SuperSite Blog

Now, here's something I can agree with wholeheartedly. In fact, I had exactly the same reaction:

As I listened to financial analysts grumble about how Microsoft continues to pour its hard-earned software profits back into its online services effort, I couldn't help but think that maybe Microsoft is on to something.

Wouldn't newspaper industry analysts have had the same grumbles if the Gannetts and Knight Ridders of the world had poured a huge chunk of their profits into online ventures a decade ago at a time when their ad revenues were still enjoying healthy growth? And wouldn't they now say such a move, if well done, would have been brilliant?

If the biggest long-term threat to Windows and Office is free rivals and Web-based services, shouldn't Microsoft be using a significant fraction of its profits to develop its online advertising capacity?

Obviously, Microsoft needs to execute better on the Web. Pouring money into online ventures is only good if it produces returns. To date, Microsoft has not seen the kind of gains it will need to have to make it pay off. Some newspaper companies did, for example, build online job sites and auto sites and just weren't able to grab enough money to replace the ad dollars being lost. It's not enough to see the threat and try. To prove the grumblers wrong, Microsoft will have to do more than throw money online. It will have to win.

Bravo. Exactly.

Mary Jo Foley reports that the under-tested and underwhelming Fiji update to Windows Vista Media Center has been completed. Hopefully the 6 or 7 people who tested it did a thorough job.

Microsoft is done testing “Fiji,” its update to Windows Media Center and is preparing to release the product — officially known as “Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008.”

Microsoft notified testers that it had RTM’d (released to manufacturing) Fiji on July 17, according to testers who requested anonymity. From the alleged release note:

“Fiji, officially known as Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008, has Released! The input from Self Host testers has been invaluable to this product and the team would like to thank each of you for your bug reports and feedback.

“As the release team is taking a much needed break, our next focus will be to post the final build onto the Products servers. Please check the newsgroups for updates. Once the build is live, we will notify you.

“-Windows Media Center-”

According to one Fiji tester:

“The (Fiji) release going to be OEM only on new machines. They have not been testing any upgrade scenarios whatsoever — even when they were at RC (Release Candidate) 0. Did they not watch the whole Ultimate Extras debacle? They put Media Center on millions of PCs thru Home Premium, and then give them all the shaft?”

Microsoft announced today as part of their annual revenues announcement that it has sold over 180 million licenses of Windows Vista so far. Wow. What a failure.

Revenue growth was primarily driven by continued customer demand for all products, including Windows Vista, which has sold over 180 million licenses since launch, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, server software, and Xbox 360 consoles and games.

BTW: They announced 140 million copies sold two months ago. So Microsoft is selling 20 million licenses a month on average. If that continues, Microsoft will sell over 220 million copies of Windows Vista in its first two years on the market. Given that XP is basically gone, it will probably be higher than that.

Microsoft made over $60 billion in fiscal 2008. Yikes.

At least on my desktop PC, that is.

You may recall from my Firefox 3 vs. Windows Vista posts from a while back that I had been lamenting that bugginess in Mozilla's latest browser (later tied to particular add-ons) had been bringing down my PC's reliability index. What's weird is that the reliability index has never really recovered since then either, despite a few valiant attempts. This time around, it's not Firefox, however. (In fact, Firefox 3 has been notably reliable.) No, this time it's iTunes.

Here's a shot of the index:

The 30-day high point came on June 20, 2008, when my PC registered a reliability index score of 8.09. Since then, it's been up and down, mostly down, and mostly because of iTunes. In fact, of the 8 "bad days" seen above (and denoted by red X's), four of them were solely caused by iTunes and another, in outlook.exe, was caused when I had trouble syncing with iTunes. (I can't definitely blame that one on Apple, but I'll throw it out there, since this is the only reason I even use Outlook.)

In fact, over those 8 bad days, there were a total of 16 application failures. Here's how they break down:

iTunes.exe   5
WindowsMailSync.exe (for iTunes) 4
LVPrcSrv.exe (Logitech) 2
Outlook.exe 2
Communications_Helper.exe (Logitech) 1
wmplayer.exe 1
wlcrdpsystem.exe (unknown) 1

As you can see, iTunes and a related exe are responsible for 9 of the 16 application failures over the last 30 days. And probably 11, if you count Outlook.exe. Which I do, but I think you could make an argument otherwise.

