The MS nerd

The Windows 8 Launch, Reimagined.

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:37:00 -0430

It is now two and a half months since the launch of Windows RT/8 and the Surface, and a consensus has been reached among the technology journalists that Microsoft and its OEM partners mismanaged the launch of Windows RT/8. The problems most frequently identified have been around lack of availability of all-new built-for-Metro hardware, the weak SoC in the Surface and an incomplete transition to the Metro UX, centered around Office. Given these issues, it is interesting to think about how Microsoft might have done things differently with this launch to make it more successful. Here are some of my ideas:

Firstly, Microsoft ought to have delayed the retail launch of Windows 8 devices by two months. Windows 8 would still have been available for upgrading Windows 7 devices through the website in October, but no new 8-specific hardware would have been launched just then. Now this would mean missing the key Thanksgiving sales period, but Microsoft would still have been able to hit the Christmas shopping time just fine. Developers would have had an additional 2 months to prepare for the full launch and they would still have been seeded with Surface RT devices.

Next, Microsoft would not launch Surface RT at retail in December 2012. A Windows RT developer device would be available for enthusiasts and developers, but only sold online. The retail variant of Surface available in December would have been a 10.6” Clover Trail device by Samsung which would be otherwise identical to the Surface RT. It would also come with the new Office 365 preview, and a 1 year subscription (including SkyDrive storage & Skype minutes) starting from when the preview period ended. It would only be sold with a Touch Cover and 64GB storage at $500. It would still be sold only at Microsoft Stores. At the same time, touch-enabled ultrabooks and convertibles using Core processors would be launched by OEMs at other retailers. Every Windows 8 device would come with $10 in Windows Store credit to encourage use of the service.

Starting in February 2013, after the new Office 365 had exited the preview phase, OEMs could begin offering Clover Trail devices. Ideally, Microsoft would update the Reader MX app to support viewing (not editing) of Word, PowerPoint & Excel files. Updates to the Windows Essentials MX apps would make Mail and Calendar far more usable and OneNote MX would also get better inking support at this point. OEMs would now be compelled to be price their Clover Trail tablets at or below the $500 mark. This would mean that Windows 8 tablets could become a real option for consumers shopping in this price range where the iPad 2 & 4 reside. The Windows Store would have been fleshed out well enough by then.

Around E3 2013, Microsoft would make their new Xbox announcements and show off the “Nook/Xbox/Surface RT”, a 7~8” inch device by Asus, that would be available in late 2013. Select developer partners would start getting this device for testing right then. Closer to the new Xbox launch, this device would be detailed to be using the Tegra 4, would not support snapped apps and desktop Office. It would still be able to run all the Windows Store apps with slight modifications. This device would hit the $300 mark or be bundled with a new Xbox + 2 year Gold subscription at $99 + $15/month (that would include Music Pass & a “Nook Book Pass”).

In December 2013, Microsoft would launch Surface Pro by Lenovo, a 11.6 inch Haswell powered, touch-enabled ultrabook perhaps using a design similar to that of Yoga 11S, starting at $900. At this point they would have more Microsoft Stores open, but the whole Surface family would now be available at additional retailers (both online and in physical stores).

Based on this last idea about the Surface Pro, and given the HTC Windows Phone 8X thing, Microsoft could continue partnering with one OEM at a time in creating each Surface device. It would make the whole Microsoft-made devices thing more palatable for the OEMs, while achieving many of Microsoft’s objectives with the Surface initiative. This is basically the Google Nexus model, and I think it would work very well for Microsoft too, with the additional advantage of giving OEMs a reason to provide equal support to Windows & Android/Chrome OS. At the same time, it would bring many of the Apple-like advantages of hardware/services integration as desired by everyone in the industry.

As for a full on Metro Office suite and the future of the Windows UX, there is just too much sense in going the full (albeit refined) Metro route in future, as long as some of the core benefits of the current desktop environment are incorporated into it over time. How that works out is still somewhat nebulous, but the more obvious little things include better mouse support, 50/50 snapped views, a more performant and capable WinRT platform and so on. Hopefully, we see some of the ideas outlined in this post come to fruition. The promising thing is that Microsoft is going to have to do better and better in light of the competition it faces today.

"I won’t be posting anything new here moving forward. I’m leaving this blog up until..."

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:56:33 -0430

“I won’t be posting anything new here moving forward. I’m leaving this blog up until April 27, 2012. If you’d like to save any of the content, feel free to do so. However, if you post it elsewhere, please attribute it back to me at Twitter: @MS_nerd. That account will remain active, but my tweets beyond the aforementioned date will be private & I will use the account passively. The Tumblr, however, will be going offline at that time. I’ve answered a ton of questions here: http://redd.it/r4q5l”

So there's Win8/Metro/WinRT - what's going to happen on the Desktop side of the house? It looks like Silverlight and WPF are being put out to pasture. Is there a Desktop version of WinRT in the works? Thanks!!

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 17:48:04 -0430

No, the Desktop is a legacy environment for backware compatibility. All future development of WinRT is for Metro-style apps. The windowing environment will continue to be tiled, not overlapping moving forward.

Windows 8 CP Mail AP only supports EAS; no IMAP

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:09:00 -0430

The Mail app preview in Windows 8 consumer preview currently only supports EAS protocol syncing. I say supports, but the implementation is currently buggy. ~~Hotmail does not sync all mail, merely the new unread mail~~. I’m assuming that will be fixed soon enough. Gmail works perfectly well.

LOL: Mail only syncs the latest two weeks worth of messages & there is no way to change this right now.

On the other hand, there is NO support for IMAP. I don’t mind if POP is never supported: it sucks. However, for those of us who use e-mail providers that do not have EAS support, there is no way, other than using the browser or a desktop app, to access our e-mail. One example is Yahoo.

Now, interestingly, Yahoo does not even allow POP unless you have a Plus subscription. There are workarounds to this limitation, such as changing your account region (not language) to anywhere outside North America. This also gives you access to a proxy-address feature similar to Hotmail.

However, if you would rather not jump through these hoops, here are the IMAP details for Yahoo Mail, which are difficult to find on any official Yahoo help/support page:

Incoming Server - imap.mail.yahoo.com

Outgoing Server - smtp.mail.yahoo.com

Incoming Port - 993 (SSL)

Outgoing Port - 465 (SSL)

Username: email address (e.g. xyz@yahoo.com)

Password: same as what you use to login to Yahoo.

