Almost 6 years ago, I embarked on a quest to the Bay Area.
Lots of things have happened. On Nov 2016 I was at a mentorship at UC Berkley learning techniques for a successful startup creation. I met wonderful people and stayed at the world renowned Startup Embassy which
Today I’m working from a fully funded Startup based in Santa Clara, CA called Espressive where we are working with AI and Machine Learning trying to reinvent the IT Customer’s Experience scene.
As of know, the Journey Continues and I’ll let you know how it all went.
"PC makers are watching their market shrivel, and after a year of hoping the anti-Windows 8 sentiment would blow over and people would dutifully buy whatever was on offer, they realized users aren't going to spend money on Windows 8 PCs. As a result, the big three PC makers...have all begun selling Android tablets...they make less money from those ...than they do (for) Windows PCs (which) their profit goals depend on..."
"In response, at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), PC makers are unveiling "PC Plus" systems -- Windows PCs that also run Android applications via emulation or virtualization --reputedly from Intel. Here comes Windroid!"
"I can't begin to fathom how anyone at these companies thought it made sense to graft yet another head on to Windows 8. But I can see how they came to this cockeyed conclusion: "People aren't using touchscreens on Windows 8 PCs because there are so few Metro apps -- so what if we filled that gap with Android?""
Galen Gruman of InfoWorld, JANUARY 07, 2014
Galen, here's Carlos Osuna. I've been in the IT business for a while and have also watch how the market has transformed from the monolithic era of the IBM PC 5150, to the fully mobile era that started with the first Compaq Portable and ended with the iPhone and iPad.
Some people want productivity, others want effectiveness.
It would appear that PC and Post-PC are two different worlds but rather are two different use cases.
Personal Computers are productivity devices, that is, they are focused on making task faster and simpler. Mobile Devices, on the other hand, are effectivity devices. They allow us to make the correct things, no matter how long they take.
The best example of this difference is the comparison between Adobe Ideas/Photoshop Touch vs. Regular Photoshop. With the former, you create rough drafts, dribble with colors, that is you explore what the best thing to do. With the latter, you just do mostly repeatable tasks that you know work for you. Mouse and keyboards gives productivity, touch gives effectiveness.
And that's the reason Windows 8 hasn't blended well with nobody. They want to make YOU effective with mouse/keyboard and productive with touch, when it's the other way around.
So to know why Android makes a perfect sense inside Windows 8, you need to forget the prior Windows 8 market and focus on how it fragmented after its release.
Some people loved Metro, some people hated, most remain in between.
The Metro Lovers: You'll find them in every forum which speaks about Windows 8. They are completely convinced this is the future and people are either idiots or are resisting change. They own a Surface or Surface 2. And also Windows Phone.Sadly they are a small group which at present seems to be closer less than 25 million, which is the current number of Windows 8.1 activations. Most won't admit it but most started their journey with an iPad. They are focused on increasing the effectiveness of Windows, rather than increase its productivity.
The Metro Haters Club: You'll find them at the other side of the fence. They are so used to the way the work with Windows that they can't stand any change. This aversion most likely stems from a poor Vista experience of some sort. Most of them use uber equipped desktops. Some of them started using Windows with 95 or XP. The think they are very productive with what they have today. They won't switch. They aren't a majority but are a very vocal one.
The Swing Voters. As in every political race, most of the people are almost in the middle. Most of them think an iPad is an expensive luxury so will easily rule out the Surface. But they aren't staunch Metro haters. They know it's coming somewhere in the future, but most will only switch when everybody else does.Some of them have a $150 inexpensive Android tablet, but aside from that, they don't use touch interfaces.
Since the two first camps have already made their decision, it's the third camp which is the only one worth fighting for.
Heavy laptops are out and slim tablets are in.
People aspire for Ultrabooks, but they aspire most for MacBook Air as the former is not aspirational enough. People with the money don't have to decide. Normal humans do.
But what happens when you add touch to the mix.
Nothing, if you still think Windows 8.x.
It neither beats the MacBook Air nor creates an object of desire.
But add Android, that is move the center of gravity just a tiny bit, and you hit the sweet spot.
Although you don't move the productivity of the system, you move it's effectiveness.
You can now play Candy Crush, Cut the Rope, DrawSomething, in a completely isolated space where mistakes can be made without affecting the rest of the machine.
A safe haven free for über private stuff.
Although at the web I can check my Facebook page, inside Android I check LinkedIn so my company has no idea I'm looking for a job.
The secure nature of the web services powered apps, lets you bypass security since almost all traffic for apps is done HTTPS. Bank traffic also comes to mind.
Why not do it in Metro? Because perception.
Metro is still Windows and even updates are boasted on the Start Screen.
Effectiveness is killed in favor of productivity.
So, as you can see, even though it might feel unnatural and strange to join Windows and Android it might turn up to be the "kller app" Windows 8 was looking for.
Paraphrasing U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday songs: "There's been a lot of talk about this next OS, maybe, maybe too much talk. This is not a rebel OS. This OS is Windows Bloody Windows."
I'm referring not just to Windows RT, but all recent Microsoft products that end with the T: Windows Phone Eight, Windows Eight and, of course, XBox One Next.
