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Android

Android is ousting Windows from its last mobile bastion

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Microsoft’s coming end of support for Windows Embedded is forcing the industry to look elsewhere

They’re everywhere, but you rarely notice them: the millions of handheld devices — often equipped with scanners — that delivery people, store clerks, and hospital staff responders often carry to manage inventory, process orders, and verify delivery.

Nearly all of these supply chain-oriented devices run a version of the Windows Embedded operating system, which has had many names over the last decade. But within five years, the companies using these devices will have ditched Windows and moved to Android in one of the biggest industry platform shifts ever.

Before Windows Embedded came to dominate these specialty handheld devices in the mid-2000s, they ran a variety of operating systems. The best-known was from Symbol Technology, which been bought and sold several times over the years, and whose remains form the core of a company called Zebra Technologies.

Why the industry is looking to ditch Windows Embedded
The industry coalesced around Windows Embedded CE version 6, which debuted in 2006 and represents 99 percent of all embedded devices’ operating system, says Mark Kirstein, senior director of enterprise software at Zebra, the company that makes most of those specialty devices.

But the industry largely skipped 2011’s Windows Embedded 7 and almost totally skipped 2012’s Windows Embedded 8, Kirstein says. He expects the same to be true for the new Windows IoT, a variant of Windows 10.

Version 8 and later aren’t compatible with Version 7 and earlier, so developers have to create their devices’ apps from scratch, he notes. Plus, Windows Embedded 8 didn’t support the wide range of screen sizes and form factors that specialty devices need.

Kirstein says Windows Embedded 8 was merely a version of Windows Phone 8 minus the Xbox functionality and not designed for specialty devices such as for supply chain use. “It doesn’t have the enterprise management capabilities or staging/provisioning services — and therefore was never adopted. It did not meet the requirements of Kohl’s, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and so on,” he says.

Microsoft is ending extended support in 2017 for Windows Embedded 6 — the one that powers 99 percent of current devices — and in 2020 for Windows Embedded 7. Thus, developers and device makers need to rewrite their apps for a new OS — whether from Microsoft or someone else — before then to be safe. Many devices are used in regulated environments where support is required.

The transition won’t be cheap or fast: “It took Home Depot four years to migrate 28 apps,” Kirstein recalls. Enterprises like Home Depot, Carrefour, Whirlpool, Jepco, Tropicana Resort and Casino, and the U.S. Air Force typically have dozens of specialty-device apps, and some of those apps hit 1 million lines of code. The transition can cost as much as $10 million, he says. With that level of investment, enterprises need to get really comfortable with the platform they adopt.

The shift from a focus on enterprises to consumers in Windows Embedded 8, and a similar focus in the Windows 10-based Windows IoT, has prompted the industry to look elsewhere. As Kirstein recalls:

Home Depot was the largest planned deployment of WE8HH [Windows Embedded 8 for Handhelds] , but never happened. I was driving/owning the Microsoft/MSI relationship during this announcement.

The end result is Microsoft never delivered the OS on time when they committed to it, nor did it include the key requirements that were expected or needed for enterprise devices. Chipset vendors stopped supporting it, and then we were told we had to wait for Windows 10 to come out. Home Depot moved on, as well as dozens of other large enterprises.

Where did they move? “They are all rolling out Android now,” Kirstein says.
Why Android attracts embedded device developers

More precisely, most are moving to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the part of Android that does not include the Google Mobility Services (GMS) component set. GMS is where Google makes money from Android by using apps like Gmail, Chrome, Google Drive, Google Now, and Hangouts to gather user data, then sells to advertisers and others.

Using AOSP provides developers several advantages, Kirstein notes.

One is the large base of Android developers to draw from. The apps that run on these specialty devices come from companies like Zebra, supply-chain software development firms, and the enterprises themselves that use the apps. Few developers know how to write for Windows Phone 8 or Windows 10 — Microsoft’s latest offerings — but many know how to write for Android.

Another advantage is that developers can modify the Android OS to add capabilities and restrictions not supported in the core OS. For example, a developer can modify AOSP to set the time zone or enable Bluetooth connections without user interaction, to reduce the human errors that could mess up workflow or data consistency in logistics operations across a region.

But developers can’t remove capabilities, so any Android app will run on these AOSP devices without modification. Why does that matter for a specialty device? Kristen uses the example of Best Buy, which has special product-scanning and inventory-checking handsets for employees. Those handsets can also run the Best Buy app and the Red Laser price-checking app, as well as access the Internet. Thus, employees can see what their customers see on their smartphones and use the same apps to comparison-shop.

That example made a lot of sense to me, given a recent experience I had at a Best Buy store where the app showed a lower price than the store’s internal system. I let the clerk see the price on my iPhone to prove I was owed a discount; it would have been better if she could have done so herself — then flagged the inventory management system — on her own company device.

There’s also some feeling in the industry that AOSP is a safer bet than Windows Embedded, Kirstein notes. He says that at its height, in 2007, Windows Embedded accounted for 0.01 percent of Microsoft’s profit. Then-CEO “Steve Ballmer couldn’t afford to pay attention to it,” he jokes. That’s why Microsoft let the enterprise focus end.

Plus, Microsoft no longer needs to use Windows Embedded as a “socket to the enterprise back end,” Kirstein argues — its decision to make its apps and services available to iOS and Android (often before Windows Phone) has let all devices feed into the core Office 365 and Azure services that now power Microsoft’s revenues.

But Google makes no money on AOSP, so why is that a safer bet for enterprises’ specialty devices? Kirstein believes Google needs AOSP to create a big enough ecosystem to funnel people into the GMS part of Android; he calls it a flanking strategy and notes Google uses it in noncore products to drive users to the data-oriented services where it does make lots of money. “Google needs the broad adoption to ensure enough people who pay for the whole thing.”

Of course, Google isn’t developing AOSP in any significant way; it has pivoted to GMS, where the money is. But the open source nature of AOSP helps it remain viable, Kirstein says: “Many large companies are so invested that they would carry the ball.”

If GMS becomes required, the industry will adapt, Kirstein says — as long as “Google can better address the corporate-liable approach.” Google has taken some steps in that direction recently, such as through its Android for Work technology.

