Life is grand

I normally avoid acquisition articles until it is a done deal but this is just too bizarre, yet likely, to avoid; Microsoft may acquire Yahoo!

Why should I care? I use Flickr and del.icio.us. I also use Yahoo! Pipes.

To wake up one day and find three services I like and use being owned by Microsoft, who so far have 0 websites/services I like or use, would be strange.

I am not totally against it mind you. Though I’d start running the moment Flickr was told to use Silverlight and ASP.NET. Supposedly I’ll have to switch my Flickr login to Microsoft Passport too. Flickr users won’t like that one bit.

Strange times.

I am skeptical about the consensus from a panel of internet browser developers (including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera) at the Web 2.0 Expo:

vendors plan to focus on positioning the browser as a development platform.

This just a day after SilverLight was announced which has no firm plans for anything but Mac OS X and Windows support.

I simply think that there will be critical disagreement and interference from corporate requirements. I’m not sure I can imagine Microsoft pushing an Internet Explorer that adheres to a platform standard that allows an app. to run on any operating system the browser can run on. I can see Mozilla and Opera doing that because they have little vested interest in the underlying OS. I can’t see Mozilla or Opera adopting XAML though or Mozilla ditching XUL. They have trouble adopting one Microsoft invented attribute on a minor element.

I also don’t see Adobe in this discussion and they own Flash as well as the upcoming Apollo platform. Flash is not dead and it is widely distributed. Sadly Adobe is not known for playing well with others either.

It is a nice idea but for the foreseeable future there is going to be forking, different platforms and all the joy that goes into developing for different and continually shifting browsers.

John Collins quotes the following in his Vista article:

Hughes maintains that Vista is ready now and rejects any suggestion that users should hold off on upgrading until issues are addressed. In particular, he stresses the fact that Microsoft had its biggest beta testing programme in place for Vista including 17,000 Irish users. He advises anyone considering upgrading to download the Vista Upgrade Adviser from the Microsoft website which will warn them of any potential hardware or software issues.

I hope Mr. Hughes was misquoted or a bit flummoxed at the time as in that first line he is saying that even though there are issues users shouldn’t wait to upgrade. Upgrade now people and don’t worry that your scanner and fax software that you rely on to do your job don’t work. Don’t worry, it will work in a few months time when new drivers get released and then you can get back to your job. In the meantime be happy with your shiny new Vista.

A typical head-in-sand-out-of-touch-with-reality response from a techy awed by shiny buttons.

I tried Vista. I didn’t like it and reverted to Windows XP. Funnily enough I had no hardware issues (and this on a Macbook Pro, probably not your typical Vista machine) so I can hardly imagine how much more I would have disliked Vista had there been hardware issues.

The next few months are going to be tough for Vista as the millions of new PCs with Vista are sold and people try to connect their existing hardware to it.

As John summarises at the end the main problem is one of expectations. Vista was supposed to be a six, a home-run, a touch down in the end-zone. Instead it is a catch-up and platform for Microsoft’s next move. Sadly that was a miscalculation and their next move has been hobbled. I won’t be trying Vista Version 2 with the same hope I had for Vista.

Mac OS X has an amazing ability to loosen the wallets of its users. In all my years of Windows computing I personally bought exactly one application; Winzip. And that purchase was more out of guilt for having used it for years and never paid. Funnily enough I switched to Mac OS X a short month after buying Winzip. Most of the other software I had installed was free or provided by a MSDN subscription.

In the few months I have had a Mac though I have bought TextMate, Omnigraffle, Photoshop, Fireworks and now Synergy.

The initial reaction to this is that Windows is better because “it has more free software for it and so you don’t need to pay” which is technically true. On another level though Mac OS X is better; The level of the computer as a productive tool and not an end in itself.

Synergy proves this out for me. It is a $5 utility app. that controls iTunes. I would never have paid for a Windows equivalent because nothing on Windows comes close to the quality of Synergy. It integrates so beautifully with the Mac OS X menu bar (and system-wide keyboard shortcuts) that after a few days of free use I realised it was worth more than $5.

Synergy feels like it is part of my daily Mac OS X experience. It is there when I need it, out of the way when I don’t and it works as if I had personally told the developer exactly what I wanted and he had gone and made it.

A lot of Mac OS X software is like this.

I can’t think of any Windows software like this. Maybe iTunes on Windows…

If I had read this post a few months ago, when I was still a Windows user, I would have scoffed at it. I would have said it was some air-headed Apple fanboy under the influence of Jobsian spells.

Now I think the reality is that Windows is the one casting spells on its users. Spells of illusion, of forgetfulness and of tolerance for poor quality. More to the point; Windows casts the spell of practicality which pervades enterprise thinking. It is the grey-suited men telling you what is good for you and you sucking it down for your rationalised life.

And before you say it; If I’m going to suck anything down I’d rather suck it down from a black pollo-neck wearing wizard who dares to dream.

Macs and Mac OS X are something you have to use to appreciate. It changes your computing experience, from the frustrating chore that is Windows where you spend more time dealing with a computer than with what you are trying to achieve. With Mac OS X I find I get more done and in a more pleasant manner. That is important, that I enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it.

I don’t expect Windows users to like hearing this or think it is even remotely true. It takes actual sit down time with a Mac and Mac OS X to have the spell lifted.

Remember, I was a Windows user for 14 years. I developed with Microsoft technologies, used Microsoft tools and thought Apple was a high-priced toy that had lost touch with reality. How things change.

