The Continuous End-to-End Missed Opportunity of Desktop Linux

A recent PC World post asked, if Desktop Linux has missed its opportunity. Oh, boy. Did it ever.

Understand that I've been using Linux more years than I've been using Macs, and I'm sold at how solid Linux is. I rely on Linux everyday to run my back-end stuff and my network. Apple fan boy that I am, know that this isn't any religious bias when I say, Desktop Linux sucks. Let me tell you why.

The kernel aspect of it--- the schedulers, the memory management they're all good as it is. This underlying technology can handle Desktop Linux no doubt.

For years, Desktop Linux--- Gnome or KDE has had the look and feel of Windows. And it sucked. Have you seen the standard Ubuntu color?

Linux for years has offered little to differentiate itself from the market. In fact, a few years ago, no decent distro would install mp3 support natively. None. nada. You'd have to hack it to get decent mp3 playback. And the slow support by Intel, NVidia, and ATI for their graphics cards have long been an issue too (which has changed considerably in the last two years or so)! Hell, Flash Player couldn't run properly on a 64-bit Linux machine up until quite recently. Then there is the eye-candy of Compiz and Fusion are only now being integrated into the whole shebang. With technologies like XMBC Media Center, and with projects like Gnome 3.0, things are getting better right?

When Red Hat ($RHT) walked away from the consumer market, it was a punch in the stomach for Desktop Linux. No one wanted to buy it. And for good reason, you can't even play games that your friends were playing on it. And like I said, you were still expected to hack most of the media stuff yourself. Yes there were games like Tux Racer, but haven't you been a kid before? People were using windows because they liked to play PC Games too. With their friends. Wine for all its power took too long to get to market.

It wasn't so much as a developer problem writing linux native windows drivers, because TransGaming has succeeded in that. Have you seen Cider? You can run spore today on Macs and Windows using cider technology, which is based on wine. Yes, it is imperfect for hard core gamers but the casual gamer wouldn't be arguing that much, right?

So the question is, why haven't Dell ($DELL) or HP ($HPQ) jumped into integrating Linux more into their machines? Think about it: an Ubuntu base, with a customized Dell User Interface and User Experience with properly licensed mp3, dvd playback technologies that can run native windows applications like Photoshop, Office suites, Chrome, Halo, Left4Dead, and Fallout 3, why hasn't anybody done it?

Is it because they'd have to answer to Microsoft's wrath?

All this world needs is one huge PC manufacturer that has the clout to integrate Transgaming technologies, an innovative User Interface and decent User Experience and a Linux foundation and you have not just serious competition to Windows, but Desktop Linux. The real deal.

How much did Apple ($APPL) spend to initially develop OS X? Surely, Dell or a similar company can do it. Surely, other material that are not open sourced can be licensed.

If you look at Apple's success even during this recession, it is a shout in the bow that PCs and, specifically Windows--- sucks. People are tired of viruses and trojans and reboots. And while Windows 7 addresses most of the issues of Vista, have you seen how it arranges Control Panel? Seriously, the damn thing is so complicated, it takes a rocket scientist just to decipher what it all means, much less to get it to work right.

The problem of Desktop Linux has been too many cooks. Desktop Linux suffers from the Windows mentality of mediocrity. There is no focus. It looks and feels like Frankenstein on top, when in fact under the hood, the kernel and the infrastructure around it is ready. Avahi technology on linux is like Apple's bonjour for instance and it works right out of the box.

The other truth is, the best unix desktop for the consumer right now is Apple's Mac OS X and boy, it could have been Linux. Still could really. No one just has the balls to try to do it right.

Don't get me wrong, the building blocks to making a true and ultimate desktop linux experience that challenges the status quo of Microsoft's dominance is here or getting here and like Lego bricks, someone just needs to put it all together and polish it. The continuous missed opportunity is that Linux distos are following the Microsoft formula of we're software only. No one dares enough to combine in one single polished product both the PC and Linux in an end-to-end solution and tell the customer, yes, we're responsible for all of it. In the words of Alan Kay, "people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware". It's also true isn't it that people who are serious about hardware should write software as awesome as their hardware.

The Oracle and The Sun

This changes things. Australia and the rest of Asia woke up to this startling news that Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corp have tied the knot.

Sun Microsystems owns the company known as MySQL AB. It provided sponsorship and support for the free open source database called, MySQL which is used the world over from Wordpress blogs to flickr, facebook and enterprises. Oracle is a world leading database company. You can imagine that both are in competition and both are development philosophies are opposite.

Yep, Oracle's market share just shot up.

The beauty of this Open Source license under which MySQL is licensed is that it remains free. Oracle doesn't own it. It owns the proprietary stuff that is coupled with MySQL and it may very well halt support and sponsorship for the project--- but the code can live on in someone else's backyard or developers the world over who are not satisfied with this latest development can invoke their right to fork. Which somewhat has happened with MariaDB.

It isn't to say that on the database market there isn't any competition at all. PostgreSQL is right up there. IBM and Microsoft have their offerings too.

There are other more interesting things here too. Oracle just got themselves an Operating System. OpenSolaris coupled with ZFS or Oracle's Cluster File System--- hello shot in the bow, not just at Microsoft and IBM but Red Hat too! For years, Oracle has been trying to get their own operating system. And that's exactly what it is, as per how Larry Ellison, big fish over at Oracle was saying about the deal.

OpenSolaris with a former Debain Linux guy (Ian Murdock) running the show is certainly moving Solaris towards a more-linux like feel, with Gnome and userland tools familiar to Linux users. Coupled with ZFS and Oracle's software assets, most certainly this is a threat to Linux and Microsoft.

At the end of the day, Oracle's "stewardship" of the software assets that it has just acquired from Sun may determine if the 7.4 billion dollars it has spent for it is good money. There can be no denying that an IBM buy of Sun was the better deal for developers, and for customers but this move by Oracle does shake things. In a down market as we have right now, it will be most interesting how this plays out.

The other thing is... "owning" things these days isn't the same as owning the software. Certainly, IBM buying say, Red Hat wouldn't do much to "own" linux. More like throwing money at something they don't really need to. It would just solidify their commitment to that platform, think more public relations than any practical result. IBM also gets JBoss. And the chess game of mine is bigger than yours will ensure. Maybe we'll even see a new operating system war.

At the end of the day, the market just got interesting.

Microsoft Buys Transgaming, will move Windows to Open Source

In a startling announcement, Microsoft's Steve Balmer announced that the Redmond company has purchased Transgaming Inc., for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft also announced that it will be moving its basic code base to Darwin, shocking the global computer industry.

"Today marks a new era for Windows. We have purchased Transgaming Inc., and will use their Cidar technology to power legacy and future Windows applications as we migrate to an Open Source code base for Windows. This code base will be shared across everything from Windows Mobile to Windows 8 and Windows Servers." Mr. Balmer said.

Mr. Balmer when asked why the sudden change, "Frankly, this has nothing to do with the Internet Reboot scheduled for today as some of you have speculated. I'm tried of being compared Apples to Oranges with our friends from Cupertino. For Windows 8, we will be moving our basic code base to Darwin, which is open source and which coincidently is the foundation for OS X. Make no mistake that the entire User Interface and User Experience stack will be familiar to Windows users everywhere."

Michael Dell when asked how this will affect Dell Computers, simply said, "We asked Apple once before if they will licensed OS X to us. Now, Microsoft has anted up. Windows 8 will look great on future Adamo notebooks!"

Industry pundits point out that this too is a shot across the bow for Linux. Now that the world has gone Unix, industry insiders said that it will be an interesting few years.

Apple declined to comment. Microsoft stock rose 5% in after hours trading on news of this purchase.

Lauren is a PC

Macs are not for the price conscious. Macs are for people who look beyond the price and see the value what they're buying. I mean, how much are you going to spend on viruses and system crashes vis-a-vis getting a Mac? How much is the price of headaches when things don't work on the PC?