Albeit, there's something wrong going on inside Microsoft that keeps these OSes from being America's (and the world) sweethearts.
Mihaita Bamburic down at betanews describes the problem with Windows Phone 8, but I think the problem runs deeper than he think's and has more to do with Microsoft's top-down strategy control, than sticking with a decision.
The best way to explain it would be to create a Shakespearean drama played act by act by those involved. It would look something like this.
Windows 8: A dramedy
Authors: S. Ballmer, J. Larson-Green, et. al.
Act One: "To Zune to be true".
A small group inside the company through using some clever hacks create an innovative UI which somehow gets green light inside the silo divided fort.
Plenty of geeks give thumbs up and a tiny little media player is released. Upper management applaudes and then goes back to focusing on Vista. Nobody cares about sales and everybody gets a star on their forehead.
Act Two. "SJ phones home".
Upper management is too busy with the Vista fiasco to even care about the iPhone. They laugh for a short while before concentrating on Service Pack 1.
The small team sends memo upon memo that they can respond to the threat with the Zunetastic, but they can even get Steve Ballmer's assistant to hear their elevator pitch.
Act Three: "Smartphones are In, Other phones are out".
Things start getting messy everywhere. It seems Vista was virus and everybody got infected. Just the Zune guys were inmune. So upper management decides to do a lobotomy on Windows Vista (which would become Windows 7) and extract Windows Mobile out of the bloodstream.
They let the Zune guys now they can toy with the phone idea for a while and see if they can offer something of value. Nobody thinks they will make something useful.
Act Four: "It's a beta, but don't let anybody now. Let's just call other phones a beta instead and distract everybody".
Windows Phone 7 is release. Everybody is happy and they even have a funeral for Apple (yeah right) and for BlackBerry (long overdue). Everybody loves the little tiles, just don't ask the team how they got them there.
Once upper management finds out what hacks they made, they cry in despair. "So we actually are selling these things". Urgent meeting to correct things and the Super Senior architects are called in.
Act Five "To Alcohol Vista! The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems."
The super duper architects beyond good and evil inside Microsoft decide that it's "the season to be Metro". Go ahead and have wonderful meetings with everybody exposing the wonderful API they envisioned (without a single meeting with the WP7 team) so everybody can copy it and do wonders. Everything must be Vista...errr... NT kernel and everything must end with a T (Windows Eight, Windows RT, Windows Phone Eight, XBox Next...errr One...)
And so, everybody gets back to their own silos and, just like the telephone children's game, everybody interprets the meetings differently and ends up with similar but incompatible versions of the Super Duper API.
The Windows team thinks that this goes against Apple and since there a lowercase "i" in iPad and iPhone, why not use a uppercase "I" everywhere: IDisposable, IEnumerable, IDontknow, IWhatever. and let's all use COM+. Windows Phone team sees the silver lining and does everything with a Silver Light.
In retrospect: a flop so obvious you could write essays of Windows 8 just by using the leftovers left from reviews of the "John Carter" movie.
Act Six: "It's the End of Start...or Beginning of the End"
Windows 8 is first shown. It's magical, it's wonderful, but it doesn't have a Start Button.... where's the damn Start button... People panic, sales panic, Ballmer dances (of course)... he once said it was the "Riskiest product bet by Microsoft....". Then we see Windows RT and it's even worse (as incredible as it might sound)... then XBox One... and tablets running Windows RT instead of Windows Phone.... and...
Act Seven: "S. Elop: Our arrogance will block out the sun. S.Ballmer: Then we shall have our battle in the shade!".
A new cast actor enters stage named just J and says... "We are SpaRTa!!! There could only be ONE!? Who needs a phone, in this moment"
300 developers are rushed into battle against Mac OS Xerces, while the other thousands have to figure out how to combine Windows RT and Windows Phone.
What's gonna happen? Who's OS is gonna die? Stay tuned, since this is gonna be a 2014 Bloody 2014.
First, it doesn't feel like we are asking you to abandon some glorious place of communications nirvana....Outlook may be familiar, which we can often confuse with productive or well designed.
Certainly, we can admire the application for its survival... a pre-web program written at a time when NT Server terrorized the data center landscape with the confidence of a T-Rex born to yuppie dinosaur parents who fully bought into the illusion of their son’s utter uniqueness because the big-mouthed, tiny-armed monster infant could mimic the gestures of The Itsy-Bitsy Pterodactyl...
But whether it’s familiarity, laziness or simple stubbornness dressed in a cloak of Ayn Randian Objectivism, the time has come to move on, commrade [sic ... go deep in this pun, it is layered].
Memo to Yahoo employees asking them to move from Exchange to Yahoo Mail ---Allthings D, November 24, 2013
Celebrating my birthday… And remembering the 50th anniversary of JFK assassination through his memory… Ironically at a Cuban Cantina… Go figure… with Norma at La Bodeguita del Medio – View on Path.
Today, we are happy to announce that we will be introducing a new Yahoo! logo next month.
Over the past year, there’s been a renewed sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo!, and we want everything we do to reflect this spirit of innovation. While the...
Breaking Bad or none at all: the Hyperloop, Schrödinger cat or the uncertainty of life...
