No. No, you don’t. You plan a trip, buy tickets, get everything lined up long before you go. It’s been my contention for some time that buying a new computing device – smartphone, tablet/slate or other, is just like taking a trip. Also, unlike years ago where when we bought a computer, it was guaranteed to come with Windows and run all the old apps that for some reason we hang on to like hoarders on a TV show, today’s new devices come with a Baskin-Robbins assortment of operating systems – none of which will run Windows applications as-is (and that’s fine, as long as enough other apps are actually available for the device being considered).

With all due respect to the people of Dubuque, I call the act of buying a device without regard to how you’ll actually use it, “taking a trip to Dubuque“. I have been to Dubuque once, briefly while moving cross-country, but I can’t speak with authority as to the activities that avail themselves there (I’m sure there are some fun and interesting things to do). But having come from a similarly small town in Montana with a less catchy name, Dubuque works better as a destination that you’re going to want to plan for before you arrive, or you might be a little bored.

I was a fan of Microsoft’s Tablet PC platform when it first came on the scene – in fact my main computer at Microsoft for almost two years was a Motion Computing “slate” device (not a convertible, though I did order a Motion USB keyboard too). Unfortunately, my experience was that handwriting recognition, though handy, wasn’t perfect – and with my horrible handwriting, resulted in an archived database of my handwriting, not anything searchable or digitally usable. In essence, OneNote and a few drawing applications ( I didn’t have Photoshop, but surely it would be useful as well) were the only real applications that took advantage of the Tablet PC platform. That hasn’t changed much. Today the main reason why you’d buy a Tablet PC running Windows 7 is for pen input, not broad consumer scenarios (Motion Computing, which still makes great hardware has become soley focused on medical and services for exactly this reason). Though Windows 7 actually does have full multi-touch gesture support, most people don’t even know this, as witnessed during a recent webinar we had at work where people asked when Microsoft would introduce a version of Windows with touch support (they already do!) - and few applications make the most of it. I haven’t tried using Microsoft Office 2010 with a touch-focused PC, but I can’t imagine it being a great fit. Office, to date, is written to be driven via  a mouse (or a stylus, acting as a proxy-driven mouse). Touch requires a very different user interface design.

The iPad was successful from day 1 because it took advantage of the entire stable of iPhone applications, and simply doubled their resolution (to varying success), and used that to cantilever into motivating developers to build iPad optimized applications. No Android slate has established anywhere near the same market, most likely because of this aspect – when you get the device, what do you do with it? Sure. You’ll browse the web and check email. What else? How many consumers really want to pay $800+, plus data plans for a device that can just check email and browse the web? That’s not very viable. Today, HP announced new, pretty good looking all-in-one TouchSmart devices. Though one section of that article mentions them being consumer focused, the article ends with a fizzle, stating the systems are “designed with the ‘hospitality, retail, and health care’ industries in mind”. Yes, that’s right. Without a stable of consumer-focused multi-touch applications, devices like this, as great as they may sound at first glance, become just simple all-in-one PC’s for most, and touch-based only when damned into a career within a vertical industry with one or more in-house applications written just for touch, that they’ll run day in and day out until the device is retired.

It’s quite unfortunate how touch hasn’t taken off in Windows. ISVs don’t write apps because there aren’t enough touch-based Windows computers and no way to monetize to the ease and degree the Apple App Store has enabled, and yet people don’t buy touch-based Windows PCs for the same reason they don’t buy 3D TV’s – it’s a trip to Dubuque. Like most consumers, I’m not going to buy a ticket there until we’ve got some clear plans of what we’re going to do on the trip.

“We are very excited about the full set of partners for the next version of Windows.
NVidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are working on SoC designs based on the ARM architecture.
Intel and AMD will continue to innovate on the x86 platform, including the new low-powered SoC systems that will be fully supported by Windows and will include support for native x86 applications.”

To paraphrase the above, x86-based SoC systems will of course include x86 application support, but new ARM-based SoC systems will not provide any emulation support for native x86 applications. Applications and device drivers will have to be recompiled and/or rewritten to run on Windows on ARM.

