Anyone who was using computers in the late 90’s to early 2000’s had a copy of WinAmp on their computer. What is funny is that I almost forgot about them till I read the article. Funny to reminisce about the brown square interface with green text, that “Kicks the llama’s ass.” Bang it here for the link.
The Google Nexus Q is a product I think will be dead on arrival, only in the houses of the Google ecosystem diehard. It seems like a second attempt at the Google TV idea, but less functional. In fact I’m not sure what the point of it is. If you want to see specs and less opinion, jump on over to ArsTechnica for their story. Here are my reasons for thinking the above (and I’m not the only one, Leo Laporte during his live coverage said as much):
Price: This shocked me when I read rumors on the price, but it was even worse when they confirmed it. The device doesn’t seemingly do any more than an Apple TV or Roku box would; yet it is three times as much? Granted it has a small amplifier in it, and a decent quality one is not cheap, but who needs that? If I am integrating it into an existing home theater I will use my speakers and amp that I already own.
On Monday night Microsoft held a super secret event to launch their own tablet named Microsoft Surface. As one would expect it is a Microsoft branded Windows 8 tablet with some pretty interesting and original design, and a few original accessories.
The design is similar for both tablets, with the Pro version being a bit thicker and heavier. You can tell the Metro square theme is in full force with the design, employing 22 degree angles on the sides (which is important for what I don’t know) and seemingly hard edges. There is a kickstand built in to both allowing them to stand on their own in landscape mode. One differentiating feature is the pro model has a gap around the edges to let heat out, necessary with a Core i5 under the hood (this is not pictured anywhere on the surface site at this time, but was brought up during the announcement).
This is the consumer version of the Surface tablet, essentially an iPad competitor. It is a 10.6” wide screen display, which no actual resolution numbers have been given. The weight at 676 grams is around the weight of the OG iPad and it is about .1 mm thinner. It will be Tegra 3 powered and should have respectable battery life with a 31 Watt-hour battery. The RT version has a microSD (not SDXC like the pro), a USB 2.0 port, and will come in 32GB and 64GB varieties. The omission of a 16GB model strikes me as a way to position it favorably price wise with the more expensive versions of the iPad at those sizes without having to lose money on a $499 model.
In the same style chassis, albeit a thicker and heavier one, is the Pro tablet. This is the one more like a real computer. It will come with a Core i5 processor, full HD screen (again the actual resolution has not been released), USB 3.0 port, and Mini DisplayPort. All in all it seems as if this is the perfect device for someone who doesn’t really use a tablet all that often and will mostly be docked on a desk with a real keyboard and monitor.
The Pro tablet to me makes less sense. It seems like it is a hot rod that they shoe horned into an econobox chassis. I fail to see how a Core i5 based computer running a full version of windows will last more than an hour or two with a 42 Watt-hour battery. Or, if it has great battery life, it will be a performance kludge. They also don’t state how much RAM the tablet will have and being real windows it will need a good portion if it is to feel responsive with a gimped CPU. For a device that is to offer No Compromises, I fail to see how it won’t.
Now that I have brought up the “No Compromises” tagline, I really think Microsoft is going to be bit hard with this one. They say it is running Windows on a tablet, which is true, but which version. What I mean is, they have to realize a lot of people are going to buy the ARM version of this tablet. They are going to think it is a hell of a deal being priced like an iPad, but getting the “No Compromises” of Windows. And then they are going to try to put the Windows software they already own on it. At this point they will realize it is not a Windows tablet. As the frustration of why this won’t work slowly rises from a simmer to a boil, they will go online and do some searching and find out that they really needed to buy the much more expensive pro tablet if they want to use their existing software. Inevitably in their anger, they return it and buy a iPad or an Android tablet.
The Verge has a great write up about the rise and fall of Palm. Having been a former Handspring Visor and Palm Treo Pro user, there is a small part in my tech heart for the company.
Click here for: Pre to postmortem: the inside story do the death of Palm and webOS
In a few days, we will find out who has the best record of predictions when Tim Cook and Co. take the stage for the WWDC keynote. The guys at Cult of Mac have listed their predictions, but like any person, I feel the need to put my own two cents in. I’ve re-jiggered their list as it is pretty comprehensive given the rumors that are out in the ether. Continue reading WWDC 2012 Predictions
Amazon has released a firmware update for its current generation Kindle. It brings it to version 4.10 and among the important features is a new font.
Personally the font does seem to be a bit crisper than it was previously, but some may not see much of a difference. What is also noticeable is there seems to be less ghosting of previous text if you don’t have full refresh on page flip enabled. It also has grouped all the dictionaries into one group which is nice.
It hasn’t auto pushed to mine yet so I jumped here to download it and install it manually.
After the excruciating wait for FedEx to arrive with my new iPad, I wanted to share a few quick observations on it.
I’m already enjoying the new iPad as much as the first when I got it. Reading on it is great and I notice less eyestrain during long sessions.
For a more thorough review (and if you like reading about the more technical aspects) head over to Anandtech for their review.
Yawn. That is what I thought (and did) the entire time through Microsofts CES keynote presentation. I honestly don’t even think it was a “keynote” presentation, more of a “we don’t have anything new so we are just going to rehash every presentation we gave in 2009”-note.
