Published: 01/05/2008 | Last Revision: 17/03/2010

There has been much talk recently about the quality of the Microsoft code bases and whether the company is going to implode over the next few years. There’s no real surprise in this topic, of course – predicting the fall of any Empire is not hard, someone somewhere will end up being correct. However, there is something more in this than the headlines might initially suggest. Firstly there is the ongoing perception (and I choose my words carefully) that Vista is turning out to be another Windows ME: not liked, not wanted, the wrong answer to the wrong question. Certainly, if you ask any home users what they think, you will get negative reactions from almost everyone. If you ask a corporate user, it might well be the same. Things run slower, the UI has too many gratuitous changes, there is not enough payback for time invested. The phrase that keeps repeating itself is: “And what was wrong with XP anyway?” At this point, it’s hard to prevent one’s head exploding. Windows XP, used in a business context, was - and still is - a damn good operating system. XP in the home environment was - and still is - a horrifying monstrosity. Only yesterday I spent seven hours trying to disinfect an XP desktop machine which had become loaded up with spyware, redirectors, IE extenders, pop-up managers and advertising bots. I tried tool after tool, all name brand ‘quality’ products. And these were not just the demoware versions – these were full product downloads with current licences. Just when I thought the machine was clean and the latest tool reported an all-clear, another random IE window appeared on screen taking me to 888.com gambling site, or another of an endless list of advertising sites. In the end it was Microsoft OneCare which managed to scrub the machine clean – much to my surprise, given the pasting that OneCare has had from the so-called security experts. The only thing I could say about XP on this occasion was that anything which is so easy to infect, to screw up and take control of is something I don’t want near my network. But that misses the reality that in a properly managed network, XP is the best of the bunch and the layered tools keep the nasties away. Yet even in the business space, people are still grumbling about Vista. I can only assume that most of the undoubted improvements within Vista are frankly lost on most businesses, especially those in the small medium enterprise space. Needing only one DVD for disaster recovery is a huge improvement over XP, where every sub-version of chipset, graphics card and mouse required its own bootable media. Sneeze near a computer and another set of images were needed just for the ‘sneezed on Dell with Logitech mouse’ version.

Three worlds

The truth is that Microsoft exists now in three main worlds, and it is important to remember which one is being discussed at any one time. Firstly, there are the dinosaurs. The operating system group and the Office group are becoming an embarrassment. The failure of Vista to ignite the marketplace is countered by the strength, focus and capability of the new Windows Server 2008 platform. But the reality is that most system administrators are still happy with their 2003 world, and will be for years to come. Wrap in XP on the managed desktop, and these users have closed their ears and are loudly singing “La La La, I can’t hear you” whenever you mention Server 2008.

The Apple iPhone SDK

The buzz that has surrounded the SDK for Apple’s iPhone has been astonishing. Hundreds of thousands of SDKs have been downloaded, and there is a full development platform complete with desktop code simulator too. Apple has been rapidly filling in the holes with three releases of the SDK so far, and more to come before the WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) to be held in San Francisco in June.

At that point, it’s expected that Apple will unveil the long-awaited 3G version of the phone, complete with the infrastructure necessary to make it all work as a delivery platform. Look at what they have promised: a one-stop iTunes shop for code delivery, 30 per cent fee for any app that you want to charge for, free hosting for free code and full redistribution of updates for free. But that’s not all: they have thrown 100 million dollars into a VC fund which you can apply to tap into. And if that runs out of cash, they will put more in.

Apple iPhoneCompare and contrast with the Microsoft way. Microsoft has a strong development platform for its Smartphone. It has no application distribution mechanism: we are expected to Google for apps across the Internet. There is no updating mechanism: we have to chase updates for any app manually. There is no support for freeware apps. There is no VC funding to ignite the developer community. Can we see a difference here?

This codebase is frankly quite cruddy now. I would put Office as being the worst of the lot. The recent Office Open XML debacle managed one thing – it allowed us to look inside not only the OOXML format itself, but also the native file structures, and it is a horrible, embarrassing mess. Office desperately needs rewriting and re-architecting – remember that Excel first shipped in 1985 which makes it older than many of its users. All that has happened since then is the addition of layer upon layer of rubbish, wizards and more rubbish. I’m not even sure that the Office team live in the same world as the rest of us – it is hard to come up with any sensible explanation that is the travesty called Office 2008 for Mac. No VBA, no macros and poor file format compatibility even with Office 2007 for Windows. Wrap in the OOXML mess and this is a billion dollar division that is inhabiting a parallel universe. The second group is the development tools brigade. And they really have taken common runtime to heart and come up with a superb set of development tools and capabilities. Write in whatever language you like, choose your deployment platform, and boom, you too can write interesting and clean code. The fact that words like .NET and Common Runtime have almost no meaning in Office or OS Land at Microsoft is simply an indication of the stifling lack of clear thinking and innovation that is inhabiting those groups. Then there is the third group: the new era. Some of the dinosaurs have had radical makeovers. Compare and contrast Exchange Server 2003 with its 2007 replacement, and it is clear that a huge re-engineering effort took place as it’s all .NET and CLR and frameworks now. Want to do something neat? Use the Powershell interfaces. It’s a world apart from the old monolithic server product. But the customers still love the old babies, they are the ones they trust. With the arrival of Ray Ozzie, we were promised a revolution. And with the launch of Live Mesh (check out www.mesh.com), maybe he is starting to really deliver on the promise. Mesh promises to allow people to share data, folders and general stuff across any number of devices and services, and it all interlocks together through a framework of online services. This ‘stuff’ could be a file, a range of data in Excel, or some video or pictures. Basically anything. And any device can play in the space. All changes and version control is done by the framework, so you can edit a file at home, revise it on the laptop on the train, and then pick it up at the office. Then stuff it onto your smart phone and finally present at someone else’s office from their desktop. My initial reaction is “woooo, big framework, big stuff” and indeed it is going to require huge plumbing to make this work, and a robustness of security that is second to none. This is exactly what you would expect Ozzie to come up with: take his earlier work and build a massive framework and a global architecture for it all. And yet. And yet. How many IT managers of the ‘2003 and XP’ era are going to look at this and start wondering which ports are necessary to block on their company firewalls? We already have ‘social networking’ sites causing major rifts between users and companies. How are we going to cope with this utopian Microsoft-esque world of shiny happy people sharing data, pushing stuff to their homes and a quick update on the train? And how will the old dinosaurs of Office and OS handle it? Will it be yet another crusty bolt-on chunk of code that attaches itself to the shipwreck that is Office, where the integrated experience is all smoke and mirrors? I hope not.