- The view from Microsoft's Live Mesh and Apple's .Mac: Shared disks and remote desktop access, no VPN required
- Back to the Mac
- Microsoft opens up, just a little
- Vista SP1: Release to mob
- Windows Server 2008: Redmond's new server OS hits paydirt
- CES and Macworld Expo predictions
- Microsoft's homework for the holidays
April 30, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Apple's .Mac comes close to offering professionals secure shared data and remote desktop access without the hassle of VPN. Microsoft Live Mesh hopes to take it all the way.
Old-schoolers will tell you that there are only two places your important data should live: on your meticulously secured network behind a paranoid firewall, or at Iron Mountain. One must heed the old schoolers, for they shall keep the bitemarks off your backside, but their advice must be tempered with modern reality. Having data live exclusively within your domain presents thorny operational problems when two or more people need to get at it. If you want to selectively share files with temporary staff, business partners, external software testers, or employees who are on the road, you've got to find a way to publish it with a combination of easy access and tight security.
If you've shared business data that can't easily be placed in a shared Exchange folder by putting it in a password protected zip file and stuffing it in your Yahoo! Briefcase or its like, you'd hardly be the first. Nor would you be the first to stay on the phone with that remote user until they verified receipt of the file so that you could delete it immediately. You're wise to assume that data hosted on free, public, consumer online services will prove inaccessible, will transfer to its broadband-endowed recipients at modem speed, or fall into the wrong hands.
While it makes IT break out in hives, professional users also need remote access to their desktops. Whether it's to run applications that are locked to that machine by license, or to make a quick Saturday check on a time-consuming task, or to pull out files that are wisely (or unintentionally) not publicly shared, there are some things that can only be accomplished at the desks at which professionals spend so little of their time. It is a truly dicey matter when an employee works at home. When they're traveling, or, ironically, in the office for meetings or such, they routinely turn their desktops into servers that stand naked on residential DSL and cable modem networks, neighborhoods that make Detroit look like Utopia by comparison.
If you think you can impose security requirements on these users, you're dreaming. Users will always take the path of most convenience, and where users' remote access is concerned, IT can't possibly craft a more convenient solution than the forwarding of file sharing and VNC ports through their home or branch office routers.
VPN is the prevailing standard for safety, but that's effective only for services that live behind your firewall. It's wholly impractical, and sometimes difficult and unwise, for off-site users, contractors, and branch offices to VPN into your corporate LAN to share data. And if you have charted a course by which workers at hotels can use your corporate VPN to connect to desktops in their home offices, you've got too much time on your hands.
Apple's $99/year .Mac service (http://www.mac.com) has the makings of an interesting solution to the desktops-as-servers conundrum. It sets up a virtual volume, called an iDisk, that appears as a desktop icon on Windows and Mac clients. The iDisk client that's launched when you click on the desktop icon is a convenience. iDisk uses WebDAV, a secure and mature, if sluggish, standard for access to remote file hierarchies. It's a capital notion, because any changes to files are immediately visible to all users subscribed to a given iDisk, and the iDisk client lets users use Windows' Explorer or OS X's Finder to move files around, as though the iDisk were a local disk. iDisk also automatically synchronizes remote files to a local folder, so that when you open your iDisk while you're offline, you can still access your files. When you're back on the Net, changes you've made are shipped to your remote iDisk and visible to other authorized users.
iDisk is clever and simple, but it shows both its age and its consumer-targeted nature. As I said, it's slow, owing to SSL encryption and HTTP's unsuitability to chatty protocols. Although changes to an iDisk are visible to all online users, there is no notification scheme to alert users that a shared volume's contents have changed and nothing like file versioning to prevent changes submitted by multiple users from overwriting each other. .Mac's 10GB storage pool, which is expandable for a fee, is roomy enough, but Apple subjects all users to limits that have been imposed to guard against the whims of adolescents. There is a monthly transfer limit of 100GB, but if you use 50GB of that in the first two weeks of a month, Apple shuts down your account. My suggestion to Apple is that transfers among .Mac users should be unlimited. It would help distinguish .Mac's $99/year service from Gmail and flaky free personal file hosting services, and it would make it worthwhile for companies to buy .Mac accounts for their users.
