Jan. 18, 2021

Ryan's Windows Epiphany

Ryan's Windows Epiphany

Could this be the future Microsoft's envisioning?

We discuss Microsoft's strategy for Windows, Ryan's journey to Linux/Mac, and insights from "The Goal" and "Lean Startup".

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Ryan Purvis  0:00  
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face and how they solve them. The years they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took, that will help you to get to the scripts for the digital workspace inner workings.

So I had this epiphany this morning, while I was working out, I finally figured out martial strategy, the operating system.

Heather Bicknell  0:40  

Ryan Purvis  0:42  
So I think they deliberately are splitting out the operating system into two flavors. Maybe Maybe, no, definitely, I definitely see windows 10, as we know it as the enterprise version going down the route of being a non persistent operating system. So what I mean by that, I mean that it's something that will be a base image as you will you release it, either on your web platform or your own video platform. I'm very common architecture that you can completely control either in the web world, or in your own data center. But it's meant to run on very specific hardware, that you you control all the variables in an ecosystem. And then you have this flavor, which is where they're going the roots for the dual screen device, or the things called, they were another windows flavor called R or x or something that's coming, which is like a pared down version, I think that's the version that's gonna be more consumer oriented, which we'll work on more variable devices. Because I've used Android for the new phone device, it almost looks like they're moving a slightly less well moving out of the consumer space. And relying more on a operating system that is strong in the consumer space. And you may even see windows fall away at that level for the next two years, but I can see it happening over time. And then in that space, you'll be using apps more to access Marshall products, or Azure services, because at that point, who cares about the end to end windows, while the operating system for the for the consumer is going to be replaced by Android, or iOS? Doesn't matter whether they are a Linux distro? As I've seen this morning, I think that's quite a part of

Heather Bicknell  2:51  
it isn't windows so slightly one or the I don't know if they just names

Ryan Purvis  2:56  
windows, as is the like, it's locked down to the point that you can't you can't use any other browsers you can only use. What at that point was age now. So now, so will the new version of age at least Yeah. There's another one that they've been working on. I heard the other day, which is another sort of spin off version, which I think is going to be the consumer orientated one, and then you're going to have this the windows to power windows 10, the big one will be made for for more VDI environments. With his reference, you know, evergreen replacing of you know, rebuilds often and, and running patches often and the the sort of rapid cycle of, of enhancements. Yeah, I think that's I think that's the plan.

Heather Bicknell  3:55  
Did you read something that sparked you in this direction? Or was it just observations from yours? So

Ryan Purvis  4:03  
what will like most of these sorts of things, they just pop up in your head? Sometimes you just, you know, I think I think I mean, I listen to Windows weekly, as my main sort of Windows podcast. The Azure ones mess up. But you know, they were saying something we've talked about on the on the show as well about how I really hate windows 10 as a consumer operating system. And I think it's only designed for, for women going in a sense of of a of a hosted desktop as a service offering. But if you take it away from from every user, then you don't have Wi Fi without the out of the energy space and you lose a huge amount of your market share, and you're in your sort of cult of Microsoft following because everyone just uses windows because that's what's the most preferred device. And you don't want it as a strategy. Don't ever want Microsoft to be known as only an enterprise operating system. I think With them to business, as much as they don't really focus on Windows, in earnings calls and that kind of stuff. But the more I thought about them, and the more I've seen, how are they rolling out updates and how unstable things morph, I thought that that's probably what they are trying to do, but they have to put something on the consumer side. So you have the Windows, Windows 10 s, but there's another one, which I think is called x, I think that's coming out, which is almost designed for consumer. And I think that's the one that because if you break if you break them apart, this is sort of the perfect game for if you break them apart, you have the windows 10 Enterprise Edition that is designed for VDI infrastructures that can be rolled out really when you take away all that headache from from the internal IT guys trying to keep up to date with the new releases. But you, you now provided in such a way that they can roll out the images quite quickly as well. Because your other pattern is you're trying to you're trying to keep the consumer happy. Running out of these big updates to the consumer, most consumers don't need more than they don't need a new functionality, often they just need the security updates. So you need to make the the operators a lot more lightweight. And I say light in relative terms, or less complicated for users to upgrade by themselves. Because that's what what the challenge is right now if sitting through this pandemic and having people working remotely and, and they're having issues with updates. It's very frustrating. Because Because it's it's a really poor experience. And it's an experience you can't control. And most of the problems are because you've got encrypted drives, which the average consumer won't do, they're not going to install BitLocker they're not going to or whatever you use, they're just going to run the machines, which they shouldn't be honest, they should be encrypting their drives, but but typically they won't. But if you go on the enterprise route where most businesses are now, and I say most business, I've got a number for this, but I know that banks are going VDI to some extent. And and this is falling through there. And also it makes sense that if Microsoft is offering you a an Azure service that you can pay for as part of your your UI five license, Wi Fi license, whatever it is, which is cheaper than having laptops, and you can secure your data because that's really what you're what you're paying, or what you want to do on secure data, you want to have stable environment, it becomes a really nice story to say, well, this hour paid on your corporate card, to have the machine for a month or put it on your invoice to run the infrastructure, we'd have to go by, you know, 1000 laptops, 10,000, laptops, whatever it is, everyone can just use a device of choice, which is connected into a secure environment. Say I think it's just I think it's just a puzzle pieces fitting together to send this thing a very well actually, that would probably what they're trying to get to, was what I would do if I were in if such as choose strings.

