Microsoft makes fresh move to Web

[rpm]

http://www.mybroadband.co.za/nephp/?m=show&id=1132

 

[Turtle]

You can try a beta of their "Windows Live" offering here: http://www.live.com/

IMO, it's embarrassingly bad (as far as I can tell, it's little more than a cruder, uglier rip-off of Mac OS X Widgets (MS calls them "Gadgets"), but in a Web page, and with a few portal-y things like a Web search box). OK, they say it's beta, but I think it was too early to announce this to the public. Maybe they're banking on most people believing the PR hype and not actually trying it out, with the purpose being to try plant the vague idea into people's heads that 'great things are coming' from Microsoft.

"Carmi Levy of the research firm Info-Tech said Microsoft's announcement means "the end of shrink-wrapped software in a box and the start of the Internet-based services era. It marks a turning point in the industry."

We already passed the "turning point" years ago - it was led by companies like Google and Yahoo. The other implication here is that in future you will 'rent' your software instead of 'purchasing' it, so that we can keep paying forever for what we currently get by paying for once ... MS already tried this "software as a service" tack a few years back, and customers widely rejected it. This time it's being tied to benefits like server centralisation (i.e. access your apps/documents from anywhere in the world) ... but it's a false implication that you need to 'rent' the software in order to also have these benefits:

"This system would allow customers to use word processors or other applications on the Internet and store documents on a secure website instead of on a PC drive."

Funny how the media is touting this as a new, revolutionary 'movement' in computing, when the UNIX world has pretty much always worked this way, and even before PCs existed this was the norm (everything in the UNIX world was designed with this in mind, e.g. NFS for transparent remote filesystem access, the X protocol for client/server GUI, telnet/SSH etc. for remote access etc.). I guess it's true that "everything that's old is new again". I don't mind if they want to copy a good idea, but at least they shouldn't try to claim credit as if it's their 'new' (30-year-old) idea. Being able to log in to a (multi-user) server and be presented with my own GUI desktop environment, own files etc. (and all as if I was the only user on the computer, when there were many), and being able to access this from anywhere in the world, I remember doing that in 1995 already.

 

[AntiThesis]

The problem with the "digital revolution" we're facing is I foresee a whole lot more money being made by select people. M$ have already admitted that "theoretically" a CPU could be locked to accept only a certain OS. Add to that the rumors of upcoming rented PCs (pay/CPU cycle) and Web based OS and you've got the makings of a potential empire to rival Telkom.

I sense a much greater level of control about to be passed on to the developers and retailers. Aah well.