The success of every new software product is dependent on whether customers like the new features or not. Thus, I think it makes sense to listen to customers as early as possible.

You might have heard the news that some sites that were posting rumors about Windows 8 features were shut down. It appears to be unclear who is behind this, but it is obvious that Redmond does not really like it when possible Windows 8 features are discussed in public at this time. I believe that this strategy is wrong, and in this post I explain why.

In my opinion, these rumors are very important. They trigger discussion on the web, and I believe that this helps Microsoft find out what Windows customers really want. This is one of the reasons why I started the Windows 8 poll with its somewhat surprising outcome.

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The importance of smartphones and tablets for businesses is growing quickly. If you have to decide which platform you will introduce in your organization, then the Microsoft-Nokia deal should influence your decision.

When I read that an analyst (Adnaan Ahmad) “urged” Nokia and Microsoft to form a partnership around Windows Phone 7, I thought that it is the first time in a while that I’ve heard an analyst saying something really smart. Funny thing is that Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop were so impressed that they gave in to Ahmad’s urges and just announced this very partnership a few days later. Negotiations must have been under a great time pressure to fulfill Ahmad’s urges.

It is difficult to say in which direction information was actually flowing here, but one thing is for sure: This deal deals a new hand in the smartphone game. If you have to decide which mobile platform you will introduce in your organization, one important factor certainly is which smartphone OS will prevail in the long run because moving to a new platform is always time consuming and expensive. If you had doubts whether Windows Phone 7 can seriously compete with Android and iOS, you now have to sit back for a moment and think again.

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iPad for business? Should IT support the iPad? This are the questions that are discussed in this article.

One of the big topics doing the rounds amongst IT professionals these days is the increasing influence of consumer technology in enterprise IT and in particular the question whether the iPad is valuable for business and should be supported by IT. End users have access to more and more business-ready devices in their personal lives, and the traditional line between personal computing and work computing is looking blurrier than ever.

There is increasing pressure on businesses and IT professionals to provide (and support) infrastructure which enables users to connect and be productive on a variety of consumer devices, now that these devices can, with relative ease, cross the boundary between home and work. Business-focused platforms like Windows Mobile and Blackberry have had to improve their consumer functionality, while consumer devices like the iPhone have had to beef up their enterprise features.

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I admit this was an ill-matched fight. Only 16% of 4sysops readers believe that the iPad, or tablets in general, will replace the PC. How could I ask such a silly question? On the other hand, no less a man than the fabulous mastermind Steve Jobs, elected as the most powerful business person, made this prediction.

Could it be that that was just another sales pitch for the iPad? I think, we can rule out this option. Steve Jobs is a marketing machine, but his ego is more important to him than a few more sold iPads. This was a video interview that was seen by millions of his admirers and opponents. He can’t just use the excuse later that a journalist misinterpreted him.

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At the All Things Digital conference, Steve Jobs predicted that the iPad (some people still call them tablets) will replace the PC. He did not say that PCs will completely disappear, but that only a minority (“one out of x”) will use them.

He compared PCs to trucks and the iPad to a car. When our civilization was transformed from an agrarian to an urban society only a few people kept using trucks. The majority are driving cars nowadays. I suppose with this analogy he wanted to indicate that PCs come from the pre-Internet era. In the post-PC era, the Internet (or perhaps the cloud) will dominate our way of interacting with digital assets and this is why we will need a new device with a user interface that is adapted for this purpose.

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Of course, the winner of this contest was decided right from the outset. Nevertheless the results of this poll are quite interesting. More than 700 IT pros took part in this poll and to my experience this number is statistically significant; that is, it is quite likely the results represent the search engine market share among Windows admins.

As the time of this writing 86% of 4sysops readers prefer Google as their search engine, and 10% use Bing. Note that these percentage numbers are rounded. This is why the results still appear to change. So if you wait a few days, Bing might have 11% of the votes. However, the overall pattern is stable now and I don’t expect any major changes.

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Ed Bott wrote an excellent analysis about the news that kept the media busy for the last couple of days: Apple’s market capitalization passed that of Microsoft. Most commentators attribute this to Microsoft’s failures and in particular to Steve Ballmer, which is a bit strange considering that Windows 7 is the bestselling operating system ever. Ed Bott correctly realized that the whole PC industry wasn’t doing any better than Microsoft. I am not an analyst, and 4sysops is not a blog about the philosophy of IT. But I can’t help myself saying a word about this topic because Apple has become one of my favorite rant topics.

First of all, we should not forget that Apple’s market cap does not represent Apple’s real value. It is the value that “the markets” predict for the future. The fact that Microsoft is more profitable than Apple makes this obvious. Of course, the markets know this. Thus, if Apple’s market cap is now bigger than Microsoft’s, the markets predict that Apple will be more profitable than Microsoft in the future. Well, we all know that the markets haven’t been very good with their predictions lately.

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You’ve probably heard that the European Commission (EC) is conducting a preliminary investigation about Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior in Europe. The fact that Microsoft is probably partly behind this is no surprise. I am not really a friend of the EC’s antitrust cases and I don’t know if this one is justified. The outcome of this investigation is certainly interesting, but the mere fact that complaints about Google reached this level is much more remarkable.