Although iDisk needs some renovation, Apple has added a thoroughly modern touch to .Mac's suite of services. Back to My Mac uses .Mac as a remote desktop access gateway for Mac clients, eliminating that other justification for turning home office desktops into vulnerable servers. It uses .Mac to transparently tunnel through firewalls, even those odious hotel and conference center gateways, and to pierce the veil of dynamically assigned IPs, to put your desktop's display, keyboard, and mouse at your command. There are lots of specialized services that do the same thing, but Back to My Mac is blissfully simple, not least because it is a standard feature of OS X Leopard. For any Mac user, Back to My Mac is just there, and to me at least, it is pretty plainly aimed at professional users.
Without changes to iDisk, .Mac falls short of requirements for commercial use, and Back to My Mac is of no use if you really need Back to My Vista, or that decrepit XP thing. Microsoft is floating a closed trial of Live Mesh, which, on paper at least, looks like .Mac for the 21st century. When it goes live -- timing and cost are not mentioned -- Live Mesh could render specialized file transfer, folder sync, and remote desktop access services obsolete. I like seeing specialized anything go obsolete. I say that Live Mesh could obsolete these things. A lot depends on how Microsoft packages it.
What is Live Mesh? It's not that easy to find out; I've given you the link to the most concise description that Microsoft provides. The details are limited, although the screen shots are gorgeous. My hat's off to Microsoft for finally bringing some commercial artists in house. Even in its concise synopsis of Live Mesh, Microsoft can't help spending more time bragging about the underpinnings of it than talking up what users will get out of it. Perhaps that's because what Live Mesh does is very simple: It keeps folders and RSS feeds synchronized across all of the PCs in your custom-defined "mesh" so that no matter which of your PCs you're facing, folders and feeds published via Live Mesh are all kept in sync and made available both online and off. .Mac approaches this and arguably does it one better by blending in the synchronization of contacts, calendars, mail rules, and browser bookmarks across multiple Macs. But Live Mesh's publish/subscribe mechanism takes polling out of the equation for published folders. It will let you know when the contents of a folder change or when a new post is received in an RSS feed.
Live Mesh also lets you tap the console of any Windows machine in your Mesh in Back to My Mac fashion. That's no surprise. Nobody's got easy and fast remote desktop access down like Microsoft.
Microsoft is careful to couch Live Mesh as a consumer service, but really, with Mac and mobile device support on the road map, Microsoft clearly doesn't see Mom, Dad, Billy, and Grampa as the members of the typical Mesh. Live Mesh allows you to invite select outsiders to share whatever parts of your Mesh you choose to make available. Let's dare to hope that what Microsoft calls the "social aspect" of Live Mesh will soon begin to take shape as a cure for commercial file sharing woes, and an end to the unsecured desktop server.
Posted by Tom Yager on April 30, 2008 03:00 AM
April 16, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Several months ago, I determined that my years-long fondness required reexamination. I quietly took a break from the Mac to get some perspective, to check out Vista, AMD, and Longhorn (Windows Server 2008) untainted by Apple's PR and uninfluenced by other journalists and bloggers. I elected to take a break from reviews of new Mac hardware, the occasion of which always piques my interest in Apple's platform. There were times when I felt I'd chosen the worst possible time for this hiatus. I ended up passing on MacBook Air, Time Capsule, Harpertown Mac Pro, and most painful of all, the new MacBook Pro. It was difficult seeing InfoWorld pick up reviews of these from sister publications, but I take my responsibility to readers very seriously. I can't very well counsel you on technology choices if I consider the field limited to one worthwhile player, especially when that player projects the image that it competes only with the generation of systems that preceded what's presently sold.
I found enormous value in my time away from Mac. I made the kind of discoveries I used to make routinely before I took on the Mac as a specialty, and as I take up the Mac again -- which I am doing immediately -- it's clear that my appreciation for the platform is justified, and that the customary split of my effort and attention between Apple and AMD is justified.
The genuine, practical superiority of AMD's Barcelona server platform, and its Phenom desktop platforms that derived from Barcelona, came to light during the break I took from Mac. A one-socket, quad-core Spider (Phenom plus ATI CrossFire graphics) runs Vista so obscenely fast that even a die-hard Mac user's head will turn. Privately, of course.
I found it extremely intriguing that systems built on Phenom platforms can tune themselves autonomously for the maximum possible CPU and GPU speed over a surprisingly broad range, based on a whole system approach that takes cooling, power supply capacity, and your preferences for noise and maximum power consumption into account. I found that I could speed bump an AMD Phenom desktop for free by moving it closer to the floor, where the cooler air prevails. What a grand idea that in itself shows genuine customer-focused insight.
