ll be able to call Windows APIs and have a user interface that feels less like a webpage, more like a native application. Feature-wise, they should be at the same level as .NET and native programs. It’s just that they’ll use an HTML5 programming model and JavaScript. The net result should be something that’s familiar to Web developers, but without the functional deficits that Web applications normally suffer.

Far from being a developer disaster, Windows 8 should be a huge leap forward: a release that threatens to make development a pleasure for native, managed, and Web developers alike. The unification of the .NET and native worlds; the full hardware acceleration; the clean, modern APIs; Avalon as the primary solution for creating Windows UIs—this is what Longhorn’s WinFX promised all those years ago, and this time around it looks like it might actually happen.

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Microsoft splits up its XAML team: What’s the fallout? [June 23, 2011] (emphasis is mine)

… Microsoft on June 20 split up its XAML team, sending part of it to Windows, part to Windows Phone and leaving part in the Developer Division, according to an e-mail from Developer Division chief Soma Somasegar dated June 20. …

From: S. Somasegar
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011
To: Client and Mobile Team
Cc: Developer Division FTE; Steven Sinofsky; Julie
Larson-Green; Terry Myerson; David Treadwell
Subject: Bringing together client platform efforts

MICROSOFT CONFIDENTIAL

Over the last couple of years, our Client and Mobile team has done a fantastic job of building a number of XAML related technologies that have been a huge value add to the Microsoft client platforms and an instrumental part of delighting our developer customers. The agility and customer focus that the team has demonstrated over the years has been a pleasure to watch.

Today, we are making some organization changes to bring our platform technologies under a single management structure. These changes are centered around three focus areas:

• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows will move to Windows.

• The team working on XAML technologies for Windows Phone, Xbox and browser plugin will move to Windows Phone. [Microsoft Mobile Communications Business is now the Windows Phone Division [by Mary Jo Foly in ZDNET, June 16, 2011]]

• The Client and Mobile tools teams, including Windows Phone tools and XAML tools, will stay in DevDiv.

These changes are all effective immediately. From a performance review perspective, we will do this year’s performance review underthe DevDiv organization model.

I want to thank Kevin Gallo [publicly so far: General Manager on Silverlight, he was originally writing the graphics engine of WPF but by 2007 was already product unit manager for Silverlight, now he has been moved to the Windows Phone where the Silverlight heritage will continue to live] and the team for all the great work that they have done over the years. Moving forward, I’m very excited to bring the client platform efforts closer to the platform teams. There is a lot of very exciting and critical work underway as part of our next wave of platform releases and I am very eagerly looking forward to seeing the team’s work in the hands of our developers and customers.

The follow-up emails will provide more details on thechanges to those impacted. Please join me in wishing Kevin and the team all the very best as we move forward. If you have any questions about this change, please let your manager or me know.

-somasegar

Please welcome the XAML platform team to Windows! [by Scott Barnes, June 24, 2011] (emphasis is mine)

…

From: Julie Larson-Green Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 9:35 AM To: Grant George; Jon DeVaan; Julie Larson-Green; John Cable; Yves Neyrand; Craig Fleischman; Bambo C. Sofola; Scott Herrboldt; Greg Chapman; Julie Bennett; Jeff Johnson; Ales Holecek; Mohammed El-Gammal; Chuck Chan; Michael Fortin; Eric Traut; Jensen Harris; Linda Averett; Alex Simons (WINDOWS); Gabriel Aul; Dennis Flanagan; Iain McDonald; Samuel Moreau; Dean Hachamovitch; Michael Angiulo; Antoine Leblond; Tami Reller; Chris Jones (WINDOWS LIVE); Jonathan Wiedemann; Ulrike Irmler; Adrianna Burrows Cc: XAML Team; Kevin Gallo; S. Somasegar; Terry Myerson; Sharman Mailloux Sosa; Brad Fringer; Steven Sinofsky

Subject: Please welcome the XAML platform team to Windows!

We’re pleased to announce the transition of the XAML platform team from the Developer Division to the Windows team. While the team has been working side-by-side with the Windows team for the entire project, this step brings them into our team formally.

The team will continue their work on Windows 8 as planned and will join our Developer Experience (DEVX) team. This transition allows us to bring together our platform development team in a single-management structure.

The dev, test, and pm leaders who will be leading the team reporting to AlesH, YvesN, and LindaAv are:

Sujal Parikh, Development Manager

Eduardo Leal-Tostado, Test Manager

Joe Stegman, Group Program Manager

The leads and individuals joining our team are receiving this mail and have received communication on next steps.

These changes in leadership and organization are effective today. For the purposes of finishing out the fiscal year and the performance review process the team will operate under the existing management structure.

There will be an informal Q&A session today to welcome everyone and answer any questions that folks might have.
– XAML team welcome – 2:00-3:00 in building 37/1701Please join me in welcoming these folks to our organization! Julie

…

Somewhat may be related: Non-iPad tablet vendors likely to launch new Wintel-based models to compete with Apple in 2012 [June 24, 2011]

Intel and Microsoft are jointly touting a new Wintel-based platform for tablet PCs, raising hopes among non-iPad tablet PC vendors that they may be able to compete more effectively with Apple in the segment in 2012 with models other than ARM/Android-based products, according to industry sources.

Most non-iPad table PC vendors have been frustrated recently due to lower-than-expected performance of their tablet PCs built with ARM/Android. While attributing the slow sales to the instability of Android and the strong brand image that Apple enjoys, some vendors have also begun mulling new strategies to strengthen their competitiveness.

Knowing the demand from tablet PC vendors, Intel and Microsoft have recently revealed a roadmap for their Wintel platform to production partners, said the sources, noting that the new platform will come with a less than 5W low-power CPU from Intel paired with Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS.

While Intel is also expected to lower prices for its new CPUs, tablet PC vendors also hope that the new Wintel platform will help them tackle the compatibility issues found between Android 3.0 and 3.1.

June 14-21:
Premature cries of Silverlight / WPF skill loss. Windows 8 supports all programming models [by David Burela, June 14, 2011]

…

A few people have been digging into the Windows 8 Milestone 3 leak and peeking into the UI framework and .dlls that exist. The most vocal of these have been @JoseFajardo and people in this forum thread http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak

What people have found so far is that while yes it is possible to create applications using HTML + Javascript, there is a whole new framework laying underneath that can be programmed against by almost any language / framework.

The first piece of the puzzle comes from the new application model for creating applications. There are a number of codenames here that need to be sorted out

DirectUI: The underlying framework that creates, draws the visual elements on the screen.

Jupiter: The new packaging format of applications on Windows 8. Allows apps to be written in language of choice.

Immersive applications: Current theory is that these are apps that execute within the ‘new shell’ in windows 8. And are aware of being split paned and resized. Like was shown with the RSS feed reader.

Direct UI

Direct UI has been around since Windows Vista days. Previous is seemed to be focused around UI basics for the OS such as theming app windows in the ‘new vista style’ vs. classic theming in WinXP. http://blog.vistastylebuilder.com/?tag=directui

Now it seems that Direct UI is being overhauled to have additional functionality to load XAML applications, new animations, etc.

…

Jupiter

interesting rumor fact : WP8 rumored to be codenamed Apollo, and Apollo is the son of Jupiter Jupiter being the new UI framework of Win8
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/78826337250451457

…Jupiter is shaping up to be a very very lean SL/WPF implementation
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/79423110755008512

…your SL/WPF skills will be invaluable for DirectUI apps, and you get a new framework that is seriously lean!!!
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/79425349938712577

DirectUI.dll is basically Silverlight (agcore.dll) ported to Windows/WinRT
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=441627#post441627

Jose Fajardo has been a great source of information on Windows 8 leaks. From information he has dug up, as well as information on the forums, it seems that the new Jupiter programming API is a mashup between WPF & Silverlight.

…

While the new Jupiter programming model may not be a direct continuation of WPF or Silverlight it does seem to have a lot of code from both technologies. Jupiter instead seems to be a ‘Next generation’ XAML based framework. A framework that can be targeted against by all main current languages used by the typical .Net developer (C#, HTML, etc)

*speculation* This could be because of the calls from the development community to make WPF & Silverlight more aligned. Perhaps we’ll see an updated ‘Silverlight’ framework when Windows Phone 8 is released that is compatible with Jupiter.

Creating applications with Jupiter

As further evidence that Jupiter applications can be created with your language of choice, and that it has roots in Silverlight, here are some examples of how to create applications.

C# & XAML

Here is an example of using C# to invoke a new Jupiter based application. The really interesting thing to notice here is that the loading screen has the iconic Silverlight loading animation!

…

C++

Example of an application being created in C++ with a single call to CreateImmersiveWindowFunc

…

HTML + Javascript

There are some initial attempts at getting HTML working with the new frameworks. The apps and manifests have been created, but a few more hooks may be required to get a fully working version
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=446552&viewfull=1#post446552

There are mentions that you can hooks into Direct UI through the COM hooks from Javascript. And also that you may be able to use Direct UI XAML + Javascript. Similar to how Silverlight was done in the original Silverlight version 1.

Immersive applications

There is some confusion over the distinction between a “Jupiter app” and an “Immersive app”. Immersive apps require a call to CreateImmersiveWindow and can make calls to the new immersive namespace

…

Immersive applications are ones that were shown to live inside of the new Windows 8 shell. Examples of functions that an immersive app can do can be seen with the RSS reader app. When it was docked and resized, it knew to display its data in a different format.

Classic / Jupiter applicationswill run in the ‘classic windows’ desktop view that was seen when they fired up excel

Immersive applications will be embedded within the new shell

Will this work for existing applications?

There is evidence that existing applications can be wrapped up in the new packaging format.

WindowsStore is basically written in C++ and leverages Windows Runtime. HTML5/JavaScript is just a (very very) thin layer for the interface
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=442463&viewfull=1#post442463

So while existing applications may not run with the new Direct UI framework, it seems they will still be able to be packaged and distributed through the Windows 8 App store. This was discovered by Long Zheng a few months ago.

The AppX format is universal enough so it appears to work for everything from native Win32 applications to framework-based applications (WPF, Silverlight) and even *gasp* web applications. Games are also supported.
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110405/first-look-at-the-future-of-application-deployment-on-windows-8-appx/

Conclusion

While Microsoft only showed off the HTML hooks into Jupiter, I am a LOT more excited about the upcoming XAML based framework.

If you are an existing WPF, Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 developer, it seems that your XAML based skills will carry across fine to the new development framework on Windows 8.

My thoughts are that Microsoft announced that applications can be created in HTML in the same way that they announced it in WindowsXP with active desktop, and then again in Vista with “HTML based sidebar gadgets”. It was a way of saying “hey you can use your existing web skills to create applications on Windows 8.
And that Microsoft plans on unveiling the new Jupiter SL/WPF hybrid framework for all of the “Real developers” at BUILD in 3 months.

…

riagenic [Scott Barnes, the harsh critic being a previous insider, see much below] Says:
June 14, 2011 at 7:13 pm

Hmmm… my memory is flooding mah brain with “remember…” moments… Before I left the team etc I remember hearing the windev teams wanted to put a 3rd Animation framework on the market. At first we laughed and ignored it with “oh great, what well need…a third option to confuse the already converted..”

Now thinking on it more, me thinks its this mystery framework coming to haunt us all. Now, i’m thinking this concept has existed but was already ported across to the XAML way of life around Windows 7 timelines (memory is sketchy on this one). If that’s correct then i think this is an official code-reset on WPF/Silverlight but with reduced capabilities (ie less the bloat).

Question is how mature is it compared to the two? it’s all well and good to throw a FILE->NEW->UX Platform onto the table, but if it lacks parity with the existing? what have we gained?….performance?…i’ll wait until i see how the fundametals found in most photoshop effects filters gets applied here and performs under what i call “developer-art load”….lots of glows, dropshadows and crazy ass animations..

…

Win8 M3 (7955) findings relevant to Managed .net & WPF/SL developers [[Jose Fajardo] June 14-17, 2011]

[Forum discussion on comparing WPF UIElement, Silverlight UIElement, WP7 Silverlight UIElement and WinMD(DirectUI)]

@vbandi András Velvárt
Don’t worry abt Silverlight! Jupiter has dep props, similar API & layout logic, RenderTransform, UIElement, etc http://bit.ly/mdL06i [Win8 M3 (7955) findings relevant to Managed .net & WPF/SL developers]
16 Jun via MetroTwit

@vbandi András Velvárt
After analysing http://bit.ly/mdL06i , Jupiter SEEMS to me like a customized Silverlight for Win8. Much like SL 4 WP7, but more custom.
16 Jun via MetroTwit

…

jmorrill Jeremiah Morrill
@josefajardo @markmacumber The other hard part is these guys are reverse engineering, so they might be looking at some private impls.
16 Jun

josefajardo Jose Fajardo
@jmorrill @markmacumber exactly, they could be doing things with the beta bits that it was never intended to do. Wrong assumptions 😉

16 Jun
@vbandi András Velvárt
@josefajardo @jmorrill @markmacumber Still better than burying an entire technology based on half a sentence. 🙂
16 Jun via MetroTwit

Continuation of that: Win8 M3 (7989) findings relevant to Managed .net & WPF/SL developers [[Jose Fajardo] June 19-24, 2011]

…

SilverlightWPF [Jose Fajardo] 21 Jun 2011 11:27 AM

Originally Posted by NaiveUser

God, this article got so many things wrong, or I should say I beg to differ so here is my take
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/…-trenches/9738 [Under the Windows 8 hood: Questions and answers from the trenches [by Mary Jo Foly in ZDNET, June 20, 2011]]

I guess there are two possible meanings for ‘Jupiter’, it could be the DirectUI.dll, or, it could be the whole api framework that exposed by WinRT/WinMD, includes DirectUI.dll and Windows.*.dll and some more. so basically Jupiter == DirectUI eitherway.

essentially Windows Runtime is just ‘Modern COM’, which is just an interface for exposing code. its not an actual ‘runtime library’ like CLR. I think you can expose code written with any ‘runtime library’ as WinRT components, just like you can write COM components in C/VC++/VB6/Delphi/.NET/etc.

DirectUI applications live in a HWND with a class called ‘JupiterWindowClass’ and a caption ‘Jupiter Window’, personally I think this IS strong ‘correlation’ betwwen Jupiter and DirectUI. and, as far as I can see there is ‘no direct correlation’ between DirectUI.dll and the old ‘DirectUI’ in dui70.dll which uses the ‘duixml’ markup.

and I have never seen any connections between SLR/WCL and ‘everything else’. wcl*.dll exposed as WinRT ? where ? Windows Runtime is the marketing name for the SLR ? where does that come from ?

[Jose Fajardo:]

Jupiter could be an entire ecosystem too, could be the tooling + api that goes into creating jupiter apps.

Jupiter could be the next marketing buzz world, like “Silverlight” was!

Who the hell knows! I know I’m not confident enough to say that Jupiter==DirectUI!

Nor am I confident in saying WindowsRuntime is COM version next..

Regardless it’s all interpretation until MS come out and explain themselves.

Power to you if you can conclude all this, personally I only talk about things i know are factually correct that I’ve chased down to registry settings, code in exe’s/dll’s, or reproduced in code myself.

…

June 1 – June 3 and 6:
TINY FACTUAL INFORMATION FROM MICROSOFT
(say just HTML5 for now, not a bit more)

ilyen világos megfogalmazásokban én ezt mondanám:

– amit láttunk és hallottunk a demókban az olyan UX funkcionalitás, ami HTML5 és JavaScript ALAPÚ fejlesztési környezetből érhető el

– azt is láttuk, hogy amikor “az Interneten végzendő teendőkhöz nincsen ehhez az új UX környezethez szabott (“tailored”), új stílusú (“new style”) alkalmazásunk”, akkor az IE9-hez képest “touch first”-re áttervezett IE10-et használjuk

– ebben ugyanúgy vannak “odatűzött” webhelyek (“pinned sites”, vagyis URL-ekkel azonosított webalkalmazások vagy webhelyek), de vagy a Start Screen csemperendszerében vagy egy teljesen új kialakítású, amennyire meg tudom ítélni dinamikusan megjelenő (pl. “Frequent” illetve “Pinned” listák a képernyős billentyű felett) task bar-on helyezkednek el

– az új UX környezethez szabott (új stílusú) alkalmazások a Windows eszközökhöz (facilities) — tehát a natív platform eszközökhöz — is hozzáférhetnek, tehát nincsen két shell, csak egyetlen shell

– ugyanakkor arra a kérdésre, hogy miért nem írja át az Office részleg alkalmazásait erre az új UX környezetre, a konkrét válasz: “Valamit lehetséges, hogy tesznek a jövőben, most azonban az volt a célunk, hogy megmutassuk, nem kell az embereknek a meglévő alkalmazásaikat, melyeket jól ismernek, feladniuk ahhoz, hogy egy mobilabb form factorhoz jussanak. Vagyis az embereknek egy billentyűzetet kell csatlakoztatniuk és használhatják [régi alkalmazásaikat] ugyanúgy, mint eddig.”

The factual details:

Metro styled new entertainment experience on Xbox 360 [June 6, 2011]

Next-generation cloud client experiences based on the Metro design language [Jan 24, 2011]

Metro Design Language of Windows Phone 7 [on-line tutorial from Microsoft, Dec 5, 2010]

Building “Windows 8” – Video #1 [June 1, 2011]

– related press release: Previewing ‘Windows 8’ [June 1, 2011

… a few aspects of the new interface we showed today:

Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.

Fluid, natural switching between running apps.

Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.

Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

… also talked a bit about how developers will build apps for the new system. Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard JavaScript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences. These new Windows 8 apps are full-screen and touch-optimized, and they easily integrate with the capabilities of the new Windows user interface. There’s much more to the platform, capabilities and tools than we showed today.

… we have much more to reveal at our developer event, BUILD (Sept. 13 – 16 in Anaheim, Calif.)

Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky, live from D9 [June 1, 2011]

… Oh yeah, we built these in house, but we’re giving devs APIs and an SDK based on HTML5 and Javascript that allows them to create apps like this. We have lots of new tools, but still you can connect to our file tools, etc. … Apps can connect to each other. It’s not just apps alone, it’s applications connecting to each other. … You design for touch, and then we translate the touch commands to mouse and keyboard. …

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Demo From D9 (Video) [June 1, 2011]

Microsoft Unveils ‘Windows 8’ to World on 2011 Computex in Taiwan [June 2, 2011]

– the same with Silverlight Smooth Streaming video: Microsoft Unveils “Windows 8” to World
– the related Microsoft press release on 2011 Computex in Taiwan: Microsoft Previews ‘Windows 8’

Windows 8 NUI GUI Preview Video Shoots Past 2 Million Views the First Day [June 3, 2011]

… everything that users see in the demo videos will actually make it in the RTM Build of Windows 8, otherwise, Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows and Windows Live Division would not have allowed it to be made public, per the translucency communication strategy he implemented even before Windows 7.

In the end, I think it’s a safe bet to expect Sinofsky to underpromise and overachieve with Windows 8, just as he did with Windows 7.

Office and other apps:

Why not the Office team will rewrite the Office into that kind of aproach?
[Walt Mossberg, [6:45-6:51]]

They may do something in the future but we don’t think people should give up everything they know online just to get to a more mobile form factor. So people can plug-in a keyboard and use just like they would use otherwise.
[Julie Larson-Green [6:51-7:06]]

Windows 8: It’s the Applications, Stupid! [June 3, 2011]

It’s a huge question. While Larson-Green said that the current version of Office would behave in touch-friendly fashion in Windows 8, it’s obvious that it’s not going to feel like it was written for the new interface. (You could tell that when she fumbled with Excel as she tried to drag it off-screen with her fingertip.)

I imagine that the real answer to Walt and Kara’s queries is that yes, of course, Microsoft is going to reimagine Office for Windows 8. But even then, it’s not obvious whether the company is going to give Office a truly touch-centric interface as the default. (Sounds hugely risky and probably impossible to do well–all the Office apps are rife with features that will never work well without a mouse and keyboard.) Or mirror what it’s doing with Windows 8 and give Office two different interfaces. (That also sounds extremely tricky.) Or do something akin to what Apple did with its iWork suite, and build a separate version of Office with fewer features and a wholly new interface. (That sounds like it could make sense.)

Every other significant software developer is going to have to deal with similar questions. It’s not yet clear what the right answers are–it’s possible that Windows’ new look will be a bust and it’ll be silly to invest energy in supporting it. And the right answers will be different for different companies. But ignoring Windows 8 won’t be an option.

Could You Turn A Windows 8 Smartphone Into A Windows 8 Computer? [June 2, 2011]

I caught Sinofsky after his D9 talk and asked — would Windows 8, the full-blown operating system, be running on future phones?

Sinofsky smiled, and smiled big, but he only said that’s not something Microsoft has announced yet. So, we wait to see.

What if it happens? Getting to that unification “first” doesn’t necessarily mean that Microsoft somehow “wins” in doing so. For one, would it really run that well on phone-sized devices? That remains to be seen.

