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Many of you know by now that I have left Microsoft a month ago after 9+ years. I’ll write more about that later, as well as discuss my new place of employment and focus.
For now, however, I would like to tell a quick story. My new employer gave me the choice of a Windows XP laptop or an Apple MacBook Pro, and for my mobile phone it was either Blackberry or iPhone (thank goodness I do not have to have a Windows Mobile phone again – for the last 9 years I have had to suffer with WM). Well, after being on Windows 7 at MS, there was no way I was going to XP. So I went Apple all the way! I wanted to take a first hand take at Mac, as well as break my tie to Microsoft for a number of reasons (more on this later).
After about 2 days, I quickly fell in LOVE with Apple products. The MacBook and OS 10 simply blow away Windows (any Windows)! And the iPhone (mind you, I had to settle for 3G) was light years better than any Windows phone (Windows Phone 7 is certainly a huge improvement from WinMo, and I had the opportunity to use it, but I would still take iPhone any day)! It has now been about 3+ weeks on Mac/iPhone and I have decided that I will be getting the iPad v2 when it comes out, and the next laptop I buy my children and/or wife will be Macs. No more Windows machines in my house!
Now, please note that I also LOVE Mac Office 2011. But Windows…OMG…I can’t believe I was using Windows PCs (and still have some at home that I have to support) for most of career. There is only one thing, one application, that I miss having for my work pc – OneNote. I am considering Evernote or Pear Note. But otherwise, I am all in on the Mac.
My MacBook and iPhone ROCK!
Are PC’s, and Windows going to be less significant in the next 5 years? Its certainly a scenario that I am sure many at Microsoft (and the industry) are arguably challenged with. More so today, then ever!
Yes, cloud computing is definitely becoming a disruptive force (in a positive way, I might add) in how we deliver and consume services today, as Ray Ozzie wrote about in his memo, The Internet Services Disruption, 5 years ago. But, I think the message, warning, and context Ray raises in his new memo today, Dawn of a New Day, 5 years later, is more relevant and I am sure has folks in Redmond and the industry talking about it.
I do not disagree, as I look into the future, I have to admit it looks less like just PC’s connecting to the cloud and services, but more about “connected devices” and “continuous services” that play out in our lives thru mobile phones, gaming consoles, TVs, iPads/Slates, cars, and other everyday devices that connect to the cloud.
Its a very interesting read and as one of my colleagues tweeted today; “Shut the door, turn off your phone and read Ray Ozzie’s Dawn of a New Day” .
Really cool work by Seesmic for a real rich Twitter experience on Windows! Manage and view multiple Twitter accounts, lists and searches in separate columns and more! Download the Seesmic Desktop!
Have you tried to run PHP on Windows? Maybe you should try it!
Try it and compete in the Great PHP on Windows® Contest!
Try your hand at PHP on Windows and win a complete 52″ HDTV home entertainment system and the opportunity to present your creation to the crowd at php|tek 2010 in Chicago with an all-expenses paid trip!
The basics of the contest are simple – Write a new application designed to run in PHP on Windows using IIS—or make a significant contribution to an existing open-source project along the same lines.
Find out more here!
I went to the 2008 Crunchies Ceremony, sponsored by TechCrunch last Friday in San Francisco. It was the second year for the awards and was packed with over 900 attendees. It turned out to be a good night for Windows Live as Windows Live Mesh won the “Best Technology Innovation/Achievment” and Ray Ozzie was there to accept the award. Here’s a link to some pictures from the event.
See my post back in April 2008 to learn more about Mesh with some good resource links.
Here is some of the press buzz:
- · CNET: “Microsoft’s Live Mesh Top Innovation at the Crunchies.”
- · CNET: “Winners and Losers from the Crunchies Awards.”
- · GigaOm: “Thank You for Making the Night of Crunchies Fun.”
- · TechCrunch: “Why We Put on the Crunchies.”
- · TechCrunch: “Congratulations to the Crunchies Winners.”
- · VentureBeat: “Winners of the 2008 Crunchies.”
- · ZDNet: “The Crunchies 2009”
PDC has arrived, and with it, we unveiled our cloud services platform (in CTP – Community Technology Preview) to the world! Windows Azure.
The Azure™ Services Platform is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities.
The Windows Azure compute service is based, of course, on the Windows platform. For the CTP, Microsoft allows Windows Azure to run only applications built on the .NET Framework. However, we have also announced plans to support unmanaged code as well, i.e., applications that aren’t built on the .NET Framework, on Windows Azure in 2009. For example, Windows Azure will support third party tools and languages such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python.
As you can see from the diagram, there are several building block services in the Windows Azure Services Platform. These include Live Services, .NET Services, SQL Services, SharePoint Services, and Dynamics CRM Services.
Here are some resources for more detail about Windows Azure:
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) – You can watch video of the sessions and keynotes.
This week, Microsoft launched a new chapter in its new Windows advertising campaign. The dialogue all started with the Mojave Experiment (an experiment to see what people think of Windows Vista when they do not know its Vista), then the Gates & Seinfeld ads (I am still scratching my head on this one; I guess it got people to giggle a little and get a conversation going; confirmation that I am not a marketing guy), and now we have the I’m a PC ads and the overarching theme of Life without Walls.
OK. I like the I’m a PC ads. But “Life without Walls” makes me think and ask the question; if there are no walls in the future, does that mean there will be no windows???
Windows 7 is the next major client operating system release (after Vista). It looks like the Windows 7 team is going to start giving us some insights. If you want to keep up with Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan (Sr. VPs running the Windows Engineering teams now) and their respective new blog posts, you can find it at Engineering Windows 7.
Windows 7, the next major release of Windows (post Vista) is around the corner. There are many articles out there on Windows 7, including videos of the multi-touch interface coming with Window 7.
What we don’t know and are starting to speculate is what’s after Windows 7. Midori is one of the OS projects that Microsoft is working on and now we are starting to hear more tidbits. Here is an interesting post in ars technica on the potential post-Windows OS.
Midori, or whatever post Windows 7 OS we will end up with, will be written for the cloud computing future. It will certainly be a platform that will enable compelling scenarios and options for developers and solutions providers; taking advantage of cloud computing facilities.
Stay tuned…
When you tell people you work for Microsoft, some of the questions you get really make you wonder. People ask about Bill Gates (as if I regularly have been in meetings with him), or the more common questions pertain to experiences with their “personal computer”. Prior to Vista, they were real first hand experiences (some good and some bad). Now, most of them are prefaced with “I hear Vista …” and usually they are not true. Of course, some of this is the result of our own go to market stumbling with Vista, and some of it probably resonates from the success that Apple has had with its “Get a Mac” TV ads.
Well, as part of a broader strategy to re-invigorate our Windows brand (more to come), and as one executive stated in an internal memo, “time to tell our story”, we have real people experiencing “Mojave”. The “Mojave Experiment” took place in San Francisco, where Microsoft round-up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista. Check out the Mojave Experiment!
Although I am frustrated and angry that the Microsoft people behind the Mojave Experiment chose a competing technology (flash vs. Silverlight) to provide a rich interactive experience, I think its a great look into the power of brand and perception and marketing.
