Microsoft Silverlight event – and living with the iPhone

Silverlight

Although the Apple Mac is my computing platform of choice, I wouldn’t say that I live in an Apple bubble. When needs must, I will use Windows XP to get the job done (mostly usability software analysis tools) and I like to keep up to date with what the linux world is doing. On hearing that Microsoft were giving a talk in Brighton on their ‘Flash killer’, Silverlight, I made sure to go along.

I considered bringing my MacBook Pro along to take notes on, but I thought that being clubbed to death with a copy of Vista Home Premium is not how I want to check out of this world. Imagine my surprise however, when I turn up and both the MS presenters are typing on their MacBook Pros. I ask them about why they’re using Macs and he says that the Mac is the best platform to run Windows on. One says that he doesn’t use OS X much, mostly Vista, but he was using OS X when I was chatting to him. I was curious to ask what he thought of OS X, but never got round to asking. The second MS guy was one of the few user experience evangelists for the company, now there’s someone who has his work cut out for him.

The venue was very informal, The Eagle bar near the North Laines in Brighton. Sitting upstairs with a real fire burning and people sitting in a haphazard fashion on stools or propped against the walls, it felt like we were at a secret meeting to overthrow the government; the government in this case being Adobe.

The presentation on Silverlight starts. Silverlight is MS’s version of Flash. They wouldn’t phrase it quite like that, but that’ll give you an idea of what it is. MS has a long history of bringing out products that compete with those which are almost industry standards. MS didn’t invent PDF, no problem they announce XPS (XML paper specification). That iPod is doing quite well, let’s conqueror that market with the Zune, and now of course, Silverlight, which fights for control of dynamic content in the browser market. Let’s be honest though, whenever MS has tried to take on market leaders, their attempts have historically been half-baked and rather limp.

The crowd were mostly Flash developers, people who develop in it for a living. Some of the questions were not exactly hostile, but definitely direct such as, ‘How is this different than Flash’. A seemingly simple question (what is your USP), however the answer sounded a bit wooly. Basically they say that just be looking at the content itself, you couldn’t tell if an animation (of movie) was made using Flash or Silverlight. What is different is the journey, as Silverlight offers better integration with other tools. Silverlight content is also not an island embedded in a page like Flash, it is possible to communicate to the object using Javascript, so data can be passed into and out of it. Quite neat. It will also support 3D and a simple game made using XNA worked in Silverlight by only changing 10 lines of code.
For Mac users it was interesting to note that there will be no dev tools available from MS themselves, but as the spec is open, others can write one. Hmm.
There were no stats available for market penetration, but it’s going to take years for this to make any impact on Flash. They also argued that corporate penetration will be easier than Flash, as most companies already use MS technology.
Someone asks why should they spend their time learning this new technology and the MS guy responded with maybe they shouldn’t, but just keep an eye on it.

It’ll be interesting to see how the local Flash community respond to Silverlight, or if they invest any time learning to develop in it.

Real-world iPhone

As I didn’t have my MacBook Pro with me, I took all the notes on my iPhone (or Mac Nano – see previous post). I was very surprised how I felt about this, I didn’t miss my Mac at all, in fact, the iPhone offered more in this situation. The iPhone was connected via Edge, so responding to e-mails and updating my Twitter and Facebook accounts in between gaps in the talk were effortless. I also used the Notes app to take down all details for this blog entry. With my Mac, I wouldn’t have been online and would have been sitting awkwardly with my laptop on the small table. The girl sitting beside me was also checking her e-mails on a phone (without the ‘i’). The screen looked very washed out and the fonts looked to have been rendered in a size 3 point font. There was a progress bar on the phone and it seemed to stay there forever.

I spoke to another attendee (very pro-MS), he saw me use the iPhone and I gave him a quick demo. I showed him Google Maps first and he was blown away. Typing in cinema, the red pins dropped on nearby cinemas, click on one of them and all the details appear, just tap to phone them. First thing he said, ‘I’m going to buy one tomorrow’. He then took out his phone, it had a full qwerty keyboard which slid out and it was held it in a horizontal aspect (I don’t know the brand). I asked did he like it, he says no, nothing works. When he syncs his phone, it deletes his contacts. I showed him a few other things and he said ‘this is definitely the future of interaction’.
Leaving the venue, I quickly check the train timetable site, say my goodbyes, then pop in earphones for some Midlake.

I’m glad it was a MS event tonight, otherwise I wouldn’t have left my MacBook Pro at home and discovered how liberating it feels to just have an iPhone.