Ryan Seacrest, “hugging” Ballmer. Is this happening, or am I dying? d.pr/kWhk
— 512pixels.net (@512px) January 10, 2012
I’m live-tweeting tonight’s keynote over at @512px. Come join the fun.
Category: Microsoft
Dell Leaves Netbook Market
While very few are still buying netbooks, many manufacturers have continued to release the small Intel Atom-powered computers (see Asus, Toshiba, etc.). However, Dell isn’t going to be one of those companies.
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Not only are the Inspiron Minis being put in the grave, but the company confirmed for us that it will not be releasing new netbooks based on Intel’s forthcoming Cedar Trail platform. In other words, it is done with the category.
The Windows Store
Starting in late February, developers can submit apps starting at $1.49 and charge as much as $999. We’re not sure why Microsoft chose to set the bar above the 99-cent mental barrier, but there’s some great news for developers when it comes to revenue share — like other app stores, Microsoft will take 30 percent of the proceeds at first, but reduce its cut to 20 percent after your app does $25,000 in sales. More reason to have a blockbuster program, we guess! There’s also a 70–30 split for in-app transactions, but only if you use Microsoft’s billing system — the eBay app, for instance, uses PayPal and doesn’t pay Microsoft a thing.
‘Create a Meeting Tomorrow at Teen Anal’
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 voice recognition needs a little work.
Ultrabooks Are The New Netbooks
This Is My Confession
I owned three netbooks back in the day. The first was the original netbook, the Eee PC 701 4G. While the “4G” had nothing to do with its network connection, the machine wasn’t half bad.
It was all the way bad.
I later moved on to the HP Mini 1000 and then the Dell Mini 9. The HP had a fairly decent keyboard, and the Dell Mini 9 ran OS X 10.5 Leopard like a champ.
The Nokia Lumia 800
Nokia has announced its N9-esque Windows Phone 7 phone. My, it is handsome.
Thoughts on Windows 8 Developer Preview 1
I’ve been playing with Windows 8 on an HP 6730b, and have collected some thoughts below:
- While the Installer (at this point) looks like Windows 7, the Setup screens are all Metro. This means lots of solid green and thin text.
- Setup is simple. It quickly joined my wireless network, which is unlike previous Windows versions.
- You can create a Local account, or sign in with a Windows Live ID. Doing the latter allows Windows to sync preferences and other information across computers via the cloud. You can “upgrade” to using a Live ID at any time.
- The new Start menu (interface?) is cool, but sort of overwhelming. I like the “Live Tiles” idea on Windows Phone 7, but the laptop shows so many of them it’s almost too much information.
- This interface is also cluttered. AND WHY IS THERE SO MUCH GREEN?
- Clicking “Desktop” from Start will launch … well … the Windows we’ve all come to know over the last few years. While it is probably critical that Microsoft doesn’t go all-Metro at once, it feels very jarring to move and back and forth between the interfaces. It seems that Windows 8 has dual personalities. One is wearing a tie, while the other is going batshit crazy from its first shot of heroin.
- This leads to some duplication of services. For example, there’s a Metro-based Control Panel, and one in the Desktop environment.
- Overall, it feels very fast. I’ve only had one crash in my few hours of testing.
- I wonder how much Metro will be used by desktop and notebook users. My guess is that many will view it as most OS X users view Dashboard: helpful every once in a while, but mostly useless.
- I really want to see this on a tablet.
- It took several minutes of looking around to figure out how to shut down the computer.
Windows 8 and the ‘Post-PC Era’
Zach Epstein at BGR doesn’t seem to get it.
On Bringing Metro UI to the Desktop
For a tablet-focused event I don’t think you will find much disagreement that Microsoft has hit the mark with Metro. Metro feels like it belongs when used with a tablet – it’s smooth, it’s easy to use, it’s gesture-driven, and it’s finger-friendly. Virtually everything Windows Phone 7 did well as a touch screen OS has been ported over to Metro and it shows.
The converse of that is that Metro feels awkward and out of place when used with a mouse and keyboard as a laptop/desktop. It fails to take advantage of the precision of the mouse or the fact that not everything needs to be in size 28 font when sitting down to use a computer. At this moment it feels like trying to use a tablet with a mouse and keyboard, which isn’t far off from what it really is in the first place.
Windows 8 Tablet
If anything, this shows how dedicated to the Metro UI Microsoft is. While I like it on WP7 devices, I’m not sure it scales to tablets.
Ultrabooks and Originality
Lion More Painful than Vista?
Having lived with the pain of Vista pre-SP1, I can tell you that the problems currently facing Apple with Lion are worse. Much worse. In fact, it’s such a nuisance that I’ve decided to install Snow Leopard into a different partition and switch to the old OS for the time being, keeping Lion so I can keep an eye on future updates to see if they fix these issues.