The web isn't going anywhere. The way we interface with it will change in some ways. Basically you're replacing the browser with your RSS reader Robert. The web is still the delivery mechanism for your content, you just have a better, different browser. In your case the browser wraps up the posts and puts them in your email client for you, and ASP.NET page or web service could easily do the same thing.
The thing about the web is that it's a fantastic data storage device. It can hold any type of digital content, deliver it to anywhere that has an internet connection, and makes no assumption about the kind of platform the client is running. The new killer applications for the web will be the ones that aggregate and filter this data and allow the user to find what they want, when they want it.
P.S. 636 sites?! Where do you find the time? I have trouble squeezing in "Karen Sisco" on Wed nights.
Scoble, I wasn't blaming Microsoft, if anything I was blaming Udell, for continuing to act as if it's some big surprise that Microsoft doesn't like the Web. It's always the issue of the year, and we never seem to factor it into our thinking. Also, I think the Web is going to keep kicking no matter what any of us do. I don't think MS is all-powerful in this regard.
Full comment here: http://bilodeau.blogs.com/sttw/
2...t_scoble_o.html
Sorry about that...
http://bilodeau.blogs.com/sttw/2003/11/
robert_scoble_o.html
Scott, the Web is NOT the delivery mechanism for RSS content. That shows you have little understanding of what the Web is.
You gotta separate the Web from the Internet. RSS does come to me via the Internet. It doesn't necessarily come to me via the Web. Unless you call anything delivered via TCP/IP the Web. Oh, but I can send you RSS files via email. Or via SMS. Or other protocols.
Ed, what I'm talking about here is not an "either/or" approach. The Web will go on, even on Longhorn. It just will look better, behave better, be better integrated, and there will be new capabilities that only work on Longhorn. Just like Flight Simulator only works on Windows today.
Scott,
You need to discover the secret of RSS. I watch 636 sites. It takes me 30 to 60 minutes.
Why? Because out of 636 only about 50 to 150 will update in a 24-hour period.
Second? Because I can read all those sites locally. Fast. Loading one site in a browser takes up to 45 seconds. Loading one in an RSS news aggregator takes microseconds.
Third, I only need to read what's new. Go to http://msdn.microsoft.com and tell me what's new there. Quick. I'm in a hurry.
With RSS I instantly know what's new. It's bold in my news aggregator.
RSS gives me a huge increase in productivity. If you're using a web browser I can understand how you don't know how to read 636 sites.
"It just will look better, behave better, be better integrated, and there will be new capabilities that only work on Longhorn. Just like Flight Simulator only works on Windows today."
The real question is, when, if ever, will Longhorn reach enough desktops that web (internet, whatever word would suggest that I "get it") service providers will stop developing solutions for non-Longhorn users and simply tell their customers to "upgrade" to MS's latest product?
I've had mixed feelings about the possible success of the Linux desktop, because I felt it might come at the expense of potential Mac OS X desktops. But Mac OS X and Linux can coexist quite well on the internet, and if a significant fraction of the total marketplace is on those platforms, then we have a choice.
If my bank ever decides that the only way they can deliver the kind of service they wish to provide their customers is to deliver it on a Longhorn desktop, and Longhorn desktops constitute the vast majority of users, then either I have to use a MS computer to participate in online banking, or I'm simply excluded because I chose a different platform. Mac users already experience this to one degree or another, although it has generally been getting better in the last couple of years. It's not very clear that it will continue to do so in a world where the internet "only works on Longhorn."
RSS is not everything on the internet. Neither is the web browser. Both have their place for specific jobs. Why is everyone seemingly hailing RSS as the new "lets use it for everything" godsend? It's got it's place and it does it's job well, but it will not replace [other technology] soon. Apples and oranges.
/hasn't read the original post yet
I like the apples and oranges comparison. I think it is like shopping. If I know what I want to buy, I go to the source and buy it quickly. This is RSS. My favorite sites are almost all RSS, and that is how I track it.
If I want to browse for new items, then I go to a store and wander. This is the WWW. Everything is there, and one can surf around to see what is new and different.
So RSS and the web serve two different sides of my needs...
Tom
Dave, (this is my own educated guessing -- I haven't seen the "official" Microsoft predictions) assuming Longhorn ships in 2006, it will take a couple of years to get to 30%/40% shares. It'll probably take five years to get to 80% or more. So, we're looking at 2011.
Keep in mind, between now and 2011 I'd expect Mozilla and the W3C and IETF and even RSS to evolve and change too.
I learned long ago not to make any predictions further out than two years.