Apple prices the Mac at a certain price point for a reason. It helps built the Elite feeling, that Cult of the Mac brand. Microsoft needs to understand that it should build better software to entice users and to build a better user experience. Less geek on Windows and more simplicity.

MSFT to YHOO: you are too expensive

Microsoft (MSFT) announced that they are withdrawing their bid to buy Yahoo (YHOO). This is good news seeing that none of these big buys actually deliver stellar performance and only headache in the short term.

Is Windows Collapsing?

Yesterday, Gartner's warning of doom for Windows echoed across the Internet. Back in 1993, IBM faced a similar "doomsday scenario," its Mainframe business was collapsing. It was hemorrhaging money. It was called a dinosaur, a has been. In 1996, Apple was thought of headed towards the grave, a year later Jobs returned and it has been a renaissance for Cupertino.

Gartner:

Their advice to Microsoft took several forms, but one road they urged the software giant to take was virtualization. "We envision a very modular and virtualized world," said the researchers, who spelled out a future where virtualization - specifically a hypervisor - is standard on client as well as server versions of Windows.

"An OS, in this case Windows, will ride atop the hypervisor, but it will be much thinner, smaller and modular than it is today. Even the Win32 API set should be a module that can be deployed to maintain support for traditional Windows applications on some devices, but other[s] may not have that module installed."

Backward compatibility with older, so-called "legacy" applications, should also be supported via virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not, as needed."

Someone forgot about Wine.

Let's take a step back. This is pure fiction, one that would be so insane that to do it, would really shatter perception. Let Microsoft photocopy Apple's design process and steal from Cupertino's playbook. Shift Windows to a Unix foundation and keep the media layer like DirectX going. Heck, if they really wanted to rub it in, they'd use Linux. But BSD Unix would perhaps be more apt, given the License.

What's the possible uptake to this?

1. Unix is far more inherently secure, with sockets and firewalling. I really hate all those antiviruses and trojans and worms and will not shed a tear if those guys ever close shop. Increased Unix security prevents (but not wipes out) a lot of problems Windows has today from propagating. 
2. Microsoft gets to keep the media foundation of its Operating System going like in Apple's playbook, it becomes a valued-added service atop Unix. Microsoft still gets to control this space. They get to keep it proprietary. 
3. Microsoft doesn't need to completely throw away its development environment. .Net, bet you it wouldn't be too much trouble to get it going. and here's the really good part:
4. Wine can be the Rosetta of Windows. Legacy applications need not be a burden. Wine exist to run them. Heck, Photoshop can run on wine. With a little more help from Microsoft, bet you things can go a lot smoother.

Going forward, a Unix-based foundation can jump start an aging Windows franchise. BSD doesn't require you to return updates to their source tree. Microsoft can play with this technology. Wine is there for legacy apps.

On the other hand, the use of Linux as the foundation for a future Windows lets Microsoft accelerate software development. Linux already has drivers for most of the PC world. Microsoft wouldn't need to worry that driver X for common device A would be working. It also gets to play more in areas where it is playing second fiddle like the high performance computing market. Think of Microsoft Windows-Linux as an unlikely Marriage but would cost less to do and execute as say, a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo but the business up take would be staggering. And the controversy that would create would certainly be a shot that echoed across the planet.

Given Microsoft's (in my humble opinion, foolish) desire to play second-fiddle to Google on the Ad space, with their persistent play for Yahoo, "Is Microsoft still interested in the Operating System business?" 

The marriage plans between Microsoft and Yahoo should in fact have MSFT shareholders rattled, more than Yahoo's. How can it not be billions of dollars wasted in an effort to catch up with Google? 

Think AOL-Time Warner. 

The length of time, the energy wasted in integrating the two companies would give Google all the space it needs to take even broader steps in the mid term. And for what? throw away all of Microsoft's money? 

At the end of the day, Microsoft will have to decide what exactly is it now? Is it a conglomerate? Is it the world's most powerful software developer? Is it the company that produces the world's most dominant operating system? Is it an Advertising company?

This whole mess that Microsoft is in, isn't a question of whether or not there are smart people in Redmond. It is a question of how creative are they? And where do they see Microsoft is and will be. If they are not going to play in the Operating System market as aggressively as they used to, perhaps it is time to spin it off, and while they're at it, maybe they could spin off XBox as well, just like the rest of the company and just do the advertising game. If Microsoft is the new IBM or at least the IBM of the 1970s and 1980s, then it needs to become the IBM of the 1990s and this first decade of the 21st Century. 

Is virtualization the key for Microsoft? VMs will be big business in the next few years. Microsoft will be part of that business. But to keep the Windows desktop franchise going, VMs will not be the answer.

When all is said and done, is Windows collapsing? If it was, it is going to be a slow agonizing death that would take years, given the sheer dominance of Windows' market share. That is assuming everything is stagnant. My bet is that it keeps going. If Microsoft was really going shock the world, going Unix would be it. Technologically feasible, you bet it. Pure fantasy? what do you think? 

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (part 6)

The Way the World Is

I was asked "Why is the Mac immune to criticism on Application Integration at the Operating System Level?" this question over at twitter by @digitalfilipino in response to my posting this link by thebetaguy.com on Windows 7 development. Which led me to ask myself this question: Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

We took a journey down memory lane, into part of the past 30 years of our technological era. We began with a small company called Apple in 1976 that was started by two guys named Steve. We saw the rise of a pure software company, called Microsoft that was Bill Gates' and Paul Allen's and through events that favored them, became the sole provider of an Operating System for IBM's Personal Computer. And as they say, that was that.

Fast forward to 2007, Steve Jobs is one of the most admired, if not the most admired CEO in the world. Bill Gates is ending his tour of duty at Microsoft and is one of the richest in the world. We talk about the Philosophy of Computing Platform and when we look back at the last 30 years, it was shaped by these two men. 

Jobs' sense of perfection, his nature as a charmer, his salesmanship, his taking technology to an art-form, his driving belief of minimalism and simplicity and his role as the patron of the arts for our technological epoch drives Apple. His vision of a universe of integrated hardware and software whose marriage forms art is Apple's soul. 

In the same way, Gates is the vision, the pure geek energy, laser focused, calculating towards software that drives any computer in everyone's home is the source of philosophy ingrained on PC and by extension every Microsoft product the world over. 

Similarly, this Gates philosophy extends to Linux because if there is something similar to how Windows and Linux do things is that they are reflections of geek-engineering culture. Such culture, such philosophy is this technology savant imprint, a kind of rough around the edges, almost brute-force-like feel that calls for every user to be familiar with technology.

The scorn and hatred Microsoft got at the end of the 1990s haunts them to this day. It is this mistrust, this sense that Microsoft can do evil is the very fuel, the very thing that blocks them from furthering their vision of the future. It is this wall that forms criticism around everything Microsoft does. Which isn't really fair to Microsoft but is the price of being found guilty. 

At the same moment, the very nature of the PC, an Open Architecture on the hardware side is in direct conflict with a proprietary platform such as Windows. The PC world is a world where everyone can and must interact. And Windows as gatekeeper of this dynamic, Frankenstein-ish world plays a balancing act to keep legacy and future applications running. Perhaps, one day it will collapse under the weight of its own complexity or perhaps, one day it will allow itself to be transformed.

How ironic that it is quite the opposite for the Mac. The Mac is built on the same commodity parts that PCs use but engineered by Apple. Its software is based on Open technology: BSD Unix. Yet what Apple has done, it has taken this pedestrian technology and made it extraordinary (something that Linux can learn from). 

The Integration, the marriage of Hardware and Software is at the very heart, the very philosophy of Apple and in everything they do. Mac loyalists are willing to let Apple be the gatekeeper of their machines because it is no long just a mere computer, it is a consumer electronics device, sensual to the touch.