Beyond Android, Tizen might await
Of course, should AOSP wither away like Windows Embedded has, the industry will have to shift again. Kirstein sees only one possible candidate: Tizen, the open source mobile operating system backed mainly by Intel and Samsung.

Tizen has flopped in consumer devices, but Samsung is a huge player in specialty electronics and devices. If it adopted Tizen, that would create a huge base to attract developers and enterprises.

Of course, Samsung has been ineffective at garnering developer interest in its own platforms. It’s a long-shot bet that would rely more on Google forcing the supply chain industry to find a new platform than on Tizen itself.

There’s also no evidence that Samsung has an interest in Tizen for supply-chain-oriented devices. Although the company recently launched an Internet of things business (who hasn’t?), it did not respond to InfoWorld’s inquiry as to whether it saw Tizen as part of that effort. Translation: That’s often how Samsung says no without saying no.

 

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Windows 10

Windows 10 revealed: Microsoft’s next OS fuses Windows 7 and 8

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At a press event on Tuesday, Microsoft launched the next version of Windows: Not Windows One, not Windows 9, but Windows 10, which combines the reborn Start menu with Windows 8’s colorful live tiles and adjusts its behavior depending on how you’re using your device.

Windows 10 will officially launch in the middle of next year, but you’ll have a chance to try it out before that via a new Windows Insider program, launching Wednesday. The platform’s most vocal fans will have a chance to download the technical preview before it launches next year.

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore showing off Windows 10’s reborn, revamped Start Menu.

Microsoft executives unveiled the new OS at a small press event in San Francisco, where the company tried to position the Windows 10 OS as a “natural step forward” for both Windows and Windows Phone, which will also be renamed Windows 10.

Windows 10 will be designed for the enterprise, Terry Myerson executive vice president of Microsoft’s OS group, said. It will have a “familiar” interface, whether it be for Windows 7 or Windows 8. “They will find all the tools they’re used to finding, with all the apps and tools they’re used to today,” he said.

Windows 10 will be compatible with all the familiar management systems, including mobile device management. MDM tools will manage not just mobile devices, but PCs, phones, tablets, and even embedded devices inpart of the Internet of Things, Myerson said. Enterprise customers will be able to manage their own app stores, so that ther employees get the right apps for them. As Windows 8 did, data security will be a priority, he said.

“Windows 10 will be our greatest enterprise platform ever,” Myerson said.
Windows 10 revealed

Joe Belfiore, who runs part of the OS team focused on the PC experience, showed off the new OS, which he called a “very early build.” Yes, the new build has the Stat menu, combining the icon-driven menu from Windows 7, plus the added Live Tiles to the right.

Belfiore used the analogy of a Tesla to describe how Windows 7 users would feel when they upgraded—something that Microsoft desperately wants them to do: a supercharged OS, but one that will feel familiar.

One of the things that Microsoft wants to ensure is that Windows 10 is personalized results, including search results, Belfiore said.

Windows 8 had a universal app platform, with a common Windows Store that handle updates independently. Belfiore said that Microsoft wanted all those Windows 7 uses to get all the benefits of Windows 8 apps. Apps will be shown in the Live Tiles, with no real indication whether they are “classic” apps or modern, Windows 8 apps. Apps can be “snapped,” like Windows 8. Users will also not have to leave the Windows desktop to use modern apps, as expected.

Multitasking will also be a priority, with a stated goal being able to “empower” novice users, Belfiore said. On the taskbar there will be a “task view” where users can switch back and forth between different environments—whether it be 32-bit Windows 7 apps or modern apps. And yes, they will include virtual desktops, with the ability to switch back and forth between virtual environments. A “snap assist” feature will allow users to select similar windows to snap alongside other apps. And up to four apps or windows can be snapped to the four corners of the desktop, Belfiore said.

Even more advanced uses will be able to take advantage of new keyboard shortcuts, with the ability to ALT-TAB between desktops. “It’s a nice forward enhancement to make those people more productive,” Belfiore said.

Microsoft even improved the command line interface, with an improved keyboard interface. (You can use Crtl+V to paste now!)
Touch when you need it

Belfiore wrapped up by talking about touch: “We’re not giving up on touch,” he said. But he did say that that massive numbers of users were familiar with the touchless Windows 7 interface, while supporting those who have jumped to Windows 8.

So that means that the Charms experience will be revamped. When you swipe right on Windows 10, the Charms bar is still there. But Belfiore said that the Charms experience would change. When people swipe in from the left, Windows 10, you’ll get a task view. “I’m using touch in a way that accelerates my use of a PC,” Belfiore said.
windows10 continuum start screen

Microsoft is also working on a revamped UI that isn’t is in Windows 10, yet. For two-in-on devices, a “Continuum” mode will adjust the UI depending on whether or not the mouse and keyboard is present. When a keyboard is disconnected, the Windows 8-style Start menu appears and a back button is available so that users can easily back out to a prior command. Menus grow larger. Bu when a mouse and keyboard is connected, the desktop mode reappears, Windows apps return to desktop windows, and the Start page disappears.

Now, Microsoft needs to take the next step: pitching enterprise customers, Myerson said. And that’s critical for Windows’ future, analysts said. Expect more details on the consumer flavors of Windows 10 early next year, more application details at BUILD, and then a launch of Windows 10 near the middle of next year.

“For businesses, I think there are some businesses who have picked it up and they are really early adopters, but in general, the sense—when we engage with customers, we’re not hearing a lot of reception out there,” Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said in advance of the briefing. “We’re hearing a lot of businesses even before whatever that thing comes out tomorrow, before that came out, businesses were saying, we’re going to hang out on Windows 7, it’s stable, it does what we need to do.”

Starting Wednesday, Microsoft will launch a Windows Insider program, distributing the technical preview of Windows 10, Myerson said. Through Window Insiders we’re inviting our more vocal Windows fans” to help refine the Windows experience, executives said. Users wil be able to sign up at preview.windows.com, he said, where they will be able to hold private discussions with Windows engineers and give feedback.

“Windows 10 will be our most open, collaborative OS project ever,” Myerson said.

 

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Microsoft

New Microsoft same as the old Microsoft

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For all the talk by its CEO about a new and different Microsoft, the company’s revenue and profit engines remain untouched, with money-making software groups tied to hardware-intensive divisions that increasingly drag down the firm’s overall margin.

