Category: Microsoft

The Windows cycle →

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Tom Warren, opening his Windows 10 review on The Verge:

Windows has a cycle. Windows XP saved us from Windows ME, Windows 7 saved us from the Windows Vista mess, now Windows 10 is here to save save us from Windows 8.

It’s nice to be on the good part of the cycle.

I’ve been playing with the pre-release versions of Windows 10 on and off for a while now, and I like what I’ve seen. Microsoft has reigned in some of the insanity of Windows 8, and the whole thing feels faster and more modern than its predecessor ever did.

Microsoft’s big day

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Today’s Microsoft’s keynote was packed full of announcements, from previews of Windows 10 and a post-IE browser to Xbox improvements and a virtual reality headset.

Really.

Like many who have been in the Apple camp for a long time, my natural tendency to dismiss Microsoft as old and boring, reserved for people stuck in the enterprise, but the truth is that Redmond is more relevant than they have been in years, and today’s event proves it in several ways.

Color me excited about what Microsoft is doing for the first time in a long time.

Windows 10

Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft started on their whole “one OS, everywhere” concept, but the company had to split their OS based on what processor was under it — resulting in the much-despised Windows RT.

All that’s gone now, it would seem. Windows 10 is one OS, spanning from the desktop to the smartphone. The whole OS has an interface that’s smart enough to know what kind — and size — of device it is on.

Hell, even the Xbox is getting Windows 10; whatever that means.

This isn’t the approach Apple’s taken, of course. Apple still ships Mac OS X and iOS as separate operating systems, albeit with special versions for the Apple TV and (soon) the Apple Watch. OS X and iOS share a lot of under-the-hood bits, but they don’t share much in the way of control or UI elements.

While I think Apple’s way still is best, but there’s no denying that Windows 10 is compelling.

Features like Cortana, Microsoft’s powerful digital assistant will be on the desktop, as will smartphone-like access to things like Bluetooth and location settings.

Interestingly, it’ll be free for a year for anyone who owns Windows 7 or 8. Clearly, this is in response to Apple making OS X updates free several years ago, but this is a big move for Redmond. Unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t rely on hardware for the majority of its income, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the company’s earnings.

Office

The upcoming version of Office falls in line with Windows 10, with one version to run on all devices. Both the OS and the office suite will change depending on input type, which seems a little crazy, but these things have to live in a world where a laptop can flip over and become a tablet, and it’s good to see Microsoft realize that.

Project Spartan

While it’s here to plague web developers for years to come, the end of Internet Explorer is in sight.

Maybe.

It’s actually unclear if Spartan is just the next IE, or if Microsoft will take this opportunity to put the maligned brand out to pasture.

We know that the new browser will be powered by an all-new rendering engine, but it doesn’t seem like its WebKit. This world it still doomed to having Microsoft build its own engine, but hopefully it will be as modern as the company claimed today.

On the feature side, Spartan boasts deep integration with OneNote, making it easy to mark up webpages and share them. There’s also Reading List which is exactly what it sounds like.

Surface Hub

The new Surface Hub — no, not this Surface or that Surface — is a 84-inch 4K display with a built-in computer hooked up to a bunch of sensors, cameras, speakers and more.

In short, the Surface Hub can hold conference calls, serve as a digital whiteboard (powered by OneNote) and more.

Where it got real weird

The Microsoft HoloLens is a visor-based virtual reality headset that overlays holographic images on the real world.

Basically, this plus the Oculus Rift.

I don’t even really know what to say about this, but this article is well-worth the read. I have no idea what this stuff is for beyond gaming, but it sure seems awesome.

Satya Nadella at Code Conference →

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Ina Fried:

In his first few months, Nadella has gone to great lengths to show he is a new type of leader in Redmond — from speaking frankly about the competition and challenges to sporting hoodies rather than the Oxford shirts and sweaters of his predecessors.

I like Nadella, and I think he’s going to be great for Microsoft.

Microsoft Office for iPad team does an AMA →

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This is pretty neat:

Hello from the Office for iPad engineering team!

In the first week since launch we’ve seen over 12 million app downloads and heard a lot of valuable feedback. We’re already incorporating that feedback into future updates, and to kick things into high gear, we are partnering with Reddit for the next 2 hours to give you an opportunity to ask us anything (well, nearly anything) about Office for iPad. We have developers, testers and program managers from each app team (Word, Excel and PowerPoint for iPad) here to answer your questions.

The war was over years ago

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With Office for iPad being released this week and Microsoft reportedly backing away from its anti-iPad campaign, change is underway at the software giant.

There’s an obvious reason for this. The company’s new CEO Satya Nadella is a breath of fresh air in Redmond.

Clearly Office for iPad was in the works before Nadella was promoted to CEO in February. There’s evidence of Office for iPad that surfaced (hrm!) back in October 2013 and December of 2012. Eric Slivka’s Mac Rumors post in October suggests that Microsoft was working on bringing a “touch-first” version of Office to its own Windows platform before iOS.

It’s not hard to imagine the meeting where Steve Ballmer was shown the product and forbid it to be released.

And there — right there — is why Nadella is different from his predecessor.

But to see just how different he is from Ballmer, it’s important to look at the past.

Here’s a portion of Steve Jobs’ keynote at Macworld Boston in 1997:

In the keynote, Jobs shared Microsoft’s promise to release the same number of releases of Office for Mac as on the PC, and announced (to booing) that Internet Explorer would be the default browser on the Macintosh.

While those agreements have expired, the stress felt in the room is evidence of the rift between Cupertino and Redmond. To address this, Jobs said:

We’re shepherding some of the greatest assets in the computer industry. If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here.

We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that’s great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. I think if we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude. We like their software.

So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy. This is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again.

I really think that Jobs believed this. The war was over years ago, but Microsoft just now let down their weapons. Nadella gets it; Ballmer didn’t.

Nadella seems to understand that for Microsoft to survive the post-PC era, it has to evolve. The idea of keeping a product from Apple’s platform just because of the logo doesn’t work anymore. Microsoft needs to make good apps backed by powerful cloud services.

That’s a future I welcome.