Let’s start with the overall keynote gripes, and then we’ll narrow it down. Steve, please stop, please. Who do they get to write the scripts for these things? They interject barely funny skits and Steve Ballmer’s dumbass adlibs into a boring script that sounds more like a Ronco infomercial then a keynote technology address. Actually, it’s worse than that; I wouldn’t want to disparage Ron Popeils knack for selling. You give very little data on the products such as sales figures, market share, etc; and fill it up with “I just love this product” crap. As much as I hate to say it, Apple is your daddy when it comes to these events. And while we are at it, what in the hell is this censoring the video feed when they showed a movie clip or some old video games. Respecting intellectual property? You have got to be kidding. I guess it would be damaging to the marketing plan for me to watch a clip of PacMan for 30 seconds.
On to the product demos. First we have Windows 7, which they show a bunch of rehashed PC designs that are hardly worth the extra money they charge for them. Then Media Center was demoed. This was a well done segment, minus Ballmer’s stupid interjections. Here’s is the problem with your awesome demo. Nobody gets IP TV in the US. Almost no one uses AT&T’s Uverse, the only provider to use Microsoft’s MediaRoom Platform, so you made a demo of great tech that no one can use. As far as the Cable Card demo, that’s great but we have seen the success or lack thereof with the Cable Card platform.
Then we come to the, GASP, HP slate. I’m sorry but tablets and slates are going to be a huge bust for the tech industry, I don’t care what Apple does. They are going to be overpriced for the functionality and honestly, no one has a use for them that isn’t already handled by a netbook or cheap notebook. The funniest part of the Slate preview was ole’ Steve trying to start a video to end the segment. You see the results of shoehorning touch onto the Windows 7 platform. The UI isn’t designed for it. This is going to be a 500+ dollar tablet with no power or usability. Fail.
Then they moved onto the Xbox. They talked about some new games, some Zune integration, and some Facebook integration. That’s great, it all happened LAST year. Then they moved onto Project Natal. Minus finally announcing a shipping date, it was the same information they talked about last year at E3. And that sums up the last part of the keynote.
I probably left some things out of this summary because, well, it was that boring. I know my attention wavered. How in the world do you keynote the biggest electronics show in the world and bring out nothing new and fall flat on your face? Only Microsoft could do that. Wait I forgot, Sprint did the same thing shortly thereafter, but that’s another article.
The flurry on the interwebs right now is how Rupert Murdoch has threatened to disallow Google to crawl his news sites and how News Corp. is doomed to fail. I unlike most don’t think News Corp. will fail, but also unlike some such as Jason Calacanis, don’t believe it’s the smartest decision either.
Most people do have it right in that the public doesn’t use Google News much and they don’t search Google for news. I’d bet that most people that follow news have found RSS or go to the website of the news organization. Then we get to what I use for news now, Twitter. Mark Cuban has argued exactly my point that nowadays Twitter is going to be the new way for people to have news pushed to them. Using the previous three methods to access news gains Google nothing and drives all the traffic to the sites themselves. I mean it makes this whole hulabaloo worthless.
As far as my thinking the decision is a dumb one is that of broadening your audience. If someone does Google search a topic and your article shows up of course you would want that traffic. Plain and simple, it’s why stores have free giveaways and loss leaders. Get you in the door and show you their wares.
Calacanis then goes on to say this is Bing’s silver bullet to increase marketshare against Google. I disagree as evidenced by the points above, but also for the fact of if this was really profitable, it would have been done already. Microsoft as of late has been doing whatever it can to gain share so why wouldn’t an exclusive deal, a’la Facebook, not been done. I mean I’m just saying.
It seems once again I’m writing a piece that refutes PC World writer Matt Peckham’s thoughts. I was reading his piece “What happens if we boycott the PC version of Modern Warfare 2” and once again my head started to hurt.
Having read numerous posts of his before, he is constantly bringing attention to the sad state of PC gaming. On the first page of his post though, he brings the idea of boycotting the PC edition of COD4 Modern Warfare 2. Before I get into the actual meat of the article I just have to opine of how stupid the idea of boycotting a PC game for a console platform is. Why would any fan of PC gaming do exactly what the studios want? Why would we purposely tank the sales on a platform that most publishers want to kill? Many game studios have already abandoned the PC and are waiting for any excuse to drop it. So by all means lets buy COD4 Modern Warfare 2 for Xbox 360 or PS3 and make sure PC gaming dies. Stupid.
So why would anyone come up with such a ridiculous idea? It seems the main crux of his argument is that a PC version would not have anything to differentiate it from the console versions. Well guess what, when your now a minority in market share content developers are not going to spend time to make your product special. It’s plain and simple economics. One down.
Next he brings up once again DRM. As I have said before DRM is an evil that is not going away anytime soon, so it bears no real weight to bring it up again and again as a detractor. He goes on to say that the use of Valve’s Steam platform is a deal breaker. For me, Steam is about as close as you can get to DRM done right. It allows use on multiple systems, just not at the same time. It also allows me to access games that I normally would not be able to get a hold of, and from the comfort of my home. Plus if you catch a sale, you can get great software for next to nothing. Couple this with the fact that if your system gets hosed you just re-download the games and it works for me.
He then goes on to say that if we boycott the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 Activison may just drop PC support all together. Um, I’m pretty sure we all figured that one out. Which brings me back to his headline, so why would be boycott the PC version?