Can Microsoft even create a touch-first operating system, or even a touch-first version of Windows?

Over the past several months, I have been subjected to several news reports about the Microsoft Surface Duo 2, the ‘lost’ Microsoft Windows Version S operating, the new Surface devices, and quite happily, the magnificent Windows 11.

I also use the iPad as a tablet. Daily.

What does that have to do with anything?

Plenty.

While the Surface line really shows off their hybrid chops, they aren’t touch-first devices like the iPad is.

Resultantly, they cannot be used as pure tablets, and that’s a darned shame! Because, into this breech steps the iPad, which is a very good media consumption device. Only.

Which does everything well in that realm, as long as you desire to live in Apple’s walled garden.

I don’t.

I don’t want anything Android either. Ever!

I just want a Microsoft touch-first, preferably windows-based operating system for all my Surface tablets.

So that I can ditch the keyboard and the mouse.

That can’t too much to ask now, can it?

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Microsoft announced a couple or so new Azure things at MS Ignite 2018

Seems like Microsoft has been hard at work on Azure, if this list is any indication.

In a blog post, the zookeeper for Azure outlined a list of new Azure infrastructure products, classifying them around the following nests: infrastructure for every workload, hybrid offerings, and security & management. In all, it is a lot of stuff to digest.

Thanks for sharing, Mike Baz

The following, in order of importance to Logikworx and our clients, are most pressing to me.

Item verbiage is by Microsoft, since I have not had the time to parse them):

• Windows Server 2019 (GA in the coming weeks) – I am incredibly excited about the newest release of Windows Server 2019! Windows Server 2019 is an OS built truly for the cloud with hybrid management, Linux containers, and many more amazing features. You can find more details on this exciting release on the Windows Server 2019 blog.
• Standard SSDs (GA) – Standard SSDs are a cost-effective disk offering optimized for low IOPS workloads that need consistent latency. Standard SSDs deliver better availability, reliability, and latency compared to HDD Disks, and are well suited for Web servers, low IOPS application servers, lightly used enterprise applications, and Dev/Test workloads. Read the engineering blog to learn more.
• Secure score, improved threat protection, and network map (preview) – Microsoft secure score makes it easier for you to understand your security position and potential risks in your environment. Azure Security Center now shows your secure score with clear recommendations on how to reduce risk and strengthen your security. We are also extending our threat protection capabilities to include Azure Storage, Azure Postgres SQL, and containers running on Linux VMs. Finally, we have added a new network map to help you visualize and get quick insights on network related vulnerabilities. You can find more details about these improvements in this blog.
• Azure Firewall (GA) – Azure Firewall is a managed cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall with built-in high availability and cloud scalability. Check these links for documentation and pricing.
• Virtual WAN (GA) – Virtual WAN provides a simple, unified, global connectivity, and security platform to deploy large-scale branch connectivity. You can utilize your favorite SDWAN and security technology vendor. Also, we now offer support for client-side connectivity using OpenVPN.
• Azure Blueprints and Azure Policy in Azure DevOps (preview) – Today, we are announcing the preview of Azure Blueprints. These blueprints make it incredibly easy for you to deploy and update Azure environments in a repeatable manner using composable artifacts such as policies, role-based access controls, and resource templates. This ensures you can configure your different environments to be compliant immediately after they are created. It also allows developers to be completely self-reliant in the creation of new environments. Furthermore, you can now include your Azure Policy definitions in the release management pipeline of Azure DevOps, ensuring that policy compliance is a part of shipping rather than considered after release.
• Azure cost management in the Azure portal (preview) – One year ago, we announced that Azure was the first cloud platform to provide free cost management capabilities to help you reduce your costs in the cloud. Today these capabilities are now integrated natively into the Azure portal for an improved experience. We are also providing an API so you can access cost management from PowerBI or directly from your own custom applications. Azure cost management in the Azure portal preview is available for EA customers today with all other customers on-boarding by the end of year.
• Migration. We recently announced support for Hyper-V assessments in Azure Migrate. We also announced GA of Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, which enables you to migrate SQL Servers to a fully managed Azure service. We also now support many new migration scenarios as part of the Azure Database Migration Service. Azure migration center.
• If you migrate Windows Server or SQL Server 2008/R2 to Azure, you will get three years of free extended security updates on those systems. This could save you some money when Windows Server and SQL Server 2008/ R2 end of support (EOS). If you combine the savings from with Azure Hybrid Benefit and Reserved Instances, running these servers on AWS will be 5 times more expensive than on Azure.

