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Okay, so you get my thoughts on this as I listen...enjoy.

First...thanks a pantload for making the stream only accessible via windows. Brilliant attention to detail guys. It looks so good when Microsoft Windows Media Player for Macintosh cannot access a Microsoft Windows Media stream. Just bloody brilliant.

Disco...Microsoft is playing Disco. This somehow is not surprising, and I'm really quite grateful that I can't see the keynote audience right now. But really...disco..that says something. I'm just not sure i want to think about what that is.

At 56K, i'm still getting dropouts, but not as bad as at 100K. Of course, this is over 11MBps wireless to a windows box via MS Remote Desktop Connection...because that's the only way I can access the stream.

Oh goody, at 8:30, we find out it will start at 8:40...more disco with dropouts!!!

Putting the body of this in the “more...” section, it's just too damned long otherwise. Refresh that page to get updates.

8:37: Five minutes to go...at least the music got better

8:41: The “About to begin” notice...the announcer is a little odd...ooh, music stopped

8:46: Great, no sound, just video. Trying Virtual PC

8:55: What the hell? They SUSPENDED parts of the KEYNOTE from the feed? How stupid is that

8:56: feed is back, he's on about megatrends and 64 bit. Form factors now. Still pushing the tablet...doubling almost nothing is still almost nothing though. MS has totally bungled the tablet marketing.

9:00: Talking about five years ago in 2000, and about .Net and XML, how important that was. This is, even at 56K, the worst stream I've ever dealt with. Having an audio only stream would be SUCH a good idea. It's really amazing the difference between how Apple does this and MS.

9:02: The generations of XML...third Generation is XML being at the core of everything.

9:04: Going on about record level of investments in the Windows platform. Moving towards everything being part of Windows and MS's products. Nothing about working with anyone else yet, although that's not surprising. Still, it's the same old “Windows is all” song. The server world is evidently Microsoft only.

9:09: now up to 2003, talking about the packaging for Vista. WinFS is client only for now? The next iteration is client and server. It will be released on both client and server. Finally getting into the meat.

“Confident”, “Clear”, “Connected” are the three areas of Vista. “All the new PCs will have Vista”.

9:12: Office 12 will come out in the Vista timeframe, so end of 2006/beginning of 2007. Chris Capecella(sp?) doing the Vista/Office 12 demos. Vista connects you to people/information/devices you care about, confidence wrt security, and clarity in getting to your information.

Launching a bunch of applications. Now when you hover over the task bar, you get live previews of the Window, just like the OS X dock. Looks like they have live previews in Alt - Tab too. New 3-d preview of windows and apps in task switching. Interesting, but more as eye candy than anything else.

The live search is useable as an app launcher

Nice big thumbnails of data contents, better metadata. Spotlight features in the documents. So far, this is all done in Tiger, except for the app launcher stuff.

No chris, Vista did NOT introduce virtual folders. JUST like spotlight. The virtual folders are actually XML files. That could be handy, you can pre-populate virtual folders if needed. None of the searching is that new or exciting.

The adding of metadata is nice though. Not sure how many people will jump on it.

The Sidebar is now shipping...how long have they been talking about this?

OH MY GOD...it's GADGETS instead of Widgets. Holy crap, they totally lifted Dashboard. They don't force you into another presentation mode for it, but jesus, this is so blatant.

9:21: Sideshow...what the heck...a 2“ LCD on the laptop? lord. So now you never shut your machine off? yeesh.

Parental controls built into the OS. That could be cool, but it's still nothing radical. You can do that now with OS X too. Hmm...they check with the ESRB for games ratings and use that as part of the parental controls. That's an interesting idea, but what do you do if you don't have an internet connection to update the ESRB. It seems to be a bit more complicated than it needs to be.

Talking about phishing protection in IE 7. Telling people where the SSL cert came from is useless to a non-technical user. You have to know what that is for that to mean anything. Oh good, they're double-checking user reports of phishing sites. Good, the anti-phishing stuff is opt-in...they're learning.

Audio dropouts again

9:27: Tabs in IE and searching. Whee. They did an interesting take on how OmniWeb does tabs with the slideshow ”View all tabs“. Kinda of a cross between OmniWeb and Expose.