The differences between PC and Mac is the very Philosophy of their creators and their nature. PC needs to be open, needs to be a platform where anything goes (even transformed into a beauty like Mac) and accessible to everyone. In short, it fulfills the do-it-yourself mantra of hackers everywhere. Mac on the other hand is like a piece of art like that Ferrari or like a thoroughbred, gorgeous, perfection and powerful. The fundamental nature of computing platforms is the philosophy and nature and ultimately whatever the end-game of their individual creators.

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (part 5)

Return of the Jobs

Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

After years of poorly executed plans, high cost of production, and failed opportunities, Apple Computer was facing death. Discounted, ridiculed and a market share as bad as OS/2 had, Apple was written off. But Apple would not go without a fight. In search for a New Operating System to jump start the company, Apple shopped around. Long story short, Apple bought NeXT--- Steve Jobs' company and in MacWorld 1997, Jobs stepped back on stage.

MacWorld 1997

When Steve Jobs returned, he brought with him Bill Gates' multimillion dollar no stock investment to Apple (think: loan) and Microsoft Office. This would prove significant. It wasn't the money. It was the deal that Microsoft would make Microsoft Office for the Mac. Jobs knew then that interoperability would be a key factor in reviving Mac shares. How could it not be? The world had standardized on Office. Everyone needed Microsoft's word processor if they were to pass documents to and from associates and business partners.

So began an Apple renaissance.

The seeds of what Mac OS X is today began after Jobs had exited Apple in 1985. The NeXT platform was Unix-based. It also had tools like Objective-C, a subset of the C language but was Object Oriented. These among others would prove to lay the foundation for the future.

The startling difference between Apple's then future OS X and Windows was its design. Clearly, OS X from the get go, was built around tools that painted a specific goal. It favored the creative mind-set of its core constituency certainly, but more than that, appeals direct to the non-hacker-non-technology-savant. The underlying layers of OS X--- Unix, Core Foundation--- Core Audio, Core Image/Core Video and now Core Animation (1997/1998) continued to serve as abstractions to the Geek dominated world of zeroes and ones.

The genius of Apple is that it uses technology and brings it to the level of art.

Take the iMac--- iconic desktop of Apple. Unlike its rivals, the iMac is an integrated platform. There are no CPU boxes, and there are three cables that go to and from the machine: a power supply, a keyboard and mouse (a fourth could be a Harman/Kardon speaker set). Heck, if you were really adventurous, you could simply run it with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The design is elegant. The machine is finely crafted. The Operating System that goes with it makes you work from the get go. Phones connect via bluetooth just like that. other devices can simply be plugged in and chances are they would just talk.

Macworld 2000

The beauty of OS X is its simplicity and well thought of design--- from simple buttons to how the computer interacts with the users in intuitive ways. Take installing software. In the windows world it would require you to answer series of questions just to install an Application. Often, this requires the user to be quite knowledgeable about technology. But with OS X, most Applications come in a disk image. It "mounts" like loading a CD on your system. And how do you install? simply just drag the App to your Applications folder (or any local folder for that matter) and you are done. Application is installed. just double click on the transferred app and you're working. No hassle. No need to think about complex stuff. Want to uninstall? just drag the App from your application folder into the trash and empty it. The power of this simplicity is that Macs don't require you to be a technology savant. It doesn't impose a barrier for the lowest most ignorant user. It makes these things abstract letting most people just use the machine. This beauty comes from a well thought of integrated foundation.

Elegance in everything is the simple nature, simple beauty of Apple.

This is the same simplicity, same elegance that Apple incorporated into the iPod and iTunes when it entered the Music business in 2001:

Apple's 1st Music Event, 2001, The First iPod

Beyond the Macs, and the iPod, what makes Apple different is its cult-like following. It is arguably the largest subculture in computing, perhaps even more so than Linux and Open Source. Leander Kahney author of (and who writes a blog of similar name), The Cult of Mac (legally free download via Bittorrent) wrote:

Mac users can be extremely cool. It's a lifestyle thing. Mac users tend to be liberal, free-thinking, counterculture. They dress well, look good, have discerning taste (in New York, anyway). Take a Mac out in public and people want to look at it. Mac users have a sense of humor. They also help eath other. Myriad Web sites help you find solutions to problems, pointers to the best deals, and great freeware or shareware.

Mac users are creative. What else would you expect from all the musicians, artists, designers, and filmmakers who make up Apple's core constituency? It's not unreasonable to say that a lot of the world's mass media--- books, magazines, movies, music, Web sites--- is made on Macs. A lot of highly creative people fire up their Macs every day to shape our culture.

This difference in culture is the predominant distinction between the design philosophy of PCs whether it is Windows-based or Linux-based.

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (part 4)

The End of the Beginning

Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

In the Mid-1990s, a company called Netscape drew its bread and butter from selling a Web Browser and Communications (Email, HTML editor and Browser) suite at a price. When Internet Explorer became freely available on Windows and came with every copy of Microsoft's world dominant operating system, and with technologies like "Channels"--- push (similar idea to what RSS is to us now) data from the Internet to your Windows desktops became a feature of Windows 98, Netscape was losing the war.

So in the process of adding value and growing their business, Microsoft not only stepped on the toes of others already in the game developing emerging web and multimedia technologies but was figuratively shoving it down their throats.

Naturally, those emerging companies cried foul.

And this arrogance, this hubris would taint Microsoft to this day. Gone was Chancellor Palpatine who everyone respected for his ability to be politically adept. When Microsoft won the war, it had become Emperor. Well-earned nomenclature or not, the world saw them the Dark Side.

Microsoft crushed Netscape when they made Internet Explorer free and part of Windows. With every PC that came out a manufacturer's door, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was right there. Ordinary people who needed to use the nascent Web naturally would use IE. It was the first thing they saw. For Netscape, a company that sold browsers, who made a living by selling a web browser and suite, how do you fight against the very attractive price of US$0.00 and which came along with your computer, no downloads, no additional install needed?

The seeds of AntiTrust, anti-monopoly, anti-Microsoft revolution begun.

Companies started to fear Microsoft's control and it became evident. They wanted the same freedom to build applications on the Windows platform as the PC but when Microsoft started making the same applications, naturally the upstarts would die.

Everyone had to dance to Microsoft tune. And when people start to feel less free, the seeds of dissent were sowed. Revolutionaries were poised to come out of the shadows and fight a guerilla campaign openly.

Eric S. Raymond wrote a paper called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and published it online. This paper was more about software development. It was about the fundamental difference between writing software where everyone could see it and writing software behind closed ivory towers (Microsoft's way). In many ways, this paper helped legitimize and bring to mainstream an Open Architecture philosophy to software development in the same way that the IBM PC had opened up the commodity hardware business. The Cathedral and the Bazaar would be the geek version of a Declaration of Independence.

But dissent wasn't just with the geeks.

In the boardroom and the backdoors of silicon valley power--- companies who relied on the Openness of the PC were also revolting. Microsoft held a firm iron grip on them. Microsoft was slowing down innovation by the very nature of the "closeness". But no hardware manufacturer in their right mind would have dumped Microsoft. They'd have no business. It was a symbiotic relationship. The world had standardized on Windows as much as it had standardized on the PC. To dismantle more than 15 years of Microsoft rule would be like throwing stones at a rushing Jumbo Jet.

Much had change by 1998. The wheel was once more poised to turn. The Internet revolution had brought the network to early adapters and it was fast becoming mainstream. In accelerated the development and adaption of Linux, the world over. In Mountain View, Google was born. And Netscape, after reading Raymond's paper had announced it was opening up its browser and giving it away for free. The Open Source revolution went mainstream.

In Red Hat co-founder Robert Young's "Under the Radar" book about the rise of Red Hat, he wrote this about Intel:

Executives at the highest levels at the company had long recognized that proprietary operating system manufacturers were not moving their operating systems forward as quickly as Intel was advancing microprocessor technology. That is, Intel was being held hostage by those that controled the operating system. If it had new technology available at the processor level that would allow computer users to do new things, it had to wait until the Operating System supplier decided it was willing to build support for these features into the system.

