I find these kind of comments depressing mostly because they scream "group think". (my inner circle says this, so I repeat it) The new MS is much different than the MS I grew up with in the 90s. It's time for the community to recognize this and just let people bask in positive news that is worthy the bask in.
I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I love that Office on my mac is current and that Microsoft's mobile strategy is 100% cross platform unlike that of Apple and Google.. I love that MS is honest these days and its disappointing the community is largely dishonest in return.. often snarky.
I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests:
(1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.)
(2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, without joining the Patent Commons.
(3) Microsoft seems to intentionally subvert its OS's users' attempts to disable snooping. AFAIK, Microsoft not only refuses to say what data are gathered, but also phone home to so many different IP names/numbers that it looks like they're trying to hide the activity from the OS user.
(4) Microsoft is now "embracing" Linux. Microsoft became famous for "embrace, extend, extinguish". People outside of the CEO's inner circle can't know if that's the plan here as well.
The "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme is largely overused these days in reference to Microsoft. If the trend towards using the cloud continues and the desktop OS becomes more of a terminal to cloud services then we could be looking at a modern version of "EEE". Embrace linux for the customers, extend Windows software to Linux for those customers, and let market trends extinguish the desktop OS.
The interesting bit is that FOSS movement that created the modern mainframe, aka browser + cloud, just made it even easier for companies to leech on free software and user data.
That's a good point. I guess the question is, in a case like this, what are the odds that the company's executive-level culture has changed? I don't know.
The manner in which Microsoft pushed Windows 10 may be a data point.
The sco scam was in 2003 and the recent move towards arm devices that use treacherous computing to lock the user out of modifying their machine was recently who cares about 1995.
1) This is the entire industry, but much less so today than in 2007..
2) Microsoft is listed as the highest level of foundation support for the Linux foundation and a member of patent ocmmons.
3) true.. but people seemingly don't care that everyone does this.. have a chrome book? you're being snooped, use a mobile device and mobile apps? you're being snooped..
4) That was said 21 years ago.. see #2
I actually suffered through corporate pressure against my use of Linux for applications I developed (and users LOVED), because of the press onslaught in the trade magazines about the ridiculous SCO trial. (And then I see from a comment above that this is being appealed. Still. 13 years later. OMG.) So, my cynicism may be intractable.
You may see a "new" Microsoft, but all I see is a Microsoft which is making moves they HAVE to in order to survive. In this world of "the cloud" and the utter dominance of Linux in everything with a CPU that ISN'T a desktop computer, what else can they do but the things they're doing?
That Microsoft is executing WELL is a byproduct. If they didn't, they'd have become the IBM they defeated 20 years ago, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. (They'd offer legacy support for Windows XP, and we'd all wish we could cut them out of the budget, along with the mainframe.) I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business.
I find the bright and cheerful comments like yours depressing. They seem to belie a belief that the upper management of Microsoft has somehow been knighted with a sense of civic duty. I see it as the same business shrewdness they've always shown. They no longer have the power to dictate absolute terms to corporations, and must play nice with the rest of the IT world.
I credit Nadella for this, but none of this is due to some sort of newfound egalitarianism or philanthropy. It's just business.
So, how does that make the outcome any worse? RedHat isn't contributing to the Linux kernel out of a sense of charity. IBM isn't contributing to OpenStack as a philanthropic endeavor. Facebook isn't improving PHP because it's a fun hobby project. They're all doing the things that they're doing because it's good for business. Why is it any worse when Microsoft does it?
No, they're not different from anyone else for having a profit motive, but Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very long stretch of using underhanded and illegal tactics to stifle competition. I would argue that they're STILL abusing their monopoly position on the desktop. THAT is what makes them different than the rest, and that, to me, is what tempers my attitude about these recent announcements.