This is very significant, as it is both a pro and a con. The pro is that legacy x86 applications not optimized for gesture won’t likely cross into ARM, and new applications will likely be written that both take advantage of the ARM processor, end-user scenarios anticipated for the device (not sitting at a keyboard using a mouse, running Lotus 1-2-3), and be designed for the small/mobile form factors we can anticipate. The con is of course that application compatibility is what made Windows what it is today – most major applications make the leap from version to version of Windows,  and Microsoft makes a concerted effort to ensure legacy application compatibility. If you have an ancient x86 app for Windows 7 that you love, it may not be waiting for you (but a new version or an entirely new app may be) when you get there. This is uncharted territory for Microsoft. I can recall major burps Windows has hit along the way – 95 (loss of some 16-bit apps and many devices), ME (loss of real-mode DOS apps, XP (loss of many more DOS apps and many devices), Vista (mostly loss of devices). But this will be the most major hiccup I can think of in terms of application compatibility. Honestly, I feel that is a mixed bag, and Windows on ARM shouldn’t be noted as a “it’s a stupid idea because…” as I think a new generation of apps, designed for the form factor, CPU, scenarios, and end-user needs will be far more valuable to Microsoft than 20 year old applications that don’t need any of the new functionality delivered by systems using the ARM SoC architecture. Another significant benefit to excluding emulation support for x86 on ARM is operating system size. In order to support x86 applications with an emulation layer, the operating system would likely need to be nearly twice the size of an ARM-only version.

As I alluded to yesterday, Windows on ARM is step 1 of 4 to building computers (tablet/slate or other) that can compete with the iPad. This first step is significant – but it shouldn’t be touted as a move that will make a Windows PC on ARM an immediate alternative/equivalent for a consumer considering an iPad or other ARM-based slate or ARM-based notebook. To do that, Microsoft has to do the three additional steps, below.

1. Natively support Windows on the ARM (or low-powered x86 SoC) processor architecture (including streamlining the OS to minimize background services and processes that blow CPU time/battery life)
2. Emphasize gesture-based APIs as an equal mode of interaction with Windows vs. mouse/stylus
3. Work with OEM partners to come up with system designs that are feature/value competitive, unique, and that consumers fall in love with
4. Evangelize and enable an ecosystem of gesture-based applications and games before the platform arrives

Windows NT, upon which all full versions of Windows today are based, was designed from day one to be a “portable” architecture. Though the Intel x86 (and the architecturally derived 64-bit AMD64/x64 platform) has always been and continues to be the principal architecture supported by Windows, it didn’t start out that way (the first architecture supported by NT wasn’t x86 – it was the Intel i860 RISC processor – explicitly to force a portable architecture).

Throughout it’s life, NT has supported quite a few non x86 architectures – but in the end, every one has been deprecated – even the Intel Itanium (IA64) architecture is now end-of-lifed – leaving x86 and it’s descendant x64 as the sole Windows architectures. Again.

It is surely possible that the Windows codebase could be ported to support the ARM architecture. But let’s stop for a second and asses what Windows on ARM would really mean. Assume Microsoft released a version of Windows 7 (say at the same time as Service Pack 2) or it simultaneously shipped Windows 8 for ARM at the same time it shipped for x86/x64 in the assumed Q4CY2012 timeframe. What would Microsoft really gain?

As many people say Microsoft should port ARM to Windows, I think it’s important to note what Microsoft would and would not gain by adding support for ARM. This list is not perfect, it is comprised of some fact and some opinion, and I welcome your feedback and will tune it accordingly. But I believe anyone saying, “Microsoft needs to port Windows to ARM” should carefully consider this maneuver. Microsoft has never sustained Windows on any platform besides x86. What would make Windows on ARM succeed where others have failed?

Truths of Windows on ARM

• Windows on ARM is possible. TRUE – Microsoft has ported the Windows codebase to RISC architectures before, and could surely do it again. The low power constraints of ARM provide a unique challenge, but it could be done. See the next point though; this is only part of the battle.
• Windows applications could be ported to ARM. TRUE – Though key applications and APIs are designed explicitly for the x86 or x64 architecture, it would not be insurmountable to port them to ARM – again, this still isn’t the most significant problem facing Microsoft to provide an iPad counterpoint – gesture-based navigation and low power consumption are.
• Windows on ARM could provide a desktop platform as well as a tablet platform. TRUE – certainly Windows optimized for tablets could run on desktops as well, and would likely provide a great thin client platform (as Windows CE and now Windows Embedded Compact have done for some time). Touch enablement may not be as logical here, though and a focus on thin clients would risk mindshare and potentially marketshare of Office users unless an ARM-based, gesture-focused version of Office was also available.

