What Apple Needs to Know About Azure, Windows 7
News Commentary. This year's Microsoft developer conference was bolder and brasher than Apple's—methinks; Steve Ballmer's crew is more forthcoming with information than was Steve Jobs' gang. |
Apple's developer conference, where the CEO unveiled the iPhone 3G, was closed to the press. Participants agreed to NDAs. By stark contrast, Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference was open to the press, and pretty much anything and everything was public. Secretive Apple tightly holds close its future product plans, while Microsoft revealed information that competitors could use before new products reach market, such as Office Web, Windows Azure and Windows 7.
Contrasting styles are just the beginning of the differences. Microsoft articulated the clearest strategy I've seen anywhere for the PC, mobile device and Web service. Apple has got nothing even close. But for all Microsoft's talk, there is no real mobile strategy. Yet. By contrast, Apple's mobile strategy is well-formed and rapidly expanding.
For at least the next 12 months, Apple can build out its mobile platform, with developers and iPhone users, with the chance of getting ahead of Microsoft and holding any mobile lead. But the greater challenge is coming, as Microsoft woos developers to its Azure Services Platform and when Windows 7 releases. Just like "Star Wars," the empire strikes back.
Joe Wilcox gives brief overview of Microsoft's Azure
Mobile is unquestionably the future of computing. I debated this point yesterday at PDC with Chris Bryant, group product manager for Microsoft Office Enterprise. I put forth that many smart phones already are nearly PC replacements, particularly the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1. He countered that there is no physical keyboard. My response: Surely the day is coming fast when, say, an LED-emitted virtual keyboard would let people touch-tap on most any surface. He had a great comeback: Chris rides the bus to work everyday. To which I suggested using a natural user interface like voice. During that 15 minutes on the bus everyday, Chris could dictate portions of a groundbreaking novel.
The mobile phone will displace the PC. Microsoft executives know this, even though they don't publicly admit it. Why should they, when Microsoft's mobile strategy is weak? For now. If Apple fails to strongly establish the iPhone and the App Store as successful, next-generation platforms within 12 months, Microsoft has a good chance of coming from behind and catching up in 2010-2011—that's assuming the company can fulfill all the promises made during this week's developer conference. The promises were huge.
What Is Azure's Allure?
For starters there is Azure, Microsoft's new clouding computing platform. The services platform is essentially building blocks made up of existing Microsoft products and services that have been adapted to run on Internet data centers. The platform's foundation is Windows Azure, which essentially is Windows Server 2008 running on Microsoft data centers and accessible only as a service. On top of this foundation run Microsoft Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, Microsoft SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM. On top of these services, Microsoft will provide Windows Live, Office Live and Exchange, SharePoint, and CRM Online services. Third-party developers—particularly corporate, ISV and Web—can build out applications or services.
Microsoft's Debby Wilson Fry discusses Windows 7 features
Windows has languished as a development platform, as developers took to the Web. Azure should be viewed as a cloud operating system through which Microsoft could pull back developers to its platforms. Rather than write code for Windows on a PC, developers will write directly to Windows running on Microsoft data centers. No other company has anything like this, unless Apple has some secret plan somewhere (which I doubt). Should Microsoft's Azure vision come to market, and by early 2010, every major software developer bound to the desktop—including Adobe, Apple and Oracle—will be hugely challenged.
Microsoft could re-establish Windows as a development gravity well pulling developers away from other Web or device platforms and services. Rather than writing to open or accepted standards, developers would commit to Microsoft proprietary development tools and Web services platforms. Because of Microsoft's building block approach, developers could conceptually mix and match platforms. Many won't.
Windows 7 task bar inherits elements from the Mac OS X Dock
For Apple and nearly all other software developers, Microsoft is playing an endgame that would extend Windows from the server to the desktop to the Web and mobile device. What Microsoft needs most to succeed is reliable, extensible synchronization. As I've so many times chimed: Sync is the killer app for the connected world. Microsoft's early sync strategy looks promising, but Apple and Google have real products in market. The race is on.
