
Why Microsoft's engineering changes will be the real Windows Threshold story - radmuzom
http://www.zdnet.com/why-microsofts-engineering-changes-will-be-the-real-windows-threshold-story-7000034147/
======
robomartin
I have a much bigger problem with MS. It has to do with a fundamental aspect
of the Windows architecture: The OS holds your applications hostage.

In the DOS era applications had a huge degree of independence from the OS. You
could nuke the OS, upgrade it, modify it and move machines and your apps
worked just the same.

Today things are different. The OS, by means of such "features" as te
registry, holds applications hostage.

Say I have a five year old machine. I want to purchase (or more than likely,
build) a new machine. In the past this was relativley painless. Once the
machine is up you move your apps and off you go. Today this requires full re-
installation of apps from scratch. It's a nightmare and it is one I contend
has significant economic consequences. Whereas someone like me might consider
upgrading hardware every year or two, the financial math now includes the non
trivial time and expense of reinstalling everything.

We've done this a few times. With typical high end engineering workstations
full of software it can easily take a month of installing and configuring
software to get back to the setup you had before he upgrade. This isn't
pallatable at all from more than one perspective. And so machines continue to
be used as long as possible before upgrading anything that might trigger a
reinstallation event.

To me this is a major flaw in the design of Windows. OS, applications and data
ought to be fully separable independent entities. I get all the advantages of
DLL reuse and centralized settings, etc. I still contend that this could be
achieved at the cost of additional storage and some more smarts. A one
terabyte hard drive is about $60 today. I could not care less if DLL's need to
be duplicated for each software installation in order to break lose from the
OS and registry as much as possible.

The point is, if they are smart they ought to be able to figure it out. I
ought to be able to install all my apps on a portable USB drive, walk up to
any machine in the world, plug in and have my tools and files available for
use instantly. That's the way it should work.

~~~
sliverstorm
Every operating system is guilty of this. Each has its own upsides (Windows
has uninstallers; Linux has decentralized config; OSX has centralized
application storage) but they all commit the sin of complicated painful
installation.

A lot of the responsibility for that lies with the application developers, by
the way.

The reason it doesn't work the way you are dreaming is of course because the
OS provides more abstraction than ever. In the old days, DOS just handed the
whole machine over to the application you launched- that would not be
acceptable today.

~~~
robomartin
I don't want to get into details because there are loads of possible and
creative solutions. An API could be created very easily to have an application
request services from the OS and have those services installed locally within
the installation directory structure of the app. From that point forward the
app can travel from machine to machine and retain the environment it requires.

Of course there are tons of details to work out. My point is that we live in
an age where computing power, memory, storage and remarkably intelligent
computer scientists abound. With some work this is not beyond our
capabilities.

Imagine the selling point of an OS that allows you to isolate your apps and
data to the point where they travel with you to be used on any machine (or
machine migrations as people and companies upgrade systems).

------
pjmlp
What I would like to see from developer point of view, would be a WinRT
version of the OS, using .NET Native while trying to fulfil the Longhorn
vision.

Lets see what really comes out.

~~~
freehunter
I was excited for Windows RT thinking we would see a truly new Windows system
from the ground up. They didn't quite go that far, and unfortunately with the
intense hate spewed across the Internet for years afterwards, I'm not sure
they'll have the stomach to try again. Imagine if they went back to Windows 98
after Windows XP came out (since XP got just as much hatred from the Internet
back before it was so fondly remembered).

Time will tell.