A more expansive list is below, and you can find descriptive information by following the link to the blog post, which, in turn, has links to all sort of relevant information.

Enjoy, and if need be, contact me directly.

MS Ignite 2018 New Azure Products List

• NVv2 VMs (preview)
• NDv2 VMs (preview by end of year)
• HB VMs (preview by end of year
• HC VMs (preview by end of year)
• Azure Firewall (GA)
• Virtual WAN (GA
• ExpressRoute Global Reach (preview)
• ExpressRoute Direct (preview)
• Front Door Service (preview)
• Ultra SSDs (preview
• Standard SSDs (GA)
• Larger managed disk sizes (preview)
• Azure Data Box Edge (preview)
• Windows Server 2019
• Azure Stack
• Confidential Computing DC VM series
• Secure score, improved threat protection, and network map (preview)
• Azure Blueprints and Azure Policy in Azure DevOps
• Azure cost management in the Azure portal
• Azure Migrate
• Azure SQL Database Managed Instance,
• Azure Database Migration Service

Read the entire blog here: A crazy amount of new Azure infrastructure announcements

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Why not Surface Go or Surface as a rental?

This is a highly-requested product/service?

While it is true that I don’t have the number that Microsoft probably has, it seems unreal.

If you look at Microsoft’s hardware inventory, what product, or products scream out for a subscription service?

Did you utter “Surface Go”? And/or scream “The Entire Surface line, dodo!”?

Aaah! So, you know.

I have been totally verklempt trying to understand why an LTE-equipped Surface Go was not offered on Day One, and at that same price.

(The glacial pace of hardware developments and refreshes from Microsoft expose it as a software company. Nothing is wrong with that, for Microsoft mints more bars of gold-pressed Latinum than many sovereign countries. However, it does not show an undeniable commitment to hardware.)

In fact, is there any reason why the entire Microsoft Surface line does not have LTE-equipped models at launch?

And subsequently bundled with a rental+cellular subscription?

Even if you remove LTE from the devices for cost reasons, why aren’t Surface/Surface Go subscriptions available?

If low enough, it would be a fantastic K12 offering.

But, nooooo.

Xbox.

Unless this is a test case for Microsoft coming up with a Surface Go subscription service, or a completely BS rumor, I wouldn’t

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto

The Circle of Trust

Every day, we entrust our private and professional lives in these United States, and for most of the world actually, to basically these 6 companies, namely Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft and Starbucks. To a lesser extent, Snapchat, and Twitter. I have to add Uber and AirBnB as well. Facebook’s Instagram and WhatsApp will also be talked about under Facebook, as would YouTube under Google.

We do so mostly willingly, but mostly because of some vestigial connections still using that specific service or resource.

However, are these companies deserving of our trust, and our business, at all? Are they practitioners of ethical computing? Is our data safe with them? Can they be trusted in the future?

Over a series of blog posts, I will give you my thoughts on the firms listed above, and why I either have increased, stagnant, decreased, or zero engagement with them.

Believe me, some of these companies are not, and will NEVER be, in my Circle of Trust!

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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"When Google Met Schadenfreude". A play in €4.3 billion parts

How many people remember the NOISE coalition against Microsoft?

During Microsoft’s transatlantic antitrust woes?

N.O.I.S.E.?

The people who secretly and publicly funded that mofo working with Penfield Jackson to bring down Microsoft?

Novell. Oracle. IBM. Sun Microsystems. Everyone Else.

Surreptitiously, Google was in the “Everyone Else” category, until outed.

At every turn, Google complained to the EU, coming up with farcical BS market dominance theories that  yum-yums running the EU antitrust offices eagerly lapped up like the, well, lapdogs that they were!

It was horrifying!

Under the intellectually-deficient Mario Monti, the thoroughly-incompetent Nellie Kroes, and the dumbass Joaquin Almunia, Microsoft was hobbled.

All the while, Google had a free hand to become unlawfully dominant.

Fast forward to today.

Thankfully, the current European Commissioner for Competition is Margrethe Vestager.

