Can Microsoft get the Nokia branding right?

Posted on December 20, 2013 by halberenson

I’m suffering from extreme jet-lag (14 time zones is nothing to laugh at) and woke up at 4 AM thinking about microprocessor architecture and wondering if Microsoft is going to mess up the Nokia device branding when the acquisition closes in the next few weeks.  Yeah, sleep deprivation does weird things to you.  The former is not something I have reason to write about, but the later is something we all should worry about.  Microsoft has a poor track record on branding.  And that is being kind.

At the heart of the problem for Microsoft is he name “Nokia”.  It has real value, particularly outside the U.S., and Microsoft has to be very careful about how it transitions away from using it.  I think there are fewer issues with the Lumia (and Asha) brands, but also no reason to move away from those.  Lumia is a better brand for Windows Phones then “Windows Phone”.  It’s not even close actually.

If you think about some of the previous dumb branding by Microsoft we could end up with the “Microsoft Nokia Lumia 666 Windows Phone”, in which case I’ll dump my stock.  Microsoft has to be much smarter about how they do this.

I was thinking about alternatives this morning and decided my favorite was to initially keep the current Nokia Lumia xxxx branding scheme but in a very low-key way make it “Nokia by Microsoft”.  You’d just say Nokia, but in writing there would be a small “by Microsoft” under the Nokia.  Then over the course of 12-18 months you’d emphasize the Lumia name and reduce saying Nokia.  By the end of two years you drop Nokia entirely and it is the Microsoft Lumia xxxx, but you still emphasize Lumia as the brand.

An alternative would be to make it Nokia Lumia by Microsoft (same subtle use of the by Microsoft) then slowly reduce the verbalization of Nokia until it just disappeared and you had Lumia by Microsoft. Again with the emphasis on Lumia.

The long-term branding is the Lumia by Microsoft the way Marriott has done with many of its brands.  It is Courtyard by Marriott and Fairfield Inn by Marriott.  Marriott loyalists will actually emphasize the Marriott part, but Marriott has increasingly emphasized the individual brands and what they stand for.  Marriott Courtyard (as they were originally called) was very confusing because you knew what a Marriott was and had (unfulfilled) expectations when you stayed at a Marriott Courtyard.  Today you know what a Courtyard is, and you know the Marriott affiliation brings certain benefits to Courtyard but doesn’t define it.  Microsoft needs to do the same kind of things with its brands, starting with Lumia.

So there is an engineer’s view of branding and how Microsoft should handle the transition of the Nokia brands.  Let’s see if the branding specialists can do better, or at least as well.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments

Windows Phone: Getting better all the time

Posted on December 19, 2013 by halberenson

Paul Thurrott beat me to the punch with a blog entry about Windows Phone having turned the corner in 2013.  Yes, things feel much better than they did a year ago.  Volumes are up. Market share is up, strongly in some regions.  And the app library is starting to fill in nicely (although it still has a way to go).

Personally, after dissing the state of Windows Phone earlier in the year, I found the Lumia 1020 irresistible.  It takes amazing pictures, something that continues to draw attention.  I was in Thailand the last couple of weeks and I think I sold two guides on getting 1020s because every time they borrowed mine to take our picture they were just amazed at the result.  And taking pictures of their customers is something they do regularly.  One was frustrated with the reliability of their Galaxy Note and I suggested they look into the Lumia 1520.  Yes, the Phablet form factor is popular in Thailand.

Nokia and Microsoft have also done a considerable amount of updating of WP8 and the Lumia devices over the year, with Windows Phone 8 Update 3 and Nokia Black coming to my AT&T Lumia 1020 today.  The device has continually felt fresh.

I also have a Lumia 521 that I bought to play with, something completely reasonable when you consider you can get one without contract for under $100.  I can see why the 52x line is helping drive Windows Phone volumes as it’s a great device for its price category.  I can also see a future generation putting the final nail in the coffin of the feature phone, something that will make more strategic sense as Microsoft takes over the Nokia device business.

And many more of the apps I really care about are now available.  Yes I still have some frustrations in this area, but Joe Belfiore was probably right in asserting that WP will reach effective app store parity by the end of 2014.

Something else about my Thailand trip.  The Thai’s seem quite a bit less jaded about Windows Phone and still hold Nokia in high regard.  So Microsoft’s opportunity to achieve high market share in this Newly Industrialized Country (NIC) of 70 Million people is quite good.   It’s just a different perspective than one gets sitting in the good ole USA.

