AMD pushes out three more triple-core chips

Chip maker targets gamers and digital content creators with desktop processors
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today unveiled more triple-core processors, adding to several models released earlier this year.

The announcement comes amid Internet rumors that the chip maker may be announcing plans to spin off its manufacturing operations as soon as next week.

John Lau, senior semiconductor analyst and managing director of Jefferies & Co., said last week that AMD is looking to spin off its fabrication plants into a separate company funded by a Middle East consortium. The company, according to Lau, will handle AMD's manufacturing but will also be free to build chips for other companies.

An AMD spokesman last week said that the company would not respond to rumors.

Today, however, the AMD is focused on announcing its new desktop processors: the Phenom X3 8750 Black Edition, with a Clock Multiplier Control and tunable performance; and the energy-efficient Phenom X3 8450e and Phenom X3 8250e.

The chip maker noted in an e-mail to Computerworld that the chips are aimed at the gaming community and at digital content creators.

Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., noted that while AMD's technology is still well behind that of rival Intel Corp., the triple cores are a welcome addition to the chips being offered.

"They do fill a slot in the market, providing a balance of price vs. power," Olds added. "They'll be speedy enough to handle demanding games and applications, but at a reasonable price."

AMD released its first triple-core chip in March, with three more available a month later. AMD released another one last month.

Microsoft warns of IE8 lock-in with XP SP3

Also notes other problems, including crashing Windows Live Mail
Microsoft Corp. yesterday warned users of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won't be able to uninstall either the service pack or Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) under some circumstances.

The warning was reminiscent of one Microsoft made in May, when Windows XP SP3 had just been made available for downloading. At the time, the company told users they wouldn't be able to downgrade from IE7 to the older IE6 browser without uninstalling the service pack.

In a post to the IE blog today, Jane Maliouta, a Microsoft program manager, spelled out the newest situation, which affects users who downloaded and installed IE8 Beta 1 prior to updating Windows XP to SP3. If those users then upgrade IE8 to Beta 2, which Microsoft unveiled today, they will be stuck with both IE8 and Windows XP SP3.

A warning dialog will appear to alert users. "If you chose to continue, Windows XP SP3 and IE8 Beta 2 will become permanent," Maliouta said. "You will still be able to upgrade to later IE8 builds as they become available, but you won't be able to uninstall them."

She recommended that users instead first uninstall Windows XP SP3, then uninstall IE8 Beta 1; they should then reinstall XP SP3 and follow that by installing IE8 Beta 2.

It's unclear how many users the warning is aimed at. Although users running Windows XP and IE8 Beta 1 could manually download and install Service Pack 3 from Microsoft's site, the company set its Windows Update service so that it didn't offer SP3 to systems with IE8 Beta 1.

Windows XP users who do have the first beta already on their machines will be offered the update to Beta 2 via Windows Update if they have Automatic Updates enabled, Maliouta continued. "A prompt in your Windows task bar will alert you when IE8 Beta 2 is ready for installation," she said.

Windows Vista users, however, will not see IE8 Beta 2 in Windows Update because update apparently cannot sniff out instances of IE8 Beta 1 and uninstall them automatically. Instead, users must remove Beta 1 manually, said Maliouta.

Several additional updates are required before installing IE8 Beta 2 on Vista, including one that, if omitted, blocks its installation entirely. That fix, a revised version of a Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) prerequisite that earlier this year sent machines into an endless series of reboots, is also necessary for IE8 Beta 2; users with SP1 will, of course, already have it in place, but those running pre-SP1 versions of Vista must still install it.

Microsoft also spelled out a long list of IE8 Beta 2 known issues and compatibility problems in release notes it posted on its support site Wednesday.

Ironically, of the nine applications called out as incompatible with the new IE8, the only two that will lock up and crash are Microsoft's.

Visual Studio .Net Version 7, said Microsoft, will crash on a PC that also contains IE8 Beta 2. "No workaround is currently available," Microsoft said in the release notes.

The other Microsoft incompatible application is Windows Live Mail, formerly called Windows Live Desktop, and the desktop mail client meant to replace Outlook Express and Windows Mail. "If you install Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Windows Live Mail will crash when you create or reply to an e-mail message," Microsoft warned.

