3 reasons Microsoft's Surface is no joke

Fortune ^ | June 22, 2012 | Don Sears

[SmokingJoe]

Many have scoffed at the idea that Redmond's tablet will succeed. But there are three crucial reasons to take the effort seriously. By Don Sears

FORTUNE -- Do not underestimate Microsoft's Surface tablet move. Its gambit to design and build its own hardware is a bold play to develop a thriving ecosystem of new products. It is centered on Microsoft's dominant property: the operating system. Monday's flashy Surface launch may have felt like an Apple event with its bright, pastel-colored keyboard, slick introductory videos and breathless hyping from little-known engineers. But, in fact, Microsoft's play is anything but Apple-like. The company is clearly trying to make tablets into hybrid PC-mobile devices, something its California rival has said is a bad idea. We don't yet know all of Surface's details -- battery life, pricing, official release dates are all to-be-determined for instance. But here are three important reasons Microsoft's Surface is likely to be anything but dead on arrival:

Reason #1: Microsoft can build an ecosystem

Microsoft (MSFT) has had success in the consumer market with the Xbox and most recently with the Kinect motion-control devices. The Xbox has become a household name with major brand extensions as an entertainment device. Microsoft disrupted gaming, and it can disrupt hardware.

Microsoft has serious engineering chops. Josh Topolosky, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge and not exactly a fanboy, was blown away by a visit to Microsoft's R&D in 2011. He wrote of that visit: "[MS] showed me a project … which would allow you to create a virtual window from one room to another, utilizing a variety of display, motion sensing, and 3D technologies… dubbed … the 'magic wall.' It was nuts. It was awesome. It was ambitious. The whole time, all I could think was: where has Microsoft been hiding guys like this?"

[Proud2BeRight]

What is RPC mean?

[OldEarlGray]

Borland is a lesson in what happens when the Rainbow Progressive camel is allowed to get its nose into the tent.

 

Back circa 1990, IIRC, they were one of the first tech companies to offer same sex benefits.

 

The cancer of an activist agenda progressing within self-evidently made The Company less able to respond to competitive pressures that came from without.

 

Deja Vu -- How did Bradley Mannning circumvent MAC (Mandatory Access Control security)?  Hmmm.

[Moltke]

I’m not in the market for any TabletToy at this time, but just one look at that ridiculous screen format (what is that, 2:1?) would immediately make me look elsewhere.

[null and void]

DOS isn’t done until Lotus won’t run.

[OldEarlGray]

RPC = Remote Procedure Call.

Aka WCF aka DCOM/COM aka OLE aka...

XEROX/SRI RPC

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=XEROX+SRI+Remote+Procedure+Calls

There is nothing new under the Sun.

[OldEarlGray]

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=Jim+Manzi+Cashectomy+Borland

Same ol’.

[Gideon7]

Microsoft deprecated RPC (DCE) in Windows 8 and is switching to WS-MAN (WinRM) for remote management and control. For example the new Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 is all WinRM.

See http://redmondmag.com/blogs/it-decision-maker/2012/05/ws-man-in-remoting.aspx

[Gideon7]

Microsoft deprecated RPC (DCE) in Windows 8 and is switching to WS-MAN (WinRM) for remote management and control. For example the new Server Manager in Windows Server 2012 is all WinRM.

See http://redmondmag.com/blogs/it-decision-maker/2012/05/ws-man-in-remoting.aspx

[OldEarlGray]

Microsoft Newspeak.

The Service Interface of WCF is an implementation of RPC.

Quack, Waddle, Duck.

[adorno]

Translation: I hit a nerve.

Yeah, sure.

Keep thinking that if it makes you feel better.

I have no dog in the fight, and I could care less about who wins in the hardware/software wars, since, to me, they're all just tools to get the job done. I just don't go around, like a little boy, trying to score fanboy points about things that don't really matter.

[null and void]

Glad to hear that.

[OldEarlGray]

And I’ve seen nothing from MonkeySoft to indicate the clipboard isn’t still DDE, aka Windoze 2.0 RPC, either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Data_Exchange

[Gideon7]

WS-MAN (WinRM) is emphatically not RPC (DCE) based. It is SOAP based. There is no IDL, no huge range of TCP ports to firewall, no 32-bit/64-bit argument translation, just XML. There is no ‘remote procedure call’ per se, but rather alerts (like SNMP traps) and info requests (like SNMP queries). WinRM is based on WMI, which is more closely related to SNMP (with its MIBs) than any RPC implementation like OSF DCE or Sun XDR/RPC.

WCF is just a .NET API for communication. It is orthognal to RPC and WS-MAN (it can access both).

[OldEarlGray]

They can call it whatever they want. Whether I’m consuming a WCF service from a Delphi SOAP client/WSDL, or via a proxy using a net.tcp binding, the functional end result is the same:

An interface to an remote object.

Quack, Waddle, RPduCk.

>>WCF is just a .NET API for communication.

No. It’s a robust framework for persisting a remote interface to, and serializing data between, remote objects via a variety of bindings.

IOW, whatever the M$hills are calling it — it’s just DCOM/OLE/DDE/RPC for the Internet.

[zeugma]

Microsoft deprecated RPC (DCE) in Windows 8

Hopefully they'll have better luck getting away from that than they did with WINS.

[null and void]

Woot!™'s take on the Surface...

[zeugma]

Woot!™'s take on the Surface...

Now, that's funny! They are probably right. After all, Microsoft did make an mp3 player for them (zune).

[antiRepublicrat]

IOW, whatever the M$hills are calling it — it’s just DCOM/OLE/DDE/RPC for the Internet.

I haven't had a chance to look into this specific case, but knowing the history it could either be a completely rewritten communications subsystem, or a WCF call is just a wrapper over the same old DCOM routines. OTOH, from what I've heard the whole TCP/IP stack has been rewritten, so hopefully these got the same treatment.

[adorno]

That was actually, pretty stupid.

Don't you have anything better to do with your life?

Try serious websites for a change, and not the jokers and not the detractors, and not those whose lives depend upon seeing others fail.

Most likely, you're an Apple or Google fanatic, and you're running scared about what Microsoft has done to their mobile offerings with the announcement of the Surface tablets.

3 reasons Microsoft's Surface is no joke
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/22/surface-2/

Microsoft Surface Could Totally Change the Tablet and PC Markets
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/258042/microsoft_surface_could_totally_change_the_tablet_and_pc_markets.html

Microsoft Surface Tablet Has Potential to be Embraced by Physicians
http://www.medpagetoday.com/IltifatHusain/33365

With Surface Tablet, Microsoft Stands Alone
http://mashable.com/2012/06/19/surface-tablet-microsoft-alone/

Microsoft Surface: first serious iPad competitor?
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0619/Microsoft-Surface-first-serious-iPad-competitor

**********************************************************

Basically, the Microsoft competition and Microsoft detractors, are running scared about how disruptive the Surface will be to the tablet market, and Apple executives everywhere, won't be sleeping too comfortably for the next few years. And, you, well, it seems that, you're already having convulsions since the Surface was announced. Take a chill pill, and remember, it's just technology in the form of a tablet, and, you'll likely survive this Microsoft shock to your system. ;)

[adorno]

Now, that's funny! They are probably right. After all, Microsoft did make an mp3 player for them (zune).

Actually, according to most technology experts, the Zune was/is, technologically, a vastly superior MP3 player to the iPod. It failed in the marketing, with Microsoft and it's marketing arms not doing an adequate job. But, I'll admit, marketing is part of the overall drive to get products to be accepted, and, Apple has been good at that, even if the iPads and iPhones aren't really superior or extraordinary technology.