For another, it also means that Windows 7 Phone users would be upgrade-orphaned. The apps they have for that platform probably wouldn’t run on Windows 8 devices.

BUILD:

Does this [BUILD] event replace PDC this year and in the future?
Dr. Know said on June 2, 2010

BUILD isn’t a replacement of the PDC but a new event that takes a broader view of a developer community that now extends far beyond the realm of just “pro developers”. From hardware, to the web, to software and the PC … BUILD is the key developer event you should attend in 2011 (there won’t be a PDC this year).
Jennifer Ritzinger [Microsoft] said on June 3, 2010

BUILDing a bright future [June 1, 2011] (emphasis is mine)

… At BUILD, Microsoft will show off the new app model that enables the creation of web-connected and services-powered apps that have access to the full power of the PC.

The conference name, BUILD, reflects a call to action for the more than one hundred million developers driving the pace of technology: build experiences with the next version of Windows that will transform the computing experience for billions of people across the globe. …

Today, everyone can be a developer; the most tech-savvy generation we’ve ever seen is fueling demand for new tools and technologies. Many of the developers building web sites and apps that make an impact have no formal education in computer science or engineering. BUILD will be a gateway to new opportunity for all developers.

The professional developer community continues to be a vital part of the Microsoft ecosystem. We value the longstanding and deep relationship with this group and will continue to engage with this important audience in a way that best meets its needs. For these developers, BUILD connects Microsoft’s past to Microsoft’s future.

June 1 – June 6:
UPHEAVAL OF ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS (or more questions than answers)

Food for harsh criticism because of absolutely no communication for the previous dev stories [ENORMOUS LENGTH]
From a quite opinionated but quite unsatisfied previous insider: http://twitter.com/#!/MossyBlog[ENORMOUS LENGTH]

Food for harsh criticism because of absolutely no communication for the previous dev stories:

Windows 8: A missed opportunity. [June 3, 2011]

So the rumors were true. Microsoft was planning to radically reimagine Windows as we knew it. It would feature a modern, fluid touch interface, it was to be heavily inspired by Metro on Windows Phone, and it was to have an app store.

Good. Right? Not exactly. Its a bitter sweet outcome, because another rumor ended up being true. This one started by Scott Barnes, the sometimes controversial, seemingly always right former Silverlight PM. This rumor said that there was an internal struggle inside Microsoft, and the factions at war were the .NET/Wpf/Silverlight heads versus the Windows division heads.

The war is over. We lost. In an ironic, but telling turn of events, hot of the heels of the Mono guys forming a start up based around .NET, the inventors of the technologies themselves have seemingly given up on the platform.

Sounds dramatic, even outlandish right? Well so did the rumors about Silverlight, WPF, et all’s death. Yet here we are, and its sad because it represents a monumental missed opportunity.

Consider the following:

Microsoft had rare opportunity to throw backwards compatibility to the wind and make a clean cut. A fresh start. A new Windows.

Microsoft had the chance then to simplify and unify their developer story. Slim down .NET, remove the legacy cruft (Winform, older depreciated APIs) and simply call it “Silverlight”. Make it the de facto development platform on Windows, like it is on Windows Phone.

Say to developers: Here’s our Windows App store. The ONLY way to get published on the app store is to write a cross platform Silverlight application. This application will work on x86, x64, and ARM based environments. Its resolution independent, completely hardware accelerated, and secure.

You do many things at once: You simplify, unify, and move forward your developer story. You ensure a verifiable, secure execution environment on Windows 8. You solve the cross platform problem. You KEEP YOUR DEVELOPERS HAPPY. People who have invested years into your technologies do not appreciate being essentially shown the door.

Its fine to embrace HTML5/JS, if web developers want to cause themselves pain, then hey, thats them. Do NOT subject your loyal, devoted, armies of developers to the horrors of the web platform.

Microsoft: WTF?

We dont just need to #fixwpf, we need to #fixwindows8.

Microsoft refuses to comment as .NET developers fret about Windows 8 [Tim Anderson, June 3, 2011]

There is a long discussion over on the official Silverlight forum about Microsoft’s Windows 8 demo at D9 and what was said, and not said; and another over on Channel 9, Microsoft’s video-centric community site for developers.

At D9 Microsoft showed that Windows 8 has a dual personality. In one mode it has a touch-centric user interface which is an evolved version of what is on Windows Phone 7. In another mode, just a swipe away, it is the old Windows 7, plus whatever incremental improvements Microsoft may add. Let’s call it the Tiled mode and the Classic mode.

Pretty much everything that runs on Windows today will likely still run on Windows 8, in its Classic mode. However, the Tiled mode has a new development platform based on HTML and JavaScript, exploiting the rich features of HTML 5, and the fast JavaScript engine and hardware acceleration in the latest Internet Explorer.

Although D9 is not a developer event, Microsoft did talk specifically about this aspect. Here is the press release:
Program Manager Jensen Harris says in the preview video:
Microsoft made no mention of either Silverlight or .NET, even though Silverlight is used as the development platform in Windows Phone 7, from which Windows 8 Tiled mode draws its inspiration.

The fear of .NET developers is that Microsoft’s Windows team now regards not only Silverlight but also .NET on the client as a legacy technology. Everything will still run, but to take full advantage of Tiled mode you will need to use the new HTML and JavaScript model. Here are a couple of sample comments. This:
and this:
Underlying the discussion is that developers have clients, and clients want applications that run on a platform with a future. Currently, Microsoft is promoting HTML and JavaScript as the future for Windows applications, putting every client-side .NET developer at a disadvantage in those pitches.

What is curious is that the developer tools division at Microsoft, part of Server and Tools, has continued to support and promote .NET; and in fact Microsoft is soon to deliver Visual Studio LightSwitch, a new edition of Visual Studio that generates only Silverlight applications. Microsoft is also using Silverlight for a number of its own web user interfaces, such as for Azure, System Center and Windows InTune, as noted here.

Now, I still expect that both Silverlight and native code, possibly with some new XAML-based tool, will be supported for Windows 8 Tiled mode. But Microsoft has not said so; and may remain silent until the Build conference in September according to .NET community manager Pete Brown [response #1 to the Silverlight Forum discussion [06-02-2011 6:44 PM]]:
While this is clearly not Brown’s fault, this is poor developer communication and PR from Microsoft. The fact that .NET and Silverlight champion Scott Guthrie is moving to Windows Azure is no comfort.

The developer division, and in fact the whole of Server and Tools, has long been a bright spot at Microsoft and among its most consistent performers. The .NET story overall includes some bumps, but as a platform for business applications it has been a remarkable success. The C# language has evolved rapidly and effectively under the guidance of Technical Fellow Anders Hejlsberg. It would be bewildering if Microsoft were to turn its back on .NET, even if only on the client.

In fact, it is bewildering that Microsoft is being so careless with this critical part of its platform, even if this turns out to be more to do with communication than technical factors.

From the outside, it still looks as if Microsoft’s server and tools division is pulling one way, and the Windows team the other. If that is the case, it is destructive, and something CEO Steve Ballmer should address; though I imagine that Steven Sinofsky, the man who steered Windows 7 to launch so successfully, is a hard person to oppose even for the CEO.

Update: Journalist Mary Jo Foley has posted [June 6] on what she “hears from my contacts” about Jupiter:
Jupiter, presuming her sources are accurate, is the managed code platform for the new Windows shell – “Tiled mode” or “Tailored Apps” or “Modern Shell – MoSH”; though if that is the case, I am not sure whether C++ in this context will compile to managed or unmanaged code. Since Silverlight is already a way to code using XAML, it is also not clear to me whether Jupiter is in effect a new Windows-only version of Silverlight, or yet another approach.

Microsoft needs to tell Windows 8 developers now about ‘Jupiter’ and Silverlight [Mary Jo Foley, June 6, 2011]

I’ve blogged before about the XAML layer that Microsoft is building for Windows 8 as part of its “Jupiter” initiative. Yes, it still exists, I hear from my contacts. And yes, this will enable support of native Silverlight applications. (Does this mean Windows Phone apps written using Silverlight will be able to run on Windows 8 with no/few tweaks? I don’t know.)

…

Microsoft is still going to support Silverlight with Windows 8, and not only as a browser plug-in, my sources say.

At the 50,000-foot level, Microsoft wants to find a way to reinvigorate the Windows-development ecosystem. (I believe that’s one reason the Internet Explorer team has been talking all that “native HTML” nonsense. They really mean they’re trying to get developers to write HTML/JavaScript apps that use IE’s hardware acceleration for the “best” HTML experience.)

…

At the more granular and immediate level, Jupiter is the way that Microsoft is planning to get developers to write new “immersive” applications for Windows 8 that will use the IE 10 rendering engine while using the .Net and Silverlight technologies they already know. Jupiter is aiming to provide these developers with a managed code XAML library, so that developers can access the sensors, networking and other Windows 8 elements in a way to which they’re accustomed.

Applications built using Jupiter won’t be targeting the “classic” mode/shell that Microsoft showed off last week during its Windows 8 preview, I hear. They’ll be the same class of immersive apps targeting the new Modern Shell (MoSH) that Microsoft will be writing itself and/or trying to convince others to write using HTML5 and JavaScript.

It definitely seems Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to wean developers off Silverlight and to convince them to use HTML5 and JavaScript to write new apps for Windows, going forward. But until there’s better tooling for HTML5 (beyond what Microsoft provides via the F12 HTML tools in Internet Explorer), it seems the Softies are going to support .Net and Silverlight via new versions of Visual Studio, the .Net Framework and Expression.

I believe Jupiter is key to enabling Microsoft to continue to insist that Silverlight’s not dead (as far as a development platform) — at least for now. But anything that’s not a new Windows 8 “immersive,” modern application, going forward, is now going to be considered “legacy,” from what I can tell.

All of what I’ve said here is from sources who have asked not to be identified, not from Microsoft officials associated with Microsoft’s Windows or Developer Division. Like many devs I’ve heard from, I don’t believe Microsoft can’t afford to wait three more months to let its developer base know what its intentions are. So far, however, ill-advised silence seems to be the Softies’ plan….

[Pete Brown had a numerous other responses on that thread [Windows 8 apps going html5, wtf [from 06-01-2011 8:06 PM to 06-03-2011 3:23 PM when locked by Pete Brown] as until 3 days later having enormous visibility of 10,030,100 views] but being just kind of moderation responses, including – not a usual thing – editing responses by other for “non-civil” words, and finally closing the first thread and responding to another one with same topic [Windows 8 apps going html5, wtf – part 2 [from 06-03-2011 3:46 PM still on] as until 3 days later having large visibility of 1,118,657 views].

Besides Pete Brown’s responses the enormous bad publicity caused by that huge developers visibility will cost Microsoft quite a lot as Steve Barns nicknamed MossyBlog [See also his other responses after Pete Brown’s responses] remarked quite well on twitter:

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes: 900k views of just “Microsoft you suck” forum warfare.. thats over 500k eyeballs that Microsoft has to repair in min 2 years.. #fail   8 hours ago via web

replies ↓
josephcooney Joseph Cooney by rickasaurus @ @MossyBlog The stats on this page say it’s 9M going on to 10M http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/17.aspx?PageIndex=3 8 hours ago

rickasaurus Richard Minerich @ @MossyBlog We had an internal meeting today to discuss if we should discontinue all Silverlight development. It’s that bad.

rickasaurus Richard Minerich @ @MossyBlog Oh yeah, plus all of the Kinect hate they’re getting from E3 8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @rickasaurus oh? i’ve missed reading the E3..on my afternoon todo list… whats the gist of it? 8 hours ago via web

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rickasaurus Richard Minerich @ @MossyBlog Mostly just that hardcore gamers don’t give a toot about Kinect 🙂 8 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @rickasaurus i’d prefer to see more info around Kinect beyond gaming and into windows market(s)..well whats left of it post win8 lol 8 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @rickasaurus well Kinect as a game platform is really a wii style approach to it.. hardcore gamers arent really a good mkt for it 8 hours ago

@rickasaurus Richard Minerich @MossyBlog Sure, but E3 is a hardcore gamer conference, and MS was all Kinect! Kinect! Kinect! Kineeecccttttttt! 8 hours ago via TweetDeck

replies ↓

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @rickasaurus heheh well in Microsoft you ride the new shiny object until it loses its appeal..so they are in the peak of the kinect orgy 8 hours ago

rickasaurus Richard Minerich @ @MossyBlog That’s the MS navel gazing culture for you. They’re so myopic and it drives me insane to watch. 8 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@KristoferA KristoferA @MossyBlog @rickasaurus I presume there will be a JavaScript library for Kinect integration shipping with Win8… HTML + Kinect = Win 🙂 9 hours ago via web

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MossyBlog Scott Barnes   @ @KristoferA @rickasaurus i can’t wait to combine jQuery and Kinect..it will be awesome… yay.. #celebratemediocrity   8 hours ago

rickasaurus Richard Minerich   @   @KristoferA Why not :). That could make for some cool surfing.   8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes Sinofsky’s team need to be fired. thats my thoughts. 8 hours ago via web

replies ↓

VicKlien Vic Klien @ @MossyBlog – Any counterweights to team-Sinofsky internally? Assuming ScottGu and Soma would have other ideas, I guess they’re outranked. 7 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @VicKlien well i always thought @scottgu and team-sinfosky were two dueling titans internally anyway..but bobmu left, scotts in azure..so.. 7 hours ago

VicKlien Vic Klien @ @MossyBlog – The current when-to-reveal issue aside, do we really know Soma and ScottGu don’t also support promoting HTML5/JS above .NET? 7 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @VicKlien Of course they support it… just like i support <insert your belief system> when you have a gun to my head 🙂 7 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   9 million is more than that site gets in a year almost… HOLY FUCK… 9 million people all seeing “Silverlight is kinda dead” undercurrent 8 hours ago via web

replies ↓

traskjd John-Daniel Trask @ @MossyBlog Bet all the advertisers paying per impression on the SL forum are getting great ROI… 8 hours ago

josephcooney Joseph Cooney @ @MossyBlog plus the follow-up post (which is presumably what you saw) is nearly at 1M. That’s a lot of discontent. 8 hours ago

Pete_Brown Pete Brown @ @MossyBlog @josephcooney And there’s an open letter thread with 100k views. Smaller threads too, mostly OT, but I’m letting them stay 8 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   I feel for guys like @Pete_Brown who later have to clean this shit up. Pete needs to clone himself fast… /cc @josephcooney

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes

I am so glad I’m not a Microsoft Evangelist still.. i mean..fark me.. talk about walking into the lions den. 8 hours ago via web

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes     10 million pageviews so lets assume 50% of that is uniques… 5 million ppl around the world seeing “HTML5 vs JS is the future” undercurrents   8 hours ago via web

replies ↓

malcolmsheridan Malcolm Sheridan @ @MossyBlog I think you should stop computing and take up gardening! 8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes      There goes 3 years+ of hard work around Silverlight branding… nice one Sinofsky you jackass   8 hours ago via web

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jcdickinson Jonathan C Dickinson @ @MossyBlog the whole Win8 + HTML5 thing is easily fixed: <object data=”data:application/x-silverlight-2,”… 🙂 7 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes       windows internal politically objectives was to make Silverlight / .NET fail.. Mission accomplished.. you just undid 3 years of work in ~1wk 8 hours ago via web

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jtango18 Justin Taylor @ @MossyBlog I think you overestimate the liklihood of MS devs walking away from the platform. 8 hours ago

mstrobel Mike Strobel @ @MossyBlog the Windows team really doesn’t have the clout to effect change of this magnitude; devs aren’t going to abandon .NET for HTML. 8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   @mstrobel well that and lets just say we just sized the market of who they have to convince..5 million devs need to believe HTML5 8 hours ago via web

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes 5million+ is now your baseline for html5 convince metrics msft in 2yrs need to say They have more than this in adoption 8 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes      What if the Blend team were working on a HTML5 design tool… what would you all say… 😀    8 hours ago via web

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shrage Shrage Smilowitz    @ @MossyBlog Html 5 design tool? yea and they’re going to call it Microsoft FrontPage?   7 hours ago

SilverlightMan Noah Addy @ @MossyBlog I would love that idea!!! Spitting out Javascript code for HTML5 development is no fun!   7 hours ago

lazycoder Scott Koon    @   @MossyBlog “Please stop” 8 hours ago

KristoferA KristoferA   @ @MossyBlog If the new Win8 UI instead was C# + HTML5/MSHTML instead of HTML5+JS then I would be less sceptical about it. 8 hours ago

kitron kitron   @   @MossyBlog They better be working on something like that.   8 hours ago

mstrobel Mike Strobel @   @MossyBlog Same thing I said to Blend: no thanks.    8 hours ago

KristoferA KristoferA    @ @MossyBlog .net is strong on the language and framework side. UI design tools is only a tiny part of the dev story… 8 hours ago

KristoferA KristoferA   @   . @MossyBlog HTML5 and the HTML DOM is *not* the weak part. JavaScript is. A C# compiler that emits JS would be a different story.   8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   @KristoferA its possible 😉 …but to what gain? XAML out..HTML5 in? ..what gain? 8 hours ago via web

replies ↓

KristoferA KristoferA @ @MossyBlog You know that SL and WPF sucks performance wise. If IE can supply a rendering engine that can be used from .net then it is a Win   8 hours ago

KristoferA KristoferA   @   @MossyBlog A good app framework (.net fx), a solid language (C#), and a good rendering engine is all I ask for. JS is not a C# replacement.   8 hours ago

KristoferA KristoferA @   @MossyBlog XAML to HTML5 would be status quo. Maybe better performance. But what I am saying is: the UI rendering is a tiny part of apps. 8 hours ago

—————-

mstrobel Mike Strobel @ @MossyBlog Same thing I said to Blend: no thanks. 8 hours ago

mabster Matt Hamilton   @   @mstrobel I was shocked at the number of hands (including mine) that went up at #mvp11 when asked who hand-codes XAML. /cc @MossyBlog     8 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   @mabster @mstrobel i stopped being shocked and it grew into frustration.. “if only there was a tool that did that for you?” hmmm.. 8 hours ago via web

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mstrobel Mike Strobel   @ @MossyBlog @mabster I mean, would you use a tool that wrote C# code for you? I loathe Blend. Hand-coding w/ R# is so much better IMO.   8 hours ago

mabster Matt Hamilton   @ @MossyBlog I’ll try Blend at some point I guess. Hand coding works really well for me. /cc @mstrobel   8 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   Heh sinofsky gets on stage and suddenly 10m voices all vanish at once – starwars / sl forum joke Tehehehe 5 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

replies ↓

redboltsnz Guy Robinson by MossyBlog @ @MossyBlog bottom line is D9 was about the end UX. Should never have talked about the technology unless they wanted to engage with devs. 3 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes   @redboltsnz that’s actually a great insight… i agree! ..they should of just said “this is purty win8”.. 3 hours ago via web

Back to Pete Brown’s real responses: I will consider his first non-moderating response on that as his real response #2 (almost a whole day passed between those, he probably got permission from the above to really respond):]

Pete Brown’s #2 response [06-03-2011 4:30 PM] (Microsoft Community Program Manager – WPF, Silverlight, XNA, Windows Phone, more) (emphasis is mine)

That first link is a gizmodo article [Windows 8 and Its Incredibly Cool New Touch Interface [June 1, 2011]]. Nowhere in there is a microsoft person saying that HTML/Javascript are the exclusive way to write applications. It’s a new way, it’s an exciting way, and, let’s face it, a way that is likely to be hugely popular with web developers.

News outlets make assumptions. I can’t respond to that, neither does MS PR for reasons I don’t entirely fathom.

The press release shows only what we showed that day and is carefully worded to state as much. It doesn’t speak to Windows 8 as a whole.

I’m not a PR person. I don’t know why we word things the way we do, or why we show certain things. I’m just asking folks not to make assumptions here (one way or the other) based on information we haven’t actually shared.

We can’t say anything else until September. Trust me that the previous thread was visible at some of the highest levels inside Microsoft (one reason I edited to remove the trolls and insulting that was a problem and obscuring the message the thread was sending)

To be very clear: I’m not saying anything here other than “wait for //build/” and our press release is the official word until you hear otherwise from PR or top Microsoft leadership. There are no promises being made here. I’m not stating support or lack of support for any specific technology or group of technologies.

Pete Brown’s #3 response [06-03-2011 5:33 PM] (emphasis is mine)

Guys, don’t make it personal. It’s heading down the same road as next time.

Keep it to issues on topic. Keep it civil. Don’t be mean. Be respectful. Remember, we’re all peers here, not enemies.

Pete Brown’s #4 response [06-03-2011 6:32 PM] (emphasis is mine)

g.t.:

We spent 2 years developing a WPF project, and after all what I have seen, I am defiantly going html5 + JavaScript.

This makes zero sense to me and seems reactionary rather than a well-thought-out architectural decision.

You saw that you can write WPF apps for Windows 8. “Existing apps will run”. TBD if they can use the new shell, but they do run in classic mode at a minimum.