I gained a fresh appreciation for the GNU compiler collection, which has taken remarkable strides since I last took a deep dive in it. I was unaware of the level of engagement from commercial partners, including Apple, AMD, and Novell. Each is undoubtedly pursuing its own agenda, but it does so within the framework and culture of one of the most tightly controlled and liberally licensed open source projects in existence. AMD has finally embarked on the long road to compiler parity with Intel with its contribution of Family 10 (Barcelona/Phenom) architecture-specific optimizations to GNU.
Apple has been busy on the gcc front as well. Objective-C 2.0, with its desperately needed garbage collection, has been a reality in the GNU toolchain since Xcode 3 was in nondisclosure beta. In release 4.2 of gcc, auto-parallelization joins auto-vectorization to adapt projects to multiprocessing and vector acceleration without developer intervention. Unless I'm mistaken, the public beta versions of the iPhone SDK, now at Beta 3, mark Apple's first swing at Microsoft-style free public distribution of pre-release dev tools. The privilege of early access has been reserved for paid members of Apple's Developer Connection programs. That iPhone SDK carries all of the latest GUI tools, documentation, and GNU command-line compilers, including Fortran, into Apple's default distribution. Hit Apple's iPhone Dev Center and scroll to the bottom of the page for the download link. You do not need to pay the $99 fee to register as an iPhone developer to use the new tools, which compile applications for Leopard as well as iPhone.
Apple is getting ever more daring in its engagement with open source in other ways. WebKit, the fast HTML/CSS/SVG rendering and JavaScript engine used in Safari, has caught on like wildfire outside Apple, and why not? To get a commercial browser, loaded with current and emerging standards, free and open for incorporation in your software, is the stuff of fantasy, and Apple holds virtually nothing back. The WebKit project is not strictly Apple's. It enjoys broad community engagement, but it is worked as a priority by Apple's staff, even to the benefit of direct competitors. For example, the browser on Nokia's E-series phones is WebKit-based, and this is not the only example where Apple effectively put its staff and technology to work for the benefit of a competitor. The GNU toolchain's adaptability to multiple embedded platforms will see WebKit in everything from phones to toys, starting with iPhone and iPod Touch. Now that WebKit has been accepted into Google's Summer of Code, I can't wait to see what innovation comes from that gathering. I plan to ply the most influential attendees with the libations of their choice and get their take on where development is headed.
Apple pushed the source code for the publicly exposed innards of OS X Leopard, known as Darwin 9, out for public download on MacOS Forge. Every time it does that, I imagine the move preceded by arguments inside the office about the effort and risks that such a program visits on Apple's platform business. The work of preparing a project of Darwin's size for public distribution is inestimable, and Apple deserves credit for putting it on the agenda of its top OS engineers and project leaders.
I love the conservative approach that Apple is taking with iPhone, especially with regard to multiprocessing. iPhone applications need to launch and quit instantly, yet relaunch after the first execution, having cached and persisted their closing state in detail. It's a freeze/thaw model of state persistence that I'd like to see extended to applications in general. Apple's Xcode has Instruments (prior: xRay), a tool that jams electrodes into your program's and the system's running environment. It records and charts statistical data at runtime along several axes for later examination. It's the most effective means of hand-tuning code for efficiency that I've ever used, and it shows the benefits of persistence quite plainly.
Taking a break from Mac hardware gave me a chance to drink more deeply of the software that Apple maintains off its beaten path. MacPorts and Apple's validated versions of open source projects are open source treasure troves stuffed with some 5,000 free applications tuned and packaged for Intel and PowerPC Macs. Digging through these repositories is so addicting that I had to issue myself an edict to get back to work, which I shall do, newly confident in my mission and purpose. I'm a Macophile for good reason.
Posted by Tom Yager on April 16, 2008 03:00 AM
February 27, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft opens up, just a little
What's Microsoft's open source interoperability initiative? It's about lawyers
I'd like to see the specifics of Microsoft's new open source interoperability initiative, but the link to the FAQ (frequently asked questions) takes me to a page that says, "We're sorry, but we were unable to service your request." I think that's the answer to my own frequently asked question: What is the open source interoperability initiative?
