Microsoft's old tricks will doom Windows on tablets [JTSOS, May 2012]

[Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2012/05/10.]

Amazing. Just when I was actually starting to like MS again (after decades agin), they fall back on their old bad ways.

In a recent Register article, the Mozilla Foundation and Google have been complaining loudly that Microsoft will only be allowing Internet Explorer as the default browser on ARM-based tablets and devices running Windows 8 - or Windows RT as it will be called on those platforms.

For those of us with recall slightly better than the common-or-garden-pond goldfish, this brings back memories of the antitrust battles that were fought in the US and in European courts as Microsoft tried to monopolise first the browser space, then the media player space. In both cases, MS gave their own products "most favoured nation" status, with private programming interfaces not provided to rivals. In both cases, MS tried to make their own product inherent to the operating system, restricting or even preventing rival products' attempts to allow themselves to be default. In earlier times, Microsoft even (allegedly) committed occasional "dirty tricks" that deliberately caused their competitors' programs to misbehave, and appear to be buggy, in unfair comparison with MS's own.

And now it's happening again.

The antitrust lawyers will have a field day with this. MS will be stomped on from on high in the US and European courts, and end up paying a fortune and opening out the OS again, just as happened before.

Compare Microsoft's market capitalisation with Apple's and Google's, over the past ten years. They tell their own tale. MSFT's been on a slow slide over that period, and the upcoming news isn't good.

The problem is a lack of vision at the highest levels.

Microsoft's principal market is in desktop and laptop PCs, particularly in business - and desktops are rapidly going the way of the mammoth. Microsoft's laptop market share is under pressure from Apple laptops, and Apple and Android tablets, and it's only going to get worse unless MS acts. Rather late in the day, Microsoft has seen that it must have a tablet proposition, or fail; hence the genuinely innovative Metro user interface.

They've also spotted that Intel-architecture processors aren't future-proof any more, and that ARM is making more and more Intel products look decidedly yesterday's news. Compare ARM's and Intel's growth, and it's plain to see the trend. So, MS had to come out with ARM versions of their key products before market drift made them (MS, and their products) obsolete.

There have been signs of a change in Microsoft's course. For about the first time, the company has been engaging fairly with the open source community. They've started to innovate, at long last - Metro being a case in point. And, of course, addressing the ARM-based portable devices was seismic in its impact.

Unfortunately, the old-school leadership has undermined these welcome initiatives. Microsoft hasn't yet stopped covert operations around open standards, a pattern we all remember from allegations of ballot-stuffing on standards committees. And this most recent anti-competitive behaviour shows once again how Microsoft's leaders seem locked in an early-1990s time warp, and yet appear to have learnt nothing at all from the company's history of causing costly and ultimately unsuccessful court battles.

Microsoft's corporate investors can have only limited patience. Microsoft needs vision. Time for a change at the top, before their leaders squander the rest of Microsoft's share value.

CES 2012: Microsoft's keynote. Speak it softly, Steve! [JTSOS, Jan 2012]

[Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2012/01/10. At the time of writing this update, July 2012, the CEA has yet to announce who's doing the pre-show keynote for 2013.]

Last night, at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft presented what they had claimed would be their last opening keynote. The most interesting points, though, were the ones that were unsaid.

As usual, Gary Shapiro, the Eternal Leader of the Consumer Electronics Association, intrduced it. His spin on the ending of MS's annual pre-show presentation: that it was a joint decision. I have my doubts, lots of them. Reading the body language, I'd say that wasn't entirely the whole story. There was a mawkish handover to Steve Ballmer of a framed set of photographs from previous keynotes that will sit well in a restroom somewhere in Seattle, and a lot of half-hearted back-slapping displays of mutual respect.

And this is where we hear the first big hidden hint. Shapiro kept the door open for a return from Microsoft post the 2013 Show. That in itself isn't so surprising, but the way he phrased it was - referring not to Steve Ballmer, but to "The leader of Microsoft". Ballmer looked momentarily struck by that, before getting back to speed. This is worthy of interest - a power play by Shapiro, pointedly showing a loss of respect for Ballmer, an acknowledgement of information obtained behind the scenes, or just the caginess of a natural politician?

