That the Windows 7 phone could be worse is little consolation

I played with a Windows 7 phone at the Bell store (the LG Optimus Quantum). Although I wasn't repelled, I was puzzled. Things that should be fast were deliberately slow; navigation included pointless transitions that looked pretty the first time, but that I would soon get sick and tired of waiting to complete.

The device was so warm and heavy you could use it to give a hot stone massage. It is unsurprising that sales have been lukewarm. I was really hoping to see better from Microsoft, if only so that my mutual fund that depends on its performance would perk up a bit.

Tools by tools no longer cool

For a while there I thought that Microsoft was going to take everybody down with Visual Studio Team System. They'd take their superior IDE and debugging environment, add testing and fix their crappy version control system, and they'd own the world. "Nobody else will be able to deliver everything in one package," I thought. "They'll undercut everybody else until they own the landscape, and then they'll milk us like the clueless cows we are."

I even chose Perforce for a version control system. I looked at CVS and decided it was crap; Subversion was still not there, and everything else was just not good enough. "Microsoft uses Perforce," I thought, "and how wrong could they be?" (At that point I was still in fear and awe of Microsoft. Hell, I even thought Longhorn was going to rule the world.)

How different the world is suddenly. Yes, Microsoft has a beautiful IDE that permits you to smoothly debug Windows software. But who can afford to run web software on Windows? It is simply murder on a business model. And desktop software on Vista? Yeah, right. As a result, Team System is terribly quaint all of the sudden. Trac, Subversion (or Git if you're really cool), and BaseCamp are really all you need for web development, so why would you bother administering a SQL server database and a domain controller and an exchange server and a project server and a team system server and buying CALs for all of the above and along with the hardware to run it -- all for tens of thousands of dollars? And if you want to do truly distributed development between a core team, external contractors, or even (gasp) a wide community, Team System won't even do it. And there's the rub: that's the way software is built today.

Yesterday I saw an ad for Perforce: they're giving away a 2-user version, "No questions asked." Whoop-tee-doo, who cares. They can't even give that away. Microsoft versus Borland versus IBM was like a tyrannosaurus fighting a triceratops and a pterodactyl. It just doesn't matter.

Yahoo! Microsoft is dead.

It is with a six-pack of schadenfreude that I consider the collapse of Microsoft's attempt to eat Yahoo. Particularly hilarious is this zinger from Steve Ballmer:

At the heart of our strategy is a commitment to bring the benefits of competition, choice, and innovation to everyone who uses the Internet.

Competition? from a convicted monopolist? Hollow laugh. Choice? Only until they use cross-subsidy to wipe out their competitors. Innovation? Microsoft has never had an original idea other than Microsoft Bob.

The yellow press is full of speculation that Ballmer's job is on the line. As a replacement, let me be the first to recommend former SCO head Daryl McBride. He has lots of experience that will help in Microsoft's probable new line of business: threatening people with lawsuits. The RIAA route is the last avenue of the irrelevant.

Feeling bloated

Do you feel like you're slowing down as you get older? Maybe it isn't just your own metabolism – it could be the software you're using. An excellent comparison of resource consumption by Windows/Office over the past decade is a damning indictment of the horribly bloated and unwieldy state of the Microsoft desktop platform. The old adage that "Andy [Grove (Intel)] giveth, Bill [Gates (Microsoft)] taketh away" turns out to have been insufficiently pessimistic: Bill has been taking more than Andy had to give. The free lunch is over, but some companies are still bellied up to the buffet.

Missing the point

Linux increased desktop market share by 119% over the past 12 months – but even so remains at 0.81% of total market share. Some see this as a huge disappointment and evidence that Windows will remain the One Ring.

However, I think a narrow focus on desktop market share is actually quite misleading. New devices with new capabilities are taking over the computing world. 'Most everybody carries a mobile phone, where Symbian and Linux are dominant, and Windows Mobile (which has nothing to do with Vista) has virtually no penetration.

