Tag Archives | Microsoft. Windows

Windows 7 Device Stage: Ready, Set, No Go!

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 22, 2009 at 3:18 am

Empty StageSo help me, I like Windows 7. Its emphasis on staying out of users faces whenever possible is a huge sea change that makes it the most pleasant version of the OS in eons. I’ve been running various pre-release iterations for a year now, and look forward to booting into the thing–a radical improvement over Vista, which usually had me gritting my teeth as I pressed the power button. Here’s a long and favorable review which I wrote for PC World.

But as Windows-reviewing pundits go, I’m relatively cautious. Windows 7 may be launching today, but there are things we won’t know about it until millions of people try to install it on millions of PCs, each of them unique. And there are other aspects of the OS whose success is contingent on work yet to be done by parties other than Microsoft. Like, for instance, Device Stage, the new feature which lets makers of cameras, printers, and other gadgets create customized user experiences within Windows 7.

When I wrote that PC World story a few weeks ago, I tried to review Device Stage and gave up: None of the gizmos I plugged in gave me the results that Microsoft was touting for Device Stage. The company told me that manufacturers were still readying their Device Stage support in preparation for Windows 7’s launch day. Well, that day is here–so I’ve been revisiting Device Stage on a couple of Windows 7 PCs. My experimentation is limited and unscientific. But so far, it’s left me completely disappointed with the feature.

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Twenty-Three Years of Windows Launch Oddities

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 22, 2009 at 1:30 am

predictaLater today in New York City, Microsoft will be hosting its Windows 7 launch event. I won’t be there, but I have a good excuse: I decided to stay home in San Francisco and go to the last day of the Web 2.0 Summit to see Tim Berners-Lee speak. I hope everyone who makes the trek has a good time, but I’m also keeping my fingers crossed that nothing transpires that leaves me kicking myself for not attending. (Microsoft plans to stream the event live starting at 11am EDT, so those of us who aren’t there can check in on the festivities.)

In lieu of being at the 7 launch, I’ve been revisiting old clips relating to Windows launches past. Join me, won’t you?
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Will Windows 7 Hurt Mac Sales?

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 16, 2009 at 9:25 am

Apple AnvilAmong the many questions that Windows 7’s imminent release is prompting is this: Will it result in fewer Windows users deciding to switch to Macs, thereby halting the slow erosion in Windows’ market share that we’ve seen during the Vista era? So far, there’s no consensus on wht’s likely to happen:a

I’m not going to predict how Windows 7′ release will impact Mac sales–hey, making no predictions is the best way to avoid making boneheaded ones–but a few thoughts on the dynamics of the competition:

  • Unless Windows 7’s driver situation is worse than it seems and/or PC manufacturers manage to screw the OS up with unwantedware, it’s going to make for better PCs than Windows Vista ever did;
  • I’d still rate Snow Leopard as the better OS, but the gap between the two platforms is smaller than it’s been in a long time;
  • Windows 7 doesn’t do much to reduce the need of Windows users to worry about security in a way that Mac owners don’t;
  • It also doesn’t eliminate such Mac virtues as the bundling of iLife;
  • As John Gruber says, the competition between Windows and Macs only happens at the high end of the market–most people who buy Windows buy it on cheaper, lower-end computers for which there is no Mac counterpart.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the notion that most people really don’t have any particular desire to switch operating systems. If Windows 7 lives up to its promise and expectations, it’ll leave fewer Windows users tempted to dump the OS. But I suspect that most folks who have made the jump to the Mac aren’t coming back.

Your take?

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Windows 7: That’s Infomercialtainment!

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 14, 2009 at 12:32 pm

Part of the upcoming extravaganza of Windows 7 marketing which will presumably soon be upon us involves a November 8th Fox TV special starring Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane. It’s sponsored by Microsoft and has Windows 7 references woven in. (I refuse to call it “commercial-free,” but it’ll have no traditional breaks for standard commercials.)

Ars Technica found a teaser clip:

I’ll wait to judge the whole thing until I watch the show (or don’t watch it!) but there seems to be a basic cognitive dissonance at work when a supposedly take-no-prisoners, slay-all-sacred-cows kinda sensibility is applied to a paid advertising message. (There’s a reason why MAD magazine–from which all modern humor springs–refused to accept even traditional advertising back in the day.)

But if nothing else, the show will ensure that lots and lots of people are exposed to Windows 7…

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Windows Vista: A Review Recap

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 12, 2009 at 2:48 am

Windows Vista InspectedMicrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer isn’t so sure about how folks are going to respond to Windows 7. As Mary-Jo Foley says in a ZDNet blog post, Ballmer told Bloomberg that “The test feedback (on Windows 7) has been good, but the test feedback on Vista was good. I am optimistic, but the proof will be in the pudding.”

Mary-Jo goes on to muse:

…I’m left wondering about Vista, as many are/were about the current financial crisis: Why didn’t anyone inform us sooner of the impending meltdown? Weren’t there warning signs? Where was everybody?

Most of Mary-Jo’s post involves Windows Vista beta testers’ reaction to the OS, but it got me wondering: How about the reviews that came out when Windows Vista was released? Negative reaction to Vista among consumers and businesses ended up preventing it from ever truly superseding Windows XP in the way it was supposed to do–but were the reviews among the first signs that something was amiss?

