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HOME >> OPINIONS

Short Takes: April 15, 2010

By SD Times Editorial Board

April 15, 2010 — (Page 1 of 2)
Birthday lessons
Windows turns 25 this year. I've been working on a project to ask some of the industry's biggest brains what they think Microsoft should do to keep it relevant into the future. While there was no shortage of ideas, a consensus did emerge: simplify, simplify, simplify!

Apple is onto something with the iPad. Most people do not need everything that Windows offers them; they only use their PCs for a few tasks. Windows 7 is simpler and easier to use than Windows Vista, but it's still far too complicated. Microsoft has added touch-screen capabilities, but the OS is still built for a person who is sitting at a desk using a mouse and keyboard.

Microsoft needs to think differently, because people are no longer anchored to a desktop PC. Smartphones have ushered in an era of light computing. Netbooks are another example of how people can get what they want accomplished on less powerful, more portable hardware. I hope that the next version of Windows takes some cues from Windows Phone 7. — David Worthington

Games everywhere
I got a chance to stop in at the Game Developers Conference. It's naturally a fun show, but every year I see more and more that this industry is starting to mirror the enterprise software world.

For software developers, a source-code repository is a source-code repository is a source-code repository. The same is true for many other development tools, including those from IBM, Versant and others at this show to sell development tools to game makers.

A few years ago, Grady Booch told me that the biggest thing enterprises can learn from the gaming world is how to deal with non-software assets. I think he's absolutely right. Enterprise guys are increasingly required to gather up non-code items, like Web graphics and buttons, then to keep track of those things going into production. There's a lot of interesting back-and-forth possible between these two worlds, because in the end, it's all just software. Games just happen to be prettier than ERPs. — Alex Handy

Related Search Term(s): mobile development, Windows

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