Writing this out of my love for you.. Microsoft!!

Yeah! I am saying it. I don't mind saying this because as far as i can remember, a good part of my computer experience has been on windows operating systems.

And I love these guys. For what people appreciate Apple for their iDevices, was the same love i share for Microsoft when it comes to their operating system.

Beg or steal.. these guys pretty much set the standard for what the graphical UI you and i know that is today.

Of course, they are commercial and they are not open as Linux.. but that doesn't make them evil. But i do know instances where these guys showed their dark side (killing Netscape.. which again i think is back in a different avatar as FireFox) for which i hate them a lot.

Most of their products right from Windows OS, Office Suite, Exchange/Outlook, etc. (hope this not the entire list :)) ) have set a different standard for usability and convenience.

Ok.. So why am i telling all this.. its because i am concerned about the direction in which they are heading. But again, what am i concerned about here.

The concern is that i am not sure if I am ready for any other products apart from the ones mentioned above, for my day to day use. Comeon folks, Apple iPad is much more closed than Windows, Google wants me to use web a lot and Linux is still not ready for mainstream retail use.

I have been techie enough to be branded as a geek. I have built my own distros of Linux and hacked stuff. But still i love Microsoft's products for the sheer pleasure of using them. The difference is that of being a TV Electronics repair guy and the same guy watching TV at the end of the day sipping hot coffee!

You might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me while Microsoft is still here doing just fine. Believe me.. Microsoft is still here.. but i am not sure if they are ready for tomorrow.

Well the trigger for this post was this post here by Russell Beattie - The end of WIMP and rise of Touch. This trigger was backed by a slow build up of frustration on Microsoft's misfirings with their products' strategy.

These guys have lost focus on some of their products. The most important of them of all was Internet Explorer. Having killed Netscape, it was the end of fun and of course business. With literally no competition until FireFox and Chrome actually munched away a good portion of the browser pie. This was too much of a oversight on Microsoft's part.

Browser is the window to a whole new world of connectedness. Children of this generation take this one product/application for granted.

How could you lose sight of a product so important and waiting until guys like Google and Apple to actually catch up with you!!

There has been a steady downfall in terms of their product quality and usability since IE6. I guess a bit of branding change with a serious effort to revamp their technology should do the trick of winning back customers.

With Companies like Apple and Google who are changing the rules of the game by winning customers over by bringing in disruptive technologies (examples: search and iPhone) which have great usability and performance, its time for Microsoft to start taking its products seriously.

The next most important product of all, Microsoft Windows Operating System. Windows has not been doing well since XP. Vista has been good for me though, but a lot of things had gone wrong in Vista too. Customer Expectations, bad PR and negative press/blog coverage did take its toll. Though i haven't used Windows 7 myself, i do hear great reviews from the blogosphere and that its usability is same as, if not better than, Apple Mac OS.

But as Russell Beattie has mentioned in his post, the future is moving towards Tablets which obviously will use touch as the preferred (or the only) interface. I am not confident that Windows is ready as a tablet OS.

Again, I don't think its too late for Microsoft. If it can regroup and focus correct, it can do a great job of coming with a tablet version of its OS. Look at the Apple. I came up with a totally different UI and Usability for its iPad. That should be the approach for Microsoft as well.

The next biggest goof up was with Windows Mobile. In all practical sense, there is no way Microsoft can do anything about it now, unless and until it was do something as drastic as giving away its Mobile OS to OEMs for free and think of a different business model around it.

Guys @ Microsoft.. you are making mistake after mistake and I hope you correct yourself soon. Again i am big fan of your remaining products (though I stopped using IE for many years now).

I know you guys are doing a lot to get things back on track. You are doing good with your Office suite. can see that you are regrouping in terms of your developer languages and tools. But do it fast and get your products back on track.

Mac mini server farm :)

Wow!! I dint know there are server farms that use Mac Mini. 

Refer to the photo in the article in AppleInsider on why Mac Minis are here to stay.

Each one of those small boxes is a cute Mac Mini PC from Apple. Really surprising to know what people could do with such a small mac.

