In the United States District Court for the District Of
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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA STATE OF NEW YORK ex. rel. Attorney General ELIOT SPITZER, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Civil Action No. 98-1233 (CKK) MICROSOFT CORPORATION, Defendant. DIRECT TESTIMONY OF LINDA WOLFE AVERETT TABLE OF CONTENTS Background. 1 I. The Role of Digital Media Technology in Windows. 3 A. Identifying a Baseline of Functionality in Windows for Digital Media Applications. 4 B. The Two-Stage Process of Exposing Digital Media Functionality in Windows to Developers. 8 C. Digital Media Functionality Currently Exposed by Microsoft in Windows XP.. 9 D. Microsoft’s Compliance with the Proposed Consent Decree with Regard to “Windows Media Player”. 11 II. Specific Complaints Raised by RealNetworks. 12 . “Copy to Audio CD” Functionality. 12 A. Secure Audio Path.. 15 B. Play All Feature. 18 C. IE6 Media Bar. 20 D. Music Search Capability. 27 E. Default Choice of Media Player. 28 F. Autoplay Issues. 29 1. My name is Linda Wolfe Averett. I am the Product Unit Manager for Windows Media Player in the Digital Media Division of the Platforms Group at Microsoft Corporation. Before being promoted to my current position, I was the Group Program Manager for the Windows Media Platform. 2. As Product Unit Manager of Windows Media Player, I have overall responsibility for (i) determining what features to include in the software, (ii) identifying the target users of the software, (iii) planning when new versions of the software will be released to the marketplace, (iv) evaluating technologies to be included in the software, and (v) deciding which of those technologies will be offered to developers building on the Windows platform so that they can call upon the technologies in their own products. Background 3. From 1995 to 1997, I was the Group Program Manager for a digital imaging product called Picture It. As Microsoft’s first entry into the digital imaging segment of the software business, Picture It was a relatively simple application designed to make it easy for consumers to take advantage of the emerging field of digital photography. From 1997 to 1999, I was Group Program Manager for Picture It and for another Microsoft digital imaging product called PhotoDraw. Unlike Picture It, PhotoDraw was aimed at corporate customers rather than consumers. Our goal was to make it easy for people with no graphics expertise to include pictures in documents or in Web pages on corporate intranets. 4. I have worked in the computer industry for more than 30 years. After graduating from the University of Tennessee in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Physics, I worked for the Atomic Energy Commission as a software developer for two years, and then I went to work for a small company called Electronics Associates. It was there that I got my first exposure to operating systems. Electronics Associates developed real-time operating systems for use in instrumentation control. A real-time operating system is one that reacts on an almost instantaneous basis to inputs in order to affect a process it is controlling. Such real-time operating systems are embedded in industrial controllers and similar devices. 5. After two years at Electronics Associates, I went to work for Hewlett-Packard. I spent the next eight years working my way up through the ranks from lead developer to project manager to research and development manager. Most of my time at Hewlett-Packard was spent focused on real-time operating systems used in various types of medical equipment and instrumentation control. My last project at Hewlett-Packard involved the development of a new computer system with what is known as a reduced instruction set computing (or RISC) architecture—as opposed to the complex instruction set computing (or CISC) architecture of most Intel-compatible microprocessors. 6. In 1981, I left Hewlett-Packard and went into business with my husband developing computer games. Our company developed most of the games for the Philips Odyssey gaming console, an early precursor of Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. The company later started developing games for personal computers (“PCs”). As a result, I have had substantial experience as a third-party developer building applications to run on the Windows platform. I. The Role of Digital Media Technology in Windows 7. As a leading platform company, Microsoft listens carefully to the input of developers who are building on the Windows platform. Based on my experience first as a developer of Windows applications and then as a program manager for digital imaging and digital media applications at Microsoft, I believe that Microsoft enables developers to create world-class applications on Windows. Microsoft does that by providing (i) a rich, stable and consistent platform that provides developers with assurance that their products will run on different brands of PCs, and (ii) powerful tools and interfaces that developers can rely on to build their products. It is Microsoft’s willingness to supply developers with increasingly rich functionality that enables them to focus on providing unique value-added features in their products instead of re-implementing and re-testing core functionality. If Windows becomes frag- mented, the pace at which new hardware and software products get created for use with Windows would slow. 8. I also believe—based on my experience as a developer of consumer products for Windows— that the rich, stable and consistent Windows platform is what enables the typical consumer to go to Wal- Mart to buy a PC that supports a wide range of hardware and software. Prior to the days of Windows 3.1 and establishment of the multimedia PC, it was essentially impossible for an average user to buy a PC that would run his/her multimedia applications. The user had to understand what type of display, what type of sound card, and what type of video card was installed on his/her PC, and other equally arcane technical issues; then the user had to read the disclaimer for each piece of software to verify it had been tested with the configuration of software and hardware on the user’s PC. It was not until Windows established a baseline of hardware and software functionality for multimedia applications that retailers and consumers alike could be confident that those multimedia applications would run on PCs. That baseline of functionality also permitted developers to focus on innovating in multimedia applications rather than testing all possible configurations of hardware and software that a user might end up with on his/her PC. Providing ever better functionality in the operating system to support digital media applications is an important part of our efforts to advance Windows as a platform. A. Identifying a Baseline of Functionality in Windows for Digital Media Applications 9. The primary jobs of the Windows Media team are to ensure that (i) Windows operating systems are a great platform on which to develop digital media applications, (ii) users have a compelling media experience with Windows right out of the box, and (iii) the end-to-end media functionality in Windows meets developers’ and users’ requirements. To be successful at our primary jobs, my Windows Media team does three basic things for each release. 10. First, we identify the feature set required to provide a compelling media experience for Windows users and to enable potential business models for content providers. This becomes the feature set of Windows Media Player in any given release. 11. Second, we identify the baseline media functionality that all developers need to call upon in creating digital media applications, and then make that baseline functionality available in Windows through published application programming interfaces (“APIs”). Note that for any given release, the baseline functionality is a subset of all the media features we include in Windows because those features have to be implemented, tested and shown to provide value to users and/or developers before we make them part of the baseline functionality. Additionally, not all of the features we implement will become part of the baseline functionality because not all of them are generally useful to a wide range of developers. The baseline functionality is used throughout Microsoft to provide integrated media features—as opposed to each Microsoft product team re-implementing that baseline functionality. That baseline functionality is also used both by third-party developers of Windows applications as well as by Web page designers. 12. As I noted above, including this baseline functionality in Windows enables developers of digital media applications to concentrate on value-added features that will make their products more appealing to consumers rather than spending their time re-implementing the baseline functionality. This has the effect of providing more choices for consumers and driving the state of the art forward at a faster rate because the cost of entry into digital media applications is lowered and that enables more developers to bring products to market. 13. Third, for any given release, Windows Media Player is a test vehicle for ensuring that a wide variety of hardware devices work in end-to-end media experiences right out of the box. This end-to-end testing benefits all developers who provide digital media products for Windows because their products all need to work with those same hardware devices. In other words, the end-to-end testing that Microsoft does with Windows Media Player benefits users even if they choose to use another media player. For example, in the recent Windows XP release, Windows Media Player served as the end-to-end test vehicle for copying information to read/write CD-ROMs and for Video/Mixer/Renderer (“VMR”) accelerated video display capabilities. Other developers can now call upon that functionality, which is stable and reliable by virtue of the end-to-end testing it received through Windows Media Player.