While I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the majority of internal business applications are not going to make use of the new tile interface in a big way. Why? From my own informal surveys and 15 years in consulting (I’ve been at Microsoft just over 1.5 years), most business users, developers, and managers, are still stuck in “500 fields and a 100 column datagrid” mode when designing apps. It’s rare to find a team with a real UX pro involved up-front and who have the capability, skill, desire (and time/funding) to move beyond that. In addition, many businesses still run XP, or they run Windows 7 and will continue to do so for a long time. Windows 8 won’t be released for some time, and 7 is a very good OS with long legs. I’ve even seen businesses that require their users to stick with the classic Win2k style shell no matter what OS.

That all said, we’re squarely targeting WPF at ISV type applications, and Silverlight at business developers. I’ve been saying that one for a while now. That has no bearing on what we’re doing for Windows 8. Whether or not you can target the tile interface using anything beyond HTML/JS/CSS is a question for the //build/ conference to answer.

Silverlight 5 is still in progress. WPF v.next is still in progress. Both are scheduled for release. Both are real products with real features that real developers find really useful 🙂

Finally, we don’t have the full story. Making future architectural decisions based on assumptions from demos is irresponsible. Saying we should tell you more does not change the fact that you are making a decision based on a very minimal amount of evidence.

Pete

Pete Brown’s #5 response [06-05-2011 1:52 AM] (emphasis is mine)

GOD_G:

In september I expect to see in Pete’s blog articles like “The Present of Silverlight and WPF!” and “A lap around HTML5!”

I’m not a good Javascript developer. I dabble from time to time just with my site, but I have other people on my team who are currently doing an awesome job covering that side (Jon and Joe). Plus, if you knew me or my history in the WPF and Silverlight community (I doubt you do given your newness here), I’m not really one for party-line messaging.

History will be the only thing that shows what I do in September. Anything else is just additional speculation.

Until then, fire away. Going after me is easy at the moment (as a community guy, I expect this), but unfortunately that’s doing nothing to further your purposes. I’m not offended, but I feel like if you’d apply that energy to a different approach, you might accomplish something.

FWIW, With the exception of the few posts that came in after the thread lock in the old thread (*I* think there was a race condition there, but the site dev team doesn’t quite agree<g>), I haven’t deleted posts criticizing me or Microsoft, just those attacking other members, and none in this new thread so far.

Pete Brown’s #6 response [06-05-2011 2:02 AM] (emphasis is mine)

HephaistosX:

“The interface is so new that applications will have to be re-written for it from the ground up, just like DOS applications had to be re-written for Windows. These new applications will have interesting qualities. For example, they’ll be written in either HTML5 or JavaScript”

Unless it came directly from the mouth of Microsoft – specifically through our press releases, it’s not “fact”. It’s “speculation”.

Unfortunately, that’s what news outlets do – it helps to pull in readers when they appear to be offering additional detail. They don’t have access to any more detail than the rest of the public.

Pete Brown’s #7 response [06-05-2011 2:48 PM] (emphasis is mine)
Light Crystal:

I invested 3 years of my life to study C#, XAML and Silverlight framework, MVVM pattern to build games. 2 Years ago, it was a party, was all super happy times, just before the damn iphone take foot along the market. And now “ipèd” too. Apple and Google have no dev tools, so they leverage the standard one just to not be pitiful, and they have had success, unfortunately.
Now, i’m ready to start a new company with a huge project, and i’m BLOCKED until September.

Why are you blocked? Why does an operating system your customers won’t have for years block you from using tools that are out *now*? Silverlight 5 will be released before end of year, as promised. Nothing has changed there.

While I know direction is very important for long-term planning, as developers we need to stop chasing the shiny ball and instead use what best serves us and our customers today. Keep an eye to what is in the future, but don’t block your current projects because of that.

It’s like buying PC components. I’ve built every PC I’ve owned since my last and only boxed purchase: an IBM PS/1 286 (which itself followed the Commodore 128 I got for Christmas). Each time I do that, I have to make a decision as to what CPU/memory/motherboard etc. to purchase as there is *always* something better coming down the pike. Those better chips often mean different memory architectures and lots of other things. However, if I waited each time instead of using the best of what I had right then, I’d still be running that 286 I had before I built my first computer, a 486dx33.

This is by no means a comment on how the message is being handled, nor am I downplaying the impact here. I totally understand what’s going on; I haven’t had enough Kool-aid to lose that 🙂

As a former consultant for 13 years (where I did VB4,5,6, SQL Server, .NET, WPF, Silverlight and more) and internal IT guy for 4 years before that (doing lots of projects in a mix of VB3, Powerbuilder, Delphi, dBase, FoxPro, QBasic, and Borland C++ – when was the last time our portfolios were that diverse?), I’m just hoping to offer a little perspective. We should work with what we have today, and with what we know for sure is coming short-term, especially when all we have to go on otherwise is speculation.

At its core, last week’s questions, votes, threads and more come down to:
- What can we use to write Modern / Immersive applications in Windows 8
- What’s going to run on tablets
I’m not sure that either of those impact that vast majority of business developers in a real day-to-day way other than peace of mind (which is important, but not business critical). For sure there will be lots of app developers targeting the new stuff, but for most, it won’t come for quite a while. There’s the Windows release schedule, then the adoption schedule, then the internal IT adoption schedule (which is always way behind), then the ramp up on taking advantage of the new features of the OS.

For a bit now, we’ve been saying “Silverlight for high-end media and business applications, HTML for broad reach and consumer-oriented stuff, Silverlight/XNA on phone, and WPF for ISV (big shrinkwrapped apps)”. I haven’t heard/seen anything that would make me change that recommendation.

For the people who are quick to jump on “Silverlight is dead” at companies, I can’t help you there. Those folks were looking for any excuse. Every nugget of news that comes out gets reinterpreted as that, despite Microsoft having come out and explicitely stated several times that these technologies aren’t dead. We had a Silverlight firestarter 7 months ago, and despite the HTML-heavy messaging at MIX, we also had a bunch of Silverlight 5 sessions *and* the release of Silverlight 5 beta.

And when things do change sometime in the future (eventually, everything has to change – nothing is forever, this is not a comment about anything short-term) you and your management should take a measured approach to transition to the new technology. This is no different than many other migrations. Heck, I’ve been trying for a while to get people to move from Windows Forms (a technology which is being maintained, but not enhanced) but folks want to stay there. When I give Silverlight talks at events like Tech Ed, the vast majority of the room is still doing Windows Forms projects, many on Windows XP or Vista. That’s the reality of what’s actually out there in businesses. You will have plenty of time to adapt as necessary (or not, as appropriate) and make reasonable and educated decisions about where you want to take your skills personally, and your company as to where it what it wants to leverage.

I have to question any time I hear rumors about projects being canceled or put on hold based on a rumor of where we may take a technology several years down the road. While some of those are certainly sound, the rest seem like either knee-jerk reactions, or the management wasn’t sold on the technology to begin with.

I don’t think anyone here has been wasting time learning these skills.

And while I don’t agree with the extremes on either side of this debate (the “nothing is wrong, why are you complaining” and the “I’ve wasted my career” sides) I do think that, as developers, diversifying your technology portfolio is always a good idea. Specialization can be good, but just like with stocks, if you invest too much in just one thing, your results are going to have lots of peaks and valleys instead of being more even. Of course, the person saying that has spent the last 4+ years deeply specialized, so take that as you will 🙂
Pete Brown’s #8 response [06-05-2011 2:53 PM] (emphasis is mine)

.netdan:

Why doesn’t the Silverlight.net home page get updated as often as it used to?

The blogs keep coming, but what about the News, Community Samples? There used to be loads of samples now theres about 5 a month if were lucky.

The showcase hasn’t been updated for ages, there used to be 10+ new showcases every 2 weeks or so, what’s happened to that?

Silverlight has a future I’m sure, I just wonder what exactly it is.

I curate a fair bit of this stuff. Here’s an explanation

Community Samples: They need to be written by the community. They’re just not coming as quickly as they used to. This is both because what’s there already covers almost all the easy scenarios, and because many Silverlight devs are doing WP7

Showcase: I took it upon myself to start weeding out old stuff, and to raise the bar for new submissions. Showcase needs to be showcase-level material, not a dumping ground. While I’m not yet where I want to be there, we have certainly rejected a lot more things than we had before. If the submission doesn’t meet the bar and they’re willing to include source code, I ask them to submit to the community samples.

Even blogging has slowed down. That’s partially because it’s the summer, partially because folks are waiting for the next release, and partially because many Silverlight devs are doing WP7 work.

FWIW, we’re also working on the next version of this site. Check it out at http://beta.silverlight.net

Just some insight 🙂

Pete Brown’s #9 response [06-05-2011 3:29 PM] (emphasis is mine)

SilentObserver:

ray reymond:

Lure disheartened SL/WPF/.Net folks to Android world, “Look Java and C# are almost the same so there’s not much transition pain, and we are serious about supporting Android. We will not back-stab you guys like Microsoft just did.

And it’s working for them. My team needs to kick off building a relatively simple app for tablets during this and next month. Since Microsoft is giving us the silent treatment until September, I’ve started watching the android dev videos here: http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=Oq05KqjXTvs . We will be evaluating the platform while waiting for clarifications from Microsoft. It’s a familiar concept for every SL developer. Their tools aren’t as good and C# has surpassed Java, so it would be a step down for us. But not as big of a step down as moving to javascript. The back-stabbing argument is probably the most important of all. We need to be able to trust our OS vendor and Microsoft has lost a tremendous amount of developer loyalty.

I’m with you all in that we could have/should have handled this better. However, I don’t think we’ve back-stabbed anyone. No one at Microsoft said HTML is the only way to go here, it’s just an approach we’re highlighting at the moment.

Unfortunately, we have a long-standing policy of not responding to press rumors and whatnot, so we can’t say anything about the interpretations the press has put out based on this small demo. I’m not even supposed to be posting about this here, but as the community guy for SL/WPF etc., I can’t help myself.

Yeah, “Wait until September” sucks for people who want to know *now*, but it’s not backstabbing. Remember, most other companies simply tell you nothing until the product is launched. We tried to give some info about something that we know will excite a segment of the community. I’m very concerned that the backlash is going to lead to silence being SOP in the future. 😦 I’m not blaming anyone, just pointing out a possible outcome.

Pete Brown’s #10 response [06-05-2011 3:43 PM]

Just a quick reminder for folks to keep it civil. I’ve seen a few posts that are starting to lean a little too far over the edge. Let’s keep language wars out (you won’t resolve anything), and no personal attacks.

Thanks.

Pete Brown’s #11 response [06-05-2011 3:57 PM] (emphasis is mine)

SilentObserver:

If the above is true, there is nothing to be gained by keeping it secret. So we must conclude that it isn’t true, at least as of now.

We know we can get the “legacy desktop” experience. However, our customers are doctors who own the lastest Apple gadgets. They expect us to deliver the same experience on their medical devices. If we are confined to the legacy desktop, we won’t be able to do that.

If you’re planning to develop for Windows 8 tablets, you have plenty of time. The wait until September is pretty short in comparison.

You’re also making an assumption based on the absence of information. “I didn’t hear from Joe, so he must be dead.” seems far less logical than just keeping it unknown – well, until some reasonable period passes anyway. There’s something about a box and a cat that applies here, but I’m not going there 🙂

I know it’s going to be a long summer now, and I know this is very frustrating and has everyone on edge, but I encourage you to reserve judgment until //build/. Then, once we’ve come forth with a good and full picture of Windows 8 plans, rather than just a quick consumer-focused preview, make your informed decisions.

Pete Brown’s #12 response [06-05-2011 4:59 PM] (emphasis is mine)

SilentObserver:

I appreciate you trying to calm everybody down . You’ve been given an impossible task by your PR people.

Thanks. Not anything that was given me. In fact, we’re supposed to just be quiet. That’s not in my genes, though.

I’m not so much interested in calming folks down as I am interested in getting to the core issues here and getting folks to keep any criticism on target (not attacking HTML devs or Silverlight devs, for example). And, of course, to remind folks that we’ll be talking much more about Windows 8 at //build/

Pete Brown’s #13 response [06-05-2011 5:00 PM]

SilentObserver:

A more accurate analogy would be : “I know Joe and Jim were fighting in the parking lot, and Jim just showed up very happy, so Joe must be badly bruised.” 🙂

lol. You win that one 🙂

Pete Brown’s #14 response [06-05-2011 5:06 PM] (emphasis is mine)

brosner88:

A pretty, elegant or easy to use shell UI is can be a nice selling feature to end users. It does nothing for developers.

And here we get to the crux. That demonstration video was not for developers. //build/ is for developers. HTML was mentioned as pretty much everyone gets it, even non-developers. And, quite frankly, that’s pretty cool that we’re doing that; a company that has gotten (in some cases, deserved) flak for not adopting standards is now incorporating one into the heart of their flagship product.

Yes, we mentioned HTML, but no one showed code. If it was meant for developers, you *know* we’d have had someone up there with an IDE open.

So: that demo, the walk-through video, and the related press release were all for non-devs, //build/ is for devs.

Pete Brown’s #15 response [06-05-2011 5:16 PM] (emphasis is mine)

jackbond:

Psychlist1972:

know it’s going to be a long summer now, and I know this is very frustrating and has everyone on edge, but I encourage you to reserve judgment until //build/.

What if we say no, and that that’s simply unacceptable? I for one am willing to withdraw my app from the marketplace. Anybody else?

That’s entirely your right. I just don’t think it’s a particularly savvy move given that it is based on speculation and rumor which themselves are based on a consumer-focused demo of an unreleased operating system and the related consumer-focused press release.

Pete Brown’s #15 response [06-06-2011 1:11 AM] (emphasis is mine)

kimsk112:

Anyone knows if the Prism group (patterns & practices) is now working mainly on this Silk project (HTML5/JQuery) instead of Silverlight/WPF Prism?

If they stop committing to Silverlight/WPF Prism, I think we know what Microsoft is thinking now.

P&P is a peer team to mine (although much larger), in the same side of devdiv, called EPX. I believe they’re still working on Silverlight/WPF prism; I haven’t heard anything to the contrary. They’ve been beat up a bit in the past, however, for not having enough web guidance. Silk is part of the effort to make up the difference there.

That said, I’m not sure what else there is to add to prism. I haven’t looked at the backlogs, but it has to be getting pretty mature by this point.

The prism book was one of the hottest things at the Developer Guidance/P&P booth at Tech Ed 🙂

Pete Brown’s #16 response [06-06-2011 3:44 PM] (emphasis is mine)

FWIW, we don’t use third-party media outlets to announce things or do damage control unless it’s a quoted interview or video of MS folks. Even then, it’s rare not to have the real annoncement on our PR site.

Pete Brown’s #17 response [06-06-2011 9:29 PM] (emphasis is mine)

In case you haven’t seen this, Hanselman’s “Don’t give bile a permalink” is a good read.

[Why? For things like that: “If you’re a nudist and you give your technical talks on C# naked, I likely won’t be there to watch your talk. You may feel REALLY strongly about nudism, and I wish you well. You may believe in the legalization of drugs and prefer to give your technical presentations high, and I say, kudos, but I and others may not show. There are some social norms, and you should know what they are and know how strongly you feel about them when you take your message to a larger audience. ”]

From a quite opinionated but quite unsatisfied previous insider: http://twitter.com/#!/MossyBlog

Scott Barnes

@MossyBlog Brisbane
Former Product Manager (Silverlight/WPF) Microsoft Corp, UX Specialist, The guy leading the mob on FIXWPF.org and blogging dude behind RIAGENIC.com
http://www.riagenic.com

his response to the on going debate on Silverlight Forum

MossyBlog response #1 [06-06-2011 10:03 PM] (emphasis is mine)

A few points if I may:

Not saying anything is one thing admitting it… dear god why. This isn’t directed at Pete to all staff members, if you can’t get involved in the discussion then avoid the discussion completely. Jumping into the fray and asking all to calm down while at the same time not offering answers is not wise. It only fuels further conspiracy theories for one and secondly it creates a focused point of frustration for all to increment geek-rage at. Either join the discussion or don’t but not half-way.

Perception vs Reality. The amount of times when we use to deal with constant battles around Silverlight mainly from a perception base vs the reality was a daily occurenceso Microsoft Staff, while I admire your bravery here by jumping into the fray with “probably” correct is a diasterous way of handling the corporate communication(s). You’re actually doing more harm that way and if i was still in the Silverlight team i’d be making moves to put a gag order on you for it – its not your motivates aren’t righteous but you are actually now validating some of the speculation by keeping it half-yes half-no.

New Joins vs Trolling. On one hand its great to see new members whilst on the other hand its sad under these circumstances. The point of order here is this, Corporate Comms 101 is a tire fire right now, people are frustrated and having an outlet like this to voice such concerns is a beast that well – staff – you created. If people are joining to either remain anonymous and voice their rage or so on, so be it all you can all do is reallly just sit and listen …that..or join the conversaton and start squashing some of the rumous / speculation mentioned earlier. Time to get involved.

Moderation. If you have a situation whereby the villagers are going to storm your gates, its better to marshall them into an area you can control more to the point you can isolate. Having such a firm strict hand on a forum such as this isn’t smart as what you’re really saying to the hordes of both positive & negative emotion is “take your fight elsewhere”. You don’t want that, you want this isolated and pocketed to one area of the web as much as possible as when you do finally do your reveal in September you can then provide a much more sturdier platform to voice your smackdowns. Right now this is just plain stupid.

Pete. Personally I am fan of your work and will often support you even when I think you’re wrong because at the end of the day you work very hard to make a difference to communities like this. My personal advice to you is step aside, don’t take this bullet as the Windows team have some damage to fixand as some managers in the Silverlight team used to say “If you going to break up a fight, be prepared to be punched in the face”.

Let the horde vent their rage, its fast creating a marshalling point for you to provide some much needed corporate communication(s) to down the track.

To the masses here on this thread: You can argue amongst yourselves all you want, to what end? all you’re really doing is seeing who can bark the loudest.. the reality is this won’t have impact as the decisions around this entire messaging framework if you want to call it that goes much higher than those who moderate / read these forums. At best all staff like Pete can do etc is provide a thread or snippet of quotes to execs in a “quoted” format with “Please help me help you” call to action. It’s more than likely that email will be ignored.

My advice – wait this HTML5 bubble gum pop idea out as it’s one thing to say “all devs will create HTML5 apps” and its entirely another to have it happen. This is about the 4th time Windows team have tried to kickstart the HTML pipedream and what they fail to realise is that folks who do adopt Microsoft tech enjoy .NET [while] folks who don’t, just don’t like Microsoft as a brand and it mainly has nothing to do with technology discussion. Can’t imagine why they loose faith in the brand though? can you 😉
–
Scott Barnes
Former Product Manager (well 1yr ago lol) for Silverlight/WPF 🙂
–
Scott Barnes
Anti-Evangelist

To which came the following:
npolyak1 reminder [06-06-2011 11:29 PM]

And here is an article by Scott Barnes written last September warning everyone about what is coming (would we all listen to him)

http://www.riagenic.com/archives/363

npolyak1 addendum #1 [06-06-2011 11:40 PM] (emphasis is mine)

Excerpt from Scott’s article:

I’m simply about highlighting the disconnect here and if the Windows 8 / IE teams of today think that Silverlight / WPF is something they can deprecate because they dislike people in DevDiv or its current model then think again, as this is one of those rare moments in time where you have a hung jury in terms of which of the two is really the best bet.

npolyak1 addendum #2 [06-06-2011 11:41 PM]

Apparently Windows 8 / IE teams decided that they indeed can deprecate WPF and SL. Moreover, MS seems to allow them to get away with it.

npolyak1 addendum #3 [06-06-2011 11:48 PM]

Windows team seem to have gotten what they wanted – they destroyed the developer tools division, but they are also destroying a large part of Microsoft – in my estimate this crazy idea will cost at least $50 billion in market capitalization.

Drzog response to npolyak1 [06-06-2011 11:51 PM] (emphasis is mine)

Interesting article – it explains much, and is very disconcerting. Call it conspiracy theory, but I’ve noticed a number of HIGHLY VISIBLE Silverlight marketing links are not functional on the following prominent Microsoft websites:

(1) http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ This is the entry point URL for anyone inquiring about Silverlight, and ranks first or second when searching on “Silverlight”. Guess what? Click the first thing you see — the “Play” button — and then “Launch Demos” and sadly, none of the first three video streaming examples work. SHAMEFUL.

(2) http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/future/ This is Microsoft’s “The Future of Microsoft Silverlight” page. Click the first call to action button “Watch the Silverlight Five Announcement” — guess what? NO VIDEO. Then try the “High Quality WMV” link. Guess what — staggered and strobed pixelation. SHAMEFUL.

These are Microsoft’s leading URLs for Silverlight information. Go figure.

Scott Barnes response to the erietta [user experience designer. news hound. art lover. in Sydney] 10 hours ago [vs 06-07-2011 11:00 CET]

UI experts upbeat on Windows 8 preview itnews.com.au/News/259674,ui… via @itnews_au what say you @MossyBlog ?