Even more surprising, from this article, is that information that Las Vegas alone uses atleast 10,000 mac minis in its various hotels and casinos and mostly for video surveillance.

For instance, here in Las Vegas, I know there are at least 10,000 Mac minis running in the different hotels and casinos on the strip," said Brian Stucki, who owns and operates the Mac mini colocation service. "Many are used for video security points. Certain casino companies use Mac minis in each of the slot islands on a casino floor to manage the backend. I know of one nationwide salon franchise that uses two Mac minis for each one of their stores."

Is Sun getting desparate not to lose mobile JVM market?

After Apple announced last Thurday of its intention to release the long awaited SDK for iPhone*, Sun has unveiled its intention to port JVM onto the iPhone.

Its looks like Sun does not want to waste any time bringing the mobile version of JVM (J2ME) onto the iPhone. Obviously this sense of urgency should be due to the fact that iPhone provides a very good platform for mobile applications and also because of the impending threat from Google's Android. Sun should already feel frustrated by Google's clever coup of replacing Sun's JVM with their own.

The way I see the future is that Apple and Google may be in a direct collision course towards mobile dominance. And Sun may want to be present in one of the camps.

What also remains to be seen is how would Sun JVM affect Apple's business model of trying to sell iPhone applications through their iTunes store (App Store as it may be called). With the JVM present on the iPhone, would mobile application developers like to leverage it or will they rather choose to directly use iPhone SDK. With Apple bringing in restrictions on the development platform (only Mac can be used has the host to develop and debug iPhone applications), it gives a point of leverage for Sun.

And what about performance! iPhone SDK is already a layer on top of the native iPhone OS APIs. Now JVM would be one more layer on top of it. Will the java applications written for iPhone in future have the same performance as other platforms?

The war for a mobile computing platform is going to get interesting as days go by. Keep watching this blog to see how this unfolds.

Useful Links:
* You may be interested in reading this coverage of the iPhone SDK Press Release by Ryan Block of Engadget.
- You can also watch Apple's official video on the iPhone SDK Press Release here. Note: You need quicktime player.


[Article imported from Mobile Computing Trends]

Silverlight vs Flash - War for mobile web dominance

Microsoft (Silverlight) and Adobe (Flash) are trying desperately to push their respective technologies for developing RIA (Rich Internet Applications).

Both seem to be taking this further ahead to mobile devices. Recently, Microsoft had signed a deal with Nokia to integrate Silverlight on Nokia's latest S60 based smart phones.

Adobe though having a dominance in the PC space must be doubly worried after Steve's comments on why Flash may not suited for iPhone.

I found this post from Robert Scoble providing interesting insight on why Apple may feel that Flash is not good for iPhone. More than the article, I found the user comments more intreseting.

Also, it got clear to me from the user comments that Apple was trying to port Flash 8 (and not Flash Lite - stripped down version) onto the iPhone.

Best Read on "The Making of iPhone"

One of my friends has shared an interesting article in his Google Reader. The shared post was that of a Slashdot user who was pointing to this article in Wired - The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew up the wireless industry.

If was like reading a very short book on "The Making of iPhone". Very informative and very motivating.

The article talks about how iPhone was concieved by Jobs and how they struggled to make it into a reality.

Which generation/version of iPod do you have ?

You can easily find that out by going through this article.

I found this article extremely useful. It gives a nice table which gives the entire lineup of iPods from the oldest one to the latest iPod Touch.

By the way, I have a 5th generation 30GB black color iPod :).

Top Tech Trends - Internet video, Apple products, Gaming consoles

The Yahoo! Top Technology Trends of 2007 gives an interesting view of products and services the users were searching for in the net in 2007.

Internet Video service YouTube leads the list of top technology trends. YouTube has become more of monopoly when it comes to internet video. Clear evidence that internet video is coming to be the most preferred form of watching content. Personally, I've starting watching lot of videos on YouTube, especially after I got a better broadband connection. As I mentioning in my previous post, on-demand viewing is the way to go in future.

