While Microsoft has only just begun fighting the perception problems surrounding Windows Vista, the company is already thinking and planning way beyond its latest operating system. We all know that Windows 7 will build on top of the foundations laid by Vista, and that it will include a fancy multitouch framework (and a mysterious new taskbar). According to Microsoft, Windows 7 is still on track for January 2010, and in a memo to his employees, CEO Steve Ballmer outlined some interesting new approaches the company might try with Windows 7 – including being just a little more like Apple.
It is a more or less generally accepted fact that Apple ‘has it easy’ when it comes to developing certain parts of its operating system when compared to Microsoft. While the former needs to address a mere handful of hardware configurations, the latter has to provide support for a more or less infinite amount of possible hardware combinations. Apparently, Steve Ballmer agrees with this, and notes in his memo that Microsoft’s commitment to providing choice (when it comes to hardware, I assume) interferes with the company’s ability to provide a decent user experience.
In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones – providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.
What that exactly means remains to be seen, but we can be pretty sure Microsoft wants to at the very least prevent the utter disaster where loads of OEMs created sub-standard hardware that simply wasn’t cut out for running Vista, or where Microsoft itself marked computers Vista-capable, while in fact they were barely Vista-possible. Some Apple/Mac websites even go as far as to say that Microsoft will “mimic the experience offered by the Mac maker”, but I don’t believe we’ll see Microsoft coming out with computers themselves, or even reference boards. A firm tightening of a possible “Windows 7 capable” campaign seems a lot more feasible.
And sensible.
You know what I think? The problem that Microsoft currently is facing is to a certain extent the consequence of hardware not being based on open standards or open protocols. If most hardware was based on open standards supporting everything would be a hell of a lot easier. Apple truly wouldn’t stand a chance against Microsoft. Windows would then provide an experience that could easily rival and exceed Apple’s, because Apple’s main advantage would be non-existent. Same goes for Linux of course. Maintaining the kernel would be much easier.
Which is kind of ironic, since MS is trying to force closed standards like DirectX and Office down our throat using their defacto monopoly on OS’es and office productivity. But this time MS is on the other side of the fence a they do not seem to like it. Surprise!
With open standards and protocols the IT/IS sector as a whole would thrive well, because a hard to overcome barrier will be taken away, while innovation will still be possible by both F/OSS and proprietary implementations of that open standard.
Doubtful to say the least. There are many open standards already in the IT world; ACPI for example, which has been a constant bane for Linux to support – why? because we have vendors out there who do buggy ACPI implementations.
In the case of Apple, they design the hardware, they design the software, the two sides work together and can test and modify the operating system to address any possible issues that might arise during testing. In the case of Windows, if there is an issue – the OEM is stuck in a situation where by he can’t do anything to the operating system.
Microsoft need to tighten the requirements for the ‘Windows Vista Logo’ – it won’t stop vendors from producing crap hardware and support, but if they push the ‘Windows Vista Logo’ programme, customers will refuse to do business with those vendors who don’t have the logo.
ACPI is an example of a terrible specification. It’s 600 pages long and contains all sorts of features it probably doesn’t need.
Last time I heard, the Microsoft DSDT compiler was also very good at generating DSDTs that could only be interpreted properly by Microsoft operating systems (unlike the Intel one).
Also, if I remember correctly, the DSDTs can specify that certain things should only work on certain operating systems. Since many manufacturers seem to have the idea that Windows is the only OS that supports modern computers, they mark all the ACPI features as requring the OS name to be Windows.
Really, the ACPI spec should be simple and OS independent.
True, which is the great thing with Apple – they do their own firmware, and they seem to get the stuff working correctly without too many problems – which the benefit of controlling the whole widget.
Quite frankly, I’d sooner see each distribution owned by an OEM, and seeing the OEM customising their hardware and distribution so that they work together seamlessly. A single focus on their hardware alone so that no compromises are made for the ‘greater compatibility’ outside their own hardware line.
anyone else getting flashbacks to stories about unix fragmenting into 1001 slightly incompatible variants?
sure, the gpl licence should stop most of that, but if so, why the hell even bother…
and on the topic of ACPI:
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/25/1150218
Yeap, I saw that on news.zdnet.com – I can’t believe that motherboard vendors are that crappy; then again, an HP laptop I used to own had a pathetic ACPI implementation, meaning no other operating system besides Windows actually supported the power management. Imagine sitting there in a lecture with Solaris loaded on the damn thing, only to find that it is barely able to get through a 2 hour lecture (infact, alot of the time, on a full battery, I’d be lucky to get 1 1/2 hours out of the damn thing, same situation with Ubuntu/Fedora/etc).
Basically it has come down to in the computer world, if you want decent power management you either get a PC laptop and put up with only running Windows or you get a Mac. When there are gaps of of up to 1-2 hours difference between running Ubuntu/Fedora/etc versus running Windows – can you blame people with wanting to stick with Windows?
Yes, let’s go back to the eighties and make incompatible variations for feature differentiation! How does that help anyone? (Arguably, the eee has already gone this path,and this is why many people eventually replace the severely limited customized Xandros distribution.)
Edited 2008-07-26 10:19 UTC
The eighties was full of companies creating totally incompatible proprietary software, and hardware as well. It will probably take the next ten years, but open source software creates an environment where OEMs can drive down the cost of software and create a market where players are small enough to have to worry about interoperability – and where they have the source code that gives them it for free.
In what way? The eee is a somewhat different device to a normal computer or laptop you would buy from an OEM, and has a pretty simply mobile phone type tabbed interface with all the software and links to web sites and services people generally need when they’re out and about. The Open Office that is on there will still be able to open and save documents others can read. I’m afraid only geeks that want to install an operating system so they can sit for a couple of hours installing the software and links they need will go through with that. It may be limited for you, but not for what it was intended.
In the future, and over the next few years, we will see more such devices that will diverge from a normal PC bought from an OEM. At the moment, Microsoft seems to have been able to head Asus and the eee off by doing some discounting and subsidising, but I’m afraid they’re not going to be able to do that with every manufacturer who brings a device out over the next ten years who is not a traditional PC OEM. The economies of scale of using open source software are just too great and undeniable.
That reminds me of the Japanese machines of yore…..
I don’t recall it working out that well though.
Apple don’t design hardware except the case. Their computers are built in the same Chinese factories as any other cheap mainstream PC. All Apple does is support a tiny subset of PC hardware.
Incorrect, They design the board lay out, they decide what chips they’ll use – for example, they choose to use Broadcom wireless instead of the ‘status quo’ for Intel chipsets being Intel’s own wireless chipset. Apple also has their own firmware – I am unsure, however, who are the provider of these firmware tools given that there are quite a number who provide EFI development tools.
It isn’t just a matter of throwing a board into a nice case – end of story. There is a heck of a lot more design and work involved with designing a PC besides throwing it into a beige case and giving it a cool sounding name involving an X somewhere in it – to sopme how garner money from the ‘eXtreme’ crowd.
In the case of a laptop, the design of the board layout is critical to how heat is moved around when one takes into account the design of the case itself. You can’t just pick up a generic laptop board – because all laptops are designed differently and have different ways of dispersing heat based on what the engineers at the given companies consider the best course of action.
Edited 2008-07-26 09:51 UTC
I don’t believe Apple are any longer into much hardware design now than when they really used to have their own specific platform. That’s proved good for them, because it’s less expensive to put together and sell basically standard PC hardware instead of niche stuff (no matter how good the latter is/was). I guess that also means they’re more into business than engineering nowadays.
Pardon? who said they were using custom hardware? all they’re doing is using standard chipsets and components, then deciding where they put it on the board as dictated by their case design and how they want it cooled. It has all the same bog standard components as everyone else – what makes it unique is the layout of the board, and the firmware used.
I can’t work out why you can differentiate between hardware layout and hardware design – its pretty obvious that the former has nothing to do with designing unique chipsets that are only found in Macs.
Sure. So what are the special things Apple do?
As far as I know, Apple’s boards are designed by Intel, not by Apple itself. During the PPC days, Apple co-designed their boards with Freescale and IBM. The Open Firmware during the PPC era was developed by Sun. EFI was developed at Intel for the Itanium platform, and doesn’t originate from Apple either.
Apple does the software, and the external design. That’s it. The internals are designed by Intel (at the moment) and built by little kids in the far east. Just like most other OEMs.
Because don’t fool yourself. Apple is an OEM, just with a different operating system.
Where did I said that they invented EFI or designed their own chips? You really do need to read the post again because I made no such assertions.
I said nothing of designing chips. You said Apple designed their own motherboards (“They design the board lay out”), I said they don’t. You said they have their own firmware (“Apple also has their own firmware”) while in fact, we’re looking at plain EFI with an Apple logo.
So, uhm, wait, you want me to read this discussion again…?
No, this is what I said earlier:
Read the final piece:
“I am unsure, however, who are the provider of these firmware tools given that there are quite a number who provide EFI development tools.”
When I refer to “Apple also has their own firmware”, I am referring to the fact that they have their own customised firmware – hence the reference to the tools. If I had claimed that they wrote the whole firmware themselves I would never have made the above claim – because by logic, they would be using their own tools as well.
If Intel did all the work relating to the board then wouldn’t it stand to reason for Apple to go with a complete Centrino package? why would Intel have anything to do with Broadcom?
I think you don’t understand how this works. Intel designed the motherboards for Apple (Otellini said so himself a few times during the keynotes where he was present), but that doesn’t mean everything on it has to be Intel. It’s trivial to have an all-Intel board but with a Broadcom wireless chip. A motherboard design is a reference, not a bible.
And having Broadcom instead of an Intel wireless chipset in Apple’s Intel notebooks is perfectly understandable since Apple had been using Broadcom chips for a long time already.
Except, they don’t. If you consider slapping an Apple logo on top of a bog standard EFI implementation differentiating enough, then fine – but the rest of us know there’s nothing “Apple” about the EFI in Apple’s machines.
Gotta disagree with you kaiwai. Apple’s engineering involves choosing which components to use and the case, and thats about it. They tend to choose the high end of mid range pretty much across the board, but there is nothing special about apple hardware, and as machines go you can do much, much better.
IMO even their cases are very overrated. Typically they have a nice, clean esthetic, but have very poor cooling. The macbook air can’t even play a 45 min xvid without the machine overheating to the point where one of the cores shuts down, leaving you without enough performance to finish watching the rest. The macbook pro is better then that, but I wouldn’t want to push the hardware too much for any substantial length of time. Honestly, what it comes down to is they didn’t want to put more vents on the bottom because they wanted to keep things pretty.
Keep in mind, this is coming from a lifelong apple fan. That machine in my avatar delivered is one of my favorite machines I have ever owned.
You’re right about the MacBook Air; then again, I always thought it was a stupid idea. When you read many of the talk backs on forums, the majority didn’t want a MacBook Air, what they wanted was the return of the 12inch PowerBook – basically a 12inch MacBook Pro, and the unwashed masses would have been content (with an Atom, it would be a very nice seller).
As for the MacBook Pro – I never liked the case of them. I found the aluminium look was too bling oriented. I preferred a simple white laptop without all the razzel dazzel which the MacBook Pro seems to have.
As for my MacBook, I use it on a flat surface, and the most I get is 47 degrees Celsius for my Airport card, the rest sit at around 34-37degrees Celsius – well within the ‘safe temperature’ range.
Edited 2008-07-28 03:26 UTC
I bought a simple 2x2GHz core2duo HP laptop with 3 GB RAM for half the prize of a MacBook.
Although Linux isn’t allways suitable when you have to install the OS yourself, *NIX is a killer when it comes to networking.
Why spending so much money on Apple when all you need is a linux laptop with kismet and or aircrack-ng (no pun intended)?
Depends on what you need to use it for. For me, the only viable operating systems are Windows and MacOS X – so you can guess which one I chose. I have nothing against Linux, it just isn’t suitable for what I wish to accomplish in my day to day computing activities
because we have vendors out there who do buggy ACPI implementations.
Funny, because I’ve always thought ACPI is bad per se.
“…including being just a little more like Apple.”
Meaning they will pull programmers from the Win7 team to work on the ZunePhone which will delay the release of Win7 by six months and make it an even bigger POS?
No, they will bring the next version of .NET one and a half years than the rest of the world, and will only release it in a 64-bit version. Oh wait…
(Of course, they will screw ISVs by dropping C/C++ APIs for 64-bit versions, and force them to use the Objec^W^W^W^W^W C# for UI-ish code.)
Ok, I have to admit, OS X does have beautiful frameworks
.
Edited 2008-07-26 10:18 UTC
IMHO the “hardware support” is not the biggest problem of Windows at all. Do we still have blue screens that often? If not (which I assume), it is not the hardware or drivers to blame for any bad experience.
Linux manages to support an even wider range of hardware and expose it to userspace in a way that everything above the kernel doesn’t have to care about which specific piece of hardware we got built into the system.
I see many problems Windows faces in user-space, not in kernel-space. Some major causes:
* tons of quirks to provide backwards compatibility for _software_
* very heterogenous system where lib-sharing is uncommon, instead every piece of software has its own way to deal with things
* bad API decisions of a decade ago still carried with newer OS versions. MFC should’ve died a long time ago!
So it’s true, Windows has to deal with many issues, mostly homemade, which are not a deal for OS X. But these are mostly not related to hardware support.
But it’s a sentence everybody understands and nobody questions: “we have problems because we provide you all the good choice”. Sounds like marketing, not fact, to me!
Edited 2008-07-26 00:46 UTC
i do believe that they are trying to fix that with vista, but its a long road ahead…
It’s not like the community didn’t tell them at the time – yet Microsoft and it’s proponents dismissed it as open-source idealism (and still do). That’s why a lot of open-source folk get irked by Microsoft, those very poor technical decisions (a lack of platform-independent abstractions for one, we’ve been off 386s for quite some time, despite Win32 deing skewed for it) despite the chorus saying otherwise. It’s a rod Microsoft makes for it’s own back, and while they are to blame for their own mess, we’re the ones that have to labour developing systems to their crummy userspace designs.
Everything MS does has at least ten years of support, which is why companies love them. Home users are a secondary market, the primary one is and always has been the business.
So, by your ideas, I should be able to call Microsoft and get them to talk me through making changes to the registry on my Win ME ?
Dont think so, they totally dropped ME support 3 years ago, that falls way short of your 10 years !
I’m sorry, support for their professional is around ten years. NT4 was only supported for 8-9 years, but XP is going to be supported for 13 years. Their consumer products are still above industry norm, but not quite that high.
I wasn’t even talking about operating systems though, I was talking about server side stuff and APIs. I mean, VisiCalc still works on Vista (you can even print with it).
🙂
For all fairness, MFC is NOT part of Windows itself: it is a C++ wrapper to the lower-level C API, and not even a completely functional (as in, covering all things) wrapper of the Win32 API, and sadly, more often than not, it gets in the way of doing things at the true Win32 API level, and makes you want to pull your hair out.
ATL is likely going to get in your way a lot less, especially when you want to get trickier at the lowest level: and despite all that, there’s a lot of Microsoft’s own developers that write to the bare Win32 API level. That right there is a problem with Microsoft’s creation of MFC: for the most part, they don’t eat their own dog food when it comes to that, while Apple first works out the details of features they’d like to put in the OS, implement it in at least one of their applications, and then later expose it for third-party developers to use. I suspect Microsoft these days uses .NET more in their own products than they’ve ever used MFC, but I’ve not verified.
MFC was used quite a bit in Office. If you ran Microsoft exes through a program like dependency walker, you’ll find all sorts of references to MFC.
.NET on the other hand, what large projects use .NET?
