News written by Rich Fiscus (October, 2012)

Microsoft is a company very much used to the market changing around them rather than the other way around. As happens so often for companies in that position, their executives didn't realize they were out of step with the market until they saw a major competitor (Apple in this case) leading the market in another direction entirely. Like most companies finding themselves in that position they immediately dedicated themselves to major changes in their product line.

But also typical for such companies is that their changes are mostly superficial when the real problem is the fundamental understanding of the market itself. For all the obvious changes in Windows 8, Microsoft still hasn't learned some of the most important lessons about why they were so wrong or how to correct their course in the long term.

1. Windows and Office are not an ecosystem

Steve Ballmer has made it clear that he believes in the "Windows experience" but it would be more accurate to say he's selling the Microsoft experience. It is Microsoft as the arbiter of app availability and provider of the foundation for all software development in the form of the Windows Store and Windows Runtime API (WinRT) respectively. While Windows itself is certainly a foundation for modern Windows programs, it is far from the foundation.

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Late last week I announced a new guide for preparing Blu-ray assets to be used in a new series of AfterDawn guides for authoring Blu-ray discs. Today I'm pleased to announce that the first of those guides is finally available.

EasyBD is a line of Blu-ray authoring software sold by DVD-Logic. It features a simple and straight forward interface which makes authoring simple discs as easy as it can possibly be while also supporting almost any Blu-ray feature you can think of.

In the first lesson of our tutorial for authoring Blu-ray discs with EasyBD you will learn the basics of the interface by creating a simple disc with a single title featuring one video stream, one audio stream, one subtitle stream, and a handful of chapters. This lesson lays the framework for future guides which will cover more advanced features like additional audio and subtitle streams, multiple titles, and menus.

In last week's installment of our series on mobile devices and the companies who make them looked at Microsoft's efforts to launch an ARM-powered Windows 8 platform (Windows RT) and its synergy with Windows Phone 8. Of course those are only two pieces of the Windows 8 puzzle. The other piece, and arguably the biggest one financially, is the standard x86 version of the OS; the one officially called Windows 8.

At first glance the decision to support ARM processors in Windows 8 seemed to be all about compatibility with the only hardware capable of the extended battery life necessary for a modern tablet. That's certainly how Microsoft described it from the beginning. However the biggest differences between Windows 8 for ARM (Windows RT) and the standard version of Windows 8 actually ended up being an unprecedented level of control and lack of user options.

Unprecedented for Windows anyway. It's actually almost identical to the type of control Microft built into Windows Phone 7 where a walled garden reminiscent of Apple's tightly controlled app environment is standard. It's pretty clear that Microsoft's goal with Windows RT, which also happens to be essentially the tablet version of Winodws Phone 8, restricting tablet users to installing apps via Microsoft's official app store.

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Several months ago I contacted Valery Koval, the owner of a small software company called DVD-Logic. I was hoping to get extended access to one of his company's programs so I could write a guide for using it. Plus I really wanted an excuse to play around with it. DVD-Logic sells an entire line of very impressive Blu-ray authoring software, including two different menu creation programs. In fact one of those programs was what prompted me to get in touch with him.

Instead of simply granting my request for an extended license to Quick BD Menu, the program I had inquired about, he countered with a much more generous offer. He suggested that I might prefer to write some guides for what at the time was essentially the full range of DVD-Logic's Blu-ray authoring sotware and gave me a sort of extended trial license so I could continue using it far beyond the normal 21 day trial period.

That was a little more than nine months ago and I've spent much of the intervening time learning not just how to use EasyBD, Quick BD Menu, and IGEditor, but also about Blu-ray itself. One of the first things I realized when I finally decided I was ready to get to work on the tutorials for those programs I will begin unleashing on the public later today was that it was too complex a subject to expect anyone to follow along if I began in the middle - yet that's certainly what it would mean to just jump into the authoring process.

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In the first two installments in this series examining the mobile device market we have looked at Apple and Amazon. This time around we'll be talking about a company who currently only competes in the smartphone market but whose tablets are perhaps the most anticipated product to come along since the original iPad. That company is Microsoft and obviously the tablets are the numerous models which will launch with (and following) Windows 8.

As the dominant operating system in the PC market, Windows revenue has obviously dropped with the platform as a whole in decline. Meanwhile Microsoft has watched as Apple has not just reinvented the personal computing market with the iPad, but also managed to maximize profit margin at the same time. Beginning with Windows Phone 7 and continuing with the Windows 8 family of operating systems Microsoft appears to be betting on combining their established licensing model and Apple-like levels of control to regain their OS dominance.

Continuing a strategy first introduced with Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 and its derivatives (Windows RT and Windows Phone 8) are designed first and foremost as clients for Microsoft's software and media distribution efforts. It's not a coincidence that Windows Phone and Windows RT (their ARM-based Windows 8 tablet platform) are configured to prevent users from installing unapproved software and despite their insistence to the contrary the reason isn't security. It's the opportunity to make themselves a gatekeeper for apps and media and cut themselves in on any profits from selling those commodities.

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