Microsoft's Image Problem With Vista

[chuchok]

Email this storyPrint this story Thursday January 25, 2007

By Peter Griffin

Mechanisms in Windows Vista software, which goes on sale in NZ next week, have been described as 'obnoxious'. Picture / Reuters

Mechanisms in Windows Vista software, which goes on sale in NZ next week, have been described as 'obnoxious'. Picture / Reuters

Microsoft has moved to debunk a paper written by a software expert that criticises digital rights management (DRM) features of its new Windows Vista operating system.

But the software giant has defended its policy of facilitating content publishers who seek to degrade the quality of high-definition video and audio that is played over computer connections they do not approve of.

Auckland University computer science researcher Peter Gutmann caused an internet sensation with a paper released this month that claimed Vista was "broken by design" by built-in mechanisms designed to stop high-definition movies from being copied.

"The sheer obnoxiousness of Vista's content protection may end up being the biggest incentive to piracy yet created," Gutmann wrote.

Home user versions of Vista, an operating system that has been five years in development, will go on sale on January 30, with the first copies set to be sold by New Zealand retailers staying open for a midnight unveiling.

In a carefully worded blog posting rebutting many of Gutmann's criticisms, Microsoft's lead program manager for video, Dave Marsh, said playback would only be degraded for premium content - which is paid for and may be downloaded via the internet, and only if the copyright holder desired to do so.

"Image constraint will typically result in content being played at no worse than standard definition television resolution," wrote Marsh.

In the case of built-in or external high-definition players that did not meet the standards of copyright holders, HD video would be downscaled to slightly better than standard DVD quality.

Marsh admitted that Vista's content protection features would consume more computing power. "The use of additional [central processing unit] cycles is inevitable."

But he rejected claims that Vista's DRM features would make computers less reliable.

Critics of Microsoft, including Gutmann, suggested Microsoft's approach to DRM would encourage piracy as people would look for ways to by-pass copyright mechanisms. Hackers have already succeeded in cracking the security features of next generation HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Marsh pointed out that Microsoft's DRM provisions were no different to those included in standalone hardware devices designed to prevent unauthorised copying.

A new wave of high-definition players and screens come with high-bandwidth digital copyright protection (HDCP), which protects content as it is sent over the connections between HD players and TV screens.

HDCP players will degrade video quality for playback on TV screens that are not HDCP-compliant - at the moment that mean most screens.

While the debate sparked by Gutmann's paper may not materially affect Vista's reception, Vista's DRM features constitute the most criticised aspect of the new operating system. Those features are tucked into the millions of copies of Vista that have already shipped.

The question now is to what extent movie and music publishers seek to use those features to protect their content.

[Khleerm]

Gutman is quite prolofic, he continually updates the research here.

The source page of his work can be found here:

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

[Khleerm]

Yes siree, you know you're in deep poo, all right, when your staunchest devotees cross over to the competition. Yet it sure seems as though- despite their umpteen billions of dollars and untold man hours thrown at it- what they're packaging as their latest and greatest bit of shinola will in fact come to be seen as a nothing but a heaping pile of <deleted>.

If you thought Gutman's analysis was interesting, you'll love what this Tech Editor over at MIT Technology Review has to say after her test run of Vista:

Monday, January 08, 2007

Uninspiring Vista

How Microsoft's long-awaited operating system disappointed a stubborn fan.

By Erika Jonietz

For most of the last two decades, I have been a Microsoft apologist. I mean, not merely a contented user of the company's operating systems and software, not just a fan, but a champion. I have insisted that MS-DOS wasn't hard to use (once you got used to it), that Windows 3.1 was the greatest innovation in desktop operating systems, that Word was in fact superior to WordPerfect, and that Windows XP was, quite simply, "it."

When I was forced to use Apple's Mac OS (versions 7.6 through 9.2) for a series of jobs, I grumbled, griped, and insisted that Windows was better. Even as I slowly acclimated at work, I bought only Windows PCs for myself and avoided my roommate's recherché new iBook as if it were fugu. I admitted it was pretty, but I just knew that you got more computing power for your buck from an Intel-based Windows machine, and of course there was far more software available for PCs. Yet my adoration wasn't entirely logical; I knew from experience, for example, that Mac crashes were easier to recover from than the infamous Blue Screen of Death. At the heart of it all, I was simply more used to Windows. Even when I finally bought a Mac three years ago, it was solely to meet the computing requirements of some of the publications I worked with. I turned it on only when I had to, sticking to my Windows computer for everyday tasks.

So you might think I would be predisposed to love Vista, Microsoft's newest version of Windows, which was scheduled to be released to consumers at the end of January. And indeed, I leaped at the opportunity to review it. I couldn't wait to finally see and use the long-delayed operating system that I had been reading and writing about for more than three years. Regardless of widespread skepticism, I was confident that Vista would dazzle me, and I looked forward to saying so in print.

Ironically, playing around with Vista for more than a month has done what years of experience and exhortations from Mac-loving friends could not: it has converted me into a Mac fan.

A little context and a caveat: in order to meet print deadlines, I had to review the "RC1" version of Vista Ultimate, which Microsoft released in order to gather feedback from over-eager early adopters. Such post-beta, prerelease testing reveals bugs and deficits that in-house testing misses; debuggers cannot mimic all the various configurations of hardware, software, and peripherals that users will assemble. And Vista RC1 was maddeningly buggy. Although I reminded myself repeatedly that most of the problems I encountered would be fixed in the final version, my opinions about Vista are probably colored by my frustrations.

Still, my very first impression of Vista was positive. Quite simply, it's beautiful. The Aero visual interface provides some cool effects, such as translucent window borders and a way to scroll through a 3-D "stack" of your open windows to find the one you want. Networking computers is virtually automatic, as it was supposed to be but never quite has been with Windows XP. The Photo Gallery is the best built-in organizer I've used to manage digital pictures; it even includes basic photo correction tools.

But many of Vista's "new" features seemed terribly familiar to me--as they will to any user of Apple's OS X Tiger operating system. Live thumbnails that display petite versions of minimized windows, search boxes integrated into every Explorer window, and especially the Sidebar--which contains "Gadgets" such as a weather updater and a headline reader--all mimic OS X features introduced in 2005. The Windows versions are outstanding--they're just not really innovative.

Unfortunately, Vista RC1 contained bugs that rendered some promising features, such as the new version of Windows Media Center, unusable for me (an acquaintance who acquired a final copy of Vista ahead of release assures me that all that has been fixed).

My efforts to get Media Center working highlighted two big problems with Vista. First, it's a memory hog. The hundreds of new features jammed into it have made it a prime example of software bloat, perhaps the quintessence of programmer Niklaus Wirth's law that software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster (for more on the problems with software design that lead to bloat, see "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Meta"). Although my computer meets the minimum requirements of a "Vista Premium Ready PC," with one gigabyte of RAM, I could run only a few ­simple programs, such as a Web browser and word processor, without running out of memory. I couldn't even watch a movie: Windows Media Player could read the contents of the DVD, but there wasn't enough memory to actually play it. In short, you need a hel_l of a computer just to run this OS.

Second, users choosing to install the 64-bit version of Vista on computers they already own will have a hard time finding drivers, the software needed to control hardware sub­systems and peripherals such as video cards, modems, or printers. Microsoft's Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor program, which I ran before installing Vista, assured me that my laptop was fully compatible with the 64-bit version. But once I installed it, my speakers would not work. It seems that none of the companies concerned had written a driver for my sound card; it took more than 10 hours of effort to find a workaround. Nor do drivers exist for my modem, printer, or several other things I rely on. For some of the newer components, like the modem, manufacturers will probably have released 64-bit drivers by the time this review appears. But companies have no incentive to write complicated new drivers for older peripherals like my printer. And because rules written into the 64-bit version of Vista limit the installation of some independently written drivers, users will be virtually forced to buy new peripherals if they want to run it.

Struggling to get my computer to do the most basic things reminded me forcefully of similar battles with previous versions of Windows--for instance, the time an MIT electrical engineer had to help me figure out how to get my computer to display anything on my monitor after I upgraded to Windows 98. Playing with OS X Tiger in order to make accurate comparisons for this review, I had a personal epiphany: Windows is complicated. Macs are simple.

This may seem extraordinarily obvious; after all, Apple has built an entire advertising campaign around the concept. But I am obstinate, and I have loved Windows for a long time. Now, however, simplicity is increasingly important to me. I just want things to work, and with my Mac, they do. Though my Mac barely exceeds the processor and memory requirements for OS X Tiger, every bundled program runs perfectly. The five-year-old printer that doesn't work at all with Vista performs beautifully with OS X, not because the manufacturer bothered to write a new Mac driver for my aging standby, but because Apple included a third-party, open-source driver designed to support older printers in Tiger. Instead of facing the planned obsolescence of my printer, I can stick with it as long as I like.

And my deepest-seated reasons for preferring Windows PCs--more computing power for the money and greater software availability--have evaporated in the last year. Apple's decision to use the same Intel chips found in Windows machines has changed everything. Users can now run OS X and Windows on the same computer; with third-party software such as Parallels Desktop, you don't even need to reboot to switch back and forth. The chip swap also makes it possible to compare prices directly. I recently used the Apple and Dell websites to price comparable desktops and laptops; they were $100 apart or less in each case. The difference is that Apple doesn't offer any lower-end processors, so its cheapest computers cost quite a bit more than the least-expensive PCs. As Vista penetrates the market, however, the slower processors are likely to become obsolete--minimizing any cost differences between PCs and Macs.

I may need Windows for a long time to come; many electronic gadgets such as PDAs and MP3 players can only be synched with a computer running Windows, and some software is still not available for Macs. But the long-­predicted migration of software from the desktop to the Internet is finally happening. Organizations now routinely access crucial programs from commercial Web servers, and consumers use Google's services to compose, edit, and store their e-mail, calendars, and even documents and spreadsheets (see "Homo Conexus," July/August 2006). As this shift accelerates, finding software that works with a particular operating system will be less of a concern. People will be able to base decisions about which OS to use strictly on merit, and on personal preference. For me, if the choice is between struggling to configure every feature and being able to boot up and get to work, at long last I choose the Mac.

Erika Jonietz is a Technology Review senior ­editor.

What an opportunity lost here, eh?

[nikster]

Well... don't take reviews based on RC1 too seriously - the universal conclusion at the time was that RC1 was unusable, plain and simple.

The current version of Vista also leaves a lot to be desired - I had to turn off User Account Control to be able to use it without swearing and/or headaches.

Rumor has it that MS is preparing the first service pack already so they know there's a lot that's currently wrong with vista.

I don't want to sound like an apologist - I tried Vista and went back to XP and I am saving up for a new MacBook Pro. My recommendation is definitely to wait for service pack 2. If Vista (final) is version 1, the next service pack is version 2, version 3 is usually around the time when Microsoft software becomes usable. Seems like that never changes...

In addition, if MS had just _told_ us the truth about Vista, which is that Vista is the next version of Windows XP and the main difference is prettier graphics, then many of us wouldn't be so disappointed.

[cdnvic]

Gutmann is interviewed by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte on last week's episode of Security Now;

http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-075-lq.mp3

[chingching]

it leaves me wondering why MS chooses to release buggy software. I think we can correctly assume that they are not idiots running some start up company and don't know better. Why can't they just say, "Sorry not ready, and we do not wish to release it until it is running as well as possible."

No one except themselves have set a deadline for release. And it's not as if they couldn't find willing beta testers by the 10s of thousands.

[cdnvic]

it leaves me wondering why MS chooses to release buggy software. I think we can correctly assume that they are not idiots running some start up company and don't know better. Why can't they just say, "Sorry not ready, and we do not wish to release it until it is running as well as possible."

No one except themselves have set a deadline for release. And it's not as if they couldn't find willing beta testers by the 10s of thousands.

It's nothing to do with being buggy, it's about overly intrusive DRM.

[nikster]

it leaves me wondering why MS chooses to release buggy software. I think we can correctly assume that they are not idiots running some start up company and don't know better. Why can't they just say, "Sorry not ready, and we do not wish to release it until it is running as well as possible."

No one except themselves have set a deadline for release. And it's not as if they couldn't find willing beta testers by the 10s of thousands.

It's nothing to do with being buggy, it's about overly intrusive DRM.

I think it's symptomatic though.

Looking at Vista, one really has to wonder: What has MS really done the last 6 years? Did MS's army of programmers really take 6 years to make the windows shiny and rename some dialog boxes? No, they changed the entire OS foundation to hard-wire DRM into _everything_. DRM, by the way, that no one currently supports in this form, that only exists in the heads of MPAA and RIAA executives.

Microsoft's goal with Vista has never been the end user. They didn't strive to make the best OS they can make, to make life easier for users. Instead, they were striving to please content producers with extreme DRM - being holier than the pope as they say , presumably in their quest to own the living room.

So Vista isn't about making your life easier - it's about Microsoft controlling the living room. Is that a paranoid point of view? Not at all - if you followed the MS development cycle you will find that there were many good ideas that had to be dropped because of time constraints. The one idea that did not get dropped despite being one of the major engineering challenges was DRM-infestation of all parts of the OS.

Maybe I am interpreting too much into this. But on the other hand, maybe I would do the same if I had a monopoly? Vista is going to be installed on 99% of new PCs sold - no matter how much it sucks. Hence the focus on bigger things.

That's why I think MS has peaked, and Ubuntu or some other unix distro will eventually take over offices where people work. Because people can write letters / check email / surf the internet just as well on Linux. It seems to take Linux a long time to grasp the concept of usability, but it's only a matter of time.

OS X is my OS of choice but I hope it will remain a niche for us fortunate users because of Apple's control over both hardware and software. [writing this on my WinXP machine but hoping to get back to the Mac soon]

[sabajja]

Vista is going to be a "Noob's" OS.

Any professional aren't gonna tolerate degraded content cause of DRM.

Not to mention the extra cpu power it needs.

So, people who don't understand computers, and only use it for the "glossy exterior" might be satisfied.

The geeks and pro's, I don't think so.

[cdnvic]

Vista is going to be a "Noob's" OS.

Any professional aren't gonna tolerate degraded content cause of DRM.

Not to mention the extra cpu power it needs.

So, people who don't understand computers, and only use it for the "glossy exterior" might be satisfied.

The geeks and pro's, I don't think so.

Many "geeks and pros" have already given it great reviews, including Mac people. Apple's next incarnation is also very burdened with DRM, and few people will bother with open source, despite predictions to the contrary for the past 15yrs.

[quiksilva]

Im no expert but I would imagine that DX10 will also become a big factor looking forward (yes Im a gamer).