Fallacies of Windows on ARM

• Windows on ARM will provide a counter to the iPad. FALSE (technically) – Architecturally porting Windows is step one. Gesture-enabling the entire operating system and providing gesture-focused development APIs are step two. OEMs must then provide devices as compelling as or more compelling than the iPad, at a competitive price and with reasonable non-WiFi connectivity options (see the recent $100 Galaxy Tab price drop for an example here). Simultaneously, Microsoft would need to nurture an ISV application ecosystem in a way they have not in some time, and with urgency they haven’t really ever done – all while not randomizing the Windows Phone 7 platform or ISV ecosystem.
• Windows applications and games will work on Windows on ARM. FALSE – no way. Windows has used legacy application compatibility as a cantilever to induce upgrades from one version to the next. Not only is that not possible in this scenario, it becomes a liability. Every aspect of Windows and any application would need to assume that there may never be a mouse or physical keyboard attached to the system, and must focus on gesture-based navigation at all times – if it is to provide a true counterpoint to iOS. In addition, Microsoft would need to provide Flash and Silverlight for this platform, or full HTML5 in the browser in order to enable multimedia playback. If Microsoft included a full Flash runtime, it would need to be gesture enabled as well, and would likely encounter power consumption and/or performance issues. Android and other ARM-based platforms running Flash have been criticized for high power consumption, as have full Windows systems running on single-core Atom processors (simultaneously criticized for their performance – resulting in the need for dual-core Atom processors).
• Windows on ARM provides a significantly better solution than a gesture-enabled Windows running on Atom. False – though a power-optimized, gesture-enabled Windows with API support is hardly trivial – it is an easier task than porting Windows, and would result in legacy applications working – though that is potentially a detriment, not a benefit.
• Windows on ARM provides a significantly better solution than Windows CE or a “Windows Tablet 7” derived from Windows Phone 7 would. FALSE – Windows Phone 7 has shipped, and will be updated throughout 2011. It is gesture-enabled now, runs on ARM processors today, and supports gesture-enabled application development. Though no legacy x86 applications would be supported (I believe this actually to be a net benefit), it would be considerably easier to derive a Tablet/slate focused version from Windows Phone 7 than porting Windows.
• Devices for Windows would work with Windows on ARM. FALSE – no devices would make the shift. Though this has traditionally been a detriment to Windows (lack of application and device driver support precluded Windows XP for x64 from being widely adopted) this would actually be a net benefit if considering a competitor to iOS. You don’t want mice. You don’t want legacy keyboard, display drivers, or game controllers. Those are baggage. In a gesture-enabled Windows, the cut line needs to be clear, or customers won’t understand, and OEMs won’t “go big” with new platforms.

Recently I discussed three devices that today may not seem terribly similar. However, I believe that in the next 1-2 years, you will see these three devices, and the three companies behind them, going head to head.

• Microsoft – Xbox 360
• Apple – Apple TV
• Google – Google TV

At first glance, you’re probably shaking your head saying maybe the last two have some things in common. But compare them deeper using the appendix provided below, and you’ll see the devices aren’t terribly different – and will be meeting in the middle over the coming year or two.

In the end, all three platforms provide, or could/will provide 1) Media content, 2) Applications, and 3) Games. All become “diversion in a box”. Microsoft’s is predisposed as a gaming device, Apple’s as an iTunes consumption device, and Google’s, seemingly focused on attempting to integrate the web into the television (to a content-provider limited end at this point).

There is an important differentiation I want to make here – consoles, generally, are social devices. So is the Apple TV and most content on Google TV. However I believe that there are two types of applications on consoles/media boxes – single user and multiple user.

Twitter and Facebook, though often touted as “TV Applications”, aren’t. Your Twitter feed is yours – how interesting is it to your family, really. Same with much of your Facebook feed – especially where school or work meets family. MLB At Bat on the other hand? Generally pretty multiple user – as much so as live TV of the same event would be. Many games or applications on the iPhone/iPod Touch won’t port well to an Apple TV environment – for example note-taking applications or Mahjongg, which are generally solitary applications. Instead, the applications I believe will be successful on these types of devices are social ones. Imagine a multi-user Angry Birds with iDevices (or Androids for Google TV users) as Wii-like motion-sensing remotes, or also look  at games such as Pinball Remote, which uses an iDevice for a controller and a Mac for the display – replace the Mac with an Apple TV and a television – same concept.

As Kinect moves Microsoft more into the casual games market (to date the happy spot for the Wii), the announced apps market does the same for Google TV, and a potential App Store would for Apple TV, it’s not hard to see these devices going head to head to become the center of your family room – providing you content, multi-user games, and social applications.