With an open source operating system, Intel could enhance the operating system itself if to s desired, to support its new chip technology. It then could contribute the enhanced software back to everyone who was using Linux, for example. This represented the first time that operating system development might e able to keep up with the new hardware that Intel was brining to market.

Moreover, the though that it could itself begin to tune an operating system to take immediate advantage of any new chip technology it pleased was a very attractive one to Intel, which had been in lockstep with Microsoft for more than a decade.

In the latter half of the 19990s, arbitration began and Microsoft would be subject to Anti-trust hearings the world over.

Civil War was on. Companies disgruntled with the Microsoft Empire had revolted.

Young wrote further:

...the evidence showed that Microsoft was in a position to call all the shots, often bullying its supposed business partners to limit themselves to Microsoft-owned technology. Microsoft appeared to have gone so far as to dictate how fast other companies could bring out new products--- or if they could bring them out at all, for that matter.

Young continued:

...Intel vice president Steven McGeady would testify that Microsoft threatened to withhold critical technical support from intel if the chipmaker did not stop developing software that Microsoft believed competed with its own product strategies.

But Intel's eagerness to participate in the open source business had nothing to do with any animosity the chip giant had toward its partner Microsoft. Instead, Intel was about to embark on a strategic partnership that had everything to do with smart business.

If during the late 1990s, Linux's rebel hackers and companies like Intel were fighting to unshackle themselves from a Microsoft Empire, another unlikely Revolution was creeping from a different front. An old friend of Microsoft from the 1980s had returned to the company he founded. And boy, was he back with a vengeance.

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (part 3)

One Windows to Rule Them All

Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

Bill Gates' dream that his software would run on every Computer in the world had come true. Windows in every PC made Gates and Paul Allen, two of the richest men in the world. The mid-1990s saw Windows reach the pinnacle of its success, a resounding commercial success. Perhaps, it is something about seeing someone successful that we want to pull them backdown to Earth. Perhaps, it is just the nature of all things that eventually something better comes along. However it was, after 1995, Microsoft would be perceived differently.

Unmistakably, Microsoft had taken the crown from IBM. If before the PC era, anybody who needed to buy right, all bought IBM. In the 1990s, you could never be wrong if you bought a Microsoft product. It of course was also helped that at the time, IBM was in the midst of a transformation themselves. And Apple Computer was in similar position as IBM, if not worst.

The world had changed in the 15 or so years since IBM launched the PC. It could be argued that the PC was the fundamental engine driving that change but something was already replacing the PC as the center of rapid growth. It was the maturing Network. The hardware was fast becoming ubiquitous. No longer were humans locked away as discrete islands. Humans and by extension Computers and the Data we keep, and manipulate in them, they needed to interact.

The Web was on the rise. Bill Gates had dismissed the web as the next big thing. But by 1995, even as Windows 95 was one of the most successful releases of the Operating System, clearly the Network was going to become huge. But this wasn't the vision of the future that Microsoft held. It was a time when Bill Gates didn't see the Internet as the next big thing. So Microsoft stayed away from the action, while others were building software to meet this emerging world order.

By the nature of its design and ecosystem, Windows was not a natural playmate of the network. I argue this reflects the geek attitude of Microsoft. The Windows heritage grew from islands of computers. But Windows and the PC that it ran on was the dominant platform ever. Every country, every person in the world relied on data being processed on desktop computers running Windows.

In the dark corners of the Internet, rebel hackers were sowing the seeds of dissent. Linux was born in 1991, and by 1994, the scientific community (particularly NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) gave birth to the Beowulf Project which in simplest terms was "Commodity Clustering". It was the idea of networking ordinary PCs to do the job of once expensive and proprietary Supercomputers. And it ran, a then largely unknown Operating System called Linux.

And while Windows was being cheered, adored and welcomed, Linux was being adapted across technical circles. It was the new Unix.

1995 was a landmark year. Red Hat Linux was born with the goal of packaging and selling the free operating system Linux. In the same year, Caldera was likewise founded. And the Apache Group build its version of its popular Webserver, Apache based on the National Center for Supercomputing Applications' HTTPd 1.3 series. And who could forget the birth of Yahoo! that same year?

A company called Netscape was an upstart that was poised to become the new Microsoft and by the time of the late 1990s--- Microsoft saw that it had to take on Netscape or else lose dominance. Microsoft of course got its Windows to play nice. Microsoft started to build web technologies and multimedia technologies with Windows. It was obvious. Maybe it was because of hubris--- Microsoft was the biggest baddest fish in the sea. They needed to expand Windows, add value for the customer base.

It was getting pretty clear by then that Microsoft was embracing the new world networked paradigm. Problem was, companies the world over were already taking advantage of it before Microsoft did. Companies like Netscape sold web browsers for example. It was their bread and butter. Nobody could ever doubt that at Redmond, the Killer Instinct was alive and well, so what happened next was also quite natural.

Netscape and Microsoft fought the First Browser War. IE versus Netscape, winner takes the Internet.

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (part 2)

World Dominance, Winner Take All

Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

It was the early 1990s. The world was changing. No one knew how much it would change in such a few short years. Beyond the political--- the First Gulf War (1990-1991), the fall of the Soviet Union (1991) and the Comeback Kid Bill Clinton (1993) taking office, the nascent Internet was rising, a new operating system was humbly being born, all the while a global war for desktop computer dominance was reaching its pinnacle and would make Bill Gates and Paul Allen the richest men in the world.

Unknown to most people, the following year would be a landmark. Even while Windows was poised to become the One Operating System to Rule Them All, in 1991, a geek called Linus Torvalds from Helsinki with the aid of an Internet trying to grow, let loose Linux Kernel 0.1 and begun an underground revolution that would change the shape of the world. The emerging platform of the Internet also saw the birth of Mosaic, a web browser that would father Netscape (which would father Mozilla) and eventually bring to mainstream, a whole new network paradigm.

Let us rewind a bit to 1990. Windows 3.0 came into the fray and coupled with cheap hardware that PCs were notoriously known for, was on the road to global dominance. It was eroding Apple's market share. More people were buying PCs. It was commodity hardware that allowed everyone to have a PC. Who cared if it looked like Frankenstein? The market needed gear that worked and worked cheaply.

On Apple's corner, the momentum of Macintosh five years early was ebbing. High cost of the machine, lack of interoperability with the rest of the world proved to be a bane. Windows was slowly alienating their competitor in the broader war. Brute force won over elegance. Who needed Beauty when Frankenstein could do the same things Beauty did?

In December 1992, development for NCSA Mosaic begun and in a few months found its way to Macs and Windows PCs. That browser called Mosaic would eventually become Netscape Navigator.

And where was IBM?

If the late 80s and early 90s was a golden age for Apple and the beginnings of a World Ruled by One Windows, by 1993, it was a dark time for IBM. Big Blue was entrenched with difficulties at home. In fact, IBM was dying and dying quickly. The gigantic Elephant that was IBM was hemorrhaging money. IBM Boss at the time, Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., recounted in his book, "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance," April 1993:

At the end of May, I saw April's results, and they were sobering. Profit had declined another $400 Million, for a total decline of US$800 million for the first four months. Mainframe sales had dropped 43 percent during the same four months. Other large IBM businesses--- software, maintenance, and financing--- were all dependent, for the most part, on mainframe sales and thus, were declining as well. The only part of the company that was growing was services, but it was a relatively small segment and not very profitable. Head count had declined slightly, from 302,000 at the beginning of the year to 298,000 at the end of April. Several business unites, including application-specific software and our semiconductor businesses, were struggling.

It was clear that in 1993 the First Desktop and Operating System War was over. The Windows Flag flew proudly. IBM was dying and even Gerstner acknowledged IBM's defeat, with 5% to 6% OS/2 market share, IBM exited the PC Operating System business. And Apple? By the time Windows 95 rolled out, Apple was lost, searching for a way to recapture the glory days of Macintosh.

Windows wasn't the technically superior of either OS/2 or Mac OS (well at least in those early days of the 1990s). Windows had copied Mac OS' Graphical User Interface and gave PC users a semblance of the easy of use of the Mac. Windows PCs continued on the legacy of the 1980s. Windows ran a very open, PC architecture.

If you think about it, the quick and dirty Frankenstein approach was the very philosophy of the PC. It was what made it successful. Like the pioneers of early flight, who cared how it looked, just as long as it flew. Who cared if it had seat belts or cup holders or soft leather seats? For the longest time, it was the same with the PC.

And of course they needed an Operating System to run it and Microsoft was the only one who sold it. By the time Windows 95 came out, it was pretty much a certainty that everyone who had heard of computers, all pointed to Microsoft Windows' Start button to begin their day.

In the same way that the PC was a geek project, Windows in many ways reflected the worst of being geek. Its interface reflected the enthusiasts' idea of interface. Never mind, if everybody else had to learn it. It was for a lack of a better term, crude. But it worked. And people put up with it.

So the world had standardized on PCs. The world standardized on the philosophy of Frankenstein, after all it got the job done. People would put up with the endless reboots and crashes. If you were writing a paper and the machine crashed and you forgot to save, tough man. People would put up with blue screens of death, of viruses, of worms and trojans that had become such a part of life in a Windows PC world. It was a device everybody could buy and build and build to meet their own need so people bought into the Frankenstein Philosophy.

Could Microsoft had fixed it? perhaps. perhaps not. Why fix a well oiled machine when nobody was going to beat you? It was perhaps the price of a monopoly that continued to hunt Microsoft. Perhaps, it may not even be that but the inherent Frankensteinsim of the PC itself with its myriad combinations and legacy devices and applications that Windows had got to support. Windows needed to keep the past going. Perhaps, we can lay blame on the hubris of the victor and for sitting on their laurels for lack of technical vision for what the future held and we can even blame the nascent technology.

If you've lived in those days, it would have been evident that the dust had settled. Game over. Little would everyone know that the next chapter wasn't about to begin, it had already begun in 1989 with the birth of the Web.

The wheel was once more poised to turn.

The Philosophy of Computing Platforms (Part 1)

The Beauty and The Beast: the Age of Commodity Computing

"Why is the Mac immune to criticism on Application Integration at the Operating System Level?" I was asked this question over at twitter by @digitalfilipino in response to my posting this link by thebetaguy.com on Windows 7 development. What follows is my train of thought on the matter.

Is the fundamental difference between platforms all about philosophy and human nature?

The story began, a long time ago, in a time, far, far away. There were two Steves, a Paul and a Bill. The age of the minicomputer was on. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started a small business upstart called Apple that sold computers. Bill Gates and Paul Allen on the other hand began a software company called Microsoft, founded to sell BASIC interpreters.

Even back then, the startling differences in their corporate philosophies was evident and those differences would shape not just their companies, the information technology industry but society at large. Apple was always an integrated company, shaped by the vision and natural salesmanship and personality of Steve Jobs and driven by the engineering genius of Woz. Apple since its inception has been a synergy of those great things. And Microsoft? Its relentless software focus, and core geek philosophy of its founders would take shape in the very operating system which they would use to dominate the world.

PCs for everyone was the dream but it wasn't until the early 1980s that computers started to become commodities and enter the mainstream. Enter the IBM PC.

Before the InterWeb, PCs were islands onto themselves. No one bothered with wires, Lans and Wifis. Want data passed between computers? Someone hands you a disk. You used those archaic devices called "Floppy disks". Call 'em the precursors of the CD, the usb flash drive. The PC as was the Apple before it, was birthed by the Philosophy of the age: do it yourself computers. The difference was, the PC was an Open Architecture meaning anybody could simply design hardware that could work with the PC.

By creating an Open Architecture, IBM had created what we call today, a "community". People would come in, design a hardware that would work for the PC because the standard was freely available to everyone and no matter who manufactured the PC, that device was guaranteed to work. The appeal was that anybody could build a PC from scratch to do what they want it to do.

A computer without software is like a human without a soul, without a consciousness thus, merely a pile of wires, silicon and plastic.

Operating Systems are the consciousness and unconsciousness in humans. Part of it directs everything we humans want the computer to do. Operating Systems know where to write a piece of data into the drive. It tells the DVD-ROM the instructions to spin when we humans want to watch a movie. It knows that the keyboard is a keyboard and not a mouse. It translates our keyboard and mouse interaction into what the computer could do.

So IBM at the dawn of the PC era, needed an Operating System to run the computer. In a bit of luck or faith for one Redmond company, the Operating System was subcontracted by IBM to Microsoft. This Operating System wasn't an Open Architecture as the PC was. Nobody cared back in the day about that. People were perfectly happy that Microsoft kept the OS growing. It didn't even talk to other computers as our computers do today. The network was farther off into the future.

The explosion of the PC hardware because it was an Open Architecture sent entrepreneurs building their own version of the PC. Businesses sprung like mushrooms building devices for the PC. There were video cards, and sound cards and hard drives were soon mainstream. It was like a sprawling bazaar where people could mix and match hardware. This Openness helped create business. By seeding the world with PC hardware, IBM had made possible the commodification of computers. But all of this hardware had to talk to the computer. Microsoft's Operating System needed to know all of those diverse devices. Want your sound card to play on every PC in the world? You had to write a device driver for Microsoft's Operating System.

And where was the nascent Internet of the time? It was silently cooking the back rooms of Universities, through copper wires and phone lines, through Electronic Bulletin Boards, ARPANET and USENET what would eventually become the web remained in the providence of hackers and university researchers.

In 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh. It was a tiny box that was revolutionary. And Apple's iconic 1984 advertising for that event also started the trend of Superbowl ads. It was a well made computer. It was a computer in a box--- it wasn't just a commodity, it was an appliance like a Television is. Needless to say this vision of the future foreshadows where the IT industry is now head towards. Like many things Apple, it was ahead of its time. One might argue that sometimes, Apple is too ahead and quite often, such out of the box thinking is not appreciated by the market, at least not initially.

It wasn't to say nobody did. The amazing Apple platform, dazzled many. It opened up the Graphical User interface and introduced the mouse and we've all pointed and clicked away towards interacting with the Computer. Apple pioneered the Laser printer and ushered in the Desktop Publishing business. It revolutionized fonts and how we display information on the computer. And Five Years later, the innovation, if not the platform the Macintosh began would be the standard the world over.

And in all this Apple was true to its calling of building a package that ran well, that looked good, that was revolutionary, that worked.

But by 1985, a civil war had broken out at Apple. And Steve Jobs found himself kicked out of the very company he founded. Exiled, Steve Jobs may have found himself, young, bright and talented, he would find himself very much a serial entrepreneur founding two companies during his post Apple days. One company was called NeXT and the other Pixar. The first company ran on Unix with futuristic designs and Pixar would later create the world's first animated feature presentation. His story is far from over.

With Jobs gone from the picture, Apple still continued to rise, fueled by the revolution that was Macintosh. "A golden age," wiki quotes MacAddict was the time between 1989 and 1991.

The Operating System War of the late 1980s and early 1990s was much about platform as it was about philosophy. The Mac had pioneered the Graphical User Interface, but Windows brought the same technology to the PC side. A competition arose between the two philosophies. One based on open hardware and combined with Windows created a machine that could only be characterized as a Beast: Frankenstein. The other, elegant, graceful and was simply Beauty.

The momentum the PC was on since the early 80s fueled the tide into Microsoft's and the PCs' favor. Commodity hardware was what the market needed and wanted. Sure, grace and elegance mattered but it was a young industry. It needed to be cheap enough, rough around the edges didn't matter. What mattered was to be adapted the world over and grace and elegance did not come cheap. Quite naturally, Market forces dictated that people love Frankenstein.

