Year: 2012

One of the legendary technology relationships is hitting a bump in the road. Like in many existing marriages it starts with poor communications.  Usually by poor communications we mean silence.  Things are not being spoken.  Then when spoken it comes as a surprise to one party or both.  That has been the case of late between two of the industries legendary companies: Intel and Microsoft.  For so many years the term Wintel has been synonymous with the PC industry. If you bought a desktop it would simply come with the Windows operating system and the microprocessor would be a Intel x86 chip.  With each new release of Windows Bill Gates would meet with Andy Grove to talk about the future of computing and what type of power he could expect with next microprocessor.  How could Microsoft software best leverage increased processor capabilities.

But over the course of the past few years that relationship has started to become a bit fractured. One of the big shifts in the industry over the past decade has been the increasing fast paced move to mobile devices.  Today this comes in two primary flavors: Smartphones and Tablets.  The shift to the mobile revolution has happened quickly led by Apple Computers and followed by others.  We have lot’s of choices we as consumers can make.  Do I want to go down the Apple path?  What about Google?  Amazon Kindle Fire?  A Nook anyone?  With choice comes competition and the rules of ninety percent market share are being changed.  With that partnerships are being challenged.  What was once cozy and friendly is being cooled over with thin sheets of ice.  It is dangerous in the world of business to get comfortable.  Comfort is usually something that happens with time and understandably or not, Microsoft and Intel got too comfortable. Microsoft recently has seen the wedge driven by Apple and in particular the iPad.  The iPad’s power management and instant boot capabilities really changed consumer expectations in how a PC should work.  the idea of instant on has been around for a long time.  I remember in the days of running WindowsNT at Microsoft the pain of booting up every morning.  It seemed like a five-minute process (I am pretty sure it was).  Not to mention the number of times I had to reboot during the course of the week.  I am sure over the course of a year a day or two of productivity was lost just due to the Windows boot process.  Then along comes the iPad and with the touch of a button and a swipe of a finger I am on the internet.  How?  Well it is interesting in the Steve Jobs biography that originally he was going to build the iPad with a Intel based micro processor.  He viewed the partnership Apple had developed with Intel since moving off the Motorola chip as important and working well. However some smart people at Apple said we can get a lot better performance if we go with a RISC based  chip versus the Intel CISC based chip.  The power management capabilities and over all performance trumped the partnership.  Apple had the right idea, in the end customer experience outweighs all. The success of the iPad and creation on a new market, the tablet space, created disruption in the industry.  However you define it, make no question that many people postponed a laptop purchase and decided to buy a tablet.  Thus requiring no Microsoft software and no Intel chip. The result has been both companies pursuing  individual market opportunities.  Intel has sought out Google to try to forge a closer relationship to support Android based tablet devices and pursue the other larger player in the tablet pie.  Microsoft announced over a year ago its pursuit of supporting and later creating a tablet based on ARM (RISC based chip).  As PC and Laptop growth slows it will be vitally important for each company to have a play in the mobile market place.

In fairness to both companies it is a testament to their legendary status in the industry that the relationship has been so harmonious for so long.  Over two decades.  In any industry to have such a long-lasting relationship that has been both cordial and successful is quite amazing.  However in technology things move quick and to get too comfortable with the future is to be the surest path to making certain your demise.  In this regard both Microsoft and Intel are guilty.  I have felt for a long time that both companies felt in the computing industry that they felt the hub of all technology experiences would be the PC.  In the age of the internet where everything is being decentralized and it is being distributed across he network , keep in mind it knows no boundaries.  That includes our homes and businesses.  Our homes have wireless networks distributed between desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.  The future will only bring more devices.  Where I once could say 100% of my internet time is on the PC, in a distributed environment the number continues to shrink.  That is why smartphones and tablets are disruptive technologies.  It is also why Intel and Microsoft are dimming stars gradually fading and reaching out to grab a last strand of light that once was.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann October 11, 2012