The competent Ms. Vestager has been able to cut through Google’s BS, and has undertaken to hit Google in the wallet for [economic] crimes against the people.

Today, the blow came to €4.3 billion.

Not a small sum to sneeze at, but smallish, to Google.

Sadly, this won’t stop Google.

What the EU competition authorities should have done, was to wrest control of the Android store, called Google Play, from Google.

Allowing Google to maintain control over that marketplace enshrines Google’s dominance over the Android ecosystem no matter what other remedies are ordered.

I sincerely hope that Ms. Vestager is still keeping a close watch on Google.

Until then, schadenfreude bites.

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

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Will Skype 8.0 save the franchise?

Is Skype 8.0 going to be the resurrection of the Skype franchise?

The lack of traction for Skype so far during Microsoft’s ownership is rather pitiful.

From being the communications app for most of the world, across both industrialized and emerging nations, Skype has become largely forgotten.

In the interim, WhatsApp has conquered all.

To an outsider like me, the faults came down to a few things: unnecessary tedious onboarding, a hard-to-use UI, a craptastic user experience, and a seemingly user-unfriendly stance from Microsoft. Making international calls, a hallmark of Skype, became a severe chore!

To crown it all, further development on Skype visibly stopped. New features introduced into competing products weren’t even publicly roadmapped!

How bad was it?

Well, WhatsApp went from nowhere to being neck-and-neck with Skype for a minute, and now being in excess of 1 billion global users.

As for Skype, the last time user numbers were made known, it was at 300 million users. Back in 2016.

What makes this more infuriating, is that Microsoft is a well regarded company that is universally trusted to not abuse customer PIIs and data.

In these days of just-1% slightly-greater-than-1% user privacy awareness, I am pretty sure Microsoft can recapture, or at least, capture, a few tens of million new users if they keep their eyes on the prize.

Sadly, I’m not optimistic.

© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow @johnobeto

Will (or should) Microsoft be applauded for Kinect already?

So far, Microsoft, despite all its recent successes: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 & 2008 R2, Office 2010, SharePoint Server, Xbox 360 – yes, the Xbox!, has not been given it’s due props mainly due in ink to the fact that so many of the mainstream IT punditry and in the blogosphere are looking for the diminishing, IMO) accolades from the public for being the person who discovers the next ‘new thing’.

All the while, Microsoft is making bank in several areas, with SharePoint being the latest Microsoft product to garner more than $1 billion USD in annual revenue.

Are we going to add the Xbox, and its new hardware add-in, Kinect, to that august list?

Why?

Trip this:

• On November 4th, Microsoft released Kinect to the wild.
• I had pre-ordered a Kinect (for my office Xbox 360) from Amazon.com which I got on the 5th of November.
• Wifey purchased a Kinect at mega-mart* on November 4th for the kids’ Xbox. She just walked into mega-mart, and there were several units ready for purchase.
• There were several observations about Kinect possibly failing to meet expectations.
• Whispers started being heard about Kinect possibly being a, //gasp// failure!

How could this happen? Kinect had, in my opinion, gotten the highest marks for utility from virtually all out there. In that case, what was wrong, I wondered?

Yesterday, Microsoft released some data about Kinect.

Guess what?

In the ten days since the release of Kinect, the device has sold one million units. Not a typo, folks: one million copies!

Why are you yawning?

Let’s put this in perspective:

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  •  
    • The (previous) most impressive product in recent CE history is the iPhone. It took the iPhone 74 days to sell one million!
    • You say the iPhone was a new entrant while Kinect is a follow-on product? Okay. The most iconic product this year is the iPad, which is an extension of the iPhone. How long did it take the iPad to sell one million? 28 days!

What does that show?

It shows that when Microsoft actually innovates, it can move the crowd.

Moreover, remember that the Xbox 360 has the highest attach rate of all of the game consoles on the market, and you have a potential winner here.

I believe our two consoles added to that, including the two games we have, Kinect Sports & Kinect Joy Ride.

To show the versatility of Kinect, the Microsoft Lync team has released an add-in that allows for video conferencing calls with Kinect. This is just the beginning for Kinect.

10 days, one million units sold!

Kinect for Xbox 360.

It rocks!

To answer my question: yes, Microsoft should be applauded for Kinect, and Kinect’s success. Immediately.

Remember, we haven’t even mentioned Windows Phone 7!