Perusing Microsoft’s latest financial report, the one filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in July, makes it clear that little has changed in either the last year or since Satya Nadella took over the reins in February 2014.

Two of the company’s six business units — Devices & Consumer (D&C) Licensing and Commercial Licensing — generated 68% of the company’s total revenue for the second quarter of 2014 and 93% of its gross margin. Those units, as their names imply, primarily sell software licenses: Windows to OEMs in D&C’s case, Office and a slew of other products, including Windows Server, to enterprises in Commercial’s.

Those numbers were not substantially different from a year ago, much less six months ago when Nadella took over the company. In the second quarter of 2013, D&C and Commercial Licensing accounted for 75% of the revenue and 95% of the gross margin. Half a year ago, the figures were in the same ballpark: 66% and 93%.

And the D&C and Commercial Licensing margins were still stratospheric last quarter, 92% for D&C, 94% for Commercial. In other words, for each $100 brought in by those two units — from software sales, in other words — Microsoft retained $93.10. That’s “printing money” by any business definition.

The other units — Computing and Gaming (C&G) Hardware, Phone Hardware, D&C Other and Commercial Other — had gross margins of 1%, 3%, 24% and 31%, respectively, but contributed even smaller portions to the total gross margin for the quarter. C&G Hardware, for instance, accounted for just 0.1% of the company’s gross margin, while Phone — the new line item in Microsoft’s financials that represented the Nokia business acquired in April — contributed only 0.3% of the gross margin.

As six months ago, when Computerworld last analyzed Microsoft’s financials to try to figure out whether its strategy matched its numbers, the four units were not only less profitable than the software groups, but were nearly invisible on the bottom line. Collectively they accounted for 8% of the total gross margin. It’s not a rounding error, certainly, but just as obviously not a core part of Microsoft’s profitability.

And Nadella has talked “core” so often he could be an apple — not Apple — enthusiast.

“We made bold and disciplined decisions to define our core as the productivity and a platform company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world,” Nadella said in the July 22 earnings call with Wall Street (emphasis added). “We will get crystal clear on the core businesses that drive long-term differentiation and the businesses that support them.”

Nadella used the word “core” 10 times in his prepared statement at the top of that call.

Microsoft, of course, knows full well the profit-making disparity between what it has historically done — sell software — and what ex-CEO Steve Ballmer decided it must do, sell devices, too.

While revenue from C&G Hardware, which primarily came from sales of the Xbox game console and Surface tablet, and Phone added $3.4 billion to sales, a closer look at the numbers revealed still-higher costs and continued declining margins for devices.

After an increase in 2014’s first quarter, the margin for C&G Hardware took a dive in the second, dropping to just 1%. In the last eight quarters, the group’s margins have fallen in four when measured against the previous period.

And the 1% for the second quarter, a record low — except for the second quarter of 2013, which included a $900 million write-off — put new meaning to “razor thin.”

Microsoft attributed the decline in gross margin for C&G Hardware to higher expenses for both the Xbox and the Surface, but the latter was what dragged down the number: Microsoft took an estimated $363 million loss on the tablet in the June quarter to push the total red ink to $1.7 billion since its October 2012 debut.

Nor did the addition of Nokia help much. With Phone added to C&G Hardware, the two groups returned just 50 cents for each $100 in revenue. When one charts the gross margins of Microsoft’s divisions, those for C&G Hardware and Phone are so tiny they simply don’t register.

Nadella wasn’t unaware of the crummy margins for his company’s devices, whether video game machine, tablet or phone. He killed the Surface Mini shortly before it was to launch, reportedly to eat crow immediately rather than to lose even more money down the road; rejected Ballmer’s “devices and services” strategy; and talked instead about the company’s mission as a “productivity and platforms” seller.

The vast bulk of Microsoft’s gross margin — an indicator of profitability — still comes from its software sales, while other businesses, including its hardware and phone efforts, generated so little that they’re impossible to see in the chart’s scale. (Data: Microsoft, SEC filings.)

“At times, we will develop new categories like we did with Surface. And we will responsibly make the market for Windows Phone,” Nadella said during the July 22 earning call. “However, we are not in hardware for hardware sake, and the first-party device portfolio will be aligned to our strategic direction as the productivity and platform company.”

Other company executives, including former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, have also deployed the phrase “responsibly make the market.” which some analysts have interpreted to mean that losses will not be tolerated in Nadella’s regime as they were in Ballmer’s.

The mantra of “productivity and platforms” certainly matches Microsoft’s revenues better then Ballmer’s “devices and services,” which was never really defined. The Office productivity family, represented by Commercial Licensing, and the Windows platform, more or less encapsulated in D&C Licensing, accounted for 93% of the firm’s second-quarter gross margin.

That was actually down from a year ago, when the two lines combined for 95% of Microsoft’s gross margin.

But another group, Commercial Other, which generates most of its revenue from what Microsoft calls “Commercial Cloud” — Office 365 for commercial accounts; Azure, the company’s cloud business; and Dynamics CRM Online — more than made up the difference. The service-oriented group booked $2.3 billion in revenue during the June quarter, up 44%, and boosted its gross margin to $691 million, a 106% increase.

Commercial Other’s gross margin in percentage format was 30.5%: For every $100 in revenue, Microsoft kept $30.50. That was not only a jump from 21.3% a year before, but the highest since the group’s creation on the books.

“Commercial Other margins expanded again in this quarter, benefiting from both improved business scale and datacenter efficiency in our cloud services,” said CFO Amy Hood last month.

Although Commercial Other was a creation of Ballmer, who regularly cited its offerings as the prime example of the “services” side of his strategy, the group also fits well with Nadella’s updated message of productivity (Office 365) and platforms (Azure, as a cloud-based OS).

Add Commercial Other to the two licensing-centric groups, and the cumulative margin drops to 84.7% — Microsoft keeps $84.70 of each $100 in revenue — which, while a smaller number than licensing-only, is still a fantastic margin that demonstrates the financial power of software, whether delivered traditionally or as a service.

Nadella knows that, and has even acknowledged as much, although he uses the word “software” sparingly — just twice, for instance, in the July 22 earnings call. In a May interview at Re/code’s technology conference, Nadella said, “We are a software company at the end of the day.”

