hoTodi.tv war auf Tour und hat durch die Fenster des Windows 8 geschaut. Gestern Abend hatte Gizmodo eine kleine Anzahl von Leuten dazu eingeladen, sich das kommende Update von Windows 7 – einfach Windows 8 – anzuschauen und einen Eindruck davon zu bekommen. Ich war ehrlich gesagt skeptisch, ob der Sachen, die ich da sehen sollte und so ging ich auch mit wenigen Erwartungen nach Frankfurt. Der Hauptgrund liegt natürlich auf der Hand, bei hoTodi.tv wird objektiv an Videotutorials gearbeitet und da kein Betriebssystem bevorzugt. Wissen und Anwender gibt es für Mac OS X ebenso wie Linux und auch (in einem erheblichen Maß) für Windows 8.
Neben der Software selbst hat Gizmodo noch ein tolles Schmankerl parat gehabt, so wurden Laptops und überdimensionale Touchdisplays/All-inOne-Computer von Sony ebenso gezeigt wie ein Hybrid Tablet von Sony und – endlich – auch ein Microsoft Surface.
Zunächst aber einmal die Software selbst. Windows 8 ist gewöhnungsbedürftig, keine Frage. Microsoft hat endlich mal den Mumm gehabt und sein System angepasst. Viele Jahre schon muss man seine Kunden ständig mit kleinen Häppchen bedienen um ja nicht von alt bewährtem abzuweichen, doch nun hat Ballmer und die Mannen aus Redmond ein Gesamtkonzept aufgebaut, so ist das Bedienkonzept auf den Tablets ebenso wie auf Smartphones wie auch Desktopcomputern gleich. Wer es einmal verstanden hat, wird sich auf allen Geräten sofort zurechtfinden. Mir geht dieser Schritt ehrlich gesagt zu weit, ich finde es sehr gut, dass Microsoft endlich mal innovativ wird und seinem Hauptsystem nicht nur einen Frühjahrsputz verpasste, sondern was – in vielen Bereichen – neues gemacht hat. Aber die Bedienung auf dem Desktop halte ich persönlich für misslungen, hier muss man den gewohnten Weg gehen dürfen, Microsoft muss dem Nutzer die freie Wahl lassen. Zurück aber zum Tablet, was soll ich sagen? In einem Wort eigentlich: WOW.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ervY6As5OcI
Was ich bei Android noch immer vermisse sind wirklich gute Anwendungen im Bereich Office. So liefert Microsoft Office 2013 auf dem Tablet aus und es rennt und rennt und rennt. Mit der Tastatur, welche sich im Case befindet kann man wirklich professionell arbeiten und auch seine Büroarbeiten von überall aus erledigen. Das Bedienkonzept mit den Kontextmenüs, dem Anheften von Anwendungen an der Seite und das Multitasking beeindruckt, sicherlich hackt es noch hier und da, aber da mache ich mir nicht so viele Sorgen, mit den ersten Patches wird sich auch das alles legen. Was mich bei den Tablets störte war der Bewegungssensor, dieser funktioniert noch sehr träge und man muss schon eine „kleine Erschütterung“ verursachen, damit der G-Sensor auch versteht, dass das Tablet gedreht wurde.
Von Sony gibt es einen Touch-All-In-One Computer, welcher es echt in sich hat. So liefert das ca. 22“ große 16:10 Display brilliante Farben und nimmt kaum Platz auf dem Schreibtisch weg, dabei sind alle Anschlüsse ebenso vorhanden wie ein physikalisches Laufwerk für DVDs. Die Tastatur kann ebenso verwendet werden wie die Touchoberfläche, der Anwender hat also freie Wahl. Die Geschwindigkeit war auch hier beeindruckend, doch leider liegen mir derzeit weder Preise noch Hardwarespezifikationen vor.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTBfSfogl9Q
Wie man es von Apple kennt, hat der Redmonder Softwareriese abgeschaut wo es geht – und das ist gut so! So liefert Microsoft mit Windows 8, dem Surface, Windows Phone 8, der XBox 360 und vielem mehr endlich ein geschlossenes System , welches einfach funktioniert, es harmoniert miteinander. Hat man Spiele auf der Xbox kann man diese ebenso auf seinem Tablet wie auch auf dem Desktop spielen und umgekehrt. Spielstände und Einstellungen werden im Netz gespeichert und stehen in allen Geräten sofort zur Verfügung. Auch hier hat Microsoft ENDLICH mal seine Hausaufgaben gemacht.