Steve Ballmer was interviewed by the local Seattle Times newspaper during the annual Microsoft company meeting. This event was held in Seattle’s Key arena and was attended by 15,000 Microsoft employees.  It creates traffic hell in town.  Steve called this an epic year for Microsoft. With the release of Windows 8 Microsoft will compete on the desktop (ok they still own the desktop), the tablet and the smartphone (Windows Phone 8).  Not to mention releases of Office and new games for XBOX.  There is no question that what he says is true.  Windows 8 is really the first true big change in the Windows UI since Windows 95 was released almost 17 years ago.  In an industry that moves so fast it is rather mind-boggling that the “Start” button has lasted so long.  It also brings a unified operating system across all devices to reality.  The desktop, the tablet and the phone will all have a standardized OS, so for developers this should in theory make life easier.  Steve was going good until he said bigger that Windows 8 will be bigger than  Windows 95.  That particular reference seems to come up a lot among Microsoft executives.

In one  of my early blogs I wrote about the launch of Windows 95.  I can honestly say that was a big day in my life.  To have participated in such a great event was truly fantastic.  Any of my former co-workers at the time I would be so bold to say, would agree.  It is a fantastic part of the Microsoft legacy.  It has also proven to be something that Microsoft has wanted to desperately repeat and do again. To somehow have another such event that launches the company into the technology stratosphere.  To make it the envy of the tech world once again.  To be loved and feared, again. It is not far-fetched.  There still is talent at the company.  They still work very hard in Redmond.  Despite critics they do innovate.  Windows 8 will generate more money than Windows 95, just by virtue of the huge distribution machine that Microsoft has created.  Despite all this apparent success in the end Windows 8 will not restore Microsoft glory.  It will not be bigger than Windows 95.

First it will not surprise anyone as there is already so much about Windows 8 that is known and that has been seen already out in the marketplace for sometime via the beta program, MSDN Subscriptions, etc…  The biggest change in Windows 8 being the new UI formally known as Metro.  Which is not really new since it first appeared and is borrowed from Windows Phone 7, which has been out for 2 years.  Windows 95 also boasted a new UI, but it was different in several regards.  It was much more user-friendly than previous versions of Windows, it was a 32 bit OS and it’s price point was much lower than the alternate Macintosh, which had been floundering since Steve Jobs was ousted.  It was a big leap forward for the company and the industry.

Second Microsoft had done a really effective whisper campaign prior to the launch of Windows 95.  Yes there were beta’s out in the market, the new UI had been reviewed.  But it was just the tip of the iceberg and consumers had read enough and were interested enough and wanted the new OS.  In fact they really wanted it.  There were launch parties, lines at midnight.  There was just a lot of excitement.  The press was on board as it seemed every news station was covering the launch.  Showing people lined up at midnight to buy the new Microsoft OS.  The people in line were smiling and laughing.  Microsoft at the time was very much like Apple is today.  It was generating excitement about their products and about the company.  It was the coolest pace to work on the planet.

Third and most importantly it was fulfilling a dream, a vision.  A PC on every desktop and in every home.  The dream had been there since the company launched in 1975 with the birth of the Altair Computer.  The PC was moving from being a toy, an interesting gadget, a confusing to device,  to becoming a mainstream product that everyone had to have.  The products had matured and were being more and more used in corporate offices, small businesses, schools, and homes.  It was also releasing at a time that another significant event was taking place, the dawn of the internet to the consumer society.  The timing was right for success of Windows 95.

As I said make no mistake, Windows 8 from a revenue perspective will generate the billions of dollars.  Wall Street will be happy with its performance on laptops and desktops.  On tablets and smartphones we will just have to wait and see.  But maybe the bigger point is the OS is just part of a bigger picture, the device.  People will only be truly excited if the hardware is exciting.  The OS is still very important it is just not as exciting as it was 17 years ago.  It is a welcome change, it shows how far the industry has come.  But what excites the industry has changed in a big and positive way.

