Matisyahu's Blog

There has been a lot of noise made about the person in charge of Windows speculating about the future of the Windows platform (link) in particular there was a focus by many on the comment regarding the use of keyboard and mice. What I think was lost in translation is the fact that behind the vision of the future there appears to be a renewed focus on Windows as a living and breathing platform rather than a platform in retreat. I say that because ever since shutdown Windows on smartphones the general vibe from Microsoft was a future of Microsoft where their operating system is a legacy system that will be kept around for desktops and laptops but Microsoft had no interest in developing Windows beyond that. Long story short, Microsoft had given up on trying to put Windows on any other device other than the devices it was already running on.

What I thought was interesting, that many people overlooked from the video, when talking about moving beyond keyboard and mouse I think the context that was lost wast the implication that Microsoft was going to start looking at Windows being on form factors beyond the traditional laptop and desktops. The whole vision, to me at least, implied that their retreat from expanding beyond laptops and desktops has stopped and that they see a future where Windows will be in more devices – maybe we’ll even see a return of Windows on the smartphone? there is already work being done to address the much reported situation of handheld games consoles performing worse when running Windows when compared to the exact same hardware is running Linux. The idea of Windows on a the smart phone again isn’t all that far fetched given that a portable games console isn’t too far from a smartphone especially given that many include a web browser, app stores etc.

Maybe this is the way in which Microsoft can see themselves getting back into the smartphone market – through portable gaming consoles then working their way up from there. It’ll be interesting therefore to see what Microsoft will do to slim down Windows to make it more efficient on the same hardware that Linux is being offered on. Many things are happening around the world that are disrupting the old order – at the moment Apple Pay and Google Pay along with Visa and Mastercard are they way people conduct contactless payments but in the European Union there is work being done on the digital Euro and linking it to ones bank account so that it bypasses the Visa and Mastercard system along with not relying on Google Pay or Apple Pay. Large numbers of applications these days are multiplatform and depend on web technologies which put Microsoft at an advantage when they embraced Chromium as the basis of their web browser along with it also WebView2 forming the basis on which applications written using web based technologies can run. Most of the games that exist depend on DirectX which means that many of the legacy win32 components aren’t used by games so even if Microsoft start pruning off parts of the operating system thus requiring minimal changes by developers all for the sake of getting a more efficient operating system then opportunities may open.

The reason why I bring this up is because the issues that lead to Windows Mobile never gaining traction are different this time and if Microsoft positions its platform to take advantage of the changes taking place then the models on which Apple and Google built their mobile business may not longer hold true in the future. In the past these platforms could hold onto customers because they were locked into their ecosystem but as new options open the lock in becomes weaker to the point that the ability to move to a different platform becomes easier. This is the reason why Apple jealously guards it’s iMessage protocol while doing a half assed effort at their RCS implementation because the moment Apple implements RCS or allows iPhone users to make use of the Jibe RCS network Google runs (particularly in countries where carriers don’t offer RCS – see New Zealand as an example) is the moment that one of the lock ins disappear thus making moving between platforms a lot less painful experience.