An dieser Stelle möchte ich mich beim Team von Gizmodo ganz besonders bedanken, dass ich mir diverse unterschiedliche Hardware und natürlich Windows 8 so direkt anschauen und Fragen an die Fachleute stellen konnte. Für mich ist damit klar, dass es so einige Videos in naher Zukunft auf hoTodi.tv geben wird.
Weiter wird es hier definitiv ein Tablet und/oder Smartphone mit Microsofts neuem System geben um auch weitere Erfahrung sammeln zu können. Ihr dürft also gerne Anregungen und Fragen da lassen für die kommenden Videos 🙂
Dies war das erste Treffen dieser Art an dem ich und damit auch hoTodi.tv teilgenommen habe. In Zukunft werde ich verstärkt auf solchen Events vor Ort sein und euch dann gezielt Videotutorials liefern können.
PS. Danke Tanja für das ausführliche Gespräch!
Windows 8 gibt es bei Amazon ab 50 Euro. Das Surface ist noch nicht zu haben.
I’m looking forward to playing with one of these sometime…
Click in and do more with #Microsoft #Surface
The Windows 8 tablets are beautiful…waiting for the Pro version, but
these tablets are now the best available.
Click in and do more with #Microsoft #Surface
Microsoft you are winning over my heart!
hmmm… maybe kinda… sorta… when it cost the same as a Nexus 7
Microsoft Surface overview!
Just pre-ordered it!!! #LifeOfAnEngineer #ITPro #SurfaceTablet #Microsoft
また物欲をくすぐる動画が……..
Microsoft Surface overview, ehh ini keren!!!
New #Surface advert
That touchscreen is gonna get fucking dirty. But it’s just shmexy. …Plus
the square layout actually fits with Microsoft Surface.
Ca a de la gueule !
Красава!
Keyboard is one of the main selling points of Surface, without it its
incomplete and crippled while ipad doesnt need keyboard for comfortable
usage. As for the apps; look at windows phone 7, the time its on the market
and the app selection. It failed miserably in that aspect. Lets hope win
rt/8 and wp8 will do better but you shouldnt hope for more than you get out
of the box, and considering that MS should’ve priced surface cheaper to
encourage people to buy their product and build up user base.
Ar ką sudomino? Imtumėte?
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
*Edit: I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
Еще один рекламный ролик *Microsoft Surface* в котором конкретики уже
побольше, чем в первом: http://goo.gl/4UryS
Windows Surface, yes or nay?
They call solving the Rubik’s Cube an important moment???
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
#surface
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
This might give Apple iPad a run; take a look and share your thoughts
ดูดู ก็น่าสอยเหมือนกันนะเนี่ย 😀
#surface
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
asus did it 2 years ago.
Who the heck wants desktop apps on tablets? These apps aren’t even touch
optimized. If people really wanted desktop apps on tablets, Windows 7
tablets would have sold. People HATE desktop apps on tablets.
This looks compelling, especially for those in the corporate environment.
Metro aka Modern Apps are touch optimized. And if you don’t like that plug
a mouse in or set one up using bluetooth.
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
#surface
Don’t know about the Surface yet or perhaps you wanna know what it is
capable of.
Then, check out this video to get an overview of Microsoft’s first tablet
running Windows RT.
You do realize that the $499 Surface tablet sold out in the first 24 hours
of preorder don’t you? How is that D.O.A?
Easy to sell out if a hundred or even thousand units… Lets see if they
hit millions.
They are making a mistake. they are focusing on the kickstand and keyboard
even though the keyboard is optional and costs $100…they are not focusing
that much on the pure tablet experience, which is odd. in any case, i think
this is a winning product. and the fact that so many people will have
windows 8 means the metro apps will have a huge install base….
$500 without the touchpad??? I’m out. (and I was so looking forward to it)
K!
well atlest you get 32gb and MS Office, but I would also like a lower price.
