Windows Phone and the Carriers
One of the biggest promises of Windows Phone 7 was that Microsoft would bypass the carriers completely and deliver software updates both major and minor directly to users, just like Apple does.
It was a wonderful promise, a happy promise. It’s also completely untrue.
As it turns out, Microsoft's wireless carrier partners do in fact have the ability to throw a wrench into the gears of progress and prevent their users from getting a software update from Microsoft. And this ability is explicitly provided to them by Microsoft, as a weird concession of sorts, even though the software giant could simply choose to deliver updates through the Zune PC software and bypass the carrier networks altogether.
There are some rules, however. Microsoft will be testing each update against the carriers' own internal tests and will provide the carriers with those results, proving that the updates won’t harm any users or their phones. So in many cases, the carriers will likely let these updates simply sail through.
However, if a carrier feels that an update warrants more testing, it can prevent the update from appearing on its users' devices.
The good news is that Microsoft's updates are cumulative, and carriers can only prevent an update from appearing until the next update is made available. So the blocking capability is temporary at best.
Still, I'm curious to see how aggressive the carriers get once the first-generation Windows Phone buyers start getting close to the end of their two-year subscription term. I have to believe that these guys will put the brakes on and try to get customers to purchase a new phone instead of simply getting more free updates for their old one. Mark my words: We can't trust these companies.
Kinect and the Future of Computer UIs
Microsoft's Kinect motion sensor add-on for the Xbox 360 doesn't seem like the type of thing that would keep admins and IT pros up at night, but there is growing evidence that the software giant intends to add this interaction model to desktop versions of Windows.
This makes some sense, and not just for the obvious "Minority Report" reasons. We've been stuck in a fairly rote interaction model for decades now, and even touch and multi-touch interfaces from more recent Windows versions haven't done much to change that.
The reason Kinect is perhaps more important is that it signals a change to pervasive computing.
This is a somewhat abstract concept, but I think of it as the difference between interacting with a thing—a tablet, laptop, or whatever—and interacting with your entire environment. When you type at a keyboard, you're doing a very specific action. But with some future version of Kinect, you could be silently and seamlessly triggering events on computers across the world as you move around in a room.
Of course, PCs being PCs, Kinect isn't really going to replace anything else—it's going to augment the other interaction models. So I suspect we'll be mousing around and using keyboards for years to come.
But it will be interesting to see how motion sensors change everything, not just PCs but house and office designs, cars, and more. It's the future, and if you want to get started, I guess a quick game of "Kinect Adventures" isn't such a horrible way to get attuned to it.
Here's some reading on
Lync:
Microsoft Launches New Communications Server
Office 365:
Hands on With Office 365
The Scoop on Exchange Online, Exchange 2010, and Office 365
IE 9:
Paul's Picks: IE 9 and Kinect
Windows Phone 7:
Top 10: Windows Phone 7 Enterprise Features
Windows Phone 7 as a Mail Device
Q. Is it true that Windows Phone 7 doesn't support removable storage?