links for 2007-05-09

Dave, what I am upset with is Gates' growing lack of dedication to innovation. Microsoft touts it, they sometimes provoke it, but I'm finding that they seldom provide it.

As you are aware, I'm one of the biggest MS supporters around. I've built my career around MS products & services, but when it comes to web technologies, they are still trying to be too protective of their home turf - the legacy OS.

What MS needs to do is embrace open standards and not try to extend them like they always do. Microsoft's variant of Java is a prime example. Yes they have better solutions in C# and J#, but one of the reasons Java never fully suceeded is that MS didn't want anyone else to own one of the layers that Internet services were to be built on.

To be honest, AJAX is difficult for some to leverage for services. It also has it's limitations that solutions like Silverlight, or Adobe's Apollo technologies aim to solve. The .NET framework was one attempt at that several years ago, but was originally designed in the age of innocence at Microsoft - that is, before security was the number one priority. While .NET was able to be secured on the desktop, it wasn't in the browser (until Vista).

Maybe I'm off on this one, but Gates caught me off guard this time. Guess I should get off the soapbox, eh?

1) Microsoft is in a position that few companies ever find themselves in: they are expected by many to support products made by their competitors. Microsoft is, for some reason, expected to provide products that will work not only on their own platform, but Apple's and Linux as well.

2) Apple started it. Apple's ad campaign over the last year has become increasingly hostile toward Microsoft. They outright lie in many of their ads and exaggerate in the rest to enforce a sense in the public that using Microsoft products is just stupid. If Microsoft's leaving them out of the loop on something, good! I wish Microsoft would start a new campaign to mock Apple's ads, with one addition: they'd tell the truth in their ads and it'd still seem stupid to use a Mac.