No kidding.
Which makes the hardware divisions and their very low margins stand out even more.

If the Xbox, Surface and Nokia businesses, along with the rest of the peripheral units bundled with them, were purged from Microsoft’s balance sheet last quarter, it would have raised the gross margin ten points, from 69% (with hardware) to 79% (without). In other words, Microsoft would be a smaller company — just under $20 billion in revenue versus the actual $23.3 billion — but a more profitable one.

That’s not gone unnoticed by Wall Street, which has regularly pressed Microsoft to abandon hardware, sell the units or spin them off into independent companies. Industry analysts have also questioned the devotion to hardware.

“The contrast between hardware and licensing couldn’t be more stark: one makes enormous gross margins, and the other barely scrapes a profit,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, in a July 22 analysis of Microsoft’s financials. In a follow-up, he wondered how long Microsoft would put up with the losses of the Surface.

“Continued losses will make it harder and harder for Microsoft to keep the Surface project going, so a good performance in the next quarter or two will be critical to justifying its continued existence,” he wrote on July 31.

A few days later, in an interview, Dawson elaborated. “My sense is that Nadella is less willing to accept losses than was [Steve] Ballmer,” he said.

With a financial disparity like the one shown in the June quarter, who could blame Nadella if he did?

And he has hinted that pressure would be applied to the low-low-margin hardware divisions. “For those supporting efforts such as MSN, retail stores and hardware, we will also ensure disciplined financial execution,” Nadella said on July 22 (emphasis added).

While margins for Microsoft’s hardware group — which sells the Surface and the Xbox — continued to fall in the June quarter, margins have improved for ‘Commercial Other,’ the group that handles Office 365 for businesses and the Azure cloud. (Data: Microsoft, SEC filings.)

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Microsoft

Microsoft slates critical IE, Windows patches for Tuesday

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One month left for businesses to migrate from Windows 8.1 to Windows 8.1 Update

Microsoft today said it will ship six security updates to customers next week, patching all versions of Internet Explorer (IE) and nearly all supported editions of Windows.

The IE update, one of two classified as “critical” — Microsoft’s most serious threat ranking — will patch IE6 on Windows Server 2003, IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10 and the newest, IE11.

It’s unlikely that July’s IE update will match June’s in size: Microsoft fixed a record 60 flaws in the browser on June 10. (Originally, Microsoft said it had patched 59 IE bugs last month, but a week later acknowledged it had forgotten to add one to the list, and so upped the count to an even 60.)

Windows 7 users who have not freshened IE11 with a mandatory April update will not receive next week’s browser fixes.

According to Thursday’s advanced notice, which briefly described the July updates, the second critical bulletin will patch all client editions of Windows — from Vista to Windows 8.1 — and all server versions except for those running on systems powered by Intel’s Itanium processors. Windows Server 2008 and Server 2012 systems provisioned by installing only the Server Core — a minimal install with many features and services omitted to lock down the machine — are also exempt from Bulletin 2, Microsoft said.

Of the remaining four updates, three were labeled “important” by Microsoft — the threat step below critical — while the fourth was pegged “moderate.” All will offer patches for some or all Windows editions, both on the desktop and in the data center.

Security researchers pointed to the two critical bulletins as the obvious first-to-deploy for most Microsoft customers.

They also remarked on Bulletin 6, the single moderate update, which will patch Microsoft Service Bus for Windows Server. The bus is a messaging and communications service that third-party developers can use to tie their code to Windows Server and Microsoft Azure, the Redmond, Wash. company’s cloud service.

“The odd one out this month is the Moderate Denial of Service in ‘Microsoft Service Bus for Windows Server,'” said Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7, in an email. “It’s part of the Microsoft Web Platform package and is not installed by default with any OS version.”

Although Microsoft did not mention it in today’s advance notice, or in the blog post by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), enterprises have one more month to deploy April’s Windows 8.1 Update and Server 2012 R2 Update before losing patch privileges for devices running Windows 8.1 or servers running 2012 R2.

Hardware powered by Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2 must be updated before Aug. 12, the next scheduled Patch Tuesday, to receive that month’s updates, as well as any future security fixes.

Or in some cases, even present patches, said Chris Goettl, a program product manager at Shavlik, in an email.

“One thing to watch out for [next week] will be [something similar to] the many exceptions we saw last month,” Goettl cautioned. “Many of the updates we saw in June required other updates to be in place, depending on the platform. For those running Windows 8.1 or Server 2012 R2, they need to be prepared for more of these updates to require Update 1 before they can apply them. Microsoft has stated they would delay a hard enforcement until August, but more and more of the patches [have] had variations that required Update 1. So look out for that cut over — it’s coming quick.

 

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Tech

Surface Pro 3 deep-dive review: Has Microsoft finally got it right?

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The latest Windows 8 device is supposed to work as both a tablet and a laptop. After working with it for a week, does our reviewer agree?

There’s a saying about Microsoft that I’ve heard for a long time: It takes three tries for the company to get something right. For example, it wasn’t until Windows reached version 3.0 that the operating system really took off, and it was only when Word 3.0 hit that the word processor became a market standard.

But is this also true about the Surface Pro 3, the third iteration of Microsoft’s tablet line? Microsoft touts the Surface Pro 3 as a device that, when equipped with an added Surface Pro Type Cover, does double-duty as a productivity tablet and a true laptop.

So how is the Surface Pro 3 as a laptop — or a tablet? To test that out, I carried it around and used it, forgoing the MacBook Air that I typically use when I work away from my desk. It was an ideal test case, because Microsoft has clearly aimed the Surface Pro 3 at the MacBook Air. In fact, on Microsoft’s Surface website, there’s an entire section devoted to comparing the specs of the Surface Pro 3 to the Air.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3
I had previously tried to use its predecessor, the Surface Pro 2, as a primary laptop, and found it impossible to do. But the Surface Pro 3 was generally up to the task, although with some drawbacks.

A look at the specs
Before I go into details about my experience with the Surface Pro 3, let’s take a look at its basic specs.

In this area, it certainly seems as if Microsoft got it right this time. The Surface Pro 3 has a 12-in. display, 40% larger than the Surface Pro 2’s 10.6-in. screen. And it’s quite spectacular, with 2160 x 1440 resolution and a 3:2 aspect ratio — more like a traditional computer’s than the Surface Pro 2’s aspect ratio of 16:9.

Despite the larger screen, the Surface Pro 3 is thinner and lighter than the Surface Pro 2 — it’s 0.36 in. deep and weighs 1.76 lb., compared to the Surface Pro 2’s depth of 0.53 in. and weight of 2 lb. That may not sound like much of a difference, but in use, it really matters (as I explain later in this review). Depending on the model you choose, the device is powered by an Intel i3, i5 or i7 processor. Storage ranges from 64GB up to 512GB, and RAM from 4GB to 8GB.

There’s the usual complement of ports, including a USB 3.0 port, microSD card reader and mini DisplayPort. There are front- and back-facing 5-megapixel cameras capable of 1080p video. And it comes with an interesting stylus; more about that later.

The device connects via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; I found that the Surface Pro 3’s Wi-Fi connection is a very good one. Not only did it always connect well in public places such coffee shops, it even did well in what is often a dead zone in my house, an upstairs room fronting the street in which my home network connection is always iffy. In the worst area in my home, where my iPhone gets no Wi-Fi and my MacBook Air gets it intermittently, the Surface always maintained its connection, albeit a slow one.

One especially useful feature is the kickstand, which comes standard as part of the Surface Pro 3. It has been considerably improved — you are no longer limited to a few pre-set angles; instead, you can set it to any angle between zero and 150 degrees, just as you can position the screen of a laptop.

And how much will all this cost? Even though it’s a considerably better device than the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft has dropped the price of the Surface Pro 3 by $100, so it starts at $799. That gets you a device with an i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. If you want to go whole hog, $1,949 buys you a Surface Pro 3 with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Accessories include a $200 docking station with a keyboard port, a DisplayPort, an audio input/output jack, an Ethernet port, one USB 3.0 port and three USB 2.0 ports. There’s also a $40 Ethernet adapter available. And, of course, there’s the Surface Pro Type Cover, which does double-duty as a cover and keyboard, and which costs an additional $130. (More on that later.)
An excellent display

One of the biggest problems I had with the previous-gen Surface Pro 2 as a laptop was its screen. At 10.6 in., there simply wasn’t enough screen real estate for me to get real work done on spreadsheets or Word documents. And while its 16:9 aspect ratio was fine for watching movies and videos, it required far too much side-to-side scrolling to be suitable for work.

The Surface Pro 3 improves on that dramatically. I found the 12-in. screen to be large enough to get whatever work I needed done, and the 3:2 aspect ratio was more comfortable than the 16:9 ratio of the Surface Pro 2. In fact, I discovered that 12 in. is quite roomy enough for real work. I had expected that it would feel cramped compared to my MacBook Air’s 13.3-in. screen. But that wasn’t the case at all — because of its 2160 x 1440 resolution, I was able to fit quite a bit on it.

That high resolution comes at a price, though. Text and images were at times too small to be read comfortably. Zoom capabilities solved the problem, but not always. That’s because, although Windows 8 Store apps (previously called Metro apps) can be zoomed in and out, not all desktop apps work with zoom. That was problematic at times.

I found that the SugarSync desktop client, for example, was barely usable because of how small the type was. True, I could always lower the desktop resolution to make it more readable, but when I did that, less space was available on screen for other apps. In addition, the SugarSync Windows 8 Store app lacked some of the most basic capabilities of the desktop app, so it wasn’t a good alternative.

In other words, using desktop apps can be a crapshoot with the 12-in. screen.

The new Type Cover
The new Surface Pro Type Cover, which doubles as a cover and a keyboard, is a big improvement over the previous version.

To begin with, I always had an issue with the touchpad on the Surface Pro 2’s Type Cover: It was small and not recessed, difficult to find and equally difficult to use. At times I found myself accidentally moving the cursor because it was hard to know where the touchpad stopped and the bottom of the keyboard began. And when I did find the touchpad, it was too unresponsive to be particularly useful. I resorted to a Bluetooth mouse.

Not so with the new keyboard. The touchpad is recessed, so it’s easy to find; I never had to fumble for it. Because the touchpad is larger (and felt more responsive), I could more easily control the cursor. It’s a small change, but a very big improvement, so much so that I no longer had to bring a Bluetooth mouse with me to get work done.

In addition, the Type Cover now has a magnetic hinge that raises the keyboard to a slight angle. This is well-suited for working with the Surface Pro 3 on your lap, but I also found it useful on a desk or table top, because I favor slightly angled keyboards. (I’m a fast touch typist and I like to pound a bit on the keyboard; with the angled keyboard, I’m no longer drumming directly on the table.) It’s another example of how a small engineering change has made a big difference in the Surface Pro 3’s usability.

Is it better than the 13.3-in. MacBook Air keyboard? Not for me. Having some separation between keys, as you have on the MacBook Air but not on the Surface Pro 3, allows me to type more quickly and make fewer mistakes. And because it’s a “real” keyboard, the Air’s keys have more give and feedback than do the Surface Pro’s.
The Surface Pro 3 as a tablet

The Surface Pro 3 may do double-duty as a laptop, but its basic design is as a tablet. And there, despite some very nice hardware, it falls short.

As mentioned before, the 12-in. screen is nothing short of spectacular, with vivid, crisp images and no noticeable lag or other issues with motion. No matter what movie or TV show I played on it, I found myself wanting to watch more. The speakers, as with the previous Surface Pro, are excellent, with Dolby stereo audio so realistic that it feels as if the sound is coming from the room itself, not from the speakers.

Microsoft says the speakers are 45% more powerful than the previous Surface Pro, but I never thought the previous speakers had a problem with volume, so this claim may or may not be meaningful. As a media-consumption tablet, it’s stellar — much superior to my iPad or Google Nexus 7.

That large screen also makes a difference when browsing the Web, offering a full experience, rather than the mobile one you get on smaller tablets. For example, when you’re using mapping apps, it provides far more detail and context than do smaller-sized tablets.

And the large screen also makes the Surface Pro 3 useful as a productivity tablet. For example, when I was using Microsoft Office, not only could I see more of any document onscreen, but I could touch type on the virtual keyboard because of the larger keys, something not possible on smaller tablets.

