I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Microsoft have released another version of Avalon that runs over XP. Avalon is the new Windows graphics module and was one of the key Longhorn pillars. So it was a big deal last year when MS announced Avalon would be unbundled from Longhorn.
I was surprised on unbundling as I would have thought that making companies roll out a new OS is a hard call and therefore the more candy in there the better.
But I’ve also been wondering what the Office (which generates the bulk of the cash) strategy would be. Would the next version of Office be tied to Avalon and therefore be used to to pull through Longhorn OS upgrades.
MS has said that Office would support all versions of Windows. This strategy requires dual graphics library support - so much more bloat. (And As I’ve said before Word needs a rewrite!)
This doesn’t make sense to me. Surely you would want your flagship applications to use the new graphics features of a new OS.
So maybe (and this is a total guess) a subsequent version of Office actually does require Avalon and that’s why Avalon was unbundled so that the Office cash flows aren’t compromized through the Longhorn adoption phase.
Well the facts fit the theory anyway.
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