Anyway, since Paul covered the argument rather well I won’t attempt the complete argument myself.  Windows Phone, and its prospects, seem tremendously better than last year.  In 2014 the Microsoft Lumia seems set to join the iPhone and Galaxy as the three device lines that the world primarily cares about.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

The dangers of immature standards

Posted on December 19, 2013 by halberenson

Some people (Mary, that’s you) got quite a laugh about my comment that Microsoft had relied on networking vendors to provide NAT64/DNS64 support.  So I thought I’d expand on that, show why it didn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to do, and demonstrate the perils of relying on standards before they are fully baked.

Microsoft has been a strong and early proponent of IPv6 and indeed the DirectAccess technology is based on IPv6.  Of course there is a set of IPv4 to IPv6 transition technologies defined that allow DirectAccess to function in either a mixed or entirely IPv4 world.  When DirectAccess was being developed one such technology was NAT-PT.  NAT-PT had been implemented by Cisco (and perhaps others) quite some time before DirectAccess came to market.  In fact this Cisco documentation suggests support going as far back as 2002.  With NAT-PT available to most of its enterprise customers purely by configuring their existing network equipment, Microsoft chose not to provide its own NAT-PT implementation as part of Windows Server 2008 R2 (where DirectAccess was introduced).

Unfortunately it turned out that NAT-PT had serious flaws and a pair of new networking proposals was hatched to replace it, NAT64 and DNS64.  So when Microsoft launched DirectAccess you had NAT-PT in the market and work on NAT64/DNS64 specs nearing completion.  Very quickly a catch-22 developed.  Customers working on DirectAccess rollouts were told to use Cisco’s documented NAT-PT support, but when they talked to Cisco technical support they were told that was a very bad idea.  Although Cisco technically supported NAT-PT they had effectively deprecated it (and with no NAT64/DNS64 support in sight).  No customer was willing to go against Cisco’s advice, and no alternative was available from Microsoft.  DirectAccess deployment was blocked for nearly every customer scenario.  And that forced the UAG team to put in a crash effort to add NAT64/DNS64 support to UAG 2010 as I wrote about yesterday.

So Microsoft’s reliance on network vendors wasn’t blind faith, the key networking vendor already had the requisite technology in the market and available to the Microsoft customer base at the time the DirectAccess planning was done.  But as happens occasionally, things change.

This situation demonstrates the risks of relying on proposed, draft, and immature standards when doing actual implementations. Particularly in networking, which is inherently about having multiple implementations interoperating in real-time, until a standard is fully baked and tested with multiple implementations the risk of discovering fatal flaws is high.

This is why sometimes you may find a vendor, particularly a bigger one, slow on the trigger of implementing new “standards”.  Often the standard hasn’t actually finished the standardization process, and even if it has it may have dependencies on other incomplete standards or conditions that have yet to be met.  A company concerned about “getting it right” may choose not to be first and put their customers through unnecessary disruption later.  Twenty years ago that was always the right decision.  But since the advent of the Internet gave so many a “first mover advantage” it’s become much more debatable on if you should wait or just go ahead and implement something despite its incomplete and potentially seriously flawed nature.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Windows | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The dangers of immature standards

Forefront UAG is no more

Posted on December 18, 2013 by halberenson

Back in September 2012 I wrote a blog entry explaining what had happened to the Forefront product line.  Except on days when I publish something new it is always the most popular post I’ve done, and over time it is the second most read overall!  In that post I talked about Microsoft’s view on the network edge and the demise of the Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG), but didn’t talk at all about the Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG).  Today Microsoft announced the End of Life of UAG as well.

For those who know nothing about UAG it is another network edge product offering.  It originated as a product and company called Whale, and when first brought into Microsoft it was called the Intelligent Application Gateway (IAG).  IAG offered two capabilities.  First, it was an SSL VPN.  Second, it allowed individual applications on an Intranet to be securely published on to the Internet.  With the introduction of UAG in 2009 it also provided some missing pieces of the puzzle for supporting DirectAccess as Microsoft’s alternative to VPNs.

When Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 were under development it was assumed that third-party networking gear would provide the NAT64 and DNS64 support that was needed for most DirectAccess installations, so Windows Server deferred this support to a future release.  However the networking community was slow to provide this support.  The UAG team jumped in with a NAT64/DNS64 solution inside UAG 2010.  Meanwhile it was quickly recognized that the barriers to adoption of DirectAccess were much greater than had been previously assumed and I was asked to drive an effort to figure out how to accelerate adoption.

A team identified the barriers to adoption of DirectAccess and plans to address them in  both the short-term and long-term were put in place.  The short-term plan consisted primarily of a massive Service Pack (which really could have been a .1 release) to UAG that added functionality that made it much easier to set up and manage a DirectAccess installation.  The Windows networking team also committed to performance improvements in their service pack and shipping a small management client.  The long-term plan consisted of addressing many of these problems, plus some we couldn’t get to in UAG 2010 SP1, directly in Windows Server.  With the release of Windows Server 2012 UAG went from being almost necessary for deployment of DirectAccess to almost superfluous.

