Remember this ad? The ad where Microsoft attempted to position the iPad as a chopstick-playing toy and the Surface as a PowerPoint-editing machine?
Yeah, that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Microsoft just released Office for the iPhone. It lets users edit any Word, Excel or PowerPoint document. As the oh-so-catchy name states, Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers is Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers only, meaning the app is essentially $100 a year. It’s not “Office for iOS.” It’s just a way to open and partially edit Office files for those saps paying for Microsoft’s pricey cloud platform.
Judging from the screenshots, it looks like a quality application. It supports rich-media content like charts, animations, SmartArt graphics and shapes. And since it works through Microsoft’s cloud service, all changes saved on the phone are also made to the original.
But forget about a native iPad app. Microsoft can’t kill the only legitimate selling point of its struggling Surface tablet.
Microsoft might have moved enough Surface tablets to avoid calling it a flop, but the tablet was far from a blockbuster hit. Ever since it launched the Surface, Microsoft has supported it with constant ad campaigns touting the tablet’s productivity chops. The latest TV spot pits the Surface RT against the iPad, deeming its offering as the superior choice for those who need to get work done. However, in Microsoft’s world, “work” equals editing a PowerPoint deck. This is something you can do quite handily on the iPad using Keynote and, in fact, I suspect Keynote users are well aware of the benefits of their superior platform.
Middle-manager infighting must be rampant at Microsoft. On one hand, the company has to properly support its Windows 8 ecosystem, which means it has to position its tablet offering as the only MS Office solution. But then, likewise, a true mobile version of MS Office would have a better shot at fighting Google Docs. In this case the Office team lost, relegating Office to just the iPhone — and in a truncated version at that. Windows 8 wins, the Surface stays slightly more interesting, and everybody in Redmond wins.
Back during the heady days of 2012, before the Pebble raised a crazy amount of money on Kickstarter, Sony quietly released an Android-compatible smartwatch of its own. By most accounts it wasn’t very good, but that doesn’t mean that Sony has relegated it to the trash pile.
No, with hindsight being what it is, Sony is looking to breathe some new life into that curious little gadget with some help from the developer community. The company has kicked off what it calls the Open SmartWatch program to get developers cooking up custom firmwares for the thing.
In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the wearable gadgetry space, Sony launched the SmartWatch in question last year to mixed reviews. The concept is a very familiar one — the watch syncs to an Android-powered smartphone and displays messages and notifications, as well as runs a slew of bespoke SmartWatch apps. Thanks to its Android underpinnings, you could easily think of it as a more robust version of the Pebble or any of the copycats that have sprung up in its wake.
As iffy as Sony’s second-gen SmartWatch was, most of the issues seemed to be rooted in its software (and to its credit, Sony keeps pushing out patches and updates for the thing). Sony’s is one of the prettier smartwatches out there, and the spec list has just enough oomph to make it an attractive choice for some frenzied late night tinkering. By stripping out Sony’s work and starting fresh, hackers are largely left with a blank slate, and the company is committed to highlighting some of the most novel firmware once they start popping up.
To help kick this whole thing off, Sony has also tapped Arduino to hold a hackathon in Malmo, Sweden, to get antsy developers more familiar with the SmartWatch and what it’s capable of. There is, as always, a caveat: you may be breaking new ground with a device that most people haven’t given a second thought to, but you’ll be giving up access to the nearly 200 or so compatible applications floating around in the Google Play store.
If you thought you and your RepRap were safe from posers, you’re sunk: Amazon has just opened a store for 3D printers and printer accessories that seems to, at the very least, allow smaller manufacturers to get a foothold in an increasingly tight market.
Available on the “pop up web store” or whatever you want to call it are printers from Afinia and Flashforge (which, as you’ll notice, is a literal rip-off of the Makerbot) as well as offers from Makerbot owners who are selling used machines. In short, the store consists of smaller fry attempting to sell directly to a less educated consumer – which is fine.
With Staples selling Cube 3D printers and Toys “R” Us selling personalized ducks in Hong Kong, it’s clear we’re reaching the point when 3D printing is beginning to interface with the culture. It’s still “cool” enough to be cutting edge yet it’s lucrative enough for behemoths like Amazon to throw it a bone with this store.
And what of the folks who want their 3D printers to be the hardware equivalent of underground prog rock? Well, we’re probably out of luck. I’ll know it’s gone mainstream when my Dad asks for one and, the way things are going, that should be some time next week.
Apple is looking at various changes to its iPhone lineup over the course of the next year, according to a new report from Reuters, including two sizes of larger smartphone devices, in both a 4.7-inch and 5.7-inch flavor. The “phablet” plans are also being considered alongside a less expensive iPhone model, which is slated to begin production next month, according to Reuters’ sources, after a brief delay as Apple attempts to get the colors right for the new plastic-backed device.
The cheaper iPhone would be launching in September following full production kicking off in August, according to some of Reuters’ sources, with an initial shipment target of around 20 million low-cost devices for the holiday quarter next year. The report details echo what we’ve heard from other sources recently, including from fairly accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who previously shared reports of multi-color options for the cheaper iPhone, with a thin plastic case and the same 4-inch screen as the iPhone 5. Reuters adds that it should cost around $99 when it launches, and that its release timeline might be pushed back by as much of a year.
Reports of the low-cost iPhone have been making the rounds in more or less reliable circles for a while now, which is the more interesting component of this new report. Other sources have reported that Apple is looking at bigger-screened devices, so-called “phablets” to compete with similar offerings from Android smartphone manufacturers, including the Galaxy Note line from Samsung. But even Apple’s flagship smartphone, the iPhone 5, lags behind most competing general-purpose non-phablet devices like the HTC One and Galaxy S4 in terms of screen size at 4-inches.