Today was a day of change. More precisely, unpredictable or immeasurable change, as contradicting as that may sound.
First Google celebrated Erwin Schrödinger's birthday by dedicating a Doodle to his infamous dual state cat.
Next, Elon Musk—also caught in a duality himself with Telsa and SpaceX—showed the world his latest inception: the hyper fast and hipster cool, hyper loop for travelling between San Francisco and L.A. in just 30 minutes, at about 600 mph (~1,000 km/h).
Coincidence or just quantum decoherence? Let me explain.
In 1927 Heisenberg, established the uncertainty principle where you either now where you are or now where you're going.
I know... it wasn't that Heisenberg, but then again just like Walter White, most people don't know what life will bring to them until they arrive to it. Hence, he's also another example of the uncertainty principle.
Regardless, this principle has laid the foundation of modern quantum physics. Everything from wave functions collapse to the many-worlds interpretation all has rested on one simple observation: You can predict where something's going but once you observe it, it looks nothing like the thing you predicted.
Take for example, smartphones. We all new they were coming. Everybody in the industry thought they were inevitable. So everybody started shrinking computers and started packing them in small packages, 'cause that was where we were headed. Even Microsoft created Windows CE, so we could have Windows 95 in the Palm of our hand.
Fast forward several years, and every smartphone was a computer, just miniaturized. Then came Steve Jobs and said Enough!... well, not literally, but rather conceptually.
He sat down with the engineers and after looking at a proto-iPad, he said[1] "My G-d, we can build a phone out of this..." and he put the tablet to rest and voilá, changed the phone industry forever. And today, smartphone no longer look like tiny PCs, which ironically have turned into oversized phones and tablets.
So just like Schrödinger cat, we can't know how technology, culture, or even, society will turn like, until we open the box or turn the page.
And that's what's important of Elon Musks announcement today.
Even though we can't be sure the HyperLoop will ever be built, you can rest assured that it will come, sooner than later.
It might not look like the one shown today or even go from L.A. to San Fran in 30 minutes, but it will appear. If not California or China, it could appear anywhere: Dubai, India, South Africa, even Mexico.
And the latter is something I would like to discuss with Elon Musk, if given the chance. If you want to change the world, you have actually to change it in the least probable way.
Today, hundreds of man hours are wasted on border crossings between Mexico and the United States. Just come to McAllen, El Paso or San Diego. Cross the line, go forward a few feet away, then come back. Most probably you'll take 5 to 10 minutes to do the first step of the exercise. But once inside, the return will surprise you.
You're gonna be surprise. Yourself, the car and what's inside hasn't change a bit. You don't carry drugs, nor illegal aliens (what more derogatory term do we have better than this one) and you haven't lost your American citizenship.
You have entered into the uncertainty zone, not knowing at what time you'll gonna get back. That is, you know where you're going, but you don't know when you'll get there.
The hours might pass. Thousands of gallons of fuel, wasted on a mere 300 or 400 feet. It's not called the Border for nothing. We Mexicans call it the Frontier, just like in the Old West. And then again, it's a better description as it's not a barrier but rather an Edge, where one paradigm bleeds with the other until it disappears from view,
So Elon, if you want to change something you can start by trespassing this cultural divide. By HyperLooping cities like Monterrey with Austin, you create synergies. You mix creativity with ability to deliver.
Just like the Kabbalist gift of Kefitzat Haderech, people who can travel space in little time can disperse knowledge that is greater than the sum of its components.
And yet, just like the uncertainty principle we can't really know how an hyperloop for such a contrasting environment would look like. Maybe just the idea is enough. Go from one place to another in minimal time.
Maybe that's enough for the revolution. Maybe us, as Jobs will look at another idea from another unrelated medium and say "We can build a Super Speed Transport with this".
Just my two cents, or two electrons, or better yet, one bitcoin block which is a combination of the two. Initially in a superposition of several eigenstates. Whatever that means.
My last day at ACS, a Xerox company was April 4, 2012, when we were downsized. I was enraged and could only think malaise to my former boss. Xerox was a wonderful company but not in Monterrey. The ACS side were single minded people who could only think of the bottom line.
When I tried a joint project between us and the Xerox Research Centre Europe, things get awry once top management hit their upper wall.
After a while, I realized, I was a big duck in a small pond. Minding the difference, I felt like Alan Kay and Bob Metcalf at Xerox PARC on the 70's (see my previous blogpost for thoughts on that).
And that's when my journey begins...
The Silicon Valle project
If you don't already know, Silicon Valle, started as a personal quest to make it on the big leagues.
It started as a personal journey from my current town (Monterrey, Mexico) to the center of IT all: the Bay Area, San Francisco, the Silicon Valley.
The actual name Silicon Valle started as a pun. The place I grew on is most commonly and affectionately called the "Colonia del Valle" or Neighborhood on the Valley or simply Valle (without the 'y' at the end), as Spanish for Valley.
About Valle...
Since the late 80's, due to an increase of under-graduates and graduates from higher educations centers, it has started to focus on IT. Several important venture capital funds are located there, like Alta Ventures and Naranya.
I say there, mainly because I live just two blocks north, just past a bridge atop the dry Santa Catarina lake.
