SIFT THIS -- Bill the Idea Guy wouldn't stop talking about Windows CE. "Windows 98, the whole Department of Justice bit, it's a complete subterfuge. They're protecting Windows CE." I retorted, "It's a Palm Pilot knock-off… that's standard Microsoft operating procedure. Wait and see what works and then copy it." Bill was insistent, "I'm serious, a few years from now, Bill Gates is going to be in your toaster and you're going to be wondering how he got there."
I was intrigued.
For those of you not glued to PC Week, Windows CE is Microsoft's operating system for the consumer electronics market. The pitch is simple. There are thousands of consumer electronic manufacturers who've realized something from this Internet craze. "It's the network, stupid." Your computer is vastly more interesting when connected to the 'Net. It gives you unlimited information, a virtual presence in a landscape of millions of people, and, sometimes, some quality comedy. Wouldn't your toaster be more interesting with Internet access?
Stop laughing. I mean it.
Imagine a household filled with electronic appliances which communicated to master "house server" via TCP/IP. Suddenly, you can check to see if the coffee is ready from anywhere on the planet. Or, you can tell yourself that you're on vacation for a week, and your house saves you money by shutting off the heat. The problem with this utopian household is that you're going to have one company providing your answering machine while another makes builds water heater. What you need to tie all of these disparate household appliances together is a common ground, a common operating system. What your house needs is Windows CE.
The Digest tackles emerging content technologies in "how advertising saved the Internet" Before I'd completed any research, I had imagined Windows CE being a stripped down version of Windows 95. I had nightmares of having to buy 64 megabytes of memory for my blender just so I could make a decent fruit shake. That's not the case. Windows CE was completely built from the ground up. The core kernel of the operating systems takes up a scant 300KB which is about 75 cents worth of memory on today's market - retail.
Even better, developers can pick and choose which operating system components they want to include with their hardware. Don't have a need for the user interface? Don't compile it in. Only want specific network protocols? Pick what you need and chuck the rest. Worried about having to learn new APIs? Windows CE provides a subset of the Win32 API that means that if you've done any Windows programming, you're probably already way ahead of the game.
This is the point you should get scared.
Microsoft made itself the number one software company on the planet by following a simple mantra - "A Microsoft product on every computer." Microsoft is about volume. They don't embark on projects where they don't expect to ship millions of units. If you take a quick look around your house, chances are you have one device that currently connects you to the Internet. Now look again and consider which of your other household appliances would benefit from a standardized operating system. Your stereo, your phone, your television set. Suddenly, you realize that Microsoft mantra has changed, but no one bothered to advertise it.
"A Microsoft product in anything that uses electricity."
june 9, 1998
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