User Interfaces and Network Computing

In my column two weeks ago on games and the game interface, I noted that Microsoft integrates ActiveX controls with the Windows operating system via DirectX. DirectX, in turn, gives direct access to features of the hardware and enables speedier, more efficient processing.

This gives Microsoft a unique advantage over other software makers. For the platforms they control, that is, those using the Windows operating system and the Intel chip--the "Wintel" computers--they can truly meld the power of the hardware and the software to get better performance than is possible in any multiplatform solution. The great issue that computer users will have to decide in the future is:

• Is it better to buy into the Wintel monopoly because it offers fully integrated hardware and software to enable faster more efficient processing? Not to mention the fact that they now control 90% of the desktops and that most commercial software is available first and sometimes only for the Windows platform.

• Or, is it better to support a variety of hardware and software solutions that interoperate, although arguably less efficiently than those of Wintel. These, to a much greater extent, rely on the network to provide much of the functionality built into any particular operating system.

It will be a difficult choice to make--loaded with lots of biases for and against Microsoft, Netscape, Unix, and the MacIntosh.

I've been a Mac user all of my personal computing life, but now I feel that I'm missing out on too much cool stuff to be without access to Windows. Yeah, there's Soft Windows - but it's slow. I know I can put a card into a Mac that will enable me to run Windows, but is it really worth the expense when I may end up using Windows more than the Mac OS?

What does the other side have to say for itself? Netscape sees a world in which the desktop comes to you whereever you are and without prejudice for any particular operating system or hardware.

Netscape's new suite of clients, named Communicator, will, in 1997, include a software product, code-named Constellation, that lets users merge and customize desktop and network information, tune into netcasted content, and automatically receive customized information from various locations across a network.

"We are entering the third wave of the Internet, where electronic mail and groupware with all the richness of the Web are key elements of computing," Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale said. "While the first waves of the Internet focused on users being able to easily find information, the mark of this third wave is that information finds the user. Our new products will have the intelligence to help you focus on the information you care about."

Netscape said Constellation will gather information that users care about and transparently replicate it to the server. Similar to roaming on a cellular phone, Constellation will free users from being tied to a single desktop location, the company claims.

Constellation will leverage technology from Marimba to receive netcast information. Constellation will integrate Marimba's Castanet Tuner technology, allowing users to subscribe to a wide range of self-updating content and application channels. Using a Castanet transmitter, Intranet managers can easily deploy software to desktops enterprisewide.

Castanet is expected to eliminate problems of version control within corporations as software channels constantly update themselves automatically in the background.

A Beta version of Castanet is available immediately on the Marimba Web site. The final production version of Castanet 1.0 will be available by the end of 1996. The Tuner is free for noncommercial use.

However, Marimba Chief Executive Kim Polese said that the deal with Netscape is not exclusive and that they hope to establish other deals with companies such as Microsoft. So, again, Microsoft will most likely not be left behind.

PointCast Inc.'s PointCast Network--a personalized Web information netcasting service--will also be integrated into Constellation, Netscape said.

Contrary to speculation that it would one day compete with Microsoft in operating systems, company executives said Netscape was deliberately focusing on the ability to work across some 17 different operating systems instead.

"Constellation is not an operating system, but is a new user interface," Netscape Senior Vice President Mike Homer told reporters at Comdex.

Although Netscape executives acknowledged there was some difficulty in making its software run on some environments, such as Windows 3.1, the company was succeeding and committed to continuing to support a variety of operating systems.

Analysts are reported to have said Netscape's multiplatform approach is a major distinction from Microsoft because companies would only get the full benefit of Microsoft's line of products if they deployed it throughout departments or the company--again the Microsoft "all or nothing" strategy.

Sun Microsystem's CEO Scott McNealy has been saying "The network is the computer," whereas Bill Gates is still touting the importance of desktop storage capacity and computing power. Gates thinks the PC has a lot of life left in it, especially when it comes to processing audio, video, and other types of multimedia content.

In his recent Comdex keynote speech, Gates outlined an array of pending technologies, including three-dimensional graphics and sophisticated methods of transmitting information to computers, such as speech recognition and visual clues such as gestures or expressions. In future operating systems, Gates predicted that "90 percent of the code will relate to these new input systems."

Sun, Oracle, and Netscape believe that that storage capacity and computing power should reside on the Net, independent of the users desktop; indeed, they think the personal desktop is itself an ephemeral thing existing only as code that can follow the user to whatever PC, NC, or WebTV they access it from.

Gates asserts that having the computing power--the hardware and the OS--literally at your fingertips will always be a big plus. He is focusing on making the combined power and efficiency of the physical object and installed operating system so appealing that you won't leave home without it--or leave home at all.

To PC or not PC, that is the question.

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