Microsoft is planning to release its recently acquired application migration technology, known as Alohabob, along with the first release candidate for Windows Vista later this quarter.
Microsoft acquired the Alohabob technology with the purchase earlier in 2006 of application-transfer specialist Apptimum.
At that time, Microsoft said its plans for Apptimums intellectual property and technology assets were focused on streamlining the application transfer process between older and newer computers, with an emphasis on Windows Vista migration.
Jim Allchin, the co-president of Microsofts platforms and services division, told eWEEK at the financial analyst meeting held at Microsofts Redmond campus on July 27 that the program is now ready for testing and would be made available alongside Windows Vista RC 1 “sometime this quarter.”
Migrating applications and files from one computer to another using Windows has long been a tedious and time-consuming process, but that is now a thing of the past, Allchin said, as Alohabob will make the application transfer experience easier and faster for customers.
The new Apple Macs have already achieved that, allowing the user to choose an option during setup for migrating their applications, which involves little more than connecting two computers.
“I have been using Alohabob and it is incredible how much it speeds up the application migration process. In fact I was able to move all the applications from one computer to another using it in just 30 minutes,” Allchin said.
At the time of the Apptimum acquisition, Gabriel Dorfman, a product manager in the Windows group, said Microsoft wanted to supplement “what we are calling the core transfer experience, an area we have been focusing on with Vista, by including some technology that was application-centric.
“We expect that this transfer experience will have the ability to understand how applications work, how they are modeled and how to read them in new environments. Apptimum was found to be the best overall market choice for helping us to accomplish our needs. They had the best fundamental approach,” Dorfman said.
Asked whether he expected Windows Vista to ship on the current timeline—to be released to manufacturing before the end of the year, at which point the code will be made available to volume licensees, with general availability slated for January 2007—Allchin said all current indicators were that it would.
Some reviewers and testers are saying that Vista is still not ready for prime time, and are calling for another delay, even suggesting a third beta might be necessary.
“We will have a much, much better idea of whether we will make the current ship targets when RC1 is released later this quarter, a much better idea. But all indicators now are that we will,” Allchin said. “However, that being said, there is always the possibility that something could happen to derail that and, at the end of the day, when the product ships will be determined by its quality.”
He also was adamant in the face of questions that he would still leave Microsoft at the end of January 2007. “If Vista ships early, I will also still leave at the end of January as planned,” Allchin said.
While improvements in Vistas boot performance “were not great now,” the move to “hibernate” mode was “amazingly quick,” he said.
With regard to all the criticism about the second beta for Windows Vista, Allchin said when it was released 13 of the top 20 bugs reported by beta testers had already been resolved, but were not in that first Beta 2 release.
As the fixes were added, the code improved significantly, he said. “The power management issue was, in my opinion, overblown,” he said.
Asked about the 12 principles announced in July 2006 by which Microsoft will guide its development of the Windows desktop platform, starting with Windows Vista, Allchin said these were not new and had been in place for some time now. “But this was a formalization of those and our public commitment to them,” he said.
However, Allchin was unable to say how long these core principles had been applied to Windows development, and whether Windows XP was developed under them, noting that some of the principles were as a direct result of the final consent decree in the U.S. antitrust case against the software giant.