Programming Windows: Bombshell (Premium)

On January 6, 2001, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates delivered the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It came just two months after he delivered a similar keynote address at Fall COMDEX, also in Las Vegas, and that was a tough act to follow, as Gates had given attendees there the first-ever public preview of a coming platform called Tablet PC, and that demo had been interrupted several times by enthusiastic applause.

But Gates thought he could outdo it.

First, he started with some familiar territory. As the master of the personal technology universe, Bill Gates wove a tale in which the PC was the center of everything and how a new generation of smart hardware, like Pocket PC devices, living room set-top boxes like Ultimate TV, and videogame consoles would supplement the PC experience. They would connect to each other and the Internet via a “breakthrough wireless technology” called 802.11 and DSL and cable modem broadband connections, with software defining the communications experience. Software that would come from Microsoft, of course. According to Gates, even video editing would soon become mainstream.

“Now, I mentioned the PC playing a critical role here,” he said. “In the next release of Windows, we [will] create a machine that you'll be leaving on 24 hours a day, a machine that can continue to service the different peripherals, the picture frames, the music playing devices, the different control things you have around the house … We're taking the PC and using the wireless infrastructure to make it available throughout the home.”

“These will be PCs where you can take the screen, pick it up and walk around, taking it with you,” he said, referring obliquely to the Tablet PC. “Some of those screens will be very rich in terms of the kind of interaction you have, some will just be simple, passive display devices. [Here, he is also referring to a coming and as-yet announced Microsoft platform.]” According to Gates, even video editing would soon become mainstream.

Gates brought out Microsoft’s Steve Guggenheimer to provide a demonstration of Whistler, the next version of Windows. Whistler would be the first mainstream version of Windows to leave behind the old DOS-based underpinnings, he noted, but it would also expand on the capabilities provided by the NT-based Windows 2000. He showed off a new feature that would let multiple people be signed into Windows at the same time without needing to shut down applications and logoff, a cleaner new user interface, and how USB peripherals could automatically work when plugged in for the first time.

Whistler would also feature file system-based integration with web-based storage---he specifically showed off something called MSN Community---and utilize a new Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) technology to communicate with smart devices wirelessly on a local network. This connectivity, with both web-based resources and local, connec...