Apple's iPhone OS is a derivative of the desktop Mac OS X, and the differences between those platforms are shrinking with each new release. This in fact sets Redmond apart from both Cupertino and Mountain View. One thing that was clear is just how different the two men are, a difference highlighted by Ballmer's peculiar criticism of Google's dual OS strategy.įrom a technical point of view, it's a strange criticism for Ballmer to make in spite of the efforts by Microsoft to reduce the discrepancies between its two operating systems, they are fundamentally very different. Perhaps surprisingly, Project Natal, a product that could give the Xbox360 a massive advantage over its competitors and usher in a whole new kind of gaming, only merited a passing mention. There were no big revelations during the interviews. Chrome OS is a bet on the future-an OS where applications are delivered through the browser and served remotely. Ray Ozzie said that Android represented a bet on the past-it's essentially a traditional platform with locally installed applications. Where Microsoft is striving to create the systems more similar, Google is, in contrast, creating two new distinct systems (albeit both Linux-based). The use of Silverlight on the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 OS is a case in point by using Silverlight for application development, the underlying differences between the desktop OS and the phone OS are made irrelevant. Microsoft too has separate operating systems, the Windows NT platform used for desktops and servers, and the Windows CE platform for mobile applications, but the company is working to try to make the platforms more coherent. Google has two operating systems its phone and tablet OS, Android and its future browser-oriented desktop OS, Chrome OS. Advertisementīallmer also questioned Google's operating system strategy. He was less convinced about larger Android devices, as the OS is still unproven in that market. He also said that Android was a real competitor in the phone space. Moving to the subject of phones, the Microsoft CEO acknowledged that Apple had come from nowhere to become a significant force in the smartphone business, especially praising his rival's mobile Web browser. Microsoft's CEO insisted that there was still a role for the stylus in tablet machines for note-taking, sketching, and diagramming, the pen interface is still a natural one that people want to use. However, Ballmer argued that there would be some kind of convergence between iPad-like devices and PCs. Creation devices, on the other hand, benefit from the addition of new, richer functionality. Consumption devices gain from the simplicity created by stripping away unnecessary features. Ozzie drew a contrast between consumption tasks and creation tasks. Ballmer acknowledged that Windows needed work to optimize it for devices without a keyboard, something that has held back adoption of Windows on tablets. When asked about Microsoft's plans for tablets, the pair was vague. Specialized consumption devices won't, in Ballmer's view, displace devices that enable both creation as well as consumption. Though rich westerners can afford PCs, smartphones, tablets, and so on, people in many parts of the world will tend to stick with general-purpose PCs. On the subject of tablets, Steve Ballmer disputed the claim made by Steve Jobs that the PC will get less relevant. ![]() Personal data is becoming more widely scattered through the Internet, but he suggested that Redmond would avoid many of the hairy issues related to privacy, since its business model is the sale of software and services, and not any attempt to monetize personal data directly. Instead, Ozzie said, they will become more appliance-like buy a new gadget, turn it on, and be ready to go, with instant access to your applications.īallmer also drew a distinction between Microsoft and companies like Facebook and Google when it comes to personal data. He suggested that devices will never become totally "thin"-local processing power and storage are here to stay. The two men talked about the transition to the cloud, the growth of alternative computing platforms like smartphones and tablets, and their relationship to the PC.īallmer said that the transition to the cloud holds "nothing bad" for Microsoft. After Steve Jobs did a turn at the All Things Digital conference on Tuesday, today was the turn of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and chief software architect Ray Ozzie.
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