You shouldn't draw too many conclusions from the fact that osi.org takes you to Ontario Swine Improvement, an idea that mystifies me more than Microsoft's OSI. OSI also happens to be the initials for Open Source Initiative, the body that determines the legitimacy of homespun open source licenses, of which Microsoft has two, called the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License. Both of these were filed late last year, and they are what I'd like all legal documents to be: concise. They offer royalty-free licenses of software and permit redistribution of derivative works, provided that attributions are maintained. Short and sweet, yes?
There's a little catch in the language of these licenses in the phrase "licensed patents," defined to be "contributor's patent claims that read directly on its contribution." The contributor is Microsoft, so this phrase says that all of that royalty-free and unfettered redistribution stuff doesn't apply unless you've licensed the applicable patents that Microsoft has attached to it. Now, if Microsoft contributes apparently open code, API (application programming interface) or protocol, that is itself derived from patented work, or that is great-grandfathered by an obscure patent on the letter "q," it gets messy, especially if any of the contributions are in uncommented object code form.
I recall a conversation I had years ago, and I swear to this, with a mildly besotted Microsofter who declared that Microsoft had a patent on the run queue, which is a list that keeps track of the order in which processes will run on the CPU. I asked, "Really?" and he said "abschuhoodly." For all I know, he's right. I expect that between Microsoft and Novell, everything that inventors hadn't the presence of mind to patent is now patented.
Microsoft states in its open source licenses that non-commercial use of its code, APIs, and protocols is okay and royalty-free. But let's say that somebody likes a date-to-string function you lifted from Microsoft's patented Exchange Server API and rolls it into their open source mail client. That client is subsequently folded into, say, OS X, and at that point, it's gone commercial. Land mine.
I don't know how this will sort out. As I see it now, I wouldn't touch code created by anyone who has come within whiffing distance of Microsoft's published code, APIs, and protocols. How am I supposed to know whether someone's going to sell the code derived from my code derived from Microsoft's patented protocols? I'd only lift my quarantine if Microsoft took to tagging everything I might want to use as 100 percent patent-clean. Perhaps it will set up a legal department just to declare hunks of code patent-free.
It speaks in Microsoft's favor that, with the encouragement of the U.S. Department of Justice and the EU's Court of First Instances, Microsoft has been negotiating with Xen, JBoss, and other open source projects that turned into commercial software. Microsoft's patent arrangement lays out the usual "fair and reasonable" language with relation to patent licenses. As long as vendors are free to share with us the terms of their patent licenses, I'm cool with fair and reasonable. If the license agreement requires that the terms be held confidential, that'd make me a bit squirmy.
Perhaps I'm exaggerating about the patent risk, or perhaps not, but let's keep in mind that newly open Microsoft is the same Microsoft that was SCO's primary cheerleader in its (my opinion) scheme to extort license fees from Linux users. SCO had not proven, and never did prove, its claim that Linux contained stolen code, but Microsoft cowed to SCO in a letter that conveniently excoriated all competitors of Microsoft, except Sun, which also ponied up, for abusing licenses and patents. It was the most disgusting press release I've ever read. So now, when Microsoft says "open," my mind immediately goes back to that chapter in Redmond's history.
I'm making with the cynicism as my way of telling you to be careful. I have absolutely no doubt that there are people inside Microsoft who believe in this program deeply, and who want to see it succeed for the best reasons. I know I'll hear from them; I want to. I'll bring what they have to say straight to you, uncolored by bias.
At the moment, I can't imagine any conditions that would make me comfortable with using any of what Microsoft is publishing. I wouldn't tack a piece of code onto this post, for fear that it might be covered by some far-removed patent. There are, after all, ads on this page. I am commercial.
Posted by Tom Yager on February 27, 2008 03:00 AM
February 20, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's community engagement for Vista Service Pack 1 spurs outrage, not gratitude
I've learned in recent days that my perceived paucity of Vista in the wild may be impaired vision (of the ocular variety) on my part. The merest whisper of the impending delivery of the first Service Pack for Vista kicked off a public rending of garments the likes of which I've not seen. Granted, Vista Service Pack 1 saves you the headache of downloading dozens of individual Vista hot fixes, and Microsoft sweetens the lot with feature and performance tweaks, but I wouldn't say it's the Second Coming. Apparently some people would, and they were pissed off that they weren't among the first invitees to the event.