There were some notable product announcements, mostly new allegiances and step-changes. The Kinect will become available for the PC, something that was blindingly obvious ever since it was introduced for the Xbox. Both Windows 8 and Windows Phone will have voice control at their hearts, successfully demonstrated by one employee...to need a little work yet. MSFT showed off the Windows 8 "Metro" interface - interesting, but hardly new news.

What were more intriguing were the several mentions of Windows 8 on ARM (regular readers will recall I broke this story about 15 months ago) - but no demonstrations. Telling, that, no? As a number of other commentators noted, Nvidia also failed to demonstrate Windows 8's ARM port in their own keynote, which left a hole in their presentation big enough to drive an x86-powered Ford (another MS announcement) through.

Back to body language, Ballmer's was just a little ambiguous - let's be more exact; he flinched - every time he mentioned the big February milestone for Windows 8. Even the extra leap day in the month this year might not be enough, he seemed to be thinking.

And finally, the biggie, the echelon of elephants stacked pyramid-style in the corner of the proverbial room...who would be taking Microsoft's place as the leading pre-show keynote?

I'm going to shuffle to the thin end of the branch I'm teetering on, and make a prediction.

Apple.

Well yes, obviously, huh? Not quite. Apple has pointedly eschewed CES for years, preferring to present to their faithful congregations at Developer Conferences and the like. There's never been a completely believable explanation, but it has to be connected to MSFT's guaranteed pre-Show spotlight. Apple has never liked sitting in someone else's shadow, particularly that of the owner of the predominant personal computer platform.

Getting Apple to lead the Show next year would be a stunning win for the CEA - and perhaps not before time. Although Microsoft has showed some genuine innovation (in Kinect and the Metro interface), for the first time in a very long time indeed, it's been very, very late to the smartphone party, and missed the tablet shindig completely. Almost everything Microsoft's done in recent years, other than in those two products, has been in response to Apple. Apple has shown leadership in interactivity, in design, in style, in robustness, in market-breaking new concepts and products, and MS has had to watch. Microsoft's plays in the non-PC markets have mostly been, by comparison, me-toos, whilst Apple now owns the mind-share in personal consumer electronics. And it /is/ the Consumer Electronics Show, no?

And there's more. According to today's figures, MSFT's market cap is less than 2/3rds that of AAPL, and the trend is not in MSFT's favour. So now, MSFT is not only no longer the CE leader, it's not even the biggest player, and that's unlikely to change soon - or at all. Microsoft still has majority ownership of the PC market, but those figures are declining too, and the PC is looking more and more dated as a product, and as an architecture. Ballmer's the Captain on a leaky, listing and sail-shredded ship, and he's desperately casting around for buckets of tar. It's hard to know whether Microsoft needs a new Captain, or a new ship.

Gary Shapiro is a consummate politician. That's how he's kept his job as the CEA's leader and figurehead for so long. In his place, there's only one phone call I'd make, to fill the hole that Microsoft leaves in the Show programme, and it terminates at 1, Infiinite Loop.

The only question in my own mind is - was that call made before or after MS departed?

Don't occupy Wall Street - occupy the patents courts! [JTSOS, Nov 2011]

[From a comment thread in The Register. Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2011/11/04.]

For some time now, I've felt that patents have been over-used and over-priced...and heading for a big fall - not just in value, either.

They're being used not only to obtain value from invention - as was always the way - but now to stifle innovation, and - worse - also to set out deliberately to destroy companies. See Jobs' recently-published quotes on Android, and Apple's outspoken intentions towards Samsung, if you're in any doubt.

It feels like we're on the eve of a war. I think we probably are, but it will come from an unexpected direction.

In China, India and other emerging economies, patents don't hold back progress in the way they do in established economies. Sooner or later, the biggest Western governments will realise the potential consequences. At some point - and it may happen sooner than we expect - there must be moves to weaken patents.

That could come from a number of directions. The entry barrier to patent enforcement litigation could be raised by having the litigant place a large bond (say, three times the compensation/penalties sought) in court escrow, to be released to the defendant if the case fails.

Given that a lot of patents are spurious, the defendant could be granted a pre-hearing opportunity to overturn the patent by submision of proof of prior art or lack of inventive step - meaning that any litigant could be faced not only with the potential of financial disaster in failure, the risk of having their patents ruled invalid.

