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Microsoft to Attack RIM with Magneto 193

Posted by timothy from the comic-book-names-for-good-hyperbole dept.
An anonymous reader writes "At this week's Mobile and Embedded DevCon (MEDC) in Las Vegas, it's anticipated that Microsoft will finally unveil 'Magneto', widely expected to be dubbed Windows Mobile 2005. Magneto is rumored to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile into a single platform that combines smartphone and PDA capabilities. Consistent with that strategy, Pocket Office will reportedly be renamed Office Mobile, with other key apps similarly redesignated Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, and Outlook Mobile."
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Microsoft to Attack RIM with Magneto More

Microsoft to Attack RIM with Magneto

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  • Wow (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by CypherXero ( 798440 )
    So they renamed their products...wow. What, is this supposed to make them "cooler"?

    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)

      by fireboy1919 ( 257783 ) <rustyp@free[ ]ll.org ['she' in gap]> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:26PM (#12469536) Homepage Journal
      Well, given the name, I expect that they'll be able to generate powerful magnetic fields and hatching nafarious plots. Apparently, Microsoft feels that the human demographic is no longer a viable source of income, and therefore must be wiped out to make way for the Homosuperiors.

      Not, cooler, but it keeps with Microsoft's corporate vision, "be more evil each day."

    • Re:Wow (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Fat chance.

      At this point, Microsoft would need to publish a vapid, cloying blog to be any cooler, but you've got the patent.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Frizzle Fry ( 149026 )
      The interesting part isn't the renaming it's where they "merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile into a single platform that combines smartphone and PDA capabilities". Needing to come up with a name for the new combined product is just a side effect.
    • Haha. I was thinking the same thing.

  • Let me get this straight (Score:4, Funny)

    by Quattro Vezina ( 714892 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:19PM (#12469484) Journal
    They're using an old X-Men villain to fight RIM?

    • Re:Let me get this straight (Score:4, Interesting)

      by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro@g m a i l . com> on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:50PM (#12469711) Journal
      In an incredibly geeky style here i go ... magneto was not really a bad guy , He was the one who ultimatly stoped Apocolypse allowing Bishop to resotre the proper timeline and saving the world from the Nuclear holocost...
      Magneto was more of a anti-hero he was really good but just a bit hardline due to the mistreatment of mutants.

      So i guess this shows us that microsoft thinks of its mobile devices as mistreated mutants who will save the world from Apocolypse ...
    • "They're using an old X-Men villain to fight RIM?"
      Pfft..whaddya think "XP" stood for?
      X-People, of course.
      It's more PC (Politically Correct) than X-"men".
      Get it? XP, PC... I'm keeping my day job.

  • To attack with Magneto? (Score:5, Funny)

    by oberondarksoul ( 723118 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:20PM (#12469489) Homepage
    Professor X unavailable for comment.

  • Xmen Save the Day! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft to Attack RIM with Magneto

    looks like RIM will have to call upon the assistance of the Xmen!

  • Groklaw's good idea (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    X-Men jokes go here.
  • is whether or not with the new portable device, you'll be able to manipulate magnetic fields

  • RIM (Score:3, Informative)

    by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:23PM (#12469507)
    RIM = Research in Motion

    Maybe I should have known that but I didn't..

  • Ya but.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by jobber-d ( 225767 )
    can they trust him?
  • So will Linux release mobile "Professor X", only to have the two OS's mutant API's do battle to save or destory mankind?
  • Office mobile... because paper clips should be able to piss you off no matter where you are.
    • Office mobile... because paper clips should be able to piss you off no matter where you are.

      Why mod this as a troll? Maybe not a spectacular joke, but since more people on /. than not seem to dislike the little paper-clip/dog/einstein than like it, it's at least worth a chuckle.

      At worst, I would chuckle and not give it mod points at all.

  • I've been waiting for this to happen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:27PM (#12469548)
    Blackberry is a great product. Not quite mainstream enough to be interesting to the 'big boys'. RIM isn't big enough to fight off Microsoft. If Microsoft decides to take a loss on this for a while then RIM is toast just like WordPerfect and Lotus.

