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I see that Mary Jo Foley has confessed to buying an iPad and I have to confess that I bought one too. Like Mary Jo, it is my first Apple product ever, and like Mary Jo, so far I love it. Or more accurately, I love it when I can get it away from the rest of the family who love it too. Just a few observations, many of which echo Mary Jo’s:
If I had to sum it up, the iPad is an incredible amount of fun. There may be a business use in there somewhere but I am not looking for it.
I do wonder how Microsoft missed this market. This is what Microsoft’s Origami (aka UMPC) should have been but wasn’t, perhaps because it came down from the PC world instead of up from smartphones. As Mary Jo observes, Microsoft is apparently going to try again with Windows 7 or Windows Embedded "slates", and we’ll have to see if they can break their persistent run of problems in the "gadget space," but a company that not long ago had such a large chunk of the smartphone market should have seen this coming, particularly since they did not have any partners in this market to slow them down.
Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4:
Kicking off a global launch consisting of more than 150 developer-focused events, Microsoft Corp. announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. The company also announced that Silverlight 4 will release to Web (RTW) later in the week. Together, these technologies simplify the entire development process, enabling developers to target new platforms and build high-quality applications. Developers will be able to download Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 in conjunction with the Microsoft Visual Studio Conference & Expo launch event in Las Vegas.
So what’s new in VS2010? Microsoft Developer Division Senior Vice President, S. Somasegar calls out the following:
To my mind the biggies are the full support of all the Windows 7 features and the enhanced support for Sharepoint which is a surprise hit as a business development platform. More details are available at the Visual Studio 2010 Web site.
It’s been a long time coming but the steady progress of x64 technology from both Intel and AMD has finally impelled Microsoft to drop future support for Intel’s variant Itanium 64-bit processor family.
Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version of Windows Server to support the Intel Itanium architecture. SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010 are also the last versions to support Itanium.
Current support for Itanium remains unchanged. Each of these products represent the state of the art of their respective product lines. Each fully support Itanium, support the recently-released Itanium 9300 (“Tukwila”) processor, and Microsoft’s support for these products will continue – following the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. Mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-Based Systems (and R2) will end, in accordance with that policy, on July 9, 2013, while extended support will continue until July 10, 2018. That’s 8 more years of support.
Why the change? The natural evolution of the x86 64-bit (“x64”) architecture has led to the creation of processors and servers which deliver the scalability and reliability needed for today’s “mission-critical” workloads. Just this week, both Intel and AMD have released new high core-count processors, and servers with 8 or more x64 processors have now been announced by a full dozen server manufacturers. Such servers contain 64 to 96 processor cores, with more on the horizon.
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Microsoft will continue to focus on the x64 architecture, and it’s new business-critical role, while we continue to support Itanium customers for the next 8 years as this transition is completed.
Once upon a time, Windows NT (the precursor to Windows Server) supported a variety of microprocessor architectures, but they have been steadily whittled down over the years. Itanium remained as long as it did because of its early promise of an industrial strength 64-bit Intel architecture. Now it mainly exists to power some Hewlett-Packard HP-UX (Unix) servers.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach delivered the keynote last night at the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas and it was the usual mixture of self-congratulatory boosterism and product and technology demos. Here is my list of highlights:
Windows 7
After a report on how well Windows 7 is selling, there were the PC demos including a prototype Hewlett-Packard slate PC that the technical press was pining for.
It looks like a touch enabled netbook to me and while it may have a niche, I suspect I would be screaming for a keyboard (or at least a stylus) in under a minute of usage. Perhaps more interesting were the ultrathin Lenovo A300 laptop with a 21.5" screen and the Sony VAIO home entertainment notebook with a 24" screen. How big does a laptop have to get before it becomes a single element desktop?
Bing
HP is making Bing the default Web search engine and MSN the default home page on all their PCs in 42 countries.
Xbox
Ballmer put the usual lipstick on this pig and Robbie Bach appeared later to flog upcoming games (including another lucrative Halo version) and tout Project Natal, the motion sensing technology that will appear later this year to replace the standard controllers for some games.
Windows Mobile
Zzzzzz.
Mediaroom 2.0
Bach also announced Mediaroom 2.0, the latest version of Microsoft’s IPTV offering for service providers which now supports PCs and smartphoes as well as set top boxes and Xbox consoles for TV viewing.
Summary
Microsoft really did not have much of its own to show again this year. I am almost beginning to miss the goofy Bill Gates future technology skits.