It's a nondescript bridge spanning a few feet away from the posh neighborhood on the other side. On most of the Monterrey's Met area, space is tight and municipal services lack, on San Pedro Garza García (which is the official county name) traffic lanes are divided by wide parks called Calzadas which expand north-south and east-west this affluent area. It hints first-world, but the illusion quickly fades once you get to know other areas of my town. Kinda, it indicates that we are half way on the middle.
From Point A to C, but going through H and B.
And that's precisely where my journey began. Half way down that middle road, between the knowledge economy and the real economy of my current ecosystem.
Here you don't sell ideas, you sell hands and do other's people work.
So being a freelancer is not a good place to start. There have been hardships and low downs. At several moments in time I had given up on my dreams when something new came up.
So, after much work, finally a windows opened. A friend of mine, gave me an opportunity on his company to do some intraprenual work and tomorrow we start with the first customer. To avoid giving the name away, I'll just say it's a Depot but ain't for the Office.
They are quite big, with a 1000+ team on location everywhere from Austin to Santiago, Chile, stopping at my home town of Monterrey.
My goal is help them create synergies for the likes of: mobile, consumer apps and all sorts of uses for the social and localization trend (a la Foursquare and Path) but with an Enterprise slant. They also will be assigning me to key account to help on business development, software development and architecture.
Other musings...
Alas, I don't want to forget my current visions outside that realm, so as to make them grow in current year, including.
Some of them are (I will describe briefly, as as to keep them on my personal radar).
Loreto
We plan to change social networking for the better. Today people exchange the nuances of life, including large amount of photos of food, jokes, babes and stuff.
We want to push forward, into the realm of ideas and lores, that is, the real fabric of thought. Using semantic analysis we want to help propel the semantic web forward. That'll take time and we will move slowly but surely.
Blogfacturing
Wouldn't it be nice if companies that handle your social networking needs focus on the good stuff and not just sending social messages without a purpose or meaning.
That's BlogFacturing, creating ideas, dialogues and helping companies make the right choices with regards to their social interactions.
My partner (in crime) is a Fellow from Mexico City living here in Monterrey. He's helping me sort things out and find customers willing to change their current social media providers.
Thanks to him, we currently have a graphic designer at Mexico City working with several design studies. We want to expand the team and focus on continuous clients which have a clear idea of their social interaction needs and premises.
In the end, this could become an app similar to HootSuite but far more focused and outsourced (even crowdsourced)
Featured
We believe the customer is always right, but can't find north or south. So that's what Featured's gonna do.
Give the end customer an app to find promos and packs and have him sort them out as they like. Automagically, the sorting gets published and others can search for stuff the same way.
On the back end, we're thinking of doing things the BI (Business Intelligence) way. Denormalize as much as you can, create a common engine and tell your back end customers (Wal Mart, H.E.B., Oxxo, etc.) to just drop stuff on your central server in a common way. No fuss, no mess.
P.S.:I want this idea to be a joint venture between the Santiago people here, and another guy down there in the Lean Startup LatAm stuff. I've plenty of people to convince before this goes forward, but I'm patient and I know I will get what I want once everybody 'gets the idea'. Wish me luck.
Global Internet Guru, GIG and OpenGIG.
This project has been a late bloomer. Our idea is to create a spot where freelancers can find jobs that best match their interests. We want to be kinda like Agents who find gigs for talented people and only charge the commission, kinda like 10x Management, but Silicon Valle.style.
Unfortunately, my partner down at Mexico City has given other projects the spotlight. Alas, I was banned from one of his customers, so it might well be a no go, but I will try my best to find a compromise, between business and technology.
Well those are the breath of my effort. I hope G-d gives me the knowledge, the savvy and the experience to push them forward without breaking me apart.
Alas, as always, plans change and things change, so I'm open to compromises here and there, as long as the general vision stays.
As an old saying says:
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
Wilhelm Stekel -- As quoted in The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger.
So wish me luck and hope for the best, but expect the worst, although I think that has--hopefully--past by.
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Start Button on Windows Blue"
Quite a controversy has been spawned by the apparent inclusion of a Start Button on the upcoming release of Windows Blue, aka Windows 8.1.
Let's face it. That tiny little button became a symbol of what's wrong with Windows 8 and made it a perfect martyr of the Post PC era, killed by the blinded heart of Microsoft, trying to please the phablet sanhedrin and the touch centered masses.
Even it's name could be used to create a full treatise of Semiotic value (aka symbols and signs).
"Does killing it mean that the "Start" of the Windows era has ended?" .
But then again, was it really THAT IMPORTANT.
Of course, opinions will always vary.
Lets look back and see what has happened in the past.
As you can see I will intermingle the images of Start buttons from past eras, starting, on the very top with the Start8 extension sold by stardock.com.
EVOLUTION (1973-2009)
Some say that if you want to look forward, you must first look back.
The 70's or the Seventies...Vietnam, M*A*S*H and Woodstock..
In the early 1970's--when the U.S. had Richard Nixon and we had Luis Echeverria Alvarez and we were all screwed (read the wikipedia and you'll get the idea of what I say)--in a remote laboratory at the North End of the Valley of Heart Delights, Xerox had opened what they thought was their ticket to success in computing, enough to rival Exxon [yes, it's not a typo], DEC and IBM.