Hopefully, either Mail adds IMAP support by RTM, which is useful for other accounts (e.g. universities, corporate) that do not implement EAS, or Yahoo adds EAS.

Clarity

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:54:00 -0430

One amazingly wrong story about Windows Phone has picked up a lot of steam lately. I’m afraid with my Rhythm post, I may have contributed to the problem. (Oddly, the Ecosystems post has gone relatively unnoticed, what with the recent Lenovo leak). I am referring to the widespread misconception the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will be a single OS, based on the current Windows 8. Not only is this utterly wrong, but the assumption some folks are making, based on my posts, that this will happen with Windows 9 is also wrong. Here’s why:

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The suggestion that Windows Phone be based on Windows was floated once at Microsoft. That was back when “Photon” was still alive. Microsoft had studied deeply Apple’s choice of an OS X-based iOS instead of an iPod OS-based smartphone platform soon after the iPhone was launched. At the time, therefore, there was some debate as to whether NT should take over from CE on the phone. Note that there is a history of this same debate occuring previously for the Xbox. Microsoft initially went with CE for the Dreamcast, but it failed. So, when it came to the Xbox, NT was chosen. The Xbox still uses a customized NT, quite different from the Windows variant. Eventually, however, NT was found to be too heavy for phone hardware, which was pretty weak when the first iPhone came out. It was also very tightly linked to userland at the time and customization for the phone would be a clunky and lengthy process. CE was modular by design and made for lower-end devices and was thus the ultimate choice for “Photon”.

Microsoft soon (amazingly) realized it was headed nowhere with “Photon” and rebooted its mobile efforts. Even more amazingly, it chose the Zune as the basis of its new UX that is now taking over all the company’s products. At that time, MinWin work on the NT side was still ongoing and not ready for primetime on mobile hardware. Microsoft was already 3 years late, having created WinMo 6.5 and KIN in the interim. So, it chose CE 6 R3 to get WP7 finished without further delays.

The genius of the WP7 platform is that it sandboxes 3rd-party apps completely, and that the higher-level constructs for native apps have informed the design of WinRT and the Windows 8 dev platform as well. So, theoretically, it is possible to take Windows 8, alter it a bit, put it on a device like the Galaxy Note and call it Windows Phone 8. This will not happen due to two reasons.

The first is that Microsoft does not want to have phone apps and the phone UX run on slates or TVs unmodified and vice versa. The experience would suck. Instead, it wants the basic design constructs and dev environment to be similar between platforms, while the UX is tailored for each experience. This will ideally make developers happy, as apps will be easier to port due to design and code reuse. Consumers will also be happy, as they find the 3 screens running familiar experiences, that are insanely great on each separate screen. (I’ve been reading Steve Jobs’ biography).

The second is Nokia. The partnership has nearly changed everything again for Windows Phone. Microsoft is now targeting a much wider market and Nokia has unprecedented say in WP’s roadmap. They are pushing hard to make Windows Phone cheaper and more flexible. This is a barrier for entry for the NT kernel, which has already been pushed very hard to run on ARM for Windows 8. CE is already capable of going lower.

But what about Win9? There was a thought before the Nokia deal, that Win9 core might be a good target to bring NT down to Windows Phone. This will not happen now. Big chunks of the evolved WinRT platform will indeed be shared between Windows Phone and Windows around Win9 core. However, WP will use CE 7+ as its core at that time.

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The Xbox is another story altogether. With a heady mix of rumors, tips and speculation, I am now stating that Xbox codename “loop” (the erstwhile XboxTV) will indeed debut a modified Win9 core. It will use a Zune HD-like hardware platform—a “main” processor with multiple dedicated assistive cores for graphics, AI, physics, sound, networking, encryption and sensors. It will be custom designed by Microsoft and two partners (update: AMD, Imagination Technologies & Samsung are three names I’ve heard so far) based on the ARM architecture. It will be cheaper than the 360, further enabling Kinect adoption. And it will be far smaller than the 360. It will also demonstrate how Windows Phone could possible implement Win9’s dev platform on the lower end.

It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft can pull off all these great feats and succeed in the market over the next five years.

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As an aside, I recalled writing this when I saw CNETs article on Courier.

Rebranding Microsoft

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:43:28 -0430

STATUTORY WARNING: Please check with @TomWarren of winrumors.com (who reminds of Matt Lewis, oddly enough) for authenticity/publish-ability of this content prior to creating an echo-chamber full of my crap.

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I really don’t care for Microsoft’s branding and marketing efforts. They’ve been utterly useless for ages. Apple may be blurting out lies, lies and more damn lies in its marketing but it is super-effective. I feel that Microsoft may yet again be inspired by Apple (which uses any combination of the prefix i- and the word Mac in all their branding) more so than by Google (wherein the company name is the strongest brand). After all, nobody will buy a Microsoft TV, a Microsoft Phone or a Microsoft Pad. The word just doesn’t work well in marketing. Same as RIM and Blackberry, for instance.

—-

I think Microsoft will focus consumer branding around Windows, Xbox, Skype, Bing and Office in future. The Zune brand will be further demphasized, then retired, even though the service remains. Windows Live will also slowly be pulled back as a standalone brand. MSN will be pulling back too in favor of Xbox. TellMe will be seen more as a Bing thing. We’ll see more branding like Intune and Lync and less like System Center and Communicator from the enterprise side as well. So the key is fewer, stronger brands that stand for more things. However, branding is more than just words and logos. In lock-step with this effort, methinks:

1. Windows Live Essentials become Windows Extras (Messages, Mail, Photos, People) and ships with Win8. However, they’re Store apps that can be independently serviced and managed. Writer becomes a separate extra*.

2. WL Messenger becomes Skype Messenger, Hotmail issues @skype.com addresses, Skydrive becomes (lol) SkypeDrive. Also, VideoKinect gets replaced by Skype, while Lync brand continues, connecting to Skype.

3. Bing Bar is retired. A Windows Phone-like Bing app appears.

4.. Silverlight gets moved to the “back-yard” (plug-ins section of store, to reside with Flash, Java and other crap). Sorry @JoseFajardo, I think Silverlight is crap.

5. Family Safety is integrated back with parental controls & now with Windows SmartScreen, with servicing for definition lists through Windows Update.

