Saturday, April 12, 2008

Collapsing?

This just in from Computerworld:


April 10, 2008 (Computerworld) Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been.

OK, that sounds bad. You have my attention...


Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft -- frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating -- hit the "reset" button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.

Nope, the problem with 'Alpha Longhorn' (the version of Longhorn we were working on before the reset back to the Windows Server codebase) was that we were piling everybody's science project (Avalon, WinFS, etc, etc) into Windows with some sloppy project management.

If anything, the fact that we could reset back to a good code base and port over our good Alpha Longhorn features indicates that it actually is doable to 'quickly craft a new version [of Windows] with meaningful changes'.

"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."

We have a very good feedback loop with corporate customers; Vista contains a lot of features they asked for. (For example, Vista contains thousands of new Group Policy settings)
Big corporations, in my experience, want a new version of Windows with 'incremental improvements' - they do not want to retrain thousands of workers every couple of years. There are a lot of companies out there that use Group Policy to make XP (or Vista) look like Windows 2000 (Classic mode, classic start menu, etc) - They want the newer OS, for better perf, hardware support and security, but they don't want their users to notice the change.

It takes too long for Microsoft to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the innovation arena, and in the future -- perhaps as soon as the next three years -- it's going to have trouble competing with Web applications and small, specialized devices.

Don't think so. Your computer will be your primary residence for your data for the foreseeable future.

Every user has a primary computer where all their data is stored - and your iPhone/smartphone still has to be tethered that computer to get your contacts/music/photos/email accounts. That is not going to change anytime soon.

It will (someday your data will primarily live in the 'cloud', not on a fragile laptop), but not that soon - not for the average American.

"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.

????
iPhone and your Mac laptop do not run the same OS.
Your Windows Mobile phone and your Windows laptop do not run the same OS.

In both cases, a lot of the APIs and libraries look the same. And there is a bunch of code reuse.

It has been this way ever since Longhorn was nothing more than a codename.

This is like saying a company failed because their truck engine could not be scaled down for use in their motorcycles. No duh.

Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization -- specifically a hypervisor -- is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.

"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."

The devil is in the details, isn't it? What makes you think this approach is going the be 'thinner, smaller and [more] modular'?


Backward compatibility with older applications should also be supported via virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not, as needed."

Honestly - appcompat takes up a small amount of my time. It isn't very hard to support older APIs/applications. In the spots in Vista where we significantly broke appcompat we could see the problems coming a mile away (The Session 0 security fix, for example.)

Silver and MacDonald also called on Microsoft to make it easier to move to newer versions of Windows, re-think how it licenses Windows and come up with a truly modular operating system that can grow or shrink as needed.

?
The SKU story in Windows, in my opinion, is stupid - all you need is a Home SKU, a Business SKU. Done - end of story. (Marketing, are you reading this?)

Wrt grow or shrink: Huh? You can already install/uninstall just about ever usermode part of Windows Vista.
Take Windows Movie Maker: If you don't use it, it doesn't run. Doesn't slow down Vista startup. Doesn't chew up memory when it is not running. If you don't like fact that is taking up (i dunno) 10mb of disk space on your 100GB disk, you can uninstall it. What is the problem here?

22 comments:

eatporktoo said...

I have to completely disagree, i think that they way vista handles drives is ten times better than XP did. For example, now after installing Vista, I don't have to take literally hours to install motherboard drivers, etc. As for crashing graphics drives you were most likely using drivers that weren't microsoft tested and therefore can't take that as their error.

Vaibhav Kamath said...

I think the big different between Microsoft and Apple has been hardware support. Microsoft for years has tried to make sure that every new OS will work on your old machine with little to no upgrade. That is not entirely true with Apple. Apple users go out and buy new hardware with at least every other OS release to get better performance without cursing Apple for the lack of ability to install new OS on old hardware.

With Vista Microsoft took an approach similar to Apple and look what happened. Vista will install on older hardware but seriously, who likes the Vista Basic look or the old 2000 look. All the pain with hardware / driver issues ticked off users and caused Vista to get negative reviews.