Google Apps For Your Domain has recently added some new features and, like my boss likes to say, opened its kimono. They are definitely gunning for Microsoft’s Exchange market now (they offer a solution to migrate away from Exchange, can’t be clearer than that.)

But what about us little guys, us geeks with our own domains who aren’t multinational environment shaggers? There are a couple of new features which are very welcome.

Firstly you can keep it free and get 2gb per account on your domain or you can pay $50 per year and get 10gb per account. The $50 option also offers some guarantees, migration tools, an email gateway and integration tools. Not much for us small guys so I think the free version will continue to be fine. You can see a comparison chart here.

The interesting bits are:

• URL mapping. So instead of http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com you can have http://mail.yourdomain.com. Very, very nice that.
• Google Docs is now available to everyone using Google Apps For Your Domain.
• Domain alias so you can control two or more domains as one.

I see you can also now register a new domain with Google. I haven’t found out yet if you can transfer existing domains.

So a nice update even for us free loaders and some useful features for bigger users.

If you are in or around Phoenix, Arizona tomorrow (the 17th) then I’d be in your debt if you attended a Microsoft and NewsGator event and reported back.

Drop me a line to discuss.

Reading Joel’s long piece on the Windows Vista shutdown menu, which took 48 people a year to implement, had me thinking; the answer is pretty simple. It is three choices. Sleep, Restart and Shutdown. ala Mac OS X.

Just been reading two reviews of Microsoft’s Zune player and while it isn’t terrible it isn’t going to convert any iPod users or be an iPod killer in the stores.

The NYT review[^] is a bit biased IMO (I own an iPod too but jeez author, get a life) but it brings up some frankly weird points about the Zune:

1. The Zune has WiFi, fantastic. Except you can only use it to send songs to other Zunes. You can’t connect to a PC, network or any other WiFi device. WTF?
2. You can’t use it as an external HD. Sorry folks, no USB drive in Explorer for the Zune. WTF?
3. The screen is bigger. Except it has the same resolution as an iPod.
4. Real world testing shows poorer battery life than an equivalent iPod (two hours less.) And yet the Zune is bigger and heavier.
5. No podcast support from what I can tell. Crikey.
6. Songs are $0.99 but you have to buy credit bundles of $5 or more.
7. Songs are listed as costing 79 “points” which sounds cool except 79 points will cost you $0.99. Now that is marketing.
8. The software media player is seemingly a stripped down Windows Media Player. You can’t use WMP with your Zune.
9. Getting all your existing music onto a Zune is a long conversion process if it works at all.

The other review[^].

It seems OK but nothing to rush out for.

So Microsoft has listened to the uproar about its Vista licensing and has changed at least one major part:

Microsoft said on Thursday that it will not limit the number of times that retail customers can transfer their Windows Vista license to a different computer.

That is good news however there is still some way to go before the licensing for Vista is good and fair IMO.

The Times Reader is an interesting project between the New York Times and Microsoft. For Microsoft it is a technology demonstration, in this case .NET 3.0 (WinFX really) and for the Times it is an exploration of delivering readable content to screens. The web and even most desktop software makes for a bad reading experience. Low DPI, wide blocks of text, poor fonts and, especially on the web, little if any typograhic control.

The Times Reader aims to make reading on the screen easy on the eyes. Using the Microsoft technology it offers the Times’ fonts, builds in readable columns and uses up all the screen real estate it can to present what looks very much like a print newspaper on your screen.

Here are a few screenshots of it in action though I recommend you download it and give it a go to see the layout technology at work (it is a Windows XP/Windows Vista only app, no Mac or Linux versions.)

When you first load it the app downloads a complete set of articles from the server. It then periodically synchronises allowing you to later use the app and read articles offline. As you can see it mimics a newspaper layout. On the right you will see some articles are just being displayed as headlines. If I made the window bigger the summaries of each would start to be displayed and the layout would change.

Along the top you have the different sections which smoothly flips the view from topic to topic.

Here you can see the front page after I have resized the window to a smaller area.

Clicking a headline/article takes you to the article view:

The article is nicely displayed in columns and flows around the image. You can see an advert in this screenshot but not all articles display an advert. If the full article was too long to fit on this one view then the page control (bottom right) would let me flip to the next page. It is a bit fiddly though as you have to click the little arrows rather than a bigger region.

You can also see the text-size control in the bottom left. As you adjust this the view automatically re-flows itself to fit. Honestly though the sizing is in steps and is quite jumpy. I’d have preffered something smoother.

You can go to the next article using the control near the bottom right. The arrows are once again a bit small but the transition to the next article is quite smooth.

An article has several tools one of which lets you annotate with a pen. Handy if a bit limited (other users can’t see it for instance.)

The search has three views one of which is this fluid diagram that shows an article with its assigned “topics” radiating out from it. Topics are much like tags.

Clicking on a topic takes you to a view which shows all articles tagged with that topic:

The other search view shows a grid layout of all stories that match your search, sorted by relevance (as indicated by the litte filled in dots):

Then onto the News in Pictures view which is very, very simple:

It simply takes all the photos in the paper and displays them one after the other with captions. A gallery would have been ideal and also links back to the originating articles.

I am not convinced of the usefulness of the What’s Read but it is an interesting view. It shows you each section with little squares that on roll-over display an article you have read. I would have liked an indicator next to each article title on any page to show that I have read it (much like links on the web change colour.)

All in all the Times Reader is interesting and works quite well. My main problem with it is that it is a separate, desktop app. bound to one OS. We need to get this technology into the browser.