Microsoft is Taking the Halo References a Bit Far with Windows 10
I had to laugh when I read about the name of the new Windows 10 browser. They’ve given it a name just like they did to the built in digital assistant. The built in Siri clone in manned Cortana, after the computer babe in the popular Halo video game franchise that Microsoft bought from Bungee.
I guess that kinda makes cheesy sense, but nite they’re calling the browser Spartan, which is the kind of soldier that fights in the Halo games.
Next they’ll start calling some other aspect in Windows 10 something like “Master Chief” or something equally Halo-ish.
Well, the new browser is integrated with Cortana and it has a clean viewing mode (reading views) for distraction free browsing.
It also has a new rendering engine “built for the web”.
Internet Explorer will remain on the platform, however, but will be limited to the older rendering engine, while Spartan will get the new engine.
I’m not sure who at Microsoft loves Halo enough to start code naming prerelease software after aspects of the game, or if Microsoft wants to somehow play up to the computer gaming crowd in some way, but the Halo references in prerelease Windows 1o code has reached the “beyond annoying” stage.
I remember having all sorts of beta Microsoft software and operating systems back when I worked for a small enterprise software maker, and back in ye olden days we were happy just calling it beta whatever.
It is nice to see Microsoft looking to reinvent the browser away from the tran wreck that always was Internet Explorer. IE was just a way to capitalize on web ascendancy and to appear to remain relevant to a new Internet concerned tech consumer. Microsoft was the big company on the block and the Internet as we know it kind of pulled the rug out from under them. They were never really ready for it and were always playing catch up. They would try to steer free standards over to their model and look to throw a FUDish monkey wrench into anything Linuxish, and if anything is Linuxish under the shiny exterior, it is the Internet. Where you had Linux you had them positioning Internet connected Windows. Where you had Apache they threw IIS at you. They tried all sorts of tricks around trying to make TCP-IP and other open technologies Microsoft centric with little add on pieces that wouldn’t work elsewhere. Microsoft wanted to proprietorize open Internet technologies in order to keep selling their bloated software.
I believe that Windows 8 was a direct successor to all that and thankfully the market told them “No!” to them trying to make something appealing that was actually a nightmare to use.
So, we have the younger video game generation who was a bit too young to remember the evil Microsoft, and now they think of Xbox when they see the name Microsoft, so it’s all good. Video games were the pathway to many an immature digital heart. I’ve even seen older guys given the derisive “grey beard” label when they write Microsoft this way: Micro$oft, as they used to in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This new generation only knows Xbox and has no memory of the evil Microsoft of yore.
So here we have Microsoft Windows 10 in the horizon and they are naming aspects of it for their popular video game franchise, which they bought, by the way.
You know what they say, if you can’t invent “cool”, buy it.
…then repackage it in any number of silly ways.
Which brings us back to Cortana and Spartan in Windows 10.