Better printing control in IE. Better RSS support. Autodiscovery of RSS Feeds on a page, nice touch, a more advanced version of what Safari's doing. The CRM team is integrating RSS into Dynamics. Could we PLEASE stop overusing the word ”rich“?

9:33: Office 12 info. First showing in public. ”Help people get better results faster“. Oh wow, they suddenly realized that thirty-five toolbars is too much, and that people don't know what's in the thing.

Showing the new UI. Tabs replacing Menus and Toolbars. Using the new file open dialog. Shades of OS X (again). Looks like they ripped off a LOT from the MacBU in this. New faster stuff for data visualization, but it's kind of for Excel wonks.

Lots of live changes for hovering. It's a nice idea, but it could become REALLY ANNOYING really fast. But this is just data formatting and zooming. This is stuff they should have done years ago. Lifted the new page layout stuff from the MacBU too, but that's not a bad thing. Communication between teams is GOOD. However, I'm not sure that this new UI is more intuitive for users. We'll have to see, but it looks like it's just as complex as it ever was.

9:40: Looking at Word now. Live font preview when you hover over a font on the font list. Okay, THAT is cool as hell, and really handy. It would be a REALLY GOOD IDEA if the Mac BU could steal this. Live style previews too. This is something Word's needed forever, and it's a great idea. Ah, the balloon comments. Nice.

Lots of sharepoint stuff, but that's kind of ”eh“ if you don't use Sharepoint. Ah, they finally let you yank comments and hidden info. God knows that MS's been burned by this.

Powerpoint now: Nice text to graphics stuff. They are so ripping off a lot of what Keynote's done. Again, not a bad thing, Powerpoint's needed some of that on Windows. A lot of one-click bullets to diagram stuff. That could be really handy for people like me who use a lot of bullets and hate doing that the hard way.

What about the XML stuff?

Server integration now. Sharepoint integration. It's really nice, and cool, but what about people not using Sharepoint? Again, there is a whole world that isn't MS. What are you doing for them?

Talking about Outlook now. New ”to-do“ bar. Tasks are getting integrated into things better. Live preview of attachments in Outlook. Again, nothing new here, OS X has had this for a LONG time.

RSS subscriptions in Outlook from IE 7. That's kind of cool.

Oooh...live Spotlight-ish searching in Outlook. Live OS data indexing. It's a nice idea, but it's hardly new or radical.

More Sharepoint stuff. It's good touch, but only if you're a Sharepoint shop.

Nothing whatsoever about the rest of the world. Even Steve talked about Windows and the rest of the world a bit during the WWDC.

Bill's back.

9:53: There will be a ”wave“ in 2006/2007. Easier deployment, and monster marketing. Let's hope they don't do the dinosaur thing again.

OOOH...third party apps. Wow, that's like twice.

Surprise, connecting data to data is too hard. No thanks to Microsoft.

More workflow stuff in the OS and the apps. Like...”duh“.

SOA and Web Services and XML are the center of this.

Talking about SOA on a ”standard platform“, and how important that is. I don't think that ”Standard platform“ is maybe meaning what he thinks it is though.

More history of computing.

The ”Next Frontier“ is the Server Level. There's no real standardization of how you get to info on the server? Oh, wait, interfaces, and that kind of thing. File Servers are the past, and we're all going to go to the Windows Server System.

Sigh

”Department level file servers will move to Sharepoint servers“. No Bill, they won't. Once again, a really nice theory is getting borked by his inability to deal with the fact that the world is not windows only, and never will be.

(Yes, I know, keynotes are PR, but if Bill still sees the world as Windows - Only, then so does the rest of the company, so it really does matter a lot. Remember, leadership and attitudes in a company flow down, not up.)

Wrap-up now. Well, for weeks, Scoble's been telling me to wait for the PDC to see about how Microsoft is going to work with the rest of the world, because, in theory, I'd hear better news. If the keynote's any indication, Microsoft is still going to only care about you if you're all Windows

Jim Allchin coming on

Windows 1.0...trip down memory lane.

”Drive home how far we've come“

2005 is the 20th anniversary of Windows.