Microsoft's Silverlight to support streaming HD Flash video

Silverlight 3 will be able to play high-definition Flash video and music in iTunes' AAC format

Microsoft Corp. said today that the next version of its Silverlight media player, due early next year, will be able to play live high-definition video encoded for rival Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash player.

Users of Silverlight 3 will also be able to listen to streaming music encoded in the same format used by Apple Inc.'s iTunes player.

Adding support for the H.264 video compression formats based on the increasingly popular MPEG-4 standard won't necessarily make Silverlight-viewed video look better.

Nor will supporting the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec allow Silverlight to play music stored locally by iTunes, partly because of Apple Inc.'s restrictions, said Steven Sklepowich, group product manager for Silverlight Media.

But it will prepare Silverlight 3, which will ship in the first quarter of next year, to play a much wider variety of the streamed HD video and high-fidelity music that broadcasters are expected to bring online.

"We are becoming more of an open runtime environment," Sklepowich said.

Silverlight is a Web browser plug-in that allows users to watch or listen to streaming multimedia. It differs from Microsoft's Windows Media Player, which is mostly used to play back media already downloaded off the Internet.

When Microsoft first released Silverlight last fall, to compete with Flash, it required broadcasters to encode video in the VC-1 codec, a now-open standard for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs based on Windows Media formats.

VC-1 enabled true DVD-quality streaming video that is much higher quality than the Flash video on sites such as YouTube, where most of the videos are still encoded in the H.263 codec. Such files are streamed to Web browsers, which cache them as .flv files.

Adobe has since updated its Flash 9 player to play HD H.264 video files, which are stored temporarily as .f4v files. Both .f4v and .flv are different than .swf files, which can be downloaded and played by Flash offline. (Silverlight today plays streamed video in the .asf file container format.)

Silverlight 3 won't be able to play .flv or .swf content, said Sklepowich. But it will be able to play H.264-based .f4v content.

Microsoft had long resisted calls to make its Silverlight player more compatible with Adobe's. Adobe says that last year 70% of Web video was streamed via Flash's .flv format.
Microsoft was motivated to support H.264 because it is becoming "the next-generation standard," said Sklepowich, with HD digital broadcasters such as DirecTV and Dish Network using H.264.

Adding H.264 support will cut work for broadcasters who previously would have had to do the time-consuming work of re-encoding their video in VC-1 to support Silverlight, he said.

And that should encourage more of them to stream video using Silverlight, as well as build special Silverlight-based players such as the ones specially created for NBCOlympics.com and the Democratic National Convention. The players, in addition to showing HD video, also offer features such as picture-in-picture, multiple views, and ticking data, Sklepowich said.

Microsoft plans to show off an early preview of Silverlight 3 at the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) 2008 in Amsterdam later this week, according to Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Developer Division.

A beta of Silverlight 3 is expected soon after Silverlight 2 ships this fall, Sklepowich said.

The other caveat on video is that Silverlight will only be able to view .f4v streamed video if it is delivered from Web servers using the standard HTTP protocol, Sklepowich said. Video delivered from Adobe's Flash Media Server software using its proprietary RTMP protocol won't play, he said.

In addition to supporting MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) streaming, Silverlight 3 will enable users to listen to streamed music in AAC formats. WMA is the most popular format for streaming today.

AAC is best known as the default audio format used by Apple Inc.'s iTunes, iPod and iPhone to store music files on devices and PCs.

Silverlight 3 will not be able to play those stored songs, Sklepowich said, partly because Apple adds its own digital rights management technology called Fairplay to prevent non-iTunes programs from playing them, and partly because Silverlight is meant only for streaming content.

However, an increasing number of broadcasters are using AAC to stream music through the Web, which Silverlight will be able to play.

Google bends to Chrome privacy criticism

It agrees to anonymize data from browser's OmniBox bar

Reacting to criticism that its new Chrome browser was essentially acting as a keylogger, potentially recording users' every keystroke, Google Inc. yesterday said it would render anonymous the data it collects from the browser within 24 hours.

A privacy expert said the change's impact couldn't be gauged without knowing exactly how Google will "anonymize" the data it records as users type in Chrome's "OmniBox," the name given to the browser's combination address bar-search bar.

Google has taken heat over the "Google Suggest" feature used within OmniBox since it launched Chrome last week. The Suggest feature automatically lists related search queries and popular Web destinations based on the text typed into the OmniBox. Suggest works by logging users' keystrokes -- not just in the OmniBox, but since late last month in Google's primary search field -- and offering the most likely sites or searches based on a blend of popularity and the search company's own algorithms.

Suggest transmits those keystrokes to Google's servers, as the feature's FAQ acknowledges. "Just as E.T. needs to phone home in order to get a spaceship to pick him up, Google Suggest needs to talk to Google while you type in order to offer suggestions to you," the FAQ reads.

While all keystrokes typed into Chrome's OmniBox are sent to Google, the vast majority aren't permanently recorded, but instead are discarded as soon as suggestions are returned to the browser. About 2% of the time, however, the keystrokes are recorded, along with associated data such as the IP address of the user who entered those keystrokes.

Previously, Google said it needed that data to monitor and improve Suggest. On Monday, the company announced it would change how long it keeps the data logged from Suggest.

"Given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information, and its limited potential use, we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours, basically, as soon as we practically can," said Urs Holzle, Google's senior vice president for operations, in an entry to the company's blog late Monday.

"All data retention is a balance between user privacy and trust on the one hand, and security and innovation on the other," argued Holzle. "In the case of Google Suggest, we decided it's possible to provide a great service while anonymizing data almost immediately."

Google Suggest, which had been in development since 2004, began rolling out to Google's search engine late last month. Before that, it was widely used by Google Toolbar, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox and Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

The logging, transmitting and recording of keystrokes, however, returned to the forefront when Google released Chrome a week ago. What sparked the criticism over Chrome was the everything-in-one-place nature of the browser's OmniBox, said Alissa Cooper, the chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Unlike other browsers, which separate the address bar -- where users type URLs -- from the search bar, Chrome combines the two.

"It's the URLs that sparked the criticism, and the change by Google," said Cooper. "Users were faced with Google retaining all of their search logs and all of the URLs they were typing."

Nor was Cooper sure that Google's new promise to anonymize the recorded data within 24 hours is enough. "That's a good step, but that doesn't mean that all those logs are rendered anonymous," she said, pointing out that Google says it anonymizes its server logs, for instance, when it only partially deletes IP addresses and cookies.

"It will really depend on the mechanism Google uses to anonymize those logs," Cooper said. "The impact this has on privacy will only become clear when we know how they render the data anonymous."

Chrome users can disable Google Suggest by right-clicking the OmniBox, then selecting "Edit search engines" and clearing the check box beside "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar."

iPhone 2.1 update due Friday, fixes 'lots of bugs'

Apple CEO promises it will mean fewer dropped calls, fewer app crashes

September 9, 2008 (Computerworld) Apple Inc. will release an iPhone update Friday that CEO Steve Jobs promised today "fixes lots of bugs," including the dropped call problem that's plagued users since July.

User reaction was mixed on Apple's support forum, where some took a wait-and-see approach while others remained skeptical.

Near the end of Tuesday morning's roll-out of new iPods, Jobs announced iPhone v2.1's delivery date and gave a quick overview of its contents.

"It's a big update," Jobs said. "It fixes lots of bugs. You'll get fewer call drops, you will get significantly improved battery life for most customers. We have fixed a lot of bugs where [when] you have a lot of apps on the phone you're not gonna get some of the crashes that we've seen." He also said that iPhone 2.1 would dramatically cut the time it takes users to synchronize their phones to iTunes.

Users have complained about all four problems Jobs mentioned, but the one that has gotten the most attention from both customers and the media is the dropped-call issue.

Within days of the July 11 debut of the iPhone 3G, buyers began posting messages on Apple's support forums detailing weak signal strength -- even in areas supposedly covered by AT&T Inc.'s 3G network; slow download speeds; and frequently-dropped calls.

Three weeks ago, Apple released iPhone 2.0.2, an update the company said improved the phone's 3G functionality, a claim most users disputed. Since then, Apple has been hit by at least two lawsuits seeking class-action status that accuse the company of deceiving customers by claiming the iPhone reliably connected to 3G networks.

Reaction to the news of the impending iPhone update was mixed on Apple's support forum.

Some took Jobs' announcement at face value, and were willing to withhold judgment until they can download and install the update. "We should at least wait and see if the update lives up to his word," said a user tagged as "Ansuz82" on the iPhone support forum.

Others, however, were still angry that Apple had not been more forthcoming about the iPhone 3G problems and were skeptical that the company would be more transparent on Friday. "Let's see if those statements or any further detail actually make it into the firmware release notes," said "DaddyK" on a different thread. "Further bug detail would be the responsible thing to do."

A few wondered why the iPhone 2.1 update had been scheduled for Friday when a similar update, also dubbed 2.1, was available today for the iPod touch, the iPhone look-alike. "Why do we have to wait till Friday when people can buy an iPod touch today with 2.1 already on it?" asked "deimos256" just before the Apple event concluded. "Talk about deflated expectations, all this big update is gonna do is fix problems that never should have happened."

Ansuz82 pitched in with a possible answer. "More than likely it's a server load issue. I remember the last big update where iTunes and the iPhone/touch were updated. Downloads were going at a crawl. Staggering will help with that."

The user was referring to the version 2.0 update that Apple issued on the same day it launched iPhone 3G, when AT&T was forced to suspend in-store activations because Apple's servers had been overwhelmed.

Apple did post a 2.1 update for iPod touch users today. The update included patches for seven vulnerabilities, among them a fix for the DNS bug that was first disclosed in July and patched by Apple the last day of that month. Some researchers, however, maintained that Apple's July 31 fix didn't patch the vulnerability on Mac OS X clients.

iPhone 2.1 will presumably patch the same vulnerabilities on Friday.

Windows update servers score 100% uptime, beat Mac OS X, Ubuntu

July 15, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp.'s Windows beat operating system rivals Mac OS X and Ubuntu in a three-month test of update server uptime, a Swedish uptime monitoring company said.

According to Pingdom AB, Microsoft's update servers were available to users 100% of the time during the three-month stretch of April, May and June, with no apparent downtime. Apple Inc.'s update servers, meanwhile, were offline for 2 hours and 34 minutes during that period (99.9% uptime) while the main repository of Ubuntu, one of the most popular consumer distributions of Linux, was dark for 1 day, 5 hours and 45 minutes (98.6% uptime).

In a post to its company blog last week, Pingdom outlined how it pinged the update servers and Ubuntu repository every five minutes during the second quarter. Any offline indication was confirmed from two different locations, said the company.

Pingdom monitored the Windows Update Web site at www.update.microsoft.com, Apple's Software Update server atswscan.apple.com/content/ catalogs/index-1.sucatalog (which contains the index necessary to receive new updates) and the main Ubuntu repository at archive.ubuntu.com.

Microsoft and Apple use their respective update services to provide security patches, other fixes and larger-scale operating system upgrades. Ubuntu users, on the other hand, have a wide range of locations, including numerous mirrored sites, where they can download new versions of that Linux operating system, a fact not lost on Pingdom.

"It should be noted, though, that Ubuntu's repositories have mirrors around the world, so users can download packages from those as well," the company said in the blog post.

Ubuntu supporters stressed the existence of mirrored sites and other factors as they defended their operating system in comments appended to the Pingdom blog.

"You've tested one out of a multitude of Ubuntu's update servers," argued a user identified as "Oli" in one comment. "On installation, you pick a local mirror to speed things up. Now, this isn't as clean as a transparently geo-mirrored solution as Microsoft, but you're just plain wrong to suggest that if the main repo went down now, nobody could get updates."

"If we look at the dates, Ubuntu [8.10] came out on 24 April," said a user who called himself "evenorbi" in another comment. "Around release time usually the repositories are very busy because of the updates/installs, so of course they are down most of the time."

Some got their facts wrong. "Neither Apple nor Microsoft offer full operating system upgrades via their upgrade systems," said someone identified only as "Jake" in a third comment. "They are just security updates and so forth, so there is much more load on Ubuntu servers."

That's not the case, however; both Microsoft and Apple issue major operating system upgrades regularly via their update services. For its part, Microsoft dubs these updates "service packs;" among the most recent was Windows XP Service Pack 3, which began reaching usersautomatically last week.

Apple also delivers larger upgrades through its Software Update. Last month, for example, it issued Mac OS X 10.5.4, an 88MB update.

Stealth Windows update prevents XP repair

By Scott Dunn  A silent update that Microsoft deployed widely in July and August is preventing the "repair" feature of Windows XP from completing successfully. Ever since the Redmond company's recent download of new support files for Windows Update, users of XP's repair function have been unable to install the latest 80 patches from Microsoft.

Repaired installations of XP can't be updated 

Accounts of conflicts with XP's repair option came to our attention after Microsoft's "silent install" of Windows Update (WU) executable files, known as version 7.0.600.381, was reported in the Sept. 13 and 20 issues of the Windows Secrets Newsletter.

The trouble occurs when users reinstall XP's system files using the repair capability found on genuine XP CD-ROMs. (The feature is not present on "Restore CDs.") The repair option, which is typically employed when XP for some reason becomes unbootable, rolls many aspects of XP back to a pristine state. It wipes out many updates and patches and sets Internet Explorer back to the version that originally shipped with the operating system.

Normally, users who repair XP can easily download and install the latest patches, using the Automatic Updates control panel or navigating directly to Microsoft's Windows Update site.

However, after using the repair option from an XP CD-ROM, Windows Update now downloads and installs the new 7.0.600.381 executable files. Some WU executables aren't registered with the operating system, preventing Windows Update from working as intended. This, in turn, prevents Microsoft's 80 latest patches from installing — even if the patches successfully downloaded to the PC.

I was able to reproduce and confirm the problem on a test machine. When WU tries to download the most recent patches to a "repaired" XP machine, Microsoft's Web site simply states: "A problem on your computer is preventing the updates from being downloaded or installed." (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. After a repair install of XP, which resets the operating system to its original state, Windows Update can't install the 80 most-recent patches from Microsoft.
__________

Most ordinary Windows users might never attempt a repair install, but the problem will affect many administrators who must repair Windows frequently. Anyone who runs XP's repair function will find that isolating the cause of the failed updates is not a simple matter.

Beginning in July, it is not possible for Windows users to install updates without first receiving the 7.0.6000.381 version of nine Windows Update support files. (See my Sept. 13 story for details.) If Automatic Updates is turned on, the .381 update will be installed automatically. If AU is not turned on, you'll be prompted to let Windows Update upgrade itself before you can installing any other updates. Consequently, users are forced to get the silent update before they can attempt to install Microsoft's latest security patches.

The problem apparently arises because seven of the DLLs (dynamic link library files) used by WU fail to be registered with Windows. If files of the same name had previously been registered — as happened when Windows Update upgraded itself in the past — the new DLL files are registered, too, and no problem occurs. On a "repaired" copy of XP, however, no such registration has occurred, and failing to register the new DLLs costs Windows Update the ability to install any patches.

Registering DLL files is normally the role of an installer program. Unlike previous upgrades to WU, however, Microsoft has published no link to an installer or a downloadable version of 7.0.6000.381. Strangely, there's no Knowledge Base article at all explaining the new version. The lack of a KB article (and the links that usually appear therein) makes it impossible for admins to run an installer to see if it would correct the registration problem.

One possible fix is to install an older version of the Windows Update files (downloadable from Step 2 of Microsoft Knowledge Base article 927891) over the newer version. This involves launching the installer from a command line using a switch known as /wuforce.

That corrects the registration problem, although even in this case you must still accept the .381 stealth update (again) before you can get any updates. The fact that the /wuforce procedure solves the problem suggests that the installer for .381 is the source of the bug.

Manually registering files solves the problem 

If you find that Windows Update refuses to install most patches, you can register its missing DLLs yourself. This can be accomplished by manually entering seven commands (shown in Step 2, below) at a command prompt. If you need to run the fix on multiple machines, it's easiest to use a batch file, as Steps 1 through 5 explain:

Step 1. Open Notepad (or any text editor).

Step 2. Copy and paste the following command lines into the Notepad window (the /s switch runs the commands silently, freeing you from having to press Enter after each line):

regsvr32 /s wuapi.dll
regsvr32 /s wuaueng1.dll
regsvr32 /s wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 /s wucltui.dll
regsvr32 /s wups2.dll
regsvr32 /s wups.dll
regsvr32 /s wuweb.dll

Step 3. Save the file to your desktop, using a .bat or .cmd extension.

Step 4. Double-click the icon of the .bat or .cmd file.

Step 5. A command window will open, run the commands, and then close.

The next time you visit the Windows Update site, you should not have any problem installing the latest patches.

In my articles in the last two weeks on the silent installation of the Windows Update support files, I stated that the stealthy upgrade seemed harmless. Now that we know that version .381 prevents a repaired instance of XP from getting critical patches, "harmless" no longer describes the situation. The crippling of Windows Update illustrates why many computer professionals demand to review updates for software conflicts before widely installing upgrades.

"I understand the need to update the infrastructure for Windows Update," says Gordon Pegue, systems administrator for Chavez Grieves Engineers, a structural engineering firm in Albuquerque, N.M. "But I think Microsoft dropped the ball a little bit communicating how the system works. Administrators should know these sorts of things, in case problems arise."

A Microsoft spokeswoman offered to provide an official response about the situation, but I received no reply by press time.

If you ever need to run the repair option on XP, first see the detailed description provided by theMichael Stevens Tech Web site.

I'd like to thank Windows Secrets contributing editor Susan Bradley for her help in bringing reports of this problem to light.

Have a tip about Windows? Readers receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending tips we print. Send us your comments via the Windows Secrets contact page.

Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the magazine's Here's How section.

Produtc Planning for next Windows 7

Mike Angiulo’s post about Product Planning for Windows. Mike Angiulo is the team leader of the Windows PC Ecosystem and Planning team. It rather provides an insight in the workings of the product planning team which is working closely together with the Windows 7 feature teams basically making sure that Windows 7 will run on customer hardware and be sufficient for consumer, business and hardware manufacturer needs.

Creating an operating system like Windows 7 demands tradeoffs and Mike is mentioning three that the Product Planning team encountered recently:

First there is what I think of as the ‘taste test challenge.’ Over thirty years ago this meme was introduced in a famous war between two colas. Remember New Coke? It was the result of overemphasizing the very initial response to a product versus longer term customer satisfaction. We face this kind of challenge all the time with Windows – how do we balance the need for the product to be approachable with the need for the product to perform throughout its lifecycle? Do you want something that just boots as fast as it can or something that helps you get started? Of course we can take this to either extreme and you can say we have – we went from c:\ to Microsoft Bob in only a matter of a decade. Finding the balance between a product that is fresh and clean out of the box and continues to perform over time is a continual balance. We have ethnographers who gather research that in some cases starts even before the point of purchase and continues for months with periodic visits to learn how initial impressions morph into usage patterns over the entire lifecycle of our products.

Second we’re always looking out for missing the ‘trees for the forest.’ By this I mean finding the appropriate balance between aggregate and individual user data. A classic argument around PCs has always been that a limited subset of actions comprises a large percentage of the use case. The resulting argument is that a limited function device would be a simpler and more satisfying experience for a large percentage of customers! Of course this can be shown to be flawed in both the short term and the long term. Over the long term this ‘common use case’ has changed from typing & printing to consuming and burning CDs and gaming to browsing and will continue to evolve. Even in the short term we have studied the usage of thousands of machines (from users who opt-in of course) and know that while many of the common usage patterns are in fact common, that nearly every single machine we’ve ever studied had one or more unique applications in use that other machines didn’t share! This long tail phenomena is very important because if we designed for the “general case” we’d end up satisfying nobody. This tradeoff between choice and complexity is one that benefits directly from a rigorous approach to studying usage of both the collective and individual and not losing sight of either.

Third is all about timing. Timing is everything. We have an ongoing process for learning in a very dynamic market – one that is directly influenced by what we build. The ultimate goal is to deliver the ultimate in software & hardware experiences to customers – the right products at the right time. We’ve seen what happens if we wait too long to release software support for a new category (we should have done a better job with an earlier Bluetooth pairing standard experience) and what also happens when we ship software that the rest of the ecosystem isn’t ready for yet. This problem has the dimension of working to evangelize technologies that we know are coming, track competing standards, watch user scenarios evolve and try to coordinate our software support at the same time. To call it a moving target isn’t saying enough! It does though explain why we’re constantly taking feedback, even after any given version of Windows is done.