    Too bad. RIM just got through fighting, losing and paying for a patent law suit. Yet, I don't think all the patents in the world will protect them from Microsoft.
    • The 'big boys' have been trying to compete with RIM for a couple of years, before that RIM left its competitors in the dust. MS can try, but MS entering the competition shouldn't terrify RIM, hopefully it justs expands the demand and RIM can cash in on of some of the MS advertising.
    • I used a rim two way pager for years, and the things that will prevent macro$loth from taking much of this market with pocket pcs:

      - short battery life
      - large heavy unit
      - crappy keyboard
      - no vibrating pager alert.

      A busy rim pager can last nearly a whole month on 1 AA battery. They are tiny and light. That little chicklet keyboard is easy to use.

      People don't mind keeping them on their belt, and can discreetly use them at meetings (we used to refer to that position as "the BellSouth prayer"). It's not go
      • - short battery life
        - large heavy unit
        - crappy keyboard
        - no vibrating pager alert.

        Yes, and Microsoft never gets anything right enough to knock of a superior competitor who is first to market with something that people like.

        I mean, figuring out what features you really need to copy in your knock-off, and which of your own ideas is lame shit would take two, no maybe even three generations of product. To manage this while maintaining the losses you'd sustain is utterly unreasonable from a business proposit
    • Indeed. But there's also another key point here.

      Blackberries only work with Microsoft Email products. RIM has explicitly refused to work with Linux servers. Please DO correct me if this has changed recently, as this has been a major impediment towards moving to a Linux-only shop. The Marketing and Sales guys always insist on having their Blackberries, and that in turn requires a Windows server.

      Perhaps now that Microsoft is jumping into RIM's turf, RIM will realize their screwup here, and start adding s

      • Actually, I believe the BES supports Lotus Notes and a Novell email system as well.

        Of course, none of these are absolutely necessary. I'm happily using my Blackberry over pop3 running on my Linux machine.

      • Re:Serves RIM right (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anml4ixoye ( 264762 )

        Yes, my company does a lot of Blackberry development, and we also do Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) hosting, and it supports Groupwise and Lotus.

        And yes, it happily supports POP3 access too. But dang, that BES is nice. Complete control over the phones, remote administration, just really, really nice.

  • So, the most exciting thing... (Score:3, Funny)

    by lxt ( 724570 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:28PM (#12469554) Journal
    ...the submitter could come up with about this new version was that they changed the name of Pocket Office to Office Mobile?

    Well, at least it continues the travesty that is PocketPC in good fashion :)
  • ...Stan Lee sues Microsoft.

  • Yeah! More powerful WinCE devices! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wertarbyte ( 811674 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:33PM (#12469596) Homepage
    This is a good thing, since it will bring more devices to the market Familiar [handhelds.org] runs on. At least I hope so.

  • Marvels trademark (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Marvel sued WWF/E for using "Hulk" in Hulk Hogan and won.
    I can not help but wonder if they have TMed "Magneto" too.
    • Even if they didn't file a trademark, but the use should be pervasive enough to have earned trademark protection. But a trademark applies to a field, Ford can be trademarked for Models and Cars without infringing on each other. Hulk Hogan is a character in both situations. Magneto is a character in one situation, where it is a phone in another.

      The key issue is trademark is the issue of confusion.

  • I read that too fast (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Ryosen ( 234440 )
    >>Excel Mobile

    I read that as Exxon Mobil.

    Thought we had yet another evil empire on our hands.
  • I've been waiting for MS to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile for a while. Having used Dell's Axim x50v, I have to say that it is a great (and relatively inexpensive) PDA. It is very fast, has a large screen and offers many expansion choices. Also, it runs a ton of WinCE apps. One major drawback - it lasts only a fraction of time compared to an average cell phone. However, if "Magneto" (ok, the name is cheesy) were to add a "hibernate" funtion which wakes PDA up on incoming phon
    • However, if "Magneto" (ok, the name is cheesy) were to add a "hibernate" funtion which wakes PDA up on incoming phone call, that would really make battery last *much* longer (so you don't need to keep it on to receive calls).

      Don't they already do that? Mine (Win Mobile 2003) is in standby mode most of the time, with the battery being used to keep the memory alive, keep the phone running, and wait for scheduled wakeups.

      Or, do you mean a complete hibernate, like you'd get on a laptop; i.e. the entire mem

  • ... Trying to resist making a smutty joke about Microsoft attacking Rims...