Today, the index is at 7.30 thanks to two consecutive days of iTunes.exe crashes, which is what made me think to look.

For whatever it's worth, my Vista-based Macbook is considerably more reliable. Since coming online on June 16, there has been only one application failure (explorer.exe) and two "miscellaneous" failures (both disruptive shutdowns). The reliability index score on that machine is 9.33 and its always hovered right near a perfect 10.

Weird.

I'm not sure if this is meaningful, but the desktop is running Vista x64 while the Macbook is running Vista x86 (32-bit).

I just received the following note that Apple sent to its sales force. In it, the company says that it will no longer use the "Exchange for the rest of us" slogan because MobileMe, unlike Exchange, does not really use push technology. This whole thing is unbelievable to me:

MobileMe Messaging Update

MobileMe messaging is being updated effective immediately. In order to set appropriate expectations with our customers, focus your sales discussion on "automatic sync" rather than "push." Additionally, we will no longer describe MobileMe as "Exchange for the rest of us."

When discussing the sync features of MobileMe, you may tell a customer that:

• Updates between me.com and iPhone or iPod touch will occur in a matter of seconds.
• Updates between me.com and Macs running Mac OS X Leopard and Windows PCs may take up to 15 minutes when MobileMe is set to sync automatically (Macs running Mac OS X Tiger may experience longer sync times).

As I noted previously, the distinction between "automatic sync" and "push" is sort of subtle and unlikely to affect most people. But Apple has a history of over-promising and under-delivering (Leopard's secret features, anyone?) and they get a total pass on this with the press. I don't get it, not now that the company is selling to a mass market. Microsoft would be skewered endlessly for doing something like this.

Exchange for the rest of us? More like "half-baked, partially-realized sync service that works better on Macs than it does on PCs, even though most  iPhone users have PCs." Granted, that's not much of a marketing slogan.

BTW ... speaking of the press and Apple, here's a great example of what I'm talking about. The New York Times' David Pogue, who, from what I can tell, writes an occasional column about digital cameras on the off weeks in which there's nothing Apple-related to discuss, appears to provide a well-rounded "review" of MobileMe in today's edition. But look at what's really happening here:

The magic is impressive. Make a change on your Mac, watch it appear on your iPhone and your PC. Add a new friend to the address book in Outlook Express on your Windows XP machine, and watch it appear in Windows Contacts on your Vista PC. Change an appointment in iCal on the kitchen Mac, and know that it will wirelessly sprout onto your traveling spouse’s iPhone four states away. And your Web bookmarks are the same everywhere.

OK, now let's pick it apart.

The magic is impressive. Make a change on your Mac, watch it appear on your iPhone and your PC ...

... up to fifteen minutes later. It's magic!

Add a new friend to the address book in Outlook Express on your Windows XP machine, and watch it appear in Windows Contacts on your Vista PC ...

... Again, up to fifteen minutes later.

Change an appointment in iCal on the kitchen Mac, and know that it will wirelessly sprout onto your traveling spouse’s iPhone four states away.

Notice that he switched from Windows to Mac on this one. There's a reason: On Windows, you have to pay at least $100 before you can sync calendars at all. There are only two Windows-compatible calendar syncing options available, despite the fact that Microsoft includes a free iCal clone in Windows Vista called Windows Calendar. Those two expensive options include Apple's own MobileMe service ($100 a year) and Microsoft Outlook ($110).

Now, granted, this is a MobileMe review, so he's talking about the very service you might be paying for anyway. But in carefully choosing his sync points above, Pogue is, in fact, also very carefully masking a huge problem with the iPhone and iPhone 3G: You can't sync calendars on Windows unless you pay extra for something else. This is why the phrase "Apple apologist" comes up with people like this. It's the appearance of fairness couched in what is really a promotion of all things Apple. Ignoring faults is a lie. Unless of course it's just ignorance. Which may be worse.

And your Web bookmarks are the same everywhere.

Are they now?