~~~
gtirloni
Just wanted to clarify if by "from the ground up" you mean rewriting
everything (memory management, device drivers, scheduler, API, etc) or
something else. And what that would look like?

~~~
freehunter
I mean made for the way people use devices now, as opposed to how they were
used in the 80's when Windows and Mac OS started. By "from the ground up", I
don't mean a complete rewrite, but at least a complete re-thinking of what an
OS should be in modern times. Like when FAT wasn't good enough anymore, let's
switch to NTFS and get rid of DOS at the same time. What exactly that looks
like, I don't know. I'm not a designer and I don't work on OS development, so
I'm not an expert. I can tell you the features I would like in my OS, and
maybe you could extrapolate what I mean from there?

I would like it to be responsive, so it best uses the capabilities of the
hardware you give it. Windows 8 started, but didn't get quite there. Ubuntu
has a nice idea for plugging your phone into a monitor and getting a full
Ubuntu install. If I'm tapping, don't make me double tap just because I would
normally double click. Recognize that it's a tap and not a click. And don't
give me options my device can't handle. Don't show me a desktop on a 7"
tablet. Don't default to full-screen apps on a 4k display. And if my monitor
is big enough that it could be four regular sized monitors, tile my windows
automatically. It's not that hard to do.

I'm tired of starting something on my PC and trying to figure out how to
continue on a tablet or a phone, or even just another PC. This could either
depend on application developers to support or be baked well enough into the
OS that applications don't even know it's happening, but everything should be
available to me everywhere. Again, Windows 8 has a nice start with Onedrive,
but I still have to manually save things there. Why not replicate my drives so
I can access any file from any where without even thinking about it? Make it
completely invisible what is local storage and what is cloud storage, and with
that, cache things on my hard drive for if the network goes down. If I don't
have a connection, everything should be there. If I do have a connection
again, everything that happened without a connection should automatically show
up on my phone and tablet too. Make Onedrive/Dropbox automatic and invisible.

That's actually an annoyance I have with Github, too. Why do I need to
manually commit my changes? When I hit ctrl+s, it should just go straight to
version control. If I need to revert later, well, that's why I'm using version
control, right?

I don't want to have to boot. I don't want to have to shut down (or wait 10
minutes while it shuts down). I don't want to have to install updates, nor do
I want to have to reboot for those updates. Chrome is the best model here.
Just push updates in the background and either apply them immediately or wait
until the system is idle and apply them.

I don't want to think about anti-virus. Actually this is the one thing Windows
8 got perfectly. I've never thought about putting an AV on my system. It's
just there.

I don't want to run out of power. Windows Phone is a great reference system.
If power is getting low, start disabling features that drain the battery. I
can handle checking email manually if it means I get another hour of battery
life. My eyes will adjust to a dimmer display for a little while. Facebook can
wait. If power is low, disable the things that I have turned on but am not
using.

Now, I know a lot of these features would be very controversial to the HN
crowd (since Windows 8 is very controversial). But that's fine. Anyone who
threatened to switch to OSX or Linux because of Windows 8 is free to do so. I
want a desktop OS with the simplicity of an iPad, but the problem with the
iPad is that it's simple, but not magic. Make it magic. I don't want to
micromanage my computer. That's why we invented computers in the first place.

~~~
Swizec
I for one love this! I am one person with a single mind, it's time all my
devices started understanding that.

And for the love of god can somebody PLEASE make cross-device copy-paste? The
amount of fb/whatsapp/email I send just to copy a link from my laptop to my
phone or vice-versa is silly.

~~~
lutusp
> And for the love of god can somebody PLEASE make cross-device copy-paste?
> The amount of fb/whatsapp/email I send just to copy a link from my laptop to
> my phone or vice-versa is silly.

As it happens, my free Android app SSHelper has a bidirectional clipboard
server, very easy to use:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.sshelper&hl=en)

You open a browser on the desktop, enter the address of the phone on your
local wireless network, and you have a two-way clipboard exchange with the
phone.

My app is free, there are no ads, and it's not a shareware-get-the-pro-version
deal. It's exactly what it sounds like -- a useful, free app.

In fairness, my app isn't the only Android app that provides a clipboard
gateway, but it's the only one that doesn't have ads or some other
restriction.