6. A native metro OneNote app is made available free for Win8 early adopters. The full Office 2010 suite will continue to work as desktop apps, while OfficeWebApps go Metro first. Office15 will follow on x86 and ARM as Win8 desktop (which will look more in-line with the metro aesthetic than it is in the DP stage) apps. So, for instance, you can dock your ARM slate and use desktop Excel for heavy-duty work.

7. Media Center becomes a downloadable Windows extra* and gets a design update for Win8. Over time, and Windows versions, it will be deemphasized as a brand and some of its capabilities will be folded into…

8. Xbox Live becomes the TV, Movies, Music and Games delivery platform, pulling in Zune and third-party services’ content as well doing Mediaroom-based IPTV. This is accomplished as an app on Win8, that feeds into native playback capabilities of Windows, which 3rd-parties can use too.

9. Windows Phone makes a connector app available for device servicing purposes. Otherwise natively supported by Win8.

10. Kinect Fun Labs & other such Kinect-companion apps show up for Win8 & WP.

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*How some extras are priced may be dependant on how Win8 SKUs pan out, which is still up in the air.

Rhythm

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:03:04 -0430

This is a little something about Microsoft’s 2012 through 2014 platform plan. As always Microsoft and I are equally unreliable.

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CES 2012
Win8 + WinStore beta
<ONM> CTP
Tango1 launch

MWC 2012
Tango2 SDK

MIX 2012
Win8 RC
<ONM> beta
Tango2 launch + Apollo announce
Kinect commercial SDK

E3 2012
Xbox SDK, 3G Kinect games announce
Apollo SDK
Win8 RTM

Aug 2012
Win8, <ONM>, WP8, Xbox Store launch

Build 2012
XAML+XDE platform
Win8 PU DP
<OSN> announce

CES 2013
Win8 PU Beta

MWC 2013
Apollo+1 teaser

MIX 2013
HTML platform (IE11)
Win8 PU RC
<OSN> Beta
Apollo+1 SDK

E3 2013
Xbox”loop” announce
Win8 PU RTM

Build 2013
Win9 DP
<OSN> RTM
Xbox”loop” launch

CES 2014
Win9 Beta

MWC 2014
WPN teaser

MIX 2014
Win9 RC
WPN SDK
Kinect SDK update

E3 2014
Kinect HP2 announce
Xbox PU announce

Build 2014
Win9 RTM (IE12)
Win9M RTM
<OSN+1> CTP
Xbox PU preview

Nov 2014
Win9, Win9M, Kinect HP2 launch
Xbox PU RTW

—-

Bing, Azure maintain current rhythm.

Skype is currently far too fuzzy.

I have no clue about Dynamics.

Robotics is supposedly working on a 2015 jump.

Nokia-soft

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:21:00 -0430

I started writing this in late February / early March of this year. An unexpected, career-related eight-month long break from writing followed. In the interim, I tweeted on all things sundry. Parts of this post are therefore anachronistic, and IMO, amusing.

—-

Some time ago, I asked people on Twitter what my next post should be about. The message was clear: people wanted to know how I think the Microsoft-Nokia stratagem will play out in the long term. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

Let’s go through the history as quickly as we can to build context. Back in 2003 when Microsoft launched its Windows Mobile platform, Nokia and the Symbian coalition it had founded was Microsoft’s primary competitor. Over the years, Microsoft made major strides against Nokia by bagging Motorola, Sony & Samsung (all three were part of the Symbian coalition) into its mobile OEM fold. It even managed to get Palm to make Treos with Windows Mobile. Then RIM came along and messed both Microsoft & Nokia up around 2005. That’s when Exchange support appeared on S60 devices. The iPhone changed the game in 2007 of course, and old enemies across the industry became strange new bedfellows. Office was about to follow on to Symbian then too. Finally, both Microsoft and Nokia went through resets. To Microsoft’s credit they managed to do that faster, and having other profitable assets helped.

The deal itself happened for 3 reasons for Nokia:

1. Nokia made a deal with the other old devil: Intel. That was a failure waiting to happen. Maemo might have survived at Nokia, but MeeGo was DOA.

2. webOS went to HP instead of Nokia. (or HTC. Also, Amazon did not bid)

3. Elop.

Microsoft’s trio of reasons were as follows:

1. Microsoft had zero exclusive WP7 OEMs, unlike Android.

2. webOS went to HP instead of Nokia.

3. Elop.

As you can see, the migration of Elop & webOS combined together to create Nokia-soft. I don’t like it per se, because it means the lines in the industry are blurrier than ever. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, the natural thing would have been to have the 5 mobile ecosystems in the market in the long term, like so: Apple+iOS, OEMs+Android, RIM+QNX, OEMs+WP7, Nokia+webOS (with OS X & Windows on PCs). Instead we’ll end up with: iOS, Android & Windows as the three ecosystems across the board within 5 years. RIM is on deathwatch and webOS has already failed, imo. It doesn’t matter which OEM is supporting what after that.

Now, focusing more specifically on Nokia-soft (until Win9 rolls along and Elop has to deal with Sinofsky), I feel a diagram summizes my understanding of the relationship best:

What might the outcome be in 10 years? The MS nerd might not be around for that. In this crazy industry many of the current major players might have gone bust too, by then. Yet in an ideal (and impossible) situation we might see:

1. Nokia and Microsoft form a “Nexus” device relationship on mobile. (Microsoft + HP-PC do the same for non-mobile. Microsoft + Samsung collaborate on all 3 screens).

2. Skype becomes a global multi-mode communications service integrated with the Facebook graph.

3. Microsoft + Nokia disrupt healthcare IT and robotics.

4. Bing/Navteq and Xbox/Nokia<media> never manage to break Google and Apple’s respective hold on search/maps and media delivery, but continue to provide decent alternatives.

This is all assuming that Microsoft does not implode. (and Mossberg retires)

Ecosystems

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:10:04 -0430

Methinks the personal computing landscape over the next two years will look like this. Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter or your respective blogs. (Ecosystems are ordered by market share and only ones with a long-term future are included. *indicates exclusivity agreements in place or being negotiated).