Another difference is that the other examples you've listed here are all free software. Of all the glowing coverage Microsoft has been getting of late, only .NET on Linux is comparable. But you're never going to get Windows-forms-like applications on Windows (which a surprising number of people seem to think will happen). It's only the web stack. Does ASP.NET really stack up well against Rails or Node.js as a web application stack on Linux? I don't know, but at the least, they have some catching up to do.
But, really, I think it's another example of my main point. Microsoft could have used some pre-existing open source project and built on top of that, but they chose to create another language for the future. It's even pretty good, by all accounts. It's just that, in a world of PHP, Javascript, C++, Ruby, Python, Erlang, and all the rest, what place does a closed-source language and compiler have? They had to make it open source.
I wasn't thinking about speed benchmarks. I was referring to the whole "ecosystem" of the work, from language to plugins to the editors commonly used to community activity around it, etc.
But you're never going to get Windows-forms-like applications on Windows
You absolutely will be able to get Windows-forms like applications. You just won't be using WinForms or WPF. Instead, you'll use Mono and its bindings to GTK or QT. This is exactly how it should be. WPF is an OS specific GUI library. Using WPF on Linux makes about as much sense as using Cocoa on Windows.
But, really, I think it's another example of my main point. Microsoft could have used some pre-existing open source project and built on top of that, but they chose to create another language for the future.
I think you're misremembering history. C# was created because Sun specifically cut Microsoft off from using Java. Microsoft had a project to write its own Java compiler. Sun took legal action to prevent Microsoft from doing so. And this was during the early 2000s. Python, Ruby, etc. were nowhere near mature enough to serve as the primary systems programming language for something like Windows.
Moreover, Microsoft gets a lot of criticism for making C#, but Google gets no criticism for making Go? Isn't that just slightly hypocritical?
> Instead, you'll use Mono and its bindings to GTK or QT. This is exactly how it should be.
Oh, I'm quite clear. My point is that, if the stack had delivered on the premise of the idea of WinForms-level-easy GUI development, why haven't Mono-based GUI apps proliferated on Linux? Yet, after many years of including Mono in Ubuntu, they've pulled it from the default install.
> Microsoft had a project to write its own Java compiler. Sun took legal action to prevent Microsoft from doing so. And this was during the early 2000s. Python, Ruby, etc. were nowhere near mature enough to serve as the primary systems programming language for something like Windows.
Fair enough, but even all the way back in 2000, it was obvious that, if you were going to start from scratch on a language, there was no point in making it closed. There wasn't any more real money to be made in compilers by that point. GCC was being made available on everything, and $1,000 proprietary compilers were dying out.
I'd love one if I could put linux on it. or if I could buy an OEM pc without an OS (and yes I know there are some vendors that "allow" (just that word makes me cringe) you to do it, but it should be a right). If, by their own definition, it's "intellectual" (and not material) property, then if I dont use it I shouldn't have to pay for it.
If they want to sell Surface because it's an awesome product, why do they need to go out of their way to lock their software on it ? If it's so awesome, surely people would want to use it, right ? If the proverbial destination is so great, why do they need to lock their guests inside ?
"Something that sets the Surface apart from other popular tablets, is that it doesn’t artificially limit your capabilities. If you want to use it as a laptop, or install alternate operating systems on it, you are free to do so. I think the Surface is going to make a great Linux laptop, and I look forward to spending some time playing with it."
thank you for the clarification. I was aware that linux was great on surface 1,2 models, and last I had checked, either v3 or 4 were completely locked.
I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?
I dont follow your point. I'm not asking MS to sell me a linux version of their tablet. I"m saying they shouldn't use UEFI or other proprietary bootloader tricks to keep me from wiping windows off and installing my own software on it. That would be cheaper for them to do than spending extra development time to keep me out.
Beyond that, I find those that want to run Linux on a Surface often put it in Hyper-V and use putty + WinSCP + $TEXT_EDITOR_OF_CHOICE wired up to WinSCP. Heck, now there's the Windows subsystem for Linux.
X11 and VNC help if you want a Linux desktop, but that's admittedly a less than ideal experience.