So, for 2004 and 2005 I don't see any way that Longhorn will have enough market share to get your bank to move to a Longhorn-only approach. 
Tom,
I guess you haven't tried the new Google task bar application yet, huh?
It has its own integrated browser. No need to open a browser to look for cool new sites anymore. Just type in Google, and click.
Scoble said: But, why should we do it all? Wasn't the point of the past four years to get Microsoft to stop trying to do it all? The DOJ and now the European Union are still after us cause we tried to do it all. Instead, let's just go back and be a great platform company.
Scoble, the question I have then is: Why did Microsoft get in the free web browser business to begin with? Why leave IE in flux? It seems to me that Microsoft got what it wanted out of IE -- to kill off Netscape and the web browser as a serious platform threat. Now it has little use for IE. Can you understand why customers who've been sold on using IE might be a little upset with this approach?
Robert
A major issue is cost. The cost of upgrading to the latest development environment in terms of time and money is huge. We are too busy with the new technology and we can't focus on addressing the business issues that will make our employers happiest.
The huge technological churn costs are killing us.
I hate to keep harping on this, but I still think you are ignoring the business view. Open up an East Coast office to shmooze with the corporations here, it will be worth your while to truly hear/understand corporate concerns.
Be Well
Mike
Joshua, because back then it looked like the web browser would become a platform. It has, but not to the extent we expected it to.
IE is not in flux. We'll have more to say on that next year, I hear.
Yes, I understand that. But, there's a lot more in play. First of all, we're still in court with the DOJ (and only recently settled with Netscape/AOL). So, it's understandable that its development would be frozen until those things were finished up.
To understand what Microsoft does, you also need to look at its return on investment. Touching one line of IE code is very expensive. Do you realize just how many versions of Windows and how many applications rely on one line of code? And how much testing needs to go on?
So, whenever I talk with execs, I need to show them what kind of return they'll get. So far I've been losing those arguments. Look at it another way. Is Don Box's time better spent on Indigo, or fixing a bug in IE? Chris Anderson: Avalon or IE? Which is more likely to further Microsoft's business goals? Which is more likely to make our investors money? Which is more likely to get people excited about computing again?
Now, let's look at Mozilla. There are a ton of really creative guys working on that. Still. Opera. Same thing.
How can we best help them? By building a better IE? Or, by building a new platform that lets them build new browsing features?
I am glad we're getting back to the platform approach. Build a great platform. Let other people add value by building great apps and tools on top.
Translation: I wish we never would have gotten into the IE thing, but Microsoft was pulled into that because it thought it would become a platform that could possibly replace Windows. It wasn't. It won't be.
So, now we're getting back to building a better Windows. Longhorn is that.
Mike, I hear you on the cost. This is one that the technology industry ALWAYS is facing. And it's not just an East Coast thing either.
The trick is to show there is a payoff for your investment. ROI and all that. I think we can make a good case for that in Longhorn. It's gonna be a tough one, though. But, then, didn't we all look at Wozniak and Jobs back in 1977 and laugh? (Why should I give up my investments made in mainframes to buy a cruddy desktop computer?)
These are not new arguments you're giving me. The onus is on us to answer them. I believe we will.
The hyperbole is getting a little tiring, Robert.
"For instance, fonts are being rendered in the GPU now on Longhorn. Your Web pages will look better and behave better on Longhorn than they will on any other platform."
So Longhorn will finally do real font rendering in the OS. Great. It's about time. But it's been shipping elsewhere already so it hardly qualifies as "better... than... any other platform."
You're losing cred with me, Robert. You've had too much of the "innovation" Kool-Aid they're passing out over there. You know, the kind that makes you think ClearType is revolutionary, when it's just a yweak (if that, even) on an old game programmer's hack from the Apple II days.
It's good to see MS doing something. I'm all in favor of innovation, but I'm tired of seeing PR attempts to disguise incremental improvements as innovation.
You want to impress me, tell me that what passes for a web browsing feature inside Longhorn (call it whatever you want, it's the thing you use to view websites) actually supports the CSS1 standard (nothing MS has ever shipped has even done that, yet, much less CSS2) in addition to all the cool things it does today. If it still can't correctly parse and display sites via CSS, I really don't care if it can slice bread, sit with the kids and prepare a seven-course meal. It's still just making my job as a developer harder, *not* easier. As you note, it'll be several years before I risk having Longhorn-specific coding demands; until then, I'll be playing will all browsers, and so far the MS entry in the field has caused more pain and suffering for me than all the rest combined.
