Bad news, Sidekick owners: If the frigtards at Microsoft haven’t retrieved your data yet after that massive server outage, it’s probably lost for good.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, they’re offering you a free month of their service that doesn’t work. The really good news is that there’s still this.
It’s our old friend, Jim Louderback, who writes: “The more I play with Windows 7, the more I see the Vista debacle unfolding all over again. The commonly accepted wisdom is that Windows 7 is oh-so-much-better than Vista. Well, based on my own extensive testing, it’s not. Not at all.”
Jim, who used to be editor of PC Magazine, now runs Revision3, a Web video company. He penned this poison apple for his former overlords:
Over the past two months, I’ve been testing the Win7 release candidate not on brand new hardware, nor on the free systems Microsoft has been providing to its favored reviewers. Instead, I’ve suffered through trying to upgrade a wide variety of systems that are a lot more like what you’re probably running – 1-3 year old notebooks and desktops. And what I’ve found is sharply different from the overweening bootlicking being spewed by most reviewers.
I don’t fault them – well, not too much. They’ve been running Windows 7 in a best-case environment, and I’ve been running it in the worst. They have access to a near-limitless supply of new computers, new notebooks and new peripherals from vendors eager to ride the expected coattails of Microsoft’s triumphant release. I’ve been relegated to testing Windows 7 on the old systems that you and I are still running.
They love it. I’m not so sure. I’ve installed windows 7 on 8 different machines – a mix of notebooks and desktops – and I’ve downgraded all but two of them. Why? Because despite the hype, it worked more slowly, crashed more often, and just flat out didn’t work right.
So I’m here to tell you that Windows 7 is definitely a step forward – but not for many existing computers. You may not want to hear this, but Vista Service Pack 2 – the current upgraded version – is actually better, in many cases, than Windows 7.
I just forwarded this to Ballmer, with an e-card that said, So happy for you, sweetie.
See, freedom and openness are great, except when they’re not. They’re great when you’re talking about politics, and about people being able to do whatever they want as long as they don’t harm other people. But on consumer electronics? Not so much. Which brings me to Android.
I’ve been predicting this along, and now it’s happening, and what’s more, people are starting to notice. Even passionate Google/Android fanboy Michael Arrington has been forced to admit that Android is facing a really profound problem, ie not a problem related to execution, which could be fixed by, oh, I don’t know, shooting a couple of engineers in front of the others so you could scare them into doing better work. No, the problem with Android is related to the very nature of the project itself. The problem is, Android is an open-source program. Arrington seems just now to realize that this means people can fork the code, and he and others are praying that this won’t happen:
Android, an open source operating system, must avoid the fate of J2ME, an open source mobile applications platform. Open source is great, until everyone splinters off into their own world. That’s what happened to J2ME, and a number of frustrated Android developers are now saying that there is a risk Android will follow the same path.
Um, hello? Folks, the whole point of doing open-source code is to let it fork. The idea is to accelerate evolution by encouraging weird mutations. Creating an open source program and hoping it won’t fork is like decorating your house with a zillion Christmas lights and a forty-foot inflatable Santa and hoping nobody stops to look at it.
Even if Android doesn’t fork into a zillion little weird programs that go scuttering off in all directions like so many beads of mercury, well, there’s another issue, and again, it’s a profound one, related to the very essence of Android — namely, that Android is just the OS, and every handset that it runs on is different. So if you’re an app developer, what do you write for? See, on the PC, this wasn’t an issue, because the hardware itself was pretty much standardized, so you could write for, say, Linux, and not worry about the hardware. Not so with Android. As Arrington points out:
New Android devices are being announced and shipped in bunches. HTC, Samsung, Dell, Verizon and others have phones on the way. Each has different hardware, and different software, than the others. We’ve spoken with a number of high profile Android application developers. All of them, without exception, have told me they are extremely frustrated with Android right now. For the iPhone, they build once and maintain the code base. On Android, they built once for v.1.5, but are getting far less installs than the iPhone.
Italics mine — because that’s the heart of the matter. With us, on the iPhone, you build once and sell to millions of identical handsets. Nice, right? See, sometimes there’s a method to our control-freak madness.
And now they’re faced with a landslide of new handsets, some running v.1.6 and some courageous souls even running android v.2.0. All those manufacturers/carriers are racing to release their phones by the 2009 holiday season, and want to ensure the hot applications will work on their phones. And here’s the problem – in almost every case, we hear, there are bugs and more serious problems with the apps. There are whispers of backwards and forwards compatibility issues as well, making the problem even worse.
Hmmm. Bugs? Compatibility problems? In a Google product? Hard to imagine. I mean, aren’t they like the smartest people on earth or something?
More than one developer has told us that this isn’t just a matter of debugging their existing application to ensure that it works on the various handsets. They say they’re going to have to build and maintain separate code for various Android devices. Some devices seem to have left out key libraries that are forcing significant recoding efforts, for example. With others, it’s more of a mystery.
It’s not a mystery. Hardware makers are a) evil; and b) stupid. They don’t want apps written for their device to run on other devices. They want you locked in. Duh.
Imagine if Windows developers had to build different versions of their applications for different PC manufacturers. Or even different versions for various models by a single manufacturer.
Wow, yeah. Imagine that.
That’s what some Android developers are saying they are facing now.
Jeez, if only someone had warned them about this, right? Shucks. Maybe they just should focus on the iPhone instead.