You want to know the truth about MobileMe on Windows? Here it is: Roughly 75 percent of all Windows users use Internet Explorer. And, sure enough, MobileMe syncs IE (and, cough, Safari) bookmarks. Neat. But the MobileMe Web interface—you know, the only way a Windows user can actually access the service's photo gallery, iDisk (without getting help), and help interfaces—doesn't work with IE, the browser that's used by most people on earth. In fact, Apple actually tosses up a nasty message when you try to use IE:

Cute, eh?

See, MobileMe only works with non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Safari. But get this: MobileMe won't sync your Firefox bookmarks at all. Crazy, right?

Kids, welcome to the halfway house that is Apple software running on Windows. You will never get the full meal deal unless you make the switch. And that, folks, is the unapologetic truth. The truth that reviewers like Pogue will never, ever mention, either because they don't know (i.e. they don't really use the systems that most of their readers use) or because they don't care (they're promoting Apple and its products).

Read it again:

And your Web bookmarks are the same everywhere.

So they're the same everywhere, if you use IE, in which case you can't access MobileMe. Or they're not the same everywhere because you use Firefox to access MobileMe and it doesn't support Firefox bookmark syncing. Curious that Mr. Pogue doesn't mention this. What does work, of course, is Safari: If you use only Apple products, everything works just fine. He does mention this:

Beware, though: you need the latest version of Firefox or Apple’s Safari Web browser to exploit all the features.

Except, of course, for bookmark sync. That won't work with Firefox.

Pogue even includes this insane little rah-rah sentence to explain away the IE stuff:

After all those years of being treated like an oppressed minority, it must give Apple some satisfaction to exclude Internet Explorer because it “has known compatibility issues with modern Web standards.”

Weird that every other Web site/application/service has no problem with IE 7. Weird.

Apple apologists will say I'm picking nits. But I'm not a Mac user, or a Windows apologist, I'm a Windows user. As, incidentally, are most iPhone users. As, incidentally, will be most MobileMe users. And when I discuss things like the iPhone and MobileMe, I do so from the position of someone who is part of the majority. And I'd like to know why it's OK for Apple to continually insult this majority crowd of its customers. Calendaring sync has been broken on Windows since the iPhone launched. It's still broken, unless you pay Apple $100 a year to fix it or happen to own Outlook.

Seriously, where is the outrage?

The magic is impressive. That's really all I'm saying here.

Microsoft EMEA tries to prove that Windows Mobile doesn't come up short against the iPhone and the iPhone Application Store but really just ends up proving that Microsoft can't do anything on the Web these days without first promoting Silverlight. Sorry, but the Windows Mobile Apps site just highlights the problem with Windows Mobile: It's lame.

Thanks Holland.

I've been noticing that every time I connect my iPhone or iPod touch to the PC, it does a very time-consuming backup before any syncing occurs. You can actually stop this backup by clicking the little "x" at the top of the application window but ... geesh. It's really annoying. Turns out it's a feature. Hoo-boy.

Summary
iTunes can create backups of settings and certain other information on iPhone and iPod touch. You can use a backup to restore this information to your iPhone or iPod touch after a software restore or update, or to transfer the information to a different device. Backups can be deleted from iTunes using the steps below.

Syncing vs Backups

You can use iTunes to sync content on your computer (such as music, podcasts, videos, ringtones, photos, email account settings, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks) with your iPhone or iPod touch. Syncing makes sure this content is the same on your iPhone or iPod touch and computer. iTunes will also create a backup of settings and certain other information on your iPhone or iPod touch when you sync to use in case you want to restore the software on your iPhone or iPod touch or transfer this information to a different device. Backup information includes information such as mail settings, text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, certain network settings, and other preferences. Applications purchased from the App Store are included in the backup, however they can only be successfully restored to the same device that they were backed up from.

Um. Hmm. So, seriously. iTunes is slow enough, Apple. This pretty much puts it over the top. Or under the bottom. Or however you want to word. It's really, really bad.

And I'm not the only one noticing this problem. BTW: "IBL" is pretty funny. Or it would be if I didn't keep losing it.

Mozilla Links reports on an interesting new feature for Firefox 3.1:

As announced before, tab switching is getting a dramatic update for Firefox 3.1 in both visual and behavior.