But I found the large screen to also be somewhat of a mixed blessing. Because of its size, it’s bulky to carry compared to a 10-in. iPad, and its 1.76 lb. is still significantly heavier than the 1-lb. iPad Air.

However, the real shortcoming with the Surface Pro 3 as a tablet is its dearth of apps compared to the iOS and Android platforms — as I’ll discuss in a moment.
Styling with the stylus

The Surface Pro comes with something that most competing tablets don’t have — a stylus. The Surface Pro 3 has gotten a stylus makeover, to good effect. The old stylus (manufactured by Wacom) was black plastic and felt somewhat cheap, and never felt quite right in my hand. The new one (now built by N-Trig) is made of polished aluminum, and not only looks better, but is heavier and has a far more pleasing and substantial feel to it.

It’s got two buttons, so offers more flexibility, depending on the app you’re using it with — for example, in OneNote you can hold down one of the buttons and the pen acts as an eraser. The two buttons also do double-duty as mouse buttons. All in all, when I used it, I felt as if I really were using a pen, and a nice one at that, rather than just a tube made of plastic.

The stylus no longer attaches to the place where the power cord goes, as it had in the Surface Pro 2. That’s both good and bad. It’s good because in the past if you wanted to charge the Surface Pro, you had to first take out the stylus. But it’s bad because there’s now no place on the device itself to attach the stylus. If you buy a Type Cover, there’s a small loop on the side for tucking in the stylus, but even then, I worry whether the holder will fray and tear over the long term. (If you lose it, a new stylus will cost you $50.)

Before trying out the Surface Pro 3’s stylus, I was never much of a stylus fan. But after spending time with it, I’m a believer, particularly for note taking. The combination of OneNote (which is included) plus the stylus is a potent duo. Not only can you hand-write notes and draw with it, but the Surface Pro also has handwriting recognition. So instead of using the virtual keyboard, you can write by hand using the stylus, and the tablet translates that into text. My handwriting is exceedingly bad, but when I slowed down and wrote carefully, it rarely made a mistake. Even when I wrote quickly and sloppily, it did better than I expected, making a mistake only about every fourth word or so.

I even wrote part of this review using the stylus in Word, although it’s not an experience I would care to do again, because it requires slow and careful handwriting. Still, for jotting down notes, it’s a winner.

For drawing, it’s good as well. It’s pressure sensitive — press the pen on the screen lightly and it draws a light line; press it harder as you draw and the line thickens. Microsoft claims that the stylus recognizes 256 different levels of pressure. Being no artist, I can’t vouch for whether it’s really that sensitive, but when used with an art program such as ArtRage 4, I found it quite responsive. There is also little or no lag between pressing and moving the pen and a line appearing. It feels as natural as using a real pen.

The upshot? The pen is a true productivity tool, and not a toy or an afterthought. Professionals on the go who want a tablet with pen input would do well to consider the Surface Pro 3.
The app gap

So what’s not to like about the Surface Pro 3? In a word, apps — or more precisely, the lack of them.

The Windows Store ecosystem doesn’t come close to either iOS or Android when it comes to app choice. For example, when I did a quick search, some of the popular apps that were missing included eTrade, the Chase and Citibank banking apps, Google Maps, LinkedIn, Spotify, Pinterest, Yelp, Sonos and others.

At a Glance
Surface Pro 3
Microsoft
Starting price: $799
Pros: Excellent 12-in. screen, very good keyboard cover, useful stylus and handwriting recognition, lightweight
Cons: Expensive, Windows 8 lacks many apps, keyboard cover costs $130 extra

And even when there is a desktop app and a Windows Store app for the same application, the Windows Store app typically lacks many of the important features of the desktop one. For example, the Windows Store note-taking Evernote app, called Evernote Touch, doesn’t include all of the features that the desktop version does, including good browsing and searching capabilities. In fact, even Evernote itself suggests that Evernote Touch users also install the Evernote desktop app to get “the full-featured Evernote Desktop.”

In short, the hardware is willing, but the apps are weak.
The bottom line
Microsoft touts the Surface Pro 3 as a tablet that does double-duty as a laptop and, if you buy the Surface Pro Touch Cover, what the company says is generally true. Still, the cover still isn’t as good as a full-blown laptop keyboard. At 12 in., the Surface Pro 3 has enough screen real estate so that it’s a real laptop, not a tablet pretending to be one. At 1.75 pounds, it’s ultraportable, although a bit on the heavy side for a tablet.

As a tablet, there’s still a shortage of apps, so if it’s apps you’re after, you won’t be after the Surface Pro 3. But as a productivity tablet it shines because of its stylus and large screen.

What you think about the Surface Pro 3’s price will depend on how you plan to use the machine. If you look at it as a traditional tablet, you’ll be disappointed. At a starting price of $799, this is a very expensive tablet, especially if you compare it to the iPad Air’s starting price of $499.

However, if you think of the Surface Pro as a laptop plus tablet, things look better. You’ll have to buy a Surface Pro Type Cover for $130, putting the total starting price at $930. That’s not a bad price for a premium laptop that doubles as a tablet — in fact, it’s just about the same price as the $899 starting price for the 11-in. MacBook Air, yet gives you more display real estate, a touch screen and a pen. On the other hand, the MacBook Air’s keyboard is superior to the one on the SurfacePro Type Cover.

So will this be the tablet-laptop combo that convinces you to use Windows 8 if you’re not already committed to it? No. But this machine shows that a tablet-laptop combo is not as much of a Rube Goldberg mashup as you might have imagined. It even makes sense.

With each iteration, the Surface line improves. Microsoft still hasn’t quite nailed it yet. But it’s getting close. If it closes the app gap, the Surface Pro 3 could be a big winner.

 

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Microsoft

Windows XP hack resurrects patches for retired OS

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But security researcher who tried the hack isn’t sure the fixes will actually keep exploits at bay

A simple hack of Windows XP tricks Microsoft’s update service into delivering patches intended for a close cousin of the aged OS, potentially extending support for some components until 2019, a security researcher confirmed today.

What’s unclear is whether those patches actually protect a Windows XP PC against cyber criminals’ exploits.

The hack, which has circulated since last week — first on a German-language discussion forum, then elsewhere as word spread — fools Microsoft’s Windows Update service into believing that the PC is actually running a close relation of XP, called “Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.”

