It sounds like Mike is starting up his own biz after 4 years at Disney Interactive. He's a super talented guy so I'm sure whatever he's building is very cool. That's a space to keep an eye on.
Also he gives away iPod Shuffles which is another reason to keep an eye out over there :-)
Christopher Hawkins reveals all.
I thought about looking it up myself like he did, but I was too lazy :-)
Note that you have to scroll down as his permalinks are by day :-(
First off thanks for all the thoughtful replies, I figured a post on forking Windows would get some people riled up!
This post is in response to some of the items mentioned by Martin Weber and others in the comments
http://www.codesign.at/blog/2005/06/17/windows-from-scratch/
First let me clarify my position. I don't really care if they actually start from nothing. I would imagine in fact that they wouldn't. They would use .Net and it's common runtime as the basis of apps for the new OS and perhaps reuse parts of existing code that made sense. All I think is that they should try and remove themselves from maintaining tons of legacy code which runs apps from 1988 in the new OS. I agree this is suicide for most software companies, but they have the resources to pull it off.
It would also reinvigorate the workforce at MS, which is an aspect I think most peole overlook. Maintaining code which runs apps from 87 isn't fun! How do you get the best minds to work for you if what you're doing is boring work? See this post for confirmation from the inside on this.
Now Martin said, "This must be the single worst business decision Microsoft ever could make" but you can't have it both ways because you go on to say that Microsoft has already done what I'm suggesting when they created NT, Tablet, Media Center, and Mobile. So if they've already done it why is it a bad idea and why don't you think they could pull it off again?
Another item is the distractions of the other divisions. Martin says "Even if businesses like their Hardware division just are a "pebble in the pond" it definitely would be a business other companies would like to have just on their own"
Again I disagree. I've read the financial statements. Last year the business solutions division (CRM,etc) lost $255 million, mobile lost $224 million, and home and entertainment lost a whopping $1.2 billion. Those don't sound like businesses which other companies would want to me.
All I'm saying is Microsoft needs to free it's mind and find a way to inspire it's customer base again. If there was a compelling reason to upgrade they would.
Keep an eye on Phil Wright's blog. He's doing a nice job over there going through his new product.
Why can't we get good components for online products? Gosh I'd happily pay for quality components in some key areas but good component libraries for web development are so few and far between.
I think developers are afraid to build components for languages like Perl, PHP, etc because of the risk of an open source competitor but I think there' s a good business in there someplace. Hmm maybe UserScape product #2?????
Update: He also seems to do a much better job of staying on topic than I do :-)
I just noticed that this weblog has made it into the NetNewsWire sites drawer starting with the latest 2.0 release. Thanks guys!
*[This image was lost to time in my blog transition]*
Just read an interesting post by Scoble about the London train system and how they're still running DOS apps on XP machines. Of course if you're Microsoft you have to enable your OS to continue to run those apps because there are way too many users/companies in that type of situation to change.
On the other hand you're a 272 BILLION dollar company with a stock that's been stuck at $25 forever. So where's the growth coming from? Any applications you develop need to generate tens of MILLIONS of sales to even make a dent. So Windows and Office keep you afloat but xbox, mice, all the other stuff they sell is just a pebble in the pond. I used to be a stockholder, I've read the annual reports. That other stuff accounts for almost nothing.
So how do you juice more sales out of Windows/Office when you're stuck in the mud? You can't progress fast because so many businesses won't allow it. On the other hand everyone wants better performance which is nearly impossible because if you have to keep all your old code working it's simply unrealistic to expect them to be able to deliver greatly improved software.
I think this ends up leading them into the very scary place they are where they have to move really sloooooow on everything. Sure we'll deliver a new OS every 5 years, maybe. What about an updated database every 5-6 years, nothing much going on in that space right?
Hence the companies that don't want to move to begin with are given no reason to move because nothing new happens to the OS for years at a time. There's no compelling reason to switch and Microsoft can't give them one because they must support so much old code.
They've also managed to load themselves down with thousands of extra employees. As I've written about before this is really bad for them because all these extra people do is shove in features on top of old crap. It's not their fault, you have all these really smart people and they want to work and they want to innovate.
So here's one possible radical solution. Fork Windows. Well actually not even fork it but start from the ground up. Split up that huge workforce into 2 groups. The first maintains Windows XP, providing security patches, updating code to handle new faster processors and so on. They would do this basically indefinitely. The second group now devotes all their energy to an entirely new operating system, let's call it Ralph. Ralph is 100% new, incorporating every little thing they've always wanted to do with no dependency at all on running old code.
Now for any other company this would be suicide, but not for Microsoft. They have the money and the people to support the active development of 2 operating systems. That money also affords them the ability to slowly migrate users to the new platform. At first giving it away to companies like Alienware for use in high end gaming system. Then slowly as an option with mainstream brands like Dell, making it clear that there's no backward compatibility. Sure it will take at least 10 years until Ralph becomes the primary Microsoft OS, but that's not much worse than the 6 years people are/will be waiting for Longhorn and even then all their getting is a second rate product that is extremely limited by the need to keep things backward compatible. It also puts Microsoft in a much better position for the next 30 years than yet another spruced up version of Windows 95.
side note
I hear you all out there saying in 30 years everything will be online and your desktop will only be a terminal. Not so fast I say! That makes some big assumptions about the telecommunications infrastructure. Since the .com crash spending on fiber has gone down to almost nothing. We're a long long way from having fiber right up to our houses which is basically a required prerequisite to turning your desktop into an internet appliance. Look it's already been 5 years since then and my cable modem isn't faster than it was then, I still do my word processing on my desktop, I still can barely open a 200mb photoshop file on most desktops, forget about across the internet.
A nice short article on tacit knowledge and IT support by John Udell
"Quite honestly (maybe here is where my tirade kicks in), I?m sick and tired of the Hiring Managers around here not trusting their recruiters. Hi there ? news flash. Guess what? I probably have a higher IQ than you (yes, I just went there), and I ?get? it. Trust me. They pay me the big bucks to be an expert on hiring for the company. You do your job; I?ll do mine. Plus, you don?t see me getting in your business every time some Microsoft program crashes on me, do you? " (Gretchen)
"In a marketing tactic used primarily by spyware and adware companies, Google has begun bundling its Google Toolbar and Desktop Search software with the popular WinZip archive utility. The move comes as Google begins to expand its bundling effort with a number of leading software applications." (via Beta News)
You thought I was going to talk about Podcasting, but you're wrong! What I want to discuss is the deal between Yahoo and Blo.gs. Now if I'm Yahoo and I have infinite money to spend why am I not buy weblogs.com instead of blo.gs. I mean blo.gs is second fiddle to weblogs.com. Weblogs.com is the site EVERY reader pings, always.
A secondary issue is just the name. Weblogs.com is a great name to own just on it's own right. Alot better than the fairly confusing blo.gs.
Worst case buy both! If you really want to get in the game how much could it cost to buy both? A million maybe 2?
Alas I'm sure this is all do to the enemies Dave has made over the years. The funny thing is that Dave's frumpiness is both his best and worst asset. It's what has allowed him to get things done in the super competitive format space, but at the same time has alienated alot of people with the pocketbooks. Dave's a bit crazy, but he deserves better this time.
Update: I didn't really think about if Dave would want to sell given the opportunity ..... I wonder?