Apple could stall Microsoft by developing a better sync engine. Right now, iTunes is Apple's sync hub for PCs, the iPhone and the Web. Microsoft has a sync framework that developers can put many places, with the company's services platform acting as the hub. MobileMe is a services sync hub, but iTunes sync is more mature and better adopted. Still, with the right sync strategy, Apple could best Microsoft.
New Windows 7 feature Jumplist
In 2003, Microsoft was set to conquer the digital content market with Windows Media DRM. Microsoft had a broader base platform in Windows, first-to-major DRM market advantage and reliable architecture. But Microsoft couldn't get software-to-PC-to-device sync right, and the iPod stormed the digital music player market. It was Apple, and not Microsoft, that came to dominate DRM digital music and video content. The iPhone could do for sync and services what the iPod did for digital content. But:
- Apple has got to do better sync
- The iPhone and the App Store must succeed as platforms
- Azure either must disappoint or come to market later than planned
Apple would hugely benefit from Microsoft failing to do sync right across devices and the Web or fail to win over developers to its sync platform.
Seven Could Be Microsoft's Lucky Number
Microsoft isn't giving up on the Windows PC, even as the company shifts focus to cloud computing. Microsoft executives made this clear on the first two days of PDC (the event ends tomorrow), but particularly yesterday. Microsoft dedicated most of the second-day keynote to Windows 7, from features and development perspectives. Microsoft also provided PDC attendees with Windows 7 pre-beta code.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (also in pre-beta) share the same kernel; presumably the same can be said of Windows Azure. So Microsoft has core Windows unification across the PC, server and data center. The different Windows products also share much of the same code base. This sameness will be crucial to third-party software development, which Microsoft made clear yesterday.
Already, Microsoft is prepping Windows 7 for services integration. Apple should take a hard look at the Live Framework.
New Windows 7 feature libraries
I expect that Microsoft will release Windows 7 much earlier than many analysts and other Microsoft observers predicted before PDC. The economy is the first mandate. Microsoft partners will be desperate for something new for holiday 2009, particularly with the recession possibly sapping PC sales. More significantly:
- Windows 7 builds off of Vista, so development should be shorter rather than longer
- The pre-beta build feels unusually solid for a Windows version at this stage of development
- Businesses aren't adopting Vista, and the OS won't run on most netbooks; both situations demand a replacement sooner
My expectation: Barring any major glitches, Microsoft is tracking to deliver Windows 7 in time for back-to-school season. Whether for school or holiday buying seasons, Microsoft will have a new Windows version in the market with splashy new features. Apple's Snow Leopard mandate is refinement rather than newness.
That said, Microsoft isn't focusing on newness either. The company regards a new user interface and other features as refinements. Yesterday, Debby Fry Wilson, senior director for Windows product management, told me that Microsoft research shows that customers don't want something radically new. They want the safety and security of sameness, with refinements that improve usability.
Regardless, Microsoft will finally push troubled Vista out of the market by bringing in Seven. Microsoft will have:
- A potentially competitive product to Mac OS X
- Nearly a year of supporting advertising, extending from "I'm a PC" marketing
- Enormous pent-up demand from the then nearly 8-year-old Windows XP
- A platform from which to connect business, consumers and developers to Live Services
Apple can laugh at Vista, but the management team developing Seven is more disciplined and pragmatic and fiercely determined to clean the tarnish off Windows' image.
Comments (22)
Oh FFS,
One more time with feeling, Joe - Apple has a generic Synchronisation Framework, it's used in iTunes, MobileMe, iSync, etc... This is the same core "Truth Database" code running in all applications.
iTunes sync just feels seamless to you because the iPod doesn't create or change content, therefore it's not much of a sync and more of a push.
Apple's sync services works very well and has been around for ages. Saying that Apple's sync is somehow stuck in iTunes or bound to iTunes with no way out is wrong.
Apple made the iPhone sync with iTunes because they're clever - still only one app to worry about, users are pulled to iTunes and it's wares... Same goes for the App Store. Technically they could have easily made a program like iPhone Super Active Sync Extended Cocoa Edition 2008 SE just for syncing the iPhone with user's data and then separately sync the iPod side with iTunes but that would be stupid.
