August 18th, 2007

Is the iPhone wrecking the web?

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:13 am

Categories: Microsoft, Mobility, iPhone

Tags: Apple iPhone, Web, Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, Web Browser, Marc Orchant

Scott Gilbertson, writing at Compiler on Wired News posted a pretty inflammatory piece titled “The iPhone is Internet Explorer 4 All Over Again“. As you might imagine, the comment thread is long, heated at times, and populated with the expected mix of “you’re an idiot!” and thoughtful replies both positive and negative. Gilbertson is essentially trying to argue that Apple gets a pass on stuff that would (and has) gotten Microsoft into big trouble and unloved.

While I think that there’s the germ of a good question in his piece, it was asked in far better fashion by ScottMcNulty over at TUAW. My response is that Gilbertson is barking up the wrong tree and makes a horribly flawed analogy. Here, in a nutshell, is why I think so:

• The iPhone is a fringe device used by a couple of hundred thousand people. IE4 was one of the dominant browsers of its day on the dominant operating system platform that, through the implementation of proprietary tags and features, broke the browsing experience for Netscape users (the other big gun at the time). Netscape “lost” as a result and IE became the dominant browser. There is zero chance that optimized for iPhone web sites will have the same effect on the market.
• Most iPhone websites/apps are variations on existing web properties so no one is being excluded. When they do provide something unique, it’s generally (in my experience) been to address the perceived deficiencies in what Apple has shipped in version 1 of the iPhone and so of little or no interest to users of other mobile devices.
• You can view an”optimized for the iPhone” site in any browser unless the site designer has specifically chosen to prevent this which is their prerogative (unless they’re providing an essential service that cannot be accessed in any other way which would be a ludicrous decision for anyone to make).
• Aside from Flash and some JavaScript, the WebKit-based browser on the iPhone is highly standards compliant. The optimization being done for the iPhone is largely visual enhancements to make the touch screen UI experience better.

What do you think? Is Apple guilty of the same sort of behavior Microsoft engaged in back in the IE4 era? Are they forcing anyone to do anything to ensure their web presence is viable? Do they get a pas just because they’re “cool”?

August 17th, 2007

iWork '08 - no Office killer 'cause it's not supposed to be

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:12 am

Categories: Apple iWorks, Mac, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Productivity, Software

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Apple Inc., Apple iWork, Marc Orchant

I picked up a copy of iWork ‘08, the new update to Apple’s productivity suite, the other day and have been noodling around in it since I installed it on my MacBook and my wife’s iMac. It’s a worthy upgrade for two principal reasons in my opinion: the significant improvements made to Pages (document processor) and the addition of Numbers, a new layout-oriented spreadsheet application. I’m not going to do a full, feature-by-feature review here – there’s plenty of those already on the tubes. I just want to address the notion that this signals some throwing down of a gauntlet by Apple in front of Microsoft. It doesn’t.

I thought we’d gotten past this but apparently not. Even venerable tech journalist and unabashed Apple fan Walt Mossberg fell into the trap of trying to compare iWorks ‘08 to Microsoft Office calling iWork “elegant but wimpy”. It’s a bad idea because they’re simply not the same thing. Walt goes so far off track as to slam Apple for not including an Outlook-like PIM in one sentence and them almost immediately points out that, well, Apple really doesn’t need to make an Outlook clone because, well, they already have a very nice set of applications for e-mail, calendar, and contacts built right into every Mac they ship. So why, oh why make bones over this. Why not just say so?

This, my friends, is a classic case of fomenting controversy where none needs to exist.

iWorks is not an Office “killer”. In fact, if you take Apple at their word, that’s never been their intent in producing the suite. According to a very lucid quote in an analysis piece at MacWorld from Apple’s Rob Shoeben, the raison d’etre behind iWorks is pretty simple:

“One of the things that you’ll see in some of our materials is, ‘Productivity the Mac way,’” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications product marketing. “That means, ‘I bought a Mac on purpose. I bought into the idea that things should look right and be well-designed and really easy to use.’ They want to enjoy the way they work, they want their work product to look great, and [they want to be] fundamentally integrated into iLife. If you buy into all that, that’s going to be appealing.”

And if you don’t, because you need (or want) the compatibility and feature full Microsoft Office experience then you go buy Office. Office:Mac is a decent product, if a bit long in the tooth. Even though the new Universal Binary Office 2008 for Mac has been delayed until sometime next year, the current version works pretty well. And it’s very compatible with it’s cousin on Windows. If you want compatibility with Office and don’t want to go the Microsoft route, you still have options. NeoOffice, a Mac-friendly version of OpenOffice is available at the nice price (free). You can also use ThinkFree Office which comes in both web-based (free) and desktop (commercial) flavors and will soon offer real-time sync between documents in the cloud and on your desktop with their Premium offering (disclaimer: I’m an adviser to ThinkFree).