It was a small laboratory they decided to call PARC for the Palo Alto (,California, USA) Research Center and, of course, they did Research and also they did Development so they did R&D.
After several years they came up with a fancy system they called the Xerox Alto, and it was the first time "Windows" appeared. Ironically, this is the first time, we see a "Start" button inside a computer screen.
Things were rather primitive, but enough to convince everyone that this was the future of computing.
Xerox, tasked the team on creating a commercial version of the Alto, and several years later, the Xerox Star (without a t at the end) came to be.
Mysteriously the Start button had gone. It would stay MIA for another 22 years.
Thousands of articles have been written about Xerox failure to capitalize, so I will skip those details and jump straight to Steve Jobs and, of course, Lisa and Macintosh. Go elsewhere for more info, or just buy this book "Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer".
The 80's or the Eighties...Greed, Deregulation and Techno...
It's now 1983, one year after the Mexican Miracle collapse by the hands of Jose Lopez Portillo and the start of the third year of Reaganomics. Apple was having trouble coping with IBM PC and decided to risk it all with the Apple Lisa Project. It was introduced on January 19, 1983 and cost US$9,995 ($21,693.67 in 2009 dollars) a lot of dough.
The interface looked good. Clean. But still more evolution was needed before the GUI could be liked by everyone.
Jobs had an infight and a separate team duplicated the effort of the Lisa in a cheaper (and cleaner) package, called the Macintosh.
It was all Lisa should be, but it lacked several things that would later make the difference in the battle for the GUI (one of them is, of course, the purpose of our article; the other, if you haven't figured out is preemptive multitasking).
Right there at the top, a tiny Apple held a menu. For those keen on eye, this screenshot is of System 7, so you can see the tiny Mac at the left which was breed by Windows 95, but more on that later.
At least for the next 10 years (1984-1994), Apple held the throne of the GUI wars, but not on the innovation front.
In 1988, Jobs surprised the world, with it's NeXT Cube and NextStep OS and also made a crucial innovation. He created "the Dock", that is one place where running and none running applications will appear, always in sight.
GUI were starting to look interesting after all.
The 90's or the Nineties...Eco, Peace and Grunge...
So now we arrive at a crucial date, 1995. Bil Clinton was U.S. president and Ernesto Zedillo had just barely saved Mexico from financial ruin via a help by the U.S. government. The NAFTA had just started and the world look happy and peaceful as we all would be benefiting from the "peace dividend".
On August 24, to be exact. Bill Gates at center stage and "The Rolling Stones" playing, precisely "Start Me Up". The era of Windows 95 had started with a bang.
Microsoft had somehow pulled it off. Wonderful interface on top of a terrible OS, that is MS-DOS.
IBM, on the other hand, had done the complete opposite. Crappy GUI on top of a wonderful OS.
If Microsoft strategy (or STARTegy, LOL) sounds familiar, it's because it's the same used by Windows Phone 7, but that would need another blog post to explain.
Windows 95 was a runaway success. Apple knew they were screwed, but had nothing to do, but cry (and hope Steve Jobs would ever come back to save them). IBM also cried tears as they knew OS/2 days were over, even though they were finishing the details of OS/2 Warp 4.
With time, Windows grew better, first with Windows 98.
Then Windows ME. (No screenshot here, as we all want to forget that one).
Next came the Windows NT era, which basically kicked in with Windows NT Workstation 4.0. It looked almost the same as 95, but featured a much much better OS inside.
Fast forward into Windows XP [eXPerience, but other think it stands for eXPertise] (since Windows 2000 looked almost identical to Windows NT 4.0 but with IE 3) and suddenly things got interesting. Microsoft started to innovate and good.
Everything looked nice. Everybody was happy.
Except those inside Microsoft, it seems. Contrary to the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", they decided to start "Longhorn" which was supposed to be the middle step between "Whistler" (Windows XP) and "Blackcomb" (the all manage code [.NET]) über OS, which never appeared (some people confuse it with Windows 7, more on that below)
But Longhorn was the OS turned sour. The first attempt was bad and the second attempt was even worse.
The 00's or the Zeros... Y Generation, War on Terror and 'N Sync...
It was 2007. The peace dividend was over by 9/11. The U.S. was at war with Iraq and Afghanistan, the so called "War on Terror". The U.S. president was George W. Bush at the middle of its second term and the Mexican president was Felipe Calderon which "won" the election by a mere 0.5%, with a looming "War on Drugs" fiasco. Both nations would soon regret having both leaders.
And then came: Windows Vista, to screw things over at the highest of degrees.
It looked like XP (either at war or on drugs) but worked worst than OS/2, on hardware 10x faster.
It was a mess. Thousands of drivers existed for every kind of hardware known to mankind for XP. Only a handful were available for Vista. With no convincing reason, Microsoft have scrapped 10 years of hard work by OEMs like HP, Canon, Cisco, etc.
I'm including a screenshot just to remember this dreaded release. I couldn't find one with the middle finger raised.
BTW. I've a friend on Microsoft and a month before it was released, I told him this would be the Edsel of OSes; he called me a phony. I should've made a bet.