@angrydognr1 Yeah i guess the microsoft office package is what attract me
the most that and the pen input for the pro surface
I chose this over a ipad
I have to say it again……
„IF YOU WANT TO BUY SURFACE FOR PROFESSIONAL WORK, DON’T BUY SURFACE WHICH
USE WINDOWS RT“
Windows RT can’t install legacy software, so you can’t use MATLAB, Photo
Shop or any other software that runs on your current PC. So don’t buying
the RT version Surface because it is cheaper than Pro one !
If you just want to use IE, Office suite on Surface, then you can get one :
)
CHromebook that doesn nothing, got all of that on my fricking computer
through its free browser
It is the same price as an iPad and with more features, and you are
complaining that it costs too much?
Nah, I am force to use an iPad for work, I am not going to get one. To each
his own.
bet next ipad will have usb and play flash…. heck… it may even run Win8
If you did pre-order one, did you order one with the cover?
<3
I want this! Its exactly what i have been looking for!
Yup. I think $100 is fair and reasonable price for a slick OEM magnetic
cover that is also a keyboard. If I like it I’m buying at least one more
surface this fall with my overtime cash. Sometimes you gotta spoil yourself
hahaha
fuck apple and ipad
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
(tablet that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
deal with that logic myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
jizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit: I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the surface
because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they deliver on
the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it will be a
fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for (tablet
that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*about Windows for
*YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent of a package
manager! Every individual application had to check for its own updates and
manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am happy to see
that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see Photoshop and
Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and have everything
just go through a centralized location where I can decide when updates come
through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to deal with that logic
myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
(tablet that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
deal with that logic myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
Can’t wait for it, this is (in my opinion) clearly a better choice than an iPad
Apple fan boy Detected! Dude the app store is available both in the RT and Pro version..
Apple fanboy? Maybe if you knew me personally you’d retract that statement. Also why would it matter that the app store is available in both versions? It’s still gonna have an embarrassingly low amount of apps. I really don’t care what anyone tries to tell me, this thing should be priced at $399.99 and $499.99 both WITH the keyboard.
the best tablet after the ipad
仔細看還不錯ㄟ
The next big thing. Hell, I want this more than an iPad!
that click ~.~
And what do you expect, launch an app store with 999999+ apps ? dude be real everything start from low to high, just like the android market did.. and the prices are Perfect compared to the Ipad, and don’t get me wrong I had an Ipad 2 but this thing is the next thing.. And trust me there’s a lot of things the surface will do that the Ipad can’t, just see the specifications.. and this is only the RT version, wait for the PRO version with an i5 3rd gen and FULL windows 8 OS, Ipad < Surface..
I realize everything starts from „low to high“ which is why I had said they should’ve released the pro version first, so you wouldnt be completely dependent upon the app store. The prices may look „perfect“ to you now, but wait two-three months for some other win8 tablets to hit the market and you’ll look back at this thing and laugh. There’s tablets coming out that have almost as many features as the Surface Pro, yet are priced the same as this one, the Surface RT.
an ipad*
#MicrosoftSurface : La tablette sous Windows RT enfin testée, pour des
premières impressions mitigées
+LesMobiles.com :
http://www.lesmobiles.com/actualite/9010-microsoft-surface-la-tablette-sous-windows-rt-enfin-testee-pour-des-premieres-impressions-mitigees.html
Iwannitiwannitiwannit!
Crippled how? You are seriously missing some pieces of brain. How much is a 32GB iPad? Hmm… $599. How about Surface 32GB, $499. Obviously you missed 1st grade math where you would have learned that $599 is not equal to $499. Surface works as great as iPad without type / touch cover and is enhanced when you add the cover.
He meant to write „Sold out on arrival“
Anyone know the song name? Or where can I find this version?! Thx 😉
song?
Yeah, but most of those were purchased by Microsoft employees so it’s kind of irrelevant.
Source? This is buzzing everywhere, lots of people want them. Not necessarily me, I’m happy with my Nexus 7 for now, but c’mon, this thing is going to sell.
Getting rid of my iPad 3 for this.
Yeah, the iPad starts at 499 too, but it’s a POS compared to what this can do.