The actions of the court in enforcing the patent could be limited: an upper limit on claim size; a strictly limited window of opportunity to file claims (in effect, a statute of limitations on patent violations); the restriction of recourse to retrospective establishment of a court-set reasonable licence fee; the removal of any powers to ban sales of supposedly infringing items, except where the defendant has failed to pay the retrospective licence fee after a reasonable period.

One way or the other, the current patents system has to be fixed, and on a worldwide basis - and not just to protect business interests.

Otherwise the human race's dying words could well be, "We couldn't shoot down the meteorite, because the patent court grounded the weapon system."

I Told You So! (Episode 2) [JTSOS May 2011]

[Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2011/05/09.]

Way back in November, in a blog article called "ARM's Cortex-A15 CPU, and how it will change your world"", I closed with this paragraph:

So here's the real left-field question: given the power and BoM cost savings, how long now before Apple ditches Intel completely for ARM?

In a follow-up ("Desktop ARMs - and what they'll mean for Microsoft"), I expanded on those thoughts, opening with:

If Apple finds that the ARM processors out-compete Intel on price and power consumption, and at least match x86 for performance, the choice to switch is going to be a no-brainer.

And lo, it came to pass. Again.

Today, Charlie Demerjian published a very interesting article entitled "Apple dumps Intel from laptop lines" in his own blog, "Semi Accurate".

It seems as though I've been a tad prescient. That, or well-informed.

The rest of my blog article contained some other, equally dramatic, predictions. Well, let's call them "predictions" for now. One, which I've since admitted came from insider sources (in the first "I Told You So!"), was that Microsoft was porting Windows and Office to ARM. There were several more that are waiting to be proven.

Now here's another, just to keep your interest whetted. Rik Myslevski has written a well-informed article for The Register, titled "Intel's Tri-Gate gamble: It's now or never". In it, he adds a throw-away speculation near the bottom of the last page: "Intel could license the ARM architecture and start buiding its own ARM variants in its own fabs, using its 22nm Tri-Gate process. That's unlikely, but stranger things have happened."

Stranger things indeed. And I think that Rik is well and truly on the money. Intel's executives are very, very far from dumb. They are painfully aware of ARM's squeeze on their markets, both from above and below, as I'd outlined in that first blog article. Intel really has three obvious plays they could try:

1. Find a transformational technology that puts them in contention with ARM but retains x86 compatibility.. Intel's Tri-Gate announcement was clearly an attempt at this play.

2. Try to find a way to put ARM out of business, or at least weaken it. We've not seen this attempted seriously yet, and it's reasonable to wonder why that is.

3. License ARM cores for desktop use, and keep in the market by following the market..

I contemplated in the second blog post:

Here's a statement I never thought I'd make: with a stock and cash exchange, Apple. Could. Buy. Intel.

Now things start to add up.

* Apple needs a top-tier ARM supplier. Their relationship with Samsung, their current ARM fabrication partner, is reportedly getting a little rocky. Industry reports suggest that they're considering switching to Intel chip fabs.

* Intel needs an answer to the ARM squeeze on x86.

* Apple has tons of ready cash.

What it all adds up to is the possibility that Apple could invest in Intel, both commercially and financially, to license the ARM cores, and set up new fabs to make Tri-Gate ARMs, for both their iOS and MacOS products.

It would make a great deal of sense. It would also give Apple the power to put the squeeze on Microsoft. If only Apple has access to the Tri-Gate ARMs, it leaves Microsoft out in the cold - or rather, the far-too-warm - when MS start to produce the ARM versions of Windows, which will only be able to run on old-school pre-Tri-Gate hardware.

Microsoft will have to consider a very similar investment in Intel, for the same reasons, before Apple can lock them out.

Whichever way you look at it, Intel's prospects may well have brightened.

LATER NOTE (2011/05/18): it seems that one or two people may have read this blog, after all. :) Paul Otellini of Intel was put on the spot in an investors' meeting about the possibility of Intel using Tri-Gate to fab ARMs, and did his level best to dampen speculation: "The short answer is 'No'."

Mind you, if Apple came knocking, with barrow-loads of dollars in tow...? It's possible that Otellini's playing a wooing game, as his next comments could be construed as a come-on: "We have [...] an ARM architecture license. The important thing for us is to figure out how to get paid and how to be present. And we think the best way to be paid and present [...] is to build best-of-class chips."

EVEN LATER NOTE (2011/05/28): perhaps Paul Otellini wasn't reading from the hymn-sheet after all...Intel's CFO Stacy Smith appears to be a lot more positive to the idea of Tri-Gate on ARM, and specifically mentioned Apple as a possible buyer (of devices, not Intel!), according to a Reuters story this week.

Now, bear in mind that a CFO's words probably carry even more weight in the financial markets than the CTO's. After all, CTOs have been known to make some pretty daft comments - but the CFO is the person the money listens to. Smith said that an Apple deal was "Not in the works today". To the untrained observer, that's a flat denial, but it's more likely to be coded speech for, "We're not manufacturing yet, but a deal's cooking." We shall see. Keep watching this space!

Why Steve Jobs' absence might help Apple's health [JTSOS, Jan 2011]

[Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2011/01/18. Steve Jobs died in October that same year. My condolences to his family, friends and colleagues.]

I'm not the kind of person who wishes ill health on anyone, even my worst enemy. I took no pleasure in the news that Steve Jobs is stepping back from Apple for the sake of his health. But I do have some hope that it might signal a new direction for a company I respect, but whose products I don't want.

Let me explain what I mean. I was at a friend's a few evenings ago. He's a big fan of Apple's kit. We were chatting, and listening to music on his Apple TV. There was a track on my mobile phone I wanted him to hear. The conversation went like this:

"Has the the Apple TV got Bluetooth?"

"No, sorry."

"OK, well, if I put my phone on your network and set it up as a UPnP audio streamer, it'll pick it up and browse it, right?"

"No, it doesn't do ordinary streaming. I can send files from the iPad, though."

"Huh. Look, the iPad has Bluetooth, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, my phone knows A2DP. You can pick up the file from there, yes?"

"iPad doesn't know A2DP."

"Well, how about I 'tooth the file to the iPad, then you can send it on to the Apple TV." (Getting desperate now; I don't like copying IP around.)

"It won't accept Bluetoothed files."

"And it can't browse my phone over wireless, using uPnP?"

"Nope."

"Right, well how about I hand you over the microSD memory card from my phone?"

"iPad doesn't support removable memory."

I played the song using my mobile's speaker.

Now, that's a couple of self-confessed alpha geeks, using every trick in their books to try to play a tune from my phone using Apple kit. What chance do mere mortals have? And every way was blocked because Apple decreed it so. It wouldn't have been difficult for Apple to have included those facilities, but they said:

• Thou shalt have no streaming server support in Apple TV"
• Thou shalt have no streaming server support on iProducts
• Thou shalt not use Bluetooth the way God and Ericsson meant it to be, but only in the ways decreed by Us
• There shall be no removable anything in our iProducts. What you've got, you've got. Be glad of it, and want no more. Or buy the next, bigger, one when it comes out.

See what I mean? Welcome to the world of jaw-droppingly expensive consumer disposables. When your battery starts losing capacity, pay a fortune to an Apple Centre to get it replaced, or buy a new device. When your battery pegs out on a long plane flight, be glad you had the use of it whilst you could. Don't expect to do anything other than what Apple decrees on its own hardware. Because you don't own the hardware really; Apple does, and Apple says what you can do with it.

Actually, I can tell Apple what it can do with it. I like being able to carry a charged spare battery on the place. I like to watch YouTube every now and then. I like being able to stream my phone's music to my Bluetooth-enabled car radio. I like to add to my device's memory when it's getting a bit full.

The annoying thing is that I want to buy Apple's stuff. I was an early adopter of the Mac Mini, and loved it. If the MacBook Air had a removable battery and a DVD burner, I'd have it. If the iPad were about half or two-thirds as expensive, and had a microSD slot, Flash support and a user-replaceable battery, my wife and I would probably have had one each by now. It's hugely frustrating to me that every time Apple comes out with a nifty new piece of kit, it doesn't meet my needs. And the decisions that dictated the specs that caused that problem arose, I believe, from Apple's Executive Office.

Jobs' illness is very unfortunate, and I genuinely hope he recovers and goes on to lead as long and healthy a life as any liver transplant patient could hope for. But I think it will be best both for his health and Apple's if he does what he promises, and stands back from the company now.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, his vision transformed the company and its products. But now I believe he's become a hindrance: a portcullis between the company and its customers, and a barrier to its growth - yes, Apple could grow faster, if its products were less encumbered by executive doctrine.

Get well, Steve. But let Junior fight his own battles now. It's time for Dad to step back.