Windows Future

As architects we need to have some understanding of what the future
might hold for the personal computing market. These devices form an
important component in most IT systems so its probably useful to
look at where they might be headed in the next few years.

Microsoft's Windows operating system has formed the basis for personal
computing for nearly two decades so this will be our focus. While
Apple have recently become the most valuable IT company they insist on
remaining hardware focussed, which ultimately means that they are limited
to about 10% of the total market purely because they are physically
unable to manufacture enough product by themselves. Microsoft products
however, can be installed on any computer so they have the potential
to be 10 times larger than Apple in terms of installed operating systems.

For this article I will define the term PC to refer to a machine that
has a keyboard and mouse. They are the laptop and desktop machines
that we are all familiar with. The term "tablet" will refer to a
machine that can be easily used without a keyboard or mouse, usually
because it has a touch sensitive screen.

The sales of PCs have grown almost exponentially for the last ten years
but are now showing signs that they will level off at about the 350 million
per year mark. Some analyses have shown a slight loss in market share
by Windows over the last few years. Combining these two pieces of
information and it looks likely that if Microsoft remained with just
PCs then it would have to report a decline in its sales. This would be
a major embarrassment for the management team at Microsoft.

Microsoft have, no doubt, been aware of this potential problem for some
time, and have been endeavouring to find some new source of income.
They tried a subscription system for Windows, but this sort of failed
when Vista was late being delivered. They are trying "Software as a
Service", (SaaS) but its likely that this is just eating into their
sales of Office. The products where SaaS works well are email and search
but they have a very strong competitor in the form of Google for
those markets.

Now Apple have shown them a new possibility - the App Store. The ability
to get a cut of every software sale would give Microsoft the income
stream they have wanted for so long.

The Apple tablet also demonstrated that it could be sold with a simple
smartphone style of interface rather than the desktop style that
Microsoft have been trying unsuccessfully for the last decade.
While the tablet sales are quite small in comparison to overall PC
sales, they are on a rapid growth trajectory that might be enough
to keep the total sales figures growing for a few more years.

The Metro interface, developed for the Windows smartphone, has been
adapted for the tablet. I will look at why it was also pushed into
the PC later.

The tablet needs to run on ARM since Intel have not been able to create
a sufficiently low power x86 device. This meant that there was no need
to be backward compatible - this machine could start with a clean slate.

The Windows tablet would need something to differentiate it from the
Android machines, and the most obvious solution was to include Office.
It would appear that the Office team was either unable or unwilling to
create a touch version, hence we have the rather awkward Metro-Desktop
switching which annoys the Windows-8 reviewers.

Microsoft almost certainly see the Android tablet as their number one
problem. Microsoft do not like it when something other than Windows
starts to get any sort of market share. We saw this with netbooks, the
first of which ran Linux, and did so quite well. MS responded by
bringing XP back so that there was a light weight Windows OS to use
on these small machines and, it's suspected by many, coercing the OEMs
into dropping Linux, probably by threatening to remove their OEM
discounts for Windows on their other machines.

Now we have Android tablets illustrating that you do not need Windows
to do computing. Microsoft is currently unable to coerce the OEMs
since they do not have an ARM version of Windows. This will change
with Windows-8.

I expect that Microsoft will use the X-Box strategy when they introduce
the Windows ARM tablets. The machine will most likely be sold at below
cost with the App store recouping the lost income. The use of UEFI to
lock down the machine so that no other operating system can be installed
supports this view. (You would not want to sell at a loss only to have
Ubuntu installed on it and not get any App store sales.)

Once the Windows ARM tablets become available I expect that they will
be priced below the corresponding Android equivalents. I guess that
Microsoft will hope that the lower price will make up for the lack of
available applications.

A price war among the tablets will spell the end for the laptop computer.
They will be squeezed from the bottom by tablets and from the top by the
ultrabook. This is sad for students that just need a cheap machine to get
work done. Prior to doing this analysis I thought that the ultrabook was
unlikely to succeed, but with the laptop being squeezed out I see that
it does have a future.

Will this work?

It is impossible to predict what the market will do.

It must be remembered that the tablet is not the most convenient
form factor. Its OK for things like recipes in the kitchen, browsing
the web from the coffee table or reading in bed, but for actually doing
any work its too big to be a phone and too small for the desktop.
The current rapid rise in sales might not last beyond those that
can afford it as a secondary device.

If Windows ARM tablets get ignored by the consumer then Microsoft
might do what they did with the Zune and the Kin - drop them
and go back to what they know - the PC. I am not so sure that this
would be their reaction since I think they can see too much potential
gain. I think they would advertise and price cut until the Android
tablets are overwhelmed.

If it does work and Android tablets follow Linux netbooks into
oblivion and Microsoft gets its new income stream via the App store,
what happens next? What can we expect from Windows-9?

Microsoft will want to extend the App store to the PC. It not only
provides an income stream, but it also allows them to screen out
malicious programs and viruses. I would expect that we will see
some API changes in Windows-9 designed to force developers to the
Metro and App store and away from the open desktop. This trend
will continue for subsequent releases of Windows since there is
so much to gain and so little to lose.

