Facebook's fiasco gets even worse

Throughout the last coupe of weeks, as Facebook were fighting to hold back the tide of negative news, declining public opinion, and a gathering storm of official investigations and class action lawsuits, their "defence," such as it is, has remained the same: yes, in hindsight, bad things have happened, and FB didn't do nearly enough to prevent them before they happened, or deal with them afterwards, but nobody at FB predicted that bad things would happen. Foresight was lacking, FB have claimed; it's not like they knew that bad things would happen, and then forged ahead anyway, consequences be damned.

Except that it's exactly like that, as we now know, thanks to some solid reporting from, of all fucking places, BuzzFeed:

On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.

“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.

“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.

“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”
The explosive internal memo is titled “The Ugly,” and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.

Yes, Facebook absolutely knew beforehand that their platform would be abused. FB absolutely knew that the costs of that abuse could, and probably would, be severe: up to, and including, the loss of many human lives. And, knowing all of this, they forged ahead anyway, consequences be damned. Growth was all that mattered to them; growth at any cost, as long as others were paying.

Which means that basically everything that Mark Zuckerberg has been saying for the past week, as he attempts to defuse this bomb, has been a deliberate, bald-faced lie.

What's next for Windows?

With news from Redmond that the head of their Windows and Devices Group is moving on/being moved on, speculation is swirling about what this might mean for Microsoft's future. Fortune has an interesting take on that question:

The current reality facing Nadella is that Microsoft’s mobile strategy in hardware and software failed and tying everything to Windows for a boost didn’t help. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud business is booming, as is the growing revenue from business software subscriptions like Office 365 and Dynamics 365. In its most recent quarter, the three months ended Dec. 31, revenue from Office 365 increased 41%, Dynamics 365 rose 67% and Azure sales jumped 98%. At the same time, revenue from Windows commercial products dropped 4%, Surface computer sales gained 1%, and Windows sales for PCs rose 4%.

The new idea for 2018 is to tie everything more closely to the cloud and the fast-growing Azure unit. The WDG is being disbanded and band leader Terry Myerson is retiring from Microsoft. When the WDG was formed under Myerson, he took over mobile efforts from Stephen Elop, who left the company. It will be interesting to see if Myerson’s directions are erased as quickly as he moved away from Elop’s failing strategy.

Much of the Windows software effort, called the Windows Platform Team, will move under cloud and enterprise software leader Scott Guthrie’s group, along with several AI initiatives. Guthire also gets charge of AI speech, vision, augmented and virtual reality (what Microsoft calls mixed reality) efforts. Putting those teams, which face fierce competition from the likes of Amazon (amzn, +0.94%), Google (googl, +3.46%), and Apple (aapl, +1.00%), together with Azure could help them catch on as cloud services.

While Fortune make a special point to reassure folks that Windows 10 is doing "just fine," I don't think there are too many ways to read Microsoft's latest moves as anything other than an admission that their prior decades' Windows strategy is a failure. Microsoft have repeatedly tried to leverage Windows' dominant position on desktops and laptops into a dominant market position in, basically, every aspect of our data/information age lifestyles, only to find little to no traction with consumers, and only slow uptake from businesses.

Microsoft are not going to be Apple, or Google, or Amazon, and it looks like they may be tired of trying. Exactly what cutting their losses might look like, or what that might mean for consumers who, let's face it, mostly don't want to and/or can't afford to convert their bought-and-paid-for PCs into expensive-subscription machines. Whether MS are now planning to stop pushing Windows 10 so damn hard, and start adopting a more consumer-friendly stance with Windows, generally, will be interesting to see.

Just remember, folks: Linux is an option here, and ChromeOS is also coming.

Today in Facebook

As we come up on the two week mark of Facebook's fiasco, there are finally signs that Facebook might actually be taking the matter of users' privacy seriously enough to do something, this time.

First, from Ars Technica:

Facebook will (soon) yank third-party ad data in the name of privacy

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and rising public pressure against Facebook, the social media giant announced on Wednesday evening that it will restrict how much data advertisers can have access to.

Facebook will soon stop allowing advertisers access to data about individuals held by companies like Experian and Acxiom.

Prior to this change, Facebook allowed advertisers to target groups of people based on an amalgamation of both datasets.

Baby steps, I guess. Ars is also reporting that Facebook is also going to make it easier for users to find and change their accounts' privacy settings. "If that sounds familiar, it's because Facebook has made that exact kind of announcement many times over."

Facebook are also blocking new apps from joining the platform, as reported by The Verge:

Facebook paused its app review process last week to “implement new changes,” the company quietly announced yesterday. Facebook’s move to momentarily prevent new apps and chatbots onto its platform comes after the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal that’s unfolded over the last two weeks. The ongoing situation has embroiled the company in an existential crisis of unprecedented magnitude after up to 50 million Facebook users profiles’ were compromised by a third-party app. Last week, Facebook said it will further limit developers’ access to user data.

[...]

One co-founder of a digital agency took to Facebook to complain about the sudden pause, as spotted by Mashable. “Imagine hundreds of hours of work, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment capital, and dozens of clients disappearing at any given moment at the whim of a few lines of code,” Troy Osinoff wrote, as he set his status to “thinking about the meaning of life.”

Yes, the Facebook Effect is now expanding to cause harm to companies that have done nothing wrong... except to get into business with Facebook. Expect more lawsuits, in addition to the fourteen class actions that have already been filed.

So serious is Facebook's situation that market analysts, who were predicting that Facebook would ride out this storm just fine, are now predicting much more gloom ahead, not only for Facebook, but for tech giants in general.

Today in Facebook...

Just as I was beginning to dread the prospect of having to keep tabs on the four-alarm garbage fire that Facebook has suddenly been revealed to have been for years, the good folks at Gizmodo have decided to save me all that hard work, and start their own (regularly updated) blog entry on the subject, which you can now check instead. I know that I intend to. Because I am lazy.

"Here Are the Myriad Ways Facebook Is Getting Dunked on Right Now," can be found using the link (<-). I'll also add a link to the sidebar (->)... mainly for my own convenience, but hopefully it also helps at least one other person at some point.

My favourite bit of snark from Gizmodo's post:

Did you use Facebook on an Android phone? Your calls and texts might have been scraped by a company you already hate!

Don’t even worry, though. Facebook—a company definitely not embroiled in a scandal due to its handling of sensitive data—has said it wasn’t looking at your chats.

Reputations - they take years of hard work to build, but only minutes to destroy.

This week in VR...

... it's Facebook! Because of course it is.

From Business Insider:

As Facebook users around the world are coming to understand, some of their favorite technologies can be used against them. It's not just the scandal over psychological profiling firm Cambridge Analytica getting access to data from tens of millions of Facebook profiles. People's filter bubbles are filled with carefully tailored information — and misinformation — altering their behavior and thinking, and even their votes.

People, both individually and as a society at large, are wrestling to understand how their newsfeeds turned against them. They are coming to realize exactly how carefully controlled Facebook feeds are, with highly tailored ads. That set of problems, though, pales in comparison to those posed by the next technological revolution, which is already underway: virtual reality.

On one hand, virtual worlds hold almost limitless potential. [...] In these new worlds, every leaf, every stone on the virtual ground and every conversation is carefully constructed. In our research into the emerging definition of ethics in virtual reality, my colleagues and I interviewed the developers and early users of virtual reality to understand what risks are coming and how we can reduce them.

"VR is a very personal, intimate situation. When you wear a VR headset … you really believe it, it's really immersive," says one of the developers with whom we spoke. If someone harms you in VR, you're going to feel it, and if someone manipulates you into believing something, it's going to stick. 

As anyone who's read this blog knows, I'm definitely bearish on VR's prospects. I think it's essentially useless, that it's potential is far more limited than VR's proponents think, and that the current generation of VR headsets, including Facebook's, will not become a thing. Yes, if VR were to actually realize the potential that we keep getting told is has, then it could be a powerful tool for manipulating people... which would be troubling if combined with Facebook, which is built from the ground up to psychologically profile and manipulate people. It is Facebook that's the problematic part of that equation, though, and not VR per se.

Added to that, Facebook's shareholders are already unhappy about the billions being dumped into VR with no prospect of anything like profitability for a decade or more. I'm still predicting that Facebook will be writing down or spinning off their Oculus arm within two years, and given how much other trouble they're in, it might happen a lot sooner than that. VR is not, and will not be, a thing; you don't have to work about what Facebook will do with it. Or what anyone will do with it. Because nobody is going to do anything with it.

Which brings us to the other story in VR: HTC's new, better, and more expensive Vive. Yes, more expensive; apparently HTC are still betting their future on VR not only being a thing, but on that thing still having a high end for them to cater to.

Today in Facebook...

I have a feeling that this will be a regular thing for a while.

To start with, I'd like to draw your attention to this great piece from Engadget:

Let’s stop pretending Facebook cares

[...]

The really great thing to come out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is that Facebook will now start doing that thing we were previously assured at every turn they were doing all along. And all it took was everyone finding out about the harvesting and sale of everyone's data to right-wing zealots like Steve Bannon for political power. Not Facebook finding out, because they already knew. For years. In fact, Facebook knew it so well, the company legally threatened Observer and NYT to prevent their reporting on it; to keep everyone else from finding out.

[...]

When the The Guardian's 2015 article came out, Facebook pretended to care."And then," former Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie told The Observer, "all they did was write a letter."

"But literally all I had to do was tick a box and sign it and send it back, and that was it," says Wylie. "Facebook made zero effort to get the data back."

[...]

It wasn't until the NYT and The Observer prepared to publish their articles last Friday that Facebook decided to suspend Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie from the platform -- in a weak attempt to get ahead of the story. Even then, it was after Facebook made legal threats on both NYT and The Observer in an effort to silence both publications.

[...]

It almost goes without saying that this whole sickening affair is more proof we didn't need that Facebook only cares when it is forced to. When the company decides it has a reputation problem. Which is the only problem they actually care about fixing. Other than that, it's all about creating more data dealer WMD's, like Facebook's impending patent to determine social class, which we can all assume will be abused until press who can afford to stand up to Facebook write an article about it.

Yes, Cambridge Analytica have definitely done bad things, but Facebook is the problem. It's heartening to see that the media is increasingly seeing past the Cambridge Analytica trees to the out-of-control Facebook forest fire. Some of them have also started paying attention to Facebook's corrosive social and psychological effects, too.

Engadget is also keeping tabs on the class action lawsuit situion (up to four), #deleteFacebook picked up steam todayt when Elon Musk deleted Tesla's and SpaceX's Facebook pages, and Facebook's share price is down 13% for the week - although, if you've got nerves of steel, now is either a great time to take a short position on Facebook, or to pick up some FB stock cheap, in the hope that they can ride this shitstorm out... and good luck with that.

The Verge has a very detailed guide up to deleting Facebook, step-by-step (#deleteFacebook), and LifeHacker has a detailed guide to finding out everything that Facebook knows about you (spoiler alert: it's really, really not easy). GQ has just posted an article about how consumers can kill Facebook. Oh, and the notoriously feckless and ineffectual U.S. Congress has apparently smelled the cross-spectrum, bi-partisan outrage, and summoned Zuckerberg to the Hill so that he can lie to them again.

I've probably missed quite a bit. This story is now so big, and so hot, that a dozen new articles are being posted about it hourly. Make no mistake about it, folks; Facebook are in some real trouble, here.

Yes, Facebook's fiasco really did get worse...

Remember just yesterday, when Mark Zuckerberg was trying to explain their Cambridge Analytica dealing away as some sort of outlier, and talking about how, sure, in hindsight, they probably shouldn't have taken CA's money, but how were they to know at the time? Well, pretty much all of that was horseshit. CA wasn't any sort of an outlier, and the amount of data they received was not at all abnormal.

From The Guardian:

Before Facebook suspended Aleksandr Kogan from its platform for the data harvesting “scam” at the centre of the unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, the social media company enjoyed a close enough relationship with the researcher that it provided him with an anonymised, aggregate dataset of 57bn Facebook friendships.

Facebook provided the dataset of “every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level” to Kogan’s University of Cambridge laboratory for a study on international friendships published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2015. Two Facebook employees were named as co-authors of the study, alongside researchers from Cambridge, Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. Kogan was publishing under the name Aleksandr Spectre at the time.

[...]

“The sheer volume of the 57bn friend pairs implies a pre-existing relationship,” said Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. “It’s not common for Facebook to share that kind of data. It suggests a trusted partnership between Aleksandr Kogan/Spectre and Facebook.”

[...]

Facebook has not explained how it came to have such a close relationship with Kogan that it was co-authoring research papers with him, nor why it took until this week – more than two years after the Guardian initially reported on Kogan’s data harvesting activities – for it to inform the users whose personal information was improperly shared.

[...]

“We made clear the app was for commercial use – we never mentioned academic research nor the University of Cambridge,” Kogan wrote. “We clearly stated that the users were granting us the right to use the data in broad scope, including selling and licensing the data. These changes were all made on the Facebook app platform and thus they had full ability to review the nature of the app and raise issues. Facebook at no point raised any concerns at all about any of these changes.”

Kogan is not alone in criticising Facebook’s apparent efforts to place the blame on him.

“In my view, it’s Facebook that did most of the sharing,” said Albright, who questioned why Facebook created a system for third parties to access so much personal information in the first place. That system “was designed to share their users’ data in meaningful ways in exchange for stock value”, he added.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Observer that Facebook was aware of the volume of data being pulled by Kogan’s app. “Their security protocols were triggered because Kogan’s apps were pulling this enormous amount of data, but apparently Kogan told them it was for academic use,” Wylie said. “So they were like: ‘Fine.’”

As I wrote yesterday, Facebook is the problem, here. They didn't just fall in with bad company, through no fault of their own; they jumped into shark-infested waters with a bucket of chum, ignored the circling fins (the warning signs that their own processes threw up), and raked in the money quite cheerfully right up until the moment when it became apparent that they were, indeed, bleeding heavily and about to lose an unknown number of corporate limbs. They didn't care when it mattered, and they didn't act when it mattered, and they damned well knew better at the time.

And now for something completely different

Let's lighten the tone a bit, shall we? How about I stop talking about the evils of Facebook to discuss the stupidity of Google, who have just given YouTube users yet another reason to ad-block. Yes, really.

From Gizmodo:

YouTube, the world largest video streaming platform, wants you to start paying money to watch Kendrick Lamar’s latest music video—and to force the issue, you’ll start seeing a lot more advertisements between specifically music videos.

Bloomberg reported that Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s global head of music, said during a SXSW interview that music video watchers will see advertisement increases the company hopes will annoying the shit out of viewers enough to buy into their new rumored streaming service, Remix.

Specifically, Cohen said:

There’s a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers. Once we do that, trust me, all that noise will be gone, and articles people write about that noise will be gone.

You—yes, you, the YouTube consumer, will be lovingly frustrated by a poor advertising experience, then be seduced into a monthly payment to avoid those unwelcoming ads. Sounds like a great plan: annoy your loyal user base until they pay money to not hate your product.

Was it just this morning that I was praising Google for being far more consumer-focused and consumer-friendly than Facebook? I think it was. And yes, I do feel just a little bit foolish for doing so. Only a little bit, mind you... in the grand scheme of things, this latest bad idea really is just hurting themselves, and not affecting me at all. Still, though, what are they thinking?

Well, apparently they're thinking that they can just target the YouTube version of "whales."

A YouTube spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email that not all users will see more ads, but a “specific subset of users” might.

“Our top priority at YouTube is to deliver a great user experience and that includes ensuring users do not encounter excessive ad loads,” the spokesperson said. “We do not seek to specifically increase ad loads across YouTube. For a specific subset of users who use YouTube like a paid music service today—and would benefit most from additional features—we may show more ads or promotional prompts to upsell to our paid service.”

Yeah... good luck with that, Google.

Facebook is the problem

I don't think my previous post quite made this clear, but there's a very simple reason why I've been posting about the of the Cambridge Analytica story here, on my tech blog, rather than over there, at my political blog. It's because the political angle of this never struck me as being the most important part of the story; because the problem here really isn't Cambridge Analytica, per se.

Yes, Steven Bannon was (and probably still is) a real piece of work, and the company to which he was attached did do some very bad things, but Cambridge Analytica didn't do anything that Facebook didn't allow them to do, at the time. Yes, CA scraped waaayyy more data from FB than Zuckerberg's crew expected, and clearly abused it, and then behaved in almost cartoonishly villainous ways, but the real problem is that FB had the data available to sell in the first place.

To get a real idea of how big, and bad, the problem is, consider the following hypothetical scenario:

1. You "friend" or "follow" your doctor on Facebook. This is useful; it allows you to book appointments more easily, and keeps your doctor's contact info readily available if you need it...
2. ... and you do need it, because you've just been diagnosed with something that's chronic, serious, and both difficult and expensive to treat. Your doctor mentions a few different medications that he might want you to try, and tells you who makes them, so you...
3. ... follow those pharmaceutical companies online. After all, they make medications that you're now intensely interested in.
4. Meanwhile, your doctor has reached out to some of their colleagues via a professional FB group. Your name is never mentioned, of course, just the basic fact that they have "a patient" with a difficult and unusual diagnosis, and they'd appreciate some advice.
5. Facebook now know (a) your name, (b) your doctor's name, and (c) your interest in companies that make medications to treat (d) the condition that your doctor now also wants advice about, because it's a rare diagnosis and they're never seen an actual case before.
6. ( a + b + c + d ) = details of your medical history, which you never divulged to anyone, but which Facebook now has in their database, access to which they now sell to...
7. (e) anyone who might have a financial interest in knowing about the sudden increase in medical bills that you're about to incur. Have you applied for a mortgage recently? Or a job? Or extended medical insurance coverage? Would any or all of those companies maybe appreciate a solid cost-saving heads-up about your circumstance?

This may sound like a far-fetched hypothetical, but it's not. The data that Cambridge Analytica scraped from Facebook's database was of exactly this kind, and you'd better believe that they weren't the only firm to buy access to the data profile that Facebook has built of you, with neither your knowledge nor informed consent, and then sold to God knows who.

This is a problem because data, once sold, can't be un-sold; once Cambridge Analytica had scraped FB's data trove onto their own servers, there was nothing FB could do about it anymore. Do you know how many criminal organizations might have gained access to personal information about Facebook's users, and then re-sold it on the darknet? Because I don't, and neither do Facebook. The fact that they've just recently stopped/are about to stop doing these evil things doesn't begin to un-do all the previous evil they've already done... the effects of which their products users (i.e. you) will now be living with for years to come, at the very least.

Facebook's fiasco

Did I ever mention that I'm not on Facebook? I did have a Facebook account at one point, but I wasn't using it, so I suspended it years ago, and I never told Facebook all that much about myself. And, oh boy, am I ever glad that I'm not heavily invested in the Facebook ecosystem, because OMG what a fucking mess.

Facebook themselves have been really quiet about the whole Cambridge Analytica situation, to such an extent that I keep seeing articles commenting on how weird the silence of their CEO is, at a time of such crisis for the company, but that hasn't prevented the flood of "how to delete Facebook" articles, the start of the class action lawsuits (from their shareholders, natch, complaining that FB's mishandling of the matter amounts to negligence and is costing their shareholders money), and at least three official investigations from the governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. So much for their hopes that an "independent" (yet still internal) audit would be enough to keep the steadily building outrage to manageable levels.

Suddenly, the probably-inevitable failure of their VR adventure (along with everyone else's VR adventures) is looking like the least of Facebook's problems. Mark Zuckerberg has gone from being a rumoured Presidential hopeful just last year, to being a dead CEO walking at the company he himself founded, with CNBC calling for him to step aside and let Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg take over. And an industry that was built on collecting, and then selling, their customers' private and personal information is suddenly facing the very real prospect that they'll find themselves regulated, and heavily, within the year.

And all I can say is, it's about damn time.

Seriously, the Big Brother nature of Facebook and Twitter creeps me all the way out. I mean, Google might want to collect as much information about you as possible, but they're not literally selling your private deets to companies outside Google, they're not leveraging using your contact list to gather information about you without your knowledge or consent, and they're not doing this all behind a black-box wall of obscurity that allows you no visibility or control over the process at all.

My Google account settings have turned all of the data collection off, because Google lets me do that. Google lets you opt out. Facebook doesn't let you opt out, and will collect information about you that you didn't know they could access, all without even asking first. The fact that they're in the business of selling your information to others, and not just advertising services powered by that information, has always been all the way wrong, and crying out for regulation. And, as far as I can see, regulations really can't come soon enough.

And so, the last of the Wild West dot com boomers will be brought to heel, and we will spend the next decade (at least) grappling with the fallout from their recklessness, arrogance, and greed.

In the meantime, here's The Verge's guide to deleting Facebook.

Editorializing

Offered for your consideration, two different headlines about the same story.

Start with this headline from the normally quite sober WCCFTech:

Microsoft Promises, Microsoft Delivers! Windows Installation Time Reduced to 30 Minutes

compare it to Gizmodo UK's headline about the same announcement:

Windows Has a Plan to Make Its Update System a Little Less Garbage

and marvel at the power of editorial direction. The same phenomenon can be seen at work in the articles themselves.

Microsoft's Edge-ey move garners predictable responses

I'd already written about this development last week, but it looks like the rest of the tech media world has also caught on to Microsoft's latest move to force Edge on Windows 10 users, and the results are about what you'd expect.

Por ejemplo, Mashable:

Sorry Microsoft, but this isn't the way to get people to use your Edge browser

or diGit:

Microsoft could soon force Mail users to use Edge for email links in Windows 10

In the latest Preview Build, Microsoft is testing opening all Windows Mail links in Edge, even if the user's default browser is set to Chrome or Firefox.

or Übergizmo:

Windows 10 Mail Users Will Be Forced To Use Edge For Email Links

The Reg:

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn’t default browser

Grab some popcorn: Redmond’s asked for feedback on the idea

The Inquirer:

Microsoft is trying to bolster Edge in Windows 10 by overriding browser defaults

Firm has learned nothing about anti-competitive strong-arming 

Express.co.uk:

Windows 10 could FORCE you to use Microsoft Edge, even if Chrome is your default browser

MICROSOFT could soon force Windows 10 users to open links in Edge, regardless of users’ default web browser.

These are just the headlines, of course, but the story that they'e reporting hasn't changed since Friday, and the headlines show pretty clearly how badly Microsoft have failed at pitching their terrible idea. Almost every headline uses the word "force" to describe what MS are doing; none of them are even potentially positive. The Inquirer talks about "anti-competitive strong-arming" in their headline; The Reg is grabbing their popcorn as they watch this fireworks show kicking into high gear. It's difficult to say what reaction Microsoft were hoping for, here, but none of these reactions are good news for Redmond.

None of them are particularly insightful or informative, though. For those things, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Paul Thurrott.

"Drawerware"

With VR's two-year anniversary coming up quickly, I've been seeing a lot of videos and articles in the last week analyzing the current state of the industry, and questioning whether VR has, really, any future at all. This article from TechCrunch is a good example:

Compelling virtual reality shipped to developers and consumers nearly two years ago. The first flagship headsets arrived from Oculus and HTC back in the spring of 2016, offering enough resolution, frame rate, field of view, latency mitigation and position-tracking to produce believable visual immersion.

But no one seems to know what to do with it. To date, no killer app has extended the promise of VR from a novelty to a sticky experience or utility that reaches beyond enthusiasts to resonate with the consumer center of mass.

This isn’t to say that great experiences don’t exist. Apps like Tilt Brush, Elite: Dangerous and Google Earth VR have earned rave reviews and plaudits from enthusiasts. But we have yet to see a household phenomenon like Halo or Lotus 1-2-3 — applications that single-handedly propelled their respective platforms to wide use. At CES 2018, one industry analyst referred to VR as “drawerware,” referring to the likelihood of headsets to be stuffed in a drawer after a few forays into jejune worlds.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I was positively tickled by the "drawerware" terminology, credit for which goes to Wired: 

The launches of the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and mobile headsets like the Gear VR were heavily hyped, but these new computing devices have failed to develop momentum in the mainstream market. Even Sony, with its newer PSVR headset, has struggled to sell 2 million units to the 70 million owners of the compatible PS4 console in the last year. And in its effort to push its exclusive Gear VR goggles, Samsung gave away perhaps millions of units by bundling a shiny new headset with new Galaxy phones.

"I call it drawerware," says GlobalData analyst Avi Greengart about the Gear VR and other early VR headsets. "It gets put in the back of a drawer ... I have a Vive and PlayStation VR. The experiences are fascinating, but they are not very sticky. Right now, VR is really searching for a killer app.

If you feel like there's a common theme for these articles, you're entirely correct. It seems that an industry which was entirely convinced, just a year ago, that the single biggest obstacle to mass adoption of VR was its price point, are now realizing that dropping price points haven't really helped, and started moving in the direction of the real problem: the simple fact that VR really isn't useful.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So goes the famous quote by George Santayana. It would seem that Microsoft are determined to prove the truth of this bit of wisdom, by setting themselves up for yet another antitrust action of the type that they've already lost before... twice.

From The Verge:

Microsoft wants to force Windows 10 Mail users to use Edge for email links

A desperate move to grab browser share

Yes, I'd say that "desperate" is definitely the right choice of adjective, there.

Microsoft is testing a new change to its future version of Windows 10 which will probably annoy anyone using the operating system. The software giant revealed today that “we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” The change means if you have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser in Windows 10, Microsoft will simply ignore that and force you into Edge when you click a link within the Mail app.

It’s a ridiculous change, that’s similar to Microsoft forcing Cortana users to use Bing search and open results in the Microsoft Edge browser instead of other browsers that are set as default. [...] I’m sure Microsoft will receive a lot of feedback over this unnecessary change, and we can only hope the company doesn’t ignore it.

1) I don't believe that Microsoft listen to their Windows user community... at all, really, and 2) I hope they don't listen this time, either, because the their typical oblivious arrogance could well end up landing them in some richly-deserved hot water of the antitrust variety. Again.

Because you're not imagining it: Microsoft have done this before, back in the day when they were abusing their position as the platform's gatekeepers to drive Netscape out of business. Over-riding the users' clearly established preferences and using Edge as a default browser is not OK, even if it's only happening in Microsoft's own Mail app. Because this shit won't stay in "just" that app, if they're allowed to get away with this; it will find its way into every Microsoft app. It's just the first dick move in a clearly-telegraphed dick game with only one possible goal, i.e. a complete monopoly.

Which is, as I've said before, the whole point.

Not only are Microsoft failing (or maybe just refusing) to remember their own history, they're shooing themselves in the foot by doing so. Because this change won't force users towards Edge; it will just drive them away from Mail... assuming that any significant number of them were using Mail in the first place, which seems unlikely. Coming at a time when Microsoft is still struggling to convince users, and businesses, to switch to Windows 10, these shenanigans are unlikely to help MS's cause there, either, and may actually hurt. 

And all that bad is on top of the very real legal jeopardy that comes with such obviously anti-competitive and anti-consumer antics. It's moronic. Who signed off on this?

Whatever. Who cares. I just hope that they stay the course, this time, and pay the apparently inevitable price for doing so. With Democrats riding a building electoral wave that could see them take control of both houses of Congress, and Trump's impeachment all but certain if they do so, the impunity with which the Microsofts of the world continue to flout U.S. antitrust laws could end rather sooner than the monopolists are planning on, which can only be a good thing.

So, go for it, Microsoft! Keep right on trying to make "fetch" happen. Keep doing you, no matter how much damage you do to your own cause in the process. When the end comes, I will be there watching. With popcorn. And maybe beer.

No, Microsoft, it won't. It really, really won't.

From Simon Sharwood at The Reg:

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'
Which is just-about an admission Win 10 is a mess

No, Microsoft, it won't.

I mean, we've known for a while that Microsoft would really, really like for S mode, and thus their digital storefront, to be the way that a majority of users experience Windows; this has always been the plan, so it's no surprise that MS see this as the best possible outcome... for them. The only surprise is that they're finally speaking openly about their desire to make this happen, in spite of the fact that consumers' rejection of this vision of personal computing has been pretty much total, up to this point.

Consumers have made it very plain that they do not want this. So much so, in fact, that Microsoft's latest aborted attempt to push it on them anyway has now been walked back. But don't expect MS to stop trying. Forcing every PC user on Earth into their walled-garden Microsoft Store ecosystem is, very plainly, MS's entire plan for Windows, and they will try again.

The Reg's reporting doesn't include anything much that Thurrott.com didn't already cover yesterday, apart from this bit of editorializing:

"We expect the majority of customers to enjoy the benefits of Windows 10 in S mode," Belfiore wrote. Which is hardly a ringing endorsement of Windows 10 in its dominant configuration!

Which is completely accurate - after all, MS wouldn't be having to push WX so hard if it were good enough to sell itself on the product's merits. That isn't, however, the point. The point is that MS want "S mode" to supplant a Windows in which consumers retain control over their PCs, and the software that gets installed on them, and instead relies on Microsoft to serve up everything. The point is raw, naked greed; it's MS wanting to be Apple, with their own iOS-style App Store.

The fact that MS want it to happen, however, doesn't mean that it will happen. Because for all its issues, Windows 10 is still better than its "S mode" counterpart, which is why Windows 10 S flopped in the first place. Making S mode an option for all WX users doesn't do anything to make it more attractive to those users, or alter the fact that the "Universal Windows Platform" has utterly failed to be a thing. The "benefits" of S mode are non-existent; the experience of using S mode is shit, and there's nothing happening which will alter that in any way at all.

Sorry, Joe.

MS tiptoes back from the "S Mode" edge

Well, colour me surprised if Microsoft didn't hear peoples' howls of outrage and walk back a terrible decision before it had even gone live.

From Thurrott.com:

Microsoft now says that it will no longer charge customers who wish to upgrade from Windows 10 in S mode. The revelation comes after a bizarre tweet in which Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore confirmed Thurrott.com’s exclusive story that it would kill Windows 10 S and provide S mode in all mainstream Windows 10 versions.

Now, Belfiore is providing more information and is doing so via a more traditional means: A Microsoft corporate blog.

“We’ve received feedback that the [Windows 10 S] naming was a bit confusing for both customers and partners,” he writes. “Based on that feedback, we are simplifying the experience for our customers. Starting with the next update to Windows 10, coming soon, customers can choose to buy a new Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro PC with S mode enabled, and commercial customers will be able to deploy Windows 10 Enterprise with S mode enabled.”

[...]

Best of all, however, Belfiore now says that Microsoft will no longer try to charge customers to upgrade from S mode. (Today, the upgrade from Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro costs $50.) So you can upgrade from the hobbled S mode in Windows 10 Home, Pro, or Enterprise to the “full” version of whichever OS product edition for free going forward. This is absolutely the correct thing to do.

Microsoft's previous ruminations on their upcoming S Mode, its costs, and its lawsuit-avoidance carve-out for the antivirus software industry, were indeed bullshit, and S Mode is still bullshit, but at least Microsoft won't be charging gamers extra for wanting to install games on their new PCs anymore. So, yes, absolutely the correct thing to do, and it's only taken them three tries to produce an S Mode strategy that the market might actually accept.

Of course, this latest change also makes it even easier to ignore S Mode entirely, now that it's not being rammed down users' throats anymore, so it won't do anything to make S Mode relevant to consumers. Which means that S Mode is still a failure; Microsoft is just finally admitting failure, is all, rather than insisting on charging consumers extra to help cover their failure's costs.

It's tough to give Microsoft much credit, though, for belatedly doing something the less-shitty thing on their 3rd attempt, and only after the outcry made it clear that their anti-consumer bullshit would not fly. It's tough to even call this a win for consumers; Microsoft may have backed away from the edge this time, but there will be a next time, and a next one after that, so have we really won anything other than a temporary reprieve? Because it sure doesn't feel like a win.

I doubt that the overall goal, i.e. forcing consumers onto the Windows Microsoft Store to buy all of their PC software, has changed, however. With UWP failing, and Progressive Web Apps being a Google-led trend that Microsoft can't monopolize, it's tough to see how they'll be able to force the ecosystem issue, but mark my words: they will try again. Whether on some other ground, or on this same ground once it's swept clean, they will try again.

For now, though, saner heads appear to have prevailed. It's not much, but I'll still take it.

In other news, Moore's Law continues not being a thing, and PC sales continue to decline as a result.

That's according to analyst firm IDC, as reported by The Reg:

Desktop PC shipments dipped below 100 million in 2017 and there's worse to come across the personal computing device market according to analyst firm IDC.

The company on Wednesday published a summary of its Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker for 2017's final quarter in which it totted up shipments for the year across all forms of PC and slate-style tablets.

The headline figure was a 2.7 per cent year-over-year decline.

The firm said "commercial PC renewal momentum remained as the main catalyst in a market that was also tempered by lackluster demand for legacy form factor devices and component shortages." There was a little good news in 2017 with growth in notebook sales, as they grew more strongly than in any year since 2012, but the overall picture was poor.

Their article includes a handy table showing the expected decline for each product category, but even with notebooks and detachable tablets expected to grow modestly, overall PC sales are expected to drop 1.80% in the next five years. And that's not the only bad news:

News of continuing slow-downs in PC and tablet sales come on top of the first-ever drop in smartphone sales.

People just don't see value in upgrades these days, and who can blame them? Devices are now almost devoid of moving parts that break and have been water-and-dust-proofed to keep their innards clean. CPU upgrades offer less obvious advantages for common workloads or tasks.

Worldwide smartphone shipments dropped by 5.6%, which is their first-ever drop, according to different analyst group Gartner:

Several major factors caused the market shrinkage, said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. “First, upgrades from feature phones to smartphones have slowed right down due to a lack of quality ‘ultra-low-cost’ smartphones and users preferring to buy quality feature phones.

“Second, replacement smartphone users are choosing quality models and keeping them longer, lengthening the replacement cycle of smartphones. Moreover, while demand for high quality, 4G connectivity and better camera features remained strong, high expectations and few incremental benefits during replacement weakened smartphone sales,” Gupta added.

That's what the end of Moore's Law looks like, folks. With sales of both PCs and smartphones now declining because new devices just aren't that much better than the old ones, and VR sales still stubbornly not increasing to take up the slack, makers of consumer electronics could be looking at some lean years over the next five.

Windows 10 loses ground in latest NetMarketShare numbers

You didn't think I'd miss marking the 1st of March by posting the latest OS market share numbers, did you?

Windows 10 dipped from 34.29% last month to 34.06% this month, a drop of 0.23%. Windows 7 dipped slightly, too, from 42.39% to 41.61%, a drop of 0.78%. Windows 8.1 and XP both gained slightly (+0.10% and +0.65%, respectively), which was unexpected.

Windows lost ground overall, again, dipping by 0.13% to 87.66%. MacOS lost ground this month, though, dipping by 0.06% to 9.89%, which is the opposite of previous months. Linux gained overall, rising from 1.93% to 2.08%, an overall gain of 0.15%.

In short, none of this month's numbers make any sense, with Windows' most popular versions both losing ground to versions which were looking pretty much dead until right now, and none of the gains seemingly being enough to offset the losses. Which most likely means one of two things: (a) these numbers are some sort of weird anomaly, and next month's numbers will revert to the overall trend of previous months, or (b) this month's numbers contain actual errors, and NMS will be updating them later in the day with corrected values.

The third and perhaps less likely option is that some sort of shift to Linux actually is underway, that NMS's new methodology and revamped data sets were only able to obscure for so long before they reasserted themselves in the data. We'll have to see if NMS let this set of numbers stand, or what StatCounter and the Steam Survey have to say about the current state of the OS market.

Regardless, however, one thing is clear: this month's shifts in the market are still very small. Which means that we've now gone three full months since my mid-November prediction that we wouldn't see any significant shifts in the OS market. So, yes, I'm calling it: that prediction is confirmed. And since VR still isn't a thing, either, that give me a record of 3 and 1 for my prognostications, with only the Nintendo Switch performing better than I expected. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.