Talking about ”getting dirty“

Talking about everything they've done in the last year, and it sounds good until you realize that it's all variations on XP and Server 2003

Giving out build 5219 of Vista

Beta 2 will be on a wide release.

They feel confident about the general availability of Vista by the end of 2006.

Daily builds of Vista.

Things happening around the edge of the Internet.

MICROSOFT made Handwriting the next input form factor? Um...no. No they didn't.

WIndows was designed to live in a Malware world? Well yeah, being a target is living in a hostile environment.

Evidently only Microsoft can do it all, and Vista will do it all. lord.

Presentation layer
wow, they finally are doing what Apple's been doing since Jaguar and Quartz Extreme. How innovative

Data layer(?)
Manage, store and integrate regardless of location.

Communication
Allow apps to communicate reliably and securely. Protocol aganostic, based on Internet standards. Okay, show me the money Jim. Show me that you work well with others.

Reliability and security
Yes Jim, this is important. It took you until now to figure this out?

Deployment features:

Imaging's a problem. (wouldn't be if you would get the damned hardware makers to stop being so damned schizophrenic) Auto quarantining machines until they comply with network policies. Adding hardware diagnostics and monitoring with hardware. This is nothing new unless you're Microsoft.

Allowing for libraries and drivers to be replaced without requiring a reboot. Yawn. Welcome to Unix Jim, the view's fine.

User Account Protection..hey, Windows doesn't force you to run as root to get work done. Of course, apps will have to be rewritten for this. This of course is stupid. The OS should handle this so the apps don't have to care.

Autooptimization in Vista. big deal. SuperFetch! VM analyzing based on usage over days, months and years. Evidently they're going to hold onto VM pages over time here so relaunches are faster. So it background launches all kinds of data that you use a lot. Now, where is this information stored? How do you deal with it in a resource - limited situation? Ah, he's dealing with that. Oh lord, they're using USB pen drives as part of the VM system and the system RAM. That sounds like a spiffy idea, lots of cheers. Ah, it's all encrypted. But lord, that's going to be slow. Maybe if they made library loading more dynamic, so you don't have to preload as much data, you wouldn't need SuperFetch. But it's nice that they copped some of the AS/400's memory model.

Process separation and protection. Again, why is this only NOW build into the system? This is interprocess security 101. Lame. But for MS, this is an ”incredible“ innovation.

10:30: He's on about developer PR stuff, and customer expectations. Microsoft Pioneered some of the best way for doing web services data access? mmmm...maybe. But they also borked it up for everyone else.

Talking about Atlas, Microsoft's reaction to Ajax. Extending ASP.net to handle this. Runs on any browser, but why do I see it only running on Windows Servers?

Oh, here we go...the Windows Presentation Foundation is ”Light years“ ahead of everyone else. Um...Jim, stop drinking the Kool-aid, no, you're not, you're just catching up to where Apple has been for a while now. Of course, instead of using open standards like OpenGL and PDF, it's all Windows stuff

Hmm...Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere. Based on javascript. Subset of the full WPF frameworks. Now, what does it run on that isn't some version of Windows? Darrin Deekan(sp?) doing the demo.

Netflix Demo using WPF.

BWAAHAAHAHA...”It has to run on a wide range of devices“...and they're demoing it all ON WINDOWS!!! ”Mr. Allchin, your clue train just left without you“. Jesus, show me this NOT on Windows.

10:38: Still on the Netflix demo of how WPF/E redefines ”Everywhere“ to mean ”Windows“.

Yes, yes, when you have a vector display engine, you can make it look good on all kinds of screens. Noting new here. ”Nothing new here“ seems to be a central theme if you don't drink the kool-aid. Lordy, this is so not new at all. Look, you can use frameworks to let you embed video content in an application!

Just like QuickTime's done on OS X for years now.

Wow...it only took three developers and a graphics designer a month to create a Windows application that runs on Windows...ASTOUNDING!!!

BWAAAHAHA...they're selling the PDA/Phone for only $150...dude, it's only cool when you give it away. Only Microsoft sells stuff at a keynote. Oy. They have the money to give them away.

Data Pillar

sharing, updating, subscribing and integrating across multiple data stores.

Addressing the ”impedance mismatch“ between dev languages and data stores.

Linq...language integrated Query...they just reinvented the SQL wheel yet again. No they aren't the first.

