Microsoft's (not-so hidden) agenda here has to be to save themselves from
the mess they've created with WinCE.

All the apps have to be recompiled for different platforms/architectures
because WinCE is not a VM technology.

My guess is that their spec will contain a hardware CPU requirement so they
can create another "Wintel" monopoly for the PDA world (although it may not
be an Intel chip they spec).

The alternatives are:

a. The dominant technology is another VM-based PDA OS (not likely, I'm
afraid)
b. The Palm product line becomes the dominant technology (leaving Microsoft
   with dominance of the soon-to-be obsolete desktop platform)

It's possible that they will come up with a VM-based spec, but the C++
bigots hold the political power and such a spec is more likely to be
sabotaged than not.

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Rowledge [mailto:rowledge at interval.com]
> Sent: August 31, 1999 10:01 PM
> To: Squeak mailinglist
> Subject: Lampson/Thacker to do Dynabook?
>
>
> Yet another project to do a Dynabook. Maybe they'll be able to get further
> than the ones I've been involved with?  (Annoyingly, this
> requires a (free)
> subscription.)
>
>
> WILL THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING BE WRITTEN ON A TABLET?
> Enlisting the talents of two computer designers who were part of
> Alan Kay's
> legendary team at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s,
> Microsoft
> has plans for developing a portable, wireless, keyboardless "tablet
> computer."  Although generally similar devices developed by
> Apple, Go Corp.,
> and AT&T were commercial failures in the past decade, Microsoft is betting
> that the current rapid convergence of display, processing,
> storage and other
> technologies is finally setting the stage for commercial tablet computers
> using handwriting or speech input.  (One recent development has been
> Microsoft's introduction of its Cleartype software that improves the
> readability of fonts on flat panel computer displays.)  The two designers
> who will lead the new Microsoft tablet computer effort are Chuck
> Thacker and
> Butler Lampson.  Lampson says, "I think this will be the way most people
> interact with the Net and the rest of the computing universe as well."
> Thacker injects a personal note:  "I've always wanted this kind of device,
> and in systems research one of the most motivating things is that you want
> the device yourself."  (New York Times 30 Aug 99)
> http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/bin/fastweb?getdoc+site+sit
e+82844+0+wAAA+tablet%7Eand%7E%22research%7Ecenter%22



--
New: It comes in different colors from the previous version.
Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
 tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>