Windows Server 2012 R2 contains its own application publishing capabilities which, I am sure, don’t have the flexibility of UAG’s but do meet the basic need.  So just as UAG replaced TMG in its application publishing role, Windows Server 2012 R2 now replaces UAG’s application publishing role. That would leave UAG as an SSL VPN offering, something that Microsoft never really emphasized and is counter-strategic.

UAG served Microsoft well as a gap-filler product.   But Microsoft’s pull-back from being a full-range security software vendor left UAG nowhere to go in terms of having a mission of its own.  Personally I thought that UAG should become a Windows Server Role and, had I stayed at Microsoft (where I was managing UAG amongst other products at the time I left) I would have pursued that direction.  Apparently that’s approximately what Microsoft did.

I think all the strategically weaker parts of the old Forefront family have now been purged.  What remains has strategic significance within the businesses they now reside.  So I guess I can say that I don’t expect any more falling footwear.  At least not related to Microsoft’s pullback from becoming a security products vendor.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Security, Windows | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

More on life with the Dell Venue 8 Pro

Posted on December 17, 2013 by halberenson

I’ve just completed an extended, and challenging, period of travel with the Dell Venue 8 Pro (DV8P) as the only non-phone computing device I took with me.  Basically, a three-week trip with over two weeks of that in Thailand.  So I’ll give my final thoughts on the device and its use before turning my focus to other things.

I didn’t make the final decision on taking the DV8P or Surface RT with me until the night before the trip.  Basically I was struggling with a desire to really lighten up my carry-on versus having the ideal devices with me.  Finally I went with the lightest setup I could, from headset to tablet to some other things I travel with.  My nervousness around taking the DV8P extended to two basic issues.  First, the appropriateness of the 8″ screen for extended video watching on an airplane.  Second, the lack of a keyboard in case I wanted to do extensive writing.  I decided to risk the first, and for the second I decided I wasn’t going to really want to take writing time while on this trip and the DV8P would actually help with that.

I had made one concession to carrying the DV8P, purchasing the somewhat expensive Dell Folio cover for it.  That made things a little lighter and smaller than the ill-fitting 3rd party case I’d previously used.  One thing I screwed up on was getting an adapter so I could plug USB devices into the DV8P’s micro-USB port.  At the last-minute I went looking for one, but couldn’t find it in stores.  Since Amazon doesn’t have their drone system in operation yet, they couldn’t get me one in time either.  The only real issue here is that I couldn’t back up our digital cameras while we were on the road, something that I have done on previous trips with my Surface.

For the most part the DV8P was a delight to have along on this trip.  I watched several hours of TV shows on it, only slightly missing the larger screen.  I read a few books and magazines on it, for which it is a superior form factor to the Surface RT (or any 10″ class tablet).  And I kept up with Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, etc. and to some extent my email with it.

Email is probably the place I missed my Surface RT the most.  With a small screen and no physical keyboard I let a lot of mail just slide until I returned from the trip.  So if you sent me something and haven’t heard back, that’s probably why.  It was just too painful to respond to anything non-urgent without a decent way to type so I limited my responses.  This isn’t specific to the DV8P or even Windows 8 tablets, I have the same behavior on an iPad.  But the cramped on-screen keyboard of an 8″ device makes the behavior a little more pronounced.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post the ability to install WiTopia makes having an x86 Windows 8 tablet a better experience than Windows RT.  As I traveled WiTopia would automatically give me a VPN connection at the myriad of open WiFi hotspots I used.  I did find another weakness though, and another demonstration of the downside of allowing the installation of Win32 software on your tablet.  WiTopia interfered with Airplane Mode.  Specifically, it wouldn’t allow WiFi to come back to life when you turned off Airplane Mode.  I figured out a couple of workaround (requiring reboots) for that, though in the end I’d just turn off WiTopia completely (including it starting up on login) when boarding a plane.

I did have one potentially disastrous glitch occur.  I shutdown my DV8P at the start of one flight (as other countries haven’t yet adopted the new U.S. rules) and when I restarted it my email and calendar were gone.  That’s the first time this has happened, and they didn’t come back until I connected to the Internet.  Fortunately it was a flight with WiFi Internet availability. It’s the only time this has happened in my heavy use of Windows 8/8.1 over the last 18 months.  But it leaves me with a concern about relying on the built-in Windows Mail and Calendar apps when expecting to be without Internet access.

