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Microsoft Embraces Macs And Interoperability At Mix07

crn.com — A remarkable sign of changing times at Microsoft was on display Monday at Microsoft's opening keynote session for its Mix07 conference in Las Vegas: Macs. The presentation was riddled with Macs.

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  • geoken, on 10/12/2007, -10/+26Obviously they're pushing interoperability now, they're trying to gain a foothold. I'm pretty sure it would be a different story if SilverLight had the market position of Flash.

    As it stands I still haven't heard about anything this can do that Flash can't.
    • grogan, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4As for things that flash can't do, TechCrunch said yesterday:

      "The announcements around Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform yesterday were important to anyone who is thinking about where the web will evolve. For those of us watching the demos at the Mix conference the immediate importance of it was apparent - Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications. It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy. After the keynote, the main topic of conversation in the hallways centered on just how effectively Microsoft carried out its execution of Adobe."


      I'm not sure they really care about locking people into Windows through this- they're just trying to sell their Windows Live services that work with Silverlight.
    • geoken, on 10/12/2007, -2/+22That doesn't really tell me anything. I want actual facts. Many of the authors who have swooned over SilverLight and called it the Flash killer seemed to have a very limited knowledge of Flash, with many of their claimed SilverLight benefits bieng flat out wrong.
    • grogan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Here's some more substantial information:
      http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/30/silverlight-the-web-just-got-richer/

      The key seems to be that Microsoft is embedding a miniature CLR, which apparently is very fast:

      "The most remarkable part of the CLR are its speed and its size. First of all, the full Silverlight download with CLR and everything else will weigh in at around 4MB - which with current broadband penetration is effortless. Second of all the CLR is fast, very very fast. In a demonstration today showing a game of chess routines written in .NET competed against native Javascript routines and the result was a speed difference of orders of magnitude. Developers can simple take their existing Javascript and copy it into Silverlight and have it perform multiple times faster than it does in the native browser environment. Further to that, Silverlight applications can access and manipulate the browser DOM (meaning they can reach outside and into the webpage itself) so once the Silverlight runtime is more common expect to see many developers of web applications tap into Silverlight for both a performance increase and for better visual enhancements and user experience."
    • jimbojim, on 10/12/2007, -8/+23Meh... Microsoft has always worked along side Macs.. as much as they could for them being a competitor. It's the Apple fanboys who make it out to be Mac vs. MS.

      Get this: Macs can still sell good without MS failing.
    • johnbellone, on 10/12/2007, -7/+5Think about it. What does Microsoft have to lose? With Apple pushing the fact that Windows can be run on the Mac now Microsoft just stands to make even more money off the licensing. With Apple's hardware minority they don't have to worry about dominance issues. The real competition for Apple is Dell, Gateway and all the other big box companies. Even then they have their own niche market and aren't really effected be anything that happens there. The only place Microsoft is in direct competition with Apple is the Zune.
    • str3ama, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5finally we can start pulling down that wall that has separated mac and pc users....perhaps we can get rid of that stupid animosity that exists between the two groups, maybe even establish some sort of standards between the operating systems.

      Overall I think this is spurred by web 2.0, Apple and Microsoft are both worried about the fact that the web can serve as an inter-operable platform meaning that in the future we may be able to have some sort of web-based platform that doesn't require any proprietary operating system (a man can dream..a man can dream).
    • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11The embrace of Microsoft is like that of a black widow spider. Resist their advances, they do not come with good intentions.

      Stick to open formats (Silverlight is not truly open), don't fall for the trap again as the world did in the 90s.
    • revmitcz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Here's one thing it can do that Flash can't : Lock people into using Microsoft products.

      But on a more important note - Flash has gotten to the ubiquity standpoint where users who have it installed are in the high-90 percentile. You can develop for Flash knowing full well that you're not going to be annoying millions of users who need to find, download, and install a new plug-in. YouTube wouldn't have been purchased for $1.65 billion if it was built on Windows Media, Quicktime, or RealPlayer technology (*cough*CinemaNow*cough*). The beauty was in video for people without (in all but very few cases) requiring extra downloading/installing/configuring on the part of the end user.

      Now that we've gotten this far, Microsoft wants to stand up and say "no, wait! we can do better! we promise!"? Uhh... yeah. We've seen their attempts in the past. No thanx. I'll stick to Flash, Apollo, and a near-ubiquitous standard.
    • flag564, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3"Microsoft Embraces Macs"

      Well I guess that has more to do with the fact that Macs can now run Windows. So in reality it's Mac has embraced Microsoft.
    • BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3You would have to an absolute lunatic to allow your product to get invested in Microsoft interoperability, considering the well documented history of technologies, companies, people etc. destroyed by doing just that.

