I was interviewed recently by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for my thoughts on Google’s forthcoming cloud-based operating system, it was quite an honour. It also got me thinking in very serious terms about the ramifications of what’s unfolding both up in the clouds and down on the desktop.
With Chrome OS, Google are highlighting one of the biggest problems with computing today. Integration, or rather a lack of it. I said…
What about playing music or video on the move, or editing photos on one service when they’re stored on another?
and I’ll write more about the integration of cloud services in a later article. But it’s not just Google who are doing this and causing problems. Microsoft are also doing the same thing and Windows 7 lies at the heart of the problem.
The Redmond giant has simply become too big and has too many departments working, essentially, against each other. The lack of proper centralised co-ordination on the Microsoft campus is worryingly bad and the latest additions to this, the rumours of a Zune Phone and the forthcoming Windows Mobile 7 are just the latest examples of how these departments simply don’t talk to each other when, really, they should be co-operating at a very close level.
Microsoft have many competing platforms these days but they’re not just competing with the outside world, they’re competing with each other! We don’t have to worry about the lack of interoperability between cloud-based services from Google and the like, because Microsoft are already causing a bigger headache with products which aren’t even compatible with each other.
For an even better example look at the disparity and incompatibilities between XBox and PC gaming! These are essentially the same things with the same code running on the same hardware, but are they compatible? Not in the slightest. Live Mesh and Skydrive anyone!?
Okay so they do all work together, but not natively. My thoughts on the tighter integration needed between cloud services if also required on the desktop.
Windows 7, essentially at the hub of all of this, needs tweaks, software and updates to get it working even with Microsoft’s own cloud services. No doubt Windows Mobile 7 will need new versions of Mobile Device Centre to get it to talk to Windows. Indeed, why is mobile device centre even needed? Surely if joined up thinking was being used any Windows powered phone or device would simply show up as a drive with the integration with Outlook and Windows Live Mail simply working automatically within those programs.
For this to happen all the Microsoft platforms would need to be working from the same code base and that would be hard. But now Apple have led the way and demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can take the same code base and run it across hugely different types of platform. The iPhone, iPad and Mac all use the same code base. Everything, every single piece of hardware from Apple is just able to talk to all the others without a single problem, incompatibility, patch or update ever being required.
This is true unanimity. Now I understand that Apple have been able to start from scratch with a lot of this, but that’s what many people have been calling for with Windows Mobile 7. Just start from scratch, build it from the already excellent Windows 7 foundations and watch the magic take place.
But is this utopia going to appear at Redmond? When there were calls years ago for Microsoft to be broken up, it was unnecessary for any authority to do so. Microsoft achieved that all on their own.