The First Desktop and Operating System wasn't just between Windows and Mac OS. IBM was losing control of the business that they had founded. After making a device that was Open, virtually every company in the world would be making their own PC. Companies other than IBM were growing and winning over the PC and IBM was just lost on the hardware business. When IBM looked at the software side, they came to realize what what they had done with Microsoft, so started the war between Windows and OS/2.

Do you remember Jobs' NeXt Computer? Well, in March 1989 saw the birth of the World Wide Web by Timothy Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau and the staff at CERN and a NeXTcube was used by Berners-Lee as the world's first Web server and was also used to write the first web browser.

And so the 1980s ended with Microsoft fighting a War against IBM on the Operating System at the PC front while battling it out with Apple on the broader market. The prize was the only prize worth fighting for: World Dominance, winner take all.

There is an Apple in your Windows Future: OS X Apps to Run Native in Windows

In a bold and surprising move, escaped developers sources from Cupertino Redmond have revealed an insidious plan from within the super-secret enclave of The Great Jobs. It is nefarious. It is so viral that it shatters all preconceived paradigm.

Remember that hat trick Jobs did when Apple switched to Intel? That OS X had, for years been secretly running on Intel machines? Well, Steve Jobs, Lord of All Things Apple is expected to announce a new secret sauce in Apple's ever expanding WarMachine, code-named, "Orange".

Think of Orange as "Rosetta for Windows".

This little backdoor program will allow all native OS X applications to run natively on Windows machines. Developers had been pushed to work like slaves the lavishly paid folks that they are, 24/7 for the past year to get this baby out the backdoor.

This probably isn't any surprise to Cranky Geek John C. Dvorak who back in 2006, wrote a piece, "Will Apple Adopt Windows?". He saw what no one thought possible.

What does this mean to the whole Apple-Windows universe?! Migration plans to move AppleScript to .Net is reported to have been completed as of MacWorld. XCode will replace Visual Studio as Developer's coding environment and will be using a freely available Intel C/C++ compiler. Spotlight will take over all search on Windows machines. XGrid--- that Apple magic formula to cluster all your machines ubiquitously is reportedly a welcome addition to the Windows Family of Native Apps. The Dock will be retired in favor of Windows Button and Taskbar. And Sudo will be the one command to rule all your Applications.

This is like a merger, not of two companies, which will never stand regulatory scrutiny but a merging of minds. It will be a merging of two of the world's most recognized Platforms. Gates and Jobs have been seen with wide grins on their faces, spending hours upon hours taking Photobooth snaps and iChat sessions. Even Steve Ballmer and Phil Schiller have been reported as uncharacteristically friendly towards one another, both giddy like schoolgirls. They've all seen Peter Oppenheimer's projections on this little project. Both companies are expected to gain billions and billions of dollars from massive and perpetual licensing and royalty agreements.

Sadly, a downside of all this is the reported whipping verbal reprimanding of escaped developers sources from Apple's and Microsoft's ultra-secret concentration camps, better hidden than CIA detention centers comfortable campuses.

Folks, this isn't like 1984. This is bigger than that! If this new world redefining paradigm isn't enough, as Bill Gates is set to step out of Microsoft's campus, he is reportedly handing over Strategic Planning to his long time friend, Steve Jobs. Steve B., will run day to day, Steve J. will take over Strategy. As today, April 1st is Apple's Anniversary, expect the world to go crazy once Bill Gates and Steve Jobs announce this New World Order later in the day as part of Apple's Anniversary surprise.

Updated: Happy April Fools!

Apple is going after Blackberry's Lunch

(Updated, -1) There is blood in the water: Microsoft's, Sony's, Nintendo's and Research in Motion's blood. If there is any doubt that Apple is a shark and is about to eat and have Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Research in Motion for lunch--- the Apple March 6 Event launching iPhone's Software Development Kit is that proof.

Let's start with the most obvious. Apple's crosshairs has locked on Research in Motion. With Apple licensing ActiveSync thereby giving it access to Microsoft Exchange servers, iPhone and sister iPod Touch just laid down any doubt that they are players on the Enterprise.

Has Microsoft realized what it has done?

Enterprises don't need a third party to push their services. iPhone just cut that middle man (RIMM) off. iPhone can have direct access to Exchange servers. Enterprises, and email addicts will now ask, why should they pay for Blackberry service when they can provide it all in house, with cheaper infrastructure and less complexity?

And as more and more people come to become addicted and married to their Blackberry iPhone, enter the second coming of the Halo Effect. Apple's push to eat Microsoft's lunch is far more insidious, far more subtle than its attack on RIMM. iPhone is positively viral.

Giving Apple access to ActiveSync and Exchange servers maybe the nail that signs Microsoft dominance on the Enterprise. Coupled with growing discontent with Windows by businesses everywhere, this push towards the Enterprise by Apple via iPhone will increase adaptability of the rest of Apple's more consumer oriented line.

Who was it who said Apple isn't interested on the Enterprise?

What Apple is doing against Microsoft, this is guerilla warfare at its finest. Apple is trying to get inside the Enterprise through the backdoor. They want to get people addicted first to this one device.

What Apple is doing is turing iPhone into spice like Dune spice. Just like any drug for that matter. First they give you a taste, and you find you can't live without it. You'll say, "This is great. I want more. then you go, more, more".

If it's that good, could it be evil?

Pretty soon employees will be banging demanding like a rabid mob in front of the IT department's door: we want Macs.

Insidious.

Okay, maybe not that crazy, but you get the picture.

The other set Apple is out to get is Sony and Nintendo. With Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch displaying such advanced game play as was demoed in their March 6 event, the PSP and the DS are definite targets.

Heck, iPhone can run Spore-- positively one of the most awaited game of the year. (Update-1) Whether or not EA launches Spore on the iPhone platform is of course another issue but beside the point. Macworld confirmed that EA is launching Spore, other games on iPhone. The advanced features of iPhone like the accelerometer gives game play a different interface. Just look at the Wii. Rock, roll--- or whatever the game designers can come up with.

Wonder if LucasArts will have The Force Unleashed on this baby?

iPhone is a game changer, more than I thought it was. iPhone is the one device that lets you work and play. It is a convergence and general purpose device so much like the PC.

When iPhone was launched, I first thought this was going to be the beginning of the UMPC era... that iPhone would be the grandfather of the UMPC, let me be the first to correct myself: this is UltraMobile Computing, right here, right now. This is what Bill Gates has been lusting about with his Tablet PC craze. iPhone is what every person should have.

Forget any other device that fits right in between the iPhone and a Macbook. iPhone is that device. iPhone is that platform. If there is anymore doubt as to the authenticity of this claim, just point your browser to iFund where KPCP is looking for market and game changing ideas on the iPhone platform to fund. This to me is the most important aspect of the March 6 Event that solidifies this platform as the device we are looking for.

I don't mean to be a backseat driver but the only thing Apple can do wrong now is that if it lets iPhone be married to a single carrier. Forget negotiating with a carrier: set iPhone free in the markets you haven't entered just yet. Don't worry if it eats iPod's lunch. Let it spread across different frontiers and with this device on every continent it will take the world by storm. It already is happening, underground. The developers will come from across the planet and the revenue you lose by being married to a carrier will be taken over by the App Tax you get on every download. iPhone is viral.

Okay, maybe it isn't that simple. There are complicated arrangements with every country on frequency and such and their local laws and communications commissions. Can we collectively shout out, "damn, bureaucracy!"

For Apple, they've come full circle with iPhone. Without a doubt, Apple has learned the lesson of the Machintosh and is applying it to this new revolution. iPhone is the new Cellphone. iPhone is the new iPod. iPhone is the new Macintosh. iPhone is the PC of the 21st Century. iPhone is truly a personalized computing experience. iPhone is a game changer.

Updated: Don't believe me? Fake Steve gives a clear point: Happy now, bitches?

TEDTalks: Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope

Billing? It made Scoble cry.