Heather Bicknell  8:07  
Yeah, I mean, I can see that with, you know, obviously, they want to move people to web and on Azure, that sort of the play. So really, anything that gets people to Azure is the move they're making right now, especially in the enterprise.

Ryan Purvis  8:27  
And then you go, you got to look at it from a you know, what is what is the ideal endgame for them? You know, trying to if you're trying to manage both in both ecosystems, because the consumer ecosystem is very different than enterprise ecosystem. I mean, average, down for a couple days. You know, they're only going to complain about it to them to someone, you know, in social media, or they'll get a result. You know, but if you bring down a whole a whole business, because you've rolled out a new patch, like 20, or 20, of one for it was a nightmare to upgrade to, you know, that's a factual condition to deal with. To what you know, who's gonna shout the loudest? Well, obviously someone that's got a lot of seats. I just did. Yeah. Just like I said, it perfectly. Just makes sense to me. We'll see what happens. So one of the things that see we are in five years time,

Heather Bicknell  9:29  
yeah, watch this space. So how is your personal Linux journey going? Are you still playing around with that?

Ryan Purvis  9:39  
I am, I am. I've actually been playing around with today a little bit here and there. I'm finding a few challenges. It's not It's not as easy as I hope to be. And I think that's just the reality of moving to a different ecosystem. A lot of the apps that I use daily don't exist in the Linux system, which is very frustrating. So as going to a vanilla distribution doesn't work off the bat because you know, they're not they're not as popular as Windows 10 or Mac is. So what I'm seeing is that mostly absent of wind on Mac. So I've been rebuilding my Mac okay my wife A while ago, to be maybe my device that I'm used to the general things. And then I'm basically work between my iPad and the Mac, and then that should, should get me off completely. And it's little things like, like notion which I use for everything that doesn't have a Linux app. OneDrive doesn't have a Linux app. The Dropbox I use sometimes doesn't have a Linux app. So there's a lot of there's a lot of an official apps. So I'm trying those things. If they work for a period of time, I think, you know, the, the world is moving to more Linux environment. If you look at, generally speaking, all your IoT devices are bought on Linux environment. Like occasions for years have been hosted on Linux, Linux always been the most stable thing. And the actual, you know, General UX experience on loose wires is actually better than Windows 10. It's a lot simpler and cleaner. But it does miss a couple things like business, like Windows, you press the Windows key, you get search, that you can just search for something and use it. I haven't found that on Linux per se. You've got to kind of tweak it a little bit. I think it's a little a little bit of a hobbyhorse. But you know, so far away. I mean, what I'm finding interesting, and this is also based on scotchman budget is performance differences crazy. I mean, the machine that I've used that I've set up Linux, the battery life is double what it was 10 and zero to boot, it's as good as the Mac said, you just open it up into their Windows devices, 234 seconds. And sometimes you still have to press a few buttons to get in. It's not It's not the user experience you're looking for. So we'll see. I'm trying very hard to move. And the problem is I don't always have the time to go and do the research and things like that I struggle with the other days, I wanted to do a whole bunch of pivot table stuff in Excel. And I just wasn't confident that I could do this. Yeah, that's the best thing like, Can you do that kind of stuff?

Heather Bicknell  12:34  
Yeah, Excel is one of those apps, it's really hard to replace with anything else.