That's the flaw in your exuberation, Robert. Longhorn will make developing easier *only* if you limit yourself to Longhorn development. Those of us in the real world have to develop for a wider base (yes, Virginia, there is a world beyond Redmond) so the traditional MS approach has caused difficulty, not ease.
If you'd like, I'll take the workarounds I had to feed MS browsers to keep them from barfing all over the design out of my site's code for a couple of days so you can test it. (You can have a look now at the graphic behind the rollovers on it to tell. No graphic, just color? Then it still isn't supporting the full CSS standard. I'll have to change the code before we can test for CSS1 support specifically, as I used the browser's inability to correctly support some CSS2 features to hide from it the CSS1 code it also didn't support. If you see the site logo in the rollovers, it's correctly parsing the CSS2 at last, but still not getting the CSS1 right.) Or have a peek at http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ for some demos.
"I'm watching 636 sites every day. Try to do THAT in your Web browser."
Very few people want to do that. You are on the extreme edge of a technology curve. And it's not about being ahead of other people, it's about having radically different needs than most people.
Arlen: if it isn't innovation, then why isn't any other OS doing it? Well, OK, Apple is doing anti-aliasing and I hear some Linux distros are doing it, but so far I haven't seen it.
So, is being the first to put a 1977 feature into a mainstream OS innovation? I think so.
The Newton was the first device I ever saw pen computing done on. But, it wasn't until Microsoft put Pen stuff into a mainstream OS that it became useful for me. Is that innovation? I think so.
As far as CSS bug fixes. I want them too. Believe me, I want them too. But, the ROI is just not there. If you were an exec here, why would you invest another $100 million effort on the browser? What would you get for that? So far not even 40% of the geeks have switched to Mozilla. Obviously if the geeks don't think standards-compliance is important, how am I going to convince execs here that mom and dad will care about that? They don't. The only ones who do are people who create web sites. Not enough for an ROI argument.
Mr. Nosuch: no, but let's say you only read the same five sites every day. RSS makes it far more productive for you too.
Through history, I've found that many people do the same things I do. I do not believe I'm a weirdo. When you get RSS you'll find you soon follow more sites too. Why? Because you can.
I don't disagree that the RSS you're receiving could be transported in other ways than http. In fact if all you're interested in is glorified newsletters, then you might as well forget the web - there are more efficient ways of shifting the stuff.
But the kind of information being tansported using RSS *can* be part of the web, and if it uses the web architecture rather than just tunnelling through it, there is an awful lot of potential for extending its usefulness. And this is all way before we start talking about the Semantic Web.
It doesn't really matter whether MS or even Dave is busy undermining the web - it's grown far beyond their control.
Danny: agreed!
Re: CSS and geeks.
If every single geek switched to Mozilla today, it still wouldn't have any effect on the rest of the world. There's really not a lead and follow effect going on here. So despite all the geeks having converted, people still can't create correct websites, lest they alienate 95% of the internet population.
Not that I think Mozilla is the solution. I hate it. But that doesn't absolve IE's sins.
Robert,
I'd like to encourage MS to comply with existing standards, but I realize that would not help promote the market differences it needs to continue exploiting the platform cash-cow it has in Windows.
Zane: I think you'll see us do quite a bit with standards. We'd like to have the ability to build one site once for everyone too.
The problem isn't as simplistic as you frame it. Even if tonight we shipped IE7 that complied with all W3C and IETF standards completely, very few people would use it. Why? Standards compliance just doesn't have much pull. Heck, look at Tim Bray's stats again. HIS READERS ARE ALL GEEKS WHO CARE ABOUT XML. Yet more than half have not switched to a browser that supports more standards than IE does.
So, I'm supposed to write up a plan and introduce that to execs and say "spend $100 million to get IE7 standards compliant" and have them not laugh at me?
Now, look at RSS. Oh, wait, are we supposed to support that? Did you realize that is NOT a W3C or an IETF standard? But, people are adopting RSS because it actually offers a USER BENEFIT. It lets me watch many more sites than Mozilla lets me watch. That's something that my mom could get excited about.
See what I'm getting at? It's not standards that matter. It's what is the end user benefit. It's what can we do to have a return on our investment.
>> Which is more likely to make our investors money?
Jerry,
Did you have a point there? Corporations exist to make money for their investors. Microsoft is no better or no worse in that regard than other corporations.
Are you saying that there's something inherently evil in our capitalist system?
Oh, damn, forgot about that.
Precise: Millions of copies of IE and the MSFT WebBrowser control are in use across a global corporate Windows user base. These are the guys who make your investors most money, by happily signing up to new licenses year on year.