I did finally give in and write a couple of blog posts on the DV8P, most notably my prediction that Bill Gates would give up the Board Chairman position.  It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, but I really do want a physical keyboard for that activity.  I’ll likely try out the Dell offering when it becomes available.

We had one instance where the hotel offered virtually no interesting TV channels and I wanted to hook the DV8P up to the display so we could both watch something.  This is the first and only time I wished it had a micro-HDMI port.  If this scenario is something of real importance to you then one of the other 8″ Windows 8.1 tablets might be a better alternative.

So the bottom line on the DV8P is that it was a delightful if imperfect device to travel with.  It has grown on me to the point where I expect to keep mine and carry it whenever I want to optimize weight and size, particularly where I’m not expecting heavy use.  The way Microsoft is using cloud services, and particularly SkyDrive to sync settings and content, makes this really easy.  I can pick up either the DV8P or Surface and not really be concerned about what is on each device.  So I’ll go back to the Surface being my primary tablet (for now) and the DV8P its little buddy.  Then we’ll see what happens when more LTE-capable devices appear in 2014.

For those considering a DV8P for Christmas 2013 the good news is that they are still available.  I notice that various configurations keep running out of stock for brief periods at various retailers, but Dell seems to be stuffing the channel so a couple of days later they become available again.  And you can order them for delivery from Dell in time for Christmas as well.  What might be gone is some of the amazing deals on the DV8P, as right now I’m seeing everyone list them for $299 (though you do get a $25 gift card so effectively they are $274).  That’s still a great price for this device.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

TANSTAAFL -Making Windows Phone and Windows RT free

Posted on December 12, 2013 by halberenson

Recently rumors have surfaced that Microsoft is considering making Windows Phone and Windows RT free. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  Today’s OEM licenses come with marketing kickbacks that dramatically lower their price.  Indeed one comment on Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia claimed they had to do it because they were giving Nokia more in marketing support per device than Nokia was paying in per-device license fees!  So actually making the licenses free will come with a price, the OEM won’t get any market development funds from Microsoft.

Given that Microsoft/Nokia control over 90% of the market for both Windows Phone and Windows RT there is little financial downside to dropping the price to zero. Or it may be that “free” is just a technicality, the actual mechanism might be to charge OEMs a license fee but offer all of them 100% of the license fee in Market Development Funds. The latter better matches how Microsoft likes to do business, but the former might better appeal to some OEMs.  Perhaps Microsoft will offer them a choice of licensing models.

The one thing that isn’t going to happen is for Microsoft to offer OS licenses for free and provide marketing support to the OEMs.  TANSTAAFL.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Bill Gates will resign as MSFT Chairman within a year

Posted on December 12, 2013 by halberenson

I tweeted the thought in the title months ago but never followed up with a blog entry. If you want to know why Bill was so emotional at the recent shareholders meeting it was probably because this was likely his last as Microsoft Chairman, not just Steve Ballmer’s last as CEO. The founders era at Microsoft is coming to an end.  Let me lay out my reasoning for you as well as some of the implications.

First, this is not about pressure from a couple of investors as was reported a while ago. I believe Bill has come close to giving up the Chairmanship on more than one occasion over the years and now the timing is right.

The timing is right for a new CEO because he can’t have the founder hanging over his head.  Bill’s personal connection with employees, even those who joined long after he ceased being CEO, is strong.  And his influence amongst investors holding a large percentage of Microsoft stock is also strong. A new CEO can’t have Bill undermining him as he seeks to change the company. Sure Steve had that same problem, and he struggled to establish the right balance between his own direct authority and Bill’s moral authority. A new CEO, particularly an outsider, could not succeed under similar conditions.  In fact an outsider will almost certainly insist that Bill phase out of any role at Microsoft before he takes the job.   An insider might have a different take if he had a long time connection to Bill. Only Satya Nadella probably fits that situation, and even Satya would be better off without Bill as Chairman.

It’s also right for Bill. His interests have moved on, and while Microsoft is still his child it is now a grown child.  There are times that his heart must have been breaking over things Steve did that he disagreed with.  The pain level associated with a new CEO and the changes they will institute is going to be even higher. And although Bill is still Microsoft’s biggest shareholder, it no longer represents the majority of his assets.  He no longer needs to keep his finger in the mix.

Bill’s leaving the Chairmanship will probably be orchestrated in some seamless way.   Perhaps he will become Chairman Emeritus for a while, followed by his leaving the board but remaining a “Strategic Advisor” before fading into Microsoft history. Bill would probably nominate someone, perhaps Jeff Raikes, to the board to represent his interests. Assuming he doesn’t accelerate divestiture of his Microsoft stock.