      Of course, they will likely smile and nod and humour the large aggressive rich company that's famous for obliterating competitors, but don't think the technology world is lining up to get their nuts on the Microsoft block for fun, because strangely, other businesses like to keep making money and protect their investments as much as Microsoft does.
    • Eldoo77, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Typical MS... Embrace / Extend / Extinguish.
  • abyss478, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6meh... microsoft is just realizing how much they suck
  • wedderburn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21er they're pushing to get there technology accepted so that it will become a standard that they can control.

    take IE for example back in the day when netscape was around Micosoft ported IE to Unix(solaris) and mac os once netscape was out of the picture the solaris port went aswell.
    once silverlights a standard they will start making better versions of it for windows or stop updates for non windows versions in doing so forcing the poor users to stay or move to a windows pc.
    • gnomon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I was actually unaware of a Solaris port of IE--that's interesting.
    • wedderburn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8yeah theres even a wikipedia article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX ,i didn't know they made it for HP-UX (Hewlett Packard Unix) as well, learn something everyday :)
    • Adma1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Seems like MS can do no good whatsoever to some people.

      If people aren't willing to change to something potentially better, then we'll be stuck with the same crap forever, we need innovation!

      Also, about them cutting away better versions from Linux/Macs/whatever, wouldn't that be a pretty stupid idea? It's not like Flash is going to go away for good, there will be competition. If they stop support, then Flash irks it's way back into the spotlight. Let's think things through before we go on an MS lynch.
  • eangel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15They will not release the authoring tools on Mac or Linux. Until they do that, there is no reason to trust MS's claim of interoperability, it's is completely bogus.

    I can see this going the same direction as IE. Once MS established market dominance with their browser, and applied their practice of embrace, extend (extinguish) to web standards, they dropped IE for Mac. It would be foolish to believe MS plans any real support beyond Windows in the (unlikely, IMO) case that Silverlight supplants Flash. The move to make Silverlight "interoperable" is clearly not genuine.

    Edit: Yes, good call wedderburn, beat me to it.
    • MacParrot, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5They dropped IE for the Mac after Apple released a version of Safari that didn't completely suck.
    • jon61575, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Apple built Safari because they knew support for IE was going to be dropped.
    • ericush, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2It's true that we won't be seeing VS or Blend on the Mac, but as 1.0 is just JavaScript and XML there's nothing preventing Silverlight apps being written on Macs using any editor.
    • natenovs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0and why should they?
      maybe if apple wants to see their machines they will develop some tools to develop silverlight on it themselves. as ericush said, its just javascript, xml, and .net framework. hell, the thing could be written in notepad with photoshop if you want.

      why should microsoft make development tools for a different companies product. leave that up to the apple developers.
  • audiored, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9But will it work on linux? I wonder if MS is more worried about linux and may keep that OS locked out.
  • rongon87, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/4/42/Krose.jpg/459px-Krose.jpg
  • aegisknight66, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Ah, interoperability from NASA.......just like when they tried to inter-operate metric and standard units on the Climate Orbiter back in '99?
  • bradym80, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12They are afraid that Adobe Flex and Apollo will make Microsoft obsolete.
    • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13When all Microsoft does is clone other people's innovations, they should be obsolete! Microsoft is like a giant thug that steals from everyone and then tries to take the credit for it.

      Seriously. What does Microsoft offer, compared to the competition? Are their products truly better, or do they sell because of their interoperability? Everything Microsoft does is to tie people back to Windows, Office and their online services. A shrewd business strategy that has worked great for them. But has it worked great for YOU?
    • HUKI365, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Yes, it has, Kenobi. Thanks for asking.
    • Darcy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5I think it's Adobe who need to be afraid here. If Silverlight and the Expression design tools become a huge success, this could very easily wipe out a huge chunk of Adobes market. If Microsoft fail, then they would have just failed to capture a new market, wasted a lot of time, lost a lot of money and embarrassed themselves, but not seriously hurt their business. If they succeed they could potentially destroy Adobe or at least cause the company serious damage. It wiill be interesting to see what happens, but Adobe have a hell of a lot more to lose than MS.
    • estvir, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Hahah, right, Flex and Apollo will topple Microsoft whereas Linux, Apple and others haven't been able too.

      Hahahahahah.

      OBKenobi, of course they want you to stay on their products, it's a freaking business and stop trying to make it out as if it's some big evil thing. Apple tries to do it, the FOSS-zealots do it and so on.

      SilverLight /is/ superior in some ways and face it, a lot of Microsoft products are good and better than the competition.
    • DOGPARTY, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7No tools for the mac platform so how exactly are designers going to make things for it.
    • BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Apple voting for an initiative that's part of edging out everything from Photoshop and Apollo down to KHTML and BSD?

      Dump on its prepress and design background, some of its most historically pivotal app support for industry, and software components from the top to the bottom of its OS and its userbase's favoured programs?

      All for a flash copy avec .Net that reaches fewer platforms, and doesn't provide developer tools for Apple developers? This would actually put Apple-using developers out of work unless they get windows.


      It would be turkeys voting for Christmas. Jobs has to have more survival instinct than that.

      I notice it's the same old tricks. I thought MSFT had more imagination than that, at least at the business aggression side of things. What gives, Microsoft?