So, if I count the "computers" in my house, there are: 2 linux laptops, two linux desktops, one vista laptop, one symbian mobile, one linux mobile, one linux landline and VOIP phone, one blackberry, one Windows CE and three linux embedded devices. Granted, I am a freak, and that increases the likelihood that I'll have linux devices – nine out of thirteen of them, in my case. But I only chose my OS on four of those nine linux devices, for the other five linux devices there is no alternative. And of course I'm not alone, as the TiVo is a linux device, and the linux-based wrt54g is the most popular router of all time.

Microsoft is innovating with a new category of device, a $10k coffee table. Good for them, it looks very sexy. Unfortunately for Microsoft it also looks dead simple to clone. Where's the new business model to go with it? Being too expensive won't make it exciting for long. Maybe they're hanging their hat on the Zune integration.

Meanwhile, Linux is making its way onto the motherboard (two different ways). Linux and other operating systems are being included in all kinds of new devices. A million iPhones have been sold already, and they run Mac OSX (the same thing that runs on the Mac). People don't think about the OS in these devices, and they don't care. The focus on desktop as the measure of success is so very 20th century.

Not invented there

Like many geeks, I'm messing with Ruby on Rails and absorbing REST (which leads to not getting enough rest). I've been working on an ASP.Net project and tried to use a RESTful URL... bad juju. I got it to work under Mono by overriding the 404 error page, but that trick didn't work on Microsoft's server. The suggested solution is to write your own ISAPI filter. Uh-huh, I'll get right on that as soon as I get done knitting my own underwear. So much for that.

Today I came across an article about "Microsoft's Astoria REST Framework". Cool! I went to the official project page to check it out. What's really weird is that the page never actually uses the word REST. They're solving for it, they're implementing it, but they can't name it that? Bizarre. Just how are people supposed to find this thing?

Apparently Microsoft is switching from "embrace and extend" to something far weirder: "grudging adoption without admission"? Or "yeah, we'll do it, but we'll bury it in the FAQ." What's up with that?

Perfect fit

The buzz is that Microsoft is buying RIM, maker of the BlackBerry mobile device.

I think this makes perfect sense. Blackberry is ubiquitous, practical, and ugly. The development platform is terrible – if you were there for DOS, the Blackberry will seem eerily familiar. The operating system crashes regularly. Wonderful error messages like: "Null pointer exception" and "VM: too many threads" are common.

Ugly though it may be, it is very popular (heck, I have one). Microsoft has to have this. Their mobile platform is dead in the water, and this is where the market is expanding. I suspect that Microsoft was waiting for RIM's recent patent difficulties to blow over – the last thing a convicted criminal organization needs to do is buy more trouble.

So there will be a marriage, and many children. Sometimes ugly parents produce beautiful children. Just not usually.

Who's your daddy?

Windows Update isn't asking anymore. Even if you configured it to ask you before updating anything on your system, it updates the update mechanism without asking you, and without telling you. There's no telling what exactly the (unavoidable) update mechanism does, either.

So, your computer now belongs to Microsoft: they decide what software runs on your machine, and any notion of control of your own computer has been rendered quaint. In a way, I understand their position: they get all of the blame when viruses and worms exploit known bugs for which people haven't applied their updates. But my sympathy is running out because somebody put all of those bugs in Windows in the first place, and three years after their security audit the bugs keep coming – even in their newest versions.

Now that Microsoft has softened you up to expect that they can (and will) patch your system without your knowledge or permission, there's a great precedent for doing it for other reasons: to repair their DRM when bypassed, to disable your computer when they think your Windows license is invalid, or to start advertising on your desktop. They're going to monetize that big installed base they have, and they will do it any way they can. Just so you know who's in charge: on Windows, it isn't you.

Microsoft: Patent Troll

Desperation is never sexy. It is sad (if unsurprising) to see that Microsoft has stooped to becoming a lowly patent troll. They've been moving in this direction for a while, starting their patent portfolio as a purely defensive measure, but then trying to intimidate the Samba project, then financing SCO to be their stooge in a battle against GNU/Linux. But so far, they had just been using their patent portfolio as a FUD tool. But now they've turned a corner and decided to monetize their paperwork, shaking down big scaredycat organizations. Then they decided to subvert Novell. Now they're setting the stage to take their campaign wider and try to scare individuals.