Funny thing: this was the first time the start menu had no start label. And, of course, Windows Vista was a "none starter".
People hated "the View" (Vista, in Spanish was supposed to mean vision, but surprisingly, the correct word for that is exactly the same visión, vista means just eyesight). Back to the drawing board and two years later and finally, Microsoft was ready to kick Vista out-of-sight.
The '10s or the Teens... Obamacare, Market Crash and Justin Beiber...
With 2009, came Barack Obama, the first African American president and, of course, the 2009 market meltdowns.
And...the release Windows 7. A full controversy ensued as to if this was really the Seventh iteration of Windows, but regardless, it was a success. Although internally 6.1, by definition, it had the luck seven.
REVOLUTION (2010-2012)
Did I say everybody was happy. Well, even Microsoft, but sadly, happiness lasted too little as in January 2010, just 3 months after Windows 7 release, Apple changed the way we interact with computers forever and released iPad.
And, guess what? It had no Start menu. It was a resounding success. It sold 15 million in less than a year.
What had happened? Well, although Apple had lost against Windows 95, Jobs went back and took good ol' NeXTStep (1988, see above) and transformed it into a touch device. As you can see from the image above, there's a dock and there's lots of icons. Inside there was PDF rendering, OpenGL and lots and lots of stuff borrowed from the original OS.
Some people think that iOS (the same system running on the iPhone) came from Mac OS X and that a half truth. If you delve inside you'll see that Mac OS X is an interpretation of NextStep and OpenStep, but not really a descendant.
iOS, on the other hand, is the lost son. Pure, simple and without the need of any useless compatibility.
So Microsoft was angry. They knew they were wrong at dismissing the iPhone. They hoped Android would kill iPhone and instead, Apple shifted the cheese to another level. Both them and Google will have to catch up again.
And boy did they started thinking.
Android released the ill fated Honeycomb. The Windows Vista of Android.
And after lots and lots of work, Microsoft released Windows 8 and Windows RT.
And guess what? (Again) No start button.
Just a big "Start" title on the upper left of no real use.
Below that, plenty of squares, of all colors. These were called Live Tiles. MIcrosoft meant them to alert the user of what was happening inside. But inside, where?
Touch one of them and it sends you to the app, not the currently displaying "information". Same principle as Windows Phone 7.
The problem is: how do you know what else is inside? How do you stop the Tile to see if the message is important enough to dive in. No gestures, no scrolling. This is not your Android Widget, not even your Windows Vista Desktop Gadget (you had forgotten those)
With a fell swoop, Microsoft forgot all it had learned.
They forgot people start with actions, not questions or answers. You know you want to "do something". Windows 8 became an OS of Ads not Actions. You are bombarded by what's happening, just like Television, but there's no concrete way of interacting directly with those Adverts.
With that in mind, this would should be the Live Tile for Word 2013.
And it ended looking like this:
Contrast that with Word 2013 on Windows 7, Start menu.
As you can see there (and below) the icon has a purpose (to open the app) and a menu (to open recent files).
Same applies to all of Windows. Just take a look at My Start Menu.
You can easily see I've recently opened ("Reciente" is "Recent" in Spanish) and have included in this post. I also know how to search, and even have a handy button for turning the machine off ("Apagar"). If I wanted, I can invoke the program itself by just clicking the program name.
DEVOLUTION (2013?-)
So the Start Menu is really a feature lost. The Start Screen, is just a bad imitation created to please the touch centered audience. But aren't those guys more prone on buying an iPad. That is: if you want touch, why care about ordinary Windows programs? Office, of course.
And there you have it, Office for Windows 8, aka Office 2013 with a touch friendly ribbon on the top, flat and spaced, ready to take your commands with the touch of your fingers.
But wait, what's that blue big button that says "FILE". It's not a tab, nor a menu (nor a bird nor a plane, for that matter). It your ticket to the "Backstage". Kinda like a "Start Button" for any of the programs in Office 2013.
Info
New
Open
Open in SharePoint...
Well you get the idea.
As you can see, this what some people at Microsoft intended when they were faced with the touch dilemma. Others went the "happy path" and made the Start Screen. They forgot what had been learnt just to push ahead.
So now that we are hearing about the next release of Windows 8, code name Blue, we start hearing about the return of the "Start" button.
Will it be like Windows 7 with all the fancy icons and stuff, in a side window?
Maybe not. Maybe the desktop will simply go from this:
To something as simple as this:
CONCLUSION
So that's the reason, Virginia, why the Start Menu is back on Windows 8.1, because it never really went away.
It just stayed dormant on the minds of the people outside the Metro-wonderland.
And now that the red pill fix has started fading, it's time to get back to reality with the tried and tested blue pill. (So long Morpheus, I mean Sinosfsky)
Facebook Home, Windows Phone, Marmageddon or "why you can't please 'em all"...
It appears Microsoft is a little jealous of Facebook's Home and the media attention it grabbed.
At least that's what TechCrunch says from "Welcome to the People Party".
Well, these days Microsoft is jealous of everybody's success, since they aren't getting any love.
Turns out they believe they invented the whole People-centric smartphone concept and hope they deserve the credit. And that's when people start saying... "yes... I saw that done on Windows Phone 7 a while back... whatever happened to that cute phone?".
