Ben Meyer and Rob Wright from TwitchGuru discuss what the recent moves by the tech giant mean for the future of the company.

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What do you think about Microsoft's recent moves?

This is also a good place to bash the hosts (preferably Rob), production values and the subject matter in general.

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That bad, huh? Well, it WAS Ben's idea...

So, Ben... Seattle, huh? Cool.

Rob, where are you coming from? "They make software, not web ads." I don't know if you're familiar with the internet, but web advertising is software.

Yeah, the video was pretty lame. MS isn't at a brand new crossroads here, so it's hardly worthy of debate. They've been crazy about expanding for years. They've had some hits, some misses. But that's business.

Let's look from another angle. Take a look at Sony for a second.

Sony manufactures and sells televisions, cameras, laptops, MP3 players, game system, cell phones, and who knows what else. And they haven't finished expanding. (Have you ever been to the Sony store?) If there is a piece of electronics equipment they don't make yet, they're working on it.

Microsoft is doing the same thing with software. If there is software to be made, MS is trying to make it.

They also do a bit of hardware, but what do you expect? Sony develops software too. It's practically inevitable in these partnering fields. They may butt heads in a couple of categories, but for the most part they are in the same boat--leaders in their industry trying to maintain their lead.

I do think they're biting off more than they can chew sometimes, but I'm not going to fault them for trying. I do wish they'd focus more on the products that affect me directly, but I'll only fault them for not investing 6 billion in my back account.

If I look at Microsoft's recent moves, I must mention one thing:
Microsoft doesn't even pretend that it develops software anymore.
I mean, what's new in Vista? What's new in Office 2007? Four years and billions invested for... This? DX10 which is merely a relabeled OpenGL 2.1, sound acceleration which requires third-party drivers (OpenAL) to work? DRM, as in the user is supposed to cheat so we must NOT allow him/her to use his computer the way he/she wants? Great.
While we're mentioning the Web, what's up with Internet Explorer? IE7 is merely a long overdue bug fix of IE6, with a less flexible,space eating interface, using retarded technology (still no XHTML support, HTML support still lagging behind, CSS support not on par with competition, and buggy still, JScript and DOM still not ECMA compliant!).
Funnily, IIS 7 may be the only worthwhile software they're making: it's a clone of Apache.
Meaning that Microsoft software is buggy as ever, insecure as ever, even pricier than before, and now they are adding layers of unusability on top of the inherent flaws of their softwares. I don't think this is a good tack on development.

To add insults to injury, they're now threatening everybody (their customers included) to sue if they use software allegedly encroaching on MS patents - 235 of them precisely, of which NONE have been validated in court, and are probably bogus.

Example: MS recently applied to patent a system which, by checking the credentials of the invoker against a white list, may allow this user to gain temporary administrator access for the scope of another command.
Interestingly, that's the exact definition of the sudo command, which has existed for 20 years now in the UNIX world.

Is Microsoft making smart moves? Well, I don't know if developing a bogus new OS, a non-innovative office suite with a disturbing interface, and turning into a lobby/patent troll really qualifies MS as a software developer anymore, let alone makes for a smart move.

Microsoft doesn't even pretend that it develops software anymore, eh?

So, like, all that stuff... Vista, Office 2007, and the whole collection of apps they have... they didn't write and develop those. Those just appeared out of nowhere, right?

I'd like to be polite but... just... please, type less and think more.

You may not THINK they made many feature improvements. You may THINK they backpedaled in some regards. That's your opinion. That doesn't mean they didn't still develop the software, idiot.

Christ. If writing an OS and applications doesn't count as developing software, then please tell me, exactly what does?

Ask an average person what Microsoft makes or owns. Maybe they'll say Hotmail. Probably they'll say Xbox. Most likely they'll say Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, and so on. Fact is, aside from the Zune and Xbox stuff, almost everthing big Microsoft does is software. You just don't happen to like it. That doesn't mean they don't write software, though.