Ryan Purvis  12:41  
Yeah. For that,

Heather Bicknell  12:42  
you know, anything really other than being simple tables? It's like, yeah, I can't really use sheets or something else.

Ryan Purvis  12:49  
Exactly, exactly. So. So the other thing that I wanted to chat to you about is I've been rereading two books. One was called the goal. The other one is called the lean startup. And both of them are quite interesting. So who I am, and with one of my projects at the moment is around how you organize when you when you're building something, and, and the goal is, is about a content of the Theory of Constraints. Which means you can only if you think about the example that he said it's a book worth reading, because he actually it's a very good story, the way it's written. It takes you through the factory process of building widgets, you know, obviously, product for whatever, whatever it is. But the problem of the book is it doesn't really cross the line into software development, which is where I was kind of trying to get my story like, okay, that's great, I understand your constraints. And what you're trying to do and the sort of this this couple concepts, but but the one concept is, is the higher order things. And it goes contrary to what you think is a logical assumption. So for example, ordering things ordered by the slowest thing first, because the slowest thing needs to be done first before you can do things and again, it kind of speed you up. The other thing which is there a batch size, and how much work do you do? to to get something out? Do you do things one to one to one to the end or single item finish first? And then you do the next one? Or do you do maybe an example be filling envelopes to fill all the envelopes to the same point and then you write the address and then you seal them? Or do you finish one envelope and then do the next level of the next envelope. And it's the sort of the contradictions in terms because somebody would say, Well, if you fill all the envelopes together, you're obviously quicker because you're doing simple tasks. you're all thinking the same time you're doing all the labeling at the same time you do all the stickiness at the same time. But the problem is if you find a problem at the end of the process, you've now got to go in and full all the envelopes into full absence, those sorts of contradictory terms, you've got to get your head around. So that's where the two books combined and be quite nice, because Lean Startup talked a lot about experimentation. And, and getting the matrix, right. The goal talks about the matrix, and it talks about, you know, these other concepts of ordering things and batch sizing. But the liens are kind of crossing the bridge into software development or building Park, which is where I'm at the moment. So yeah, that's pretty good, looks pretty good. To me. Looking for something, something to read.

Heather Bicknell  15:35  
Sounds interesting. So they both sort of more theory based than like, you know, the author's personal experience?

Ryan Purvis  15:45  
Yeah. So So the goal is theoretical. You know, he's trying to, he's trying to convey the concept. Whereas the lean startup is actually a combination of both. So the guy who writes the Lean Startup riesel rice, he talks about one of the startups that he worked in, and what they had to deal with. And then he also looked at other examples, so you'll, you know, his his product, what they did, and where they did well, or badly, and then you're looking at an example where else and it'd be, you know, whoever it is, the things like, like the example is a good one, where he's explaining how the envelope thing is, it's you think people would say that the productivity gain would be that you're doing the same task and repeat and repetition, but actually, the benefits you get from the one to one revolution complete, which is to pick the envelope, full the envelope and unwrap the label on it, it's better because you identify problems quicker, you get the results quicker as well, which means you can push it out. So you can, you know, if you're thinking about doing a big mailing out 1000 people, the minute that envelopes ready, you can send it out. Whereas if you're doing batching, and you're trying to do body work, when everything is logical work batching, we fall together, and you label them and you stick and then you send them, you have to wait till 1000 to finish, before you send them out. You wouldn't be posting out, it's a it's a finish 10 envelopes a day, and you start sending up, you know, the next day 10 on the road, you may realize that after 15, that actually the project's finished to start. So your cost is cut off at that point. But if you did 1000, and then you sent them out, when you committed now you've already spent the time the resource the money. And if you have to pull the plug, then you've you've you kind of do that. So that's the sort of thing that's where I'm in the book them about how 60% through. But that's much more practical, which is probably why I'm enjoying it a bit more. Because whilst the goal is really well, and it's written as a story of the day in the life of a former client manager, and he's also going to go through this exercise of re educating people against some fallacies. Like, if you're in a factory, the machines always should be working. And if they're not, if they're not doing what's a priority item, they should just be doing what they do. So you know, building surplus building inventory of parts, and then you say, Well, no, that's a waste. Because you not only do you waste the time building the machine, that building the inventory, but then energy sits on the floor, and it cost you money when it sits there. And it costs you space, and it costs because every time you try to navigate the factory floor, you got to navigate all this extra surplus of stuff you don't need. So it's again, coming back to this concept of build the most important thing into end first, and then build the next most important thing in first, and don't split your resources and make everyone focus and that are LED quite nicely into dev team, are you saying we've got a dev team of you know, 1235 people, whatever it is, but they need to work on that component for the most important part of the first get that finished, and then do the next one and get that finished and get the next one. Instead of having, you know, teams that are spread out do too many things. And you try to bring them back together later on. Because they'll always be out of sequence. Can you see right.