Cool
I will be buying the second version, for now thank you beta testers!! :-)~
If it was an iPad ad, it’d just be a minute and a half of;
„JUST FUCKING LOOK AT HOW JEALOUS YOUR STUPID FRIENDS WILL BESDFLKJDSLKFJ“
@bjzapll r definitely is right. i seriously couldnt believe when my brother say this to me. Listen to this, even my colleagues used to make dime well weekly doing some small works and watching funny stuffs. i found it from here. you can also try it <<< bit.ly/QTZIpu?=njdxfds
just wondered does it have an on screen keyboard if i need to type on the train for example?
cool
computer in tablet pc my program on surface + USB hard dics and webcams, LIVE videos broadcast and mobile phone internet
can i buy one with the screen in a larger size, and does it come with a stylus?
source?
◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか？実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【httｐ://437.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆
◆◇◆◇◆いきなりの書き込み失礼します。お金にお困りの方、いらっしゃいますか？実は宝くじで100,000,000円当選したのですが、その使い道に困ってます…馬鹿みたいな話ですが事実です。単刀直入に申しますとこの当選金をどなたかにお譲りしたいと思ってます。既にお譲りが済んだ方もいますが、少額でのお譲りが多かったため結構な額が残ってます…本日中にお譲りする事も可能なので遠慮せず仰って下さい。出来る限りご希望の金額を、と考えております。もし、お受け取りになりたい方いましたら、サイト内ですと書き込みが削除されます場合が御座いますので、こちらの→【httｐ://473.jp】リンクより、スムーズにお話をすすめる事ができますので、どうぞお早めのご連絡をお待ちしております。◆◇◆◇◆
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
(tablet that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
deal with that logic myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
*Edit:** I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*
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ХОЧУ!!!
So there’s been a lot going around about the Microsoft Surface recently,
and I just wanted to weigh in on some of my thoughts on the upcoming
releases of Microsoft’s products this October 26th.
*Note: this is one huge wall-o-text, and I don’t intend to make a tl;dr
section. You have been warned.*
*Surface*
First off, the price point. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the
$499 price point as well as the covers being ~$100. To be honest, I’m not
all that surprised at this price. They are still undercutting the iPad,
which is their core competitor, but at the same time I feel like they’re
producing a product that is something different entirely from existing
tablets in that it’s designed to be a possible laptop replacement,
especially the Pro version. When you get into the realm of the Pro, I also
wouldn’t be surprised if that device ends up zeroing in on the $1000 mark.
Why? Because it’s more of an ultrabook than a tablet.
The touch covers are expensive because there’s no tech that can compete
with them right now and they’re likely trying to recoup some of the massive
R&D costs that went into them. A touch cover that can tell if I’m pressing
a key vs if I’m just resting my hands? A type cover with keys that depress
less than a millimeter but don’t fire off accidentally? Pretty cool stuff.
Also, I seem to remember docks and similar keyboard accessories for the
Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Transformer being up there in the price point as
well. As such the prices aren’t that surprising.
Also, I’d like to point out that the RT comes with Office Home and Student
edition, which generally retails at roughly $100, so if you include that
into the price point, that’s pretty cool too. Obviously there are those
that would rather $100 be taken off the hardware and not include Office
(since they’d rather use LibreOffice or some other alternative and save
their money), but I don’t think the RT is targeted at those users
specifically.
Personally I’m not as excited about the Surface RT for serious use as I am
for the Pro, but that’s because I want the Pro to replace my laptop, and
for that it needs to run games (the Pro’s specs are high enough to run
Guild Wars 2 at fair settings) as well as non Win-store applications.
The RT is looking pretty good for the average consumer, though. It comes
with Office and interacts with existing Microsoft products, as well as
non-Microsoft services like Facebook. (Sadly no G+ but that’s likely due to
Google having read-only API, which as a developer, I’m still pissed about).
I find the new start page will be very intuitive for the touch interface,
and I was happy to see in this video that the desktop is still accessible
on RT, which leads me to believe that some legacy applications may find
themselves ported to ARM for the RT.
Also, did anyone else notice that the Pro version runs standard x86_64
Windows 8? And has a 3rd-gen Core i5 in it which thusly supports VT-x and
EPT technology? And by that point should be able to run Hyper-V (or any
other virtualization for that matter)? I’ll enjoy playing with that on my
Surface Pro for certain (though for those situations hopefully the RAM will
be upgradable to 8G).