It is what it is – a decidedly different approach to constructing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets nicely integrated into the Mac OS experience. Gee. Thinking different. From Apple. Go figure.

Update: Thanks to the MacWorld review of Pages I just learned that the Track Changes feature in the new version is compatible with the MS Word feature of the same name. Because Apple does not make this clear in their marketing messages or the small manual that comes with iWork ‘08, I assumed it was a proprietary approach to change management. This is huge for me as that’s one of the gating factors for me preventing me from seriously considering using Pages in more of my work. Sweet!

August 2nd, 2007

Microsoft delays Office 2008 for Mac until... 2008

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:46 am

Categories: Mac, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software

Tags: Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Jim Dalrymple, reporting at MacWorld announced the following news from Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit:

Microsoft will delay the release of Office 2008 for Mac until mid-January 2008, representatives of the company’s Macintosh Business Unit announced Thursday.

The long-awaited Intel-native Office, featuring programs such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage, was originally scheduled to be released later this year. Instead, Microsoft said it hoped to release Mac Office 2008 to manufacturing in December, which would allow it to release the product at the January 2008 Macworld Conference and Expo in San Francisco.

This is bad news for those of us who need some of the advanced functionality in Mac Office to collaborate with folks in the Windows world. Track Changes, in particular, is a compatibility issue that keep from from switching off Microsoft entirely on the Mac. It’s so commonly used in the work I do that I simply can’t afford to rely on another suite or set of products. I was pretty excited about the changes I’ve been hearing about in this next release but I guess I’ll just have to continue muddling along with Office 2004 on my MacBook a while longer.

That, or I need to just bite the bullet and use only Office 2007 in Parallels (serious overhead) and just remove Office 2004 from the Mac. Once Leopard arrives, I plan to reevaluate my Bootcamp thinking and may ultimately end up partitioning and dual-booting. Or I may just throw my hands up in abject defeat and do this kind of work on my Tablet PC and forget about everything-on-one-PC scenarios entirely.
I’ve already found a solution for cross-platform, work from any device, online/offline productivity for less complex documents and where the use of Track Changes is not mandated. I’ll be posting about that sometime soon, once the software/service I’m using is officially announced.

I know that Office is a big complex product and I’m sure there are legitimate reasons why MBUmade this decision but I’m increasingly feeling like Microsoft has some deep-rooted issues they need to address. More and more, it feels like everything they produce has a very good likelihood of slipping from its announced ship date. That does not bode well for them in the long run. The impact on SOHO and SMB customers is significant. The implications for Microsoft’s relationship with the enterprise is potentially catastrophic if they cannot hit their dates and provide a reasonable level of predictability.

UPDATE: On the virtualization front, VMWare has announced that Fusion, their Mac OS product will be released on August 6th for $79.99 (same price as Parallels). Between now and August 5th, you can pre-order Fusion for $39.99. You’ll get a license key instantly which can be used with the Release Candidate currently available or you can wait until the official release is available next week. Either way, it’s a sweet deal from a longtime leader in the space.

July 25th, 2007

Vista is taking body blows

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:59 am

Categories: Microsoft, Productivity, Software, Uncategorized, Vista, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, Marc Orchant

I’ve been on a bit of a blog and RSS hiatus the past couple of days and have been working my way through tales of destruction and distress (the 365 outage, not Lindsay Lohan’s latest episode), news, and views. In my reading, there’s a recurring theme that beats louder all the time. People are just not loving Vista.

James Fallows, one of my all-time favorite columnists, just wrote that he’s going back to XP. Valleywag, (almost) always amusing, albeit at the expense of accuracy from time to time, reports that the official release of SP1 for Vista appears to be slated for a 2009 release. And David Berlind really nails it in his discussion about the way the world is changing around Microsoft when he writes:

Today, I’m a user of both Windows XP and Windows Vista and while I remain convinced that Vista is a better OS than XP, my usage of XP serves as a constant reminder that when it comes to getting my work done, I’m not getting it done any faster or better in Vista. In fact, because of the way several things have been moved around in Vista, and because of the way Internet Explorer 7, in an effort to protect us from ourselves, locks up the Web in a chastity belt, I often find myself being slowed down by Vista. It may only be a matter of time before I get used to it (and figure out how to reconfigure IE7 with the necessary wiggle room). But the bottom line is that (a) I’m definitely not more productive and (b) if I finally get to a point where I am more productive, it won’t be by much.