Heather Bicknell  18:57  
Yeah. Now that that makes sense. To me. That is interesting. Because I think, yeah, it is kind of unintuitive versus the way of mean, I'm just thinking about even the assembly line, which I guess sort of combines both envelope approaches to some extent because you have the machine or the person doing the repeat task, which which has that efficiency of you know, being designed for that or being accustomed to whatever part in the process they're doing. But then you are getting, you know, complete items one at a time, not you know, building pieces and then finishing them all at once. It's not like you have a team of five who are responsible for building cars and and you know, you replicate that team across the floor and so you have that whole chain that goes down so

Ryan Purvis  19:54  
it does work. I mean, if you think about from the technology world That's often where teams get hurt, because they're trying to do too many things. And we're all guilty of it. I mean, I'm sitting with it now. And we we've have split the team to work on to two different pieces of functionality. But the reality is that that that was a conscious decision is they those two pieces are completely distinct from each other. So they have to be finished, play finished. And you try to reduce it, because it's the other thing is to reduce the dependencies as much as possible. And at least be aware of what your dependencies are. So for example, you know, typical resource that the special skill, the graphic designer, and graphic designer can only work on one component at a time. So you need to know which one, you know, he or she needs to work on first. So they can set that piece up before the developer starts or be aware that development gets to the point where you need to go after design, and then you're sort of trying to find the right balance. So well, you know, where does it go for designing getting involved versus with one opponent is the other since you still have the same end date? Which, which sometimes gets forgotten, because you don't sometimes think of it as dependencies, what happens usually is developers work on something, they both get to the same point. And then they said, Oh, now we need to go for design in the garage. Which one will come first? So yeah, it's just, it's so interesting, because you know, this, it's good to read books a few times, because sometimes you read the book, and it's just interesting to you at the time, but you don't really apply it. And suddenly, we're like, holy crap, this is exactly what I'm dealing with. I'm so glad I'm reading this book is giving me ideas. And it talks about things in the lean sideline, you know, AV testing, and writing functionality. But, but also what I really find interesting is the matrix, because there's there's vanity metrics, the vanity metrics, podcasts, for example, how many downloads you have? Well, you know, it's nice to know that any good month that you had, you know, 100 episodes downloaded, that's, that's great. But does that really tell you anything about your podcast? No, it doesn't tell you anything. But it's a much more interesting thing to know. And we don't unfortunately, get those stats as does someone listen all the way through? Do they do they're listed? Are they subscribed? And then we don't get you know, we don't know how many subscribers or downloads. But that's the important stuff that you want. And then you can start working on ways to make it more sticky. So things like potentially running a survey at some point in asking, you know, when someone listens to the episode, once the survey, why did you listen? What made interesting was that was the title was it because we interviewed a guest? Was it because it's a topic that's important to you right now. The other sorts of little bits of extra information will help us improve the quality of the product, which is the episode.

Heather Bicknell  22:49  
We can look at their Spotify and Apple podcasts actually the listen through time.

Yeah. Do they not have that? No, I

Ryan Purvis  23:03  
haven't seen it change. Yeah, I

Heather Bicknell  23:06  
mean, that's a nice aggregated metric is Yeah.

Ryan Purvis  23:09  
For me, I'm looking at more. The reason why I look at the download is just to make sure that it's getting out. It's just nice to see the numbers going up. But it's it's more when you get someone that you speak to that send you a message or, or you chat to call the guy or listen to episode on whatever was gamification or information security. So I really enjoyed that. It'll be more and more about what you think on this stuff. That's that's the the differences in some senses.

Heather Bicknell  23:40  
Yeah. Yeah, I met time.

Ryan Purvis  23:43  
Will channel Thursday. Yeah. All right. Thank you for listening. Today's episode, and the big news app producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. for your hard work for this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW w podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website WWW dot digital workspace that works. Please also visit our website www dot digital workspace that works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends and colleagues.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai