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To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (19570)	5/21/1998 2:42:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 24154

After Windows 98: The Future According to Microsoft nytimes.com Back to the rest of the news today from the good gray Times, the metaphor article wasn't the only one good for a laugh. In this one, we get back to an old favorite of mine, Microsoft Barney. First a serious bit: For all the money Microsoft spends on research, it has yet to produce breakthroughs as remotely revolutionary as, say, Bell Labs' invention of the transistor. The company has, in fact, fallen behind others in speech recognition, and outsiders question the usefulness of technologies like image recognition. Of course on speech recognition, Bill's every popular holy grail next wave innovation/integration/imitation thing, Microsoft had to go for the backup strategy of giving one of the leaders the proverbial offer they couldn't refuse, to get somebody else's code base. But never mind. Back to Barney: The Actimates are fascinating for the glimpse they offer into Microsoft's approach to new technology design. First, they represent a new kind of user interface -- the dolls are the interface. "People have asked about 3-D interfaces for a long time," Myhrvold said. "These things truly are a 3-D interface." Right, Nathan. I love Bill too, really. The image that came to my mind after first meeting Microsoft Barney at Wal-mart was Bill as the little android engineer with the decrepit loft full of robot toys in Blade runner. That's not quite correct, that would put Bill back in the "naive software engineer" mold, it's just a thought. Where's Rutger Hauer these days anyway? Anyway, back to a more serious note: Erik Strommen, a developmental psychologist who headed the design team for the Actimates, said they also signaled a new way of building computers. For years, Strommen said, engineers have approached the computer as a tool. The new approach, which has emerged in the last five years, represents what Dr. Strommen and others call a social approach to building computers: the technology as a partner or collaborator in the work, rather than a tool. If more devices like the interactive Barney begin to emerge, Microsoft's operating system would become more invisible to consumers. A sticker saying "Microsoft Inside" might become necessary if the software became packaged out of sight in things like plush dolls or electronic organizers. Such credit is important to the company, said Tom Rhinelander, an analyst atForrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. While the 3Com Corporation wants consumers to know about its Palm Pilot, "it doesn't care if you don't know about the Palm OS," he said, but the opposite is true of Microsoft. At Microsoft, he explained, "they want everybody to know about their operating system." But at this point, given the unwanted attention the Government has given to Windows 98, a less visible operating system might not seem like such a bad thing after all. Invisible, even, like an OS ought to be. Microsoft has a problem with that formulation, of course, I posted an article on that one too. Maybe it's one of those duality of man things. Cheers, Dan.

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (19570)	5/21/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Analysis: Giving Microsoft's Competitors a Fighting Chance nytimes.com Fun is fun, but this is the substantial article of the day from the good gray Times. Speaks to a few recent topics. I'm sure Reggie will explain away this one, another one of those "occassional reference to a news article without any justification for its contents." Bwahahahahaaaa. As if Reggie has ever given justification for anything. Needless to say, this article doesn't quite fit in with the "Microsoft Rules" theory of life, the universe, and everything. Conclusion, quoted without comment. The government's seeming fixation on Netscape's browser flows not from a judgment that browsers are in themselves especially important. But as a technical matter, they might some day serve as a substitute operating system -- a platform on which word processors, spread sheets and other applications programs run. If so, they could eliminate the importance of Windows or any other operating system. For that reason, browsers pose a threat to Microsoft, which explains its previous attempts to write exclusionary contracts that prohibit its partners from promoting Netscape's Navigator. Whatever the outcome of the suit, the government cannot micromanage software markets. It cannot know if Netscape's browser has a future. But it does not have to know. The point of antitrust laws is not, as some of the government's statements and remedies may wrongly suggest, to give a specific competitor a helping hand. Rather, antitrust principles are solely designed to preserve the possibility that a smart company has a fighting chance to flourish in a market. The remedies of the Justice Department may wind up doing nothing for Netscape, but the test is whether they provide opportunities for anyone else. Cheers, Dan.