At least Microsoft is much more of a software company than their lead competitor, Apple. Since 2001, Apple has been known mostly for the iPod, iTunes store, and a little (to the average consumer) for OS X and Macs. And now they're making a cellphone and TV media bridge. What next, TVs and speaker setups? Apple is a software company that won't even license their software, i.e. they're a poorly masked hardware company. Microsoft doesn't care who installs their software on what, just as long as they sell it. They're a software company through and through. The Xbox lineup is a way to bridge the gap between PCs and TVs in an attempt to unify the two (take a look at media center PCs and Xbox 360s, they're slowly creeping towards each other), ultimately I believe they just want to bring home theater hardware into the fold with PCs and have all media and gaming driven by their software.

No, Microsoft is a software company alright, just not a particularly excellent one.

No, as I said they spent billions developing those, and frankly, they're not worth the expense: innovation zero. Which is quite bad in its own right.

Had I typed my full reflexion on the matter, it would have taken a whole book. I mean, Vista didn't improve the pointer code, didn't improve the main file system driver (the Vista NTFS driver is right now LESS efficient than the freshly released ntfs-3g to prevent fragmentation; chkdsk is still as buggy as it was in 1999) - meaning the system hasn't improved in sensitive subsystems, and adds layers of instability on top of a system that was struggling to get a bit better than before (personally, I liked XP SP2).

Give me ONE improvement. Just one. I looked over the whole OS ever since the first public beta was released.
Then I checked Office 2007, which brings only new headaches.

Actually developing software that does stuff that hasn't already been done by the competition, or at least do the same thing but better.

My gripe is that they don't write it well and sell it at a premium. As for your examples, let's see:
- Hotmail was better before it was bought by MS: you had access to a search engine that allowed you to locate an email address. It was damn useful - yet scrapped by MS to promote Outlook.
- Xbox was an attempt at foiling Sony. Please note that MS still hasn't broken even on those investments.
- Internet Explorer would have been a competitive browser... in 2002. Refresh problems, bad CSS support, lousy DOM support, frozen interface and no XHTML support - it still sees it as 'bad' HTML 4.0, and doesn't understand the application/xhtml+xml MIME type (all others do support it: Opera, Firefox, Safari)
- MSN doesn't actually return relevant results - when it's not crashed. Microsoft should have kept paying Yahoo to provide their search engine capabilities... I mean, damn! When I look for stuff in MSDN, the MSN search engine has a lower hit rate than Google! Frankly, if Microsoft can't make their search engine parse their own pages better than their competitors, why are they even in the search business?!

At least Apple innovates and makes their system more stable on each new release. Moreover, the complete OS costs less than Vista Basic.
Example: BSD kernel, UAC done right, only one OS version as capable as a server than as a media center, and many layers of the system have available sources (the kernel, the HTML and JS engines, the Active Directory compatible system, their latest ECMAscript VM, the HTTP server, the C compiler...).
I will mention Linux in passing, which has Mac OS's versatility, better hardware support than Vista, much better stability, is faster, and more innovative: real 3D interfaces even on old hardware, modularity, fast upgrades, Live CDs, full 64-bit support, scalability - and can be copied and modified at will. And when you want to pay for it, you actually get competent support.

Actually that's not true. You can buy a license for their software; they just don't guarantee that it'll run on non-Apple hardware, and you pay a premium for covered hardware. Now, if you buy a Vista license for your PC, you have absolutely no right for a refund if it happens to not like your hardware.
As for Linux, it's try before you buy - and try as long as you want.

I guess, then, that registration and activation are figments of my imagination. The restrictions on virtual machines install is, too, then, I guess.

Actually, Philips started that trend - it was just too little, too soon. About the Zune, well, I want to mention it: they did worse than Apple, eventhough they had ample time to copy Apple's products.

Well, they weren't the first with such an idea.

And as such, they now have to rely on unfair tactics to protect their business: threatening their customers, make their products more difficult to use with third-party software and much pricier, prevent laws that would improve reliability, and pervert the patents system. Did you know they're pushing a patents reform to make prior art irrelevant for patents validity?