  • obligatory (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is Blue Screen Mobile(tm) also included?
  • My job is at a Blackberry/Domino/SUSE site but we have to run a Win2003/Domino server for Blackberry Enterprise Server.

    We run Domino because Exchange vulnerabilities are plenty scary and we don't want Active Directory either.

    Time for Blackberry to help us retire that box!

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Mobile what? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @01:48PM (#12469695) Journal
    I wonder ... some things have managed to make a very strong market share out of something or invention that was not understood, or had shaky legal basis in the past. Like was said here, what is the market (in units) for PDA's? What is the market for hand-size mobile computing?

    There are several companies out there that keep hammering away at this market (even though it is not very big or profitable) and eventually, we will all become unimpressed with phones that don't have calendars, address books, do text messaging etc.

    I guess that my point is this: does anyone see where this is going? Can anyone accurately predict what protocols, air interfaces, and file format standards will end up winning in this (now) mobile free for all?

    I predict that the sheer size and market control that M$ has will play more than a significant role in this. To the point that I think anti-trust laws should be used to address anything M$ becomes involved in.... more or less. Not that I have any real fear that Excel will become a useful mobile application anytime before Cray starts making PDAs'

    There are currently so many competing wireless interfaces and protocols, I don't see how anyone getting into the game can imagine they will make money unless they believe that they will be able to manhandle the market place and simply be able to metaphorically bludgeon the competition to death.

    RIM started small, and with what I think was a sound business model. As they make their move into the more consumer oriented marketplace, it is a shame that they will have to fight M$ just to get in the game...

    My real fear is that in the future you won't be able to get a phone without windozeXX on it, or be able to use any air interface not supported by M$ pocket-mobile-crap software.

    I know that sounds a little defeatist, but I don't see any strong competition to M$... sigh

    • Re:Mobile what? (Score:4, Informative)

      by glesga_kiss ( 596639 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @02:09PM (#12469815)
      eventually, we will all become unimpressed with phones that don't have calendars, address books, do text messaging etc.

      Nope. There is and always will be a huge market for basic phones. They just don't make slashdot front page.

      Can anyone accurately predict what protocols, air interfaces, and file format standards will end up winning in this (now) mobile free for all?

      I'll bite. Well, they all have mail and web access, so they are fairly standard, use IMAP for your mail of course. Files get stored on SD-cards, which is a standard format. Notes are txt files. Emails in the inbox are stored in a unique way, just like every other mail package on the planet (with the exception of direct-access stuff like Maildir of course). Recorded audio is plain wav with a choice of codecs.

      The only thing that you might actually have to export manually would be contacts and schedules. Both can be dumped to XML IIRC. I've helped people export data from a variety of phones, and these things are very open compared to others it has to be said.

      Thing is, I can't think of an alternative office are appliction that encompasses shedules, contacts and tasks in an easily workable format, and allows synchronization between mobile devices. I'd be happy to use one if it existed, but hate it or not, Outlook is actually very well featured. That's half the problem here; the competetion isn't all that much of a competion. Yet.

      My real fear is that in the future you won't be able to get a phone without windozeXX on it, or be able to use any air interface not supported by M$ pocket-mobile-crap software.

      Sure, lack of choice bites, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "pocket-mobile-crap software". Have you actually used one? Personally, I think they are the dogs bollocks and there is nothing else as good as them on the market right now. Zealotry aside, that's all that matters.

    • Re:Mobile what? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wfberg ( 24378 )
      The way things are now, the air interface doesn't matter much; for things like data, TCP/IP is the standard, whether it be over GPRS, 802.11b/g, 3G/EDGE or whatever.

      SMS and call-setup is usually handled by device-specific AT-commands to a virtual COM-port.

      Seeing as this is essentially an embedded market, i.e. the OS comes with the device and you won't be replacing it with an upgrade that's provided by anybody else than the hardware supplier, this is really a non-issue.

      It's more troubling that most all ha
  • Go University of Waterloo. Nuff said.

  • Magneto and Titanium Man (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well I was talking last night
    Magneto and titanium man . . .
    We were talking about you, babe,
    Oo --- they said ---
    You were involved in a robbery
    That was due to happen
    At a quarter to three
    In the main street.

    I didn?t believe them
    Magneto and titanium man . . .
    But when the crimson dynamo
    Finally assured me, well, I knew

    You were involved in a robbery
    That was due to happen
    At a quarter to three
    In the main street.