Friends, let me say this again. Android is a half-baked, unfinished clusterfuck. I’ve been at this a long time and I can tell you the only way to make a great consumer device is to lock the fucking thing down. Tight. Otherwise you’re “playing tennis without a net,” as Robert Lowell once said. Or was it Jerry Garcia. I get them mixed up.
Ten days ago Eric said there was no reason for anyone to think it’s a problem for Arthur Levinson to be on our board and Google’s board. Um, then today this happened. Eric’s track record is getting kind of spotty on these prediction things. Remember he said the Yahoo-Google deal would go through, no problem? Yeah. And then there was not going to be any problem with him being on the Apple board. Well, I’m sure he’s right about this FCC inquiry into Google Voice after AT&T complained about Google not sending calls to rural areas or whatever. Eric says there’s no problem there, and I believe him. Totally.
I’ll be honest — we already have the name worked out. Of course we do. Right? The name is the first thing we come up with, before we even work on the ads. Nevertheless, we thought it would be fun to let people take a guess, and that way we can all go back and see how everyone was. Poll is in the right column, just below the Mozy advertisement. Which reminds me — be nice to Mozy. They’re our friends. Try their stuff. It really works. And even if you have Time Machine backing you up, you should still have something remote. What happens if your house burns down? Or there’s a flood? Not saying this is gonna happen, but what if?
Anyway, peace out. Try the poll.
It’s happening, people. In Austria. In Montana. In Iowa. In Chicago. In Idaho. In Nebraska. In southern California. In Texas. In Denver, where baseball games are getting snowed out. This is exactly what Al Gore predicted, and it is freaking me out.
See, when there’s only one mainframe company in the world, and they’ve locked most of their customers into long-term outsourcing contracts, and in some cases they don’t just run the data center, they actually own the data center, well, the customers are kind of at IBM’s mercy. And sometimes that really, really sucks. Just ask Air New Zealand.
Today’s case study: Air New Zealand, a big IBM outsourcing customer, lost its data center and was massively disrupted. Its CEO complained in an email, and said:
In my 30-year working career, I am struggling to recall a time where I have seen a supplier so slow to react to a catastrophic system failure such as this and so unwilling to accept responsibility and apologise to its client and its client’s customers. We were left high and dry and this is simply unacceptable. My expectations of IBM were far higher than the amateur results that were delivered yesterday, and I have been left with no option but to ask the IT team to review the full range of options available to us to ensure we have an IT supplier whom we have confidence in and one who understands and is fully committed to our business and the needs of our customers.
Let’s overlook the fact that the guy can’t spell “apologize,” and point out the obvious, which is that his airline maybe should have thought about this before they signed over their data center to IBM.
See, those outsourcing deals always sounded so good: Why do you want to run a messy old data center anyway? We can do it for less than it costs you to do it yourself, and you can focus on your real core competence, which is running an airline.
Except, um, no. An airline’s core competence is running computers. I mean, think about it. Duh.
Thing is, these guys did think about it. They knew the deal, but they did it anyway. You know why? Because they got to take a bunch of assets off their balance sheet and send a few hundred IT employees to IBM. It was an accounting maneuver, a way to dress up their financial reports, and it was especially appealing to weak companies. IBM takes your data center off your hands — and in some cases even pays you some money — and then sells it back to you as a service over the next decade.
This isn’t about IBM being a technology company. It’s about IBM being a bank.
But once IBM takes over your data center, they can start using it to goose its own hardware sales. Like in 2002, at Air New Zealand, when IBM swept out all the Windows NT Compaq servers and replaced them with Linux on mainframes. Ah, Linux. That’s the stuff that sets you free, remember?
They might even start renting out cycles in your data center to their other customers, and calling it “utility computing.” Because, see, IBM can’t make money on the deal if they just take your old crap and run it for you (aka “your mess for less.”) They need to put you into a big pool with loads of other people.
They also need to set up the deal such that you get a discount in the early years, but prices start sliding up toward the end of the 10-year contract, and you’re locked in with a huge penalty for early termination. And if you do survive the 10 years, well, by then they’ll have you so hooked that you can’t ever leave.
Yeah. You’re at the mercy of your outsourcer. Which is why a lot of these deals are made by CEOs who know they’re not going to be around long enough to take the heat for them. They get a quick shot of chemo for their sickly financials, and then they’re out the door and their successor can mop up the mess.
This is also why the first thing Jamie Dimon did when he took over J.P. Morgan Chase in 2004 was to cancel the bank’s long-term outsourcing deal with IBM. No flies on Jamie.
In response to the Air New Zealand fiasco and its CEO’s threats to “review the full range of options available to us” IBM CEO Sam Palmisano issued this statement:
Options? What options? At IBM we’re strongly blah blah blah mwah mwah mwah to address this important blah blah committed to innovation mwah mwah in partnership with our customers blah blah get stuffed.
Oh, and one more thing: You don’t suppose that in the era of “cloud computing” companies might face any of the same dangers, do you? Except that instead of being controlled by IBM you’ll be controlled by Google? Could that be why Google is so excited about the cloud and is giving away all that free stuff?
Nah. No way. Couldn’t happen.
Yahoo! has seen fit to honor Dear Leader on their front page. (In that rotating “Today” thingy on top.) Something to do with being a billionaire, but we all know that El Jobso doesn’t care about the money, just about restoring a childlike sense of wonder to our lives.
We completely endorse your selection as one of Esquire’s “Eight TV Women We Love.”(Number two of nine.) However, you are quoted as follows: “Never buy a Mac product in early June, before the Apple conference, in early September, when they launch their Christmas line, or in January, before Macworld.” You are instructing people not to buy Apple products. Please retract this statement. Thanks.