If you think about what the operating system is there to do, what it was originally designed to do was to take commands from the hardware and interpret them into images (letters) one the screen and over time it evolved to allow developers to write applications and generate new lines of business.  It was software that was creating this magic.  It created a lot of millionaires.  And, yes, it created a few billionaires.  No one understood the meaning of the operating system and what it could do and what it did do  better than Bill Gates.   Windows 95 was a fulfillment of a journey, started in his youth at Lakeside School.  However between Windows 95 and Windows 8 even more exciting stuff has happened as the rate of innovation increased and technological advances were made in hardware and software that would dwarf what had been created in the first 20 years of Microsoft’s existence  The competitive landscape for Microsoft has changed and expanded.  Windows 8 remains a core piece of that competitive Microsoft advantage but it is under ever-increasing pressure from all sides as desktops morph to Lap[top to Netbooks to Tablets to Phones .  The latter two have appeared within the last 5 years, what new form factors will the next five years bring.  What OS will they run?  What OS will they need?

In the end Windows 8 will be big, but as big as Windows 95?  Not a chance, the stars are just not aligned like they were in 1995.  The idea of a OS making that significant of a change in how society functions will not happen with a new fancy UI.  The big releases in tech industry are few and far between.  Windows 95 was a big one.  The launch of the first Apple iPhone was another huge one.  You saw society and their interaction with their cell phone change what was seemingly overnight.  Windows 95 had a similar impact as the PC was an accepted device and was everywhere.  In the end Microsoft can have the impact they want again, but it just will not be the OS, it will not be Windows 8.  Society has moved on and awaits the next big change.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann Portland, OR September 19, 2012

My past would suggest I am about to write a blog about the legendary goth band led by Peter Murphy and Daniel Ash, but for those who know my past you will be disappointed to know that this will not be the case.  Sorry.  Wherever I can I will try to reference the band for those who care to read further.  How did this rather unique title come about?  I have been reading the biography of Steve Jobs and though not completed I have been fascinated by his thought process in the early days around development of the Macintosh.  He was thinking beyond simple features and even back in the early 80’s was thinking about the aesthetics of what he was building.  This   It was at a time when PC’s were just becoming reality and for the most part they were simply functional and frankly plain ugly.  It’s this marriage of tech and art that I find very interesting as it has become and will become more prevalent moving into the existing decade and beyond.  It was a major reason for the rebirth of Steve Jobs.

The Bauhaus art movement started in Germany following the end of World War 1, in fact many say Bauhaus 1919 was the start of this simplistic and minimalist art style.   What makes it interesting and relevant to Apple is the movement was a response to the rise of machines and technology following World War 1, which was the first war to introduce, new weaponry to the battlefield in mass.  New inventions produced on  a mass scale such as tanks, planes, battleships etc..came of age during this gruesome war.  However out of all that bloodshed new ideas and ways of thinking emerged in society The simplicity of the Bauhaus art movement captivated Steve Jobs and he was influenced by the art in designing the first Mac.  To be clear it was one of many art influences, not to mention the design of Braun hand blenders that would drive Steve Jobs forward.  For Steve Jobs simplicity was a necessary component of creating great technology, not just the guts of the PC but the overall look, feel and beauty of the PC.

That intersection of art and tech is what I have found interesting and visionary in reading the Jobs biography.  For those who remember the early days of the PC, the Microsoft mantra was “Your PC can be any color you want as long as it is beige”.  Prior to the rise of flat screens, the CRT’s we had were large, bulky and hideous.  In fact in the early evolution of technology the PC was just plain ugliness.  However Jobs never saw it that way, it would just take 20 years for his vision to become reality.  In the early days he was fascinated by that intersection.  I found it interesting that he would go down to an appliance store and look at the design of a hand blender and think about how some of that German simplicity could make it into the PC. He gravitated towards the Italians and their elegant designs and then to the stark simplicity of a post World War 1 art movement in Germany, the Bauhaus.  From under the black sun he gravitated toward something that would come to define the future of computing.

It is amazing to me that in an industry built on vision that so few were able to see that meeting of software, hardware and fashion.  The two former started in the realm of the engineer.  The latter starts in culture, in the world of day-to-day life.  It has taken many years but over time the technology has morphed and shrunk in size that we see the realm of software and hardware impact all parts of our lives and further.  How we listen to music is no longer the giant stereos with mondo speakers that we saw in the 70’s.  The phone is no longer a single purpose device.  The car is becoming a software platform   Entertainment content is leaving our television.  Glasses are taking in a new multifaceted dimension.  How we read is morphing.  Everything is becoming smaller and more simplistic in look and feel, yet the  technology is becoming infinitely more powerful.

Steve Jobs was seeing this connection before it truly existed, he was taking the art of simplicity and incorporating it into technology, both what was visible to the average human and also what was not visible to the average human.  When I was at Microsoft it was a mode of thinking that just did not exist.  Mainly because we saw only the functionality of technology and its application to society.  It’s physical beauty was never a part of the equation (this was primarily due to the fact that Microsoft had little to no involvement in hardware).  Fast forward to today and the world of tech surrounds everyone and more importantly it is all in color.  Every new Smartphone that is unveiled seems to come with a big announcement around what colors will be available, not to mention the screen design usually matches the color of the phone, very chic.  You now see the old Bill gates mantra of, “You are either a software company or a hardware company”, is seemingly dead.  Microsoft will be releasing and manufacturing their own tablet, the Microsoft Surface.  Steve Jobs made Microsoft do this.

Steve Jobs in death seems to still exist with the launch of the new iPhone 5.  The iPhone 5 was on the drawing board before he passed away.  But the Steve Jobs imprint lives on.  The emphasis on bold and beautiful screens.  The software is great but the picture and design are fantastic.  It is elegant.  It will be interesting as we move forward if Apple can keep its simple designs pure the way Steve Jobs would have envisioned them.  The art of fashion is a timeless thing that is constantly invented and reinvented.  It lasts.  Now some of those earlier inventions and designs may and will incorporate technology.  The art of Bauhaus is coming back in 21st century style with old designs and new capabilities.  It is an inspiring legacy that at times looked back into history to move us forward.  I like fashion.  I like simple elegance.  This is a great time we live in and the future only gets brighter.What started nearly a hundred years ago is being brought back to life and we can all thank Steve Jobs

Goodnight and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann September 17, 2012

I wrote about this first a year ago.  It is one of those terms we have been hearing for several years now, but I am of the opinion that we have turned the corner and it is now more than just an accepted term.  In my current role I am learning a lot about what VMware and its entire virtualization product set.  In their certification training the “post PC era” is mentioned several times.  Ironic since the current CEO of VMware Paul Maritz, played a major part in creating the PC era, while he was at Microsoft.  On the consumer side we have seen the rapid rise of consumer driven smart devices, like the iPhone and iPad.  People want small intelligent, fun mobile devices. It seems almost hard to accept as the PC era has not really been with us that long.  But technology moves fast and it seems self-evident that what VMware, Google, Apple  and others are touting is all but too true.

We have seen a lot of change over the past couple of hundred year.  We had the agrarian age, where much of work and wealth was tied to the care of the land and feeding of society.  Then we moved to the industrial age, where man’s technological advancements started to foster new industries such as train travel, the manufacturing of cars, the necessity of steel, and the birth of the oil industry.  A hundred years later, give or take a few years, the rise of the PC and the information age began to take hold.  It was not long before the dream of a PC on very desktop and every home moved from fantasy to reality.  The one thing that is evident is the we will not have to wait a hundred years for the birth of a new economic revolution.  The tech industry is transforming rapidly and will not last as long as the industrial revolution and before long we will move to the age of robotics.  The age of Nano tech.  The age of new energy.  In a presentation I heard Newt Gingrich say, “In the new century we will surpass all the advancements of the 20th century in the first 25 years”.  It may seem bold, but is realistic and in the end will be true.

When you think about desktops and laptops it may make you think we have returned to mainframes with dumb terminals. To a certain degree it has.  But I was listening to CNBC one morning and they were talking about Generation Y (those born 1980 or later) and how they use or do not use technology. This generation is the Tablet, Laptop and Mobile phone group. The idea of a desktop is not their thing.  They are also the generation that will feel more comfortable with using cloud based services.  In addition many things that were thought to be only available using the power of the PC are now readily available in the cloud and can be viewed through a web browser.  Think if all the mapping technologies we have available to us today.  We take for granted that all of that is being provided to us remotely and we are just consuming a  service.  We need a user interface to consume services but where those services reside is not relevant to the majority the world’s population.

The Roomba is an interesting device.  A device that vacuums the house for you.  It is a robot made and manufactured bu iRobot.  My niece has one.  I saw one once in an office space.  They sell well.  Are they pervasive in society?  No, not yet.  The people who own them are what we call in marketing terms, early adopters.  What does this have to with the post-PC era?  Well a large part of PC’s is the software that drives them.  In the early days of the tech industry the role of software was relinquished to the PC.  But as we moved into the new century and what Bill Gates called the “software decade”, he failed to see in its entire what that meant.  Software was going to increasingly be deployed in hardware devices, not called a PC.  These new emerging fields of Robotics and renewable energies would not be tied to the desktop.  Simple robotic devices like the Roomba, start to demonstrate what the power of software will be and what it can and is going to be.  It also shows a future with devices beyond simple information devices, but true productivity devices in a manual labor sense.

The latest stats for this years PC market show another year of sub 2% growth.  Some due to the slower than normal global economy, but most is due to what I believe is consumers choosing to buy a tablet or smartphone and forgoing the cost of a new PC.  Do not get me wrong the PC will live for the rest of the 21st Century.  But what these buying trends show is that there is a world out there does not live in spreadsheets.  That do not build databases.  Who may not even use a word processor.  A lot of those people bought a PC with Microsoft Office on it so they could access the wonders of the world-wide web.  Now they have an alternative choice.  A choice that is simpler and in some cases cheaper.    I think sometimes in certain areas of the technology industry we became a bit silo-ed in our views.  To think one view of the world will live forever is a recipe for long-term failure. Bill Gates thought the PC would be the center of the universe and it still may be, but it’s share of the overall pie is shrinking as many people move away from the PC as their primary device.  Looking for the elusive mobile lifestyle.

The coming six month are reason for a lot of excitement that will test these views.  We have Windows 8 coming to market and this will test the one OS to rule them all theory from the one and only company that can drive this vision, Microsoft.  We will also have the iPhone5 coming for the holidays.  Both these releases are guaranteed successes.  These will test two fundamentally different vision from two giants in the industry.  Microsoft still owns the desktop and Apple owns the consumer.  In the background you have Google pitching a different a vision with its Android mobile OS and Chrome based laptops.  Where will Facebook play?  Are they just Social Networking?  They have API’s so where there is a API there is a developer play.  We are entering the post-PC era,  that is almost for certain at this point.  There are likely devices we have not even thought of, it could be the next great leap in robotics that creates the next break through or simply a prettier, friendlier personal device.  In the end the only thing that is forever is change

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann August 28, 2012

Seems odd to say since I have been on every version of Outlook since version 1.0. That was back before calendaring and email were integrated. For scheduling you had a little software program called schedule +. You could always tell old timers at Microsoft because when you were talking to someone about setting up a potential meeting they would always say “Sched + me”. Now Microsoft has finally decided to replace Hotmail by renaming it and updating it to Outlook. I have had my Hotmail account for over ten years and during that time it has become old and outdated and frankly really hard to manage. I also have a gMail account which I do not use very much so this is a chance to stat anew and see if I will stay with Outlook or start migrating to gMail. Lets take a look at the new “cloud” based email service from Microsoft, both mostly good and some, in my view, iffy decisions.