Press Ctrl + Tab (or Shift + Ctrl + Tab) and you are presented with tab thumbnails and titles with the most recently visited ones first so you can more easily determine which tab you want to go, have the one you most probably want to go closer, and as a result get to it faster. Hold Ctrl pressed and keep pressing Tab to see the thumbnails smoothly scroll to the left while the status bar displays the tab web address.

 

Ctrl-Tab, a Firefox extension developed by Dao Gotwald, that has served as a prototype for this change is available from Mozilla Add-ons.

Thanks Sebastian.

Related: Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) planned features draft

Live Mesh forum:

Live Mesh is now openly available to anyone in the U.S.
The Live Mesh team is pleased to announce that anyone in the U.S. can now use Live Mesh just by signing in to www.mesh.com with a valid Windows Live ID. No sign up needed to participate!

International Customers
With Live Mesh open to anyone in the US, our international friends can join in the fun early as well - with one caveat: you must be willing to change your Windows operating system region and language setting to EN-US. Once you do this you will be able to immediately sign in to Live Mesh with a valid Windows Live ID. Please be aware that this may cause other applications that specifically require your native country region and language settings to encounter problems.

Feedback
Once you've begun using Live Mesh, we'd love to hear from you! We are working hard to create the best experience and appreciate any feedback you have. Please send us feedback using our online form. You can also submit (and view others’) feedback and bugs here on the Microsoft Connect website.

Thank you,
The Live Mesh team

Nice. Now how about the rest of the world?

Thanks Mitchel.

Nice to see someone else going after the mainstream media for unfairly blaming Microsoft for something, in this case—get this—the iPhone 3G's poor battery life. Head's up, guys. Push kills battery life, no matter where the service comes from.

Gary Krakow has gone insane.  I was going to say he’s an idiot, but I’ll leave that up to Cali.

In his latest article on TheStreet.com, he writes (regarding the iPhone and battery life):

In our tests, iPhone batteries really can't handle the extra drain of Microsoft Exchange mail. Blame it mostly on Microsoft.

Microsoft's mobile email software is a pig. It always has been a battery hog. Everyone who has ever lived with a Microsoft Mobile phone knows that battery life stinks if you constantly "push" email to your device. That's why I'm surprised that Apple chose to default their Exchange mail software to "push" email. If you set up your phone without changing that setting, you will get only four to five hours before you have to recharge the battery.

source – TheStreet.com – New iPhone’s Battery Falls Down on the Job

C’mon Gary, pull it out man.  My Blackjack 2 connected to the same server using the same “push” settings (Windows Mobile calls this as items arrive) and with 3G enabled and I get at least twice battery life that I get with iPhone 3G.

Microsoft’s mobile email software is a pig.

What?!  What mobile software of Microsoft’s is on the iPhone?  Do you actually understand the technology you are writing about in this article?  The only think “Microsoft” on that device is the license to use the ActiveSync technology…which acts as a message broker.  Maybe Apple isn’t effectively managing the messages coming in/out?  Who knows, but your claim is just blatantly wrong to assert with that authority.

It always has been a battery hog.

I challenge thee on that statement.  HTC, Samsung and others have been able to create great WinMo devices that have good standby/call battery time with 3G/EVDO and “Push” features enabled.  So do they have smarter engineers than Apple?

How about a more balanced viewpoint Gary.  You say “mostly on Microsoft” but then don’t write about where other blame (to use your word) might lie.  This is the first time iPhone has enabled such “push” technology.  Wire up a MobileMe account and push “business grade” messaging through that…I suspect the battery life issues will be the same.  I’m not arguing that push mail is a battery drain on the iPhone, but certainly it can be improved looking at where the inefficiencies lie…and not just saying some server product is to blame.  Will you start blaming business power field users because they use email? 

Ridonkulous Gary.  Simply uninformed and scandalous.

Uninformed and scandalous. I like it. Because it's true. Only Apple gets this kind of pass. It's astonishing.

Looks like Netflix customers are going to have another avenue for enjoying movie content this fall:

An exciting new home theater experience is coming to living rooms this holiday season. At E3, Microsoft and Netflix, the world's largest online movie rental service, today unveiled an exclusive partnership to offer the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix to your television via Xbox 360.

Xbox 360 will be the only game system that lets you instantly watch movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix. This movie-watching innovation will be available to Xbox LIVE Gold members who are also Netflix subscribers, and will let those users enjoy streaming movies from Netflix on Xbox LIVE at no additional cost.