Now the obvious question is, who becomes Microsoft Chairman?  There actually is an obvious candidate, and this is a scenario I’ve mentioned to a number of people: Alan Mulally!  I have never seen Mulally as a good choice for CEO, but he’d be an excellent choice for Chairman. It’s the right thing for the next stage of his career.  It gives the investment community someone who they want to oversee their interests. It fits all the scenarios that have previously called for Mulally as an interim CEO before turning that over to Satya Nadella.  Basically you end up with Mulally focusing on shareholder value and Satya (or Tony Bates or…) focusing on the business both short and long-term.

And you want to know the kicker?  It totally fits with all the non-denial denials we’ve been hearing out of Ford. Alan Mulally can join Microsoft’s boards, and even be its Chairman, while finishing out his term as Ford’s CEO.  Game, Set, Match.

Ok, I may be way out there on the Mulally thing. But I’d put money on Bill leaving the Chairman position within 12 months of a new CEO being named.

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Lumia 1520 is a Phablet, not a Phone

Posted on November 22, 2013 by halberenson

Repeat after me, “the Lumia 1520 is a Phablet not a Phone”.  Now repeat it again.  I’m amazed when I read reviews of this device and the author doesn’t get it.  I’ve always questioned if phones with screens greater than 5″ make any sense, but at least I describe the design scenario they are targeting.

Phablets are a horrible idea for men, at least as a primary mobile phone, because they don’t fit in our pockets.  They might make sense as a secondary device we carry in a briefcase and rarely use as phones.  But then why not go with an 8″ tablet and use Skype when your primary mobile phone won’t suffice?

Women may find Phablet  more acceptable since they usually have a handbag with them, but then they also have smaller hands.  And where does the Phablet go when the situation calls for a small, or no, bag?

See I just don’t get Phablets.

But I’m an American taking an American, or at best “western”, view.  A friend recently returned from Asia where he found Phablets were very popular.  Particularly amongst women, who generally carried them in attractive cases that turned them into fashion accessories.

I’m sure a Phablet also could make sense in countries where Man Bags are more common.  Particularly if the alternative is to carry around both a phone and a tablet.  And that is what this Phablet category is all about for me.

The Lumia 1520 and similar products from Samsung and HTC make sense if you REALLY need two devices but insist on only carrying one.  Every device is a tradeoff and these are no different.  You want a screen big enough so you don’t need to carry around a separate tablet?  Then you have to carry something that is outside the acceptable range of dimensions for a phone.  It’s that simple.

Will Americans bite?  Probably not in huge numbers.  Here it is a niche market.  Could OEMs and carriers expand the market?  Sure, if they sold non-voice variants of these devices.  That would make them tablets.

Would I consider buying a data-only Lumia 1520 if it were $299 (no contract) and I could add it to my AT&T family-share plan for $10/month? You bet.  It would become the tablet I carried when I didn’t really want to carry a tablet.  But I’m sure not going to pay mobile phone prices, and accept mobile phone contract terms,  for the way I want to use this device class.

So why haven’t we seen data-only versions of these devices?  I can only speculate, but I think it is because they are too close to being phone substitutes for the carriers’ comfort.  They don’t want to lose the voice and SMS revenue for the niche population that would find a data-only Lumia 1520 with Skype etc. an acceptable phone alternative.  And they must worry that based on what they see in Asia that niche could grow into a significant portion of their customer base.  Or that customers would then start demanding 4.5″ data-only devices that would truly eat into mobile phone revenues.

If you are going to write a review of the Lumia 1520 or similar devices you need to acknowledge that:

  • This is a unique market segment, not just a large phone
  • That cultural and gender differences play a far greater role in the acceptability of these devices than they do in the broader mobile phone market

The problem with the review I linked to at the beginning is that the reviewer evaluated the device as a phone.  It’s not, it’s a Phablet.

(To be fair, the reviewer does discuss tablet-like scenarios.  But that’s more to criticize the current WP8 Xbox Video state of affairs than to focus on the device as more than a big phone.)

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Is this the year of Windows 8 tablets?

Posted on November 21, 2013 by halberenson

One outstanding question from my piece a couple of weeks ago is a question of Microsoft and the partner ecosystem finally have the pieces together to succeed in the tablet space.  There has been some movement these past couple of weeks, so this is both an update and additional thoughts.

The retail scene has been changing quickly and I expect that to continue through Black Friday.  When I wrote the original article there was positive news in terms of traffic I was seeing while visiting stores, and negative news about retail availability of all the newly announced tablets.  My observations about positive traffic continue.  I’ve been in 3 different Best Buy stores since then and in every case there were a lot of people looking at PCs, and the Surface family.  This is a completely different experience from last year where the PC departments in stores were empty.  But what about the problem of retail availability of all those announced products?