Of course, virtualization generally precludes USB peripheral access, so my suggestions are a pure software and web development solution.
It looks like most of the linux issues are due to MS doing some weird architectural things (touch calculations on the GPU, etc), but that's just what I was able to find out with 2 minutes on the first thing google popped up.
And, like others have pointed out, the Surface isn't "locked". Yes, it has SecureBoot and UEFI... just like literally every desktop motherboard shipped within the last 5 years. You can go into UEFI, turn off SecureBoot, wipe Windows and replace it with whatever you want. It may not work very well, but it's totally doable.
If they want to sell Surface because it's an awesome product, why do they need to go out of their way to lock their software on it?
Because the software is part of the product. Apple has shown us that customers do not consider hardware and software to be separate entities. They consider both to be an integrated whole.
I've hated MS a decade ago, because of their position against linux and because of IE6. I've watched them doing big efforts the last few years, and I welcome them - I can't wait to feel good about them. That being, this article indeed sounds too emphasized to not be fishy. Maybe it's a PR article, maybe it's just that the author from this financial publication bought MS shares lately, maybe it's something else, I don't know.
But yeah, I don't see either any major change in mobile MS usage around me.
All of that was prior leadership. Satya has largely reversed this trend (which wasn't limited to Microsoft) and has gone the polar opposite of open source licensing a-la BSD/Apache licenses (no strings attached) and joining the Linux foundation.
As far as I'm aware MS are still operating their Linux patents extortion racket. What on earth were the Linux Foundation thinking when they allowed MS to become a member? It seems the Linux Foundation is little more than a corporate jamboree.
Without being ideological about baggage from a decade and more in Microsoft's past, it's easy to see that the company it is today has a large and diverse set of products. Many are good, I'd still say some are bad. But it would be simplistic to remain suspicious and attached to an expired narrative.
I haven't used Azure but I know people that have and they all say it's a pleasure to work with most of the time.
As a JVM developer the .NET Core stuff is really interesting to me and I'd love to figure out a way to start using it.
I'd pretty much written MS off several years ago as a fading giant but they're cranking out products and services I want to use now and that I just need to figure out how to get them into my life.
Have you played with Azure or .Net Core? People tend to enjoy the Surface products too.
In this regard I would not say they are "back" but better than Microsoft has ever been. Are they the best at everything... nah but heck the fact that I am saying many of their products are compelling is a big improvement
I got a Surface Pro 3 last year because the form factor seemed ideal for a road trip (I wanted something I could use as a laptop in a motel room and as a tablet in the back seat of a car).
The quality of the machine blew me away. It's easily the best "laptop" I've used in a very long time, and it's become my downstairs computer.
I originally planned to dual-boot it with Arch Linux, but I ultimately decided against it because Windows 10 worked so well on it, especially for the form factor. Any advantages I would've had by running Linux were eliminated by installing Cygwin and KDE Applications (plus PuTTY to connect to my Linode). Since then, that's been augmented by bash for Windows, which is absolutely lovely. Thanks to b4w, it's become my main machine to use when working from home.
More recently, I've visited one of my local Microsoft Stores, and I'm really impressed by the Surface Book and the Surface Studio. Those are some really sweet pieces of hardware.
I used to be a diehard Microsoft hater for most of my life, and now I'm a convert.
I've played with Azure and it's terrible. If a client wants me to use Azure instead of Google or Amazon, I literally charge a premium because it's so much more painful.
I don't see how anyone could possible claim GAE or similar offerings from Google compete anywhere close to what Microsoft or Amazon is providing.
My take on it between Amazon and Microsoft: Microsoft has less functionality but with an easier UI. Amazon is light years ahead of anyone but their UI scheme (from naming things to where they position features and options) is pretty lack luster.
These days, GCP completely blows away AWS in every area where they overlap, especially VMs, networking and cloud storage.