I am too mystified by the big picture of the meltdown that is the public reaction to Vista Service Pack 1, and Microsoft's reaction to that reaction, to do accurate reportage on the details. Here's what I do know: Microsoft announced that the RTM (release to manufacturing) of Vista Service Pack 1 will take place in March. This I like. New Vista systems shipped from manufacturers and discs supplied to developers and volume licensees will include the Service Pack. Rolling up fixes means that new Vista users will get one big download from Windows Update instead of dozens of little ones, and there won't be any wondering about whether you've received all the critical fixes. For corporate fleets, IT typically makes sure that accumulated hot fixes are either folded into the system image that IT uses to initialize new clients, or they're pushed out from centralized management servers. But for the rest of us, a Service Pack is a major convenience. And it's free. It's not like you'd turn it down, but you wouldn't trample your grandmother to be first to get it.
Well, you wouldn't, but some people would.
The moment that Microsoft dropped a hint that a Service Pack for Vista was coming, anticipation created a buzz more deafening than that generated by Vista's release. Erstwhile leaks of Vista SP1 surfaced and were quickly put down but not before they had been dissected, screenshot, and "reviewed." For reasons that I cannot fathom, Microsoft apparently offered a release candidate of SP1 (a beta of a roll-up of patches?), and it's said that Microsoft seeded discs among favored bloggers and media outlets. The have-nots seethed as the haves boasted, and I imagine that many of my readers, like me, were too distracted by a mix of real work and real news to take notice.
Joining this party late gives me the benefit of a simpler perspective. I see this as a sequence of three events that spins a tale more cautionary than amusing. Microsoft engaged the community, as is now its laudable practice to do, on the engineering of Vista Service Pack 1. Those who had been so engaged, and others who wished they had, interpreted Microsoft's announcement of the March RTM as a signal that the software was ready, and everyone had their own rationale for first place in line. The kicker is that shortly after Microsoft told the impatient rabble to wait it out, that there were still some device compatibility issues to iron out, Microsoft sheepishly and apologetically put Vista SP1 out for public download well in advance of the RTM. Release to manufacturing became release to mob.
Microsoft has discovered the dark side of making process and engineering transparent to the public. I've praised Microsoft's trend- setting model of community engagement in new engineering efforts. The company's responsiveness to public feedback, gathered in part through unfettered employee blogs open to comments, shows in Visual Studio and Windows Server 2008. But as I said, the idea can be taken too far, and I think that's what has happened with Vista SP1. Some work at Microsoft needs to take place behind closed doors. Bug reports and feature requests brought in through tech support, work with partners and interaction with enterprise accounts, the populations that are the most informed and attentive among Windows users, are appropriate fodder for fixes and feature tweaks. Giving everybody a visitor's badge to the Redmond campus makes great PR and exciting give-and-take but not always great strategy. SP1 turned into a case of take-and- take. Making sure that those who complained the loudest got SP1 first perhaps became more important than making room for those precious final builds, that last proofing of the documentation, that one device or chip set driver that was just a day away. We can't know what got sliced out when the klaxon went off and the Vista team had to do a hasty upload of the code to Akamai.
If Microsoft did make a gift of early SP1 access to those it favors, perhaps under what it understood was nondisclosure, it may understand now that this approach to marketing and relationship building creates more liabilities than benefits. It's a lesson that Microsoft has had the opportunity to learn before. Whether or not Microsoft brought this on itself, it's clear that what good there is in Vista SP1 has been buried by bad press. I'm content to wait until March, and I believe that those who plan to put SP1 in production will likewise wait until it reaches them. As one Microsoft blogger points out, Vista without SP1 is still Vista. SP1 doesn't make it a new OS, and if you've let Windows Update auto-install your critical fixes, you're missing out on very little.
What should Microsoft brace for next? A tidal wave of moaning from the entitled over the absence of their pet fixes and features. Work should already be under way for Vista Service Pack 2, where we're more likely to see what cooler heads had in mind for SP1. I only hope that Microsoft lets its engineers, not the blogosphere, decide when SP2 is ready to ship. I'll say it again: Perhaps there are some projects that don't need a blog.
A footnote: As of February 19, Microsoft has not made Vista Service Pack 1 readily visible to members of Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). In his blog, Microsoft corporate VP in charge of Windows Product Management Mike Nash provides a link to the SP1 downloads for paying MSDN subscribers. At present, the MSDN SP1 download link is http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb898842.aspx.