Searching and metadata across multiple data stores and machines.

Windows Communication Foundation/Communication Pillar

Unified platform for distributed apps.

Write once, talk to everyone
Identity managment
P2P

New Federated ID management
Info cards, based on open standards. Identity independence with an interface for multiple ID models.

People Near Me
basis for PeerNet in Windows Vista. Why do I get the feeling they also just reinvented Zeroconf?

Subscriptions to sessions over P2P. Okay, so I'm seeing Remote Desktop with a Zeroconf connection. This looks like a PowerPoint version of SubEthaEdit. Uses IPv6 to pretty much recreate zeroconf.

Coders coming out. I'm going to not update a lot of this, since it's all Microsoft reinventing the wheel, and making it all Windows only.

Okay, only Microsoft would use ”Contracts“ in a communication infrastructure for message handling.

What modern browsers don't support XML?

It's really sad when Microsoft programmers are better speakers than Gates OR Allchin.

11:26: Still doing code demos...why are they streaming this...more important, why am I still listening...oh wait, these guys are actually funny and dynamic...and when they're talking about creating classes in C#, that's a neat trick.

11:28: HOLY CRAP, they're demoing the Atlas app they built on a Mac in Safari! Oooh...it works too! Holy crap, someone from Microsoft gets that ”Cross Platform“ isn't just ”Different Windows SKUs“. About goddamned time, only took almost THREE HOURS.

11:30: Third party devs, from The North Face. Talking about Windows Vista. Fluid, doing work for The North Face. Proof of Concept C# / XAML app. Data driven, all dynamic. Rotating video players in 3-D. Pretty cool. But what good does that do people wanting to buy stuff from The North Face over the Internet. I mean...it's pretty, but pretty's been done. How USEFUL is it? Six weeks for a pretty prototype? Big deal. Six Weeks for that same app working on every modern browser, that's useful now? that would be cool.

Again, the world is not going Windows - Only, but no one seems to have told Microsoft. The North Face thinks they'll blow away the competition? Yeah, for customers who use Windows.

12:00: Allchin doing a wrap-up. Talking about making your app run just like every OS X app runs now. Standard user, portrait or landscape.

So let's recap. In three and a half hours, the not-windows world was mentioned one time, and that was by a dev team doing a demo of a web app. Nothing on the rest of the world. Jim thinks that the Enterprise hasn't gone through an upgrade cycle. He's hallucinating. The Enterprise has been upgrading all the time. We just aren't waiting for Microsoft.

But here's what MS thinks will drive this...comarketing. Microsoft isn't being run by innovators or creators. It's being run by marketers, and sales guys. Sad really.

Oh wait, now he's having someone demoing their new Digital Locker online store? Holy crap, this is what passes for real innovation at Microsoft? Online Software Sales? Jesus, no wonder this company looks like a blind, deaf, beached whale. They honestly don't know what the hell they do anymore other than make money. That's what their mission is, ”We Make Money“. The whole OS thing is coincidental anymore.

Digital Locker...Microsoft will control your online retail experience. Just like Hailstorm. Wait, we've all been waiting for one-click? Hello, Amazon?

It's integrated into the Vista shell via Windows Update. So now, you can get all kinds of software via Windows Update. Why am I seeing the potential for real problems here?

The idea of storing license info securely and in an easily accessible manner is cool, but who is going to trust Microsoft with this?

Jim, you're not listening to anyone but your fellow Kool-Aid drinkers.

Well, it's nice to see that Vista is finally trying to catch up to OS X. It's good to see that MS is trying to make the programming parts of this as easy as possible. SOme of the stuff in Office is a really good idea. These are all areas that Windows and MS have needed to improve upon for years.

But is it revolutionary? No. Everything i've seen is evolutionary. Nothing wrong with that, but it should have been happening all along. MS has to get off the UBER - RELEASE mentality. really.

As well, other than one Atlas demo, Microsoft is still viewing the world as Windows - only, or about to become Windows - only. They still think that if they just come out with enough features and reasons, everyone will dump everything else and move to Windows, and it's not.going.to.happen.

But until you get rid of the Nimrodic Triumvirate running Microsoft, no change is possible.

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