First off the UI is cleaned up immensely.  I should say that I don’t mean its brand new in its layout, but it is softer in its appearance and simplified.  The thing about UI’s are it’s not necessarily about being bold it’s a fine art.  Google Search is a good example of something simple and appealing to the eye.  At the same token I will say gMail will look busy and cluttered compared  to Outlook.  One thing I really liked was deleting email.  In Hotmail I always found myself scrolling up or down to delete an email or series of emails.  With Outlook delete is only on top and only appears when I check a box (when I check a box all my options appear reply, delete, junk, etc..).  A very simple and elegant way of cleaning up the user interface.  I also like when I mouse over an email it provides a delete bucket icon so if I know it’s just an email I will never read I can easily delete.  It also (like gMail) has consolidated  conversation threads, which was a must and a welcome change.  This is one feature I will add “it is about time!!”.  I really like it but did it take so long?  In any case glad to have it.

When I go to People I am first greeted with the now standard do you want to pull all your Facebook Friend, Twitter Followers, LinkedIn contacts to Outlook.  I have to admit maybe there is an advantage to this but the way I interact with Social Networking, to me at least, highlights the advantage of the modern browser and multi-tab browsing.  I also do not want 500+ FB contacts and 800+ Linked in contacts imported into People and then synched to my iPhone..However it does do some integration by default and like the inbox the contact info is very clean and non-intrusive.  The basic integration with Facebook is nice in that it does not clutter my interface.  Even though I may not use it it’s done in a way that is again very clean in its approach.  Next to email, People is the most important thing I access and manage on a regular basis.  The name change?  I am OK with it, however when asked I will still say “let me look at my contacts”, I do not foresee someone asking me, “Can you find Joe’s phone number”.  I respond with, “Let me look it up in my people”.  Sounds weird.  But if Microsoft wants to replace contacts with people, I can live with that.

The calendar is not much different from its predecessor.  When you think of calendars either in digital or print has the basic form changed much in the last 500 years?  That being said it was the one area I felt that I was no longer in Outlook but back in Hotmail. The look and feel are not what I experience in the rest of Outlook but brings me back to where I came from.  It almost makes me think did they run out of time to meet a deadline?  My hope is this gets cleaned up to look more like the rest of Outlook as so far I like what I have seen in the rest of Outlook.  there are thousands of calendar templates on the market I would think they could have found and licensed one that was better than what they ended up with.

Then there is the name.  There is no question new and young users seem attracted to and attached to gMail and that Hotmail had become old and outdated.  If I have been critical of Microsoft about one thing it would have to be their mismanaged sales and marketing efforts.  As I said about the Nokia Lumia adds and the effort to tie in Office with Windows Mobile, no kid wants a phone they can do homework on.  With the name Outlook we are now tying my internet email with my corporate email.  As I said at the start I have had and loved every version of Outlook since v1.0.  However if you want to attract new and younger users, well image is everything.  That being said there were three options:

1. Keep Hotmail (or MSN)
2. Use Outlook and its established reputation
3. New name

If I had to decide I probably would have stuck with Hotmail.  As I think a new name would have been just another brand for Microsoft to manage.  Maybe Bing Mail?  No easy answers on this one, I am just a bit leery of using Outlook as the brand, especially if you are trying to attract a younger audience.

So what is my overall verdict?  Overall I really like the new Outlook.  I could go to gMail but why?  Compared to Outlook gMail looks cluttered and old.  I think they did a great job in simplifying the UI for email and people.  The calendar is in need of a  makeover, but top be  honest I do not use that feature too much.  I liked the new Contacts set up and overall I find the experience enjoyable.  I will say in composing anew email moving the To:, CC, and BCC, to the left pane is taking some getting used to but not really a big deal.  In the end too much headache to move and I find Outlook a better experience anyway.  I am and will remain a Microsoft internet mail user.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann August 7, 2012