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When elephants fight, the proverb runs, the grass gets trampled. In the world of personal computing, the elephants are definitely going at it, with just about every company taking potshots at Microsoft -- and Gates's Gang fighting back fiercely. As usual, the grass -- in this case, the mass of consumers -- is getting the worst of it.
The fights have been brought to a head by the upcoming release of the new Windows XP operating system, and most of the attention has focused the wide-ranging dispute between Microsoft and fellow giant AOL Time Warner over instant messaging, music downloads, and assorted other issues. The battle, which is being played out to the accompaniment of of noisy warnings and threats (sometimes delivered by prominent politicians), has been intriguing. What is clear, however, is that neither of the combatants has consumers' interests at heart.
THE JAVA PROBLEM. Meanwhile, a quieter and sorrier struggle is being waged over the future of Java, a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that makes it possible to write programs capable of being run on many different types of computers. Here, alas, consumer concerns are also inspiring little concern.
When first introduced in the mid-1990s, Java was hailed as the Next Big Thing, a product that would cause software as we knew it to be replaced by applications downloaded on demand from the Internet. This never happened for a large number of reasons, including the fact that slow and unreliable networks just couldn't be counted on to deliver vital software on demand. But the Java's development also was hurt badly by years of name-calling and litigation involving Sun and Microsoft.
Despite the bad feelings, Java has long been an integral part of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, with programmers and users alike generally agreeing that IE handled Java far better than the rival Netscape browser. Though it has fallen far short of its promise, Java remains a useful tool for displaying active content in Web pages. Many news and stock tickers depend on it. And it has proven especially popular in education, where mixed environments of Windows PCs, Apple Macintoshes, and Unix workstations abound. (For a demonstration, check out the "mathlets" at the Journal of Online Mathematics, www.joma.org.)
STRIPPED AWAY. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided to eliminate Java support, called the Java Virtual Machine, from the Internet Explorer 6.0 browser bundled with Windows XP, as well as from stand-alone versions of IE 6.0. Microsoft blames the long dispute with Sun, and the terms of the settlement, for the decision.
"We improved support [for Java] in Windows and innovated in a way Sun didn't like," says Windows XP product manager Greg Sullivan, who adds: "Among the terms of the agreement was that we couldn't modify the Virtual Machine further. We wanted to avoid a situation where Sun might not like what we had done. In the worst-case scenario, they might try to enjoin the shipping of XP. The best course to minimize the impact on users was to take [the virtual machine] out."
Microsoft had the option of including Sun's Java Virtual Machine instead of its own, but that's a course Sullivan dismisses out of hand. "It would be extraordinary for Sun to ship a Microsoft product," he says. "If we shipped Sun's, we'd lose control of the experience."
How big an issue is the presence of Java support in Windows XP will vary from user to user. If you upgrade a Windows system that has Java installed, the old setup will continue to work in XP. Some computer manufacturers will add Java support, either Sun's or Microsoft's, when they set up a new PC.
If you get a new PC without Java built in, the first time you open a Web page that uses Java you will be asked if you want to download the required software. The download will be easy enough for people on dialup connections, but waiting for the 5 megabyte file is really tedious. And there's a suspicion that Microsoft, which is promoting a language called C# as an alternative to Java, could make the download more difficult in the future. In any event, it's a sad thing for consumers that the long catfight between Sun and Microsoft is making a valuable technology harder to use.
FUZZY PICTURE. Another dispute, this time between Eastman Kodak and Microsoft, seems headed for a happier resolution. Windows XP includes some advanced features for handling images. For example, when you open a folder full of pictures, you will see thumbnail images instead of icons. And when you plug a digital scanner into a Windows XP computer, it will automatically launch Microsoft's Scanner & Camera Wizard.
Many camera manufacturers, however, prefer to launch their own software, especially since they hope to get revenue for steering your images to processors for printing. This is especially important for Kodak because of its own leading role as a printing service.
Microsoft says it has always been possible to select an alternative to the Scanner & Camera Wizard for handling image transfers, but the method for doing it was pretty well hidden in test versions of XP. In the shipping version, Microsoft promises that alternatives, including Kodak's, will get better billing. Whatever the outcome of that particular case, consumers can expect little peace while the elephants continue to do battle.
Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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