    So we went out
    Magneto and titanium man . . .
    And the crimson dynamo
    Came along for the ride

    We went to tow
  • ...more names, just like they snagged "windows" as a trademarked name, even though there were windows before they used it? Now they own "mobile"? Just great....

  • Bad idea! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @02:08PM (#12469806) Journal
    Come on...we all know you can't let Magneto near computers.

    If magnets can kill your hard drives and monitors, just think about what he could do to them...

  • So what's the difference between Windows CE.. Windows Mobile and Windows Pocket Edition?

  • They attack their rims with magnets? Do MS have magnetic shit or something? I'll use toilet paper thanks.
  • For those of you wondering if MS should be sued over the name "Magneto". 1. there's no confusion between a character named Magneto and software named Magneto 2. it's a freak'n code name, not the release product name

  • Upgrade? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by imemyself ( 757318 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @02:31PM (#12469967)
    Is there any remote chance that you will be able to upgrade from Windows Mobile 2003? If not, then it'll be a long time before large numbers of people actually start using this.
    • Everyone who buys a new device will have to use the new version right away, sending last years models to an early obsolesence grave. Thus fragmenting the user base into more incompatible segments than there already are. Palm, on the other hand, has very good backwards compatibility in PalmOS (except for multimedia functions), unlike WinCE.

    • Re:Upgrade? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Thumper_SVX ( 239525 )
      That depends on your device. Some of them have an upgrade path (those that use flash for storing the OS have a possibility), some don't.

      Basically it will come down to; how well does the manufacturer of your device support your device? You can't take a standard Magneto download and install it on any device, it needs to be customized for your hardware. Since these are closed hardware platforms it falls to the manufacturer to do it unless you feel like doing some serious reverse engineering.

      At the moment, th
  • If you haven't gotten rid of your floppies by now, better do it before you boot up Magneto. Erase-day is coming.

  • Does this mean... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @02:40PM (#12470039) Homepage Journal
    Are we now going to see Sobig.Mobile?

    To be ever so slightly serious, Windows Mobile as a smartphone platform isn't really too bad, wspecially when you're already in a Windows shop. I just deployed some of the Verizon/Audiovox 6600 phones for a client of mine that runs MS SBS 2003 as their server platform (a small accounting firm), and they absolutely love them. The phones are a little bulky, but phone performance is good, data performance and mobile sync work very well, and it only took me a little while to set them up with the server. And they work pretty simply, with decent battery life as phones.

    I wouldn't replace my Sony Ericsson T637 with anything in the current generation (particularly because I use iSync), but when you want your PDA and your cellphone to be in the same device Microsoft is doing a decent job of it.

    Even though it pains me to say that about them - but once in a while Microsoft pretty much Gets It Right with a product. The PocketPC OS is pretty good, Mac Office is very nice (except for the monolithic database file Entourage uses), and SBS 2003 is pretty good for the smaller company with limited Internet exposure.

    And odds are that the new PocketPC/Windows Mobile 2005 won't suck.

  • Windows Mobile is a joke (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is the worst operating system I have ever encountered. For example, when you click on the close button, programs do not actually close. They just minimize. To close a program, you need to reset the handheld or go to the memory management tool in settings and force them to quit. This is ridiculous. Also, if things don't have the right extension, they won't open period.

  • Handhelds aren't just about software... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xRelisH ( 647464 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @02:47PM (#12470074)
    Even though Microsoft has tons of money to spend, I think they will have a tough time beating the Blackberry.

    I always thought PocketPC was kind of bloated, and suffered poor battery life mostly because Microsoft doesn't manufacture or develop the hardware as well.

    However, RIM develops both the hardware and software ( with some minor exceptions ) and this makes it easier to make things efficient and more reliable. It's also the clean interface, you've got icons, a thumbpad and a trackwheel, I don't deed a bloody fingerprint scanner, or 3D acceleration to keep up with my daily schedule. This simplicity is what helped the low-end palm devices and the iPods sell very well.

    The only weakness I see for RIM is MS Exchange. The Blackberry Enterprise Server(BES) works with the MS Exchange server to keep things in sync. I don't know if it would be legal for Microsoft to do this, but if Exchange suddenly refused to stop working with the BES, it might spell trouble for RIM.