So copied here: UI experts upbeat on Windows 8 preview [June 6, 2011] (emphasis in bold is mine)

But are icons more effective?

User interface experts have expressed surprise at the re-design of the Windows OS interface, giving Microsoft the thumbs up for touch-based gestures and use of web app development standards.

The new interface, previewed late last week, replaces menu bars and icons with tiles akin to Windows Mobile 7.

A panel of Australian user interface gurus told iTnews the preview was significant.

Whereas web applications were once developed to mimic richer desktop applications, users now prefer the simplicity and ease of navigation of web applications.

Today, the desktop OS attempts to mimic the web.

“Hallelujah, at last, someone got it!” said Anthony Colfelt, Creative Director at web user experience firm, Different.

Microsoft’s tiles “take the best from informational web-design and applies it to the main computer UI,” he said.

He was particularly impressed that Microsoft has chosen to run applications developed with HTML 5 and Javascript, to prepare for an “inevitable shift toward light-weight terminal computers that rely on web-served applications.”

Colfelt said Microsoft was “finally attempting to lead in the area of UI and experience, rather than following Apple.”

“It has always been to Microsoft’s advantage to open up their system (for a reasonable fee) to the masses of developers and hardware manufacturers,” he said.

”Lots of programmers and machines equals lots of cheap programs and computers, and that means lots of accessibility for the consumer.”

Richard Edwards, Principal Analyst at Ovum said the preview proved Microsoft is still a “viable market-maker.”

Made for tablets

Shane Morris, director at UI specialists Automatic Studio said the interface “shows that Microsoft is serious about embracing touch and slate-based modes of use within Windows itself – as it should be.

“Clearly Microsoft has thought hard about how to integrate the casual consumption model of tablet devices with ‘real’ operating system features like multi-tasking, file system access and rich applications that require extensive user input, like Office.” he said.

“Why abandon the power and familiarity of Windows if they can possibly help it?

“The use of scrolling panels of tiles is a natural extension of the use of tiles and panning ‘panoramas’ in Windows Phone 7, which are proving popular with users,” he said.

“Swiping left and right to scroll through choices is a very natural action, and leverages both spatial memory and muscle memory to help users find and re-find what they need.”

But Morris pointed out that the preview did not reveal any on-screen cues to users to show them how swiping in from the edge of the screen could activate operating system features like task switching. This could prove a sticking point until users grew used to the concept, he said.

Colfelt also noted that many of these same interactions would “feel clumsy using a mouse.

“That could cause RSI if the user gets too excited about using them,” he noted.

The only point on which the experts disagreed was the use of tiles on the home page. Whilst Colfelt felt it was a solution to what he calls “information spelunking” (areas of a site easy to fall into and hard to find your way back out of), Morris felt Microsoft was abandoning icons that have historically proven far more effective.

Tiles, Morris said, are difficult to differentiate and can crowd the screen.

“The use of larger, consistently sized tiles containing dynamic content has the potential to create a vista that ‘yells’ at the user – and the demonstrated use of bright, saturated colours might actually make it difficult for users to discriminate between tiles and to focus on individual tile content,” he said.

“We know that people use various cues to search the visual field. Outline shape is one of the primary prompts to help people discriminate and identify objects visually. The dominant and consistent rectangular shape of the tiles themselves means Windows 8 users cannot use this outline shape as the primary cue. They must instead rely on colour and the actual tile contents. Compare that to the carefully designed icons in Microsoft Office products. Those icons present unique outlines – for good reason.”

Morris raised concerns as to whether Microsoft would continue to support stylus and other pen-based input as well as touch.

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @erietta @itnews_au UI Experts? hah.. thats like saying “Lifecoaches enjoy windows 8” 🙂 9 hours ago

in reply to ↑ @MossyBlog Scott Barnes @erietta @itnews_au the only expert in that conversation was @shanemo and he nailed his remarks well.. wouldn’t say it was upbeat tho 9 hours ago

erietta erietta @ @MossyBlog is your microsoft bias shining through? Anthony is a well qualified UX designer (& my boss you ratbag!) @colfelt @itnews_au. 7 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @erietta @colfelt @itnews_au he is? so am i? so is everyone.. UX Expert is an oxymoron imho 🙂 7 hours ago

erietta erietta @ @MossyBlog @colfelt @itnews_au and I was after YOUR thoughts as you are on the record of sledging microsoft UX design. What say you? 7 hours ago

in reply to ↑ @MossyBlog Scott Barnes @erietta @colfelt @itnews_au i personally think the Tiles Windows8 concept is still unproven firstly & secondly it’s lazy design that furthermore, I don’t think as much thought as one is lead to believe has been put into the science behind it.. the design behind current MS Metro is a state of confused schizo ver of Intrinsic & Extraneous cognitive load. 7 hours ago

in reply to ↑ @erietta erietta @MossyBlog @itnews_au @colfelt This is the Scott I was looking for! Will be interesting to see if the process behind design is revealed. 7 hours ago

replies ↓ MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @erietta @itnews_au @colfelt yeah i mean i feel like a crack record though on my metro insighs..basically i like its attitude not execution 7 hours ago

——————————–

colfelt Anthony Colfelt @MossyBlog @erietta @itnews_au having worked alongside a few MS UX team members, I know PLENTY of thought went into the design. 9 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au pink had potential and there were far better ideas on the table early on

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au it’s principles are great it’s execution is lazy 9 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

colfelt Anthony Colfelt @MossyBlog @erietta Isn’t it a tad insulting to them to suggest otherwise? 9 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta so? Want to play in the big leagues be prepared to backup the science behind it all 9 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta this execution panders to making engineers I to designers without context or personality 9 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta current metro designs are what I call shoplifting for designers

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta it’s in my view the same as buying ui art from a $1 or less store

colfelt Anthony Colfelt @MossyBlog @erietta I doubt most those reading @itnews_au cares abt the science. But next time, maybe they’ll ask a REAL expert to comment. 9 hours ago

in reply to ↑ @MossyBlog Scott Barnes @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au let me know if u meet one. I watched $1m usd research try and find one and it failed :$

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au btw i’m not looking to attack you per say, just the concept of “UX Experts say..”.. its kind of “wtf?” is my pt 8 hours ago

brettatitnews Brett W @ @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au I’m guessing if I’d included @MossyBlog there would be no argument on using the word “expert”. 7 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @brettatitnews @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au wanna take that bet ? 🙂 .. The word expert is an alt word for Life Coach in my vocab 🙂 7 hours ago

brettatitnews Brett W @ @MossyBlog @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au how would you rather be addressed Scott? 7 hours ago

in reply to ↑

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes @brettatitnews @colfelt @erietta @itnews_au Me? why would you address me.. i’m just a developer who designs. 7 hours ago via web

replies ↓

erietta erietta @ @MossyBlog @brettatitnews @colfelt @itnews_au What have I started here?! </flamewars> 7 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @erietta @brettatitnews @colfelt @itnews_au haha 🙂 no.. its just that article came up light..i want more meat on the bone.. 7 hours ago

brettatitnews Brett W @ @MossyBlog @erietta @colfelt @itnews_au I’ll be sure to include you next time Scott. 6 hours ago

MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @brettatitnews @erietta @colfelt @itnews_au hah.. that’d be funny. 6 hours ago

MORE FROM SCOTT BARNES

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes Blog Post:: Understanding “Why would Microsoft do that?” http://bit.ly/m8lRiL 8 hours ago via RIAGENIC Blog

Microsoft on five key technology areas and Windows 8 –UPDATED [Dec 15, 2012] with full content up to delivery and change of command

May 24, 2011 2:35 pm / 8 Comments on Microsoft on five key technology areas and Windows 8 –UPDATED [Dec 15, 2012] with full content up to delivery and change of command

After this update there are three detailed sections in the post:

Julie Larson-Green’s and her team journey to build the new Windows 8 and Windows Live experience and getting to the top of the whole product group
The follow-up posts to the original May 2011 one
The original May 2011 post, which described the five key technology areas for the Windows 8 journey which Microsoft earlier (in H2 CY2009]
– identified to transform the industry over the next few years, and
– was committed to investing and innovating and leading
These were:
1. Natural user interface
2. Natural language
3. HTML and JavaScript
4. Chip and form factors
5. The cloud

As the end-result of that effort we had delivery shown in Microsoft Windows 8 – Launch Event Keynote Highlights [HD] [BuildingWindows YouTube channel, Oct 28, 2012]

Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows from [0:01] to [1:42]; Julie Larson Green, Corporate Vice President, Windows Program Management and Michael Angiulo, Corporate Vice President, Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem [1:49] to [4:28]; Steve Ballmer, CEO from [4:30] to [6:43].

Then came:
Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [this same ‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog, Nov 13-20, 2012]
resulting also in Julie Larson Green’s promotion to the top job of leading all Windows software and hardware engineering, and in her membership in the Senior Leadership Team of Microsoft.

All this during quite a turbulent year at Microsoft, with quite a lot at stake, as shown in:
2012: A Year of Microsoft Milestones [Microsoft YouTube channel, Dec 12, 2012]

From Windows 8 to Surface to ‘Halo 4,’ 2012 was a momentous year for Microsoft. See how Microsoft is building its devices and services foundation for the year to come.

Going into the detailed sections below (including the linked posts in the second section) you will be able to judge for yourself how much Microsoft would be able to transform the ICT industry over the next few years. All this is, certainly, in addition to your own experience with Windows 8 on a proper touch device. Your own experience should also last as long as from two days to two weeks depending on how deep you are involved in the old way of doing things with mouse and keyboard, as well your degree of resistance to change.

1. Julie Larson-Green’s and her team journey
to build the new Windows 8 and Windows Live experience
and getting to the top of the whole product group

Update: When she started the journey:
Interview with Julie Larson-Green about Office 2007 and Windows 7 [BryZad YouTube channel, Nov 21, 2009]

Her Microsoft Office achievement is well described in the description of her 2008 Outstanding Technical Leadership award:

In revamping the interface of Microsoft Office 2007, Larson-Green effected a paradigm shift in one of the company’s most successful products.

“At first, no one wanted to change Office dramatically,” says Julie Larson-Green, who was tasked with overseeing a reimagining of the product’s end-user interaction and overall experience in the fall of 2003. Larson-Green’s leadership of Microsoft Office 2007’s redesign, the most radical revamp in the product’s history, required immense courage and conviction, to which this award attests.

A specialist in user-interface design, Larson-Green began working with Office in 1997, when she program-managed FrontPage. She subsequently helmed UI design for Office XP and Office 2003, which had evolved into a large organization of carefully negotiated compromises among the application suite’s various programs. Although Office’s great success was based on customer familiarity, the Customer Experience Improvement Program was indicating that users, while basically happy with the product, were increasingly either unaware of (possibly redundant) functions among Office’s different programs or frustrated by the amount of training necessary to use an astonishingly complex set of commands, dialogs, and interaction modes.

After deciding that Office needed to be made easier to use, Larson-Green’s team arrived at the elegant solution of the browsable Ribbon (or Office Fluent user interface) and its contextual cousins that united the product’s common capabilities and ease of experimentation. “The breakthrough,” Larson-Green says, “arrived with contextualizing the user interface and realizing that all of the product’s features didn’t have to be present all the time.”

SELLING THE REDESIGN

As development of Office 2007 proceeded, Larson-Green was confronted with the equally formidable task of selling the redesign across Office’s various programs. “Our biggest challenge,” she says, “was convincing people that we had an idea that would work.” Heavily invested in the earlier version, the Word, Excel, Outlook, and other organizations were initially reluctant to relegate control to an umbrella design team. Even more significant, Larson-Green had decided not to compromise the integrity of Office 2007 with the safety net of a “classic mode.”

It’s difficult to change the direction of a large organization at the best of times. It’s even more difficult when the goal is still incomplete. Larson-Green’s ability to argue her vision without necessarily being able to address myriad objections in detail is a remarkable trait in a data-driven culture such as Microsoft’s. One by one, however, the suite’s principals bought into the design as it was being tested and fleshed out.

Office 2007 shipped to nearly universal critical acclaim in January 2007, and Larson-Green was promoted to corporate vice president of program management for the Windows Experience. As with Office 2007, she plans to identify and solve customer problems, which will in turn drive a new design and its subsequent engineering. “In the old world,” she notes, “coding would start and design would kind of evolve with the coding.”

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

Flattered by her nomination for the Outstanding Technical Leadership Award, Larson-Green admits to shock at winning. “I was very pleased,” she says, “but also kind of embarrassed. I may have been the ringleader, but I couldn’t have done it without a lot of help from a lot of people.” She cites principal Office User Experience Team Program Manager Jensen Harris, Product Design Manager Brad Weed, General Manager Dave Barthol, and Test Manager Sean Adridge as key collaborators.

As for the prize, Larson-Green will treat its dispensation as a family affair. “Unless we all agree on one, we’re going to split the award and each pick a charity,” she says. “My seven-year-old son has already decided he wants to do something with animals. My fifteen-year-old daughter wants to do something with children. And my economist husband is doing all the research on how much money goes to programs versus administration.”

View Larson-Green’s official press profile.

Update: When she delivered:
Windows 8 Launch Live Event Part 1 – 25/10/2012 [LiveSports TechNews YouTube channel, Oct 25, 2012]

Windows 8 Launch Live Event Part 2 – 25/10/2012 [LiveSports TechNews YouTube channel, Oct 25, 2012]

After that an Interview with Microsoft’s Windows Program head, Julie Larson-Green [VentureBeat YouTube channel, Oct 25, 2012]

Update: before the promotion on Nov 12, 2012 to lead all Windows software and hardware engineering, and becoming member of the Senior Leadership Team of Microsoft, her official corporate biography [Microsoft, Oct 25, 2012] was as follows:

As corporate vice president of program management for Windows at Microsoft Corp., Julie Larson-Green oversees the design and delivery of the Windows operating system. Leading a team of technical engineers, her responsibilities include program management, design research and development of all international releases for Windows 8.

Larson-Green joined Microsoft in 1993 and has focused on technical design and development throughout her career. As a program manager in Development Tools and Languages, she was instrumental in several releases of Visual C++ for 32-bit operating systems and led the development of Microsoft’s first customizable integrated development environment for Windows. Moving to the Windows team, she was responsible for the Internet Explorer 3.0 and Internet Explorer 4.0 user experiences, including features related to the Web-integrated Windows desktop.

Continuing her focus on end-user software, Larson-Green joined the Office team in 1997 and led program management for Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft FrontPage, including the early work in information worker servers. More recently, she has been responsible for leading the user interface design for Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, which was lauded for its innovative reinvention of the user experience for productivity software. Before Windows 8, Larson-Green served as corporate vice president of Windows Experience for Windows 7, charged with leading the design and development of the Windows 7 OS.

Before joining Microsoft, Larson-Green was a senior development engineer at a Seattle-based company that created leading desktop publishing software. She has a master’s degree in software engineering from Seattle University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Western Washington University. A native of Washington state, she lives there with her husband, who is a university professor, and her two children.

This time she had her earlier key collaborator, Jensen Harris again to lead the program management of the user experience. Watch Harris’ presentation about The Story of Windows 8 [keynote on the UX Week, Aug 21, 2012, published on vimeo on Oct 25, 2012] as it is extremely important to the whole story:

UX Week 2012 | Jensen Harris | The Story of Windows 8 from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

… [26:04] David Pierce said [in The Verge that] the Start Screen [of Windows 8] feels like a house made out of the Internet …

The 5 Microsoft (previously Metro) design [style] principles he is talking about

Do more with less, i.e. “fierce reductionism for every piece of UI”
Authentically digital, i.e. “skeumorphism … removing decoration, ornamentation in a ‘Bauhaus‘ style … content over chrome … as in the [3d party] my History Digest application … icons reimagined as tiles”
Pride in craftsmanship, i.e. “caring about every detail … getting details perfect … typographic grid underlying everything on the screen”
Be fast and fluid, i.e. “… feel broadcast TV quality … as in the [3d party] Cocktail Flow application …”

Win as one, i.e. “… have a product feel as designed by one person …”

With the goal of having one device for consumption and productivity

“New Microsoft led by principled design” as the result of all that

About

Jensen Harris is Director of Program Management for the Windows User Experience Team.

He has worked at Microsoft since 1998. Prior to his current job, he was the Group Program Manager of the Microsoft Office User Experience Team, where his team redesigned the user interface for Office 2007 and Office 2010, adding the Ribbon, Live Preview, Backstage View, and other innovations.

Jensen attended Yale University and Interlochen Arts Academy, graduating with degrees in music composition.

For completeness some additional information from Jason Harris:
– Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Product Demo [WindowsVideos YouTube channel, Feb 28, 2012]
– Creating the Windows 8 user experience [Building Windows 8, May 19, 2012], highly recommended reading as gives all the background information, from Windows 1 released in 1985 upto Windows 8.
– Windows 8 UI vision mockups from 2010 [a 3d party report from the UX Week video]
– Jensen Harris: Windows 8′s lockscreen photos are design easter eggs [a 3d party report from the UX Week video]
– 8 traits of great Metro style apps [Channel 9 video of Jansen Harris’ Build2011 session, Sept 13, 2011]
– Notes from BUILD – Day 1 – Big Picture Session 1 – Jensen Harris on 8 Traits of Great Metro Style Apps [Oct 6, 2011]
– bldwin – 8 traits of great Metro style apps (notes in German about Jansen Harris’ Build2011 session) [Sept 13, 2011]
– regarding his earlier achievements see The Story of the Ribbon [Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog, March 12, 2008] with video and slides embedded

And Jensen Harris had a team behind him as well. From that team Bonny Lau, Senior Program Manager, Windows User Experience Team had been the most active member. Here she is briefly talking (click to the link which follows) in a concise way about the same subject what Harris was talking about in great detail a year earlier:
8 traits of great Windows Store apps [Channel 9 video, Oct 18, 2012]

The 8 traits she is talking about:

Microsoft design style

Be fast and fluid (the Cocktail Fow 3d party app is shown again)

Snap and scale beautifully

Use the right contracts

Invest in a great tile

Feel connected and alive

Roam to the cloud

Embrace Microsoft design style principles

Her related materials:
– Creating Metro style apps that stand out from the crowd [Windows 8 app developer blog, July 12, 2012] using the “Food with friends” application shown for Microsoft design style (in Jason Harris’ UX Week keynote as well to illustrate by him the Do more with less design style principle) as an example for development
– Make great Windows Store apps (Windows) as her contribution to “Getting started” MSDN materials for developers
– Designing UX for apps as contribution from her team to MSDN documentation with everything including samples to learn from
– earlier she was with Microsoft Project 2010 Scheduling Engine Project 2010: Bonny Lau [MSFTProject YouTube channel, Oct 28, 2009]

Finally here is a light talk of Bonny Lau about Windows 8 User Experience [MSUserCommunity YouTube channel, Sept 18, 2012]

Do design principles hinder innovation? Bonny Lau explains the reasoning behind theWindows 8user experience and urges developers to leverage design templates as a starting point (not an end point) for design, to push the envelope and build great looking apps.Learn how to make your app the best experience for your users at Generation App. Ready to Get Started? 1.Visit the Windows Developer Center for a myriad of sample, docs and guidelines: http://bit.ly/PwV3sE 2.Join the Generation App program and get a jumpstart building your Windows Store app. http://bit.ly/PwVi6R

Update: The Woman Charged With Making Windows 8 Succeed [MIT Technology Review, Dec 13, 2012]

In a Q&A, Julie Larson-Green explains why Microsoft felt it was necessary to rethink an operating system used by 1.2 billion people.

As the head of Windows product development at Microsoft, Julie Larson-Green is responsible for a piece of software used by some 1.3 billion people worldwide. She’s also the person leading the campaign to introduce as many of those people as possible to Windows 8, the dramatic redesign of the iconic operating system that must succeed if Microsoft is to keep pace with a computing industry now shaped more by phones and tablets than desktop PCs.

Windows 8 throws out design features familiar to Windows users since 1995, swapping in simpler, bolder interfaces designed to be operated using a touch screen. The release of the Surface, a device somewhere between a tablet and laptop, also sees Microsoft break its tradition of leaving the building of hardware to other companies.

Larson-Green took over the role a few weeks ago, after Microsoft veteran Steven Sinofsky left amid rumors of personal disputes with other Microsoft executives. However, Larson-Green has long been a senior figure inside the Windows division and even took the lead on drawing up the first design brief for Windows 8. An expert in technical design, she also led the introduction of the novel, much copied “ribbon” interface for Microsoft Office, widely acknowledged as a major improvement in usability.

Larson-Green met last week with Tom Simonite at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington.

Why was it necessary to make such broad changes in Windows 8?

When Windows was first created 25 years ago, the assumptions about the world and what computing could do and how people were going to use it were completely different. It was at a desk, with a monitor. Before Windows 8 the goal was to launch into a window, and then you put that window away and you got another one. But with Windows 8, all the different things that you might want to do are there at a glance with the Live Tiles. Instead of having to find many little rocks to look underneath, you see a kind of dashboard of everything that’s going on and everything you care about all at once. It puts you closer to what you’re trying to get done.