It's not everyday Microsoft does something good. WorldWide Telescope is one of them.

here's the original link

Begun, the New Internet War Has

The Ancient Chinese strategy manual, "The Art of War" in its opening says, "Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis for life and death, the Way to survival or extinction. It must be throughly pondered and analyzed." Many in the business world equate business with war. And if the drama that has been playing out the past few days is evident: war is here. This war is a battle not just for the future of either Microsoft or Yahoo, though those are at stake but of the Internet going forward. 

No one doubts that Yahoo--- with its potential has grossly underperformed and is underwhelming. At the dawn of the Internet age, long before Google was in anyone's radar, Yahoo was the de facto standard.  It was the first place people went--- from front page news to free email, to the groups that it hosts.  

In "All you Yahoos belong to me now!" I wrote about the identity crisis of this once great company and in many respect, still an excellent brand. Its search tech is a distant second to Google. Its advertising system hasn't taken off. Shareholder dissatisfaction aside, with too many vectors for information challenging the attention of users, the only thing that keeps Yahoo going is the brand it has created over the years and its impressive user base, which is analogous to the massive user base of Windows. This New Media company's only value now remains to be the volumes of users it has acquired over the years. 

Is that worth 44 Billion dollars?

The Microsoft argument in acquiring Yahoo is it wants to be a player in advertising. Undoubtedly, search advertising is the biggest money making scheme on the Internet. No, the next one isn't social networking ads--- which hasn't seen the same explosion in revenue as in search. Not that companies shouldn't be in that space, but perhaps they should dial down their expectation largely because the target audience of social networking are young adults and teens. (The next biggest revenue generator of course beyond advertising is the business model popularized by Amazon). And if this argument concerning advertising is to be believed, then this play for Yahoo is because Microsoft wants to acquire Yahoo's user base.

The icing on the cake of course is Microsoft getting their hands on Yahoo's search engine code.  In recent days, Fake Steve for instance highlights the problem with said icing in his Monkey boy's three legged race. Putting Number 2 and Number 3 together, don't make you number one. 

The only conclusion one can draw from this is that Microsoft doesn't have vision going forward. If Microsoft was the Roman Empire, it has been slowed by its sheer size, sheer complexity.  If they really wanted to give the world a heart stopping surprise, how hard could it be to throw a billion dollars into developing the next generation of Windows on top of say--- Linux or BSD?  

Apple dumped their old OS and wrote a new one from scratch a decade ago by developing OS X's proprietary code on top of open source code and did it for less than a Billion dollars, focusing on infrastructure, on future features than wasting time doing it from the ground up. Look where Apple is today, elegant from the code up.

It isn't like Windows apps don't run on Linux today. The fact is, wine, crossover office and transgaming have been running Windows Apps--- games to be exact on linux for years.  Those projects are mature enough to run Warcraft 3 and Photoshop! How hard could it be to polish the existing wine code base, move Windows to a Linux or BSD code-base and still retain the windows look, and functionality that users know on top of that Unix? 

Wine could be what Rosetta is to Apple's OS X. Windows developers wouldn't even be alienated. Mono is .Net that runs on Linux. How hard would the move for .Net developers be?Most of the work has been made.  The argument wouldn't even be Windows versus Linux any more. It would be a Microsoft-approved Linux or BSD desktop/server versus Red Hat, versus Novel, versus Apple. Talk about grabbing market share and giving the competition a bellyache! 

Similarly, Microsoft could have also gone and acquired Trolltech and the QT code base which was recently acquired by Nokia, which would extend their dominance on Linux since KDE, a window user interface that runs on Linux uses QT. More bang for the buck, I would say.

Of course, such moves would be unthinkable for Microsoft. It would rather throw in a Billion dollars rewriting their own code or 44 Billion to buy Yahoo than acquiring another code base and writing on top of that using their own proprietary platform. See, going Unix is the antithesis of everything Microsoft is as an engineering company that says, everything not developed at Redmond is no good.  

Rolling the dice to acquire Yahoo or going after Yahoo in a protracted, and reserve depleting battle is highly dangerous for Microsoft. This isn't a battle for a small company they can just set aside or wait to assimilate or develop a product like zune or xbox that can wait for version 3 or version 4 to be good. They'll lose the ability to waste money on their pet projects and wait for it to grow with this war for Yahoo. 

It isn't that it's impossible to do. Like all marriages that have gone before, not as easy as it would seem. They may find it would be more difficult that they think it would be. This is Yahoo, a huge global spanning business that would distract Microsoft for at least a year and they wouldn't be seeing a return on their investment for at least a year after that.  That advertising revenue must be tempting, not to mention the prestige one gets in being great at Search and Ads makes Microsoft jealous of Google.  

Yahoo is in a similar boat as Microsoft--- innovative-wise, anyway.  In fact, it is safe to say that of the search business that has potential to be the better Yahoo than Yahoo is Mahalo. Both are social-network friendly. In fact, Mahalo is what would be a mashup between Yahoo, CNet, Social Networking and Wikipedia.  

If Yahoo was smart, it should have gone the way of Mahalo, or even acquire them before all this has happened. Just imagine the power all those people answering Yahoo questions, taking advantage of Yahoo's huge user base and apply that to augmenting search results the way Mahalo does.

The Mahalo-way isn't even new. Remember The Open Directory Project, user submitted directory? Mahalo is no different but does it better. Mahalo does the New Media business with not just pointing people to content but generating their own. Nothing like having Veronica Belmont with Mahalo Daily to spice things up. The viral effect of getting users to submit which link is relevant is the antithesis of Google's robotic computer generated result.  If they play their cards right, they could be big one day, if not sooner. The best of Yahoo (not to mention CNet) is already being reincarnated in Mahalo.

Like a thousand other commanders, in myriad battle fields throughout history, Jerry Yang must be feeling what it's like to be on the crosshairs of a more powerful invading army.  Time would tell, if Yang would fall the way of Chamberlain or have the muster to successfully fight off the invaders.  

The good news isn't for Yahoo though. It is for Google. The Battle for Yahoo could severely deplete Microsoft and like the lessons of so many armies, in so many battlefields, wars can be won or lost through the presence or absence of logistics. Whether Microsoft successfully acquires Yahoo or not is really beside the point right now. Google will certainly make sure they will severely give Microsoft a headache to weaken them further and Google doesn't even need to play that hard or for that matter to win. They've already won without even firing a shot and everyone knows it. Throwing a monkey wrench every so often would be great.

The risk is that this War may be the Beginning of the End of Microsoft's supremacy over the Information Technology business and it would go the way of IBM--- not dead, but not Absolute Monarch either. 

When the dust settles, it doesn't matter if Microsoft acquires Yahoo, or Yahoo rejects the bid, and battle it out with Microsoft to win or eventually lose. In either scenario the flag that would fly, would be Google's. It also gives opportunity for Mahalo and others who see the opportunity to quietly acquire users, while the big boys play it out.  Change, the Internet map would be and as Yoda would say, "Begun, the New Internet War Has". 

All you Yahoos belong to me now!

On and off, the rumors came and went with the wind over the years. "They're in talks," for all we know comparing what jet is great to buy. For all the years a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo! had been whispered, it was always in the realm of wishful thinking like fanboys day dreaming of the day Apple would buy Sun.

The litany of why a company should and ought to buy another is a long list of pros and cons.  One thing that has always struck me is the similarity between Microsoft's and Yahoo's approach to solutions. 

Take Yahoo Mail, it is cumbersome and slow compared to the sleek cleanness and efficiency of Google's Gmail. Their home pages--- a reflection of what they value most. Yahoo's more media-centric, everything bit of thing is here in contrast to Google's minimalist one search box, quick to load page.  Yahoo is more tabloid than Google's more newspaper elite.

In the same vein, look at Microsoft's Windows XP/Vista--- great for general purpose use, for the unwashed, the plebs plebis. Pop open XP/Vista's command line and you'll find it sorely lacking in tools out of the box like secure shell. Sure there's putty, but you'd never have to have it if Microsoft would just include ssh by default. Not that the majority of people using computers would mind or ever need it or want it.  Contrast with their competition (putting aside the Linux folks), Apple has included secure shell in OS X. Windows is more ordinary, like a midrange car, while OS X is more what a car should be. 

