Silverlight: Microsoft Vaporware Video

Microsoft "Silverlight" popped up this morning, a "cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web."

Looking at Silverlight's home page, I first thought it was something new. Digging deeper, I found it's .NET and XAML. Oh, OK, WPF/E.

Anyhow, I tried to watch the video. They've got the phrase "cross-browser, cross-platform" plastered everywhere, but I could only get it to play on my PC, and that's after a string of codec downloads and WMP updates. SSDD at MSFT.

Once I got the video running, it was basically mashing of everything people have liked on the Web in the past year. As a whole, it was entirely unoriginal and conveyed no meaning whatsoever - it could be an advertisement for a new development platform, a new database, or a new cell phone.

It literally said nothing about Silverlight, presented regurgitations of popular themes, and alienated the people it needs to attract:

1. Scene 1

An artist draws and colored swirly designs leap off the canvas. It looks for all the world like they copy/pasted the artwork from Adobe's Creative License preloader. I'm not saying Adobe was entirely original with that look, but it's a bit like when your parents try to use your generation's slang.

2. Scene 2

Developer in white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses arranges what looks to be "blocks of code" visually. Sure, I love it when I drag something out in VisualStudio and it calls the instance "DataConnection1." This scene's really going to win over some developers: there's nothing like having your persona in the video be George McFly.

3. Scene 3

"Cool" guy stands in the middle of a 3d revolving set of snowboards / skateboards. North Face demo take 2 much?

4. Scene 4

A warehouse guy (maybe a metaphor for a DBA, given the stacks of snowboards) uses a thin, handheld, rounded-edged PDA-type device with a touch screen to send a skateboard order.

This is so unoriginal I really did have to pause the video to make sure he wasn't using an iPhone.

5. Scene 5

Kids look at skateboarding videos arranged around an axis. North Face, again.

6. Scene 6

Two women use a vertically mounted multitouch screen to watch videoa, look at pictures, etc. The MSFT ripoff artists making this video forgot one thing when they ripped the postures and gestures from the famous multitouch video demo: to make the UI multitouch.

7. Scene 7

Business type looks at charts and graphs. This is kind of a glossed over "Yes, you can do charts with this thing" clip.

If there's going to be a new development platform, there are two people you need to hook: developers and business leaders. They're both the least featured personas in this video.

In case anyone's not up to speed, Microsoft typically follows one of two patterns when they want to break in to a market:

1. Buy their competition. I doubt Adobe's selling the Flash platform, which leaves...
2. Promote the heck out of their alternative while spreading FUD about their competition. Once the competition is pretty much dead, regardless of the merit of their products, release something fairly craptastic.

Over the next few days, expect plenty of Microsoft punditry about Silverlight being the RIA revolution for the masses and a new image of Microsoft as a RIA company focused on cross-platform technologies.

Remember, this is the company who brought you Vista (Dell just decided to keep selling XP boxes due to customer demand), the Zune (expect them free in happy meals by year end), the XBox 360 (at least 1/2 of 360's produced are sitting in warehouses), some crazy wristwatch PC thing, and Microsoft Bob. And those are just their flagship "revolutions."

Amusing update:

As I was posting this, my wife came in, looked at my screen, and asked "What is Silverlight?" So I played the video, and this is her answer:

"It's swirly, creative, lets us do this stuff at home, it's for skateboarders, they're doing that thing they do on tv where they move things around with their hands, and you can share pictures."

After the video was done: "Who knows?"

Good job launching your new development platform, guys.

My wife is still asking me "What do you do with it?"

"It sounds like the Breeze (Adobe Connect) thing. Community stuff."

Oi.

Me: "It's their answer to the stuff I've been using - Flex, Apollo, etc."

Her: "So why are they marketing it to skateboarders?"

Overall, her main impression of what Silverlight was, based on the video, was that it was multi-touch screens.