It's a sad state of affairs for the once-proud company that released great products like Windows for Workgroups and Excel. No, Microsoft was never really innovative, but they were at least competently derivative: at one time they could take somebody else's concept and improve upon it. Remember how they took on Netware and destroyed it (with a better product)? Today all they seem capable of doing is screwing up their products and taking out their frustrations on their customers.

Microsoft is apparently taking theatrical cues from Joseph McCarthy. "I have a list here of 235 patents the communists are infringing." Of course they won't say what they are, because if they do, those patents will be immediately challenged with prior art and worked around by the open source community. Plus, their competitors will unleash hell with their own patent portfolios.

The funny thing is that if Microsoft still had decent prospects it wouldn't dare resort to this sort of two-bit shakedown operation. Microsoft made an empire by appropriating the good ideas of others and incorporating them into its products (then using cross-subsidy and vendor lock-in to exterminate the competition, the tools of a convicted monopolist). By doing so they added value and met the needs of the end user. But they seem incapable of doing that anymore, so now they resort to intimidation. It's a sad end to a once-proud company.

Microsoft follows Adobe to open source

Microsoft has (not quite yet) announced that it will release source for Silverlight, following Adobe's recent move with Flex. Since Microsoft is only planning to support Windows and Mac for the runtime, Adobe has a slight advantage with the huge, lucrative Linux market [har]. Adobe's big advantage is that they are two years ahead and not Microsoft. Microsoft's big advantage is [er, wait, give me a minute, I'm sure I'll think of something... oh!] they 0wn your Windows box and can nuke the Flash player from orbit with Windows Update [diabolical laughter here]. They can't do that, though... it'd piss off their customers, and I guess they care (though they have a hard time showing it).

Ouch... breaking backwards compatibility

Joel Spolsky on Microsoft's latest versions:

I tried to open some of my notes which were written in an old version of Word for Windows. Word 2007 refused to open them for "security" reasons and pointed me on a wild-goose chase of knowledge base articles describing obscure registry settings I would have to set to open old files. It is extremely frustrating how much you have to run in place just to keep where you were before with Microsoft's products, where every recent release requires hacks, workarounds, and patches just to get to where you were before. I have started recommending to my friends that they stick with Windows XP, even on new computers, because the few new features on Vista just don't justify the compatibility problems.

Time for a reboot, folks: your old documents are better supported in OpenOffice.org than they are in the newest version of Microsoft Office. Furthermore, when this many important thought leaders are abandoning the Windows platform it is in serious trouble.

A friend went to the MySQL conference last week. He said it was like waking up one day and finding that the world had changed fundamentally: everybody was doing web development; practically nobody was doing desktop, and those few were doing Linux. He said 25-30% of the attendees were using Macs. When I went to the MySQL inner circle meeting last year roughly 1/3 of the PC laptops were Linux-based. Granted, MySQL developers aren't the entire developer population. They're just the part of the developer population that is growing.

Adolfo clued me in that there's a Microsoft advertisement here on my blog. It made me uncomfortable for a moment, but then it made me laugh to see Microsoft paying Google to counter my statements with their tired, expired FUD. Since Microsoft can't even provide backwards compatibility anymore, what possible reason is there for giving them money for an upgrade?

My switch to Ubuntu

When my brother-in-law asked me about my experiences I realized I needed to write an article (and beat Cory Doctorow to it).

I switched my Dell Latitude D600 to Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) back in December of 2005. I haven't looked back. Although sometimes I run Windows in emulation, that's becoming increasingly rare. Basically, I use free software for almost everything I do, and it feels great.

I'm using Edgy Eft for my work desktop, as I haven't set aside two hours to rebuild it. But I just installed Feisty Fawn on Adolfo's old laptop (amd64) and it is quite nice -- a big upgrade from Edgy in terms of ease-of-setup.

Automatix is the must-have resource for downloading the usual necessities like codecs.

Device drivers can be problematic as some things (like Blackberry) are just a black hole. Digital cameras however almost always just use the standard USB disk driver, so that "just works". iPods work too (even without iTunes). USB scanners that I've tried have just worked as well, as have the webcams I've used. So, no complaints.

The biggest problems are generally with Broadcom wifi chipsets, cheap printers, and ATI video cards. Feisty has built in support for them, but you still have to jump through a couple of hoops at setup, depending on your hardware. Depending on the printer it can be kind of a pain (my HP Laserjet 1000 was just hopeless, and although I got it to work, I finally just gave it away). However, if the printer isn't local it is usually pretty straightforward, as the biggest problem is around firmware. [Man, I hate hardware manufacturers who put the device firmware in the driver.]

Samba is pretty easy these days, though mostly I don't bother (except as a client) -- I have a NAS drive that I use for file sharing, and a network-enabled printer (new colour laser!) -- so if you're setting up a laptop, networking shouldn't be a big deal.

I don't use any virus scanning at all. It does exist, but who cares: I get my stuff either through the official Ubuntu packages (apt-get) or I download source (and the latter very rarely these days). Basically, you just don't worry about viruses or spyware on Linux. The software updates are all centralized in the distribution, are fast, and don't nag you about rebooting. In short, a much better user experience than Windows. But what isn't these days...

A year and a half ago when I first tried it Ubuntu was quite an adventure, but it has now become quite polished. (I flirted with Gentoo for a while, but lost interest in the flexibility. Choices == headaches.)

I have officially stopped providing free Windows support. I thought I was helping friends & family all those years, and it turns out I was just letting Microsoft continue to ship crappy software. Now I have an alternative – and I will help friends run Linux, but not Windows. Microsoft: I quit. Good luck replacing me.

ASP.Net and the future

ASP.Net actually seems to be picking up steam and according to a friend-of-a-friend who does such research,

"Lamp still holds more market share, but ASP.NET has been making inroads and things are trending in that direction."

Netcraft shows IIS gaining ground.

But the picture isn't that clear. To make it fuzzier, I want to try to separate the web services from plain old web sites. Web services do not yet have deep penetration in the marketplace, and they might be a better indicator than what is now popular.

And, as a friend points out, there are plenty of examples of high-volume websites that run ASP.Net. MySpace does. As my friend also pointed out, scalability of a web application has more to do with whether it is stateless and how the database is laid out. However, ASP.Net and IIS set you up with convenient-but-deadly session variables and other cheats that refugee desktop developers will find irresistible.

Then, the cost question: how much do you have to shell out to Microsoft to run your ASP.Net application once you've built it? Without SQL Server it's not too bad, but you will wind up spending about $500 upfront plus $125/year for the rest of time just for standard Windows Server with Software Assurance. A friend notes that ASP.Net 1.1 is fully supported on Mono and is actually complete. So you could have your cake and eat it too -- as long as you don't want to try to debug that. Yikes.

Finally, fashion. Languages gain ascendancy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is what happens in schools. Lots of schools still use Java to teach computer science; at one time it was Pascal. C++ had a brief heyday in the mid-90s. Whatever the kids are doing today, they're likely to keep doing as they get older. I'm going to get my face pierced and go hang out in the CS lounge at UBC and see what they're playing with. Polyester went out of fashion in the 80s despite its durability and ease-of-use, but then was rebranded Microfibre and is now quite popular again. I don't expect that to happen with C++.

Do CS students buy Macs like the rest of college students? Do they use Parallels? Do they have Visual Studio installed? Are they debating Linux distros? Are they hardcore gamers running XP?

DoubleClick on Google

Old news already, but Google's purchase of DoubleClick is a pretty big deal. Google already owned most of the online ad revenue, and now they own the rest of it. Granted, their evil quotient just went up again, but I guess everybody cashes in sometime. I can understand how Yahoo! was outbid, but Microsoft still has $29 billion in the bank. Ballmer says advertising is important, but he seems incapable of doing anything about it. I suppose he's counting on his geniuses to invent something new. So far, they sell ads on MSN &ndash like, wow. Good luck with that, chump.

But honestly, what is the deal with Ballmer? Last time it was YouTube:

I am surprised that Google would pay $1.6 billion for it.
No. I'm not saying it is overvalued. I'm not trying to say that. It depends on a set of factors. I'm not saying I wouldn't write a check for that amount of money. I might.

Oh yeah? Well, buddy, if you can't innovate within your company, then you'd better stop dithering and buy something.

ASP.Net considered wasteful?

So, is ASP.Net really a pig? Is that why none of the big web apps use it? Is this correlation without causation? Let's explore some of the possible reasons.

It may be about cost. Start adding up how many processors it takes to serve those pages, how much the windows server licenses cost, divide by the number of users and revenue per customer, and in the end you'll keep a lot more money if you're running on an all-free LAMP stack.

Or it might be a more generational thing. The older generation of developers who cut their teeth on Windows naturally like the tools they're using and focus on them. They also live in fear and admiration of fearsome Uncle Bill, he who gives with one hand, takes with the other and makes the mountains tremble. So they listen to his oracular rumblings and lap 'em up. 80% of victims of family violence never escape their abusive situation.

The younger developers with the ostrich bone stuck through their eyebrow started out on web services and never considered Microsoft's opinion relevant. They never liked Windows anyhow, so why listen to that old fossil? Besides, this LAMP (or Ruby on Rails) stuff is new and shiny, and look, I can download it for free right now and use it immediately and write a promotional site for the keg party at Spencer's house on Saturday.

Or it might just be that ASP.Net is a windsucking pig that devours costly resources like 1980s metal bands consumed Bolivian marching powder, but without any speedy results. However, were this the case, I suspect that endless benchmarks would have shown this, which they did not. But are the benchmarks measuring the sort of applications that Windows developers of a certain age really write in ASP.Net (huge object-oriented confections with elaborately orchestrated design patterns swapping objects promiscuously like a 1978 key party) or a dumb Hello Web page hammered like mad (line-for-line translated simple I/O)? I don't know for sure. I have certain suspicions and recollections. LAMP applications are written very differently from ASP.Net applications, and it may not be the framework but instead the way the culture uses it.

Likely it is a combination of the three factors: price, performance, and fashion. One thing's for sure: of big web apps, there's nothing out there written in .Net. Unless somebody cares to enlighten me.

The jig is up.

The desktop era is over, just as the DOS era ended when Windows 3.1 came out fifteen years ago. Suddenly the Windows monopoly is irrelevant. Nobody targets Windows, they target the web, and they probably target Mac as well if there's some software they have to install. Windows (and Office) are not being pushed aside primarily by Mac and Linux; no, that is a symptom. Instead Windows has been made irrelevant by web-based email and a cloud of little productivity tools that are now available (and growing fast). It's April on the web, December on the desktop. There's no reason to put up with tired Windows with the high cost and terrible quality (usability, speed, security – name your criteria) because you can get a Mac or install Linux and get all of the productivity tools you need – on the network, to which everybody has access everyplace they want to work. The days of emailing Word documents around to attempt to collaborate are over. The way that people work is changing, and today's desktop software gets in the way of collaboration. In two years nobody will be bothering with it anymore. And don't even get me started on Sharepoint and the rest of Microsoft's collaboration "tools" that they're tacking on to the outside of their old, brittle applications. The new services are organized around collaboration and can do much, much more of what people actually need to do. Game over.

Yes, Windows will still be around, as will Office. Today's 30+ population will continue to use it, and they might even upgrade one more time before they get pressured into switching platforms too. They'll get tired of sitting in support queues trying to install these packages on Windows, and at the same time be attracted by friends to services that have no such problems (and, usually free of charge, and carry no expectation of hand-holding telephone support). MS is defanged: they have to compete with Linux (free) and Mac (qualitatively better) to provide a stable, simple operating system that gets people online and lets them get their work done. Except Microsoft probably can't do that with Windows and maintain backwards compatibility. They are stuck.

Developers who are hooked on Microsoft tools will continue to maintain a wilting set of applications in a deteriorating Windows market. They'll try to use the Microsoft stack to build web services, but the licensing costs will squeeze them right out of business. Microsoft development tools are very sleek, very sexy: they are space shuttles built for architecture astronauts, when what most people need is a bus or a Hyundai (or if they're super rich/irresponsible, a Hummer) to get them to the office. You can't build a web-scalable application with that swollen, sluggish .NET framework for any money. (If so, name one. It's hard enough to find a really big site that runs Java.) Yes, these tools are a very satisfying environment to code in, and they debug like a dream, but they're built for desktop software (at most, client-server) and that game is played out.