Posted by whatever | October 29, 2008 8:29 PM
apple is a web 1.0 company that doesn't get it. they need to either evolve or become fully a hardware company.
Posted by notapple | October 29, 2008 9:40 PM
whatever, my iPhone doesn't sync to itunes: it syncs to the Internet.
Posted by Ian Betteridge | October 29, 2008 9:47 PM
Why would I want to sit on a bus and train and talk to my phone to dictate (poorly, I've yet to find a voice to text program that actually does a decent job) anything personal or business related?
I'd much rather a laptop over some tiny cramped underspecced phone. I think certain parts of the IT industry are horribly out of touch with reality, things like centralised software/dumb terminals and super phones are all fine and good for novelty uses but there's no way in hell they'll ever be more than just that, novelties.
Posted by realist | October 29, 2008 10:13 PM
WOW!!! Sounds like the same hype surrounding Vista...Let's wait & see. How come MS is always talking about what they'll deliver in the future when they never quite get there. Looks like they are ripping off Apple again. How come MS waterboys always compare an OS that is around today to something that might ship in the future? Apple is not standing still. MS is still playing catch up & still borrowing heavily from Apple. I guess some things will never change.
Posted by JS | October 29, 2008 11:00 PM
Super phones will have wireless keyboards as an option sooner rather than later. I always take my phone on the train and rarely a laptop. I just read feeds anyway. Every generation of computers is an order smaller than the last. Composable and cloud computing together will let us go truly mobile soon enough. Laptops are just the luggable computers of the mobile Internet. If you want the large monitor and keyboard in the future you will carry those accessories like you may carry a USB DVD drive or a laser mouse now, but the heart of the system will be an always connected, lightweight, mobile Internet device that looks a lot more like an iPhone than a Thinkpad.
Posted by crander | October 30, 2008 12:01 AM
People aren't going to huddle around a 3" screen to view their photos of their family or holiday, and if you are going to carry around the keyboard and monitor (which I feel pretty safe in saying people will) it might as well be connected to the computer (it may as well be a laptop).
Computers will get smaller no-one is debating that, but the idea that you'll just carry a phone and use a stylus or clumsy touch screen is stupid, and the idea of those "virtual keyboards" is even moreso stupid. Have you actually thought it through? Exactly what are you going to project it onto? If you are holding onto your phone you are forced to type one handed, if you aren't holding onto your phone.....what is?
Posted by realist | October 30, 2008 12:54 AM
Mr. Notapple,
Sorry to be rude but, have you even read what I've written?
You're reinforcing my point exactly - Joe has a mancrush on iTunes-iPod syncing and from that somehow deduces that Apple's sync technology is kinda locked inside a spaghetti code mess deep in the bowels of iTunes - which is simply not true.
Just like MobileMe is seen as a system from the ground up designed to only ever sync Email, Cal, Contacts, Files to the cloud. There's a very mature set of frameworks behind this (and let's not forget WebObjects), along with SproutCore as a framework to provide the web front end.
As with any Apple - Microsoft comparison it's easy to only look at what each company publicly touts in ads, press-releases, etc and use that as the basis.
This is problematic because just about all of Apple's messaging is aimed square at the end-user and tech-enthusiastic end-user, whereas a lot of Microsoft's messaging is aimed at developers - thus highlighting extensibility, frameworks, "paradigm shifts", etc...
Posted by whatever | October 30, 2008 4:17 AM
Phones/PDAs with keyboards?
The ideal combination for me - and one I've stuck with because I haven't seen a better alternative yet - is a Palm Vx (decent sized screen, with only a few buttons around it, and Graffiti), with a full size folding keyboard I can dig out of somewhere slightly less convenient if needed. It usually isn't but it's just the best typing experience if typing is what I want.
The historical popularity of the old Palms, and now the iPhone, seems to suggest that the large screen/limited physical interfaces approach is a good one. Maybe someone should consider explicitly positioning their devices as being *by design* a partnership of a large screen, physically simple device with an optional separate folding keyboard?
