waffle

DF:

It’s not so much that if Windows 7 were good, it would attract some Mac users, but rather that if Microsoft were driven by technologists rather than sales and marketing guys, they would be hungry to build an OS that wins those switchers back. It’s not that they need those customers, but that they used to drive the industry’s technical agenda, but now they don’t.

The iPhone may have put multi-touch in the limelight, but it’ll be early efforts like HP TouchSmart and now Windows 7 with built-in touch handling that brings multi-touch in computers to a wider audience. Snow Leopard may have touch support, and there will be some sort of tablet (any multi-touch device that’s not an iPhone and with a 7″ or bigger screen) out of Apple within a year, and that tablet will be tremendously interesting, popular and useful. But in Gruber’s sense, that won’t drive Dell or HP to release, or Microsoft to support, multi-touch devices to “counter” it; they already are.

To the extent that Microsoft has ever “driven the industry’s technical agenda”, they’re still doing it with Windows 7. Their “firsts” have been things like SPOT watches and Windows SideShow that never took off; the Microsoft Bobs and Edsels of computer hardware.

Nearly every time I read a programming article of any sort, there are comments involved and a sizable number of comments have been left, at least some comment will always be about how the proposition put forth in the article is bogus because of this and that. Occasionally, these people are very obviously and objectively right, but most of the time, they’re not. They’re just set in their ways, which is a polite way of saying “tribal bullshit”.

This should probably be common sense and self-explanatory, but I’ll say it here: Assume that those that come from a different place have something to teach you. This doesn’t negate, say, your ability to use the right tool for the right job, but if you think that great programmers ever stop learning or fence off some areas as ridiculous by edict, you’re holding yourself back.

(See: “Choice. Value. Innovation.”: The Annoucement)

“This agreement comes with boatloads of value for Yahoo!, our users, and the industry. And I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” said Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz.

This agreement is bad for the industry and bad for Yahoo! users. This agreement comes with boatloads of money for Yahoo!, though.

“Users will continue to experience search as a vital part of their Yahoo! experiences and will enjoy increased innovation thanks to the scale and resources this deal provides.”

Even though we’re pioneers, companies have been leeching off of the more successful technologies of more successful companies for years. In fact, this licensing move is the most beneficial to customers, most likely to succeed and most conducive to innovation since the HP iPod, except that people actually kind of liked HP and iPods.

Providing a viable alternative to advertisers, this deal will combine Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces so that advertisers no longer have to rely on one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search. With the addition of Yahoo!’s search volume, Microsoft will achieve the size and scale required to unleash competition and innovation in the market, for consumers as well as advertisers.

Beleaguered Microsoft will finally be able to break free of the haunting shackles of low market share and kick some serious ass.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the agreement will provide Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, the scale necessary to more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results.

The reason people aren’t using Bing is because, despite being the preselected search engine in the highest volume web browser in the world, shipped with the highest volume operating system in the world, and recently superseding the second Microsoft-run search engine of that lineage in a decade-long scheme, people just can’t seem to locate it.

“Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company,” said Ballmer.

Three big choices is much less likely to stimulate competition than two big choices. Haven’t you seen Star Wars, man? Light Side vs Dark Side’s where it’s at.

We’re which side again?

“This deal fits the long-term strategic direction of Yahoo! to remain the world’s leading online media company and Carol Bartz has the full and unanimous support of the Yahoo! Board behind this deal,” said Roy Bostock, chairman, Yahoo! Inc. “This is a significant opportunity for us. Microsoft is an industry innovator in search, and it is a great opportunity for us to focus our investments in other areas critical to our future.”

I am high as a kite.

Today, a phrase.

best practices, n.

1. Something, somewhere is so horribly wrong, overly complicated, badly designed and massively improbable to get even moderately right that a cottage industry has grown up devoted simply to working around the problem in various ways, because “just” working around the problem will inevitably either drop plenty of advantages of the original approach or mess up something else, or both. Of the ones responsible, someone should have been sacked, and the rest need to revisit the drawing board.

2. Actual, honest phrase to denotate the blindingly obvious in simple, approachable tasks. Not actually used — because of the people who discuss the blindingly obvious, few are old or sober enough to regularly throw around phrases like “best practices” — except as part of the attempt of the wink-wink-nudge-nudge contract from usage 1 to assert or insinuate that the design is sane and that the tremendous, life-saving documentation listed in the pretend shape of the blindingly obvious is simply merely a courtesy detail.