  • caranthir, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4With XAML, CLR and DOM access this is nothing less than Web 3.0
    • sc0tt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Using Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 makes baby jesus cry :(
  • retardojesus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3iT's A trAP!!
  • iChuckles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Well Mac Office 2008 is on the last lap and will be released before the fall school year. So I am sure they want high visibility for that as well.
  • sparkalex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3give me ActionScript 3 any day of the week
    • jawngee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That's what they're giving you, ECMAScript 3.0.
  • Namo4184, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Can anyone say, embrace and extend. We saw it with IE, Java, WMP, etc... And we will see Microsoft's "embrance and extend" strategy again with silverlight if it gains a majority stake.

    Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice... well you know the rest.
    • BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes. I can't see any business with experience biting here.

      Of course, it may be a political move by Microsoft trying to paint themselves as the voice of reasonable interoperability, knowing full well that most credible technology companies will be reluctant to touch it.

      Their moves in the direction of loudly, publicly announcing interoperability that isn't, cross-platform technologies that aren't and open source stuff that isn't would seem fairly consistent with this.

      If that's what this is, Microsoft speaking with forked tongue in front of the public, defying people to lose face, you can expect Jobs to match that, shake their hand, smile through bared teeth and laugh about it later, just as the folks from IBM etc. do.
  • S4MF1SHER, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Steve Jobs (sounding like Mr. Burns): Ehhxcellent.
  • blueeyedmonster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2You know, screw IE. I'd just be happy if they focused on making Windows Explorer stop crashing on Vista 10 times a day. Put all your tech dudes on that, Microsoft.
  • smranta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"The Linux crowd is noisy, but Microsoft isn't convinced it has enough market share to justify Silverlight support, said Brian Goldfarb, the group product manager helming it." oh boy.. closing your eyes on linux doesnt reduce its market share.

  • smranta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"In case it's not clear to you, I'm having a blast," Ozzie said. "I'm enjoying the opportunity to help shape Microsoft's role in this next shift, as the pendulum has swing from software to pure services to software plus services."
    Ozzie is hitting it right now.
  • mmmgood, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I don't care what they do, I don't trust them at all.
  • aliguana, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Its obvious... the more Microsoft embraces the Mac, the more they show Windows running on it, the more they release Mac friendly products, the more Bill and Bill are seen as supporters, the less likely it will be that Apple will release OSX as a direct vanilla competitor to Windows. Although, I would see it as a quid-pro-quo thing : you can run Windows on our computers, so we're going to run OSX on yours. May the best OS win.
  • Penta5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Does that mean that the only platform MS could be certain it worked was a Mac?
  • MeltingIce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have a feeling Linux users are going to be in an uproar about this since Silverlight won't support it. I bet if enough users spoke up though, Microsoft would extend support to it, especially since Dell now officially supports Ubuntu.
    • natenovs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0mono is already working on a silverlight runtime. people need to take off their tin foil hats here.
  • phillydrifter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3*****, it's not a change of pace, MS will insert themselves intoany market which they think they could make a profit in, it's only common sense. They have more money than god and are willing to take the risks in order to stamp out any and all competition in order to vastly dominate any market. They could lose billions in research and faulty products by issuing a loss-leader that only simply tempts people into trying out their products.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader
  • Diganta, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Let's look at Microsoft's track record for interoperability.

    - Came out with Windows NT. Which could run on not only x86, but also PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS, Sparc.
    That interoperability came to a screeching halt quite soon.
    - Came out with Outlook for Mac OS9. Discontinued Outlook for Macs and no MAPI support on Entourage
    - Came out with Internet Explorer for Mac OS9/X. Discontinued IE 5.2.3 support
    - Came out with Windows Media Player for Mac OSX. Discontinued after Windows Media Player 9.0 and
    no DRM support for WMV and WMA
    - Allowed to purchase Virtual PC from Connectix, stalling G5 support, then killed it for Mac OS X.
    - Finally crippling Office 2008 by removing VBA which is would hurt Mac business customers and potential new
    Mac customers looking for alternative platforms.

    Don't forget the old Microsoft axiom. Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. Repeat.
  • spltimg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is just plain bad. You can tell it is bad because they are not porting it over to operating systems that can easily run on the same hardware as vista/xp.
  • threemagic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Microsoft is a software company... Apple is a HARDWARE company. They are NOT competitors. Microsoft wants to sell it's software to as many hardware vendors as possible. Makes sense for them to embrace everyone.

    I like telling this story. We are an HP and Apple dealership which happens to be a Microsoft Gold partner. We held a tech showcase last summer and wanted all our vendors to come. Apple came on one condition ONLY. If their booth was as big and prominent as HP's. They didn't even care that it was a showcase on Microsoft's Vista.
  • alansky, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2HAH! Microsoft is just trying to elbow its way into the party so it can poison the punch. Microsoft lies.
  • mmmgood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It's bad enough that Flash is as widely used as it is. Web stuff shouldn't be proprietary.
  •  

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