What happened? For starters: nobody cared. Well, not nobody but in modern times a few hundred thousands, even millions don't amount to much if word of mouth doesn't spread the good news. Let's remember that Star Wars Episode I "The Phantom Menace" (yes the one with Yar Yar Binks) got more than $28 million (US Dollars) at the opening day and was quickly forgotten once Episode III proved George Lucas wasn't that bad as a director this time.
If he (Lucas, not Yar Yar) taught us a lesson is that you can be whomever you want but you're prone to mistakes and bad executions, even if in the past you were wildly successful and also that most times dollar numbers means nothing against powerful franchise gone bad (Star Wars on one hand and Windows on the other).
Even though Microsoft did it first, Facebook's did it way better. Just contrast the photo above with the one below.
The more you compare, the more you see what went wrong. WP looks as if you forgot to put the phone a few inches back to see the full. One friend of mine even pinched with both fingers to see if this could get smaller, to no avail.
But the UI aside, there's something deeper. It's not that WP7 doesn't do the job, it's that its design wasn't meant for everybody. It's too modern, too dark, to minimalist, while Facebook's design is clean, lively and colorful and not at all cluttered.
In the end, Facebook's Home might not be a blatant success as the Android whole or the HTC First might not even be a blip against the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S-III/4. But it delivers what's needed for the intended audience. That is, it's a hit, just for the intended audience of hyper-social hipsters (HySoHips).
If you continue the movie comparison: Facebook Home does not attempt to be a "Star Wars prequel" but rather "Silver Linings Playbook" kind of movie or jut about any Bradley Cooper film (appeals to women) plus add Jennifer Lawrence to the mix (appeals to men, specially pedofiles... LOL) and you'll get an instant success. But not with everybody, just your selected audience.
Disclosure: I haven't seen the movie as I haven't seen the HTC First but I'm sure what to expect.
On the other hand Microsoft and George Lucas, bound themselves in too tight armor.Calling it Star Wars I was worse than calling it "The Best Movie Ever Made"
Star Wars brings memories of Hans Solo, C3PO, R2D2, Princess Leia and the blonde, blue eyed Luke Skywalker.
Episode I brought only: Yar yar Binks, a useless jet ride, a squeaky brainless boy and the stupid midiclorians tale, which killed the zen like Force hoping to transform it into something akin to royal blue blood.
Windows Phone fared on no better: we remembered Windows 7, icons, the taks bar, translucency, etc. and we got really big boxes which change often with no real reason, overcrowded "windows" without borders and type so big it seems it's a mistake.
In the end, this is just my personal appreciation, but that's precisely the point: Microsoft wants to appeal to everybody and Facebook just to a couple of brave users who care to download the app or buy the phone. There's no strong arming the full solution to just one use case.
And that's when I remember a curious anecdote that happened just a while back.. It appears that some strange quake hit a town in New Zealand and that destroyed the production of "Marmite".
The event was called the "Marmageddon", since there was no other place this stuff was produced. It appears that people waited and waited for 3 years until the plant opened to finally buy their Marmite.
Lines formed on "midnight on 20 March 2013, although only the 250g jar size was initially available and many supermarkets imposed a limit of two jars per customer per day to promote fairness and prevent bulk buying"[wikipedia].
You might wonder: why all the fuss?, especially since there's a British import which is identical called "Our Mate".
Well, I don't really know. The only thing I know is that Marmite makers know that this stuff either you love it or you hate it. It's black and tastes like mud and has enough salt to fill the salt lake.
But there's people who have made up their minds. Or at least want to defend that choice. Just like anchovies, caviar or Gary. But there's no imposing to anybody. You don't go to McDonalds and see your Big Mac with Mexican Chipotle, or get your French Fries got changed to sweet potato ones. There's a market for those, but not the mainstream.
iTV or "how i stop worrying and learned to love the NeXT Television..."
At last I might have figured Apple's TV future plans and if so, I must admit I couldn't expect less from them.
The "facts" have always been the same.
It's gonna be big (60, 70 or 80 inches). Not sure why we still measure diagonally as this lost any sense when TVs went widescreen. (And don't get me started on the fact we still use inches, when most screens are made in China, Japan or Mexico all metric countries).
Companion screen (9", iPad like). Now they're saying that you can buy as much as 4 linked to one single system.
Streaming channels, ala Roku, but done better. (Why don't they just buy Roku? Go figure)
Lots of apps. They even joked on April's Fools with a console called iPlay, caring only Angry Birds.
The only problem. How do you use the freaking thing with being drove made like Samsung Smart TVs or looking ridiculous like on Kinect (which might as well be the name for a new type of Ritalin)
Apple always tests and tests before declaring a winner and also watches others fail before commitment (are you hearing that Windows Mobile and Windows XP for Tablet PC).
First was the Apple Remote, used first with Front Row and then with Apple TV. It was just a mess.
Nintendo came up with the Wiimote, good but not good enough. Also a little dangerous.
Next came Kinect (photo courtesy of The Big Bang Theory and the YMCA dance in Star Wars Kinect)
We all know what happened and it was not fun.
So now we are @ April and according to CNET we are to expect an iTV this year, featuring an "iRing" controller and even an "iWatch". Do you believe these guys?