GCP is generally a lot more consistent and modern, having benefited from a clean-slate design and Google's expertise in designing huge continent-spanning infrastructure solutions. Some examples:
* AWS Glacier looks pretty nifty until you realize that Google's equivalent, the coldline storage class, still gives you millisecond latencies (Glacier's is usually measured in hours), at a much lower price point.
* GCP is designed to automatically migrate VMs between physical hosts, with zero application downtime. This in turn is possible thanks to their rather amazing network stack, a completely transparent, encrypted L4 SDN. AWS, meanwhile, suffers on the awkward mess that is AWS VPC (unless one is still stuck on "legacy EC2").
* Google gets things like consolidated billing correct from the start. Other minor things like IAM management and the command-line toolchain are a breath of fresh air.
Not to say that it's all rosy, of course. GCP has its own set of issues, like any product offering, though no major ones come to mind. But it's clear that some of their services (the StackDriver tools comes to mind) are not up to their usual quality standards.
Of course, Google doesn't have counterparts to all of Amazon's offerings, but then AWS has a lot of odd products (much of it targeting enterprises with legacy infrastructure). Google's focus on Kubernetes and containerization means that some of the deployment-oriented services (CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk and so on) are less relevant, and for now Google seems to rely on the community/third parties to come up with their own solutions, which I think is a good call at the moment.
Another cool thing I've experienced with Google Cloud: a while ago I had a VM running, with the default 7.5 GB RAM for a 2 CPU VM. Then when I came back some days later, I got a message saying that the VM had only been using ~3GB of RAM, and that I could save money by reducing the VM's RAM, by clicking "this button". Then I clicked the button, the VM's RAM was reduced and, if I recall correctly, it didn't even require a reboot.
That's not only technically impressive, it's also really good customer service.
You can't resize running VMs — Google is good, but not that good. You can stop, resize, and start again, which is still better than AWS (unless they support changing the instance type now). I suspect that the button you talk about did that.
It most likely is out of date, but I've continued to see the same sentiments echo'd from other people recently, so haven't bothered to fully revinvestigate. I got the impression from my time with Google's offerings that their culture of "we're consumer focused, not devop focused" (anything from API's to reporting) completely plastered their offerings in the cloud space.
>most also support GCP, but very few support Azure.
This might be a case of different tech stacks, but nearly everything I work with supports Azure. Sorry to ask this, because it might be easier for you to provide an example or two what you specifically know doesn't work with Azure versus me providing everything that does (and of course, these should be semi-popular tools in whatever "stack").
> I got the impression from my time with Google's offerings that their culture of "we're consumer focused, not devop focused" (anything from API's to reporting)
Huh? What does "consumer focused" even mean in the cloud space?
Google has made a substantial effort to buff up their cloud offerings in the past few years and it definitely shows. (AWS is still my first choice though.)
> This might be a case of different tech stacks,
That's true. If you're working with a Microsoft stack then of course Azure will come out ahead. I'm coming from a generic Linux background.
GCP has enough to handle a lot of cases. Just because it doesn't have some hacked-up version of Elasticsearch-as-a-Service doesn't hurt its value.
Azure has tons of stuff thrown all over it. The UI is absolutely terrible. It's some weird tablet-esque thing that flies out to the side and requires so much clicking around. It's slow. And it's overpriced. AWS's UI, while involved, at least isn't someone's let's-resurrect-Windows-8-UI project.
I know two companies that get tons of free Azure credits, yet still pay for GCP in production just to avoid dealing with Azure. If GCP slowly keeps adding features while keeping simplicity and speed, they're going to make huge strides against AWS and Azure.
What are the problems you have the most with it? I've been working with it for a couple years now and despite a clunky interface (and the bifurcation of the two portals) the infrastructure has seemed pretty solid and has saved us (small dev shop working for small/medium companies) a ton of time and money. For most things (spinning up a new env with databases, redis caches, storage accounts etc) it is remarkably easy once you get used to the process and occasional workarounds. Granted I haven't used the other cloud services and I want to do that on my own time just to have a point of comparison.