    Being a University of Waterloo student, I myself am rooting for RIM as they're a Canadian company and they're set up right next to campus.

    I just hope the developers there get to keep their RIM-jobs.
    ... Sorry :)
    • "I just hope the developers there get to keep their RIM-jobs."

      It's not just a cheesy joke. RIM actually employs a lot of Waterloo students from many different fields. I've personally known several people who've had co-op jobs there.

      If RIM went under, it would adversly affect the university in many ways. I'm rooting for them too.
  • WHY oh WHY do these companies thing that I would be interested in 2001 technology? GPRS? You gotta be shittin me. Here in Europe most cutting edge (read: expensive, and this one ain't going to be cheap, boys 'n girls...) phones have UMTS - 30kbyte/second downloads. GPRS does 3. I believe the USA standard is called EDGE

    This is exactly why I'm not interested in the Motorola MPX [url]. (which incidentally is a similar thing, out for half a year, plus it is a very innovative CLAMSHELL design which I much prefer in

  • Sounds familiar, MS allows their lunch to be eaten for years then steps in claiming innovation.
  • Microsoft may prevent Symbian OS from becoming a monoculture or at least put some competitive pressure. Left by itself Symbian can become closed and developer unfriendly.
  • Cool. I can refuse to help set-up e-mail on yet another unsupported handheld and console the Blackberry people with the line, "well, it's not just you, we don't support the Microsoft mobile devices either..."

  • Needed a cheaper device (Score:3, Interesting)

    by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @03:14PM (#12470249)
    I would like to get a RIM: small keyboard, easy to type notes, addresses, to do lists on, etc.

    The problem is the cost. The devices cost the companies that buy them from RIM hundreds must be expensive to buy. A company I work for buys them close to the selling cost, in the hopes of recuperating the cost on service plans. So the units are still around $500 to $600 CAN. And you have to sign up for a 3-year plan.

    I think RIM needs to do higher volume on residential, non-business sales to survive.

    If MS enters the market I can see a few things:
    1) Either RIM lowers the price drastically, or, if they're lucky MS will price itself out of the market. Otherwise, its sink or swim with the 800 lb Gorilla. (Yes, comparison to Ballmer being made!).
    2) MS continues vendor lock-in. Good luck getting this to work on OS X or Linux.

    I hope RIM innovates and doesn't die. Its a really cool, profitable Canadian high-tech company.
  • Now if they could only make the bundled apps (Pocket Whatever) actually useful. Thus far, I have had to purchase replacements for the crap versions. Of course, I'm still waiting on Minimo.
  • So now MS is moving into the bicycle lighting business sector.

    I can't say that I understand their self motivation, but then again, this is just the start of the product cycle and they have to gear up to be competitive.
  • I'm surprised nobody's put this link here yet but... http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/articles/wm2005-m agneto-en.shtml [mobile-review.com] This is a link to a preview of a Magneto beta build. You can also download it for the XDA 2 [HTC Blue Angel] at http://forum.xda-developers.com/ [xda-developers.com]
    Have fun!

  • Battery will make this unrealistic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by duffer_01 ( 184844 ) on Sunday May 08, 2005 @04:32PM (#12470816) Homepage
    The key reason why RIM has been so successful is because of their network architecture. RIM has the capability to trickle emails down to a device. Since the device is always connected to the network they have the ability to constantly receive these messages. The way the PocketPC devices are built they are not meant to be always connected to a network and if you did you would likely only get about 4-6 hours battery life. When you compare that to > one week for a RIM device there is no comparison.

    I do like that Microsoft is making an alternative to the BlackBerry, I do not think that they will be much competition for RIM unless they build a network architecture like RIM's and they look into the battery life issues.
  • Well, any article about RIM recalls the prank called RIM Job [zug.com] :)
  • Now, we don't have to argue about it anymore--they are telling us themselves that they are after world domination through villainy.

  • Mr Freeze a better codename? (Score:3, Funny)

    by michaeldot ( 751590 ) on Monday May 09, 2005 @03:09AM (#12474646)
    Based on my past experience with running PocketPC software, Mr Freeze might be a better codename.

    Of course, that would mean switching to the Batman world. If we're staying with X-Men, then the Iceman could substitute.

    (Not really trying to troll. I use my iPAQ every day. It's just the apps I use have a habit of leaking memory and needing a soft reset with the stylus fairly frequently.)

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