Long-term speculation doesn't help these people or their investors; they want to know that their apps which embed WebBrowser to interface with web services, data stores, back office apps - you name it - will be supported today, tomorrow, next week.
RSS, 'new paradigms' and the like are fun, but your 'out with the old, in with the new' future-gazing pitch cannot possible determine the basis of support for a product which is *critical* to MSFT's corporate customers, and which will be for years to come.
These guys *have* to feel that somebody, somewhere in MSFT's IE owner group genuinely cares about the support and maintenance of a product that is vital to them. Your piece helps to foster the impression that you (and MSFT's execs) believe that this isn't necessary ... and that's quite wrong.
A new IE6.05 in XPSP2? Great .. when will be the beta be available to those of us whose corporate customers expect us to remain compatible with each new version, service pack and cumulative patch for IE/WebBrowser?
Jerry
I would like to figure something out about RSS. I have tried RSS apps twice. On both occasions I downloaded, installed and used multiple RSS readers in order to have a shot at finding one that I would find worth the trouble. (So don't name your favorite as the cure for my ills. It isn't.) The way I read blogs now is I have a group bookmark in Mozilla that loads them simultaneously. I quickly scan the tops of the pages when they've loaded to see which ones have new articles, and close the pages that don't. Then I read the remaining pages. I have on the order of 30 blogs and usually less than half have something to read. About 25 by the way have RSS to read.
Last round of RSS experimentation I found that the readers still don't understand the switching process. All my blog bookmarks are in one folder in my favorites. Surely it should be easier to migrate THAT FOLDER to an RSS reader than for me to do so one bookmark at a time.
Also it appears vastly more likely that the blog entry in RSS is a summary and one needs to go to the web to read the article.
I think the reader will appreciate that I'm not a conservative person. I adopted IE 2.0 deliberately (for specific reasons) over Netscape of the day, back when Netscape was dominant. So when I read about RSS, all I can say is, NOT THERE YET.
Robert, I'm glad RSS is working for you and I'm wondering how you overcame the problems I'm talking about.
Oh dear, your comments hate me tonight. Why was I anonymous on my last post??
Btw, you jumped in a bit too quickly when I got bitten by the pointy bracket syndrome. I hope my follow-up helped to clarify that!
Jerry, like I said, we'll have a lot more to say about IE next year.
XPSP2 will go into beta any day now (this month).
If anyone is making decisions based on what I'm saying, then they should ask. I'll go hunt the program managers down for the product they are interested in.
There are 55,000 people working here. My blog should be taken as 1/55,000th of Microsoft's viewpoint today. I'm not an exec and I don't speak for the anthill.
Mike: yeah, I wish all RSS feeds were complete articles. I find I simply don't read those that don't give me complete articles and I try not to point at them (Village Voice is one of those).
Moving favorites to an RSS reader would be cool. I stopped using Favorites back in 1996 after I had 5000 favorites (today I just use Google to find my favorites. Heh.).
Arlen - re: limiting yourself to longhorn - Exactly. Don't forget that MS sees itself as the only player out there because it's a monopoly, so why the heck should they play nicely with others? If everyone ran IE then the web developers job would be easy. Right now there are still websites that prevent access to non-ie browsers because those web developers have bought into the "microsoft is everything, ignore anything that is not microsoft" mythos. It's sad. The 'net is about, or supposed to be about, a global community that isn't marred by barriers from software, technology, or political borders. Right now the biggest border still seems to be what browser you're running.
Robert - re: anti-aliasing - uhmm.... every other OS *is* doing anti aliasing from what I've seen. OS/X does it, XP does it, GNOME does it, KDE, the *box window managers (the linux kernel doesn't, but that's not it's job
re - IE - Basically what you are saying is if there's no money in it, why do it? That's kinda rude don't you think? I'm all for shareholder profits, but if ms *continues* to piss off it's customers, it will get fired by more and more people, and all the investing in colleges and complaining to the government that giving OSS a chance is bad and evil aren't going to pull them out. This seems a bit out of line with the "we listen to our customers" theory that you've been putting forth. Does it take a petition? What? Of course, with 90% market share, it's not like people can really move anywhere else, so why bother listening right?
Has anyone seen ads in RSS yet?
So, I'm supposed to write up a plan and introduce that to execs and say "spend $100 million to get IE7 standards compliant" and have them not laugh at me?
What makes you think it'll cost $100M to make IE standards compliant?
