Summer

2011 June 15
by Dave

It is very draining to be a glass half full optimist in a world running at 30% for an extended period. Even further existential trauma is caused by the battle between my personal experience of life going from strength to strength and my desire to stand in front of a chalk board like Glenn Beck sketching a hazy picture of what is really going on in the world if you read between the lines of what people are willing to write.

I keep minting and discarding topics touching on the myriad ways in which things are fucked at the moment. Somehow those articles aren’t willing to write themselves and I’m more interesting in going for a swim than giving them voice.

So let’s cut over to technology. I’m grooving on Microsoft these days. I’ve started working with their Visual Studios 2010 development environments and .Net 4.0. I used to hate Windows development and now I am really happy with their current offerings. They have hit a whole range of sweet spots and made it very simple to re-purpose your work for multiple platforms.

I am looking forward to Windows 8 ARM support and the further convergence of PC, embedded and web applications. Microsoft is doing some fundamental things right while flying under the radar. Everyone is focused on the Apple/Google/Amazon circle jerk/cat fight and not paying attention to Microsoft.

The whole app store phenomenon has turned out to be a great way to monetize content, but the technical trick that it sells itself with is client side UI caching. That is in the process of becoming a pointless trick. In the ecosystem that comes after it Amazon and Google will hold the advantages when it comes to monetizing content and I think that Microsoft is positioning itself to be one of the prominent engines that that content runs on. Meanwhile Apple will slide back to being a purveyor of high end innovative hardware.

So there is your big prediction for the Summer. Apple is in the process of peaking. Amazon and Google will keep riding high. Microsoft will come back with an ecosystem that developers can make money on. Peek in your rear-view in 2013 and be amazed at my prescience.

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