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Windows 8:

Major: HP*, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus

Upcoming: Samsung, Nokia, HTC

Minor: LG, Fujitsu, Toshiba, MSI, Sony

—-

Android ICS+:

Major: Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony*, Motorola*

Upcoming: Asus, Acer, Huawei, ZTE

Minor: Lenovo, MSI, Dell, Micromax, Fujitsu-Toshiba

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iOS/X+: Apple

—-

BBX: RIM

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Xbox: Microsoft

—-

Playstation: Sony (with Google)

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Windows Phone:

Major: Samsung, HTC

Upcoming: Nokia*, ZTE

Minor: LG, Fujitsu-Toshiba, Dell, Acer

Planning: Asus, Lenovo, MSI, HP*, Huawei

Beating a dead horse

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 03:05:00 -0430

This post is a (no doubt futile) response to Google engineer, PR drone wannabe and whiner extraordinaire Matt Cutt’s latest attempt to stoke the fire. The five fundamental flaws in his argument are as follows:

Data Ownership & Origin: Google’s results as published on the open web are to be cordoned off by Bing from its web click activity data collection system. Let alone that Bing isn’t even using Google’s results, only those misdirected links in the results which Google engineers purposely clicked on to inject fake info into Microsoft’s data collection system. Bing is using user activity data as their source, not the actual contents of Google results, hence the users have ownership of that data when they give it to Microsoft, and Google does not.
Bing’s algorithm: Assuming Bing is targeting and separating click data on Google results pages in the first place, asking Bing to disclose how that particular data is weighted among the 1000 signals Bing uses is like asking Bing to disclose their result-generation algorithm. Google guards its own algorithm as one of its most precious trade-secrets, and would never disclose it. This whole issue is supposed to be about Bing benefiting off of Google’s algorithm’s uniqueness improperly, according to Google. And they expect Bing to disclose their algorithm?
Reverse-engineering: The fact that there exists a research paper that shows how competing search-engines’ spell-check mechanisms can be reverse-engineered using URL patterns does not mean that this technique is actually being used by Bing today. Bing could clarify this point quickly.
Screenshots as evidence: Matt uses a few screenshots as evidence, without disclosing that only a fraction of these so-called “honeypots” actually affected Bing results in a discernible way and that by their very nature (being nonsense terms & being rare), the “honeypot” terms were more likely to affect them.
Respect & PR: Finally, Matt attempts to threaten Microsoft with embarrassment. He says that he respects the Bing engineers, yet his, Amit Singhal’s and Google’s behavior around dispersing their allegations as factual findings without having Microsoft & independent third-parties verify them speaks of nothing but childish behavior, contempt & perhaps jealousy & a desire for vindication.

Google’s timing of releasing this allegations was suspect at best (sitting on them for a few months, then releasing on the morning of the event), and Matt’s subsequent goading of Harry Shum into playing his dirty little game and attempt at misdirecting the focus of the event does not show any respect for the Bing people whatsoever. Thankfully, most of the independent bright minds and innovators in the room still discussed the future of search in a post-Google era.

The only valid point in the whole post is that both Microsoft & Google could make the possible uses of their data-collection systems more obvious to customers. How they do this without overloading the customer with info & driving them away from opting in to these systems is a rational conversation both companies can have.

What's next, Microsoft? (or The Three-year Tactic)

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:28:00 -0430

As we are now only a little less than 3 weeks away from Mobile World Congress, I think it’s time to publish my third and final post in the what I had dubbed the “3-series” of posts. Better late than never, eh?

The next billion-dollar bet: The company is gearing up for a big gamble by directly entering the consumer and enterprise robotics markets within a little more than 2 years, with end-to-end solutions. This means robots you can buy in stores/online which run Microsoft software, their hardware is designed by Microsoft and built by a contract manufacturer, with the only brand being a Microsoft brand. This is an Xbox-like business model, with more diverse hardware designs. It’s going to take off with an Embedded 7 base, but may in the long-term switch to a common core and open up to working with other co-brand hardware design partners in Windows 9+ time-frame. The goal driving the company is very similar to that which drove it at its inception, vis, “A robot in every home, running Microsoft software”.

Future interaction models: The touch ship has sailed. Microsoft will continue to both innovate and copy competitors’ ideas where touch-based interaction is concerned, but for what it’s worth, it will never be recognized for its contributions here as much as Apple will be (and deservedly so). So, what should it do? Make like Google, HP/Palm or RIM and focus on software innovation alone? That may lead to some business success, but Apple will always have a leg up on them in terms of end-to-end user experience due to their considerable lead in usable touch-screen interaction.

Instead, Microsoft is trying to swerve around this issue, and make a bet on the next UX revolution. That is computer vision + hearing. In this difficult field, the company has spent more than a decade investing time and copious amounts of money with little measurable success. The media has been quick to dismiss their efforts with speech recognition in Windows over the years, and the vision capabilities in Surface as non-viable. In a tremendous turn of events, as soon as the company figured out recently how to put the twain together and developed Kinect, it hit upon a massive jackpot. They now have a great head-start on the rest of the industry, have successfully productized the first iteration of this technology combination, and are poised well to leapfrog the competition year over year.

As has been said by countless other commentators, the Kinect effect is pervasive, the company has grasped its potential and every division or group is hard at work integrating these capabilities into their next product.

The Microsoft experience: Despite continuing vicious political infighting within the company, it is inching closer and closer to having anything resembling a common design language that says, plain and simple, “it’s Microsoft, stupid”. Across Windows, Server & Tools, Online, IEB and Business, everyone has wised up somewhat that Metro belongs to Microsoft. This does not mean that we’ll see the exact Windows Phone 7 interface in every product; rather, they’ll all share a common design foundation, adapted specifically to suit each particular use case.

It also means more functionality and services integration across products, which had previously been hindered due to the trust-busting rules enforced on the company. Now that Microsoft is nowhere near the singular monopolistic threat it was at the beginning of the last decade, and many of its integration decisions can be seen in new light due to Apple & Google’s approach,it is poised to have its products work better together.

However, there is a lot of tension here, with some in the company more inclined to go cross-platform, rather than build platforms of their own. In the long-term this tension is a good thing, because it keeps the company from burning too much cash building products that have no hope to succeed or reason to exist. It’ll encourage the company to compete through partnerships, which will help it avoid the anti-competitive problems of old.