Is one of the 6,242,343,235 feeds you monitor Dave Hyatt's Surfin' Safari? (Here's the feed: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/h...logger_rss.xml)
Do you reckon he commands a $100M budget from Apple to develop Safari? What's the annual budget of the Mac BU at MS? They did a pretty decent job with IE 5.x, how much did that cost?
Return on investment? What kind of investment are you making by citing figures that seem to be figments of your wildest imagination? Return on investment? It would be an investment in credibility, something MS lacks and something you are rapidly losing.
You can't update the browser because it'll cost too much. You can't update the browser because nobody will upgrade their browser (though you obviously hope they'll download and install security patches, though you obviously hope they'll buy new versions of Office) - it's too hard to get users to upgrade.
These are not compelling arguments, they aren't even credible arguments.
And now we have this sort of "we'll have something to say about the browser next year" comment. What the hell is that? More FUD? "Please, everyone, we may or may not make some statement about the browser next year. So if you'll all just sort of pause and be patient with us..."
This is the new openness? This is how you build trust?
I don't think it's going to work.
"If anyone is making decisions based on what I'm saying, then they should ask. I'll go hunt the program managers down for the product they are interested in."
OK, good. Please hunt down the IE program manager (Michael Wallent might be a place to start?) and ask her/him to contact me at MeadCo.
Thanks for the offer.
Jerry
Read the Buxton paper less is more http://www.billbuxton.com/
LessIs...LessIsMore.html and it explains what is really hapening. Think of the WaterNet and how many things are attached to it today. RSS readers are fit into his story nicely.
In your original post, you said you were "trying to kill the Web", and now you acknowledge that the Web will continue to exist.
I think Microsoft needs to do a better job articulating their "co-existance" strategy, if only to respond to the knee-jerk "domination" strategy that most people assume.
Only 636 sites?
AMATEUR!
Dennis, I'll trade OPML with you.
Ed,
One thing about working at Microsoft, it's like having 120 companies all under one roof. Some want to kill the web. Others want to build it. Yet others, like the one I'm in, want to build a foundation so that third-parties can build an even more fantastic Web.
If you're noticing a bit of dissonance in my messaging, I'm just reflecting reality!
Dave,
>What makes you think it'll cost
>$100M to make IE standards
>compliant?
It cost us $500 million to make IE to where it is today.
Do you have any understanding of the testing that needs to go on if we change one line of code there?
26 languages. Thousands of applications. Hundreds of dependencies.
Changing one line of code in IE is very expensive. Certainly far more expensive than my salary this year.
I'm not sure what the real cost is.
Also, when you talk with execs, they are not necessarily concerned with money, but with tradeoffs.
If they take a guy like Michael Wallent off of Avalon and put him back on IE, what does that cost Avalon? There's only one Michael Wallent. Even if you're Bill Gates, you can't find another one. Great developers are a limited resource.
So, yes, this stuff is expensive. Is it $10 million? $50 million? $100 million? $500 million? I really don't know, but I know it's expensive. It's gonna require getting execs to take programming God's like Chris Anderson, or Don Box, off of one project and put onto another.
Jerry Mead,
I should know by the end of the day. I've found the guy in charge of testing.
How should I introduce you?
Arcterex: re - IE - Basically what you are saying is if there's no money in it, why do it? That's kinda rude don't you think?
Um, business +is+ rude. When the Giants fired Dusty, that was rude, but it was business.
You're getting down to the reason weblogs are dangerous. In the old days companies (not just Microsoft either) would hide business from customers. They did that through PR agencies and marketing professionals.
Today the messy rude world of business is out here on the weblogs. For everyone to read.
All product design requires making a series of choices. Guess what, if you're a developer at Toyota, you've gotta figure out how to build a car that'll sell for $20,000. I'm sure the designers and customers would love something like that new Mercedes that runs $700,000. Why can't you give me a carbon fiber body Mr. Toyota Designer? That's rude, customers say.
Well, no, that's business. If you take in less money than you put out you go out of business. I've been out of business. It sucks. I wanna stay in business so I can pay my credit card bills off.
Robert - From a lot of the looks of it MS has traded a PR agency for hiring bloggers to be evangelists
Is it also business to decide that recalling tires is more expensive than the lawsuits from people who are going to die due to blow outs. It may be "business", but it doesn't make it right, or moral. I'll not get in a tyrade about how all businesses these days suck and are evil though
BTW, I won't be able to make it to the blogger meet tonight it seems 
Too bad, I was looking forward to meeting you in person. Maybe next time!
Bummer, I was hoping you'd come.
Oh, I have hundreds of anectdotes about how business sucks. Many of them personal stories. Weird, though, that the suckiest stories I hear from people who've come to work for Microsoft (they were talking about their former employers).
Actually, I wasn't hired for my blog. And, today, I haven't gotten much work done.
"...the Web is NOT the delivery mechanism for RSS content. That shows you have little understanding of what the Web is.
You gotta separate the Web from the Internet. RSS does come to me via the Internet. It doesn't necessarily come to me via the Web."
Well, if the RSS files are being served up by a web server and transported via HTTP (like most RSS feeds I've seen), then the Web IS the delivery mechanism.
Agreed about separating the Web from the internet, though.
> It cost us $500 million to make IE to where it is today.
Youze guys got BONED! Although that's a lot cheaper than $9.6 billion.
Was I reading one of Steve McConnell's PM books when I read about how much it costs to fix a bug near the begining of a project vs. near the end?
It sounds like MS should have put more work in from the start towards making IE more standards compliant. IE 5.0 did have the edge for a while, but lost it quickly.
Thank God Don Box is up there to keep MS from making a mess of XML. he he he
When I see "RSS://scobelizer.com" in my feed reader I'll believe that RSS comes over the interweb d00d! 
You probably know this, but just in case....You can create and post from within Outlook by using NewsGator with the Radio plugin. (I do this with TypePad, using the MovablePoster plugin). Alternatively, you can use FM Radio.
Probably showing my ignorance here, but Robert, how can I order a book from Amazon with RSS?
Robert,
You have a knack for infering logical connections in the absence of supporting facts. There are several possible explanations for why people stick with IE even knowning that it's not compliant.
Repeat after me: Coincidence Causation.
And you aren't really addressing the issue I raise. I suspect that it is because you must agree that part of maintaining control of a market is differentiation and it does not therefore serve MS's interest to have everyone playing by the same set of rules (standards).
Finally, if end-user benefit is The Good Thing, then MS should do the right thing and release its stranglehold on the desktop.
Ooops, took out the < and > in:
Coincidence <> Causation
Repeat after me: Blog software sux when it comes to conversations.
Ryan, I don't think you can yet. Probably won't be able to. Although we showed off Amazon running on Avalon on Longhorn. Very cool stuff.
Zane, what stranglehold? I can't even get Karl Peterson to use Windows XP. The darn control we have over the desktop isn't all that powerful.
But, if you're asking us to give Avalon and Aero away for free, um, no.
Zane: regarding blog software, agreed. I can't wait to see someone do some real conversational software for the Web.
But, I guess I shouldn't wish for that if I really wanted to kill the Web, huh?
Robert:
"Ryan, I don't think you can yet. Probably won't be able to. Although we showed off Amazon running on Avalon on Longhorn. Very cool stuff."
And thats exactly what the issue is. To maintain Windows as the dominant desktop system you are going to try to move people towards Longhorn client-side web service interfaces instead of web-based interfaces.
It might take until 2015, but if there comes a point where a business can assume 80% will have a Longhorn copliant system they will start to offer their services that only work on Longhorn systems.
It might be cool to have whizzy transparency and integration with the local file storage system but it locks out users of other platforms from these services.
The Web was created to be platform and browser independant, to offer information and services to people no matter what system they are using.
MS is trying to marginalize the web as an application platform. Making web-based capabilities look inferior to the capabilities of Longhorn-only clients.
Actually by supporting the existing standards you would be bringing a lot of the rich UI benifits to everyone.
With transparent pngs, svg, css2 you can build much richer interfaces that are also cross platform compatible.
But MS has decided to go its own way, and try to make Windows the center of all future internet services.
That is how MS is trying to kill the web.
"Arlen: if it [font smoothing] isn't innovation, then why isn't any other OS doing it? Well, OK, Apple is doing anti-aliasing and I hear some Linux distros are doing it, but so far I haven't seen it."
Robert read your own words. You claim no other OS is doing it, then name off close to 90% of the non-MS operating systems as doing it. This is why you're losing cred, Robert. I had built up an image of you as someone with honesty and integrity, and then you say something like that. You've changed, man.
" So, is being the first to put a 1977 feature into a mainstream OS innovation? I think so."
This is ClearType I think we're talking about here. That's good point, putting it in the OS might be considered an innovation, as you're the first to do it. It comes down to where you draw the line between incremental improvement and innovation. And, since that's a subjective line, I'm inclined to give you that point. (See, Robert, you don't need the hyperbole after all, when you've got a valid point to make.) But claiming the credit for inventing it in the first place, 20 years after the fact, is dicey. (And no, you didn't claim that for MS; that was other MS people, so that doesn't apply to you.)