Unlike Windows XP, which was retired from security support April 8 and no longer receives patches, Embedded POSReady 2009 is due patches until April 9, 2019.

As its name implies, POSReady 2009 is used as the OS for devices such as cash registers — aka point-of-sale systems — and ATMs. Because it’s based on Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the last supported version of the 13-year-old OS, its security patches are a superset of those that would have been shipped to XP users if support was still in place. Many of POSReady 2009’s patches are similar, if not identical, to those still offered to enterprises and governments that have paid Microsoft for post-retirement XP support.

Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher at Malwarebytes, an anti-malware software vendor, tried out the hack and came away impressed.

“The system is stable, no crashes, no blue screens,” Segura said in an interview, talking about the Windows XP virtual machine whose updates he resurrected with the hack. “I saw no warnings or error messages when I applied patches for .Net and Internet Explorer 8.”

The Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) update Segura applied appeared to be the same one Microsoft released May 13 for other versions of Windows, including POSReady 2009, but did not deliver to Windows XP.

But although he has run the hacked XP for several days now without any noticeable problems, he wasn’t willing to give the trick a passing grade.

“[POSReady 2009] is not Windows XP, so we don’t know if its patches fully protect XP customers,” Segura said. “From an exploit point of view, when those vulnerabilities are exploited in the wild, will this patch protect PCs or will they be infected? That would be the ultimate proof.”

Microsoft, not surprisingly, took a dim view of the hack.

“We recently became aware of a hack that purportedly aims to provide security updates to Windows XP customers,” a company spokesperson said in an email. “The security updates that could be installed are intended for Windows Embedded and Windows Server 2003 customers and do not fully protect Windows XP customers. Windows XP customers also run a significant risk of functionality issues with their machines if they install these updates, as they are not tested against Windows XP.”

 

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Microsoft

Open sources software’s are expensive than Microsoft

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Microsoft cheaper to use than open source software, UK CIO says

British government says every time they compare FOSS to MSFT, Redmond wins.

 

A UK government CIO says that every time government citizens evaluate open source and Microsoft products, Microsoft products forever come out cheaper in the long run.

 

Jos Creese, CIO of the Hampshire County Council, told Britain’s “Computing” publication that part of the cause is that most staff are already familiar with Microsoft products and that Microsoft has been flexible and more helpful.

 

“Microsoft has been flexible and obliging in the means we apply their products to progress the action of our frontline services, and this helps to de-risk ongoing cost,” he told the publication. “The tip is that the true charge is in the totality cost of ownership and exploitation, not just the license cost.”

 

Creese went on to say he didn’t have a particular bias about open source over Microsoft, but proprietary solutions from Microsoft or any other commercial software vendor “need to justify themselves and to work doubly hard to have flexible business models to help us further our aims.”

 

He approved that there are troubles on together sides. In some cases, central government has developed an undue dependence on a few big suppliers, which makes it hard to be confident about getting the best value out of the deal.

 

On the other hand, he is leery of depending on a small firm, and Red Hat aside, there aren’t that many large, economically hard firms in open source like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft. Smaller firms often offer the greatest innovation, but there is a risk in agreeing to a significant deal with a smaller player.

 

“There’s a huge dependency for a large organization using a small organization. [You need] to be mindful of the risk that they can’t handle the scale and complexity, or that the product may need adaptation to work with our infrastructure,” said Creese.

 

I’ve heard this argue before. Open source is cheaper in gaining costs not easy to support over the long run. Part of it is FOSS’s DIY ethos, and bless you guys for being able to debug and recompile a complete app or distro of Linux, but not everyone is that smart.

 

The extra problem is the lack of support from vendors or third parties. IBM has done what no one else has the power to do. 20 after Linus first tossed his creation on the Internet for all to use, we still don’t have an open source equivalent to Microsoft or Oracle. Don’t say that’s a good thing because that’s only seeing it from one side. Business users will demand support levels that FOSS vendors can’t provide. That’s why we have yet to see an open source Oracle.

 

The part that saddens me is that reading Creese’s interview makes it clear he has more of a clue about technology than pretty much anyone we have in office on this side of the pond.
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Tech

Windows Phone Builds some momentum

It has the apps and now corporate support is starting to tick up. What more does Windows Phone need to compete with Android?

Even in the days leading up to the Build conference, it was clear Windows Phone was getting some wind behind its back. Windows Phone has surpassed 400,000 apps and the Windows Store now gets 14 million downloads a day. IBM has sort-of endorsed WP as its mobile OS of choice, although not officially.

RELATED: Why IBM thinks Windows Phone is best for the enterprise

Now there are more endorsements coming in the form of company-issued phones. Nokia just announced it has struck a deal with Spanish financial services group CaixaBank for 30,000 Lumia 925 smartphones to be issued to staff, with options to upgrade to future Lumia models.

CaixaBank employees will also be able to acquire Lumia phones for their personal use and for their family and friends as part of this deal. This comes on the heels of a deal with Delta Airlines to provide their 19,000 flight attendants with Lumia 1520 phones.

The latest news is what I’ve been waiting for. Samsung seems finally ready to make an effort. It was supposed to jump into the WP market with the ATIV S, a Galaxy S III handset, but now The Verge reports Samsung will reportedly release the ATIV SE, a Galaxy S IV running Windows Phone 8.

Now, I know that I slagged the Galaxy S IV in the past, but that I felt was more due to Android and all of the extra stuff Samsung loaded on it. The hardware, at least on paper, should be high-performance. We’ll see if that’s the case with the ATIV SE, assuming Samsung doesn’t kill it right before shipping it like it did before.

The only area of contention, at least according to The Verge, is whether it will ship with Windows Phone 8 or 8.1, which Microsoft just announced at Build. Either way doesn’t matter much, since Microsoft plans to start rolling out 8.1 in the next few weeks.

So what more does WP need? It’s still hovering at the 3-4% mark for overall market share, even with BlackBerry out of the way.

Well, Microsoft is making headway on apps, with 400,000 (vs. one million for iOS and Android), and at Build, it announced an update to Visual Studio that will make it possible for a single code base to be easily ported between Windows 8.1, PC and tablet edition, and Windows Phone. Microsoft claims developers will be able to reuse 90% of code between the two disparate platforms.