~~~
Swizec
Alas, I am on iOS. And while a shared clipboard app is a great improvement, I
would prefer this in the OS itself. Use the normal copy feature, and Cmd+V has
that thing on my laptop.

~~~
lutusp
> And while a shared clipboard app is a great improvement, I would prefer this
> in the OS itself.

Wait ... you want a mobile device clipboard feature to communicate with a
laptop, but be integrated in the OS? Which OS -- the device, or the laptop?

> Use the normal copy feature, and Cmd+V has that thing on my laptop.

Any laptop? Without any setup or permissions?

People who write programs can get pretty close to what you want, but not quite
as you describe it.

~~~
Swizec
Both OS's. I want to tell my laptop "this is me" and tell my phone "this is
me" (say by using the same iCloud account or whatever) and then they just have
the same clipboard. When I copy something on laptop, I can paste on all my
devices, and vice-versa.

~~~
lutusp
I don't write for either end of the Apple platform (at least at present -- I
once did many years ago), so I can't create this, but I hope someone does --
it's an obviously good idea. All you IOS developers out there listen up. :)

As for Android, I've already done it -- it's part of my free app SSHelper:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.arachnoid.sshelper&hl=en)

------
arenaninja
[Disclaimer: I use Windows 7, but I did use Windows 8 for 2 weeks then decided
to go back]

I'm anxious to see what Microsoft has in store, but I'm not excited. The
recent post here by the developer whose system credentials were changed after
he linked his Microsoft account is part of the reason why. Of course I'd want
access to the Microsoft Store, but I don't want to log to the system with
those credentials, I want to keep the ones that were already set. I doubt this
will be the direction that Threshold will take, and if it turns into another
Win8 turd I'll probably be done with the Windows OS

EDIT: Since I've been downvoted to oblivion I can only assume that the MS
employees here like my post about as much as I like their Winows 8 OS

~~~
yuhong
I just installed a free app to test this on Win8.1 and I did it using a local
account perfectly fine.

~~~
arenaninja
Do you have a separate (admin) account that's linked to a Windows account?
Because I think that's the way around it, maintaining 2 accounts

~~~
yuhong
No.

------
iammyIP
... [that lets the OS team see in near real-time what's happening on users'
machines.] ... so this "near" is network latency?

~~~
bentcorner
My best guess, from [http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/en-
us/default.mspx](http://www.microsoft.com/products/ceip/en-us/default.mspx):

* Applications which use CEIP typically send data to Microsoft servers after the application is closed

------
jackmaney
> I've heard Microsoft built a new real-time telemetry system codenamed
> "Asimov" (yes, another Halo-influenced codename)

[long, drawn-out sigh] No amount of head-shaking or facepalming will suffice
here.

~~~
cwyers
As the article goes on to note:

"One of my contacts said Asimov is a system that the Xbox team originally
built and used during its development process."

I don't see why you'd need to facepalm the Xbox team using a codename from the
Halo series, or why it's so headshaking that the larger Windows team would
adopt a tool from the Xbox team they found useful.

~~~
freehunter
Well the Xbox team got it from the sci-fi author. The point is it might be
inspired by Halo, but the Halo reference is inspired by the author. It's like
saying John Locke is a reference to Lost, when Lost co-opted it from the
philosopher.

~~~
cwyers
Well, Windows Phone has been using the name Cortana for their Siri-equivalent.
The codename for the next version of IE is reportedly Spartan[1], which is
used in Halo. The codename for the upcoming version of Windows is
Threshold[2], which again is a name that shows up in Halo. Naming everything
after things in Halo is apparently Microsoft's new thing.

1) [http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-next-version-of-ie-codenamed-
sp...](http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-next-version-of-ie-codenamed-spartan-
might-support-extensions-7000033685/) 2) [http://www.geek.com/games/microsoft-
taps-the-halo-franchise-...](http://www.geek.com/games/microsoft-taps-the-
halo-franchise-for-next-windows-codename-1578697/)