Appendix:

Xbox 360:

• Primary role: Gaming device
• Price: $199-$399, based upon storage and inclusion of Kinect
• Controller: Proprietary gaming controllers, optional proprietary entertainment remote, Kinect gesture controller
• Third-party applications: Games only, though limited “applications” have been made available (Twitter, Facebook). I anticipate this may change by 2012.
• Content sources: Zune – subscription based music, rental based video, or purchase of music/video, Media Center PC streaming, U-verse, Netflix.
• Live TV: Yes – Either as a Media Center Extender streaming from a Windows Media Center PC, or if you are an AT&T U-verse subscriber, it can also serve as a secondary head unit.
• Special functionality: Gaming console, U-verse secondary box, Windows Media Center Extender
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, cost, may not appeal to non-gamers.

Apple TV:

• Primary role: Media pass-through device
• Price: $99
• Controller: Simple proprietary remote or comprehensive iPhone/iPod Touch Remote application.
• Third-party applications: Not yet, and not announced. Anticipated in Q3CY11.
• Content sources: iTunes store – rental based video, sharing/AirPlay from iTunes on a Mac or PC, AirPlay from iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, Netflix, YouTube.
• Live TV: No
• Special functionality: Significant content rental availability, AirPlay streaming from iDevices, streaming from iTunes.
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, no content purchase from device, no music purchase from device (regressions from prior version).

Google TV:

• Primary role: Media pass-through device
• Price: $229 and up
• Controller: Most offer full-QWERTY keyboard controller, Android/iPhone remote application available as well.
• Third-party applications: Limited third party applications included. No marketplace for others yet, but announced. Anticipated in Q1CY11.
• Content sources: Live TV routed through device, but only for DISH Network subscribers, streaming video from web (if allowed by site provider – a problem to date) or Netflix or Amazon VOD.
• Live TV: Yes – DISH Network only.
• Special functionality: Web browser with Flash support, content search, key applications such as Pandora integrated in.
• Limitations: No third party applications yet, cost, complexity, lack of content at the present time (artificially constrained by content providers).

Since the original Xbox shipped almost 9 years ago, Microsoft has been fighting a war for the family room, in order to be the hub of your entertainment (gaming, and to a degree, larger) world. They’ve also thrown down several other gauntlets. Microsoft’s efforts to break in to the “last mile” of video for some time resulted in the Windows CE-based UltimateTV platform used by DirectTV (discontinued in 2002 amidst aggressive competition) and now providing the Mediaroom platform used by AT&T U-verse and Deutsche Telekom, among others, which has recently added the ability to view live content on the Xbox 360 as if it was a native receiver and use Windows Phone 7 to schedule or view recorded content.

Windows XP Media Center Edition (“MCE”) really began the process of Microsoft exploring the family room with their own “standalone” platform beyond the Xbox, albeit on traditional OEM PC’s decked out with TV Tuners, high-end video cards (and significant HDD space and RAM). MCE was initially a special version of XP that honestly only the geekiest, most Windows-centric videophile could stay in love with – I was in love with it for awhile – until the system began misbehaving and costing me recordings – reminding me that PC’s aren’t appliances. MCE was complete with it’s own thin clients (Media Center Extenders or “MCXs”, including the Xbox 360). A platform that puts a Windows PC at the heart of your entertainment world isn’t something most consumers were willing to buy into, and the irony is that MCXs were created to let you move your MCE system back out of the family room into an office or other location – so even if MCE was to be your entertainment hub, it was to be relegated to somewhere less thermally and acoustically challenging than a stack of dedicated A/V equipment. Devices that acted solely as Media Center Extender devices were short-lived and now no longer exist – the Xbox 360 remains the sole “extender” available, and was the only one ever able to view HD-quality content.

Even with a software development API that allowed integration into the Media Center Edition user interface, there was never any vibrant third-party application ecosystem for Media Center in the manner that there is for the iPhone or Android devices. In true Microsoft form, the focus was on providing a content platform – at best, a user-experience – to the standard consumption of “dumb tv” content*. Microsoft provides applications and platforms – that’s what they do. Media Center functionality remains available, and is included as a component of many versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Interestingly, the original MCX form factor from Linksys (also white-labeled by HP) were dead-silent solid state devices not unlike the new generation of Apple TV hardware (MCXs ran Windows CE whereas the Apple TV runs iOS – the latter is effectively an 8GB iPod Touch with no accelerometer or display) – though extenders were designed in a form factor that blended in with A/V hardware, versus the Apple TV’s diminutive size that hides well but frankly looks odd tucked into (onto?) a stack of components. MCX systems though, were dumb terminals with limited local CPU. Using a technically impressive “mashup” of sorts with RDP (Microsoft’s Remote Desktop protocol) and QoS-managed streaming video to a small transparent window on the RDP display, MCX systems gave the illusion that you were running the Media Center experience locally. But critically, this thin-client approach resulted in a platform that cannot support locally installed applications. To my knowledge, the Xbox 360 uses the same thin client approach as a MCX, but of course has a much more robust platform locally that is used to develop games – a derivative of which has been used for development of applications and games on Windows Phone 7.