By now, you probably expect another pro-Microsoft article and attack on Google. I am sorry to disappoint you, but this also an anti-Microsoft post. However, I won’t complain about Microsoft as the possible wirepuller as all the-web-and-only-the-web advocates out there do. If Microsoft is really behind this, then it probably is a strategic error because it is only a matter of time before Microsoft’s competitors will complain about Bing’s rankings.

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Some days ago , I outlined why I believe that Mac OS X is no match for Windows 7 when it comes to the decision which OS is the best choice for the corporate network. Today, I want to tell you the main reason why I also wouldn’t use a Mac privately. I just have to let this out publicly at least once. My aversion against Macs has nothing to do with OS features, overpriced hardware, or the ecosystem. You won’t believe it, but it is this “I am a Mac” adverts that I find quite repulsive. Their main message is that if you want to look like a cool, stylish surfer and not like a dumpy business guy, you really need to be a Mac. That is, using a Mac is not enough, you have to show everyone that you are a Mac.

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“Snow Leopard goes head to head with Windows 7” This is the title of an article published at eWEEK some days ago. It is a classic example of a review comparing Windows and Mac OS X. I usually find OS comparisons a bit childish because they remind me of sandbox discussions of who has the coolest tricycle. However, I can’t keep myself from commenting on this article. I know that many IT decision makers were influenced by this type of analysis when the Vista bashing flu was spreading fast. Journalists whose brains were infected by this virus tended to recommend giving up on Windows entirely and switching to a really cool operating system, which is usually presented by a cool CEO with stylish sports shoes, stylish jeans and a stylish black shirt.

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Putting on a show as big as Microsoft Tech.Ed is no mean feat. Preparing a convention venue for a few thousand demanding and IT-savvy delegates, not to mention three days’ worth of technically-intense presentations, sessions and labs, involves months of preparation and the combined efforts of many teams.

The focus of the 2009 round of Tech.Ed events is centred strongly around Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 – Microsoft’s major product releases this year. Microsoft Australia were looking for way to give Tech.Ed delegates as good an experience with Windows 7 as possible, so early this year an idea was floated to give each attendee a netbook (to have, not just to borrow) with Windows 7 preloaded. As if staging the event was not difficult enough, now the infrastructure had to accommodate an additional 2500 machines, using software which was not yet available in its final form.

A project of this scale would challenge any IT team, so how have Microsoft achieved it? I chatted with three of the main organisers and technical managers with Microsoft Australia responsible for making sure that this year’s Tech.Ed Australia netbook extravaganza will go off without a hitch.

Andrew Coates is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Australia and is the content owner for Tech.Ed Australia 2009.

Nick Hodge is an evangelist with Microsoft Australia and is responsible for bringing many aspects of Tech.Ed Australia 2009 together

Jorke Odolphi is an Infrastructure Architect Evangelist with Microsoft Australia, and is responsible for the technical infrastructure behind Tech.Ed.

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I didn’t really believe anymore that those two companies would find themselves together. The press release is quite clear about the deal:

Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

In other words: Bing gets Yahoo’s search requests and Yahoo! sells the ads.

I am not sure if I like this deal or not. On the one hand it is good that there will be more competition in the search business, but on the other hand, I am afraid that Microsoft will neglect its core business.

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A BBC reporter asked Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, this question. Google’s announcement of Chrome OS wasn’t mentioned in this interview, but it obviously was behind the question. I was fascinated how calm Ray Ozzie answered. I wonder what happened if she asked Steve Ballmer this question. If she asked me, I probably would have answered with another question. I would have asked if the next BBC World News edition will be the last dedicated version and if from then on they will just link to YouTube. Well, good that I am not Microsoft’s chief software architect. Ray Ozzie’s answer is definitely better. Watch it yourself.

Usually, I ignore the battles between the European Commission (EC) and Microsoft because I can’t take this struggle for “more competition” seriously anymore. But the latest developments are just too bizarre, so I can’t resist sharing my opinion.

You’ve probably heard that the EC believes that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 7 is against European law. I don’t know this law, and I am not really interested in it. However, if it is really true that it is against the law for a company to decide what kind of features a software product can have, then there is obviously something wrong with this law. To escape insane fines, Microsoft has decided to ship Windows 7 in Europe without Internet Explorer. Manufacturers and customers will have the option to install Internet Explorer. All Windows 7 editions sold in the European Union will have an “E” at the end of the product name.

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Mary Joe Foley and Ed Bott blogged about Midori, which is supposed to be the code name of a new operating system, Microsoft is working on. As I understand their articles, we are not talking about Windows 8 or 9 here, but about something completely new, i.e., an OS built from scratch. Even though both journalists are known to have good connections to Microsoft insiders, they have little information on what Midori is all about:

• Midori is related to Singularity, a Microsoft research project that aims to build an operating system which is mostly written in managed code (C#). Only the lowest-level code is written in assembly language and C, and the hardware abstraction layer is programmed in C++. Singularity is easier to analyze and is supposed to have better performance.
• There is some speculation that Midori could be a revival of Cairo, a research project (1991–1996) into a new distributed and truly object-oriented operating system. To be honest, I have no idea what “distributed” and “object-oriented” could mean here. Perhaps this is just referring to the managed code I mentioned above.
• Midori might also have something to do with WinFS, which was the code name for a new file system based on relational databases. WinFS was one of the new features originally planned for Windows Vista. Maybe the reason why Microsoft had to drop this feature is because too many changes to the core OS would have been necessary.

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