Microsoft is out with Digital Image Suite 9, a product looking to carve into Adobe Systems market lead in the digital imaging software market. But Microsoft's digital imaging software, which has some of the same features to Adobe's PhotoShop, is neither as robust, nor as expensive. But that's the idea: Microsoft is marketing the new software package through its Home Retail Division, while Adobe is targeting more advanced consumers and professional photographers.
The company claims that the new Digital Image Suite 9 is the only product available today that gives consumers "everything they need in digital imaging software, including advanced organizational and photo-editing tools, new levels of creativity with professional-quality photo projects."
In New York yesterday, Microsoft representatives discussed the next two versions of Visual Studio, including the "Whidbey" release, due in late 2004 alongside SQL Server "Yukon," and the "Orcas" release, which will be part of the late 2005 Longhorn wave of products that includes a dramatic new Windows and Microsoft Office versions. Most of the discussion centered around the Whidbey release, naturally, but Microsoft noted that the Orcas release would take advantage of Windows Longhorn features such as managed interfaces, enhanced UI features, new trustworthy computing and security models, new application model, improved communication and collaboration, integrated data storage, and innovations in presentation and media. Visual Studio Whidbey and applications written with that product will run on the "landmark" Longhorn OS, Microsoft representatives said.
Longhorn, the next major release of Windows, is "a bit scary," Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates confided to financial analysts last week. Scary to computer users, that is, because Longhorn products will be very different from today's Microsoft software, he said. But it appears the software is also causing some shivers at Microsoft.
Microsoft last year said Longhorn would be just another Windows client. However, it is now clear that the software stable is breeding a whole herd of long-horned cattle with a dose of .Net Web services hormones. "Longhorn is the next generation, it's a big bet for us," Gates said at Microsoft's financial analyst meeting last week.
Martin Taylor, Redmond's new point man on Linux, says he plans to change Microsoft's open-source competitive strategy by focusing on 'just the facts.' Attendees of LinuxWorld next week will see a new executive face in the Microsoft booth.
Martin Taylor - who is two weeks into his job as Microsoft platform strategist - is Microsoft's new point man on Linux. And he says he has a new plan for how to help Microsoft compete better with open-source.
Aiming to give developers a better view into what to expect from the future of its development tools, Microsoft Tuesday used the VSLive! Conference here to lay out the road map for future versions of Visual Studio .NET (codename: Whidbey) and the Microsoft .NET Framework.
Key new features slated for Whidbey include:
- Improvements to ASP.NET that include new controls for data access and visual appearance intended to reduce code in common scenarios by up to 70 percent; Microsoft claimed this will 'significantly' improve Web site performance while also providing for more robust and secure Web services
- Enhanced Windows client application development capabilities that give developers new data and user interface controls and take advantage of deployment enhancements to make installation and versioning of applications simpler
- Enhanced debugging, no-touch deployment, and the return of the 'Edit and
Continue' feature, all geared to enhancing developer productivity
- Improvements to the .NET Framework that will allow existing .NET Framework
1.1 customers to take advantage of support for 64-bit CPUs, advances in security and administration, and improvements in performance and scalability, without source code changes
- Extension of mobile application development for the .NET Compact Framework
that will allow for the creation of applications that run on the latest devices, including Smartphones, Windows CE .NET 4.2-based devices, and the newest versions of the Pocket PC.
Microsoft is encouraging small software developers to build extensions such as compilers for its Visual Studio .Net development tool by offering free access to the Visual Studio Industry Partner software development kit, the company said.
The Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program has been expanded from a single-tier program, in which partners paid Microsoft $10,000 a year, to a three-tiered program with no-charge membership at the lowest level, said Marie Huwe, a general manager in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism division.
The next version of Visual Studio .Net, code-named Whidbey, is due out at the same time Microsoft releases the next version of its SQL Server database, code-named Yukon, in the second half of next year, Huwe said. Another upgrade to Visual Studio .Net, code-named Orcas, is planned for when Microsoft ships Longhorn, the code name for the next version of Windows, she said.
Like many American companies, Microsoft has turned to international markets when the home front is either sewn up--as is so often the case with the company's software products--or when it needs a financial or moral victory in an emerging market the company has difficulty entering. In an example of the latter case, the US cable industry has been routinely shutting down any attempts Microsoft has made to enter its market, whether it's been an attempt to influence cable giants with financial investments dating back to 1997, or woo them with an increasing range of software for cable TV set-top boxes. Until recently, Microsoft's only major cable successes have come in relatively small international markets, though one might argue that such markets are emerging with huge growth possibilities going forward. Over the past week, Microsoft revealed that it is striking a large number of deals with Latin American cable operators, providing its cable wares with very large potential audience.
Microsoft has settled a patent-infringement suit and received the rights to use Immersion's technology for providing tactile responses in devices such as joysticks.
Under the deal, Microsoft will pay Immersion $26 million for licensing rights and for a stake in the company, Immersion said Tuesday. Immersion also can borrow as much as $9 million more through a convertible debenture arrangement with Microsoft, the company said.
Immersion specializes in so-called haptic technology, which uses the sense of touch to expand interactions between humans and computers. For example, its technology can be used to build a joystick that shudders in a flight simulation game when a player's airplane is shot, or a mouse that thumps slightly so people with poor vision can tell when their cursor is hovering over a clickable button.
The Microsoft CEO also described as "hogwash" the theory that the world is moving to services and that commercial software will disappear.
"Will the software business be bigger five years from now than it is today? Or will the work of people for free be as good as the innovation and value that the commercial companies create?" Ballmer asked. He responded by saying that he's "enthusiastic" about innovation, particularly with regard to Microsoft's integrated product set and "next-generation" collaboration system, and that he expects Microsoft to be able "to charge positive prices for software five years from now."
The dot-com boom wasn't a total bust, according to Bill Gates. The Microsoft chairman said Monday that most of the advances promised during the Internet boom will eventually come true.
"Virtually everything that was discussed, even the most hyped thing" will happen, Gates told a crowd of researchers gathered at its headquarters here for the company's yearly Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. "It just takes more time."
Gates said only the most basic business processes are handled digitally today, so many of the real productivity gains still lie ahead. "Certainly less than 10 percent of that has actually been realized," he said. The speech echoed the upbeat presentations that Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer delivered to financial analysts last week.