java and msft..
WebTV drops plans for
Java support
By Stephanie Miles
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
October 30, 1998, 9:25 a.m. PT
update If you have WebTV, don't count on using
Java.
WebTV, the Internet access device company that's
owned by Microsoft, has quietly dropped plans to
incorporate broad support for Sun Microsystems'
computing language into its product line. As a
result, WebTV users will continue to miss out on
some of the Web's more advanced features.
Customer and developer frustration with the
inexpensive TV set-top device, manufactured by
licensees such as Philips Electronics and Sony, is
starting to crop up. So too are questions about
WebTV's change of heart.
"You can't use Java, streaming video, [or] video
conferencing, and you are eliminated from all Java
chat rooms. [There is] no downloading of software,
no immediate upgrades, no game playing, word
processing, and the list goes on forever," said one
disgruntled user.
"As a developer, it is unfortunate that they are not
choosing to support Java,
because there are things
that...are useful in providing
better content and functionality,"
said George Olsen, design
director and Web architect for 2-Lane Media,
thinking of things like stock and news tickers.
"It also means that [Web developers] are going to
have to continue to develop different versions of
sites for different browsers," he added.
WebTV maintains that the easy-to-use,
approximately $300 set-tops aren't targeted at
advanced Web surfers. "It's not that we don't think
it's useful, it's just that we have limited resources in
terms of development and computing power,"
according to Steve Perlman, cofounder and
president of the WebTV.
WebTV shelved plans to develop a set-top box
that supports Java not because of any nefarious
meddling by its parent company, he added, but
because Java requires more memory and is more
expensive than WebTV resources allow. Meeting
the memory requirements for Java would add 10
percent to the price of WebTV, Perlman asserted.
At one time, WebTV's Java support was a
foregone conclusion--the Mountain View,
California, company was an early and vocal
supporter of Sun prior to its acquisition by
Microsoft. But an about-face on Java and Sun
came in the spring of 1997, just after the company
was bought.
Although the sequence has raised eyebrows,
WebTV executives claim that the timing was
coincidental. Plans for Java support were dropped
because it was too onerous and few users wanted
it, they said.
Whatever the case, a U-turn occurred. WebTV
officials were publicly proclaiming support for Sun
at the JavaOne trade show on April 2, 1997. Four
days later, the company was acquired by Microsoft
for $425 million. Though WebTV continued to
proclaim support for Java over the next few
months, its ardor eventually waned.
"The timing is...unusual, and I would even say
suspect," said Richard Doherty, an analyst with The
Envisioneering Group, speculating that WebTV
may have either announced its support for Java as a
negotiating ploy with Microsoft, or because it was
also in acquisition talks with Sun.
"You don't set up a deal with Microsoft like that
overnight. It might have even been that they were
dancing with Java. Sun generally finds companies
earlier than Microsoft, but Microsoft writes a
bigger check," Doherty said.
"Anytime Microsoft makes an acquisition,
somebody's eyebrows are raised," said Ted
Kunzog of Lasalle Street Securities. "Their
technology [can be critical for] enabling Internet
set-top boxes, which is a market that both Sun and
Microsoft want to get into."
Although conceding that the timing of an
announcement with Sun was close to the Microsoft
acquisition and therefore may seem unusual,
WebTV's Perlman insists that Microsoft was well
aware of WebTV's work with Java before and
after the merger.
"We were in talks for six weeks before they
acquired us," Perlman said. "We all went forward
with the best of intentions--unfortunately it didn't
turn out the way we would have hoped."
Early adopter of PersonalJava
WebTV was still publicly supporting Java three
months after the Microsoft acquisition. It became
one of the first licensees of the PersonalJava
specification, which allows networked consumer
devices.
"We're excited to be working with JavaSoft on
such an important advance in the state of the arts,
and WebTV is very excited to be the first licensee
of PersonalJava," said Phil Goldman, cofounder
and senior vice-president of WebTV, in a
statement on July 23, 1997.
Perlman says today that the statement was true--at
the time. "We developed PersonalJava together
with Sun, in the hopes that we could get a version
of Java that was small enough to run on set-top
boxes. We weren't able to get a version small
enough."
Sun declined to comment on acquisition rumors
regarding WebTV.
Meanwhile, Olsen and some analysts believe that
WebTV's non-support for Java is hurting
acceptance of the platform.
"As Java becomes more and more widespread,
there will be fewer and fewer sites that don't have
Java. Sooner or later [WebTV users] are going to
run into sites where there's some Java that's crucial
to being able to use the site," said Olsen, who is
also project leader for the Web Standards Project.
"While WebTV users may not be visiting
Java-heavy sites in droves right now, I'd be curious
to hear how [WebTV] plans to handle those
pages."
Other developers agree Java would be a boon to
the platform. "I certainly would love a
'cross-platform' viewer, because I use Linux and
make Web pages and want to know what my Web
pages look like on WebTV. [I want] my sites to
look reasonably well no matter what browser the
person seeing the site is using," said Reed Hedges,
a Web developer, via email.
"Reaching all audiences...is one of the most
important aspects of Web design," he asserted.
"Most of our users don't know what an URL is.
What people don't realize about WebTV is that the
main characteristics that people buy it for are
reliability and ease of use, not innovation,"
countered Perlman. "Innovation is something we
have to slip in without compromising reliability and
ease of use."
Not supporting Java doesn't greatly compromise
the customer experience, he continued. "Java is not
a big player in TV. Future WebTV boxes will
support Windows CE, and although Windows CE
has the ability to support Java from
Hewlett-Packard, we don't necessarily support all
the things that Windows CE will support."
Broken promises?
There may be still another explanation, but one that
is even more damaging to WebTV from a customer
perspective. WebTV's lack of support for Java
may be less a result of its price point or acquisition
strategy and more related to slow execution,
Doherty said.
"Very few WebTV promises of performance have
been delivered," he said. "It can't support frames
[on Web pages], by last September 15 you were
supposed to be able to grab photos and video and
email them, and a year after that date they just
started sending out the electronic upgrade."
"Java was listed as one of those things they would
support, and those things just did not happen," he
said. "On the spec sheets and the boxes, it said it
[the WebTV box] was Java-compatible. It wasn't
then, and it isn't now."
"It's endemic to the situation," he said. "WebTV
performance is great--but it was touted as
superlative."
WebTV boxes may support Java at some point, in
some way, Perlman said. The next version of
WebTV, will be based on Microsoft's Windows
CE, which supports J++, Microsoft's version of
Java.
Alternately, there's PersonalJava, which would
require doubling the WebTV Plus memory capacity
to 16 megabytes, Perlman said.
"If at some point it becomes a value proposition for
the consumer, than of course we support it."
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