Posted by Gavin Greig | October 30, 2008 7:54 AM
"Rather than writing to open or accepted standards, developers would commit to Microsoft proprietary development tools and Web services platforms."
In who's world is this? The web developers have been seriously burned by targeting specific browsers/operating systems. I do not think any of them are prepared to do the same again. Standards is the only way that the web can work and that's why web developers are only interested in official standards. Just look at comments on the IE blog, people are seriously unhappy with the quality and standards support of IE8.
I think in 5 years, MS will have around 85% of the desktop market, and probably
Microsoft has existed in the server space for ages, there's nothing new about tying a website to the client operating system. Its just not a very good idea.
Posted by billybob | October 30, 2008 8:27 AM
Most of the posts on this forum that are deriding Joe's analysis that the smart phone is the platform of the future are not thinking in terms of "the future".
Sure, today there's no way the smart phone is going to replace a desktop or laptop based on the exact reasons that have been described by others. The future of the smart phone includes the capability of placing the phone on a "receiver pad" of some sort and having it wirelessly transmit the monitor output, handle mouse and keyboard, and other peripherals. You'll essentially turn the phone into the hard drive and processing unit but use common interface and displays like you do today.
At the end of the day, you put the phone in your pocket and off you go.
Apple is way ahead of the curve on this future state that I've described and I expect to see it in either iPhone 3.0 or iPhone 4.0 but it is coming.
Posted by JasonBailey | October 30, 2008 8:53 AM
No, the mobile phone will not displace the PC. The reality is that mobile phones have teeny tiny keyboards and teeny tiny monitors, and that is not going to change.
Netbooks may displace smartphones though. (grin)
Posted by JohnJ | October 30, 2008 11:27 AM
The improved Taskbar in Windows 7 does not inherit nothing from Mac OS X. OS X's Dock only shows live previews when the windows is minimized to it. Windows 7 uses Live previews when its on the Taskbar, its also used for window switching. OS X's dock suffers from the fact that the icons when open cannot tell you whether it has MDI's. I could have 6 Word docs, and its only represented by 1 icon the Doc. In Windows 7, I see live interactive previews of those Documents. No to mention Jump List which makes working with recent files even more innovative.
Posted by Andre Da Costa | October 30, 2008 12:47 PM
Both Apple and Microsoft are for-profit enterprises. Apple has an advantage in their markets because in addition to software offerings (many are free for now) they also sell hardware at high profit margins. Microsoft has two cash cows in OS/server licensing and the Office suite. If either of those product areas falter they will be hard pressed to find substitute revenues (sorry, keyboards, mice, and Zune won't do it). That is why Ballmer and Ozzie keep trying to pound that square peg (Office) into the round hole (Web) -- they desperately need to continue the cash flow. The want the "cloud" to become an extension of their 20 year desktop monopoly.
While Microsoft has fumbled and floundered in the gaming space, and stubbed its toe with the Vista kludge, Apple has invested in a modern, scalable OS (iPhones to servers), acquired a system-on-chip design capability with PA Semi, and has a world-class industrial design and engineering staff for rapidly developing and manufacturing cutting-edge products. Microsoft relies mostly on its OS licensees for new products and this limits them to an 18-24 month development/manufacturing cycle.
In an era where devices are becoming smaller, mobility is a desired feature, and market agility is a huge advantage, which company would you place your bet on?
Posted by Trent | October 30, 2008 1:33 PM
"The improved Taskbar in Windows 7 does not inherit nothing from Mac OS X."
LOL - the diff Andre is that OS X is shipping RIGHT NOW. W7 is just a wet dream. Why don't you compare the OS X dock and preview features to what's available in Vista?
Posted by Jack | October 30, 2008 1:39 PM
@Andre,
Once again, you are completely off base with your comments. Stick to regurgitating the memos Microsoft sends you.