That helps, but the big news is the new price for Windows Phone: zero. Just a few weeks ago Microsoft hinted this was coming by making Windows Phone royalty-free for some Indian handset makers. Now it has announced that anything with a screen under nine inches will get Windows for free as well, both Windows and Windows Phone, depending on the device.

That’s a smart move, because IDC’s tablet research shows the greatest interest is in devices smaller than 8 inches. The company projects tablets 8 inches and under to grow from 27% of the market in 2011 to 57% by 2017, compared with 8- to 11-inch tablets dropping from 73% of the market in 2011 to 37% in 2017. Tablets larger than 11 inches would only reach 6% market share by 2017, because who wants to carry something that big?

So Microsoft made a great strategic move. It targeted the growth market with the free OS. You could argue that it should have made the desktop OS free because it needs more help, what with PC sales in decline. But that’s a mature market and, while in decline, it will always be there and doesn’t need seeding. PCs aren’t going away. But tablets are a growth market and Microsoft is now in a position to grab some share.

 

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The greatest security story never told — how Microsoft’s SDL saved Windows

‘We actually had to bus in engineers.’

Microsoft has launched a new website to “tell the untold story” of something it believes changed the history of Windows security and indeed Microsoft itself – the Software Development Lifecycle or plain ‘SDL’ for short.

For those who have never heard of the SDL, or don’t have the remotest idea why it might be important, the new site offers some refreshingly candid insights to change their minds.

Without buying into the hype, the SDL can still fairly be described as the single initiative that saved Redmond’s bacon at a moment of huge uncertainty in 2002 and 2003. Featuring video interviews with some of its instigators and protagonists, the new site offers outsiders a summary of how and why Microsoft decided to stop being a software firm and become a software and security firm in order to battle the malware that was suddenly smashing into its software.

Few outside the firm knew of the crisis unfolding inside its campus but not everyone was surprised. Microsoft now traces the moment the penny dropped to the early hours of a summer morning in 2001, only weeks before it was due to launch Windows XP to OEMs.

“It was 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, 2001, when Microsoft’s then head of security response, Steve Lipner, awoke to a call from cybersecurity specialist Russ Cooper. Lipner was told a nasty piece of malware called “Code Red” was spreading at an astonishing rate. Code Red was a worm a malicious computer program that spreads quickly by copying itself to other computers across the Internet. And it was vicious.”

Others arrived in the following two years; the Blaster worm, Nimda, Code Red II, MyDoom, Sasser, and on and on. To a world and a Microsoft not used to the notion of malware being a regular occurrence, this was all a big shock.

By January 2002, with attacks on its baby XP humbling the biggest software firm on earth, Bill Gates sent his famous Trustworthy Computing (TwC) memo to everyone at Microsoft. From now on, security was going to be at the root of everything and so help us God.

That turned into the SDL, and it was given priority one to the extent that it took over the whole 8,500-person Windows development team for much of that year and the next. Its ambition was to completely change the way Microsoft made software so that as few programming errors were made that had to be fixed once customers were involved; “security could not continue to be a retroactive exercise.”

Users had also started complaining. Loudly.

“I remember at one point our local telephone network struggled to keep up with the volume of calls we were getting. We actually had to bus in engineers,” the site quotes its security VP Matt Thomlinson as saying.

The fruit of the SDL was XP’s first Service Pack in 2002, followed up by the even more fundamental security overhaul of SP2 in 2004. By then, XP had been equipped with a software firewall, an almost unthinkable feature for an OS three years eariler.

It’s arguable that despite the undoubted gains of the SDL since then, that the firm has yet to fully recover from the trauma of the period. Windows development has seemed less and less certain ever since, following up XP with the flawed Vista and more recent Windows 8 near-debacle. Microsoft still does operating systems but it’s not clear that all its users do.

Still, the SDL programme has proved hugely influential even if it’s not well known outside tech circles. It is now baked into everything. It has also influenced many other software houses and many have versions of the SDL of their own, many modelled on Microsoft’s published framework on how to run secure development.

Whatever mis-steps Microsoft has made in the last decade, security has turned into a bit of a success story right down to the firm’s pioneering and hugely important Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) that conducts the forensics necessary to track down the people who write malware in their caves. Both the SDL and DCU are seen as world leaders.

So let’s hear of for Redmond, the software giant that launched an operating system years behind the criminals but somehow clawed itself back from disaster. Most other firms would have wilted but somehow Gates’s memo rallied the cubicle army.

 

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Microsoft’s long, messy, occasionally clumsy CEO search is about to end

Microsoft could name a new CEO within the next week, after making it clear that whoever gets the job at this point was a back-up choice.

Microsoft could be ready to announce a new CEO within the next week, and it looks to be an insider, after the lengthy outsider search failed to produce results.

Re/Code and Bloomberg both report that Satya Nadella, the head of the server and tools division and 22-year Microsoft, is now the leading choice, although Tony Bates and Stephen Elop remain in the running.

Whoever among this group ends up getting picked will be a second choice. Microsoft’s board chased a lot of outside people, and to pick Nadella or the others suggests the board gave up and just went with the inside guy.

Consider: first it was Allen Mulally of Ford and John Lawrie of CSC. Lawrie faded fast but Mulally hung in there for months before bowing out. Then came word that the job would go to former VMware CEO and ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz, who turned it down immediately. Then there was talk of Steve Mollenkopf, COO of Qualcomm, who ended up being promoted to CEO. Finally, there was Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, who also shot them down.

How would YOU feel to be the sixth choice for anything?
There is still the chance for an outsider. Re/Code boss Kara Swisher is still rooting for current VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, who would be a great choice, but there have been no hints about him in any direction.

Swisher says this protracted search is making a mess inside Microsoft. It’s disrupting the reorg announced prior to Ballmer’s announcement and has left the company in a state of uncertainty. On the one hand, you want the Microsoft board to make the right decision, but on the other hand, they can’t drag this on much longer.

Both Re/Code and Bloomberg report that Steve Ballmer will step down from the board, a wise decision, but there are conflicting stories between the two over Bill Gates. The founder and 800-pound gorilla is either going to become more involved or leave as Chairman. John Thompson would replace him.

Nadella would be wise to demand this. He needs those two out of the way to do what he must and should demand it as a condition of his acceptance.

 

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