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Microsoft's Craig Mundie: Clouds need killer apps!

No, Craig. Clouds need kewler apps!

Still, Mundie acknowledged that most people "don't choose Windows...they choose applications. It's the killer apps people are choosing and that will be true in the next generation" of computing.

"I think that will be true as we go forward with this new composite platform. People won't really care what the iron is, or the underlying OS."

Mundie's comments underscore a primary concern for Microsoft, as cloud computing becomes more widespread: How does the company keep Windows relevant?

That's a larger concern that Mundie, along with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, will need to tackle with Microsoft's evolving "client/cloud" strategy that posits operating systems will perform a vital role in local processing. Adobe Systems--which only recently launched a Web-based services--agrees. But Google and other competitors clearly see Web-based applications as driving future development.

Despite the far-reaching vision that Mundie discussed here, it's the little things that still matter most to many Windows users.

One conference attendee asked Mundie how Microsoft can bring broad technological advances, such as Mundie's vision for what he calls "spatial computing," down to a more human level and allow computing technology to better recognize human error and misunderstanding.

The attendee, a recent convert to Vista, said that his wife could not find a way to shut down the PC and had reverted to unplugging it from the wall. Couldn't Vista have helped her?

In response, Mundie said that there has "always been a tension between advancing and maintaining capability with the past. Your wife should have easily been able to discover how to turn Vista off. But we are not there yet."


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Comments

  1. I think Craig would agree with you, "kewler" is what makes an app "killer" in most cases.

    Great post.

    ReplyDelete

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