Windows 8 is clearly designed with touch in mind, and many new Windows 8 PCs have touch screens. Why is touch so important?

It’s a very natural way to interact. If you get a laptop with a touch screen, your brain clicks in and you just start touching what makes it faster for you. You’ll use the mouse and keyboard, but even on the regular desktop you’ll find yourself reaching up doing the things that are faster than moving the mouse and moving the mouse around. It’s not like using the mouse, which is more like puppeteering than direct manipulation.

In the future, are all PCs going to have touch screens?

For cost considerations there might always be some computers without touch, but I believe that the vast majority will. We’re seeing that the computers with touch are the fastest-selling right now. I can’t imagine a computer without touch anymore. Once you’ve experienced it, it’s really hard to go back.

Did you take that approach in Windows 8 as a response to the popularity of mobile devices running iOS and Android?

We started planning Windows 8 in June of 2009, before we shipped Windows 7, and the iPad was only a rumor at that point.

I only saw the iPad after we had this design ready to go. We were excited. A lot of things they were doing about mobile and touch were similar to what we’d been thinking. We [also] had differences. We wanted not just static icons on the desktop but Live Tiles to be a dashboard for your life; we wanted you to be able to do things in context and share across apps; we believed that multitasking is important and that people can do two things at one time.

Can touch coexist with a keyboard and mouse interface? Some people have said it doesn’t feel right to have both the newer, touch-centric elements and the old-style desktop in Windows 8.

It was a very definite choice to have both environments. A finger’s never going to replace the precision of a mouse. It’s always going to be easier to type on a keyboard than it is on glass. We didn’t want you to have to make a choice. Some people have said that it’s jarring, but over time we don’t hear that. It’s just getting used to something that’s different. Nothing was homogenous to start with, when you were in the browser it looked different than when you were in Excel.

I wonder if you’re experiencing a little déjà vu, after previously leading a radical change to the interface for Office that initially met with complaints.

Yes! A lot of it is familiar. Some people who review it for a shorter period of time may not feel how rich it really is. We’re going for the over time impression rather than the first 20 minutes out of the box. We’ve found that the more invested you were in the old way, the more difficult the transition is, which is unfortunate because we first hear about everything in the tech press. Those are the ones that we knew up front are going to have the most challenge.

How long does it take people to adjust?

Two days to two weeks is what we used to say in Office, and it’s similar in Windows 8. We do a “living with Windows” program where we watched people over a series of months in their household. A lot of people don’t have trouble upfront.

What data do you have on how people buying Windows 8 are reacting?

When you sign into your Windows PC, one of the things you get asked is whether you’ll be part of our customer experience improvement program, and if you will, then you’re sending some data to us. Everyone gets asked that. We get terabytes and terabytes of data every day, and we can’t possibly use it all. So far we’re seeing very encouraging things. Over 90 percent of customers, from our data, use the charms and find the start screen all in the first session. Even if you’re a desktop user, over time there’s a cutover point around six weeks where you start using the new things more than the things you’re familiar with.

Microsoft has chosen to make its own hardware for Windows 8 with the Surface tablets. Why not leave that to the equipment manufacturers, as you’ve done in the past?

It was a way to test our hypothesis of a new way of working. It takes time for individuals to adjust, but it also takes time for the industry to adjust to new things—all the complicated things about the supply chain and issues like what sizes of glass gets cut. Surface is our vision of what a stage for Windows 8 should look like, to help show consumers and the industry our point of view on what near perfect hardware would look like. We believe in Surface as a long-term product, but we know that partners will have other innovations and ideas. One of the things that’s always been nice about Windows is choice—you’re not locked into one size, one shape, one color, one version.

Your predecessor, Steven Sinofsky, was widely credited with driving Microsoft to create Windows 8 through sheer force of will. Is that true?

Steven is an amazing leader and an amazing brain and an amazing person, but one person can’t do everything. It’s really about the team that we created and the culture that we created for innovation.

What changes now that you’re in charge?

Not a whole lot. I’ve worked directly with Steven for seven years but known him for the whole 20 years I’ve been at Microsoft. We think a lot the same about what the role of Windows is in society, what computing looks like, and getting people on board with that point of view.

Now that Windows 8 has been released, what are you and your team doing now?

We didn’t really slow down. There are always new technologies to think about that can be helpful to people.

Read more about Microsoft’s efforts to track users’ reaction to Windows 8: Microsoft Has Been Watching and It Says You’re Getting Used to Windows 8.

2. The follow-up posts to the original May 2011 one

Microsoft’s next step in SoC level slot management [May 27 – June 2, 2011]
A too early assesment of the emerging ‘Windows 8’ dev & UX functionality [June 24 – Aug 19, 2011]
Windows 8: the first 12 hours headlines and reports [Sept 14, 2011]
Windows 8 Metro style Apps + initial dev reactions [Sept 15, 2011]
The early 2010 Windows 8 alternative: the Courier tablet [Nov 2, 2011]
Windows 8 gaining smartphone like “connected standby” capability [Nov 23, 2011]
The killing power of bloated web communications [Dec 6, 2011]
The future of Windows Embedded: from standalone devices to intelligent systems [March 9-29, 2012]
Standards-based adaptive layouts in Windows 8 (and IE10) [March 24, 2012]
Giving up the total OEM reliance strategy: the Microsoft Surface tablet [June 19 – July 30, 2012]
The cloud experience vision of .NET by Microsoft 12 years ago and its delivery now with Windows Azure, Windows 8/RT, Windows Phone, iOS and Android among others [Sept 16-20, 2012]
NOOK Media LLC: the finalization of the strategic joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft [Oct 6, 2012]
ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [Oct 17, 2012]
Microsoft Surface: its premium quality/price vs. even iPad3 [Oct 26, 2012]
Microsoft Surface: First media reflections after the New-York press launch [Oct 26-28, 2012]
Acer Iconia W510: Windows 8 Clover Trail (Intel Z2760) hybrid tablets from OEMs [Oct 28 – Dec 14, 2012]
Microsoft Surface with some questions about the performance and smoothness of the experience [Nov 12-28, 2012]
Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [Nov 13-20, 2012]
Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20 – Dec 10, 2012]
Marko Ahtisaari from Nokia and Steven Guggenheimer from Microsoft on the Internet of Things day of LeWeb Paris’12 [Dec 6-8, 2012]

3. The original May 2011 post

Windows 8 on ARM expected to appear by the end of 2011 [DIGITIMES, May 24, 2011] (emphasis is mine)

Tablet PCs that adopt Windows 8 and ARM-based processor are expected to appear by the end of 2011, but due to the platform lack of system performance, the platform will be mainly used for targeting the tablet PC market, according to sources from notebook players.

However, due to the combination still have several issues need to be resolved, most notebook players are taking a conservative attitude toward the new platform and will not rush to open up new projects for the related products.

Due to the Windows 8/ARM platform initially only testing in the tablet PC market, the sources believe the platform is unlikely to affect Intel’s position in the traditional PC segment, while the operating system is also unlikely to impact Google’s Android in the next one year.

Steve Ballmer: Microsoft Developer Forum [Microsoft, May 23, 2011] (emphasis is mine)

There is so much in the way of exciting innovations to look forward to over the next few years. At Microsoft, we’ve identified five things that we think will transform the industry over the next few years, and five areas where Microsoft, as a company, is committed to investing and innovating and leading. We think there will be other companies working in these areas. There are going to be opportunities for developers. Certainly we’re going to see a lot of competition. But these five key technology areas are the ones that I think more than anything else will make people look back and say, wow, computing is fundamentally simpler and easier to use, whether it’s on my phone, my PC, or my TV, than ever before.

The first one I’ll highlight for you is natural user interface. This is the notion that we really want to speak, wave and gesture, touch and mark on our computing devices. We want smart devices to work the way we work, to recognize us and our actions. Speech recognition, vision, handwriting recognition, touch interfaces, these are all part of the theme. And certainly whether it’s in phones, or what we’ve done with Kinect for large room, and living room type environments, for vision, and visual recognition are all emblems of the move in this direction.

…

The second big area of innovation will come in natural language. And the distinction is important. With natural user interface, we’re talking about voice, and vision, and touch. With natural language, we’re really asking ourselves the question, can we let you control your computing environment by expressing intent instead of specific commands. Today on a PC, it’s file open, blah, blah, blah, respond, reply, forward. I can’t just say to my device, get me ready for my trip to Tokyo.

…

The third area that I think will be increasingly important is HTML and JavaScript. We’ve made a big investment, obviously, in Windows and IE9 in our HTML and JavaScript support, but more and more of the world’s programmers will be fluent in these technologies in addition to whatever skills people have in C++ and C# and a variety of other important skills. But we have to recognize that more and more of the world’s talent will know these techniques. And whether it’s writing a website or a client application, or a server application, we want to build and develop the range of things that you can do not only using .NET, but also in using HTML and JavaScript. And, in fact, even how you can weave these things together into sensible programs in the future.

No. 4 is chip and form factors. Just think back three or four years ago and how quickly performance and size, and miniaturization and the move to ARM processors has happened. We’ve announced with Windows that we’re going to support system-on-a-chip architectures, not only from Intel and AMD, but also from a set of ARM vendors.

The form factor of the devices that we all use will continue to change. I think there will be a day in the future where it will be hard to distinguish a phone from a slate, from a PC. You literally will have displays that become paper thin and very easy to fold out form your phone. And at the same time, you’re going to get more and more PC-like capabilities in smaller form factor devices.

Last, but certainly not least is the cloud. And with both Azure, Windows Azure and SQL Azure, as well as Office 365, we’ve made a major step into the cloud. I’m sure I’ll get a few questions about Skype. Skype is just another representation of what we think is the importance of enabling a broad range of scenarios in the cloud. If those are the technologies, the flipside is to ask what can we do with them? They’re all great, but what will we, Microsoft, do and what do we expect the developers that we work with here in Japan, and across the world to do?

…

We’re obviously hard at work on the next version of Windows. Windows 7 PCs will sell over 350 million units this year. We’ve done a lot in Windows 7 to improve customer satisfaction. We have a brand new user interface. We’ve added touch, and ink, and speech. And yet, as we look forward to the next generation of Windows systems, which will come out next year, there’s a whole lot more coming. As we progress through the year, you ought to expect to hear a lot about Windows 8. Windows 8 slates, tablets, PCs, a variety of different form factors.

The browser is an area where we’ve been very active. Internet Explorer 9 is the fastest browser around because of the way that we’ve married it to Windows systems and allow essentially full exploitation of the hardware to have the fastest and most beautiful Web on the planet run on Windows systems.

We’ve integrated the browser into Windows more fully, so that you can put jumplists, and pin those to the taskbar on Windows. We’ve improved JavaScript performance. We’re running on downloads that are about five times the rate of customer acceptance that we saw on IE8, and when it comes to HTML and JavaScript, and the browser, there will be simply no one who pushes that, not Google, not Firefox, nobody will push that faster and harder than we push with IE.

Microsoft’s Ballmer says next-gen Windows systems due in 2012 [ZDNet, May 23, 2011]

During remarks at a developers conference in Japan on May 23, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer referred to the next version of Windows as “Windows 8.” He also said the next generation of Windows systems will be out next year.

To those not following Microsoft’s Windows saga closely, this may seem like a “so what” moment. But Microsoft execs have been studiously avoiding any references to the timing or naming of the next version of Windows to try to keep the specifics of the product as quiet as possible. Microsoft’s top brass has been avoiding calling the next version of Windows “Windows 8″ publicly, preferring instead to call it “Windows Next.” (Internally, a number of Microsoft job postings and leaked slides have referenced “Windows 8,” however.”

…

Update: OK, believe it or not, the “official” response is Ballmer’s statement isn’t what it seems to be… Sent from a Microsoft spokesman earlier tonight:

““It appears there was a misstatement. We are eagerly awaiting the next generation of Windows 7 hardware that will be available in the coming fiscal year. To date, we have yet to formally announce any timing or naming for the next version of Windows.”

And, as usual, there are many ways to interpret these remarks. Is the next-generation Windows release nothing but Windows 7 with new paint? Windows 8 not the final name for the next version of Windows? (The final name possibly being something other than Windows 8 is something that I’ve heard from my tipsters…) You be the judge….

Welcome to technologies trend tracking for 2015⇒2019 !

May 19, 2016: The technology breakthrough which will lead to industry shakeout like that of between 1976-2016:

More information: The Next Revolution: 3D XPoint™non-volatile memories with speed and performance close to DRAM

Special message for those people who are hating long posts, especially if there are several of them. Also a warning that your “well founded” technological and industry trend opinions are now quickly becoming invalid as we are at an overall inflection point for all technology related industries. And this is bringing disruption (in terms of business continuity management) even to the recent disruptors whether they like it or not. So you need a decent technology trend tracking more than any time before. And you won’t, you couldn’t spare a “deep dive” into the very core of the technologies for the “experiencing of the cloud” from now on whether you like it, or not. So it is better to start such a deep dive as early as possible, and this website is providing great help in that for you.

[v0.7 yet] You came to a technologies trend tracking website maintained by Sandor Nacsa from Csömör, Hungary, and first you see the newest homepage content available since June 25, 2015.

First take a careful look at the “Prerequisites (June 2015⇒)” on the right (not all are available yet, the last “Windows for Networked Society” will be available in August only, and likely in a v0.X version). That is reflecting the transition to post 2015 content geared towards the emerging “Networked Society [v0.5 yet]” from the post 2009 one which was representing ‘only’ the then emerging “Mobile Internet” phenomenon.

While the latter was still reminescent of the 2nd half of 20^thcentury’s “Computerized Society” this new type of content will embrace trend tracking for the full core technology landscape underlying the formation of this “Networked Society”. And note that such a society will as much determine the state of globality in the 1st half of the 21^st century as the previous one determined the 2nd half of the last century in our global world.

The current transitional content is required for the exploration of the best ways to do technology trend tracking in these wider and longer ranging circumstances. So please accept as such. Especially the inevitable length of the proper prerequisites. Unfortunately they are absolutely necessary for understanding upcoming posts as they will be short.

For the start here I’am introducing my rationale for all that in the form of a mixed infographics & meme:

My composite assumptions about the strategic setup in the cloud space determining the future of the “Networked society” as of June 2015

Gartner Magic Quadrant Cases for Advanced Analytics Platforms and BI & Analytics platforms (19 and 20 of February 2015) as examples for understanding the Gartner research methodology. Click for the large view, and then have a look to the detailed reports which are behind. The links for that are provided here as well, thanks to Microsoft interest in paying to Gartner on behalf of everybody in these 2 cases.

Note:
The mixed infographics & meme provided above is heavily relying on representations of the competitive landscapes in most important for our case technology areas, namely: “Enterprise Application Platform as a Service (Enterprise Application PaaS)”, “Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (Cloud IaaS)” and “Public Cloud Storage Services” . The Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology—which is behind these representations—provides a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers in fast-growing markets: Leaders, Visionaries, Niche Players and Challengers.

Most IT buyers will use the MQ to short list the vendors that they will talk to for their technology service that they are looking for. These Gartner MQs (as well as the “competing with that” Forrester Waves) also get used in justifying the purchase decision that they made at the end of the buying cycle. It will be misleading, however, to be satisfied with those evaluations. Especially in the case of crucial underpinnings which Enterprise Application PaaS and Cloud IaaS definitely are. IT buyers should carry out their own further investigations—based on the short list obtained on Gartner MQs, Forrester Waves or others—before making such important decisions. To show a different kind of equally important for modern enterprises MQs I’ve composed the clickable illustration available above. It shows MQs for 2 interrelated technology areas of strategic importance: “Advanced Analytics Platforms” and “Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms“. Even the changes over the previous years are represented in some way there. Technology vendors appearing in a favorable quadrant, like Leaders, will quite often pay to Gartner for making the full report available on-line for a certain period in time. This is the case of Microsoft here, so I provided the above links as well. Software buyers will use that full content, not simply the graphical representation when working even on creating their short lists. So you should do the same if you want to understand the MQ methodology on these 2 example, which is easier to do for this analytics stuff as they are a much more general topic than anything else.

In addition to the following infomation representing the OpenStack V4 level state-of-technology-development as of June 25, 2015 see my related, but specific update post:
– OpenStack adoption (by Q1 2016), ‘Experiencing the Cloud’, June 7, 2016

OpenStack Promise as per Moogsoft -- June 3, 2015 And now we came to the issue of OpenStack which is the only available open source technology primarily deployed as an IaaS solution. Its promise has been huge, but “OpenStack is heading to the Trough of Disillusionment on the Technology Adoption Curve” as it was characterized by Randy Bias in his State of the Stack v4 address to the attendees of the OpenStack Summit held on May 20, 2015:

OpenStack is heading to the Through of Disillusionment on the Technology Adoption Curve -- 20-May-2014 by Randy Bias in his State of the Stack v4 address

Randy told the audience there: “This is some information from Gartner and some others. Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of coaching I find. But what I found most interesting is this quote at the bottom which is that I want quote to you. … It dovetails completely with what I’ve been thinking, and what I’ve been hearing. Which is that number one is difficulty of the implementation is a problem. Two, shortage of skills, people who can actually build these things. Three, conflicting or uncoordinated project governance, and this is stuff that we’ve started to address with the “Big Tent” approach, and things like that. But you know there needs to be more. And, weak spots in some projects. And then, integration with the existing infrastructure, which I violently disagree with. You know, if you’re building OpenStack you should produce on new stuff, on net new stuff. But whatever, Gartner’s smarter than me, I guess, or supposedly. But this [is] pretty smart.” See also his slides.

OpenStack is currently [July 2, 2015] powering (not necessarily by itself only, although typically and mainly) a number of public clouds:
– in North America: Rackspace, Internap, OVH, HP Helion, IO, AURO, Dreamhost, VEXXHOST
– in Latin America: Kio Networks (Mexico), Dualtec (Brazil)
– in Western Europe: Rackspace, OVH, Internap, Enter Cloud Suite, City Network, DataCentered, Numergy, Cloudwatt, Teuto.net, Elastx AB
– in China: Rackspace (Hong Kong), UnitedStack (Guangzhou)
– In Australia: Rackspace, Anchor
Note that out of those Cloud IaaS’ only Rackspace has been included into the Gartner Magic Quadrant (in the right uppermost part of the “niche player” category, i.e. with a very great potential to move into a better category next time). This means that the other “OpenStack powered” clouds have fallen out even from the “niche” category, i.e. they are not considered as significant players at all. For HP Helio it is for very simple reason that they have declared lately the intent of NOT targeting the public cloud market.

This does not mean at all, however, that OpenStack will not play a very significant role in the future. But that role is quite different of the cloud markets we’ve been presenting so far. Data networking and telecommunications equipment vendors* have entered a very critical phase in their business development. What is called by the #1 such supplier, Ericcson as “Networked Society” needs a cloud infrastructure platform inside the network itself. One on which all the vendors can build their higher level solutions for Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). Those vendors have no other option than take OpenStack, “harden” and standardize it, and with this make it “telco grade” in the process.
* = traditional communications equipment vendors, now telco specific solution vendors

Look at the TelcoWorkingGroup/Members of the OpenStack Foundation, and you will see who are the major players in that process. As of July 3, 2015 I’ve found the following setup there (the technology areas of interests are on the right, in the form of a “tag cloud” in order to show the relative interest in them):
– IT (i.e. companies rooted in traditional IT): a total of 52 members — 40 from 9 large/bigger players (HP: 11, Red Hat:8, Mirantis:4 [the “only independent OpenStack provider”], IBM:3, VMware:3, eNovance:3 [acquired by Red Hat in summer 2014], Canonical:2, NEC:2, Tech Mahindra:2, Virtual Open System:2) plus 12 “small player” members (but among them: Dell, EMC, Oracle, Samsung)
– Communications equipment->solutions: a total of 49 members — 35 from 7 large players (Huawei:8, Cisco:6, Ericsson:4, Nokia Networks:4, Brocade: 4, Metaswitch Networks:4, Alcatel-Lucent:3, Juniper Networks:2) plus 14 “small player” members (but among them: Cyan which is belonging to Ciena from May 5, 2015)
– Telecom (i.e. operators or service providers as called otherwise): a total of 25 members — 19 from 9 large/bigger players (Deutsche Telekom:8, AT&T:3, SK Telecom:2, Comcast:2, Telefonica:2, DOCOMO Euro-Labs:2) plus 6 “small player” members (but they are: Orange, Verizon, Swisscom, Italtel, Portugal Telecom and CenturyLink)
– Semiconductors: a total of 14 members — 12 from Intel (from which 3 from their OpenStack team and 3 from the wholly owned subsidiary Wind River with strong business interest in “telco grade” software of different kind), 1 from Freescale OpenStack team, and 1 from DEK Technologies

February 7, 2014 (internal)⇒May 12, 2014 (public on the actual OpenStack Summit):
The Ericsson Case as an illustration — OpenStack as the Key Engine of NFV

Ericsson - Utilizing OpenStack for NFV - OpenStack Summit Atlanta -- 12-May-2014

From the OpenStack as the Key Engine of NFV presentation by Alan Kavanagh and Jan Söderström of Ericsson at OpenStack Summit on May 12, 2014 in Atlanta. You can watch the presentation on YouTube, as well as read the very recent OpenStack as the API framework for NFV: the benefits, and the extensions needed article by Alan Kavanagh in the #3 2015 issue of Ericsson Review. Note that Alan Kavanagh is one of the 4 member team of participants in the OpenStack TelcoWorkingGroup from Ericsson. He is Ericsson’s OpenStack Solutions Architect from 2012, as well as their Cloud Architect Expert since 2014. In the first part of the presentation video on YouTube Jan Söderström is also introducing Ericsson as it is today (“it is a SW company now, not the telephony company any more” etc.). He is VP and the Head of Product Line Cloud System and Platforms there.

May 19, 2014: from The Ericsson OpenStack Coming Out Party post on the Ericsson Research Blog

Despite the fact that people from Ericsson have been attending the OpenStack summits for 3 years, the official presence has been very low key.

At the OpenStack Juno Summit, Ericsson had a full Cloud PDU delegation, and even a booth. The booth featured two real-time demos, on virtualized CSCF for IMS and OpenStack charging using the Online Charging System, and two Flash demos, on Realtime Cloud and the virtualized Enterprise Gateway. Both the Online Charging System demo and the Realtime Cloud demo were products of Ericsson Research. The booth saw visits from several operator customers, but also from other companies, including some cloud service providers.

All three of the breakout session talks given by Ericsson were well attended.

The talk, given by Jan Soderstrom and Alan Kavanaugh, introduced Ericsson as a company to the OpenStack community. Being a telco equipment vendor, many in the community were not familiar with Ericsson’s history and current products. Jan gave a brief overview of these topics. Alan then introduced Ericsson’s approach to OpenStack, stressing that our primary goal in OpenStack is to bring the necessary technical work to the community to make OpenStack an appropriate platform for our telco customers. Alan stressed that Ericsson intends to contribute much of this work back to the community, in accordance with the open source operating principles.

Toby Ford, from ATT, and Mats Karlsson followed with a talk that had the room full to overflowing with attendees. Toby stressed that ATT was committed to OpenStack for its Network Function Virtualization platform, and Mats re-iterated Alan’s message about the additional technical work needed in OpenStack.
[you can watch the video on YouTube: Leveraging OpenStack to Solve Telco Needs (Intro to SDN/NFV)]

Finally, Alan and François Lemarchand gave a talk about the use of OpenStack and SDN for service chaining and the virtual Enterprise Gateway.
[you can watch the video on YouTube: SDN OpenStack Integration: Virtual Enterprise and Residential Gateway Use Cases]

Ericsson has a long history and much experience in standardization of telecommunication systems. The coming out party at OpenStack signals our intention to engage with the open source community, to the benefit of both sides.

And OpenStack is a truly distributed SW development initiative with people working on it in quite a number of countries:

From OpenStack Community Activity Report, January-March, 2015 by Bitergia:

New peak of code contributors
With 556 active contributors per month, this quarter has the highest in the history of OpenStack. Compared to previous quarter, core and regular contributors have also increased over 10% the former and 20% the latter.

Contributing developers are characterized as core, regular and casual depending on their activity in the git repositories. The classification is built by sorting contributors by their total number of commits; we sum the total commits per each individual contributors: the individuals whose commits sum up to 80% of the total number of commits in the quarter are the core contributors in that quarter. The regular contributors are those whose commits sum up to 95% of the total. The others are the casual contributors.

Submitters time to respond starts to decrease
For the first time, contributors submitting changesets seem to be reacting faster to comments from reviewers and submit new patches more rapidly. These values may be the result of the increased efforts by the OpenStack Foundation targeting newcomers.

Note that the whole OpenStack effort is still a relatively moderate one as far as the number of contributors to source code is concerned. But that number has been growing. For example, in the OpenStack Grizzly release, which debuted in April 4 2013, there were 596 authors who contributed a total of 9,490 code commits. That’s a number that more than doubled with the Icehouse release. For OpenStack Icehouse of April 17 2014, 1,202 authors contributed 17,209 code commits. In terms of contributing organizations, Red Hat topped the list, followed by IBM, HP and Rackspace. With the recent Kilo release of April 30 2015, close to 1600 authors from 169 different organizations contributed with 21,181 commits to the source code. Red Hat was still the top participating organization, followed with HP, IBM, Mirantis and Rackspace.

Kilo was also the first release in which the “Communications equipment->solutions” type companies first were showing significant contribution with Cisco and Huawei entering the top 10 companies rank (#9 and #10 positions respectively) while some others from the sector are not far from moving up: Comcast #16 with 2 authors, NTT (DOCOMO) #17 with 4 authors, Ericsson #19 with 4 authors. But for the remaining companies from the list of the TelcoWorkingGroup/Members contributions are still of lesser significance: Brocade was #70 with 2 authors, Alcatel-Lucent #110 with no specific author indicated for only 84 lines added. Juniper is #152 but there is neither an author nor lines are indicated. Nokia Networks and Metaswitch Networks had no authorship in the Kilo release at all, despite their strong contribution to the TelcoWorkingGroup with 4 people each. Among the single person TelcoWorkingGroup members Mellanox was however #45 with 2 authors, Midokura #68 with 3 authors, and PLUMgrid #74 with 1 author, but others (ADVA Optical Networking, ASOCS, BTI Systems, Cyan, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Openwave Mobility, Qosmos, Sandvine, Snabb, Sonus Networks, and Spirent) had no authorship at all.

This is also showing that most of the network and telecommunications oriented contributions to the code will come in the future OpenStack releases. My personal guess is about 2 more years will be needed for “telco/carrier grade” hardening of the OpenStack code together with the necessary enhancements in the functionality (see the May 12 2014 “OpenStack as the Key Engine of NFV” story by Ericsson indicated earlier).

Find more information regarding this network and telecommunications direction of the cloud technology development in my upcoming “Cloud for Networked Society” post which is one of the “prerequisities”.

My homepage from June 24, 2010 to June 22, 2015:
(in order to understand what was driving me during that earlier period)
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are fast changing from a computer-centered era of the past 60+ years into a new one based on an ICT cloud where the resources shared by everybody are behind the so called cloud covering smaller or bigger data centers, different hosting centers, or even servers in your closet connected to the Internet. All fueled by 3.5G/3.9G, SoC & reflectivity. See the links under “2010 – the 1st grand year of:” title on the right sidebar:

The Upcoming Mobile Internet Superpower

China is the epicenter of the mobile Internet world,
so of the next-gen HTML5 web
Put* together by Sándor Nacsa in August 2013

Food for thought:
– Simpler, more focused and human friendly social media–that’s the future? [March 4, 2013]
– Microsoft’s Future Vision: Live, Work, Play [March 1, 2013]

Breakthrough of all encompassing industry disruption kind:
– With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [April 2, 2013]

Understanding the near term future:
– My summary of “supply chain” and “current market trend” analyses of the 2013 market by 3d parties: Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20, 2012 – Feb 21, 2013]
– Exynos 5 Octa, flexible display enhanced with Microsoft vision et al. from Samsung Components: the only valid future selling at CES 2013 [Jan 10, 2013]
– The future of mobile gaming at GDC 2013 and elsewhere [April 6, 2013]
– Qualcomm moving ahead of Allwinner et al. in CPU and GPU while trying to catch up with Allwinner in Ultra HD [Jan 12 – Feb 20, 2013]
– IGZO is coming as the ultimate future technology for LCDs [Jan 20, 2013]
– BYOD trends vs. Mobile enterprise platform trends [Jan 21, 2013]
– The first Windows Phone 4Afrika from Huawei for $150 = Huawei Ascend W1 for $240 (in China) and more elsewhere [Feb 5, 2013]
– Analysis: Michael Dell acquiring the rest 84% stake in Dell for $2.15B in cash, before becoming the next IBM, and even getting the cash back after the transaction [Feb 8, 2012]
– Qualcomm moving to Applications DSP (ADSP) [Feb 9, 2013]
– Microsoft entertainment as an affordable premium offering to be built on the basis of the Xbox console and Xbox LIVE services [Feb 13, 2013]

Klein did note that it’s not operating systems that matter in the end; it’s more the common experiences — apps and services like Xbox Live, Skype, SmartGlass — that are what really matter to consumers. [From Microsoft CFO Klein: We’re ready for devices of all sizes [ZDNet, Feb 13, 2013]]

– Intel Media: 10-20 year leap in television this year [Feb 16, 2013]
– Windows Azure Media Services OR Intel & Microsoft going together in the consumer space (again)? [Feb 17, 2013]
– Ubuntu and HTC in lockstep [Feb 19, 2013]
– Linux client market share gains outside the Android? Instead of gains will it shrink to 5% in the next 3 years? [Feb 20, 2013]
– Phablet competition in India: $258 Micromax-MediaTek-2013 against $360 Samsung-Broadcom-2012 [Feb 27, 2013]
– Applying 2-16 cores of ARM Cortex-A15 in ‘2014 vintage’ LSI Axxia SoCs that will power next-generation LTE basestations from macrocells to small cells opening upto 1000 times faster access to the cloud by 2020 [March 3, 2013]
– 5G WiFi with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac Miracast™ from Broadcom for streaming content to UHD (4K) TVs as well [March 3, 2013]
– Nokia’s expanded, new risks and uncertainties for its Windows Phone strategy for 2013 [March 16, 2013]
– New and successful “post feature phone” business of Nokia with a new set of risks and uncertainties [March 17, 2013]
– Lead post: High-volume Nokia Lumia superphones with Windows Phone 8 extended on the top for China, and on the entry level needed for Asia and Middle-East as well UPDATE: at even lower price by 27% [Dec 5, 2012 – March 21, 2013]
– Lead post: The endgame for ST-Ericsson, other SoC vendors like Allwinner to benefit tremendously from Ericsson’s advanced thin modems [March 24, 2013]
– Connecting – Trends in UI, Interaction, & Experience Design [Documentary YouTube channel, Jan 23, 2013]

The 18 minute “Connecting” documentary is an exploration of the future of Interaction Design and User Experience from some of the industry’s thought leaders. As the role of software is catapulting forward, Interaction Design is seen to be not only increasing in importance dramatically, but also expected to play a leading role in shaping the coming “Internet of things.” Ultimately, when the digital and physical worlds become one, humans along with technology are potentially on the path to becoming a “super organism” capable of influencing and enabling a broad spectrum of new behaviors in the world.

http://www.connectingthefilm.com/
Featured on:
– Fast Company 8 Insights About The Coming Era Of Interactive Design [Jan 14, 2013]
– Forbes Interactive Designers Connect The Human Superorganism [Jan 14, 2013]
– The Creators Project Documentary Explores How We Might Interact With The Devices Of Tomorrow [Jan 9, 2013]

Featuring

Jennifer Bove Kicker Studio

Andrei Herasimchuk Twitter

Robert Murdock Method

Jonas Löwgren Malmö University

Eric Rodenbeck Stamen

Robert Fabricant frog design

Raphael Grignani Method

Liz Danzico School of Visual Arts

Helen Walters Doblin

Younghee Jung Nokia

Blaise Aguera y Arcas Microsoft

Massimo Banzi Arduino

Created by
Bassett & Partners

Tom Bassett, Andrew Casden, Scott Fitzloff, Ambika Jain, and Cassandra Michel

Produced by
Windows Phone Design Studio

Albert Shum, Mike Kruzeniski, and Kat Holmes

Motivation for the film from Connecting [Jan 2, 2013] post by Mike Kruzeniski:

We imagined something similar to Gary Hustwit’s design documentaries, and began to wonder why there isn’t an Objectified for Interaction Design. The work that Interaction Designers are doing is so interesting, representing such a range of problems and perspectives, and most importantly, has such a broad impact on our daily lives, that it deserves being captured and discussed. So our goal became to capture how Interaction, UI, & User Experince Design is being practiced right now, the emerging problems, and trends in the field.

SUBJECT SEPARATED: ‘Live book’ on the ‘Allwinner phenomenon’ [Dec 31, 2012]

SUBJECT COMPLETED: Microsoft on five key technology areas and Windows 8 – UPDATED [Dec 15, 2012] with full content up to delivery and change of command [May 24, 2011 – Dec 15, 2012]

INTEL’S DOWNFALL:
– Intel’s biggest flop: at least 3-month delay in delivering the power management solution for its first tablet SoC [Dec 20, 2012]
– Dell Latitude 10: Windows 8 Clover Trail (Intel Z2760) hybrid tablets from OEMs [Dec 18, 2012]
– Acer Iconia W510: Windows 8 Clover Trail (Intel Z2760) hybrid tablets from OEMs [Oct 28 – Dec 14, 2012, 2012]
– Long overdue: Urgent search for an Intel savior [Nov 21, 2012]
– Can VIA Technologies save the mobile computing future of the x86 (x64) legacy platform? [Nov 23, 2012]
– Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [Nov 13-20, 2012]

THE ALLWINNER PHENOMENON:
– Allwinner vis-à-vis HTC on 2013 International CES [Dec 10, 2012]
– Even Qualcomm was left significantly behind:
Allwinner A31 SoC is here with products and the A20 SoC , its A10 pin-compatible dual-core is coming in February 2013 [‘USD 99 Allwinner’ blog of mine, Dec 10-20, 2012]
– Previous history: $99 Android 4.0.3 7” IPS tablet with an Allwinner SoC capable of 2160p Quad HD and built-in HDMI–another inflection point, from China again
[This is a huge, compiled collection basically finished in September, 2012. Contains updates till November, 2012. It was published in early December, 2012. A new USD 99 Allwinner blog was launched on Nov 30, 2012 based on this compilation. Please read the two entry posts of that as well: The upcoming Chinese tablet and device invasion lead by the Allwinner SoCs and $40 entry-level Allwinner tablets–now for the 220 million students Aakash project in India in order to understand very quickly that It’s a Strategic Inflection Point of enourmous consequences, and not only for the ICT industry.]

High-end smartphones state-of-the-art: Lumia 920 vs. iPhone 5 (and vs. Android, Galaxy S3, HTC One X+)
– Lumia 920 vs. iPhone 5 (and vs. Android, Galaxy S3, HTC One X+) [Dec 7, 2012]
– Windows Phone 8 vs. Android 4.1 and 4.2 [Dec 6, 2012]

The currently leading posts on more general subjects:
– With Asha Touch starting at $83 [Feb 22: $65] and Lumia at $186 [Feb 22: $168] Nokia targeting the entry-level and low-end smartphone marke–UPDATED [Dec 19, 2012] new entry prices and Lumia 505 (? $220 ?) with AMOLED ClearBlack and Gorilla Glass [Nov 1, 2012 – Feb 22, 2013]
– Intel targeting ARM based microservers: the Calxeda case [Dec 14, 2012]
– The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem [Dec 13, 2012]
– STMicroelectronics and Texas Intruments are exiting the mobile market as there is no chance to compete with aggressive SoC vendors from PRC and the market #2 MediaTek from Taiwan [Dec 12, 2012]
– MediaTek MT6589 quad-core Cortex-A7 SoC with HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA is available for Android smartphones and tablets of Q1 delivery [Dec 12, 2012]
– Qualcomm quad-core Cortex-A7 SoCs with Adreno 305 and 1080p coming for the high-volume global market and China [Dec 9, 2012]
– Marko Ahtisaari from Nokia and Steven Guggenheimer from Microsoft on the Internet of Things day of LeWeb Paris’12 [Dec 6-8, 2012]
– Where China is not a threat (yet): Amazing fulfillment robots coming to Amazon [Nov 27, 2012]
– My summary of “supply chain” and “current market trend” analyses of the 2013 market by 3d parties: Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20, 2012 – Feb 21, 2013]
and here you can start to read my own analyses based on the new product directions and supporting SoC trends which reveal even more for the 2013 markets:
– Nokia: end of the decline? [Jan 10, 2013]
– High-volume Nokia Lumia superphones with Windows Phone 8 extended on the top for China, and on the entry level needed for Asia and Middle-East as well UPDATE: at even lower price by 27% [Dec 5, 2012 – March 21, 2013]
– $50 Nokia Asha 205 QWERTY phones and Nokia 206 feature phones with smartphone like connectivity and web experience but with more convenient keyboard interactions [Dec 2, 2012]
– $48 Mogu M0 “peoplephone”, i.e. an Android smartphone for everybody to hit the Chinese market on November 15 [Nov 9, 2012]
– From a 3d party: The amazing China smart phone market [Kai Fu Lee, Nov 12, 2012]

Broadband wireless is now over 58%, and smart phone prices have dropped to about $100 for an acceptable Android phone, and about $200 for a full-featured Android phone. Smart phones are now spreading like wildfire. About a year ago, there were less than 50M users, basically affluent or tech saavy users who were willing to pay $500 for a phone and $30 a month for 3G. But now, students, young white collar, and even blue collar workers are swarming into the smart phone market!

– From a 3d party: Overview of the one year old HDMI stick market [ARMdevices.net, Nov 20, 2012]: from $25 (single core stick solution) to $89 (a quad-core stick solution)
– China: going either for good quality commodities or the premium brands only [Nov 21, 2012]
– Hit post: Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [Nov 13-20, 2012] 790 people read it in the first 24 hours (only 53 from Twitter, and 43 from Facebook)
– Why Microsoft is disARMed? Because pressure from Intel Haswell: “Mobile computing is not limited to tiny, low-performing devices” [Nov 15, 2012] although in products this technology will be available only in Q2 CY2013.

The most popular topic for the last 100 days (as of Oct 7, 2012):
– Core post: Boosting the MediaTek MT6575 success story with the MT6577 announcement – UPDATED with MT6588/83 coming ~~early 2013~~ in Q42012 and 8-core MT6599 in 2013 [June 27, July 27, Sept 11-13, Sept 26, Oct 2, 2012]
– See these 103 days statistics as well, showing the time lag between the “breaking news” and “everybody’s news” moments in the history of a really important tech news item:

The most popular topic for the last 300 days (as of Oct 7, 2012):
– Core post: Samsung push for bada in 2012 and other Linux based devices–with Tizen UPDATE: 1st Tizen devices in 2013 [Nov 5, 2011 – Oct 7, 2012]
– See these 336 days statistics as well, showing that here we have similarly, an around 2 months period after the “breaking news”, and then an “everybody’s news” period which is much prolonged due to the specific nature of the given tech news (as the first Tizen-powered devices will come to the market only in 2013):

ALERTS:

More information regarding the fundamental changes expected in the current year is available in the third and first posts of 2011:
– Next-generation cloud client experiences based on the Metro design language [Jan 24]
– Changing purchasing attitudes for consumer computing are leading to a new ICT paradigm [Jan 5]

This is directly leading to my second post of CES 2011 presence with Microsoft moving to SoC & screen level slot management that is not understood by analysts/observers at all [Jan 7]. That move will lead to dramatic changes in the industry as will be made clear through additional details by the time of Microsoft’s MIX 2011 of April 12-14 event as the latest. Large post with detailed content, including:
Part I. The SoC support announcement
Part II. The Steve Ballmer CES 2011 opening keynote and all other Microsoft related
– Footage from the Microsoft keynote with some relevant keynote transcript excerpts included
– New Windows Laptops, Tablets and Slates Showcased
– The Next Generation of Microsoft Surface – LCDs That Can ‘See’
– New Xbox Avatar Capabilities on Display
– Copy-and-Paste Coming to Windows Phone 7
– Additional details for the three PCs demonstrated in the keynote
– Other new PCs
– Hardware acceleration for cloud clients (browsers etc.): AMD Fusion APUs, NVIDIA GeForce 500M [Jan 14]
– Xbox and Surface 2 additional information
– Windows Embedded Standard 7: the first wave of OEM partners exploiting the included Windows Media Center [Jan 14]

December News: — Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and 3.0 (Honeycomb), see more information (updated on Jan 10, 2010)
— How Microsoft is going to solve the problem of assuring HTML5 et al platform stability for web developers? See more information.
— Pixel Qi and CPT alliance for sunlight readability: screens with only 0.5 watts in mono and 1.25 watts in color? See more information.
— Hanvon and E-Ink Holdings are betting on next-generation e-readers to build a strong mass market in China during the next year or two, also well supplementing a Microsoft and Intel based premium strategy by Hanvon, see more information
— With Treesaver you have now a platform by which you could publish to the web in print-like high quality accessible from any device/browser, and without any specific apps, see more information
— Microsoft’s upcoming CES 2011 announcement of a Windows slate overlay software for touch-first HTML5 applications could have true competitive impact on the overall tablet (iPad etc.) market, see more information.
— Intel is restricted to play a catch up game in the tablet space and just to try the waters in the smartphone market in 2011, but after that everything will be much more promising because of its manufacturing technology lead and earlier evidence to become a dominant player via its architecture, see more information.
— Nokia to challenge iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 with a brand new User Experience (UX) design pattern for MeeGo, see more information
— Microsoft has a new overall platform strategy based on evolving HTML 5, and an enhanced one for its own Windows client devices, see more information.