All in all I think it was a valuable lesson for Microsoft. I see Vista as being the guinea pig that caused a lot of users to upgrade and hence would result in far better experience with future Operating Systems.

The hype has already been created for Windows Seven. Let's just hope that it exceeds our expectation.

Matthew Green said...

last i recall the iphone/ipod touch ran a stripped down mac os x very much like the desktops

Dez said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dez said...

I still think Micrsoft dropped the ball on drivers in pre SP1 vista at least. I have an 4 year old Linksys Networking card, wasnt recognised by Vista upon install.

Dont get me wrong you dont have to support all drivers, but you should support as much support as possible for connecting to the net, without that you cant download any other drivers.

I agree Vista should only have 2 SKUs, more than that is just a waste of time.

The Graphics in Vista are a hog, and dont add squat. Linux runs better on the same hardware... and even XP can have some flashy graphics if you install the latest Intellimouse software and use the Instant viewer youll see that a little extra sparkle doesnt need a complete code rewrite.

The big danger for Microsoft is that something will take the place of computer in the home e.g. the Playstation 3 / or a DVR, and that webservices become the primary use of computers over Office Applications.

Cereal Bawks said...

The iPhone actually runs the PPC versions of Mach kernel and various frameworks of OSX. This makes it essentially the same operating system, whether the rest of the code is missing or not.

Unlike Windows Mobile, which would kind of need to run the Windows NT kernel to claim the same thing. But it doesn't.

Cereal Bawks said...

Actually, make that ARM9 version. At 3am, you get things mixed up.

Viking said...

Oh dear,

I love the advice given by Gartner that in order to make desktop windows leaner it should ADD a virtualisation layer, and ADD legacy Windows emulation and then ADD the new modular Windows version, and then ADD all the glue code to make all of that appear seamless...

Morgan said...

"Don't think so. Your computer will be your primary residence for your data for the foreseeable future."
Have you walked into a web cafe or uni campus in the last year, everyone has there Gmail open and google docs. My missus does all her assignments in it. Heck even you are trusting your blog to the storage google provides on blogger.
I think Microsoft has had a good run, but they are too monolithic to do fast paced OS development that is what is wanted now-a-days with mac releasing every 12months, and some Linux distros going every 6months or more. I think Microsoft realise this and they are moving to more services, office live (or whatever they are calling it) Windows Live etc.

Anthony Lawrence said...

I think you are just too close to see the reality.

Just a few years ago the general perception of Microsoft was positive, but today it's far less so.

I sit here with my MacBook Pro and beside me is my wife with her XP.. she's constantly complaining "Stupid computer", "This so slow!", and so on. Using Windows has become very frustrating.

On the other hand, OS X is a joy. Yes, Apple has a big advantage here: they only have to support a small set of hardware and they know ahead of time exactly what that will be. And although the "leave the old stuff behind" situation isn't quite as draconian as you make it out to be, there is some truth there: Apple is willing to move on and if the die-hards won't buy new, yes, they are left behind.


But honestly I think the real problem is that Microsoft is too big, too corporate, too clumsy. You are the elephant and the mice are running around your feet..

Greg Wojak said...

If you don't like fact that is taking up (i dunno) 10mb of disk space on your 100GB disk, you can uninstall it. What is the problem here?

Ten months of using Vista x64:
* The size of C:\Windows\winsxs\ is 7GB.

* Why "Windows Calendar" and "Windows Contacts" are not compatible with Windows Mobile 6 Contacts and Calendar?

* Flash Player doesn't work in MSIE (can't install, common error tn_19166, there's no working solution available). At least it works in Firefox.

* mailto: links are broken and opens MSIE after uninstall of MS Office 2007 Trial (available solutions incl. registry entries repair does not resolve the problem)

* Can't add protocol to default programs/protocols - no such a feature.

Yert said...

We all know the Gardener report was hogwash...

Anyways, what was with the gap in posting? Tell us more about yourself (without being too specific, of course) and what happened.

Paul Maddox said...