Yahoo's and Microsoft's approach and philosophy in making things is that "it's great to cobble things together and make it work, never mind if it's ugly as long as they get money". Contrast to the efficient and perfectionist and often elitist approach by their rivals Google and Apple.  You can see how easy it is to get into a religious Crusade-level kind of war, "my Yahoo is bigger than your Google" contest or "OS X is better than Vista" that is the hallmark of message boards for what would seem like forever.

One great reason why Yahoo hasn't skyrocketed over the years is really the way they approach their business and how everyone perceives them to be. They've had an identity crisis since day one. They act like a Search Engine company, and everyone treats them as such when in fact, they're a New Media-Social Networking company. Perhaps the very first one, ever. They've got news, groups, mail from the get go.  One might argue it was social networking way before the term "social networking" was coined. Yahoo's is doing for the masses in the 21st what newspapers did for the masses during the 20th century. 

Contrast that to Google's laser-focused approached to their business: "we're all about organizing the world's information". Need something?  you know your first place to be is go visit Google. Everything Google does really well is centered around search and organizing information. Everything else they do on the side, always takes a backseat to search.

Parallel that to Microsoft, a company that identifies itself as an operating system company and as an office company: Windows+Office. They never were just an Operating System company or a company that made Office software--- though that is what they're famous and became rich for. They were a software development company. Today, Microsoft is a conglomerate not merely a technology company. 

It's not to say that being perfect for one another makes this whole takeover bid any easier. Remember: Time-Warner and Compaq+HP marriages. In recent memory, ATI+AMD's marriage was logically sound. It looked reasonably good on paper like a great gamble--- perhaps it was the only way for AMD to survive the juggernaut that is Intel and for ATI to survive the inevitably dying GPU business. Yet all those marriages remind us how such mergers, in less hostile bids typically end up--- damaging at best in the short term and a whole lot of grief going long.  

That's of course not to say that there are no good marriages in the corporate world. One marriage comes to mind: Disney and Pixar has been bliss. 

In the most optimistic scenario, Yahoo would accept this shotgun marriage proposal as would the regulators on both the American side of the pond and the European.  It would be good for the shareholders, after all.  For consumers, nothing much would change--- at least not overnight. You just can't unplug all those BSD servers and PHP code and migrate them to Windows Servers and .Net, if ever Microsoft would ever want to do that, which they probably will going forward. It would be a long while (a year at the very least) to consummate the shotgun marriage of Microsoft and Yahoo, dotting all the "i" and crossing the "t". A year is a lifetime on the Internet and that distracting time could be better spent focusing on Google and way lot of time for Google to keep on doing what it is doing right now.

This whole Microsoft-Yahoo (nice name, by-the-way) marriage may not be a done deal but Google must be thrilled at the prospect their number two and number three competitor are way too distracted with this marriage business.  If history is to be a benchmark, corporate marriages even with the best of intensions is hardly good for the companies involved.  Personally, I'm all for this--- it would spice things up, if only for awhile.  And maybe at the end of the day, Yahoo would finally be laid to rest, with only our memories what it could have been. Who would have thought, I'd be rooting for Ballmer screaming at Yang "All you Yahoos belong to me now!"?

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo!

WOW!!!! I didn't think this would ever happen. Marketwatch reported that Microsoft of Seattle, Washington,  behemoth of a company has offered to buy search under-performer Yahoo for $44.6 bln in cash, stock. it's one of those rare fanboy-wish-list thingy. you know... in that same realm of possibility as wishing that Apple buy Sun, kinda thing. 

if there was ever a corporate culture so similar--- it would be Yahoo! and Microsoft. And no that wasn't a compliment. 

this is... the end of an era, if it ever pushes forward. Finally, someone's going to put Yahoo to pasture (good riddance, if i may add). Will this be the beginning of the end for Microsoft? hardly. Threat to the juggernaut that is Google? It would be good to see some competition in the field of search and competition can only mean good things for you and me.

update:: Marketwatch: Microsoft admits it can't fight Google alone. 

If it was your Last Day... at work and you were Bill Gates...

funny!

original is here.

(Update, -1,-2) Facebook is Sleeping with Microsoft

facebook gifts (image from Wikipedia)

Microsoft clinches Facebook deal and the Windows people agreed to take a 1.6% stake in Facebook, valued at US$240 Million. Is it an outrageous sum of money for a social networking site? Why is Facebook and Microsoft a better fit? Why not just sell Facebook outright?

Facebook is "valued" at US$15 Billion dollars. And anyone who hears that right now asks, "what?" You can almost see the word "bubble" forming in their head. That isn't to say the value of social networking is on the rise. In fact, quiet recently, uses for social networking has found its way to the CIA, after they launched Facebook for spies, an experiment that will allow staff to better communicate but, it is more valuable than that.

The traffic for Facebook the site and as a brand is stratospheric right now. Its advertising model is good, so good that the offer to buy Facebook saw offers skyrocketing. The battle was seen as a face-off between Microsoft and Google. Google ready for its close-up having won the last round, with its acquisition of YouTube. According to EWeek:

The world's largest software maker was bidding against Web search leader Google Inc. for a stake in Facebook and the right to sell advertising for Facebook outside of the United States.

Microsoft said it would be the exclusive third-party advertising platform for Facebook which has more than 49 million Internet users.

The magic of Facebook--- one that differentiates itself from other social networking sites is its ability to deploy apps, which creates more active and interesting interactions with your friends online and those apps are the advertising moneymakers. It's phenomenal how Facebook is skyrocketing but everyone remembers myspace and other social networking sites, and asks, what happens when kids move on to something better?

The ability to deploy apps is the attention getting catch and the moneymaking engine. Thus, one can contend that the primary goal of Facebook is not sharing pictures or music--- though it does that. It is more like the online version of a lounge, more watering hole. It is about an online interaction experience with your friends and in that regard, Facebook isn't in line with Google's need to organize information but that isn't to say it isn't in line with Google's desire for more advertising, more page hits.

One can in fact argue that Facebook has more in common with Yahoo than with Google, with its focus more on the social, "general purpose community" aspect rather than the data mining, data distribution/organization that Google is great at. Facebook's moves is looking right now as Yahoo 2.0, sans the search engine.

Is Microsoft and Facebook a good fit? If it was an outright buy--- then Microsoft probably wouldn't be the best partner for Facebook, or anyone save perhaps Yahoo. Halo developer parts with Microsoft is a prime example that Microsoft isn't the best company to be acquiring something like Facebook, which is way left field from the Windows Maker's core competency as a software developer power house. The play to take a minority stake and advertising revenue is excellent and the PR value of course is topnotch.

If it was all about the money, one can say that an actual sell of the company at US$15 Billion would be in the best interest of Facebook, but that's not the play. Facebook wants to be the next Google. They want to compete with Google for that advertising money. In a world where Google is huge with no opposition in sight, since Yahoo is still finding itself and Baidu is still growing in China. While not directly competing nor hindering with Google's desire to organize the world's information, Facebook staying independent and sleeping with Microsoft is a good thing for everyone.

UPDATE: Google is staying friends with Facebook.

UPDATE-1: EWeek talks about why Facebook snubbed Google for Microsoft: it's all about the ads they say.

UPDATE-2: John C. Dvorak has a valid argument. He said that when you Do the Math, the whole Facebook deal doesn't make sense. Because:

1. Microsoft paid too much--- US$240 M for a company that does US$150M or roughly US$300 per user, which is high, according to him since these are users who are in his words, "bloggers, duds, poor students and hangers-on".
   
2. Google suckered Microsoft into taking this deal. He adds that Microsoft felt they needed to win one of these head-to-head competition just once.
   
3. Social networking schemes come and go.
   

Ergo, the deal, John C. Dvorak says "doesn't make sense".