And here are the pre-December 2010 news in a grouping also representing popularity:

Most read:
– Marvell ARMADA: beating other ARMs — beaten by Chinese chipmakers — full tablet prototype costing $75 to manufacture
– Phone/tablet capable Wintel: Oak Trail Atom SoC — arriving in December — Oak Trail pricing — Microsoft slate promise still late
– 3.9G and 4G: LTE & WiMAX — TD-LTE in 2011 — IMT-Advanced

– Microsoft and HTML 5: new platform? — leading compliance? — split strategy
– Other infonuggets: Android — OPhone — HTC brand — 2 Chinas: cloud computing and joint ICT market — business SaaS: SAP Business by Design and Microsoft Office 365 — 3 screens and a cloud
– E-reading: SaaS wars — FUD
– Mobile speed: 3.75G — in reality

Consequently our clients are fast changing as well. You no longer need a fully equipped PC or notebook to serve your personal computing needs. As small device as the contemporary smartphone is sufficient to feel yourself empowered by the ICT cloud. We even had media tablets last year, like the pioneering Apple iPad, which are serving your cloud content consumption needs. And then all those classic devices, the PC, the notebook, the netbook etc., that you were accustomed to in the recent pre-cloud era, have just started to be transformed into something else to fit cloud authoring and consumption as well.

The authoring includes not only content in the classic sense, meant directly for human eyes, but significantly more capable software of a new kind that is operating in the cloud, aptly called Software as a Service (SaaS).

In fact this very website is solely relying on such an SaaS. It is reached via a URL https://lazure2.wordpress.com/ which means that it is supported by one of the leading content creation and consumption SaaS’ called WordPress.com from Automattic Inc. The subdomain name of lazure2 is just for making this website distinquishable among all other WordPress.com websites which are more than 15 millions.

WordPress.com has roots in the first decade of the 21st century of internet hosting. For this reason it is possible to not only track the trend of fundamental paradigm change towards cloud computing but also experience its simplest form by writing content on “Experiencing the Cloud” website.

We certainly may expect an exponential increase of more and more sophisticated SaaS’ written from the start for the cloud. We are tracking this trend as well.

Microsoft (Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer) on the cloud clients

October 9, 2010 5:30 pm / 7 Comments on Microsoft (Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer) on the cloud clients

There have been great expectations about what Microsoft will be offering against the incredibly successful Apple iPads. Microsoft ‘s CEO Steve Ballmer was also raising the expectations this summer and only this week has this been calmed down by him telling that:

… what you’ll see over the course of the next year is us doing more and more work with our hardware partners creating hardware-software optimisations with Windows 7 and with Windows 7 Media Center …

… Media Center is big and, when people say ‘hey, we could optimise [that] more for clients’ I think what they generally mean is ‘Big Buttons’. Big Buttons that’s, I think, a codeword for Big Buttons and Media Center is Big Buttons not Little Buttons. I’m not trying to trivialise that – it’s a real issue.

We’re not going to do a revamp of Windows 7 over the course of the next year for that purpose. Whether we should, or we shouldn’t, we’ve put all our energy around doing a great job on that and other issues in the next version of Windows …

See that and more on my earlier blog post which was regularly updated in recent months:
– Windows slates in the coming months? Not much seen yet [July 13 – Oct 6, 2010]

One should keep also in mind that Intel will be ready with sufficiently low-power x86 processors just in Q1 2010 as shown in my another post Intel SoC for Cloud Clients [June 27, 2010].

The major thing, however, is that Microsoft is pursuing a much different and broader strategy than Apple. This is the so called “three screens and a cloud” approach which has been extensively articulated by Microsoft a year ago. Nevertheless, in extensive web discussions about Windows slates vs. Apple iPad issue this clear and quite rational strategy has not beeen mentioned at all. Even such highly appreciated analyst firm as Gartner has not taken the implications of that strategy into account (at least not to a sufficient degree) as evidenced by Gartner: Global Tablet PC Sales to Top 100 M. Units in 2014 [Oct 5, 2010]. See also other recent reports such as:
– iPad leads the tablet PC charge as mini-note shipments plummet, says DisplaySearch [Oct 4, 2010]
– iPad-Killers Take Aim at the Tablet PC Market [Oct 4, 2010]

Therefore, in the post below I will first give a retrospective on the “three screens and a cloud” strategy (Part I.), and then give an overview of the company’s current standing on that strategy from the point of view of the cloud clients (Part II.)

I will also recommend to read additional posts of mine because they are quite closely related:
– Microsoft strengths for the PC -> cloud transition [June 27, 2010]
– Microsoft going multiplatform? [Sept 17, 2010]
– Microsoft to lead standards compliance and implementation? … or how Microsoft is aiming to create a radically new Windows client platform via a set of “whole computer capable rich web” standards. [Sept 20, 2010]
– WHAT? … Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS? … It is part of a NEW strategy with Windows Live Essentials 2011 released now! [Oct 2, 2010]

Part I. Retrospective on Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” strategy

Ray Ozzie [& Bob Muglia] Day 1 Keynote: Professional Developers Conference 2009, Los Angeles, Calif. [Nov 17, 2009], see also the video recording in the time interval indicated by me with square bracketed numbers in the below text:

… [4:33] whether you’re developing for servers or services or PCs, phones or browsers, all of this diversity means that it’s a very complex software environment out there. Many platforms mean many choices. And whether users or enterprise IT, we all want everything just to work together very, very simply, interoperating as one.

And so across PCs, phones, TV, Web, and cloud, across our many products and platforms, across products serving both consumers and business, we at Microsoft have but one simple strategy, and that is to focus on leverage and seamlessness in everything that we do.

We aspire to deliver compelling, seamless, multi-screen experiences for users, and to enable skills leverage and investment leverage for developers and IT.

Of course, this is the very same vision that I laid out at last year’s PDC right here on this stage, and it’s a strategy embodied in a very simple picture we’d like you to keep in the back of your minds, and that is of [5:45] three screens and a cloud, three primary classes of screens, surrounding the Web as the hub of most everything we do.

Note: Those watching the video will notice that Ozzie was actually using a different picture, and before that a corresponding to that “N Screens and a Cloud”. I’ve put a different one here which I think is more expressive, and also putting the TV and XBox experience to the same screen which will be the case with Kinect delivered, as you could see from Steve Ballmer’s latest speech transcripts excerpted below.

With this picture you can visualize our fundamental belief in a world of Web-centric experiences that are also extended richly through apps on your desktop, through apps on the phone in your pocket, and delivered on the inherently shared big screen on your wall; experiences delivered from clouds in private datacenters or from the worldwide public cloud. [6:19]

More information on the “three screens and a cloud” strategy:
– Microsoft Cloud Services Vision Becomes Reality With Launch of Windows Azure Platform, Microsoft Press Release [Nov 17, 2009]

In his keynote address, Ozzie described the company’s “three screens and a cloud” vision, where software experiences are seamlessly delivered across PCs, phones and TVs, all connected by cloud-based services. Underscoring the IT industry’s shift toward a hybrid approach of online services combined with on-premises software, Ozzie described the programming model for a powerful new generation of applications for both businesses and consumers, enabled by new Microsoft development tools and technologies. He also demonstrated customer and partner commitment to Microsoft’s development platform with Seesmic, WordPress and Cheezburger Network.

– Read this Interview of Ray Ozzie, on Cloud Computing [Dec 22, 2009]
– Exclusive Interview With Steve Ballmer: Products, Competition, The Road Ahead [Sept 24, 2009]
– Steve Ballmer: Vision Forum Keynote [Nov 4, 2009]

Part II. Microsoft’s current standing on the cloud clients strategy

Steve Ballmer European Tour 2010 [Oct 4-8, 2010]: Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, was visiting Sweden, UK, Germany, France and Spain as part of his European tour to drive cloud computing adoption and discuss Microsoft’s innovation in the technology. He was also discussing Microsoft’s consumer strategy, highlighting the upcoming launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 and other products.

Microsoft has provided transcripts and Q&As for the major events on that tour. From this the following excerpts are providing a quite excellent overview of the company strategy regarding the cloud clients (emphasis used there is mine, if one goes through only that then one could have already enough information to grasp the essence of their current standing with the strategy):

Sweden Cloud Keynote, Cloud Day Summit, Stockholm, Sweden [Oct 4, 2010]

… when we talk about new client hardware and software, we’re not talking about clients turning away from the Internet and from standards, we’re talking about new ways in which clients — phones, PCs, and TVs — can embrace the cloud, but bring the benefit of intelligence on the device and the advantages of intelligence in the cloud together, and that’s really what we’ve done with Internet Explorer 9.

… it’s about integrating the smart client with standards from the cloud. … how to use the full advantage of PC hardware to make things go fast, and it treats applications on the device and websites both as first class citizens that can be mixed and matched and run concurrently, and we think that is an important part of the way we embrace this boundary between the cloud wants smarter devices, the cloud wants devices like Windows to know about it, to love it, and to treat cloud applications and client applications similarly and both as first class citizens. And I think by building an Internet Explorer 9 experience that loves the cloud and loves the Windows PC you start to see the direction in which we’re taking that.

Seizing the Opportunity of the Cloud: the Next Wave of Business Growth, LSE in London, UK [Oct 5, 2010]

The Cloud wants smarter devices. This is – it was semi-controversial; I think it is now 100% obvious. When we first started talking about the Cloud there was a view that said ‘yes, OK the devices that we use will all get dumb and all of the intelligence will move back out into the Cloud’. And what we have found is quite the contrary. People want smarter devices but smarter devices that can connect with the Cloud in intelligent ways. We just launched a new version of Internet Explorer 9 that really integrates with Windows. Why is it important? Because it’s about both supporting Cloud standards, HTML5 etc, but by doing a better job against those, by taking advantage of the hardware and hardware acceleration capabilities that are built into the PC.

As we buy smartphones people are writing little front-end applications that can talk intelligently to Cloud services. We are on the verge of launching a new such phone. But perhaps the device that I’m most keen on that will launch this Christmas season, which shows a different kind of relationship between the device and the Internet, is the next generation of our Xbox product, which allows you, with your body and your voice, to control everything that is going on on your TV screen. We say you are your control. And yet all of the important content, and information and interaction with friends is all happening out through the Cloud. So you want a smart device processing ‘me’, talking to a smart Cloud on the back end.

[Kinect video plays]

You will again see more when we actually ship next month, but it gives you a sense of why the Cloud might want smarter devices. You want the ability to do things locally; you want the ability to use natural user interface and process language and voice and action locally. And yet you do want to be able to participate in games and track meets and dance competitions with friends, potentially, around the globe. So we need to think about using the intelligent TV, the intelligent PC and the intelligent phone to participate in this new kind of application that people are really going to want to write.

… [in response to a question about what makes Microsoft’s Cloud computing offering distinctive] On the consumer side of the Cloud, I think we have some strengths and we definitely have some opportunities to improve our market share. Certainly with Windows, with IE, with Hotmail and Messenger, we have some strong positions. And I’ll say on the phone and all of the cloud infrastructure that backs it up, I’ll be pleased to announce our next generation of phone here in another week or two. And obviously the Kinect stuff. I’d say the whole sort of Cloud TV connectivity thing is really early. But if you take a look at what you can do with an Xbox this holiday, I think it’s quite a bit ahead of anything that at least our traditional competitors have.

… [in response to a question about making money out of the cloud while Microsoft has lost a pile of money in the past few years on that]
We had a round in the early 2000s where people were telling us we were wrong to do Xbox. I don’t feel wrong to be doing Xbox with the kind of profit that it’s making and the innovation that we’ve got. I don’t feel wrong about it at all. Does that mean that there aren’t things that I wish we’d done differently along the road and we’d be even more successful and even more profitable? Of course I do. That would be the case almost no matter what.

… [in response to a question about his take on the future of our tablet computing in relation to the Cloud, the growth of Google’s Android operating system and Apple iOS devices hindering the growth of Windows in that region] … the thing for at least most of us in the developed world is: we are going to want to have and be able to afford to have technology in our pocket, on our big screen, and our mediumsize screen. Big screens are great for social activities with multiple people. You saw that a little bit in the Kinect demo. There’s nothing quite like having a bit of intelligence in your pocket. And, you know, on the pocket side, we got out to kind of an early jump. We’ve had competition come back in ways I’m not excited about. Now we’ve got to come back against competition. And I think, with our new Windows phones, we really have a beautiful product.

… The bigger screen form factor slate/tablet, very different discussion. We, as a company, will need to cover all form factors, and certainly we have done work around the tablet as both a productivity device and a consumption device. …

And so exactly where the form factors are and how they evolve – and you’ll see, you know, slates with Windows on them. You’ll see them this Christmas. You’ll see them continue to change and evolve. But if you really want most of the benefits of what a PC has to offer – the ability to create and consume, take documents of all types – a form factor that actually has been tuned for a lot of things over a number of years, we certainly have a superior device, and you’ll see us continue to expand the footprint that Windows does a good job of targeting over time.

But the job one thing, right now, is: we’ve got to get back seriously into the game of phones.

The Future of Cloud Services, BITKOM Conference ( of the German association of IT, Telecommunications and Consumer Electronics Enterprises), Cologne, Germany [Oct 6, 2010]

… the cloud wants smarter devices. When the word “cloud” first popped up two or three years ago, I think the view was with the cloud everything goes and becomes recentralized, and we use very dumb devices at the end of the day, and all the intelligence is in the cloud.

All the data since then is, no, we actually want smart devices, but we want smarter devices that think more intelligently about how to use the cloud.

Our new version of Internet Explorer we support HTML5 and the standards, but we’ve also taken advantage of the power of the PC to speed those things up and run them faster than you could in any other way.

… We’re going to launch a new version of the Xbox here in the next month called Kinect where literally you can control the TV set with your voice and your body motions. Well, that takes some intelligence, but you still want it designed so you can play games and connect with people intelligently across the cloud.

So, it will be a world of a next generation of smart device, a next generation of datacenter, a next generation of software that supports those, and a next generation of applications built on the corpus of information of the Web and the corpus of information of the social graph.

Kinect Press Event, Paris, France [Oct 7, 2010]

… back 10 years ago when we started down the Xbox path, we started and said, look, we’ve got to be very good at videogames, and videogames is a very important, big market. Over that time, we’ve sold over 42 million Xboxes around the world. … with the launch of Kinect and with the broadening out of experiences on the Xbox, based upon the kind of partnership that we’re talking about today with Canal Plus, I think you’ll see a real broadening out of the demographic, and we’ll really think about the Xbox as a family entertainment, TV entertainment center as we go forward.

Kinect will launch in November. You’ll be able to buy it in stores here in France in early November, November 10th. We have had a chance to show it in a few places. … so far the visceral response from people is really quite amazing to have such a powerful sensor technology, recognizing your voice and taking action, recognizing your body, and as we say, letting you be, if you will, the controller.

… As we think about the future of user interface to all devices, the notion of having the machines understand you, your actions, your behavior, your gestures, your writing, your voice, those natural interface techniques, they’re going to be very important across the gamut, from the family entertainment and TV, all the way through to important industrial applications.

… we have 25 million subscribers on Xbox LIVE out of a total of 43 million users. If we can dial up the number of users and the percentage of subscribers and the number of people who buy a sensor, I’m pretty — I’m enthusiastic

… One of the nice things is because we have a live service, we can tune the ability of the system to respond to voice and gestures. We’re getting smarter all the time. Kind of one of the magic of let’s call it the cloud approach, we don’t have to build one technology that recognizes voice the same way for the next — for the next few years; we get smarter the more voices we hear, again with appropriate privacy and all of that ensured.

… [in response to a question about whether they intend to use the Kinect with Windows] Do we plan on using — certainly these technologies will be used in all — at some point in different ways with all three screens. Initially we’ll launch the Kinect with the Xbox. But we do have certainly people in our labs who are experimenting with what I would call appropriate applications for various environments?

This sensor, as you will know when you get your hands on one, it actually works very well if you’re about three feet away to about 10 or 15 feet away — one meter to about four or five meters. And if you get too close it encourages you to get a little further back, and if you get too far away — and, of course, the technology will continue to improve, but if you think about at least many PC environments where you’re sitting less than two feet away, this particular technology would need to continue to evolve.

Now, there are plenty of places where the PC might be doing work on your behalf but you’re not sitting next to the PC, and we have a lot of work we’re doing to pioneer some of those applications.

… [in response to a question about what Steve Ballmer sees as job No. 1 among all things Microsoft is doing]

For Microsoft — the family entertainment scenario.

Microsoft is a company that — you know, in a sense I would say we have six different things we’re trying to get done as a company. It’s not the 52 that some people think, and it’s not the three that some of our — or one or two that some of our competitors are after. We’re trying to do great software and experiences for phone, for PC, and for TV, which is really what the Xbox is. It’s broader than just gaming. We’re certainly engaged in search with our Bing search engine; that’s very important to us. We provide tools at work and at home for people to be productive, Office and the like. And then we build platforms that are really enterprise specific and software developer specific for people to build applications and deploy them whether it’s in the cloud or the enterprise datacenter. So, that’s six, it isn’t 10, but it’s not two or three.

Microsoft Days – France [Oct 7, 2010]

The cloud wants smarter devices. A few years back, I think the theory would have been that as things move to the cloud, people are actually going to have less and less intelligence in their devices, and everything is going to operate in the cloud. We’ve seen exactly the opposite happen. We have smarter phones, but phones that are being built with the notion that says they’re going to plug into the cloud from the get go.

We see smarter and smarter PCs being redesigned around this notion of the cloud. What we’ve done in Internet Explorer 9 to speed up the cloud and integrate it with the smart Windows PC is such an example. We showed you the Xbox and the Kinect technology. You couldn’t do that with a dumb client. You can only do it with a smart client, but it’s got to participate in the cloud. So, our clients are being redesigned to be user friendly, easy to take care of and from the get go very cloud-aware.

Next week we get a chance to launch our Windows Phone 7 and the new Windows Phones I think are very good examples of this kind of next generation cloud-oriented, smart phones. We have an application model. I get a chance later today to go judge a little contest of some of the app developers here in France who have been doing applications for Windows Phone 7. We’ve got a new kind of a user interface that assumes that what you really want to do is focus not just on applications, but actually on the people and data that’s most important to you. And so we’ve re-pivoted the user interface consistent with some of the things that we think are possible in the cloud. It’s very different kind of user interface.

Nueva Economica Forum, Madrid, Spain [Oct 8, 2010]

… in the world of the cloud we can think of all of the world’s people and in all of their different personalities as individuals, as employees, as citizens, we want to be able to write new innovations to provide new solutions.

… New devices, there’s new devices coming. We’re always in big competition with other guys out there, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s really a tough world out there.

But we all know there’s a need for new devices. This meeting proves it. There’s a lady here with pencil and paper. I’ll prove I have one, too. I’m not giving her a hard time. (Laughter.) If I lose this paper, my whole week of action items is gone. That would be bad. There must be a digital form that’s better. But no matter what device you pull out today, if you sit there and start typing, it’s not very sociable, it’s not very pleasant, in some cases it’s not even very efficient compared to jotting a quick note.

We have lots of room to continue to invent what does the future of the television look like, what is the future of the PC, the phone, the note-taking device, the reading device.

WHAT? … Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS? … It is part of a NEW strategy with Windows Live Essentials 2011 released now!

October 2, 2010 6:37 pm / 6 Comments on WHAT? … Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS? … It is part of a NEW strategy with Windows Live Essentials 2011 released now!

The news from Microsoft: WordPress.com and Windows Live partnering together and providing an upgrade for 30 million Windows Live Spaces customers [Sept 27]

Then Paul Kim, the VP of user growth from WordPress.com: Welcome Windows Live Spaces Bloggers [Sept 27]

Then a 3d party correction from the web: Microsoft: Windows Live Spaces already dead, WordPress.com will only get 1% of 30M users [Sept 30] which could be much understated as noted by Paul Kim’s response in the end:

Paul Kim, Automattic’s vice president of user growth, responded: “We don’t have an exact estimate for how many Spaces bloggers will move over to WordPress.com in the next 6 months, but in the first 48 hours we’ve completed close to 50,000 migrations which is very promising.” That number is impressive enough. Real measure will be the next 48 hours or 48 days.

There was a real surge in posting activity on wordpress.com. After 5 days the graph showed the following:

As you could see from the numbers there were approximately three times as many additional postings in the last 3 days of the first 5 days period, than in the first two. That quite probably would mean ~150,000 additional migrations giving the total number of migrations to ~200,000 already in the first 5 days.

So the 1% of 30 million Windows Live Spaces customers could indeed be an understatement, even a great one. Would be interesting indeed to see the numbers in the coming months. Microsoft PR meanwhile made a refinement by saying that those 30 million include the viewers as well, while the number of authors is “just” 7 million.