*Edit:** I forgot to mention that I’m still a bit skeptical about the
surface because they’ve been so secretive of it, but provided that they
deliver on the promises they’re making about the technology, I think it
will be a fantastic product and one that I’ve been waiting a long time for
(tablet that can replace my laptop).*
*Windows 8*
Overall I’ve enjoyed my months with Windows 8 RTM, and honestly don’t
understand where all of the hate comes from. The start page is surprisingly
handy if you take a few minutes to actually customize it for what you use
your computer for. It becomes the equivalent of a computer dashboard. I can
just hit the windows key on my computer and then see status updates on
Facebook (G+, Y U NO GOOD API), see any emails I’ve had, see my stock
tickers I’m watching, etc. Hit the windows key again and I’m back to my
desktop where I’m working on various programs or playing games.
From a stability perspective I have seen Windows 8 blue screen exactly
once. It was due to a conflict of Windows Update installing and update to
my video driver but requiring a restart and me saying *NO* and then trying
to install the nVidia drivers on top of it. It was apparently bad news
bears but the system restarted and I was able to install the driver just
fine. Other than that time the system has run smoothly and I haven’t had
any noticeable problems.
I haven’t really liked the full-screen new UI apps, but then again they’ve
been geared towards mobile and touch screen use, and all I have at the
moment is a desktop, so I just removed them from my start page. Problem
solved. I haven’t looked if there’s a way to uninstall them from windows
features or something because I haven’t cared enough.
One thing that would be nice would be to shut off the auto-creation of
tiles on the start page when I install applications, but I haven’t cared
enough to look if such an option exists because it hasn’t been a problem.
My biggest complaint about Windows 8 is the disconnect between some of the
touch/keyboard interface which require you to remember some key commands.
An example is semantic zooming, which can be done by pinch/stretching on a
touch device. On a standard device it can be accomplished via Ctrl+Mouse
Wheel Scroll or Ctrl+[Plus/Minus] (which the Plus/Minus one makes some more
sense). Once again this isn’t a huge problem, but can lead to some
frustration before you learn the key commands for your desktop.
IE10 is much nicer than previous IE versions. I still prefer Chrome, but
have opted to not bother installing it on some of my Windows boxes because
IE is already there. It has some quirks I don’t like (such as Javascript
not running if you right click on a window, which can screw up some web
pages), but overall it’s not the horror that IE6 used to be, and deserves
some constructive criticism instead of the angry pitchfork mob mentality
that it generally gets. I still feel that Chrome is faster, but I don’t
feel the need to install Chrome on my friends‘ and parents‘ PCs anymore to
„spare them“ from IE.
Overall my experience with Windows 8 has been favorable. I still use Linux
as my core machine since it runs a lot of Linux-only services and I’m more
productive on it simply due to my familiarity with Bash over PowerShell,
but when I do use Windows 8 for gaming, VS2012 development, etc, I enjoy it.
*Windows App Store*
I have heard a lot of negative comments about the Windows App store (then
again, I hang out on Google+ and am in the Android community so I’m pretty
much used to any comments about Microsoft being negative). I want to weigh
in on some of those.
There’s the proposed problem of there not being any applications in the
store. Honestly that’s something that only time will tell on. Many people
ask why you would go to a Windows Phone or Windows Tablet when you can stay
on an Android tablet and have hundred of thousands of applications at your
fingertips. Firstly, I would wager that about 90% of the applications on
the Android Market are *complete and utter shit*. They’re either poorly
made or just auto-generated wallpaper applications that remind me of *Bonsai
Buddy* (remember that? oh the horror). Secondly, by that logic not a one of
you should have ever tried Android in the first place. Before Android there
were BlackBerry and iPhone, and both had substantially larger application
stores than Android. The store grows over time if the devices that use them
sell well.
This brings me to my point. The application stores grow when the devices
that use them sell well and thus present an opportunity for developers. The
Windows App Store will now be a part of every Windows 8 installation and
device out there. That means PCs, phones, tablets, you name it, and whether
you like it or not Windows is still the largest share of the PC market. I
see developers making applications for the PC, and while they’re at it, why
not grow their consumers to meet phones, tablets, etc. All of that can be
done provided they use APIs that are cross-device, which in many cases
shouldn’t be too difficult.