Ok, simple. Instant search in every window is nice, especially in the control panel and start menu. In the control panel I don't have to read a lot of text, I just type in "desktop icon" and it filters the displayed options down to Personalization ('show or hide common icons on the desktop') and Taskbar and Start Menu (text omitted). And there without bothering to learn the nested structure of options and feature settings, I can almost instantly do what I want to. From the Start Menu, I just type in "stea" and it's already got Steam highlighted and can be launched with a simple Enter press. In my opinion, quick access to all my files, folders, programs and settings is the most important thing an OS can possibly do, and that alone makes Vista worth it.

Great, you've got a grudge with everything that MS is doing. I can't say I'm entirely pleased with their stuff either, but that's REALLY BESIDE THE POINT. The POINT is that, contrary to your foolish statement, Microsoft is doing software development first and foremost. We're not arguing about whether Microsoft does its stuff well, or innovates new ideas. That's not required to be a software developer.

And frankly, there are so many things that have to be common between OSes because that's just what people are used to. Green and blue are safe colors, red probably means you want to double check what you're doing (don't delete this file, are you sure you want to press the X button on the window, etc). Scroll bars go on the bottom and right because that's what people are used to. Clicking the left button selects things. Even with more complex things, like features and functions in media playback programs or web browsers, there are things that will just naturally overlap. I don't know who came up with the ideas of bookmarks, but by this point it's pretty natural for people to keep track of things, so the presence of bookmarks and how you use them is likely to be fairly standard. And so on. Let's put it this way, would you accuse Logitech of not making keyboards just because they use the standard QWERTY layout, volume buttons, and a similar key mechanism to what everyone else uses? Does Ford not make cars even if they happen to have 4 wheels and a sound system with built-in CD player just like lots of other cars? I'm not arguing that Microsoft is the God of software innovation, merely that they're developing it. They are software developers.

The complete OS costs less than Vista Basic, yes, but they put out our equivalent of service packs every what, 12 months or so? And you have to pay $130 for them. You could upgrade from XP to Vista for FAR cheaper than you could upgrade to each subsequent release by Apple.

Here's the thing that's great about you Microsoft haters. The way they are now, you hate them to death because they make their own stuff and don't implement "standards" used by everyone else. What would make you happy? Should they switch to a BSD kernel? Should they switch to using OpenGL? Would using a UAC system like Apple's make you happier? No. You'd rant and rave and get furious about how, yet again, Microsoft was copying everyone else. When Microsoft does something worse, you get pissed off because they suck. When Microsoft does something similar, you get pissed off because they're copying. When Microsoft does something better, you get pissed off because they're copying and promptly forget that they managed to do something better (like how now the almost universal Windows key is a universal access point to opening websites, applications, files, and folders through instant searching).

You misunderstand me. What I mean is, nobody makes systems with OS X except for Apple, right? See, I was under the impression that they actually had a physical chip which was required to run OS X, because otherwise, any old person could build an OS X machine (now that they use the same hardware and all). Perhaps that's not the case. I do have to wonder though, why don't we see a cheap Dell system or expensive Voodoo PC or anything in between that you can buy with OS X? You can buy Dell systems with Linux, and I'm sure people would buy cheap Dell machines for OS X rather than pay the premium for Apple hardware... so why doesn't anyone do it?

I guess, then, that registration and activation are figments of my imagination. The restrictions on virtual machines install is, too, then, I guess.

Again you misunderstand me. While Microsoft may have some restrictions with virtual machines, registration and activation as well, that's not the point I was making. The point is that they don't care whether it's Dell, eMachines, HP, Joe Random Customer, or even Apple that puts XP/Vista on their computer. They're just fine to let anybody buy it and install it. Apple, however, does not want to do this: they would sell many more $130 copies (before bulk discounts and OEM pricing!) of OS X rather than $3000 laptops if it were the case.