A few days ago I was coming to the conclusion that Microsoft was going to miss the holiday shopping season because new product still wasn’t in stores.  Then reports of Dell Venue 8 Pro sightings started pouring in.  Last night I had to run in to the local Microsoft Store to pick something up and they’d made the latest inventory transition.  I didn’t have time to survey everything, but the table featuring 3rd-party tablets sure caught my attention.  On it were 3 Dell Venue 8 Pros (DV8P), 2 Dell Venue 11 Pros, and 1 HP Omni 10.

This was my first chance to see Dell’s 11″ (nee, 10.8″) and HP’s entries.  My few seconds with each don’t justify much commentary other than a sigh of relief that a substantial number of Windows tablet options will actually in the retail channel as the holiday shopping season (already under way) ramps up.  But I do need to comment on price.  The HP Omni 10 was being offered for $399.  That’s a great price for a device with the specs it has.  Both devices felt good in my hands (again, just a few seconds worth).  Interestingly the Dell Venue 11 Pro felt lighter and smaller than the Microsoft Surface even though it has a slightly larger screen.  Hopefully I can pop into a Best Buy this weekend and see if they too have refreshed their Windows tablet offerings.  And spend a little more time playing with them.

I’ve written a bunch already on the DV8P, and if anything the more I use it the more I like it.  The reviews on it are generally very good, which should help drive interest.  One small detail I wanted to comment further on was something every reviewer comments on, the odd placement of the Start button.  Since the introduction of Windows 8 the standard placement has been on the front bottom, in the chrome around the display, when held in landscape mode.  On the DV8P it is on the top right edge when held in portrait mode and the upper left edge when held in landscape mode.  Like everyone else I thought this odd until last night.  I was using the device in landscape mode and realized my thumb was resting on the Start button.  All I had to do was press when I wanted to go to Start, and as I used it that way I realized the DV8P has the fastest arrangement of any device for getting to the Start screen.  By the end of the evening I was in love with what Dell had done.

Dell also seems to have been clever in their rollout of the DV8P.  Initially it was only available on their website and on Amazon.  And for the first few days Amazon offered a screaming deal with the $299 (list price) 32GB device available for $255.  Today they are offering it for $279.  Then it appeared at MicroCenter, where they also ran a special at $259 advertised in their flyers as “in-store only”.  They probably did this with other smaller channel partners that I’m unaware of.  And now it is being blasted into broad retail distribution.  This rolling introduction probably helped boost the excitement level around the device without straining Dell’s ability to ramp up manufacturing.

Of course today’s big news is the availability of the Nokia Lumia 2520 on Verizon, with availability on AT&T set for tomorrow.  The reviews are starting to come out and are generally very positive.  Unfortunately reviewers weren’t provided with the keyboard case so the reviews are incomplete, particularly as they relate to comparing the Surface and 2520.  But the really important news is that a nicely spec’d Windows RT tablet, that is going to get a strong marketing push, is available with LTE for the holiday shopping season.

Of course there are some negatives too.  The other three announced 8″ tablet offerings still haven’t made their way into retail as far as I can tell.  There is no 8″ tablet with LTE in the carrier channel.  Also missing in the carrier channel is a 10.1″ x86 (aka, full Windows 8.1) device with LTE.  And there is no absolutely blowout product offering.  No shockingly light offering.  No bleeding edge display offering.  No surprising hardware functionality offering.  And certainly no offering that combines all of those characteristics.  In a competitive comparison with the iPads and Android devices that moves much more of the sell into a software comparison.

The iPad has the best tablet-specific apps library.  Android is a distant second on tablet-specific apps but has the breadth of price points, capabilities, and unique ecosystems (e.g., Kindle Fire tablets are projections of the Amazon content ecosystem).  They also can run the very large library of Android phone apps.  Windows Tablets have Office, and in the case of x86 devices, the ability to run the entire library of Windows Desktop applications.  But the library of Windows Store applications, those really designed for a tablet environment, is still in its infancy.  And that remains a drag on Microsoft’s progress on tablets.

The other day someone started asking about the Dell Venue 8 Pro I was carrying.  It turns out their big problem with non-Windows tablets is that a SaaS offering they use for their business won’t work on those tablets.  Or rather, the customer-facing part of the service will but the administrative console requires a classic PC browser.  So I let him try accessing the administrative console with IE11 on the DV8P, and of course it worked.   And there have been plenty of times where my wife was having problems getting something done on a website with Safari on her iPad and I easily took care of it on my Surface.  Throw in all the scenarios with Office and you find many compelling reasons for a Windows Tablet over the iPad or an Android tablet.  This is the crutch that Microsoft needs to exploit until the Windows Store app library becomes a non-issue.  A year ago they proved inept at getting this message across while this year they are doing a much better job.

