Impressioni di un vero giornalista sulla PDC...

Ieri vi avevo detto che il prossimo anno avremo una vera e propria "rivoluzione" : era prevedibile che anche l'inviato di Tom's Hardware avesse le stesse impressioni (non ci vuole certo un genio!), ma sono talmente entusiastiche che è bene leggerle (in inglese, ma credo che fra qualche giorno saranno disponibili anche nel sito italiano).

Seguono alcuni estratti dell'articolo

Innanzitutto l'annuncio della rivoluzione

'The way we build and use personal computers will change dramatically over the next 24 months, and if Microsoft has anything to do it, they will be a principal catalyst for these changes. Linux developers will regret admitting this, but the changes being made to Windows, announced at last week's Professional Developers' Conference, will dramatically impact the architecture and feature set of all personal computers, handhelds, and to some degree, even other consumer appliances.'

Una delle prime cose rivoluzionarie : l'importanza dell'introduzione di un formato non-proprietario per i file di Office farà sì che una lettera scritta in Word non richiederà più Word stesso per essere letta....

No longer will Office documents be locked into a proprietary format; in fact, the contents of those documents can be unlocked, queried, compared with and against one another, and shared using open formats. And not just the version of "open" formats that Microsoft has been pushing, but really Open in the traditional, Internet way.
The irony for Linux is huge.

Ironia della sorte : molte delle cose che Intel e Microsoft stanno per introdurre, sono già state largamente adottate dalla comunità Open Source e dagli utenti Linux, ma mai in modo così "organizzato". Finirà che Microsoft vincerà portando ai massimi livelli alcune delle idee provenienti dai suoi nemici più agguerriti.

Intel (and AMD by extension) and Microsoft have completely rewritten the rules by which computing performance is perceived and the role for Linux as well. These new protocols and standards that comprise Vista's landscape were largely developed under Linux environments, and many by Linux supporters. Nonetheless, Microsoft is doing what no single Linux vendor, or association of such vendors, have accomplished so far: It's putting these new standards together and making a working information sharing system out of them. And it is putting their own products, servers, and services squarely in the middle

Una spiegazione più dettagliata del concetto di "formato aperto" e di "indipendenza dalla piattaforma"

You know how CSS stylesheets already give graphical styles to HTML and XHTML content. Now, imagine a kind of stylesheet that can give a graphical console to any XML document, including one produced with Office 12. This console is independent of the program that produced it. What's more, it's independent of the Web browser that's rendering it, so the stylesheet can make the document appear sensibly, and appear anywhere. You don't need a Norton Commander for an Office 12 document; its contents can show themselves off. We did see this one coming, but it's still important because it shows a new commitment from Microsoft not only to liberate data from the application that produces it, but to connect that data to new applications that can make better use of it down the road.

Nodo fondamentale della forza di Microsoft è la "mancanza di coesione della "linux communities"

'Microsoft is not only generating new and practical value that consumers can
perceive - not just programmers - but also spotlighting the Linux communities'
key weakness: their lack of cohesion among one another. So here again, Microsoft is leveraging against its advantages as a complete platform company, not only by giving retailers a good/better/best differentiator to create a reliable economy of scale, but also by defining the PC in ways Linux cannot.

A Linux non basterà più la magica parolina "open".....

If the open source community has any chance against Vista in the next five years, it will need to do more than just be "open" to new ideas

Ma questo commentatore sarà troppo "microsoftiano" ? No

Then, and only then, will Microsoft have a real challenger on its hands. Microsoft has a history of using its prominence to its advantage. But this time, its tactics are different. It's making a shrewd play inside the new sandbox that compliance with the DOJ and the EU have created for it. If you thought the Microsoft that wasn't afraid to bend or break the rules was a threat to the market, wait until you see the Microsoft that isn't afraid to write some new rules. The new Microsoft -- this time around -- is using tactics that are legal, clever, and perhaps -- dare we even say -- even admirable. Of course, only time will tell.

Che dire di più ?

PS : io non ho osato perchè ancora non sono pazzo fino a questo punto però se fate "tasto destro - salva oggetto con nome" potrete scaricare il VIDEO PRESENTAZIONE di OFFICE 12 : perchè non l'ho scaricato ? Perchè sono ben 618 MegaByte. Sorbole!

PS2 : la Microsoft ha abbassato le richieste, ma non basta -> VIDEO PRESENTAZIONE DI WINDOWS VISTA (460 MEGA e sempre "tasto destro... etc. etc.)