A growing library of more than 10,000 movies and TV episodes will be available from Netflix when it launches on Xbox LIVE in late fall, with more choices added over time. Through this agreement, along with the existing Video Store, Xbox 360 will be home to more movies and TV shows on demand than any other device connected to the TV. Xbox LIVE quickly and easily connects you and your friends to the entertainment you want—with no PC required for viewing.

Interact, Play, and Enjoy
Netflix on Xbox 360 is an important component of the new Xbox experience, a new generation of games and entertainment experiences that will be available on Xbox 360 this fall. The new Xbox experience represents the first time in history that a mass-market consumer electronics device has been re-invented through free software, giving people more fun and intuitive ways to interact, play, and enjoy entertainment content.

"Watching movies at home will never be the same. Netflix on Xbox 360 is an entertainment first, and we are bringing friends together with the best in entertainment content like no other device in the living room, " said John Schappert, corporate vice president of Interactive Entertainment LIVE, Software and Services Business at Microsoft . "We are creating a completely new social entertainment experience, and Xbox 360 will be the only video game system where you can access your library of instantly streamable movies from Netflix and turn any room into a virtual movie theater."

Highly Personalized Experience
From the Netflix Web site, simply add movies and TV episodes to your individual instant Queues. Those choices will be automatically displayed on the TV screen via Xbox 360 and available to watch instantly. Once selected, movies will begin playing in 30 seconds or less. In addition to instantly streaming movies to the TV, Gold members can fast-forward, pause, and rewind—all using either the Xbox 360 Controller or Media Remote. In all, the user interface creates a highly personalized experience that puts viewers in control.

"Netflix and Xbox 360 are a perfect combination, the leading online movie rental service and the leading games and entertainment system joining forces to create an all-in-one entertainment experience with content for everyone," said Reed Hastings, chairman and CEO of Netflix. "For Netflix, it represents an important step forward in making instantly streaming movies on the TV more broadly available to our members."

The library of movies and TV episodes that will be available for instant streaming from Netflix via Xbox 360 includes scores of Academy Award winners and nominees, episodes from a number of popular, currently running and classic TV shows, and 24 of the movies rated by the American Film Institute as the greatest ever.

Very interesting.

Finally! Google wakes up to the notion that most Gmail users don't want to automatically add everyone who writes them an email to their contacts list:

Google has finally realized that it's a bad idea to automatically add to the list of Gmail contacts all the people you've sent an email. An updated version of Gmail's contact manager has a separate section for the people you've emailed: "suggested contacts".

"My Contacts is a place to import, store and view all of the contact information that's important to you. You can also create your own groups of contacts to easily email many people at once. We add people you've emailed to Suggested Contacts. You can move contacts from Suggested Contacts into My Contacts at any time."

There's an option to automatically move suggested contacts into My Contacts if you frequently email them, but the previous behavior doesn't seem to be an option.

I don't have this version of Gmail Contacts yet but when I do I'll look at making that my permanent home for contacts. (Which would be a nice plus, given that I use Gmail for mail and Google Calendar for scheduling.)

So I noticed a Live Mesh update being pushed down the other day and didn't think much of it. After all, there have been a few of these things over the past couple of months and they've never amounted to anything interesting.

Not so fast!

According to the Live Mesh blog, this latest update actually adds some new features, one of which is a big reader request:

New Features

Sync Live Mesh folders peer-to-peer only, excluding your Live Desktop. This will make it possible to synch files across your devices (or with devices of other members of a Live Folder) without consuming any storage space or quota in the Live Mesh cloud storage service. For completeness sake, though, we should mention that it’s not a 100% P2P synch – to optimize the synch experience we still use the cloud to store the authoritative metadata for the folder (for example, the file list and change history) and to broker encrypted P2P connections between clients. But the files themselves will not be stored in the cloud. Also, note that only the creator of a Live Mesh folder will have permission to change the cloud synch settings, since all the contents of a Live Mesh folder (no matter which user uploaded them) get charged against the quota of the folder’s creator.  We've got some details on how peer communications and synch work up today on Channel 9.