Which leads into the next area of interest.  Microsoft’s real focus, the area they must succeed in to get the Windows business back to health, is in the area of 2-in-1s.  All of the tablets I described above are supposed to be primarily tablets but also have the ability to be used as a notebook computer with the addition of various keyboard/touchpad/mouse options.  Some, like the Surface family, Nokia Lumia 2520 and the Dell Venue 11 Pro, will mostly be purchased with keyboard case options that make them more of a 2-in-1.  But a lot of the excitement this season may be in the convertibles and detachables that are intended as notebooks first and tablets second.

I haven’t spent as much time looking at “notebook first” 2-in-1s as I have at “tablet first” devices because of personal interest.  Although as I’ve mentioned before my wife did get a Lenovo Yoga 11s.  But the real action this season may very well be around devices like the ASUS T100, Lenovo’s Yoga family, the HP Split X2, and the numerous other devices in this category being offered by every PC maker.  The world’s population of notebooks is aging and last years botched launch of the Windows 8 generation did little to address pent-up demand.  I think a lot of the action I’ve been seeing in my retail store visits aren’t people saying “I need a tablet”, they are people saying “I need a new computer”.  Many will opt for a 2-in-1 over a traditional (touch or not) notebook.

Does a 2-in-1 sale count as a tablet sale?  Does it matter?  Last year I talked a lot about usage Minutes-Per-Day (MpD) and how traditional form factor MpD was declining because of tablet use.  If a 2-in-1 sale results in increased MpD of Windows usage, because the owner continues to use it in scenarios where today they put down their notebook and pick up their iPad, then Microsoft wins big.  What category analysts attribute the sale to is not really that relevant.

Windows 8.1 matures the Windows 8 generation of software to the point it is much more attractive to users than last year’s release.  Even those who remain non-believers are far more muted in their criticism.  Microsoft is doing a much better job of telling their story.  The OEMs have finally stepped up their game.  And the retail channel is in much better shape, from the larger number of Microsoft Stores to (most importantly in the U.S.) the vastly improved experience at Best Buy.  Plus the wide variety of channels from office supply (e.g., Staples) to discount (e.g., Wal-Mart) are going into this shopping season with a full array of Windows 8 generation products.  That’s a complete turnaround from the situation last year.  The odds are that this is going to be a decent holiday season for Microsoft and the Windows ecosystem.  Maybe with upside potential.

And then there is the elephant in the room.  While Microsoft will undoubtedly have a long tough battle against the iPad and Android tablets amongst consumers, its path to success with businesses is much clearer.  With Windows 8.1, with far more appropriate hardware offerings from OEMs, and with Microsoft better focused on the business tablet market than they were a year ago, this could be what launches Microsoft into true tablet success.  That won’t show up in the holiday sales numbers, but it will show up strongly in sales numbers over the next 12 months.

So is this the year of Windows 8 tablets?  Probably.  Not enough that they have Apple, Google, Samsung, or other top-tier Android vendors on the run.  But enough that its clear their foray into the tablet space is going to succeed.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Mobile, Windows | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Microsoft needs to be more aggressive on encryption

Posted on November 20, 2013 by halberenson

I was horrified when I woke up this morning and discovered Microsoft’s positioning in this Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) article (republished by Gizmodo) on encryption.  Of course, that’s because it was EFF’s intent to shock vendors into action.  Or rather, to shock their customers into demanding action.  The question is, to what extent does this chart of EFF recommendations really matter right now.  And in Microsoft’s case, why might the chart not be as damning as it looks.  And even after addressing all that, given its Trustworthy Computing efforts, should Microsoft be a leader on this issue rather than a follower?

The chart contains three HTTPS/TLS usage recommendations that Microsoft doesn’t currently support.  Let’s start with outlook.com’s lack of support for STARTTLS.  STARTTLS is a way to automatically upgrade a non-encrypted connection, primarily for the POP3 and IMAP email protocols, to encrypted connections.  This sounds like a great thing and I do believe all email systems should support it wherever relevant.  However, how much does this matter in the case of outlook.com (aka, Hotmail)?  Not much.

Outlook.com’s primary communications protocol is the always encrypted EAS .  It offers POP3/SMTP support for two things.  You can use POP3/SMTP to access your outlook.com email, but it requires you to specify an encrypted connection (TLS).  There is no support for the use of unencrypted POP3/SMTP connections and thus STARTTLS is irrelevant.