Nothing I’ve read (or written) sums it all up quite as well as this paragraph. I like Vista for a lot of reasons. The visual appearance is great. The new bells and whistles (the sidebar and gadgets, integration of RSS, and built-in productivity apps like Calendar and Contacts for example) are very nice although such things have been available long before Vista on both XP, some via third parties, and on the Mac and Linux. But when it comes to actually getting things done, Vista feels like it’s getting in my way far more often than XP or the Mac OS (both of which I continue to use daily).

Having left the world of full-time gainful employment for the juggling career that is independent writing and consulting, productivity is my paramount concern. I have too many projects running concurrently to put up with an OS that creates stumbling points or friction in my work. And based on my soon-to-be-patented curses-per-hour algorithm, Vista is anything but friction-free. I recently wrote about my frustrations with something as simple as using removable USB memory stick. Given that I do a fair amount of gadget and software testing, I can say with some authority that installing device drivers and applications is not easier or faster in Vista. and even basic things like hibernating, starting up, and shutting down feel like they take a lot longer than in XP.

The luster of shiny new-ness wears off quickly these days and I’m on the fence with Vista. While I’ll keep it on the Lenovo X61 Tablet PC for sure (the new Tablet bits in Vista are that good), I’m less certain about some of my other Windows-powered devices. I’m about ready, time permitting, to repartition the hard drive on the Asus R2H UMPC to set up a dual boot with XP because Vista is just so broken on that device in ways both large (overall performance) and small (too many modal dialogs that are too big for the native screen resolution).

I don’t think Microsoft can afford the pace they’re setting. Vista SP1 needs to be officially released sooner than 18 months from now. And Windows 7? I’m not even going to think about that for a while.

July 7th, 2007

Share OneNote notebooks online

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:03 am

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software, Uncategorized, Utilities and Add-Ins

Tags: Notebook, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Marc Orchant

OneNote has long had the ability to create shared notebooks but a newly released OneNote powertoy from Microsoft developer Dave Tse allows you to export a OneNote notebook as an interactive website. Even better, the project has been deposited at CodePlex for community input and enhancement. The exported notebook is, unfortunately, best viewed only in IE7 as the .MHT “single file” HTML format is not well supported by third-party browsers. The web export can be saved on a local drive, a network share, or a SharePoint server.

For those working in a Microsoft-centric environment, this is a great way to share OneNote content with those who do not use the application and far more efficient than requiring a download of the bulky viewer application. The export can be scheduled to occur on a regular basis to keep content up-to-date. Compared to other authoring tools for creating SharePoint content, I’d much prefer using OneNote and this may well prove to the “killer” application for this powertoy.

Hat tip to Daniel Escapa, whose Search and Replace powertoy for OneNote I wrote about here for the link.

June 28th, 2007

Fake Microsoft security bulletin in the wild

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 5:53 am

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows

Tags: Security, Vulnerability, Sophos Plc., Microsoft Corp., Phishing, Hacker, Marc Orchant

If you (or someone you know) receives an e-mail about a zero-day exploit affecting Microsoft Outlook do not, under any circumstances, click on the links embedded in the message. It’s a phishing scam folks. The Security Bulletin (MS07-0065) it points to doesn’t exist. And just because it can never be said too often, I’ll say it again here. Microsoft does not alert users to security issues via e-mail. Ever. That’s what Windows Update is for. Details from Sophos are available here.

In the closing paragraphs of their announcement, Sophos describes why this vector has become so popular for phishers and hackers – people have learned that patching their systems against exploits is part of their “job” in keeping their systems running properly but haven’t yet completely grasped the potential vulnerability that awareness creates if they allow themselves to be duped into reacting to messages like this.

“Security bulletins from Microsoft describing vulnerabilities in their software are a common occurence, and so its not a surprise to see hackers adopting this kind of disguise in their attempt to infect Windows PCs,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. “The irony is that as awareness of computer security issues has risen, and the need for patching against vulnerabilities, so social engineering tricks which pose as critical software fixes are likely to succeed in conning the public.”

In examples seen by Sophos experts, the emails have contained the recipient’s full name, and the company they work for, in an attempt to lull user’s into a false sense of security.

“By using people’s real names, the Microsoft logo, and legitimate-sounding wording, the hackers are attempting to fool more people into stepping blindly into their bear-trap,” continued Cluley. “Users need to be on their guard against this kind of confidence trick or they risk handing over control of their PC to hackers with criminal intentions. They should also ensure that they are downloading Microsoft security updates from Microsoft itself, not from any other website.”

Update: Well, a number of commenters have corrected me  on my statement that Microsoft does not provide security alerts via e-mail. Apparently they do – on an opt-in subscription basis. And, apparently, the e-mails are PGP-signed (although, as the person who informed me of this pointed out, the vast majority of people don’t have PGP installed). My best advice to those of you who prefer to be safe rather than sorry is to use Windows Update to check for any security (or performance-related) updates.