So, where’s the road-map, you say? I present you below, with a rather weak illustration of how I see Microsoft and its competitors progressing over the next three years:

The Tale of The Three Tablets

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:48:00 -0430

This post was going to go up two days ago. Lucky I procrastinated, because Microsoft announced ARM support in Windows 8. This news makes my thoughts a lot clearer regarding tablets, slates, journals and phones. On the other hand, it’s gonna make the future of Embedded and Xbox a lot cloudier. Allow me to explain:

The 3 tablets—whatever might that mean, eh? Well, I was hinting at the three different dev pathways being pursued within the company to figure out how to properly approach the “new” market possibilities enabled by first the iPhone and now iPad.

The first of these was a combination of Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7. The idea was that you’d put an ARM SOC, a 8+ GB SSD and a small battery behind a 7 to 9 inch screen, and that screen would then dock into a netbook chassis, which had all the usual netbook parts (maybe swapping out the Oak Trail Atom for a 2011 Core i3 ULV or Fusion APU). The dock connector would allow the screen to be powered by the netbook bits, get juice from the larger battery/AC adapter and share data on the SSD & harddrive. When docked you’d run Windows 7 and as a standalone slate, you’d get Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft may yet announce this today at CES, depending on a lot of internal politics whose resolution I probably couldn’t ever guess. The first of these franken-PCs would be made by Samsung and Dell and be upgradeable to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 next year. They would not be cost-competitive with the iPad.

The second path, that I was particularly hoping for, but is now unlikely to happen was that of the Courier. Microsoft would, if it went down this road, not use either Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7 for their slate story. Instead they’d start afresh with an all new UI built on top of Windows Embedded 7, specifically for touch + pen operation. The first iteration would be built by Sharp, and be a single-screen 7 inch device. It would run on an ARM SOC, with battery life and price similar to the iPad’s. You’d be able to use everything just fine, using only your fat fingers, but if you added a stylus, you’d be able to do a lot more. The second iteration would then have dual 5 inch screens when that could be achieved at a competitive price.

The third, and now near-final path is one Microsoft hinted at today. Windows 8, as I have detailed previously will be the go to solution for screens as big as 27 inches to those as small as 7 inches. Anything between 5 and 3 inches will run Windows Phone 8 instead. (I know you can “run” Windows or Windows Phone on any screen-size technically speaking, but these are the optimal UX-based rules made by MS ). Windows 8 will rely on the Windows Marketplace to enforce UI guidelines on third-party apps. You buy an app once and it shows you which form-factors it supports. If you then run it on a “Windows Slate” you get a touch-UI, if you run it on a “Windows Tablet or Journal”, you get touch+stylus-UI. If you run it on “Windows Laptop” you get a mouse/keyboard-UI. And obviously Windows native bits do the same. Non-slate and all Enterprise SKUs will likely still be able to run non-marketplace apps.

Eventually, in the Windows 9 timeframe, the phone product moves from an Embedded core to the common Windows core. UI continues to be form-factor specific. This was the target with one of the Windows Phone 7 dev pathways before the “reboot” but Windows on ARM wasn’t doable in the Windows 7 timeframe and hardware was too weak on the ARM-side, while battery-life too poor on the x86 front. Metro design guidelines will have become pervasive enough by then.

What this third pathway does, however, is complicate the embedded and Xbox story. WE7 was getting close to Windows in capability and was going to be used in the TV set-top, DVR and software platform product categories; it may now be restricted to automotive and vertical niche markets over the years. The Xbox guys were told to go after integrated IPTV, but again, with ARM support Windows Media Center becomes relevant again.

This leads us too far beyond tablets though, so I’ll address it in my next post.

The Three-Tiered Take

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:33:00 -0430

Ever since Microsoft was found to have abused its Windows monopoly to unfairly compete against Netscape, the idea that the company should have taken the option to split up has been thrown about at least once every year. There is little doubt that Microsoft has been pushing itself too thin by attempting to enter every market it possibly can. And that’s not for a lack of enough employees. It is widely known that the company has suffered from too many layers of inefficient management and poor internal communication. That’s partly why companies like Apple and Google have recently outpaced it in the very markets it helped develop over the years.

The solution suggested by many is to break the company in twain. What many financial analysts and industry pundits have said is that the enterprise business be led by the old guard, where Ballmer would be comfortable, and will do very well. The consumer division could become a new, lean spin-off that should be run by younger, less risk-averse people and have to fend for itself, thereby creating a more efficient company.

Microsoft, of course, has provided decent counter-arguments lately. They’ve pointed to Windows Phone as the perfect example of integration of their varied offerings. Kinect has been heralded as to have been nigh impossible to pull off without the existence of their independent Research group’s collaboration. Windows and Office too are products that are built for both consumers and enterprise. What then might be the solution?

I’m suggesting a three-tiered take:

Microsoft Business Corp.: enterprise-oriented company that sells Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync, both separately and as a hosted Azure + 365 package. Other businesses would include Dynamics, Windows Auto, Mediaroom, Windows Embedded, Amalga etc.
Microsoft Developer Org.: A non-profit funded by the business and consumer companies. Would include the Windows core team, online services platform team, the developer division and the Research group.
Microsoft, Inc.: This consumers-first entity would handle Windows, Windows phone, Windows slate, the Office client, Windows Live, Xbox, MGS, Bing and Zune.

This way, the enterprise company would be a highly profitable venture, the money-sink/investment bits would be clearly identified as such, and would not appear to be “losses”, and the consumer Windows, Office, Xbox and MGS guys would fund Bing and Windows phone. The two for-profit entities would be more likely to support third-party products really well and push each other, properly, to compete through innovation instead of corporate infighting. The non-profit technology development groups would be more likely to work on stuff that could be commercialized faster, by either company or a third-party.

Clear identification of each group’s role might mean more purposeful hiring and easier cutting of the useless fat. The stock price might actually improve too. Of course, no solution is perfect, and these divisions I have dreamed up won’t cut clean lines for some products that span multiple markets. It could also potentially put Microsoft at a competitive disadvantage or to inefficient redundancy.

That’s why I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Some photos from the Windows PC Holiday Showcase hosted by...

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:43:36 -0430

Some photos from the Windows PC Holiday Showcase hosted by Microsoft at Cult Studios in New York on Monday, December 6th.

The photos are rather terrible because I took them with a Blackberry in a room that was bathed in dim blue light. If anyone knows who the lady photographer was (with the SLR strapped on), do let me know as she took quite a few photos that might actually be good.

Anyway, I was particularly pleased because I got to check out the Dell Venue Pro and KINECT first-hand which is difficult as there is no Microsoft Store on the east coast. I also met Ben “The PC Guy” Rudolph, Ryan Asdourian & Brandon LeBlanc from Microsoft, Mary Jo Foley and Manan Kakkar from ZDNet for a few minutes, which was fun/illuminating.

An unknown guest who might have been a journalist (the chubby guy with glasses), was a bit perplexed with the Dell Inspiron Duo and asked me quite a few questions about it. There were many other folks present, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to anyone else.

It was rather fun to have the event staff constantly ply me with little appetizers and drinks, and I wouldn’t mind being invited to such shindigs in the future at all ;-)

This Silverlight/HTML5 non-sense got out of hand despite Mary Jo...

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:06:21 -0430

This Silverlight/HTML5 non-sense got out of hand despite Mary Jo Foley’s clearly written articles. Hence, I am compelled to throw my hat in the ring and hope some good comes out of it.

Using IE9 Beta?

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:26:10 -0430

Your favorite source for Microsoft rumors, speculation and tips (other than WinRumors.com & all the veteran bloggers) now has a Windows 7 Jump List for your convenience. Simply drag the blog’s icon or tab in Internet Explorer 9 to your Superbar (taskbar) to pin it. You can also pin it to your start menu by clicking on the settings button and clicking Add site to Start menu from the File menu.

Go ahead, see for yourself and let me know what you think.

(This post will explode into a million tiny pieces of glittery magic once I’ve finished reading the MSDN pages on feature detection for IE9 pinned sites and site-mode).

On platforms & people… (or my attempt at a smart title)

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:35:00 -0430

It took me a while to compose this post. The thoughts (a mix of tips, rumors, speculation and analysis) swirling about my head were many and varied and I found it difficult to fit them into a well-written piece. Eventually, I had to set my limits for the scope of this post to be pretty narrow to get it done. Without further ado, here’s the meat of the matter then.

Microsoft began life, as we all know, as a PC assembler of sorts; then moved on to an OS licensing model with its acquisition of DOS. Its next major move was into the app vendor business with Office for Mac. Subsequently, it went after its platform ambitions with Windows and for the most part, this has remained its forte ever since. So, Windows has been Microsoft’ lifeblood for quite a while now, and if I understand correctly, the company has every intention of maintaining this structure for the foreseeable future. Many in the media and financial markets have been forecasting for more years than I can remember that this undying fealty to Windows will be the undoing of the company. The short-sightedness of these doomsayers is in their presumption that the company is incapable of evolving Windows to meet the needs of the market. It is nearly certain that Microsoft will never be the first among its competitors to find success in new consumer markets, but this will not bar it from bringing innovation to the table or getting part of the pie. There is little doubt that the stock price is going nowhere then, and Ballmer (and his successors) will stick around by sheer force of will.

It may strike you that I’ve said nothing about Windows v.Next yet, and that’s because any discussion of Windows includes discussion of company politics, so strongly do they influence each other. Well, you may say, do Office, Xbox, Bing and Zune mean nothing then? ‘Course not, but understand that they are layers on Windows in one way or another. Technically this is obvious enough but you can see it in the branding: Windows Live Office, Windows Phone etc.

This leads us to Windows “everywhere”. That’s pretty much the company line now, although it does not imply that all “Windows” products will look or work the same. The idea is that to its customers, Microsoft as a brand doesn’t exist. People know Windows and XBOX. That’s it. There is a distant goal to get Bing up there. But all new products must fall in line with one of the above. Are you an “open” platform? You are henceforth branded Windows XYZ. Closed platform, hmm, you must be Xbox and so on. Zune, Bing, Office are all cross-platform services, secondary to platforms.

So all Microsoft has to do for a new product is to choose the Windows or Xbox strategy and brand it accordingly. So they’re calling the phone, slate, the cloud and car platforms Windows, but the TV platform will most definitely be the Xbox.

I guess that brings us to Windows 8, Windows slate and Windows phone. With the slate form factor, the immediate future is OEM customization over Windows 7. Then comes Windows 8, wherein the native “shell” will optimize for slates, when it is run in that configuration (much like how certain bits of tablet, touch & mobility stuff in 7 appear only on specific hardware classes). The Windows Marketplace will surface applications that provide UI suited to slates in such cases. Of course, end-users can still get non-touch optimized apps as they do now. Developers on the Phone market will be encouraged to port their apps & games to slates (very easy, since Silverlight + XNA are cross-platform). The hardware platform will continue to be x86 with 8 so as to simplify updating native code Windows apps for the new platform & APIs. Legacy apps will be supported with Compatibility mode—a virtualization layer. With these advances, Windows 8 will still target to be fully performant on 7’s minimum specs. Obviously, adoption of solid state storage, better displays, USB 3 etc. will be encouraged, but more importantly, the Sensors platform will be substantially more refined and complete. In addition, 8 will allow third-party developers to use Office 2010’s click-to-run feature, the “personal cloud” allocated to each Windows Live user will be accessible as part of pooled storage and use the mesh framework to sync the appropriate bits across devices. Windows applications that are sold through the marketplace will roam with the user (Live ID) rather than being stuck to one PC (there will limits on the number of devices of course, much like WP7). The roaming can be quite literal with if the developer makes use of Azure platform’s App-V/AppFabric. All of these efforts (along with those that were found in the slides leak months ago) will make Windows 8 devices more appliance-like in ease of use and reliability. Finally, speaking of Live integration (tip of the hat to Neowin) & HTML5/IE9 as a platform, elements of MSR’s “social desktop” project will debut with 8.

So, one can rule out the idea that Windows phone 7 (in its current state) will do slate duties anytime in the near future. The reasons for this decision are manifold. Technically speaking, it is just as ill-suited for slates as Windows 7 is right now, because the UI is not optimized for 7 to 10 inch screens. Add to this the fact that the number of Windows applications far outstrips that of Windows phone right now, makes using the phone OS on slates a bit of a gamble. Consider also that Windows 7 has been a great success, and Windows 8 planning was in place well before phone 7 found its feet. Interestingly, while it may look different, WP7 is in many ways closer to Windows than WinMo ever was. Consider how WP7 seeks to commoditize smartphone hardware by forcing OEMs to compete on design and pricing alone, because the software is the same. This is more like desktop Windows. I can’t even begin to comprehend why the company was allowing OEMs to butcher WinMo before, while it sat on its massive behind for years on end (that role is filled by Android now, only the source of revenue is different). Microsoft also now has priority control over updates, much like it does on the desktop.

The second set of reasons is entirely political. As of now, there are two foci of power left in the company. Steve B and Steve Si. Ballmer has either by choice, by attrition, or by each person’s own follies found himself in a place where Allchin, Gates, Bach, Elop, Ozzie are all gone, leaving only one man with any interest or spine to reach for the top when he leaves. Scott Gu may be much liked, but he is happy where he is and Lees (a cunning idiot) and Mettrick (has potential, too young to last long) have yet to prove themselves (how WP7 and KINECT perform in 2011-12 is what really counts). As has been stated so often on Mini, Sinofsky would very much have liked to oversee (indirectly) Windows phone & Zune (but not Xbox or Auto), but now that Ballmer has put himself more directly in charge, he will have to be CEO first to do that. In five odd years, I wouldn’t be surprised (with Win 9 & nextbox on their way). In the meanwhile, after PDC 10, it is more obvious than ever that CEO replacements aside, the company needs to identify someone with stage presence in the interim to do most of the talking. Barring Brandon Watson’s talk, the rest of the keynote was incredibly slow, dull and full of MBA or engineer-speak. PDC may be for developers, but much of the stuff in the keynote should have been covered in sessions only, maybe reducing it down to one hour.

This brings me nicely to the Xbox. What a tremendous story! Perhaps the one division that will push the Windows brand out of a market & make its imprint on Windows to boot. The magical subscription unicorn that Microsoft toyed with for ages by Windows and Office and finally brought around with Azure & 365 happened on the Xbox first. The LIVE brand happened here first. The doll-house of Media Center & IPTV was realized on Xbox. Zune owes its existence to Xbox. And then there’s KINECT. Xbox has rapidly become incubation for Windows v.Next features, the immediate effects of which will be based on Kinect & GfW. When MSR is downsized (probably by next year), this division will get as much of the remains devoted to it as Windows, Phone and Office. And it’ll all be justified when the nextbox is delivered in 3 to 4 years. I’m calling it the Xbox TV.

So, after this massive piece of writing (for a blog, scratch that, hobby, anyway), do I think that Microsoft is flawless? Are things all peachy in Ballmer-land? ‘Course not. For one, I fear the “wait for two years” strategy may bite them in the ass when competitors figure out everything in the company’s playbook (no pun intended). Specifically, the decision to wait on Intel to get x86 to catch up with ARM could prove problematic and Intel has messed up in the past. Then there’s the danger that Lees gets promoted. Also, if Wall Street forces in a new CEO, either the company’s short-term strategy or Windows will suffer. Midori is of course up for trouble at any time now that Ozzie and some technical fellows have left. Hopefully, Allard’s return as “design & integration adviser” (a title I made up) to Ballmer might allay my fears a teensy bit. Hopefully, the company’s efforts around ARM in Xbox are bleeding into slates & phones. Hopefully the unification efforts around Metro coalesce properly with Zune, Xbox & Windows working together. It’s mostly all up in the air though, and Apple does have the $50b and counting stashed up to wreak havoc in so many ways.

Good luck, then, Microsoft! We’ll compare notes in five odd years.

7 ways to improve IE9

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 19:14:00 -0430

Links dragged to the desktop should just create old-school shortcuts and not site-mode IE as well, whereas those dragged to the taskbar OR start menu should create pinned sites.
Once Silverlight is available in 64-bit, please allow me to choose 64-bit IE as my default and stick to it. e.g. Pinned sites only open in 32-bit IE. Also, pinned sites should allow me to use plugins/addons other than Flash/Silverlight as well. Currently, my finger-print login system (DigitalPersona + Authentec) works on regular IE9 (both versions) for site logins but not in pinned sites / site-mode which is really annoying. I understand the performance concerns behind this design, but atleast allow me to choose to turn that on.
IE now finally allows me to drag links to a new tab directly. However, it is not smart enough to recognize non-hyperlinked site addresses and allow me to drag or right-click them to open new tabs (Firefox 4 does this). IE has Accelerators for a while now, so why do they not work in this case. At least let me drag text to the address bar.
The title of the active tab should be shown in the IE9 window title bar. At least make this an option. As it is the tab bar does not have enough room to show it and hovering over tabs to see the tool-tip for the title is both clunky and not possible using Touch.
The chrome (glass) part of the IE9 frame around the address + title bar can be shrunk ever so slightly. There is a tiny bit of glass between the windows close/restore/min buttons and the address bar that is unnecessary. They should not be on the same row of course (no room for tabs) but just reduce that little gap.
The little white strip separating the tab/address bar from the page is really annoying and distracting, especially on dark-themed sites. For a browser that wants the frame to recede and the sites to shine, this strip is really annoying. There are other ways to differentiate the active tab in a tab group (not distinct enough right now anyway), e.g. similar to how Office 2010 highlights active tabs in the ribbon, by extending a little color bleed upward into the frame above the tab.
The new notification bar is much better than the one in IE8. It could be made even better by emulating the Windows 7 notification area/system tray behavior. It’d be really great if, like that system, the IE9 notification bar dimmed over time if it were ignored. It doesn’t have to go away entirely (good reasons for that) until the user browses away or closes the tab etc., but it can certainly get out of the way more by dimming.

Also, a little tip, because I see people complaining about not being able to close inactive tabs without switching to them first:

You can right-click on any tab and close it from the context-menu without switching to it. I’d rather not have the close-tab button replicated on every single tab when the tab area is already somewhat smaller with IE9 (I use a 12-inch screen on high-DPI because I have a HP touchsmart tx2 tablet). For touch control, you can press and hold on a tab or do a one-two tap (tap with one finger, then quickly with another without releasing the first tap) to get the same context-menu for closing tabs. Of course, there should also be a keyboard shortcut to do the same. If you know of one, please let me know.

Microsoft's upcoming social gaming play

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:55:00 -0430

I was prompted to write this post after reading Mary Jo Foley’s post suggesting Microsoft might acquire Linden Labs to get in on the social gaming market before Google + Zynga eat it up. I had been tweeting about Microsoft’s upcoming social gaming moves for a while, but as it is not my primary interest, I avoided writing a post on it. Now, however, I feel the need to say a little more.