The second place POP3/SMTP is used is to pull mail from another email provider into outlook.com.  Of course you get to specify if you need/want a TLS-encrypted connection to the other email provider.  And here is the interesting bit, just like outlook.com they can require an encrypted connection.  Most importantly, it is safe to say that if they support STARTTLS (and few do) then they also already support the use of an encrypted connection.  If they don’t mandate the use of TLS it is to support legacy clients that can’t use TLS, and so wouldn’t support STARTTLS in any case. Which leaves exactly one scenario where STARTTLS would help.  It would prevent you from miss-configuring outlook.com’s access to another provider’s email system when they allow unencrypted POP3/SMTP.

STARTTLS for outlook.com is a limited scenario ease of use enhancement and not a fundamental, or even modest, improvement in the security of email.

Next up is HTTP Strict (HSTS), a proposed standard that was published a year ago.  HSTS is definitely something that every server and client should support as way to move towards fully encrypting web traffic.  But HSTS also has a limitation that needs to be addressed outside HSTS itself.  What HSTS does is let a server force the client (e.g., web browser) to switch a connection from the non-secure HTTP to the secure encrypted HTTPS.  Of course many web sites do this already by having a non-secure web page redirect to the secure web page.  The hole in the redirect scheme is that the initial connection to the web server is non-secure and can be hijacked.  The limitation of HSTS is that it doesn’t address this hole.

I suspect Microsoft’s lack of support for HSTS is related to both the newness of the standard and the need to come up with a, currently proprietary, means of addressing the initial connection problem.  On the former point the development of Windows Server 2012 R2 (for IIS support), Windows 8.1, and IE11 began before RFC 6797 was approved for publication as a draft standard.  Microsoft could have chosen to work with the unapproved draft, but that would have added risk to an already very tight schedule.  More importantly, implementing HSTS without addressing the initial connection problem was likely felt to be a losing proposition.  Google addressed this latter problem by having Chrome load a list of sites known to require HSTS into the browser.  But that is not a scalable solution (imagine having to load a list of 100s of thousands or millions of sites).  Microsoft may have decided it was better to wait for a cleaner solution, preferably one with industry support.  For example, an ideal solution (well, ideal if DNS security is addressed) would be to have sites mark in DNS that they use HSTS.

One note about solving the initial connection problem vis a vi IE is that Microsoft already has a mechanism in place for managing lists in the browser just like Chrome is using for this.  The Compatibility List could just be augmented or cloned and used as a HSTS list mechanism.  If HSTS support appears in IE12 then I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft does exactly this.

EFF’s real problem with Microsoft and HSTS is that Microsoft’s current penchant for secrecy prevents them from coming out and saying what their rollout plans are for it.  This same problem applies to Forward Secrecy.  The latter prevents someone from recording an encrypted conversation and then decrypting it later should they obtain the encryption keys.

Forward Secrecy is another thing that everyone should implement but is also not the panacea that users will associate with it.  It protects old communications when someone obtains encryption keys, through a subpoena for example, but not if they manage to crack the encryption code.  Does it greatly increase the protection of communications?  Yes.  Does it prevent the NSA or its peers around the world from reading your communications?  Perhaps not.  In any case this is one that Microsoft should support, and may be planning to support, but needs to announce their plans if they want to get credit.

Forward Security, HSTS, and STARTTLS really only help when both parties to communications support them.  It will take years for that support to be ubiquitous, and the only way to get the ball rolling is for the big players in the industry to take the lead and quickly roll out support for their software and infrastructure.  From a practical standpoint these technologies will have at best modest short-term benefit, but if leaders don’t lead then they’ll never have any benefit at all.  This is an area where Google is showing leadership and Microsoft isn’t. If you are a Microsoft fan (or just a customer) then that is a bad thing.

The last issue on EFF’s list is the encryption of traffic between data centers.  Until we learned that the NSA was breaking in to this communications encrypting it was in the “nice to have” category.  Now it is in the “must have” category.  Not necessarily because of the NSA breach, which was bad enough, but because if the NSA can do it so can others.  Back in the 70s a phone hacker broke into the telephone central office of a major university and installed his own equipment for manipulating the telephone switch.  If a hacker can do it, and the NSA can do it, then organizations between those extremes can do it.  Encrypting communications eliminates obtaining physical access as a direct way to intercept communications.

Microsoft has been focused on other, and perhaps more widely beneficial, privacy protection efforts and that should no doubt be part of their defense.  And along with that the currently limited benefits of implementing the features that EFF is calling for probably represents a logical explanation of the status quo.  But it’s a losing proposition from a marketing standpoint, and far from the position a company claiming the privacy high ground should find itself in.

 

Posted in Computer and Internet, Microsoft, Privacy, Security | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments