Programming Windows: Freestyle and Mira (Premium)

With the weight of Microsoft’s security problems on his shoulders, Bill Gates delivered a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2002 keynote in early January that focused on the future, not the past. And that future consisted of new types of PCs and other devices, all powered by Microsoft software.

This was a fundamental shift, he claimed. To that day, consumer electronics was “mostly about hardware.” But going forward, microprocessors would be everywhere, and those microprocessors would need software to realize their full potential.

“Things like speech recognition, handwriting recognition, and linguistic analysis become possible when they wouldn’t have been feasible before” on the PC, he said. “And we have multiple [non-PC] devices that are smart, and we have protocols, digital protocols, digital standards between those devices allowing them to work together.”

Microsoft’s key contributions to consumer electronics would come in the form of Windows XP, its platform for PCs and the devices with which it connected; Windows CE, a stripped-down version of Windows aimed at consumer electronics devices; and Xbox, its newly released video game console and its most overt push for the living room.

Each had obtained some measure of success. Gates noted that Microsoft had already sold 17 million copies of XP since its October 2001 launch, about double the sales rate of Windows ME, and triple the sales rate of Windows 98 SE, in similar launch timeframes. The new version of Windows CE, called Windows CE .NET, added real-time capabilities, 802.11 support, and other advancements, and hardware makers had sold “tens of millions” of CE devices over the past five years. Xbox, meanwhile, had done “incredibly well,” Gates said. “We’ve sold all that we can make … the sell-through is over a million and a half units.” And Xbox owners were buying three games per console on average, a great number.

After a demonstration of various Windows CE .NET advances, and a look at the new Pocket PC 2002 platform, a CE variant for pocket-sized PDAs (personal digital assistants) that was just starting to gain phone capabilities, Gates finally turned to how Windows XP would transform personal technology at home in the coming years. This promise was based on, of all things, the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technologies that had been exploited by hackers in XP, triggering Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing push. He had two key advances to discuss, both of which were “extensions” of XP.

The first was a technology then codenamed “Freestyle” that would let users access the power of a PC with a remote control instead of a keyboard and mouse. It would utilize “a user interface that’s appropriate for using it at a distance,” a phrase that would quickly be honed to “a 10-foot user interface,” as opposed to the more typical “2-foot user interface.” You would use “it”—the PC, presumably, or the Freestyle “feature”—in your living room as a “media center,” a hint at Freestyle’s eventual final naming. It would, Gates, said, let “you get at browsing, e-mail, and all the digital media experiences.”

The second was a smart display technology then codenamed “Mira.” “This is the idea of letting Windows connect up to an intelligent display, and that display itself, if it has batteries and has the wireless capability built-in, can be carried around the house and used in a variety of ways,” Gates said.

Both products would come to market via “key hardware partners,” Gates said, as was the case with Windows in the PC space. Intel, Wyse, National Semiconductor, and ViewSonic were all working on Mira-powered smart displays, Microsoft said. And HP, NEC, and Samsung were pushing forward with Freestyle-powered PCs. (It wasn’t clear at first whether Freestyle was a software application that would be provided to existing Windows XP users or bundled with a coming generation of new PCs. But Mira would be based on Windows CE .NET and would connect to XP-based PCs like a more traditional display.)

Microsoft demonstrated Mira first, showing that a Mira display would often be used normally with a PC using a base of sorts for a wired connection. But it could also be lifted off the base and carried around the home “like a tablet,” using its built-in wireless capabilities to communicate with the Windows XP-based PC back at the desk.

Freestyle, meanwhile, would run on top of Windows XP, and it too would let users “step back” from the PC, though in this case they would at least stay in the same room. It would enable TV-like capabilities via a tuner card in the PC and would provide a software guide so you could find live TV shows to watch and record, a software-based alternative to Microsoft’s Ultimate TV set-top box.

Mira and Freestyle could also work together, though this scenario was the most far-fetched. Microsoft’s Steve Guggenheimer asked the keynote audience to imagine a future in which flat-screen TVs had Mira built-in and would be connected wirelessly to a PC in another room with Freestyle capabilities. Users could access TV content on screens throughout the house, he said, and also access productivity features like instant message notifications from anywhere. It was, in effect, the connected home. One that was based on Windows XP, of course.

Gates and company also talked up its MSN 8 Internet client, its proprietary Windows Media technologies, and a coming “Xbox Online” service that would take advantage of the console’s Ethernet port and add “community” features, an industry first. But my head was spinning with visions of Freestyle, in particular. And so I was surprised when the Microsoft employees I spoke with at the post-keynote reception were more conservative about the future than Gates, telling me that they expected these technologies to require numerous iterations and several years before they would be mainstream.

Microsoft’s Dave Fester told me that Freestyle was designed specifically for “the 10-foot experience”—there it is—and said that it was just the first generation. The product was being promoted by a previously unknown group called eHome that was quickly punished by higher-ups for pushing its own in-house brand over that of Windows. And its underlying plumbing came from Fester’s Windows Media group.

“Freestyle is just another UI for accessing the digital media features in Windows XP,” he told me, one that would use a remote control. But I was blown away: Freestyle, I told Microsoft, made everything I used for this functionality at the time “suck,” and the next several months would move slowly as I waited for the product to be finalized.

As for Mira, I was told that it was designed in tandem with Freestyle, its connection technology was based on 802.11b and Windows Terminal Services, and that Microsoft was already looking ahead to future generations of television sets and under-cabinet displays in the kitchen. Mira made for a good demo, but it was slow, and a co-worker later noted that the prototype displays were heavy as well. Still, the promise was there.

Work on Freestyle and Mira continued throughout 2002, with the initial public release of each expected by the end of 2002. Each would only be delivered via hardware partners, and, it turned out, each would require (or include) Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), which would also ship by the end of that year. In addition to rolling up all of the post-release fixes and compatibility updates that Microsoft had delivered since October, SP1 would come with a new Windows Messenger version for instant messaging, USB 2.0 support, the .NET Framework (but only as an option), and a few user interface changes related to Microsoft’s consent decree in the U.S.

Mira would eventually come to market as Windows Powered Smart Displays, an unfortunate moniker that highlighted its connection to Microsoft’s core platform.

“Mira does for monitors what the cordless handset did for telephones,” Microsoft CEO Ballmer said in March. “It frees consumers from their home offices and allows them to enjoy the complete Windows XP experience, including full web browsing, sending and receiving e-mail messages, listening to music, and editing and displaying digital images, from any room in their homes.”

Mira’s hardware partners would expand over time to include Fujitsu, LG Electronics, NEC, and Philips, as well as the four original companies, and they promised a range of 15- to 20-inch primary smart displays and 8- to 10-inch secondary displays. Each would include a stylus, and some would ship with wireless keyboards. I speculated that connected homes would soon have “several small Mira devices, splayed around like remote controls, that can be used on the fly from bed, the living room, or wherever.” Oops.

Oddly, Microsoft kept promising future smart display features before the first version had even shipped. Windows Powered Smart Displays version 2, Mr. Ballmer promised, would do away with the one user limit imposed by Windows XP, allowing up to two people to access the same desktop PC at the same time, one via the main display and one via a remote Mira secondary display. This and other revelations almost certainly undermined the first generation of products.

By mid-summer 2002, Microsoft was touting the smart displays for their “roam-ability,” a sort of
“portable phone in the home.”

“You can’t really use it outside your house, because it needs that base station,” Windows lead Jim Allchin explained. “Mira needs the PC. [By comparison,] the Tablet [PC] is like a cell phone because you can take it with you. You take your storage with you, you take your CPU processing with you, you take many of your other peripherals with you. So I think some people have been confused about that.”

People would continue to be confused by that. And despite at least one major iteration, Windows Powered Smart Displays went nowhere fast, and never sold well, and the platform was quickly discontinued. In the future, Microsoft would introduce other solutions that would let Windows users “remote” their PC wirelessly to other displays in less proprietary—and less expensive—ways. It is perhaps not coincidental that one of those solutions is called … wait for it … Miracast.

Freestyle fared better. So much better, in fact, that it was eventually marketed as a unique, standalone Windows version called Windows XP Media Center Edition over three major iterations before being integrated into more mainstream Windows versions when the XP generation finally came to a close in late 2006.

Windows XP Media Center Edition—Freestyle—was based on Windows XP Professional with SP1 and it would require a new type of PC called the Media Center PC that included built-in TV tuner hardware, specific IR hardware for remote control and cable box interactions, and DVD drives. That said, mouse and keyboard navigation was added in mid-2002 during the beta, as was the ability to run the Media Center application as a floating window, instead of just being a full-screen experience. (Microsoft’s support for Bluetooth would also arrive in Windows XP SP1, and Bluetooth-based keyboards and mice were popular with Media Center users.)

Media Center PC was a gift to Microsoft’s PC maker partners: these PCs would be much more expensive than the typical PCs of the day, thanks to their powerful innards and peripheral requirements. In return, Microsoft desperately wanted those partners to deliver Media Center PCs that would appeal to home theater enthusiasts and would resemble stereo equipment. But the first generation of these PCs did not meet this need in the slightest. In a snub to Microsoft and its ambitions, the very first Media Center PC, an HP Pavilion tower PC, looked decidedly out of place in the living room and needed to be placed on the floor, upright. It was so big it wouldn’t fit in an AV rack, not even close.

Despite the awkwardness of the first Media Center PCs, the many bugs in the software, and some balkiness with the required IR sensors, Media Center Edition was a masterstroke. Its user interface was simple and intuitive, and it provided live TV viewing, pausing, and recording; DVD movie viewing; and seamless—for the day—integration with the user’s digital photos, music, and videos libraries.

Even the remote controls were excellent, and quite full-featured.

But Media Center’s greatest strength—it was a PC—was also its greatest weakness. As a PC, it succumbed to crashes too frequently, and as a system not designed specifically for 10-foot interfaces, too many 2-foot interfaces would intrude in the form of dialog boxes and other windows while people were just trying to watch TV. Microsoft told me that it had considered two paths for Media Center, and that the other alternative was to build an Xbox-like set-top box. But such a box would not allow it to take advantage of the richness of the hardware and software capabilities of the PC ecosystem. And, after all, it already had a set-top box called Ultimate TV.

In the coming years, Media Center pushed forward with future versions called “Harmony” and “Symphony” that added support for the wide 16:9 aspect ratio of HDTVs, more seamless integration with digital cable set-top boxes, and many other features. (And Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (“Symphony”) even added a rare new Windows XP visual style called Royale.) And Microsoft’s partners finally got the memo on hardware design and began offering Media Center PCs that looked like high-end stereo equipment and could be put in an AV rack. But the platform never truly succeeded despite its vocal fanbase, in part because standalone digital video recorders (DVRs) were much simpler and much less expensive. And because the cable industry finally woke up to the DVR competition and started supplying their subscribers with free or inexpensive DVR solutions of their own.

Microsoft and a small group of hardware partners would later market other Media Center-related products like Media Center Extenders that would “remote” the Media Center experience to other TVs. There was a software-based Extender for Xbox as well that came with a bundled remote control, and then a software-based Extender for Windows too. There were even handheld Portable Media Centers, if briefly.

But the platforms failed quickly, and by the time Windows Vista shipped in late 2006, Media Center was no longer offered as a standalone product version. Instead, it was simply one of many unique features provided in its higher-end product editions. Eventually, Media Center would simply disappear, after Microsoft noticed that most Media Center launches were inadvertent by the 2010s.

Freestyle and Mira were interesting—if temporary—XP-based diversions. But they weren’t the only Windows XP SP1-based platforms that Microsoft was prepping for release exclusively via hardware partners by the end of 2002. A third product, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, was curiously absent from Gates’s CES 2002 keynote, but for a reason: Microsoft saw it only as a productivity-focused product for traveling knowledge workers, and that CES happened at a time when Apple was making inroads with iTunes and the first iPod. Microsoft wanted to dominate the living room before Apple could move in that direction.

“The Tablet PC will be coming out in the second half of next year,” Gates noted in his only mention that day. “And that’s a very significant thing because it actually takes the entire PC and gets it into that portable form factor.”

Tablet PC would go on to follow a path similar to that of Windows Powered Smart Displays and Media Center PCs, despite Bill Gates’ backing and his belief that Tablet PCs and their stylus-based handwriting capabilities were the future of portable computing: after a few versions as a standalone product, its unique functionality was later integrated into more mainstream Windows versions in 2006.

But that’s a big story in its own right. More soon.