I don't care who started the trend. It really doesn't matter. And as for the Zune, while I can't say I really approve of what they did (i.e. I wouldn't buy one), who cares? Do you lambaste every MP3 player company that doesn't make iPods just because with ample time and resources they weren't able to outsell the iPod? If you apply this "they do worse than their competitors so I will despise them" attitude towards more than just the Zune, you'll find yourself hating most of the companies and products in the world.

Well, they weren't the first with such an idea.


Again, your obsession with who was the first to have an idea... you know, with so many smart people around, there are very many things which were conceptualized years or decades before they could actually be implemented. The idea of user-created hyperlinks between documents could arguably be attributed to Vannevar Bush, half a century ago. But most people don't even know his name. The fact that he had the idea first is interesting, but ultimately, it was Tim Berners-Lee who helped bring the idea to fruition, computers, and the masses in the '80s and '90s.

Heh. You want to talk about products that are hard to use with third-part software, let's pull out ol' iPod. And making their products pricier? Isn't Apple earning 50% profit or some ungodly amount on the iPhone? And similar amounts on iPods? The only reason you might think that paying $200 or so for an OS that lasts you maybe 3-5 years is unreasonable is if 1) you get one version of OS X and never upgrade, which only costs you $130, or 2) you're used to Linux being free.

You know, all this framing really isn't fun, and takes a lot of time. My point was that, like it or not, Microsoft develops software just as surely as Logitech makes keyboards. Maybe they don't innovate, but you can by no means say they don't develop. If you want to squabble further, send me a PM, I think that'd be the best bet.

The topic this week probably isn't as exciting as talking about the upcoming games or the latest and greatest in video cards, but MS comes up in the forumz everywhere, so I can see why you wanted to put your take on it.

I thought Ben did a lot more talking this time, which is nice. Rob got his point of view in, too. This show is becoming one of my favorite things on THG.

As for the topic at hand, I find it interesting how seriously Ben is taking Dell's decision to sell Ubuntu-equipped PCs. I'm interested to see how this turns out, as I run Ubuntu on most of my home computers, but I still think it's a niche market. I think statements of MS worrying about the popularity of Linux at this point in the game are a little optimistic about how well Linux is doing.

As for MS themselves and the tendency not to like Vista, I really wonder what we're looking for in an OS. Would it have been possible for MS to incorporate a lot of the features we want in, say, SP3? Throw the active search in there. Add a 3D desktop effects feature. I don't know if it's much harder for Windows to do this than Linux, but for me, it was as simple as installing Beryl. I think the idea is that XP users tend to be happy customers, and few see the reason to switch to Vista. Was Vista pretty much a make-work project, or was it all about HDCP and DRM or some third option?

When I first thought that open-source software makes sense, it was when I faced the prospect of replacing my student version of Office 2000. I'm one of the few people I know who actually bought office in the first place, but I wasn't hoping to find new features in a newer version: I only wanted to avoid the compatibility issues I could face when using .doc files from newer versions of Office. It occurred to me that Office software, in terms of personal use, has matured and I'm satisfied with the feature set that was available in 2000. Why do I need to keep paying software developers for re-inventing the wheel every few years? OpenOffice made a hell of a lot of sense to me, and I have been recommending it to home users ever since. I understand full-fledged MS Office may be better in the workplace, though.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on software development when it comes to home use.

I know that 'search in any window' was part of Gnome 2.16 at the very least, and probably there before.
Search in menus: unrequired in MacOS or Linux, as apps are stored per use, not per maker. Typing the first few letters of an app will start it automatically - no need to click afterwards.
Desktop search existed before MS introduced it in Vista: Google Desktop Search, Beagle, Kat etc. all did this, integrated in the WM, long before Vista was named such.
They didn't have the idea first and they weren't the first to implement it. It's not innovation in any way.

that's not the fact that pretty much everything one can find on a GUI today has been created in the 60's that bothers me; it's the problem that MS sells, at a premium, stuff that others have already created and refined, and that these MS copies don't even work as well as the stuff they're copying!
In fact, if Microsoft could innovate more in the controller area, well, I find their mice quite nice and their keyboards are far from bad. Their joysticks are good too, and I think they should work on that more.