So, how am I not full of it? I'll give you three real-world examples.

First, my own case. Plain fact is, I can (and do) virtually all of my real work without using any desktop software other than the browser. I use Ubuntu Linux. I run Firefox, IM and Skype regularly, and that's about it. Maybe P2P software, and video players (which are all available cross-platform). Sometimes I use OpenOffice.org when I have to look at Office documents. In very rare cases, I have to pop open a windows virtual machine. There's nothing to keep me from using Linux or Mac, so I use Linux because I'm a crazy open-source pinko commie (what else is new). But what's scary for Microsoft is, I really can do all I need to do with free software.

Second, Adolfo. His laptop got old (battery, mouse, screen dying) and he needed a new one. I suggested a Mac, but he is familiar with Windows and wanted to stick with it. At the same time, his Windows XP install stopped booting (for the third time in 18 months) -- and while he shopped he still wanted to use his computer. I declined to spend the 36 hours (fact!) to reinstall and patch it, and instead installed, configured and patched Linux in 90 minutes (fact!). Adolfo didn't like Linux: he's not your early adopter to begin with (not thrilled with change) – and the software for IM he really didn't like. Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger are much more sexy and feature-rich than Pidgin (f.k.a. GAIM), and even Skype is missing video conferencing in their Linux version. So he bought a new HP laptop with Vista on it. He didn't like that either: the change was too radical and not positive. It asks him a lot of questions he doesn't understand (that it gives no clue how to answer). It introduces installation hurdles to overcome the security holes inherent in the Windows architecture, not to mention the brick walls introduced by the antivirus software. The transparent windows make the interface cluttered and hard to use. There are too many options standing in the way of anything (insert a USB flash drive and just see how many decisions you now have to make. Oh, then try to eject it! That's great stuff.) He spent time with Windows Movie Maker, which has improved to the point where it doesn't crash every five minutes, but it was jerky, slow, and awkward. It has an Office 2007 trial installed, but he'd have to buy it all over again, and eventually he conceded that he really has no use for it. In the end, he said that next time he's going to get a Mac. The lesson here is that he has a painless choice.

Third, my Mom. She doesn't use any desktop productivity software, ever: she has stopped writing letters and no longer uses Word. She just uses web-based email and surfs the web, and sometimes uses IM (but not the advanced features). She doesn't know about configuration and doesn't want to pay just to keep her machine from stabbing her in the back. So why does she need Windows? She doesn't, and her next computer will probably be a Mac. Or it might be a Linux appliance that updates itself and requires no configuration, like Google is rumoured to be producing.

Nobody can say that this is pie-in-the-sky, Henny-Penny, pass-the-bong bullshit, not anymore. This is the actual state of affairs. Pundits agree. Wall Street agrees. Startups are all focused on web applications. The last new category of desktop applications, P2P, came out eight years ago. The reality is that the desktop is already irrelevant, therefore Microsoft is vulnerable, as the real battle is being joined elsewhere. Microsoft has everything to lose.

Now we look back at 1992 and say that was when the DOS era ended, and that's not controversial. It was very controversial in 1992 to people whose livelihoods depended on DOS applications, and denial is a powerful force. Today I got an email invitation for Excel training. Why not classes about shorthand and how to operate a Dictaphone? In three years that won't be a joke anymore.

Microsoft targeting its apps for Linux

Believe me, I'll be thrilled when Linux supplants Windows and conquers the desktop... but the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. The open source commoditization beast ate the database market (digestion takes longer than peristalsis). It's chewing on the operating system.

Guess who's on the plate.

The good news is that the era of market-imposed artificial scarcity of software is coming to an end, and we'll all reap the benefits. The bad news is that Sage's license revenue will disappear along with it. I think that'll take a long time though.

Five years.

So yeah, I love open source and want Linux to win. Never mind that I'm a filthy communist, though - I still like a paycheck, and unless Sage learns to ride the wave and make open source part of its business (like MySQL did), we'll be in Pervasive's position before long.

As will Microsoft.

If you don't think this is cheerful, ask me sometime what I think about information ecology and first contact. When it comes to our relative prospects in a world dominated by open source, call me Pollyanna.