Well, I do, 'cause it all makes sense now.
What's missing from Kinect?: Personalization. Kinect never knows who's in front of it and treats everyone alike and really never knows if Player #2 is the same as a moments ago.
What's missing from Wiimote, Roku 3 Remote, etc.? Convenient size.
The solution: Gender specific controls.
Women:
The iRing. A pocket size black or white ring with one LED. Using Bluetooth and NFC it could easily be detected and send back minimal information which will act as a pointer and identity detector. It would have any accelerometers and compass, used in conjunction with a Kinect style system.
Men:
The iWatch. Just like the current iPod Nano as a watch. It would be multi touch and allow transfer of content. It will also give accelerometer and compass info.
As you can see, this could be used in concert with iPad minis tethered to the main screen.
Well tell me what you think and if I hit the spot or went off roud in a 4x4. Send me any comments on the "Ask anything section" above.
Last year Microsoft gave us a surprise when they revealed that they were planning to make hardware by themselves starting with an unofficial "iPad-killer".
They chose to name it Surface which last was used by the table size (almost) vaporware which you could only see at the Caesars Palace Las Vegas.
This time, Surface was gonna be cheaper and available in two versions: Light (Surface RT) and Genuine Draft (Surface Pro). Both had same format but different specs. One had ARMs, the other had Legs. One had Windows RT, the other full Windows 8. Both had Office and both had cute Touch Cover and Type Cover mixed keyboard/blanket. But they were worlds apart.
October saw the Surface RT release.
It was no good.The media crushed it like cooler ice.
They said it as incomplete, not ready for touch, a two experience nightmare that promised "NO compromise" and offered ONLY compromises.
Inside was our first taste of Windows Light, aka Windows RT which could only run "Windows Store" apps. The Windows Store was a barren land, emptier than a Western town, straight not from Django Unchained, but rather from Rango including the Chameleon, his wooden fish office (out place and fake as in the movie) and all the strange supporting cast. It had Office 2013 Home Preview but served raw, on a napkin at the desktop, without even knife and fork, so you had to taste it with your bare hands.
It was also a sales fiasco.
February gave us the sequel: the Surface Pro, a more traditional ultrabook stuffed inside a Surface carcass.
It's Intel Inside so it fully Windows 8 compatible, but with a meager battery life. No application dearth, but most of can be run is not "touch first".
Suddenly and without warning, Windows was no longer a single experience, but rather two separate environments.
On one side was Windows RT and it's apps. For namesake, I will avoid the horrendous "Windows Store" apps moto that Microsoft has tried to push forward and prefer to call them that, Windows RT apps.
On the other side came Windows 8 with its apps. But if you take a moment and think about it, you'll discover that these apps are not really "Windows 8 apps", nor "Windows 7 apps".
Really, they are plain "Windows XP applications" carried forward to allow Microsoft to keep it's marketshare.
People tend to forget that, MS had an agenda that nobody followed with Vista. They created WPF to push REAL Windows Vista apps which no one cared to learn. Windows 7 knew this, and simply ignored WPF in favor of traditional Win32.
They even offered a Virtual XP Mode, for pesky apps that didn't work properly on Win 7 idiosyncrasies.
So, at this moment, it seems clear that the battle for the desktop has split in two, coming ironically from the same boat.
It's a two letter battle, between XP and RT (I'm droping the "Windows" to avoid confusion with the product). Windows 7 is full of XP and can't run RT. Windows 8 can run XP, but feels more comfortable with RT. Surface RT is obviously full of RT but has some XP splattered for MS convenience.
In a twist of things, both XP and RT are COM+ based so it's really a battle of kin. Both want the throne of Windows, in a story strikingly similar to the Tudors, the Windsors or the Bourbons in where all had the same last name, but entirely different agendas. This time, it's the first name, followed by a cryptic surname.
Silently, both are vying to be your current UI, not the next one, as Microsoft wants you to believe, but your current UI, the one you use everyday and every night. Just like highlander, there can only be one, since the current mix is neither sustainable nor bearable.
XP has few advocates inside Microsoft (just the Office team) and a lot of following outside.
RT has plenty of followers inside, but almost none outside, aside from the cousin effort in Windows Phone.
Once you realize this dilemma, you notice that you have only two choices, indeed, two REAL ones. You can stay with Windows 7 (the last of the XP family) and forget RT even exists or you can jump into unknown territory and embrace Windows RT (not Windows 8).
Why not the mixed environment of Windows 8, which sure offers "no compromise"?
Precisely because it's a false prophet. He offers to lead you both ways (XP and RT) but can't deliver on neither fully. Your stuck in-between a old road coming from the metropolitan area and a under-construction over pass which leads to an empty city.
There's no space for the lukewarm.
But as Surface RT reception told us, most people decided to wait and see, as the road ahead is still dusty and needs work. Better safe, than sorry.
So poor RT city folks are just sitting on their chairs by the road, watching cars pass nearby on the interstate, just like at Radiator Springs on the Cars movie, but this time it's not the old town that's got sidelined but the new and empty "supercity" full of "please touch" signs.
Please keep in touch and let me know your comments, questions or concerns.