An other interesting trend to notice this year was that, Apple with its products iPhone, iPod and iTunes (media download service) was all over the news. A total dominance in the news landscape. Steve does know how to generate buzz about any new product he introduces.

Also, point to note is that iPod is still more popular trend compared to iPhone. Also, iPod is the only media player in the top 10. Below Google trends show (blue indicates iPod and red for Zune) that iPod is far ahead in terms of popularity compared to Microsoft's Zune. Microsoft had introduce second generation Zune. Would have to wait and watch if they can ever make a dent in iPod's market share.


And last but not the least, 2007 was also a big year for gaming consoles. Nitendo's Wii, after its release in December 2006, was an instant hit. In fact, Wii has been selling more consoles in the first few months than what Xbox and PS2 took to sell it over a year. Nintendo made a huge come back after having been overshodowed by Sony and Microsoft for many years. But Nitendo is also having a problem with the current demand. Its supply-chain is unable to meet the demand which could become a huge problem over a period of time (a big booster for Sony's PS3 :)). Read this article from WSJ to understand the problem.

Sony launched its 3rd generation console - PlayStation3 (PS3) - November of 2006. While Sony lost ground to Wii in the initial months to Wii, recently it has overtaken Wii in terms of Sales in Japan.

Xbox 360 had a first comer advantage as it got released almost a year ahead of Wii and PS3. But it is never able to match the sales figure of Wii and PS3. But recently Xbox 360 was in news for one of the bestselling game series - Halo 3. Xbox 360 has been adding new features like the ability to download videos and games.

(I personally am a serious gamer and have a Playstation2 at home. But I have not tried any of the new consoles. So whatever I have mentioned above is from news and videos that I have been tracking on the net.)

Also, on the list are Facebook, the most happening Social Networking service and Wikipedia, the online reference for almost every topic in the world.

Will the Apple PDA click!!

When the Apply iPhone became a phenomena, It was quite obvious to me that they would eventually come up with a iPod which was similar looking to iPhone (with the multi-touch screen). It happened and then iPod Touch was introduced recently.

I was thinking as to why would Apple stop with that and why would they not extend it as a mobile computer/handheld. So now we get to hear rumours about Apple's coming up with their PDA :).

But as I think deeper.. would I be interested in a Apple PDA as a standalone device. Why would I buy an apple PDA if the PDA like functionalities could be clubbed with mobile phone capabilities as in iPhone.

When the world is moving towards convergence, would a strategy to diverge work out?. My instinct says NO. But probably the business/market analyst at Apple can better explain.

Windows Live Writer lost its gas ??!!

It has been 10 months since I wrote my detailed review on Windows Live Writer. Though I liked the Windows Live Writer a lot then, I never really used it for blogging actively.

After so many months, I thought I wanted to use Windows Live Writer for one very lengthy and comprehensive review of something on the web (not going to tell you what it was about :) You will have to wait to see that blog). Blogging a lengthy post staying online would take lot of time. I thought using Windows Live Writer, I could blog as and when I find time and then publish it in one shot.

But then I just remembered that my PC was reinstalled with Window XP once and I had not installed Windows Live Writer since then. So went about searching for "Windows Live Writer" on Google and came across this official blog cum home page for Windows Live Writer. I believe this is being maintained by the developers of Windows Live Writer.

Having been away from Windows Live Writer for so long I was really curious to know what was happening to this blogging client. So I clicked on this link to see their posts. To my surprise, since November 2006 there has been not a single post in their "OFFICIAL BLOG" :)

Has Microsoft realized that blogging client is by no means generating money for them. Whatever be the reason, one thing is for sure - Windows Live Writer has lost its gas and I believe you are not going to see any more releases of Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer.... RIP!!

Interview of Eric Schmidt - Hear the latest update on Google

Its been a long time since I had blogged. Was thoroughly held up with the work - both personal and professional.

By the way, if you want to know what Google has been up to recently, you can look at the below YouTube video for an interview of Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxzDU3tTzGA



Some interesting points that I noted in this interview were about Google's declaration of Presentation application in http://docs.google.com; Google's view on Net Neutrality; Google Maps coming soon on iPod (Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board).