To find out, I dug up evaluations of Vista from late 2006 and early 2007 as they appeared in nine major publications, written by a bunch of distinguished Windows-watchers: BusinessWeek (Steve Wildstrom), CNET (Robert Vamosi), Forbes (Stephen Manes),  The New York Times (David Pogue), PC Magazine (John Clyman), Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite, PC World (Preston Gralla and Richard Baguley), USA Today (Ed Baig), The Wall Street Journal (Walt Mossberg), and ZDNet (Ed Bott). I reread them all, and in a moment I’ll summarize here what they said about Vista’s visuals, its performance and stability, its compatibility with existing products, and User Account Control security–as well as their overall take on the OS.

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VMware Fusion 3 Takes Windows-on-Mac Up a Notch

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 6, 2009 at 6:16 am

VMware Fusion BoxWas it really only a little over three years ago that the formerly fanciful notion of being able to run Windows apps within OS X without major limitations became reality? Today, archrivals Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion continue to undergo aggressive upgrades aimed at making the virtualization of Windows on Macs even more powerful, seamless, and simple. And today, VMware is announcing that it’s taking preorders for VMware Fusion 3, which will ship on October 27th.

I haven’t had any hands-on time with the new version yet, but the list of features that VMware has revealed leaves me anxious to get my mitts on it:

  • Snow Leopard support, including a 64-bit engine and support for OS X’s 64-bit kernel.
  • Full support for Windows 7, including the Aero interface and Flip 3D task switching and better support for DirectX and OpenGL graphics.
  • A migration utility that lets you import a real PC’s Windows installation over the network. (Parallels introduced something similar in August, but did so in a separate version of the product that does the job over a bundled USB cable.)
  • A menu for your Windows apps that appears on the right-hand side of OS X’s Menu Bar, reducing or eliminating the need to use Windows’ Start menu and Taskbar.
  • A more efficient engine that’s less taxing on a Mac’s CPU, can run Windows well in 1GB of RAM, and reduces battery drain, according to VMware. I’m especially happy about that last point–my biggest beef with both Fusion and Parallels is the dramatically reduced battery life I get when they’re running. (Still to be determined: How this version’s speed compares to Parallels–the Parallels folks understandably like to tout this MacTech story that shows their product outperforming Fusion 2 in most tests.)

In all, VMware says that Fusion 3 has more than fifty new features. It’ll cost $79.99 for new users; an upgrade version will be $39.99. A few screens supplied by VMware after the jump.

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Mac vs. PC? No, Mac and PC

Posted by Harry McCracken on October 5, 2009 at 9:32 am

Mac and PC9 to 5 Mac is reporting on the NPD Group’s newest figures on Mac ownership in the U.S., which say that twelve percent of households with computers have a Mac–up from nine percent in 2008. But the really interesting factoid is that the overwhelming majority of that twelve percent of Mac-owning homes also have a Windows machine.

Makes sense to me–these days, there’s very little reason not to be biplatform. Once you get them home, they can share nearly everything you might want to share, from MP3s to Word documents to a printer. And OS X and Windows, for all their differences, are now similar enough that moving between them isn’t much more complex than owning a Mazda and a Chevy and driving both.

Apple runs ads that depict PCs (and by extension PC users) as nebbishy losers and talks about switching from Windows to the Mac. Microsoft has been mocking Macs and Mac users as effete and spendy. But if more than eight out of ten Mac households are also PC households, we’re not talking about an either/or situation, and the whole notion–leveraged by both companies–that Mac users are different kinds of people from PC users doesn’t jibe with reality.

Maybe Apple should do more to explain why a PC household should welcome a Mac or two; maybe Microsoft should stop snarking at Mac owners, since most of them are also PC owners. If they did, they’d be addressing millions of sensible consumers who find value in both companies’ wares…

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“Barrelfish”: Microsoft’s Latest Future OS Project

Posted by David Worthington on September 30, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Last Friday, Network World reported that Microsoft’s research labs in Cambridge (UK) has previewed an experimental operating system code-named ‘Barrelfish.’ However, it is just one of many fish in Microsoft’s barrel, and is not nearly as close as Microsoft’s project “Midori” is to becoming an actual product.

Barrelfish and Midori tackle a similar problem that Microsoft has determined cannot be met by evolving its existing technology. They run on multi-core systems, and are designed for heterogeneous hardware environments, where applications and resources can exist in separate places.

Beyond sharing a similar mission, there are major technical differences between the projects. Midori is rooted in a research project called Singularity, which is constructed using Microsoft’s .NET Framework; Barrelfish uses some open source components.

Barrelfish, like Singularity, is just a research project. Midori is differentiated, because it an offshoot from the Singularity lab work. Microsoft has placed Midori under the control of Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft and an alumnus of Bill Gates’ technical staff.

The company has also mapped out a migration path away from Windows to Midori, but there was still a lot of hand-waving in the memos that I reviewed last year. Microsoft has since placed all information regarding Midori under lock and key on a “need to know” basis.

After I wrote my Midori expose, I was told by a source at Microsoft that I had just scratched the surface. Microsoft is a big company that has a lot of resources, and I will not pretend to know everything that is going on in its skunkworks. What I do know is that Barrelfish is just research–for now.

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