And why would PC application developers do this? Why would they bother to
write for the App store instead of just use their own installers? Because
the App store solves a problem that developers such as myself have *HATED*
about Windows for *YEARS*. The fact that Windows didn’t have the equivalent
of a package manager! Every individual application had to check for its own
updates and manage that logic itself. It was a pain in the ass and I am
happy to see that it’s not needed anymore. As a user I would love to see
Photoshop and Java and Flash updaters disappear from my system tray and
have everything just go through a centralized location where I can decide
when updates come through, and as a developer I am happy to not have to
deal with that logic myself.
Also, any notion that the App store is in some way Microsoft’s evil way of
limiting development of 3rd-party applications, is from what I’ve read
completely unfounded and bullocks. The App store does not prevent
applications from being a part of Windows any more than Ubuntu’s software
center prevents applications from being a part of Ubuntu. Want to install
something that’s not in the software center? Then go ahead and do it
manually via its own installer. You just won’t get the benefits of the
software center. Also, similarly to Android, applications can be
side-loaded onto devices that use Windows RT and are limited to App store
installations.
It is for these reasons that I think that the App store will grow. And
since Microsoft is pushing towards generating a service-oriented structure
I think it could lead to some awesome things. I want to see games bought on
the XBOX store who have PC variants downloadable to my Surface Pro for
on-the-go gaming, and the like.
*Windows Phone 8*
I’m personally an Android guy, but I do like what Windows Phone 8 is
bringing to the table. It’s something different from a UI perspective, and
the specs seem solid.
The App store will likely grow for the same reason that I mentioned
earlier, but my concerns with WP8 is with user adoption. The carriers are
really the gatekeepers here, and if the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world
don’t push the product, the consumers won’t buy it.
I personally am most excited about the Nokia Lumia 920 device, with its
amazing screen and camera, but it’s apparently an AT&T exclusive, which in
my opinion was a terrible idea from a selling standpoint. Likely they had
to go with exclusivity on a network in order to get the subsidies to make
the purchase price of the phone low enough that it could compete. While
this is understandable, as a Verizon user with a recently signed contract,
it makes me all sad inside. The other Windows Phones have been nice but not
nearly as impressive to me for what I use my phone for. Right now I’m
probably looking at checking out the 8X.
I’m honestly not sure where WP8 will go. WP7 was disappointing, but
hopefully with the rest of the Windows ecosystem backing the App store, it
will improve.
I for one want to see WP8 do well, as it would bring a new player to the
market. Apple is practically at a point where they couldn’t innovate
themselves out of a paper bag, and Android devices have begun to stagnate
in my opinion. I want to see useful features that are used. From a hardware
perspective, NFC is a great idea but it needs to be more useful. The most
amazing things I’ve seen in the last few months were Nokia’s Optical Image
Stabilization and the new touch screen that works through gloves and with
keys and such. From a software perspective, Apple just added a new row of
icons, woo. Also both Android and Apple have the „desktop screen with
icons“ model (although Android did add widgets, that was a nice touch, even
though I never use them because most of them look terrible), and I like
that WP8 at least does something visually different with live tiles. It may
not be massively different, but I want another piece on the board to shake
up the game a little.
*Conclusion*
Congratulations if you actually made it this far. Especially since at some
points I rambled about anything and everything under the sun, and at this
point am basically going to stop because I need to get back to work. There
are many more things that could be talked about for this fall from Server
2012 to System Center, but I just don’t have the time to discuss them.
I am personally extremely excited about the end of this year for tech. Like
them or not, Microsoft is one of the largest names in tech, and this fall
are doing (as they say) the largest single release of hardware and software
they’ve done in over a decade. I for one am excited to see what the future
brings for this software and these devices.
*Edit:** I wanted to add for those that didn’t see from my bio page (or the
comments below) that I am currently an employee at Microsoft. While my
views will no doubt be biased to some degree because I am proud of the
company I work for, I try to be as fair and balanced with my opinions and
criticisms about their products as I am for any of the other technology I
use. I am in no way connected to any of the teams that worked on the
aforementioned products, nor am I a member of the marketing division. These
are merely my thoughts on the upcoming releases of these products.*
HEY!! The surface pro 2 will come in 2014!!
me too…