Untrue - that's a whole OS you get (10.1,10.2,10.3,10.4 - are complete OSes, 10.3.9 is a service pack, freely available without any restriction - no WGA key required!). As to the 12 months, may I remind you that before the XP hiatus, that's how often MS released a new OS? Win95, OSR1, OSR2, Win98, 98SE, 2000, Millenium, XP.

As I said: untrue - the Vista Basic upgrade is $100, but you NEED a WinXP license first. Said XP license is invalidated - meaning that you can't do a WinXP/Vista dual boot on such a machine. A MacOS 10.2 can be dual booted with a MacOS 10.4, since both have fully valid licenses.

No - the NT kernel itself is quite good, based off VMS. However the system that runs on it, well, sucks - why wait so long before forcing a better separation between administrator and user accounts, when the OS supported it fully in Win2k?

Oh yes - considering they're already making a carbon copy of its 3D subset in DX10... Because OpenGL is not a 3D API: it's a graphics API, with on-screen and off-screen rendering abilities, separate contexts, client-server capabilities, and is modular by design - ever since version 1.0.

definitely: the MacOS way is directly based on the BSD version of sudo and xsudo. Those Just Work(tm) - which isn't really the case with UAC.

actually, missing the mark once or twice happens. MS just happens to do it in a disturbingly regular fashion, and makes their customer pay the bill.

If only they could copy WELL, and in an interoperable manner... That would do the trick. For a vivid example, get a look at LDAP and ActiveDirectory. Then their HTML engine, their attempt at a Java VM, their OOXML file format, their TCP/IP stack, their ECMAscript engine, their document presentation format, their video file format, their audio file format... May I continue?

Hint: Apple key.

Actually, it's because PPC Macs used a specific Apple BIOS. Now, it's because Macs use Intel's EFI (published in 2004 to replace the BIOS - Vista doesn't support EFI, and requires the Bootcamp BIOS emulator) and signed systems. It is fairly easy to hack MacOS to make it run (and quite reliably at that) on non-Apple hardware, however it's a hack - thus why you don't find those in stores.

See above. Apple doesn't support at ALL non-Apple hardware and mentions it as such on the box. On Windows, you have to read the EULA to find that you're actually on your own hardware-wise, and you can't read this EULA on pre-installed machines - because it has been accepted for you.

Bulk prices for Mac OS are simple: one machine, $150. From 2 to 5 machines, $250.
On Linux, it's free anyway
Your OEM Windows license is nullified, with no refund, if you happen to burn your motherboard. One mobo, one more Vista to buy. VLK now require each machine to be registered.
And yes, you're right, Apple is a hardware maker: they explicitly support their older hardware in their newer OS releases. As I said before, MS doesn't support your machine anyway (3 months install support if you buy a full copy of Windows; nothing if you buy an OEM or upgrade version).

Thing is, most other MP3 makers tried to differentiate their products: iRiver makes them in different shapes with various supported codecs, Creative used to make portable sound studios (they are now openly copying the iPod, too bad), Apple made the iPod to be 'hip' (which doesn't mean I'd buy one) and easily filled with music (iTunes is a nice piece of software, with a very nice GUI considering all you have to do with it), while MS Zune... well... didn't work when it came out, doesn't fulfill what it touts as an advantage (share your songs through Wifi - limited to 30 second samples, no more than 5 samples at a time, MP3 and WMA support only...) and while aimed at the iPod's market, didn't appear 'hip' enough.

You can differentiate between the first person to have an idea and the first person to be able to implement it - I personally don't really agree with that, yet it is a valid argument worth debating.
However, Microsoft doesn't even do either: they neither have the idea nor the first implementation. As such, I resent Microsoft being labelled an innovating company. Many patents they filed are in fact invalid because many were filed after someone else had the idea, implemented it, and didn't patent it: some GUI elements in an IDE, the sudo command, some variable bitrate file format...
Frankly, can you call patenting someone else's idea innovation?