The PC's Future

With Microsoft moving to a Metro world what does that mean for
application developers? Basically the open desktop will become
deprecated. We will need to either build applications with a web
interface or pay Microsoft to distribute an app through their
store. Those dedicated business applications that you built using
.Net and other Windows APIs will eventually have to be rebuilt
for this new paradigm.

Many businesses are just now upgrading from XP to Windows-7 and
with the preview of 8 getting some quite hostile reviews perhaps
a lot more will move forward their upgrades so that 7 can be used
for the next few years.

Another factor to watch is the smartphone. Recently Ubuntu was
ported to an Android phone. This allows its user to use the device
as a phone while on the move and plug it into a proper keyboard
and display when in the office. You get the same applications
with all your data in both scenarios. There is enough power
in a modern smartphone for it run Linux well enough for office
use.

For docking to really take off though requires Google to define a
standard interconnect and protocol between the smartphone and
the desktop peripherals. Then an office could fit out with those
peripherals without worrying about which brand or model of phone
was going to be used and developers could write their software
to switch between the desktop and portable modes.

Conclusion

Windows-8 on the PC probably won't get much traction. They will get
their usual sales to consumers as they upgrade their hardware but
businesses will stay with Windows-7. On the tablet there will be a
fight until it displaces Android - might be quite nasty.

Windows-9 will attempt to push the Metro/App-Store model onto the
PC. Businesses will be forced to migrate their applications but
might well respond by moving to docked smartphones and web
applications.

While Microsoft has the resources to weather the storm that
Windows-8 brings, it is by no means certain that they will make
the correct decisions to return to a profitable path for
Windows-9.

Addendum - Jan 2014

I guess I underestimated the greed of Microsoft. They seem to have been mislead by thinking that just because everyone uses Windows it must actually be popular, and on that basis priced their tablet devices to be just barely competitive with Apple, rather than going after Android.

Given the extra resources that Windows needs above Android it will never be able to compete on price alone - the bill of materials is just too much larger. Additionally the other OEMs are having to pay for Windows licenses, making them even less competitive.

In the mean time Android have just about conquered the tablet market, with Apple falling steadily further behind. The prices for Android tablets have fallen to under $100 and are continuing to places that Microsoft can't follow.

My prediction now is that Microsoft will make a second attempt with the Surface line, but if it fails again, they will withdraw back to the rapidly shrinking PC market, with perhaps continued support for smartphones via Nokia.

This could mean the end of the "Devices and Services" model - the incoming CEO will have no attachment to that idea - and a focus on the business market. Businesses can expect to see a steady rise in the cost of using Windows as Microsoft try to keep the profits coming in a shrinking market.

There is a danger that Microsoft will be unable to manage its own downsizing and will collapse in some way.

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SASSY Increment #5

This increment involved a lot of work on the ontologies and some tweaks to
interpreter.

Interpreter

The interpreter underwent a few updates as usage threw up a few issues. The
initial version required the programmer to put in the offsets as numbers for
the jumps, conditionals and loops. This got tedious very quickly. I enhanced
the language to use labels for the jump destinations, and this seemed satisfactory
for a while. However on larger scripts managing the labels started to get
tedious as well. I then modified the language so that all jumps were always for
a single statement which allowed the parser to remain a single pass design and
the need for labels was removed. This is a much cleaner looking language.

A final enhancement was to allow forward references. To retain a single pass design
meant that the forward reference is patched when the real function is processed.


: aFunction noop ; # forward reference

: usingFunction
aFunction
;

: aFunction
usingFunction
;


When the parser finds a function that has already been defined it assumes the
previous instance was a forward reference and replaces the first operator
with a call to the real function.

There is getting to be a need for some documentation on writing these scripts.

Ontologies

A lot of work for this increment consisted of developing examples for the
various views that have been identified. For each view it was necessary to
define the ontology classes and properties. Then individuals were added for
the SASSY architecture and a script written to produce the documentation.
Frequently it became obvious quickly that the class design was wrong and
it would be necessary to begin again.

The following views have been defined so far - I can think of a few more
that would be useful for large projects.

Requirements

This view lists the requirements for the system with a cross reference to the tactics used to implement it.

Tactics

This view relates each tactic to the responsibilities that the system must implement.

Concept Modules

This view describes the system components at the conceptual level. It focuses on assigning responsibilities to modules.

Methodology

This view describes the development process. It is a reference view.

Implementation Modules

This view shows the components of the system, such as specific programs, libraries and databases.

Interfaces

This view describes the interfaces between components of the system.

Data Flow

This view describes the flow of data through the system.

Use Cases

A view which shows the sequence of component activations for each use case.

Quality Attribute Scenarios

This view shows the test scenarios that are used to validate the architecture.

Task View

This view enumerates the development tasks that are undertaken in each increment of the development process.

Team View

This view shows the responsibilities of the team members of the project.

Execution Modules

This view shows the allocation of processes and threads to physical equipment.

Computer View

A view showing what is running on each machine.

License View

This view shows the licenses applicable to the components of the system.

Network View

This view shows the network connections between components of the system, and any external systems.

Planning

It is probably time to reconsider the plans for SASSY. During the development
of the ontologies it became clear that actual development and the architecture
defined in the ontology were beginning to drift apart. In addition the release
notes for Protege indicate that the next version, 4.2, will include a client
server architecture and support for a relational database - these are both
things we need if SASSY is to support teams of architects working on large
systems.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.