"The Newton was the first device I ever saw pen computing done on. But, it wasn't until Microsoft put Pen stuff into a mainstream OS that it became useful for me. Is that innovation? I think so."
For most people it was when Palm put it into a mainstream OS (but then there's the problem of defining mainstream). I've tried the Windows CE things and their descendents (even developed some applications for them, for that matter). I wouldn't spend my own money on them, but that's opinion, and it's more the fault of the hardware than the software. (I want more than 72 hours of battery life, which was all I was getting from the iPaqs and Toshibas I was dealing with. A long weekend away from the charger and the PDA contents were toast.) Though I must admit ActiveSynch left a whole lot to be desired (this isn't the place for that, but if you want the consumer research data, let me know and I'll email it separately) and the memory management was inefficient (a friend could put twice as much into his Palm that had half the RAM.).
" As far as CSS bug fixes. I want them too. Believe me, I want them too. But, the ROI is just not there. If you were an exec here, why would you invest another $100 million effort on the browser? What would you get for that?"
The thanks of a grateful nation? Seriously, you'd get a lot of PR from a community that by and large hates you at the moment. Which might in itself result in more money spent on tools like FrontPage. Plus, assuming this rendering engine spills its side effects over the rest of the MS product line, you could quite easily put a dent in sales of products like Contribute from competitors. And you (meaning MS collectively) could have the satisfaction of actually telling the truth
Robert,
That some of us are refusing to 'upgrade' to XP doesn't change the fact that MS has 95% of the desktop market. As we've previously discussed.
WRT to whether Avalon or whatever should be given away I can only reiterate my previous comments about how you just don't "get it".
Please read: http://www.zanethomas.com/
abdera...tralizatio.html
"Mr. Nosuch: no, but let's say you only read the same five sites every day. RSS makes it far more productive for you too."
But only if I am going to those sites to read text. If I actually want to use any interactive features of those site, RSS can't help me there. And an optimal user experience isn't singularly about efficiency. That's just one aspect of it.
Remember, the web isn't just about publishing, it's about interaction. RSS is a *feed*. That's a one way street. Sure, it's great for somethings, but it's just another tool.
Zane: only a percentage of our users are on XP. Sorry, you keep making it seem that we have control. If we had control we'd force you to upgrade. My cable company, for instance, forced me to take a new box and upgrade. I had no choice. Now THAT'S control.
Mr. Nosuch: good point, but RSS can be made into an interactive application too and can deliver HTML and other kinds of stuff down.
And, really, a dirty little secret is that if something cool comes down in RSS, it usually gets me to click on it, which then opens up a browser. Shhh, don't tell anyone that I'm using that Web thing again.
Robert,
What percentage of desktops are running some version of Windows?
Zane: I don't know. But, I'm guessing it's about 92%. But, you are insisting on asking the wrong question.
If we really controlled the market, 92% would be running Windows XP.
Robert, your cable company controls the hardware.
If Microsoft could guarantee users had minimum requirements hardware, they would own the market.
They can't, and so, currently they only dominate it (by an incredibly huge margin).
They can't yet, but with NGSCB they might be able to.
1. You can't access these services/media content without Longhorn.
2. You install longhorn without having a TCPA Module on your motherboard.
3. You must purchase a new computer from a microsoft certified system provider.
RSS isn't going to kill the web for the simple reason that there's virtually nothing worth reading that's available in RSS form.
blogs are, however, doing a good job of killing search engines, with their incestuous interlinked and vapid nature.
DrPizza: really? The New York Times is available via RSS. So is MSDN. So is CNET. Millions of things. http://www.syndic8.com has a bunch. http://www.technoratic.com has more.
Robert,
So what you're saying is that if GM made 92% of all passenger cars it wouldn't be a problem, as long as there was a new model to choose from each year.
Robert, no-one is claiming that ownership of the market implies total control.
MS may not be able to completely dictate the pace of the upgrade cycle (although recent licensing 'innovations' have attempted to do so), but it is doing a pretty good job at dictating that when upgrades happen, they will be to another MS operating system.
MS has also historically been fairly clever at using backward incompatibility network effects to both reduce the attractiveness of other platforms (for example, the Kerberos fiasco) and to accelerate the upgrade cycle (for example, Office file formats). At least some of the Longhorn innovations you've talked about here seem like more of the same.
"DrPizza: really?"
Really.
"The New York Times is available via RSS."
No it isn't. Its headlines are. But they aren't the NYT.
"So is MSDN."
Ditto.
"So is CNET."
And again.
"Millions of things."
Where?
You've still gotta go visit the site if you want to look at the library or read the damn articles or actually DO ANYTHING.
Oh, you can look at the headlines. Who cares? RSS is devoid of content. It's merely metadata. It might help you use web sites. But it's not a replacement for them. As soon as you want to actually *use the content* you've gotta fire up a web browser (or web browser component) and visit the page.
And if you're really unlucky you'll have a site like slashdot which doesn't even bother sticking useful descriptions into its RSS feed. It just cuts things off mid sente...
RSS may augment the web. Consolidating feeds may well make it easier to notice stuff. But it's not going to kill it until RSS becomes a content delivery mechanism, which it isn't showing any signs of doing.
In spite of your protestation to the contrary the web is still the content delivery mechanism. RSS ain't content.
I believe Robert is always trying to promote his misunderstanding as "average people" thought. He does know the truth behind. Of course, ordinary people know almost nothing about RSS. And, they believe web browser and rss aggregators are both just "Internet". In their world, Internet and Web are the same thing.
RSS is just another mechanism of distributing Hypertext contents via HTTP protocol. Difference between RSS and "Web" (in Robert's very distorted wording) are just whether they're using HTML or another XML format. World Wide Web is just a federation of the Hypertext documents interconnected by Hyperlinks constructed on the Internet. HTML/RDF/HTTP are all tools for implementing it.
MH: by your definition, Flash and PDF are also the Web. And so is XAML.
Zane, no, I'm not saying that, but the problem is that computers are not cars. Cars don't get cheaper to operate based on how many people buy a certain model.
With computers, it's cheaper if more people use the same computer software. Why? Because of training and acquisition costs.
Can't use cars as a good comparison.
And, personally, I wouldn't mind it if tomorrow everyone woke up and decided to buy GM because GM had a better product.
Yes, of course. Uh, oh, I don't know about the XAML part, but, if it will be a technology for creating the "Hypertext documents", it will be part of the WEB.
TAXI company buy their cars in the same way as our company is buying computers. They will save the cost of driver's education and cost of purchasing the cars. Car manufacturers also create "for TAXI" models to reduce the production costs. Thus we can frequently see the whole taxies are of the same company's same model such as Ford Crown-Victoria in some town, Dodge Voyger in another, Nissan Crew or Toyota Crown-Comfort in Japan. We can buy our favorite car individually, and so we can do in computers. (If we can have the computers we can LOVE. )
Uh....OK, if the openness is the key of the discussion here, I must say that MS is already greatly successful to push ActiveX to pollute the web and we must frequently see unneccessary "" nested tags. It is so silly. I still hate the decision MS made when MS tried to kill the Netscape-compatible plugins. It raised the cost of supporting "open" web world. If MS monopoly would be in near-complete state in the future, then attempt to kill the "Standard" web by introducing MS-only enhancements could be successful, yeah, because "average user" does not care about the standard-compliance nor openness. I don't know whether it would be XAML or any other technology which MS would try introducing for that purpose, but anyway it is possible. Flash and PDF are both "open" technology. They are not tied to the single proprietary platform. So, you cannot mix them together.
'unneccessary "" nested tags'
should be
'unneccessary "(object)(embed)" nested tags'
Robert,
You're not getting away with avoiding the point:
Microsoft _has_ a monopoly on the desktop and the endless cycle of OS upgrades is intended to maintain that position.
Microsoft isn't going to do anything to create an environment within which there can be fair competition for desktop business and there is no amount of GeeWhiz from you that's going to change that simple fact.
So just admit it and let's move on ok?
"Uh....OK, if the openness is the key of the discussion here, I must say that MS is already greatly successful to push ActiveX to pollute the web and we must frequently see unneccessary "" nested tags. It is so silly. I still hate the decision MS made when MS tried to kill the Netscape-compatible plugins."
Let me check I'm understanding you here -- you're upset that MS deferred to W3C's standard for object embedding instead of Netscape's proprietary mechanism? i.e. that they said "use HTML's object tags instead of Netscape's embed tags"?
Surely moving towards a standard is a good thing?
Or are proprietary features A-OK when they're created by someone other than MS?
I must check the status of the standards at that time. But, anyway, tags are not the point, but plugin APIs would be, I suppose.
For tags issue, even though embed tag would not be standard-compliant, MS COULD keep backward compatibility, as they do so for all other obsolete tags, but they didn't, exceptionally for embed tag. The intention behind that decision is not "standard-compliance" because, as Robert already said, MS always see little value on standard-compliance.
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