Said iPod works on a Mac, a PC, and under Linux. Right now you can even load Linux on an iPod - Apple didn't do much to lock down their hardware, and the way the iPod's OS actually works, you may wonder if they didn't have that idea in the back of their mind when they designed it.

Well, considering MS does a 90% profit on any OS it sells... And the CD/DVD isn't always included in the bundle.

Please note that, at first, XP wasn't supposed to last that long; in fact, initial support for XP was supposed to end mid-2006, but since MS hadn't managed to get Longhorn out by then, they had to make it last longer. Moreover, they swindled companies of money with their 5-years upgrade insurance in 2001, which was supposed to bring them any new OS for free, after so many companies protested to the low delay between Win2k and XP and the high price of upgrading from one to the other. Suffice to say, said insurance never worked - yet the companies didn't get a refund.
Please also note that the EULA for Windows XP changed during those years.

No no no. I prefer keeping it public, this may refrain you from calling me an idiot again - or worse.
Please note that I value your input, and this is why I take my time to make lengthy replies. Several of your points are very interesting, and do provide food for thoughts - it's just that some of your assumptions seem to rest on unfounded facts, or at least short-sightedness.
Please also note that I keep using Mac as a reference because it's as of now the only proprietary desktop OS with a modicum of success against Windows - Solaris doesn't qualify anymore - and that I follow its progresses closely. However I don't use it anymore myself, having switched completely over to GNU/Linux. I refrain myself from mentioning this OS though, because it relies on a completely different ecosystem than Windows and MacOS.
If, however, you want to discuss Dell's recent decision to offer Windows XP again on their systems, AND of providing pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on some of their hardware, we could tack this subject a different way.

Microsoft have invested 6 billion in spam and junk mail. This is obvious with Instant Messenger, MSN.

Yes Microsoft should invest in producing better software, Vista is a flop even with the corporate pressure and leverage tactics. It's license numbers are worse than WinXP if you factor in the actual PC growth since XP was first launched.

Visual Studio 2005 is perhaps the worst development tool they produced to date and didn't even run on Vista correctly until they patched it. This is the freakin tool they (and I) use to produce software, and it's so buggy and broken.

They need to stop sending all their software contracts out to Russia and India, support US economy and US developers. When the last time you talked to someone without a heavy accent at Microsoft any time you call for "free" support.

Vista search -- yeah, OS X had that feature a long time ago. Vista = DX10 and that's only because MS refused to provide it for WinXP, and yes even MS admitted this - leverage. As much as MS think they can manipulate the consumer, when it comes to money consumers aren't as stupid as they would like to believe. Vista Ultimate is $400 -- OS X is one flavor, one version no BS.

They can't innovate, they're searching desparately for a Market with a future and dropping their current market as being a dead end. It's a dead end because they have no immagination, no innovation, they can't come up with their own ideas -- they can only try to buy and crush or copy and duplicate. It's sad! Even more sad to see them not realize this.

Produce good software and stop including a ton of junk services geared to help DRM, spammers, advertisers with their software. People pay $400 for Vista and then find themselves paying for more subscriptions service because the OS is missing functionality.

Zune -- come on!! iPOD has 70% market share of ALL portable music players. iTunes sells millions of songs per day -- Microsoft needs to STOP trying to duplicate and come up with their own freakin' ideas!

And then you hear people say "well what can they do that is new" -- gee, 40 billion in cash in the bank and the best they can do is spend 6 billion on advertising? Really, Microsoft are so removed from reality now it's becoming bizarre.

Why I hate Microsoft:
1. Their software since about 2000 onwards is buggy as hell
2. They plunder cheap labor from third world countries
3. They can't innovate
4. They'be become slow (5 years for Vista???)
5. They leverage for profit, not to establish "Standards"

Rob.