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Child for Windows can't walk, won't run |
It is always sad to see an old fool chasing a bit
of skirt half his age, when the inevitable outcome will be disappointment
on both sides. Mole is reminded of this truism by whispers from
across the Atlantic that relations between Digital (39 in August)
and Microsoft (not yet 21) are showing unhealthy signs of developing
beyond mere friendship. Word has it that the impetuous pair have
grown so close that a high-speed communications link has been
installed between Microsoft's Redmond headquarters and Digital's
DEC West offices a mile away. Already the tipsters are speculating
about issue from this unholy alliance, the favourite being a 64-bit
version of Windows NT which, as the euphemism goes, will be "jointly
developed".
Mole may be going soft with the advancing years, but he sees no reason why the age gap should make a difference. And to those who cite Microsoft's failed relationship with IBM as evidence that these things never work out, Mole would like to point out that IBM (born 1924) was considerably older than its winsome young girlfriend.
All of which brings Mole neatly to a subject he has so far ignored, the offspring of Microsoft's chairman, William H Gates III. The child, which is a girl as far as anyone can tell, will face many challenges, not the least of which will be to serve as the butt of various daddy-related jokes. For reasons of superstition and common humanity, most people avoided pre-natal cracks about late delivery and missing features, but now that baby Gates is safely out of development, it's open season.
Weighing in on 26 April at little more than a generously specified notebook computer, Jennifer Katherine Gates (aka Microsoft Child for Windows) has much in common with her father's products. Neither can stand without a good deal of third-party support. Regardless of the problem, calling Microsoft Technical Support won't help. It takes several months between the announcement and the actual release. They arrive in shaky condition with inadequate documentation. Bill gets the credit but someone else did most of the work. And finally, for at least the next year, they'll suck.
Mole has an astute reader to thank for finally making sense of the moronic slogan "Where do you want to go today?"In light of the "chicken in green sauce" episode, which had bacilli-afflicted developers laughing all over their shoes at a Microsoft event last month, it's all too abundantly clear: we want to go to a small cubicle and stay there until we feel better.
There is a parallel universe in which life dimly mirrors our own. Or at least, this is what you begin to believe if you spend too long listening to Radio Four. Mole was doing just that when he learnt of the existence in Hong Kong of Jimmy Li, proprietor of a daily newspaper named Apple. The paper, promoted with the slogan "An Apple a day keeps the lies away", has a sister title named Next. Neither of these names augers well. The outspoken Mr Li is very unpopular with the Chinese government, which he regularly attacks through his publications and has already suffered some harrassment. His empire is not expected to survive long after the colony reverts to Chinese rule. Think of Jimmy Li as an oriental Steve Jobs, think of Microsoft as China, and you begin to see a pattern appear.
Everyone knows that despite Microsoft's claims to the contrary, Windows 95 is still nothing more than MS DOS in long trousers. OS/2, on the other hand, has been able to boast of 32-bitness for years, not that it has stopped Microsoft operating systems from crawling all over the world's desktops. At IBM in Warwick, Mole detects signs of a revised strategy, cunningly based on the same shaky foundations as Microsoft's. Infiltrating a "data warehousing"event the other day, one of Mole's spies who was curious to give OS/2 a try, got his hands on a machine showing a rolling demo of Warp. Interrupting the screen saver, he was surprised to find not the Warp desktop but a rather familiar looking command prompt. Only the screensaver had anything to do with OS/2, the rest was DOS through and through.
Any confusion that may have arisen over the licensing arrangements for Windows NT has been clarified with the arrival of per-seat licensing in NT 3.51, but someone needs to tell Microsoft. One user in the academic sector was shocked to discover he had clocked up 157 licence violations despite having only two computers connected to his NT server. The villain of the piece is the Licence Manager software which counts not seats but users. In cash-strapped academia, the ratio of users to computers is high and if all the users are given different accounts, the bill will increase accordingly. The obvious solution is to use the same account for all the users. It's not very elegant but it is cheap, because irrespective of the number of machines on the network the Licence Manager would count only one seat. For anyone who misses the unlimited client licences of NT 3.1, this is the way to go. Proof, if it is needed, that Microsoft believes users come in only two flavours: stupid and dishonest.
Supporters of the parallel universe theory should check out the job offer in the last issue of PC Week. On page 34, an Australian headhunting firm called Aspect was advertising for Microsoft Certified Instructors willing to relocate not just spatially but temporally. "Where do you want to be teaching Windows NT in 1995?"the advertisement asks. Only certified professionals need apply.
Something you think Mole should know? Write to mole@vnu.co.uk, bend his ear on 0171 316 9068 or send him a fax to 0171 316 9840.
This column first appeared in the UK edition of PC Week, 14 May 1996.