Posted by Tom Yager on February 20, 2008 03:00 AM
February 06, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Windows Server 2008: Redmond's new server OS hits paydirt
Microsoft asked IT what it wants from a Windows server operating system. That OS is here.
Windows Server 2008 (WS08) has been doing an excruciatingly slow public striptease for five years. Now that the last patch of linen has been peeled away, we'll have a chance to see what thousands of man-years yields in terms of innovation. WS08 is loaded with Microsoft's good ideas, almost the way commercial Linux is, and this time Microsoft added the ingredient of wide-open, real-time public engagement in the development process.
The people doing the talking in Microsoft's blogs are high-ranking types who could easily opt out of talking to the public. In a way, WS08 is a product of the collaboration between the world's largest software company and the people who use the products they make. It's pretty cool, and it goes a long way toward repairing Microsoft's reputation as an opaque, insular entity. The idea of having someone who says "I'll get back to you" actually get back to you about bug reports and feature requests is sort of a mind-blower. Microsoft's take on community isn't perfect; not all who raise their hands are called upon. That's not possible for people whose primary job functions involve getting things done, and I wonder how Microsoft manages triage on the mountain of feedback every new public beta must produce.
I have to hand it to Redmond: Windows Server 2008 gives the people what they want, albeit spread across several products. There are only so many eggs that one basket can hold, and there is more money to be made selling one egg at a time. There's nothing wrong with that business model, and it helps defray the cost of inserting buyers into the product development cycle. I think that Windows Server, once you build the essential Windows Server System components around it, is grossly overpriced. WS08's path to release is a model worthy of emulation, but it seems that Microsoft didn't get around to asking buyers what they'd like to pay for it. When it comes time for buyers to write the check for WS08, the adage "be careful what you wish for" may spring to mind.
There is one way that IT can keep Microsoft, or any vendor, from reaching into their pockets: Don't buy it. Assuming that you don't work for Microsoft or its PR network, if I asked you to name five WS08 features that have you salivating at the prospect of upgrading your Windows Server 2003 servers, I think you'd have to hit Microsoft's Web site to come up with your answers. Only the numbers will tell the tale, but despite WS08's certificate of community, it may be a victim of the Vista Effect.
Vista differs from WS08 in that it is the product of Microsoft's bad old "we'll let you know what you want" paradigm of software design. There is much goodness baked into Vista, but I'd much rather see Vista's yummiest bits back-ported to Windows XP. You see, Windows XP is everything I need in a Windows client OS. Ask me what I want and I might give you a list that puts Santa's naughty and nice scroll to shame. I like to play and discover, and Vista has a few of the kind of gems that can make a video game with an explore-and-gather theme so engrossing. But I have to say that Windows doesn't lend itself to this. Whether Microsoft was aping Apple, whose OS X reveals something new and relevant every time you sit down with it, Vista showed that Microsoft is no better at making OS presentation and management layers enjoyable to use. I'm not motivated to hunt down Vista's wonders. Move files around? Check. Connect to the Internet? Check. Launch apps? Check. That's what I need and expect from a Windows client OS, and based on that, Windows clients hit their apex with Windows 2000 Professional.
Microsoft cursed Vista by trying to move the goalposts based on internal discussion about what users would want desperately if only they knew they could have it. WS08 tries to move the goalposts, too, but Microsoft had external discussions that yielded the public's take on its fondest desires. When asked what it wants, the market is not shy about demanding the whole world and a Dove Bar. But even though WS08 is everything that buyers asked for, at the end of the day there has to be a defensible reason to reach deeply into one's pockets to upgrade to a Windows server OS that will likely be tasked to do only what Windows Server 2003 systems do now. IT will download the trialware of WS08 in record numbers. Reviews will range from good to ecstatic. In the end, if the paid-off car you're driving now is still a nice ride, you'd be foolish to take on new payments. At some point, Microsoft will force the issue by declaring the end-of-life on Windows Server 2003, but that's a story for another day.
Posted by Tom Yager on February 6, 2008 09:57 AM
January 03, 2008 | Comments: (0)
CES and Macworld Expo predictions
Two trendsetting trade shows hit back to back, starting next week. Here's a preview.
Being far softer of belly and of brain for the time off, I'm glad to be returning to working and working out. Just in time, too, because I have just enough time to amp up for that one-two punch of trendsetting trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Macworld Expo. During my vacation, I have taken advantage of half-hour breaks between naps to stock my quiver with relevance-seeking, pitch-piercing projectiles. I go to trade shows with a mission based on my view of what matters, which oft times yet entirely by chance fails to overlap with what everyone else considers important.
Consider my take on Macworld Expo. I think that the headliner there, although Mac heads will be loath to acknowledge it, will be Microsoft. It's been four years since Office for Mac, the one piece of software that every professional Mac owner must have, has felt its creator's touch. The new features in Office 2008 for Mac are almost incidental. Office 2008 is Universal, meaning that it runs natively on Intel and PowerPC Macs. Microsoft came by that honestly, using Xcode and Objective-C, accumulating expertise along the way that has made the developer staff blogs of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit one of the very few I check out regularly.
That's not to say that I have no questions about Office 2008. For instance, why will Entourage in the standard edition of Office 2008 stand out as the only mail client that doesn't connect to Exchange Server? I'm also curious about Office 2008's integration with the OS X dictionary that's shared by all Mac apps. I can see both sides of this: Microsoft's Office dictionaries and proofing tools are available in many languages and are geared for auto-correction, while Mac users like having one consistent master dictionary and thesaurus that operates system-wide.
Lest you think that I'm writing about Officeworld Expo, Macs built on Intel's Penryn 45-nanometer Core 2 CPUs will roll out at Macworld. I'm selfishly hoping that a Penryn MacBook Pro will be first out of the gate. The Santa Rosa model is more than fast enough. I'd like longer battery life and a break from the heat. Macworld Expo's heavy emphasis on an IT track fills me with new hope for an eight-core Xserve. That could bring a consolidation angle to OS X Server virtualization. I have a wish here, too: I'd like to see the entire OS X presentation layer rendered optional for OS X Server, with a flip of a switch in the Server Admin tool or a command-line operation. This would vastly shrink the resource footprint of a virtualized Mac server.
The iPhone will be a star attraction as well. The 3G iPhone will make its bow, and perhaps we'll see a hint of the iPhone/iPod Touch software development kit (SDK) that Apple plans to deliver in February. My personal wish is a screen alignment process, like the one that Microsoft handhelds use. This addresses the parallax problem that makes iPhone typing so error-prone. If Apple or AT&T decides to put a premium on 3G iPhone or the iPhone service plan, the raspberry you'll hear during the Macworld Expo Webcast will be mine.
Why would a publication of InfoWorld's orientation dispatch someone to CES? Don't let the word "consumer" fool you; CES isn't a city-sized Circuit City. It's chipmakers and manufacturers selling to manufacturers and importers, importers selling to distributors, and America making a rare appearance as a global peer player on its own stage. It's a chance to see technology and strategy in the making, as well as products that are already well entrenched in Asia and Europe but haven't yet caught the slow boat to the States.
I always see breakthroughs on multiple fronts at CES, and it's not a show I try to predict. I do expect to see the theme of consolidation play at CES as it does in IT, but with the spin of simplicity that IT doesn't usually take the time to make a priority. For example, when IT thinks of it, unified communication is a complicated server-side solution. What electronics vendors want is to sell that idea to consumers in a retail box. Why? Because that's what consumers demand. If there is a consistent lesson to take away from CES, it is that simplicity always deserves priority.
Posted by Tom Yager on January 3, 2008 03:00 AM
November 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft's homework for the holidays
Visual Studio 2008 goes gold. For Windows developers, Thanksgiving and Christmas have been canceled
Struck sullen by seasonal affective disorder? Soaring airfares got you grounded? Well, Windows developer, be of good cheer, for Microsoft has delivered you from your holiday doldrums. The retail release of Visual Studio 2008 is available now, and that means one of two things: Don't bother showing up for work after the holiday break unless you know it cold, or start planning that "training" junket for early in actual 2008.
Visual Studio 2008, a.k.a. Orcas, and the accompanying .Net 3.5 framework went live for download on November 19. If you've been tracking the beta and CTP (community technology preview) releases, you won't find much new in the retail release, but many working Windows developers may find that the retail delivery of Orcas creates new challenges, now that concepts such as .Net Foundations (presentation, workflow, communications), Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) have found form in tools that employers and IT shops expects developers to use.
That's as it should be. I can't say that Orcas is overdue -- it's right on schedule -- but developers have been taking to alternatives for much of what Orcas brings to the table. AJAX, Web design surfaces, and elevation of JavaScript to a first-class language count among long-neglected necessities. Microsoft is quick to mix its extensions in among the standards, with Silverlight and the Expression tools harking back to what some might think of as the bad old days of Internet Explorer's JScript and site-essential ActiveX controls.
Adobe's Flash made the world safe again for sites that demand native browser extensions, and Silverlight pushes .Net and Windows Media to Windows and OS X clients as embedded objects that have an enticing YouTube-inspired "click to play" icon that downloads Silverlight.
Microsoft has gotten the message that free tools get developers educated and excited, and while IT shops rarely jump language or OS platforms, developers do. Microsoft's Express editions of Visual Studio 2008 went live for download simultaneously with commercial releases of Visual Studio 2008. Microsoft has used employee blogs to build developer communities, and VS 2008 Express Editions has a dedicated blog ostensibly devoted to those who enjoy writing code.
Microsoft's blog-as-landing-page approach sends me on a tangent: Coding4fun is an authorless blog, which might be construed by the audience that Microsoft hopes to reach as a misuse of the Web log ethos. Blog, schmog; blogging purity is headed the way of open source.
Coding4fun is a portal, more like an open source project's news page than a blog. Everyone who wants to throw a snit over commercial tainting of blog culture has a green light. The next frontier of commercialization is social networking. Oh wait, that's been done.
Visual Studio 2008 pulls me back in with two features. First there are the visual designers. Visual Studio's lame approach to native and .Net interface layout has driven a good deal of Windows developers to Flash and AJAX for front ends that probably belong embedded in the application. Perhaps someone passed a note to Microsoft's Tools group that Java does a better, more consistent job of client presentation design than Microsoft's official suite. Visual Studio 2008, along with the bundled Expression tools, brings Windows developers beyond the Win32 age. Here's a tip: The visuals don't require Vista. Vista and VS 2008 are a "better together" experience, but no employed developer, not even in Microsoft, writes apps that name Vista as a prerequisite.
The other VS 2008 win is the ability to cross-target multiple .Net runtime releases with one toolset. That's right, you can create .Net apps that don't choke when a particular release of the .Net Framework has not been installed. Launching a stand-alone app that opens a browser to Microsoft's .Net download site is the kind of thing that makes an end-user go "huh?"
Visual Studio 2008 goes a long way toward erasing arbitrary boundaries that Microsoft created between .Net, Web, and native apps, and for the first time in a long time, there is a reasonable, Microsoft-blessed pathway to targeting the Mac. But some boundaries remain firm. I don't keep Windows servers online any more; mine is a Leopard shop. I had planned to pull down the 4GB DVD image of Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition, and subsequently burn it for review on the Mac Pro system in my lab. I expect too much; the download requires an ActiveX control, which mechanism OS X, sadly, failed to implement. Also noteworthy is Microsoft's quiet acceptance of the slow uptake of Windows 64-bitness.
Visual Studio 2008 is a strictly 32-bit toolset, runnable in 64-bit Windows on Windows (WOW, which I always considered to be a counterintuitive acronym for legacy compatibility) and capable of producing 64-bit targeted code. That's a bummer because compilers make a dandy argument for the use of 64-bit code.
Developers don't have to jump platforms to catch up to the now. Sun has, hands down, the most powerful multitargeted (x86, SPARC, Solaris, Linux) toolset in the industry, and there's nothing Express about it. Sun's dynamic tracing facility, implemented in Solaris as DTrace and in OS X Leopard as X Ray, provides a scriptable interface for tracking and playback of system and application performance data at runtime, no instrumentation required. Sun's toolset is loaded with scary optimizations and profiling tools that Visual Studio lacks.
Apple's XCode has had solid source code management and interface building chops from the jump, and Objective-C 2.0 brings concepts embodied by .Net and Java into the modern age. It did that 10 years ago, but that's not germane to this discussion.
The point is that while Microsoft continues to give developers the best reason to curl up in front of the fire with their notebooks (actually, two reasons, including documentation, now that print is dead), you might also want to use that expensive broadband pipe of yours to suck in a Solaris DVD image, or gift yourself a Mac and find out why there's so much exceptional native software for it. However you spend it, I bid you an enjoyable holiday.
Posted by Tom Yager on November 21, 2007 03:00 AM
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