If the final number of migrated blogs will be in the range of several millions than this will indeed be a huge gain for the WordPress.com. The current number of blogs on that site is 13.9 million, so an increase of 10% to 30% for nothing would indeed be a great win for them.

But what is the win for Microsoft? Their announcement is giving the following reason:

WordPress powers over 8.5% of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month. Not only that, Automattic is a company filled with great people focused on improving blogging experiences. So rather than having Windows Live invest in a competing blogging service, we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com.

The Why is Microsoft giving away web traffic and abandoning users? [Sept 28] question is answered by Tim Anderson as:

Part of the reason may be that blogging itself has changed. The original concept of an online diary or “web log” has fractured, with much of the trivia that might once have been blogged now being expressed on Facebook or Twitter. At the other end, blog engines like WordPress have evolved into capable content management systems. Many blogs are just convenient tools to author web sites.

Microsoft gives up on Live Spaces: blogs to be shifted to WordPress.com [Sept 28] on the guardian.co.uk has a similar reasoning:

You’ve got six months before it disappears into the great Bit Bucket where Geocities has gone. …

Following the news that Vox is closing (on 30 September), and that its parent Six Apart (which created Movable Type) is joining with VideoEgg to create a new company called Say Media, one has to think that the pool of hosted blogging platforms is shrinking rather rapidly. Atthis rate, pretty soon it’s only going to be Blogger and WordPress.

And if that’s what it comes down to, you’d have to say that WordPress has the edge. It’s being taken up by the British government, even for non-blogging websites, where it acts as an effective content management system.

That though may overlook the emergence of “superfast blog” systems such as Tumblr, which strip away a lot of the stuff on the outside – which can make blog upkeep complicated or tedious.

Even so, it’s not clear from here where blogging, as a separate activity, is really going. I still have the sense – as I said last year – that the long tail of blogging is dying. Microsoft’s capitulation over Live Spaces seems an acknowledgement of that (its previous post, linked in that quote above, notes how much of a problem spam blogs and comment spam have been; indeed, when I used to trawl blogs for Technology content, Live Spaces blogs were notorious for being pure splogs or copy/paste jobs).

WordPress.com has done a better job keeping the spam out. The question now is whether it is building its business on top of an iceberg in a warming sea – or on dry land.

And indeed quoting from the referred The long tail of blogging is dying [June 24, 2009] post on the guardian.co.uk (emphasis is mine):

But recently – over the past six months – I’ve noticed a new trend: fewer blogs with links, and fewer with any contextual comment. (I’m defining a blog here as an individual site, whether on Blogger or WordPress or an individual domain, with regular entries.) Some weeks, apart from the splogs, there would be hardly anything. I didn’t think we’d suddenly become dull. Nor was it for want of searching: mining for blog comments, I use Icerocket.com. Technorati.com and Google’s Blogsearch.

Where is everybody? Anecdotally and experimentally, they’ve all gone to Facebook, and especially Twitter. At least with Twitter, one can search for comments via backtweets.com – though it’s still quite rare for people to make a comment on a piece in a tweet; more usually it’s a “retweet”, echoing the headline. The New York Times also noticed this trend, with a piece on 9 June about “Blogs Falling In An Empty Forest“, which pointed to Technorati’s 2008 survey of the state of the blogosphere, which found that only 7.4m out of the 133m blogs it tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. As the New York Times put it, “that translates to 95% of blogs being essentially abandoned”.

I see it: NetNewsWire, my RSS feed reader, has nearly 500 feeds. When one of them hasn’t been updated for 60 days, it turns brown, like a plant dying for lack of water. More and more of the feeds I follow are turning brown. Why? Because blogging isn’t easy. More precisely, other things are easier – and it’s to easier things that people are turning. Facebook’s success is built on the ease of doing everything in one place. (Search tools can’t index it to see who’s talking about what, which may be a benefit or a failing.) Twitter offers instant content and reaction. Writing a blog post is a lot harder than posting a status update, putting a funny link on someone’s Wall, or tweeting. People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation of amateur content, their heyday for the wider population has, I think, already passed. The short head of blogging thrives. Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude.

It is important to realize that Microsoft didn’t get WordPress.com hosting in exchange for this migration. Matt Mullenweg made this quite clear in his last year’s post of WordPress and Windows Azure [Nov 29, 2009]:

Are you moving WordPress.com to Azure?
No. WordPress.com, which is Automattic’s hosted blogging service, is going to stay on its existing infrastructure. Martin Cron from the Cheezburger Network launched a new blog Oddly Specific on Azure, which some people confused with Automattic.

Do you use Azure at all?
Yes, we’ve been testing out their blob storage as an alternative to Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloudfiles. We don’t currently use it in production.

And nothing has changed since then. The Microsoft: Windows Live Spaces already dead, WordPress.com will only get 1% of 30M users [Sept 30] post is mentioning the following:

As for platforms, Kim responded: “WordPress.com, where these migrating Spaces bloggers are moving to, runs on Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.” In a follow-up e-mail, Kim responded: “We don’t plan to host any of these blogs on Windows Azure at this time.”

So there should be some additional gains for Microsoft in order to pass millions of authors and tens of millions of readers, as well as the advertising revenue attached to that. And indeed there are:

1. Microsoft’s lost eight years online: More than $6 billion down the tubes [Aug 13] which particularly stating that:

In fiscal 2010 ending June 30, Microsoft reported an operating loss of $2.35 billion on revenue of $2.2 billion for its online services division .

… [see the previous financial year data to see how there is an accumulated loss of more than $6 billion] …

[ZDnet’s conclusion:] Microsoft has generated no return on its Internet ventures. It has been nearly a lost decade for Microsoft online. Looking at the profit and losses, you could make an argument that Microsoft would have been better off avoiding the Internet. Strategically, that argument is absolutely crazy. On the financial front, shareholders may just want a dividend. Things could change. Perhaps Microsoft’s online investment has helped it with the transition to cloud computing somehow. As things stand today, the Web is one big money pit for Microsoft.

So saving some money with Windows Live Spaces migration is an important point for Microsoft, although not the major one as we would see further on.

2. What Microsoft is abandoning now is the thing of the distant past. One can easily understand that when reading again a 3d party authorative source Why are 30 million Microsoft refugees headed to WordPress.com? [Sept 28] (emphasis is mine again):

Microsoft had very good founding concepts for MSN Spaces in 2004 that later overlapped with Facebook. At the time I first met with Microsoft managers about its online services strategy, I was an analyst with the now defunct JupiterResearch. Microsoft product managers outlined a clear and compelling strategy about people publishing content for whom they know. The Web is too big, they rightly asserted. What matters is contenting your stuff to people who would be most interested in it, like family, friends and coworkers. I liked what I heard.

Four years ago, I compared Six Apart’s Vox to Windows Live Spaces. In August 2006, I wrote at the now defunct Microsoft Monitor blog: “Features are highly comparable. Both services are free, ad supported and provide mechanisms for blogging, sharing photos, music or videos and connecting to a widening circle of friends and family.” Vox is shutting down in two days. Windows Live Spaces will be gone in six months. Is it coincidence that these two services with similar design goals and features are shutting down around the same time? I think not.

Facebook has fulfilled most of the same philosophical and development goals articulated by Microsoft managers six years ago. In early 2007, Facebook had about 30 million subscribers — about as many as Windows Live Spaces today. Facebook now claims more than 500 million subscribers, although some people dispute they are all active. Facebook users share photos, status updates and other content with a circle of friends, family and other known or accepted relationships, which is exactly what Microsoft wanted to accomplish with Spaces and connected Live services.

3. Microsoft has reworked all of its Internet and web related strategies. I’ve already reported a few of that (but will report much more very soon). See these posts on my blog:
– Microsoft strengths for the PC -> cloud transition [June 27]
– Mobile search SaaS battle [June 28]
– Windows slates in the coming months? Not much seen yet [July 13]
– Microsoft going multiplatform? [Sept 17]
– Microsoft to lead standards compliance and implementation? … or how Microsoft is aiming to create a radically new Windows client platform via a set of “whole computer capable rich web” standards. [Sept 20]

4. Their on-line services strategy part has just been completely rearranged by Windows Live Essentials 2011 available for download now [Sept 30]. The key elements of this change are (only some of the emphasis is mine here):

Windows Live Essentials 2011 was designed and built to connect your PC to the services you use every day. We’re also announcing today that Dell will be the first global PC manufacturer to ship PCs with Windows Live Essentials 2011 and Windows 7 pre-installed, just in time for your holiday purchases. Many other PC manufacturers are also planning to make Windows Live Essentials 2011 available and we’ll continue to keep you updated as they start releasing.

… Windows Live Essentials 2011 was designed from the ground up for Windows 7. You can pin your applications to the taskbar and use jump lists to quickly get to common tasks. The ribbon brings common tasks to the front, letting you filter photos, change your font, or publish to your favorite services in a single click.

For parents, Windows Live Family Safety gives you the tools to help keep your kids safer on the Internet.

… If you have more than one PC, or a PC and a Mac, Windows Live Mesh helps you sync your files and folders across your PCs and connect back to your PC from virtually anywhere.

Excellent overview: Windows Live Mesh 2011 [Nov 22]

… Use Window Live Photo Gallery to share photos with your friends on SkyDrive [this is now the one Microsoft on-line service outside of Windows Live Essentials], Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, and more.

… Create a video using Windows Live Movie Maker and instantly publish it to YouTube.

… Stay in touch with your friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace using the new Windows Live Messenger.

… Use Windows Live Writer to update your blog on WordPress.com [with Essentials 2011 it is the default], Blogger, TypePad, and many more blogging services.

… Use Windows Live Mail to keep track of your email from Hotmail [this is now the other Microsoft on-line service outside of Windows Live Essentials], Gmail, Yahoo, and more.

… Together with Windows 7 and the new Internet Explorer 9 beta, Windows Live Essentials completes your Windows experience and connects your PC to the services you use every day. Try it out and let us know what you think!

My final conclusion: Microsoft is not abandoning its eight years of on-line investments (which produced $6B+ loss so far) but splitting that among its classic strategic business lines. What we see now by Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS and with the introduction of Windows Live Essentials 2011 is for the current (Windows 7) and the next generations of Windows clients. Windows clients will continue to be free of any advertisements and hence there is no service should be in Windows Live Essentials which could only be financed through advertisement revenue. With Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, WordPress.com (with Essentials 2011 it is the default], Blogger, TypePad, Gmail, and Yahoo mentioned as important partner services, there is a clear demarcation line between Windows Live and 3d party services. In addition Windows Mail is that part of Windows Live Essentials which integrates both the 3d party web mailing services (Gmail, Yahoo etc.) and Microsoft’s own Hotmail Service. Hotmail thus remains the critical on-line service for Microsoft as well as the Live Messenger service of the Windows Live.

This is a very nice and rational on-line services strategy for the Windows clients. Please note that Microsoft Bing services are offered on their own, and those are the ones which should be supported by advertisement revenues in the long run. Also the Hotmail and Live Messenger services could be covered — at least partially — by advertising revenues in the long run. And certainly there is SkyDrive and Office Web Apps on SkyDrive which are in fact services that could mostly be covered by the Microsoft Office business line. BTW this is also true to a certain degree for Hotmail and Live Messenger.

Look at the Windows Live site for more information! You will even more clearly see that Microsoft did not lost its mind by migrating Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com in such a “no return” way.

Experiencing the Cloud

Search Results for: "Windows Azure"

Welcome to technologies trend tracking for 2015⇒2019 !

May 19, 2016: The technology breakthrough which will lead to industry shakeout like that of between 1976-2016:

Despite the fact that people from Ericsson have been attending the OpenStack summits for 3 years, the official presence has been very low key.

All three of the breakout session talks given by Ericsson were well attended.

Finally, Alan and François Lemarchand gave a talk about the use of OpenStack and SDN for service chaining and the virtual Enterprise Gateway.
[you can watch the video on YouTube: SDN OpenStack Integration: Virtual Enterprise and Residential Gateway Use Cases]

Ericsson has a long history and much experience in standardization of telecommunication systems. The coming out party at OpenStack signals our intention to engage with the open source community, to the benefit of both sides.

Find more information regarding this network and telecommunications direction of the cloud technology development in my upcoming “Cloud for Networked Society” post which is one of the “prerequisities”.

Breakthrough of all encompassing industry disruption kind:
– With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [April 2, 2013]

Klein did note that it’s not operating systems that matter in the end; it’s more the common experiences — apps and services like Xbox Live, Skype, SmartGlass — that are what really matter to consumers. [From Microsoft CFO Klein: We’re ready for devices of all sizes [ZDNet, Feb 13, 2013]]

Featuring

Created by
Bassett & Partners

Produced by
Windows Phone Design Studio

Microsoft (Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer) on the cloud clients

Part I. Retrospective on Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” strategy

Part II. Microsoft’s current standing on the cloud clients strategy

WHAT? … Windows Live Spaces SaaS moving to WordPress.com SaaS? … It is part of a NEW strategy with Windows Live Essentials 2011 released now!

Post navigation

Experiencing the Cloud

Search Results for: "Windows Azure"

A too early assesment of the emerging ‘Windows 8’ dev & UX functionality

June 20-24: Windows 8 for software developers: the Longhorn dream reborn? [by Peter Bright, June 23, 2011]

…

June 14-21: Premature cries of Silverlight / WPF skill loss. Windows 8 supports all programming models [by David Burela, June 14, 2011]

Direct UI

Jupiter

Creating applications with Jupiter

C# & XAML

C++

HTML + Javascript

Immersive applications

Will this work for existing applications?

Conclusion

June 1 – June 3 and 6: TINY FACTUAL INFORMATION FROM MICROSOFT (say just HTML5 for now, not a bit more)

The factual details:

Windows 8: It’s the Applications, Stupid! [June 3, 2011]

Could You Turn A Windows 8 Smartphone Into A Windows 8 Computer? [June 2, 2011]

BUILD:

June 1 – June 6: UPHEAVAL OF ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS (or more questions than answers)

Food for harsh criticism because of absolutely no communication for the previous dev stories:

Besides Pete Brown’s responses the enormous bad publicity caused by that huge developers visibility will cost Microsoft quite a lot as Steve Barns nicknamed MossyBlog [See also his other responses after Pete Brown’s responses] remarked quite well on twitter:

Back to Pete Brown’s real responses: I will consider his first non-moderating response on that as his real response #2 (almost a whole day passed between those, he probably got permission from the above to really respond):]

From a quite opinionated but quite unsatisfied previous insider: http://twitter.com/#!/MossyBlog

Scott Barnes

@MossyBlog Brisbane Former Product Manager (Silverlight/WPF) Microsoft Corp, UX Specialist, The guy leading the mob on FIXWPF.org and blogging dude behind RIAGENIC.com http://www.riagenic.com

his response to the on going debate on Silverlight Forum

MossyBlog response #1 [06-06-2011 10:03 PM] (emphasis is mine)

Scott Barnes response to the erietta [user experience designer. news hound. art lover. in Sydney] 10 hours ago [vs 06-07-2011 11:00 CET]

But are icons more effective?

in reply to ↑ @erietta erietta @MossyBlog @itnews_au @colfelt This is the Scott I was looking for! Will be interesting to see if the process behind design is revealed. 7 hours ago

replies ↓ MossyBlog Scott Barnes @ @erietta @itnews_au @colfelt yeah i mean i feel like a crack record though on my metro insighs..basically i like its attitude not execution 7 hours ago

@MossyBlog Scott Barnes Blog Post:: Understanding “Why would Microsoft do that?” http://bit.ly/m8lRiL 8 hours ago via RIAGENIC Blog

Microsoft on five key technology areas and Windows 8 –UPDATED [Dec 15, 2012] with full content up to delivery and change of command

1. Julie Larson-Green’s and her team journey to build the new Windows 8 and Windows Live experienceand getting to the top of the whole product group

In revamping the interface of Microsoft Office 2007, Larson-Green effected a paradigm shift in one of the company’s most successful products.

SELLING THE REDESIGN

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS

View Larson-Green’s official press profile.

… [26:04] David Pierce said [in The Verge that] the Start Screen [of Windows 8] feels like a house made out of the Internet …

The 5 Microsoft (previously Metro) design [style] principles he is talking about

With the goal of having one device for consumption and productivity

About

We started planning Windows 8 in June of 2009, before we shipped Windows 7, and the iPad was only a rumor at that point.

2. The follow-up posts to the original May 2011 one

Microsoft’s next step in SoC level slot management [May 27 – June 2, 2011]

A too early assesment of the emerging ‘Windows 8’ dev & UX functionality [June 24 – Aug 19, 2011]

Windows 8: the first 12 hours headlines and reports [Sept 14, 2011]

Windows 8 Metro style Apps + initial dev reactions [Sept 15, 2011]

The early 2010 Windows 8 alternative: the Courier tablet [Nov 2, 2011]

Windows 8 gaining smartphone like “connected standby” capability [Nov 23, 2011]

The killing power of bloated web communications [Dec 6, 2011]

Giving up the total OEM reliance strategy: the Microsoft Surface tablet [June 19 – July 30, 2012]

The cloud experience vision of .NET by Microsoft 12 years ago and its delivery now with Windows Azure, Windows 8/RT, Windows Phone, iOS and Android among others [Sept 16-20, 2012]

NOOK Media LLC: the finalization of the strategic joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft [Oct 6, 2012]

ASUS: We are the real transformers, not Microsoft [Oct 17, 2012]

Microsoft Surface: its premium quality/price vs. even iPad3 [Oct 26, 2012]

Microsoft Surface: First media reflections after the New-York press launch [Oct 26-28, 2012]

Acer Iconia W510: Windows 8 Clover Trail (Intel Z2760) hybrid tablets from OEMs [Oct 28 – Dec 14, 2012]

Microsoft Surface with some questions about the performance and smoothness of the experience [Nov 12-28, 2012]

Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [Nov 13-20, 2012]

Boosting both the commodity and premium brand markets in 2013 with much more smartphones and tablets while the Windows notebook shipments will shrink by 2% [Nov 20 – Dec 10, 2012]

Marko Ahtisaari from Nokia and Steven Guggenheimer from Microsoft on the Internet of Things day of LeWeb Paris’12 [Dec 6-8, 2012]

3. The original May 2011 post

Welcome to technologies trend tracking for 2015⇒2019 !

May 19, 2016: The technology breakthrough which will lead to industry shakeout like that of between 1976-2016:

Despite the fact that people from Ericsson have been attending the OpenStack summits for 3 years, the official presence has been very low key.

All three of the breakout session talks given by Ericsson were well attended.

Finally, Alan and François Lemarchand gave a talk about the use of OpenStack and SDN for service chaining and the virtual Enterprise Gateway. [you can watch the video on YouTube: SDN OpenStack Integration: Virtual Enterprise and Residential Gateway Use Cases]

Ericsson has a long history and much experience in standardization of telecommunication systems. The coming out party at OpenStack signals our intention to engage with the open source community, to the benefit of both sides.

Find more information regarding this network and telecommunications direction of the cloud technology development in my upcoming “Cloud for Networked Society” post which is one of the “prerequisities”.

Breakthrough of all encompassing industry disruption kind: – With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [April 2, 2013]

Klein did note that it’s not operating systems that matter in the end; it’s more the common experiences — apps and services like Xbox Live, Skype, SmartGlass — that are what really matter to consumers. [From Microsoft CFO Klein: We’re ready for devices of all sizes [ZDNet, Feb 13, 2013]]

Featuring

Created by Bassett & Partners

Produced by Windows Phone Design Studio

Microsoft (Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer) on the cloud clients

Part I. Retrospective on Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” strategy

Part II. Microsoft’s current standing on the cloud clients strategy

June 20-24:
Windows 8 for software developers: the Longhorn dream reborn? [by Peter Bright, June 23, 2011]

June 14-21:
Premature cries of Silverlight / WPF skill loss. Windows 8 supports all programming models [by David Burela, June 14, 2011]

June 1 – June 3 and 6:
TINY FACTUAL INFORMATION FROM MICROSOFT
(say just HTML5 for now, not a bit more)

June 1 – June 6:
UPHEAVAL OF ENORMOUS PROPORTIONS (or more questions than answers)

@MossyBlog Brisbane
Former Product Manager (Silverlight/WPF) Microsoft Corp, UX Specialist, The guy leading the mob on FIXWPF.org and blogging dude behind RIAGENIC.com
http://www.riagenic.com

1. Julie Larson-Green’s and her team journey
to build the new Windows 8 and Windows Live experience
and getting to the top of the whole product group

Finally, Alan and François Lemarchand gave a talk about the use of OpenStack and SDN for service chaining and the virtual Enterprise Gateway.
[you can watch the video on YouTube: SDN OpenStack Integration: Virtual Enterprise and Residential Gateway Use Cases]

Breakthrough of all encompassing industry disruption kind:
– With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [April 2, 2013]

Created by
Bassett & Partners

Produced by
Windows Phone Design Studio