.net is used in powershell, which is now part of the common engineering guidelines, which means that powershell administration providers are required for all microsoft products.
.net is also a first class citizen in IIS7, and the guidence is all new filter development should be done as managed httpmodules rather then ISAPI filters.
Windows Media Center (and related applications) are fully .net apps
Small Business Server related applications are all .net
Sharepoint portal server is fully ASP.net
The new Outlook business contact manager is .net
SQL server reporting services are primarily written in .net
Exchange mobile UI is written in .net
Visual Studio, BizTalk, CommerceServer, Content Management Server all have parts written in .net.
The reason the big apps are not written in .net is that they have been around forever and have a big commitment to C++. .Net is generally used for new projects (like MCE), or where it can be used in a more modular sense on existing apps.
Thank you for providing this information!
More than anything, I wish Microsoft would be like Apple by dumping their aging OS and releasing a new one based on BSD.
Why BSD ?
I have tried PC-BSD and it does appear to be a very good system, but your idea is to throw the baby out with the bathwater
Because, BSD’s license is such that Microsoft could create an OS out of it without having to reveal their “improvements”. This goes along much better with Microsoft’s culture that would basing an OS on Linux due to the requirements of the GPL.
Since every other major OS out there is Unix or unix-like in nature, Microsoft following Apple’s example of dumping their aging and somewhat lame OS in favor of a Unix-based os is exactly what I’d like to see; if for no other reason that consistency.
Microsoft’s current offerings are of absolutely no interest to me, but if they did as I suggested (which we all know they won’t) then I might be willing to use their stuff again.
Also, don’t talk about market share and what other people want. I don’t care. This is all about me.
I think Microsoft’s biggest problem is Windows XP. It is quite good and has gotten much better since SP2 was released. How do you convince your customers to switch to a new version of a product when the older version works so well? Vista doesn’t really bring a lot of tangible benefits to the end user. And as far as businesses are concerned (at least the one I work at anyway), rolling out Vista isn’t going to do much except break some mission-critical custom-written applications that they don’t have time or budget to update to be compatible with Vista.
No. We don’t know any of that. When Vista was on the horizon, we “knew” that if would bring us WinFS as well as heaps of other things – yet none of them are contained in my Vista-box now – surprise, surprise
Seeing is believing.
The only major thing that was cut was WinFS, which honestly has been being promised to us on and off since windows 95. Other then that they were either very minor features, or the drm stuff (which ironically everyone still complains about.)
Does that mean they’ll relieve the pressure on OEMs so to give us the choice of machines without Windows? I assume not, as that’s not really in their interest…
Funny how this big company to customer relationship works…
Is there any way to get windows 7 … without installing how can we say windows 7 is better than xp and vista..
What about chucking NT and taking up Mach, L4, BSD, or even Linux? BSD even supports multiple ABIs.
Cause for the Umteenth time – there is nothing wrong with the NT kernel. The problem with Windows lies in the UserSpace lagacy crap.
Trim the OS and get rid of the stuff lying around that is over 5 years old and virtualise it for dweebs (corporates) who need it and voila – Windows would be quite reasonable.
I like VIsta but it could do with some major trimming to cut out the old cruft..
MS did some good underlying stuff with it in the Display and Audio sub systems but it took hardware vendors a while to catch up. With audio, I suppose MS was tired of Creative’s Craptacular drivers taking down their OS.
I think MS headquarters could use some streamlining.
There is plenty of talent at MS but to much influencial people want to see their pet projects included. And at the end nobody has the overview.
I find it hard to swallow that Vista is it after such a long time of development.
I can’t help but think that Monkey Boy’s comments hide his true meaning: “Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises.” which stinks of “Treacherous Computing”, otherwise marketed as “Trusted Computing”.
I could be off base, but I see that as a move to pull a Soprano’s act on the hardware vendors and force ($$$) them to build for Windows only, excluding all others. He speaks of “our commitment to choice”, which I simply do not agree with at all: Microsoft has and will never will be about “choice”, except to choose them.