Posted by Dave Lindhout | October 30, 2008 5:03 PM
Dave, you're drinking as much Apple koolaid as Andre is drinking Microsoft koolaid. The main point is if Windows 7 is successful, which I think it will be, it's gonna hamper Apple's current drive. The only thing they'll have left is Apple fanboi's and people who buy into the Steve Jobs propaganda. I myself use both platforms, however I prefer Microsoft's since I know what the future brings since they release all information on it, whereas Apple keeps everything secret to drive up hype and demand to ensure they are able to maintain their high prices.
Posted by Stromboldt | October 30, 2008 6:14 PM
@Stromboldt,
I'll buy your Kool-Aid argument, but only to a point. If I were to have drunk as much as Andre, I would have passed out long ago.
I also use both platforms, yet prefer Apple's because of the consistent user interface Apple has provided. I don't appreciate everything Apple does, just as I'm sure you don't appreciate everything Microsoft does. I'll be the first (well, second, after Apple) to agree that they are a niche player, while Microsoft is after the mass market.
Windows 7 needs to be successful, and I think Microsoft will need to pull a rabbit out of their hat to do it. I'm not saying they won't, but don't underestimate the complexity of Windows 7. I watched some of the PDC 2008, and it appears to me that the success of Windows 7 will hinge largely on the viability of Windows Azure.
This whole cloud thing is new to both Apple and Microsoft. Mobile Me has been a problem for Apple just as Windows Live is not quite ready for prime time. In addition to the technical hurdles, end user habits and expectations must change. That is a much larger issue, IMHO. Bring on the Kool-Aid!
@Andre
Right-click on a dock item, you'll see that Apple does support a two button mouse, and it will show you a list of document windows.
Posted by Dave Lindhout | October 30, 2008 7:45 PM
Why waste your time on the MS $hill Andre Da Costa. He is an agent of Microsoft, completely bought and paid for by them. Ask Andre about all the malware problems of Windows. Ask Andre about the plays for sure DRM problems and what happened to that and why Azure will be the same problems for users? Bet you don't get any real anwsers, just runarounds, if even that.
Posted by chips b malroy | November 2, 2008 12:05 AM
pico projectors will provide large screen for mobile devices
touch screens allow user defined keyboards/buttons/tags
the touch/iphone may be too small...but the oft discussed tablet will be about the size of netbooks
remains to be seen if the iPad has a 3G (or 4G) phone sim capability for true cloud connection
the days of the desktop are limited, the fragmentation of the markets into heavy users who want a fully featured processor..and power supply and those who can make do with mobile computing
it's the sync and access which will be the key!
and no mention of viruses and malware..the main reason to drop windows and switch...not everyone enjoys rebuilding their system every month..even mac! so the time capsule is another good read of the consumer market( and small business)..it just works...something not able to be said about any windows..ever!
Posted by garybau | November 3, 2008 9:09 AM
pico projectors will provide large screen for mobile devices
touch screens allow user defined keyboards/buttons/tags
the touch/iphone may be too small...but the oft discussed tablet will be about the size of netbooks
remains to be seen if the iPad has a 3G (or 4G) phone sim capability for true cloud connection
the days of the desktop are limited, the fragmentation of the markets into heavy users who want a fully featured processor..and power supply and those who can make do with mobile computing
it's the sync and access which will be the key!
and no mention of viruses and malware..the main reason to drop windows and switch...not everyone enjoys rebuilding their system every month..even mac! so the time capsule is another good read of the consumer market( and small business)..it just works...something not able to be said about any windows..ever!
Posted by garybau | November 3, 2008 9:10 AM
if apple could let us copy ANY file rom iphone to PC then they have something...right now (without hacks and complicated adhoc wi-fi networks) there is no way to easily copy a file to the PC. do the Apple people really think the futere is in downloading music and video only?...this is an ipod that can make phone calls...not a phone/modem with gigs of memory...not yet anyway.
this is why i will also purchase a Blackberry running windows mobile...so i can download ANY file... and transfer it to a laptop/pc.....such a simple thing.
Posted by yahhoo | November 3, 2008 1:56 PM