I find myself being really suspicious whenever something being used by thousands or millions of people is just waved off by other people as being terrible. To me being "terrible" usually translates as "I started with something else and it works differently than this and its what I'm used to has its own failings and workarounds but I'm at least used to them and more productive there and I don't really feel like taking the time to get used to how things work for this other system."
It's been a while since I last used Azure, but here are some of the bigger problems I remember:
1. No managed option for MySQL or Postgres hosting.
2. Hard to find resources in the panel and lots of confusion on security practices.
3. Instances randomly dying at an astonishing rate.
You're right that "terrible" is hyperbole. I'm sure there are people who are happy with Azure, especially if they're using a Microsoft stack.
Your translation of "terrible" is how I feel about GCP: it's fine, but it takes me longer to do things because I'm familiar with AWS. Compared to Azure, where I would spend hours on trying to do something and still couldn't find a way to do it.
Well, for #1, is that really surprising when they offer Azure SQL Server instead? And they offer a NoSQL option as well (two, if you include their DocumentDB service).
#2 probably more depends on what you are used to.
#3 I can see being a problem, although I haven't seen it myself. I've had 3 servers running for over 6 months now and they haven't died once.
Just because the suck isn't surprising doesn't mean it's not there.
Like I said, if you're interested in the Microsoft ecosystem then Azure is probably great. I'm not. For running an open source stack, Azure is not competitive with AWS and GCP.
For me Microsoft was at its best when they cut the cost of the average PC to low enough that nearly everyone could afford one. That's innovative, this stuff is window dressing.
I've been saying the same thing. My coworkers bring up the surface when I mention it, but I don't see it. Tech in general has felt low innovation lately. Its time for silicon valley 2.
Powerful 2-in-1 that works as a laptop and a tablet; runs sandboxed apps from a web store as well as traditional Windows apps; built in AI assistant; excellent pen operation; built in accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer; cloud integration with OneDrive, Office programs, email etc with the ability to continue work from different devices; face-recognition or fingerprint log-on; increased security features....
Yeah, it's hard to see any innovation compared to your granddad's laptop ;-)
Lets say their implementations are marginally better.
* runs sandboxed apps from a web store - Android(2008), IOS(2007)
* as well as traditional Windows apps - Only Windows obviously
* built in AI assistant - Apple(2011)
* excellent pen operation - Wacom(1992)
* built in accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer - Every flagship phone since 2005
* cloud integration with OneDrive, Office programs, email etc with the ability to continue work from different devices - Google drive, Google docs, Gmail (2007)
* face-recognition or fingerprint log-on - Available on circa 2000 Fujitsu laptops
* increased security features - SELinux(1998)
I'm not impressed. Most of this stuff has been done for over a decade if the version from 8 years ago is worse that isn't saying much.
Microsoft had precursors for most of those, including pen operation via MS DOS extensions (in the 1989 GriDPad) and the intelligent Office Assistants in Microsoft Office 98.
Otherwise, the interesting point about Windows 10 is that so much of the technology was carried across from the smartphone industry, including Cortana and notifications from Windows Phone.
I'd have thought that creating a converged mobile OS to cover IoT devices, games consoles, smartphones and all types of PCs required innovation.
On the same basis, so did "PC innovations" that included features from minis and mainframes, and smartphone innovations that had already appeared in various PCs and handhelds.
Unless you're actually a research organization, pretty much every innovation will have more to do with implementation than with pure invention.
It's really amazing how the list you created includes different products for each bullet but Microsoft (or M$ if you prefer) combined all of them into a single product which actually functions.
I love my Surface Pro 4, I love the fact .net is cross platform, I love that Azure is fast and easy to use, I love that Office on my mac is current and that Microsoft's mobile strategy is 100% cross platform unlike that of Apple and Google.. I love that MS is honest these days and its disappointing the community is largely dishonest in return.. often snarky.