Apple TV units began shipping last month. Google has now shown hardware from Sony and Logitech running their Google TV platform. At this point, Apple TV appears to be largely about consuming any iTunes content that you already have, or using it to stream rented iTunes or Netflix content or  kiosk (Apple’s objective being getting you to consume media content). Unsurprisingly, Google TV will be largely focused on consuming web content and making other content easily searchable (Google’s objective being ad revenue on the way to helping you find what you want), as well as helping you navigate recorded content and programming schedules. Though for now it appears that there will be limited exposure to data mining of TV viewing habits while using Google TV, it will surely become part of their exercise in organizing the world’s information. In it’s first incarnation, Google TV will be delivering a narrow portfolio of built-in applications, and Google has announced a broader plan to provide for an open app ecosystem not unlike that for Android phones.

Given the fact that Apple TV is in essence a current generation iPod Touch, running iOS, it is all but certain that there will be a similar app story for the Apple TV platform – especially taking into account that Apple put out the original iPhone with no app platform, but rectified that not long afterwards. I’m not privy to Apple’s internal planning, but while it’s got a horribly absent third-party app story now, I’ve got a theory about what an Apple TV app platform could possibly bring with it that could make it truly a game changer. I’ll shortly follow up with my next post discussing the coming war for the family room. A war which will have three familiar players (perhaps not the three you’re thinking of), considerable opportunity, and an amazing set of possibilities for new consumer functionality.

*When I say “dumb TV”, I mean wrapping classic broadcast content up in a pretty, time-shiftable candy shell. MCE is effectively a DVR that can also play back music, movies, and photos. The alternative is creating either a platform that consumes licensed content (a-la iTunes) at the benefit of the consumer in order to avoid watching ads by paying for the content explicitly, or the option I expect Google to execute, which will focus on making the advertising more dynamic/custom – in time. After all, Apple is now a content company, and Google is an advertising company.

On Christmas day, I received two pieces of spam. These were admirable because they were able to defeat SpamSieve (my favorite software purchase of 2008). They were frustrating because they offered a piece of… software called “Error Nuker”.

For years, I’ve been telling people that so-called “registry cleaners” don’t do anything, and in fact can be the single most destructive tool you can run in Windows. One bad edit, and you can kill Windows.

I’m not even going to delve into the method that many tools like this use to spread themselves. While not “malware” in the truest sense of the word, spamming novice users, and confusing them to the point that they download tools like this should be illegal.

Windows gets “cruft” in the registry and occasionally in the filesystem over time with the installation, uninstallation, and updating of applications and Windows itself. The thing is, though this cruft in the registry causes your registry hive files to grow in size, it is benign. Tools such as this that lie to users and tell them that “errors” will occur are frankly more malignant than the actual problem they feign to solve.

I ran “Error Nuker” on a test Windows VM. It took quite a bit of time to “scan” my system, telling me each of the locations it was scanning. But you know what? In the end, all it did was point out locations in the registry that referenced files on the disk that were no longer there.

Now, it’s important to note that dead links from the registry are usually the result of uninstalling the application that put them there*. Meaning that, the only thing that cares that the link is dead is the application or application(s) that are no longer there! Meaning it does nothing!

*This tool also calls out files in Most Recently Used (MRU) menu locations in Windows – which if you are like me, you edit, send, and delete documents like crazy. But these MRU links being dead is hardly what I’d call an error condition.

“Error Nuker” is something like $20-$49 (depends on which spammer you get solicited by, I guess). Frankly, it isn’t worth free. It literally does nothing, and although it has a safe delete option, the fact that it is just a glorified registry cleaner means it’s effectively useless. An analogy? Do you think washing your car will make it go faster? Me either.

I’ve seen worse “PUS” – specifically the kind that is truly malware. But it’s really a shame that we’ve gotten to this point, where Windows users will fall prey to junk software pimping itself as fixing Windows’ problems.