File conflicts management on the Live Desktop. Pretty much speaks for itself. The same ability to view and resolve conflicting edits to a file that you’ve had in the Windows client is now available on the Live Desktop. Actually, we think it’s an even better experience, since we took the opportunity to streamline the UX when we implemented it for Live Desktop (we’ll bring the same improvements to the client in the future.)

Added news events for New Live Mesh folder and Delete Live Mesh folder. We’re continuing to tune the news feed to provide the right set of information you need to keep track of what’s happening across your mesh.

Nice! There are also some bug fixes and performance improvements.

Related: Live Mesh P2P Syncing video

Obviously with all the iPhone 3G hoopla from last week, there's been a lot of Apple, Apple, Apple here and elsewhere. But the iPhone isn't the only viable smart phone platform in town (though I'd argue it's still the best one and, oddly enough, already the most mature). I'm also interested in Google's Android platform, which should debut this year and expand dramatically to more devices into 2009. If you're interested in Android as a development platform, you'll want to check out Ed Burnette's next book, which you can now buy online in beta form:

Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform
by Ed Burnette

Android combines the ubiquity of cell phones, the excitement of open source software, and the corporate backing of Google and other Open Handset Alliance members. The result is a mobile platform you can’t afford not to learn. This book will get you started.

This title is currently available in Beta. Buy it now, and you'll be able to download successive releases of the PDF as the authors add material and correct mistakes. You'll get the final PDF when the book is finished.

If you buy the combo pack (Beta PDF + Paper Book) now, you'll get the Beta PDF now and the paper book when it's released on or about October 15, 2008.

About this Book

Android is a new software toolkit for mobile phones, created by Google and the Open Handset Alliance. In a few years, it’s expected to be found inside millions of cell phones and other mobile devices, making Android a major platform for application developers. That could be your own program running on all those devices.

Getting started developing with Android is easy. You don’t even need access to an Android phone, just a computer where you can install the Android SDK and the phone emulator that comes with it. Within minutes, Hello, Android will get you creating your first working application: Android’s version of “Hello, World.”

From there, you’ll build up a more substantial example: an Android Sudoku game. By gradually adding features to the game throughout the course of the book, you’ll learn about many aspects of Android programming including user interfaces, multimedia, and the Android life cycle.

If you’re a busy developer who’d rather be coding than reading about coding, this book is for you. To help you find what you need to know fast, each chapter ends with “Fast forward” section. These sections provide guidance for where you should go next when you need to read the book out of order.

This looks really interesting. I'm going to see about talking with Ed about Android soon. Perhaps some sort of a Q & A or whatever.

PC World:

Apple fans have made much of the fact that the newest figures from Net Applications show that Apple's share of the operating system market has jumped almost 32% in the past year. But they're ignoring a simple fact: Vista's market share during that same time leaped more than 355%. When you add in other Windows versions, Microsoft owns more than 90% of the market.

Net Applications reports that the Mac had 7.94% market share in June, up from 6.03% a year ago. Going from a little more than 6% to just under 8% may be a big gain when measured as a percentage of growth. But when seen in absolute numbers, it's not particularly impressive.

Vista, by way of contrast, showed far more explosive growth. In June, 2007, it had 4.54% market share. In June, 2008, it had reached 16.14% --- more than a 355% gain. Those numbers are substantial not just in percentage terms, but in raw terms as well. Apple would sell the first-born children of most of its employees if it could ever get to a 16% market share.

This is a great bit of info because, as noted, Mac fanatics do in fact love to point to these not-really-market-share numbers as "proof" of the huge gains the Mac is making in the PC market. Take that, iCabal.

Anyway, I've been making this kind of argument for a long time and demonstrated some time ago on the Nexus blog that making huge market share increases is easy when you almost zero market share.

And let's be clear: Net Applications does not measure market share. They measure usage share, and only on the Web. There's a big difference between the two and they're not interchangeable. (That is, the actual real-world usage share for Windows is higher than these numbers suggest. There are over a billion people using Windows, for crying out loud.)

Thanks Marc.

And speaking of myth-busting, did I ever tell you about the joke were iCabal high-priest Walter Mossberg actually busted the myth that Macs are somehow used over a longer period of time than Windows PCs? I know, that's funny, right? Well, it really happened.