Firstly, Microsoft will not acquire Linden Labs. The company’s primary product SecondLife has been on it’s last legs for a while now, and that type of gaming is not the direction Microsoft is aiming at anyway. There is also the fact that Microsoft is getting out of a lot of things that it has been working on for years but did not gel well with its core strengths and were bleeding money. Case in point, the recent nixing or separation of various game studios, less popular Windows Live services, research not leading toward products etc. Microsoft is parternering up more often with companies who are good at what they do, like Wordpress, Google (Youtube), Facebook, etc. This does not mean that the company is not interested in social gaming. It continues to pursue things that it believes are strategically important or which have huge potential customer bases or which are natural extensions of its core strengths without spreading itself too thin. That is precisely why Microsoft is going to go hard at social gaming very soon, with many homegrown projects geared for launch. One only has to see Eric Schmidt’s recent interview with WSJ to understand why this segment is an important growth area for the bigwigs of the tech industry.

To that end, Microsoft’s Rare studio is solely producing social-oriented casual games, primarily for KINECT. Then there is Robot entertainment which is revamping Age of Empires to be social, and of course Flight will be rebooted as well soon. Besides that, the company is working on a social gaming portal for the web for which hiring is on at full steam. MGS mobile has been set-up to get the social going with Zune and Xbox Live enabled social games on WP7. There is that Facebook platform game which is in incubation right now.

Frankly, Microsoft has its plate full with social gaming projects right now, and I would be very comfortable guessing that they will enjoy a lot of success very soon as these projects launch. Microsoft has had a strong history in gaming for ages (quite unlike media favorites Apple and Google). It has the only successful social gaming service right now that people are willing to pay for. And it is positioned well for tremendous growth in customer base in the near future with what it is developing now. No need for a Second Life rehash then.

Extending Windows Phone 7

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:02:00 -0430

Microsoft is off to a good start with Windows Phone 7, but there is of course a lot more work to do. Some of it is rather obvious and is included in every single preview article on the web (Twitter integration/app, better multitasking for 3rd party apps, clipboard support). What every article does not do is go into suggesting how Microsoft might want to achieve these things. I understand the futility of doing this, as the design of new WP7 functionality is not by community consensus - it is done by a (small) paid team of engineers/designers/developers at the company. However, I’m a sucker for this kind of speculative thinking, so I thought I’d take a crack at it. I also wanted to address some of less obvious aspects of how the design might fit into the “Metro” style. Now, I wanted to create mock-ups for everything, but it was holding me back from posting sooner. So, I’ll do my best to help you visualize in text what I’m trying to say. Eventually, I might add the mock-ups, but if someone wants to help me with this, then just give me a shout out on Twitter or leave a comment on this post.

1. Quick access to universal search for data on the phone.

Microsoft built a Bing button into every WP7 device. It is supposed to be contextual. Press it within a hub or app to search within that data-set. From the Start screen, within IE mobile and any app that doesn’t implement a custom action for that button, if you press it, you are taken to the “Bing app”. That app is fairly limited - it only lets you flip between the local listings, web results and news categories. Otherwise it relies on smart interpretation of queries to provide special results e.g. movie show-times, weather forecast, maps, flight status etc. Of course, this results in some functionality being inaccessible. For instance, shopping results don’t show up as they do on the desktop. There is no way to search your contact’s status updates (clicking the search button in the people hub only searches your contacts). Pressing search in IE doesn’t search your history & favorites, rather it takes you to the Bing app. There is no place for combined search results from your phone (including apps, e-mail, appointments, 3rd party app data etc.) The best way to make this available?

A. From the Start screen:

Make the Bing app a hub. Make Local, Web & News “tabs” on the left-most view of the panorama. Swipe to the right and you get the Images, Video & Music, swipe again to get Social, Health & Shopping. Long-press/double-click the search button, and you get universal phone data search. Swipe to the right to search data from particular apps which must explicitly enable this to show up here.

B. Make contextual search “really, really work”:

There are a lot of places which could use contextual search, where currently you are taken to Bing. e.g. IE favorites. Fix these spots.

2. App-switching

There is no simple way to switch between apps on WP7, definitely none that is scalable. Right now, you are restricted to keep pressing the back button in hopes that after you get through all of an apps screens in reverse, you find yourself in the right place. And what happens when you get there and want to go to another app? Does the back button follow a “unidirectional fixed timeline” or a “loop back to last action, bidirectional timeline”. Problems, problems, problems. Yes, you can go back to the Start screen with the Windows button. That is restricted to a limited number of tiles. Okay, you say, maybe I’ll swipe to the right again and again to get to the app list & search for the one I want and tap it. How do you know that you were using that app and not another and not make it an annoyingly convoluted process?

Easy. Double-click/Long-press the Back button and get an “app-switcher” screen. This could list the apps you’ve been using in the last few hours (alphabetical view), or your most recently used apps (timeline view) or the ones that are still running background threads (switcher view … if more multitasking APIs like the ones in iOS 4 or music+video hub are introduced). You could make it a hub & then you could include all of these categories. Of course, the search button would work here contextually.

3. Making installed apps more discoverable.

Enable contextual search in the app-list to the right of the Start-screen. The list screen should initially display sort-order options instead of the list (e.g Recently installed, Recently updated, Frequently used, Alphabetical, Categories in a style similar to how the Zune part of the music+video hub has music, video, podcasts etc. listed). Click on a sort-order like Categories & you get into a panorama which allows swiping sideways between categories, Alphabetical could split into sets of first-alphabets, Recently … into pages by recency etc.). This is easier to understand with a mock-up.

4. Backgrounding APIs

The music+video hub already automatically enables background audio and new/pinned/history/now-playing updates for app submitted to the marketplace that are primarily media-related. The same idea (taking a page out of Apple’s playbook) can be extended to VOIP apps through making the Phone screen a panorama, with apps showing on swiping to the right, and given background “phone” (mic+speaker+WiFi/3G) access & updating of recent calls/pinned contacts/new contacts areas. This would also be the right place to add video-calling apps & not in the camera app. Location is another obvious background-thread, maybe through the maps app or the Bing hub (as described in point 1. above). WP7 already does dehydrate/rehydrate or tombstoning or saved-states out of the box. I already described background thread running apps being shown in the “app-switcher” in point 2. above. Local notifications should be fairly easy, considering notification toasts & live tiles are a WP7 keystone design feature.

5. Clipboard

COMING SOON ;-)