June 26th, 2007

Powerful and free CSV export utility for Outlook

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 5:24 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins

Tags: Microsoft Outlook, Marc Orchant

CodeTwo Outlook Export is a free add-in for Microsoft Outlook (98 - 2007) that provides much greater flexibility than the built-in export feature in Outlook. All folder types are supported (including Post and Journal) and the utility provides an easy interface that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s poked around in the backwaters of Outlook to customize views and forms. This will come in handy for anyone looking for an easy way to eport Outlook data for use in a spreadsheet or database application.

H/T to Slipstick

June 26th, 2007

Codeweavers 10-step program

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 4:16 pm

Categories: Linux, Mac, Microsoft, Software, Uncategorized, Windows

Tags: CodeWeavers Inc., Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Codeweavers, the company behind CrossOver, an engine that provides Mac and Linux users the ability to install and run some Windows applications without a Windows  install or license, have just released a 10-Step Program for Computing Nirvana. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek poke at Microsoft and the dominance they enjoy over the computing world. I’m warning you up front that if you’re a Microsoft zealot, you’re probably going to hate this. If you’re a Microsoft basher, you’re probably going to get at least a few laughs out of it. And if you’re hewing to the middle ground and refuse to succumb to either of these magnetic poles, you’ll probably see both the truthiness and folly in this sort of thing.

It made me laugh and got me to click around their site a bit so I guess that qualifies as a success. Heck, it amused enough to write this.

June 23rd, 2007

New OneNote Powertoy adds search and replace

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 7:13 am

Categories: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Software, Tablet PCs, Uncategorized, Utilities and Add-Ins, Windows

Tags: Microsoft Office OneNote 2007, OneNote Powertoy, Daniel Escarpa, Marc Orchant

Daniel Escapa has just released a new Powertoy for OneNote 2007 that adds a basic search-and-replace feature to the application. I’ve long wished for this ability in OneNote. The add-in currently supports text only (no support for searching against pre-recognized text which makes sense in a certain way since what would it replace a result with?). Like all Powertoy releases, this is unsupported by Microsoft or the author so use at your own risk, your mileage may vary, back up all of your data before installing, and other cautionary admonitions apply.

June 14th, 2007

Microsoft and Linspire play nice

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 5:48 am

Categories: Linux, Microsoft, OpenOffice, Software

Tags: IM, Linspire, Microsoft Corp., Marc Orchant

Wow. Talk about the lion laying down with the lamb! In a joint announcement today, Microsoft and Linspire, a Linux distribution popular with consumers and SOHO, said they will collaborate ina number of areas to promote interoperability and a better user experience for Linspire’s customers. While maybe not the biggest deal Microsoft has announced recently, it’s noteworthy as another indication of the company’s increasingly relaxed posture towards Linux and has more than a bit of irony attached to it.

In Linspire’s early days, founder Michael Robertson called the distro Lindows and was forced persuaded by Microsoft to change the name to avoid “confusion” in consumers’ minds. Robertson, at the time, mused about changing the company and product name to Michaelsoft but opted to takesafer route of calling it Linspire.

The companies announced their collaboration will be in the following areas:

• Document format compatibility. Linspire will join with Novell Inc., Microsoft and other companies to develop and distribute open source-licensed translators that allow OpenOffice and Microsoft Office users to better share documents. These efforts will enhance customer choice by enabling effective translation between Ecma Open XML and OpenDocument Format documents.
• Instant messaging. Linspire will license Microsoft’s RT Audio Codec to promote voice-enabled interoperability between Linspire’s Pidgin instant messaging client and Microsoft’s instant messaging clients for business, Microsoft Office Communicator, and, for consumers, Windows Live Messenger.
• Digital media. Future releases of Linspire will now support the latest Windows Media 10 audio and video codecs, allowing Linspire and Microsoft Windows users to better share digital media files.
• TrueType fonts. Linspire will license popular Microsoft TrueType fonts, including Arial, Georgia, Times New Roman and Verdana, so Linspire users have improved experiences creating, editing and viewing files and documents.
• Linspire customers only receive these three technologies (instant messaging, digital media and TrueType fonts) if they purchase a patent SKU. The technologies are not shipped with all Linspire 5.0 distributions.
• Web search. Linspire will select the Live Search service of Windows Live as the Linspire 5.0 default Web search engine, allowing Microsoft to bring Live Search to a broader set of users and providing leading search capabilities to Linspire customers.

Interesting. This appears to create a platform for Microsoft to make a number of its core technologies work on Linux. There’s no indication what the “patent SKU” will cost or how soon it will be available but this is a story I plan to keep an eye on.

Update: TechCrunch says this is just the latest member in the Anyone But Redhat Club.