Sadly there is a lot of Vista bashing, and most of it from the ill-informed public. In no way does it surprise me that this part-fact part-drivel blurb comes from Gartner. Obviously Microsoft haven't been paying them enough recently. Not that I'm saying Gartner are purely driven by money, obviously..

bluvg said...

As for smartphones being tethered to a desktop, that already isn't the case with WinMo and BlackBerries. Even with the iPhone, though it's limited to desktop-sync today, it won't be once the ActiveSync support is ready to go.

On the other hand, this notion of data stored "in the cloud" is something most businesses are very reticent to consider. They are struggling with the implications of not having direct control of their own data, and also the fact that they'd be essentially throwing away many of the investments they've made in internal infrastructure--and that's just for starters (how about customization and controlling upgrade cycles for online apps, just to name a couple more?). They don't really care if "all college students are doing it!" Using it on an individual, disclosure-insensitive basis is a much different scenario... which is why all these glowing reports about the migration to "cloud" apps seem almost laughable to those of us in the trenches. They're almost always written from a consumer-centric viewpoint... are there *any* tech media outlets that actually consider business needs from anything other than a CxO-level viewpoint?

L.C. said...

gr8 post :) nice to see you blog again

x

Dez said...

Microsoft has an advantage in the Desktop OS Market that may last 4 years at best before it is seriously challenged, in the next 4 years web services combined with smaller consumer devices will become more powerful, and each one will be able to access most of you office files, photos and low and maybe even high def video people currently do from their PC. Just look at the Intel atom processor, and you can see the inevitable trend.

If Microsoft wants to compete in this space it needs the next Xbox 360 replacement or upgrade to be more reliable, and able to do more OS functions than it can currently, i.e. surf for one. Then if its reliable and user friendly perhaps that technology can be licensed and put into third party DVRs, and other devices as a feature.

Google has a heads up on Microsoft as its the default search of Firefox, and Firefox is on most Linux distros, thats a major problem. Google may have a strong presence on new devices without it costing them anything!

Without the Xbox being strong, Microsoft is just riding out its monopoly.

The only good news for Microsoft lately has been that Office got the new file formats declared as ISO standards.

Good Luck, Vistas replacement will need to to be good, and launched together with a strategy to secure the PC as the center of your digital world. You may have to lose money on the hardware and software initially.

Oh and if you acted as if you trusted your end users, i.e. allowed at least 2 install per VISTA copy, maybe people would use live search.

tuxplorer said...

I'm only and only concerned about the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_removed_from_Windows_Vista

Dez said...

Thanks Someone, lots of missing features there, although some have simply been upgraded or degraded.

I didnt know you could drag the quicklaunch though thats pretty cool.

I will agree IE7's user interface is inferior and less customisable to IE6.

Tihiy said...

If you're real Microsoft person and you ARE making Windows 7 somehow, then damn - we're doomed.

You're blind.

Wait, you say - GPO? Make Windows look like old version?

Please say then how to make Explorer look like old one. The setting in Folder Settings is just broken!

How to fix broken Classic interface with obvious bugs?

How to fix Sounds applet not working?

How to fix horrible UI here and there? Add back removed tools?

If you say compatibility bugs are nothing - they I say they were created purposefully to break apps, then!
Ask shell team what shunimpl.dll means.

To preserve compatibility, HORRIBLE backup-file-versioning system were created and 8MB of registry junk was added.

Imagine showing it to the NT or 9x original dev team and they will have heart attack.

You say - Windows Movie Maker? 10 Mb? And can be uninstalled? You're smoking something weird, then.

Or just fake stupid noob.

oneLove said...

Dude you work there, so you have a distorted view of reality. I worked at MS in building 26 and 28 for almost 10 years. How can it be that the entire world hates vista for being such annoying an complaining little bitch? Windows 7 will stink as much as Vista since it looks like you guys still have your heads in your asses. That is as plain and simple as it can be.
Regards

Justin R. said...

No wonder you stopped blogging for so long, Soma. It's a shame people need to use your blog to take out their anger on Microsoft.

As the great author of xkcd comics once wrote: "It's easier to be an a**hole to words than to people."

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