Apple’s big-screen iPhone plans are less evolved than those for its low cost device, the report claims, with one of Reuters’ sources suggesting that we could still see the plans shift considerably before anything reaches a production stage. Apple has discussed the idea with production partners, but has not set any kind of timeframe for test production or launch as of yet. Reuters says that Apple is considering the different screen sizes comes as there’s increased pressure to field more than one device a year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook suggested that we might see a larger iPhone when the trade-offs of battery life, screen quality, color reproduction and other failings brought about would be possible to counteract, speaking at the recent AllThingsD D11 conference. He did admit that some consumers are interested in those devices, however, so it’s likely that these reports come from Apple’s attempts to overcome those limitations with engineering. Plenty of Apple products don’t make it past the testing phase, however, so while you can be sure Apple is experimenting with big displays for iPhone, you can’t be equally sure we’ll ever see one. Still, Cook’s guidance to consumers and media that they can look for big product launches in the fall and through next year specifically do line up with the timing of possible iOS phablet launches reported by Reuters today.
“We have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity,” explained Xbox chief Don Mattrick. “It’s called Xbox 360.”
With those snarky words, Microsoft lost E3. That much was clear as soon as Sony’s press conference started. And it’s not because the Xbox One is a bad system. If we ignore Microsoft’s terrible marketing and judge the Xbox One objectively, it’s a fine system – a home entertainment system built for the future that should provide an unparalleled user experience.
But damn it, Microsoft: stop being a jerk.
Don Mattrick, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, explained to GameTrailers that Microsoft built a system that’s future-proof and if you don’t like it, there’s another option: the eight-year-old Xbox 360.
This is Microsoft’s stance and the company doesn’t care if you complain. That message came through loud and clear during the company’s E3 press conference. Take it or leave it. Microsoft doesn’t care. They know they’ll sell millions of boxes and a group of vociferous web trolls won’t change that – or will they?
Microsoft has a reason to be cocky. The Xbox 360 rules the living room, and has set the standard for media streaming devices in the home. There have been hiccups and mistakes along the way, but overall the Xbox 360 is a fantastic system. Microsoft baked in the best of the Xbox 360 into the Xbox One, that much is apparent. However, after years of piracy and the embarrassment of briefly backing the wrong physical media platform, the company is now working on the assumption that you don’t deserve an Xbox One if you’re not connected to the Internet. It’s a fair assumption – the target market already has broadband – but there are still plenty of reasons someone doesn’t want the One to phone home every 24 hours.
The Xbox One has the potential to outsell the PS4. It has the potential of being a better investment for the casual and hardcore gamer alike. It has the potential to seamlessly bring the best of the Internet and TV to the living room.
Look at it this way: The Xbox One is an always-connected device that interfaces with subscription TV. It’s also a portal to a person’s Windows’ ecosystem, bringing the most popular computing platform on Earth to the main screen in the house. It’s a gaming system, a cable guide, a Skype machine, and a media streaming box that you can talk to. And as David Pierce explains on The Verge, the Kinect could usher in a new dimension of gaming. It’s the most pure all-in-one home entertainment system ever built.
But Microsoft went too far.
The Xbox One treats every owner as a potential thief. By nearly requiring a broadband Internet connection to check a game’s DRM, the Xbox One is locked to a living room. Forget about rigging up a system for a long road trip. Forget about taking the system to the family cabin or grandma’s house. Without broadband Internet, the Xbox One is useless.
This always-connected scheme is even scarier when updates are considered. Microsoft will essentially be able to remotely control all these systems and push updates unbeknownst to the owner. But it gets worse: The Xbox One doesn’t work without Kinect, which is always on as well. Xbox One owners cannot trade or easily sell back games. The console is worthy of a mention in a George Orwell novel.
These downsides put Microsoft in a powerful position with game publishers. It’s all about making money and selling systems. It guarantees that games will not be pirated, theoretically putting them at ease and more likely to publish exclusives on the Xbox One. But once you put making money above the user, you start down a slippery slope.
Then there’s the PS4.
As Sony stated loudly and clearly at the PlayStation 4 press conference, the system doesn’t require games check-in online. Games can be traded like baseball cards. The system doesn’t require an Internet connection.
Best yet, indies can self-publish on the PS4.
Sony won E3 by being the anti-Microsoft. The Xbox One has ridiculous DRM and all Sony had to do is state that the PS4 takes a familiar, old-school approach to gaming. It’s just a new PlayStation. Nothing more.
The Xbox One launch is a marketing disaster even though the product itself is solid. Forgive the hyperbole, but every time Microsoft makes a statement, the hole gets deeper. But at the very least Microsoft isn’t hiding anything. There shouldn’t be anymore surprises. Hopefully.
Magnets are pretty basic – some poles attract, some repel, and you can use them to hold stuff up on your fridge. However, what happens when magnets can be “programmed” to react in different ways? Huntsville, Ala.-based Correlated Magnetics Research has some magnets that can do some amazing – and slightly spooky – things.
These magnets can “hold together” while still not touching, release from each other with a twist, and even act as a sort of magnetic motor. In one cool demo Stephen Straus, VP of CMR, shows us magnets that repel each other from a certain distance and then, when pushed close enough, snap together. Before you run away screaming “perpetual motion machine,” understand that the laws of physics still apply.
CMR essentially programs the magnets as they’re built and the company creates magnetic solutions for companies around the world who need to control torque and movement but want to maintain an “air gap” between metals. Fortunately, they have a web store so we can try these things at home and attempt to build wild, non-intuitive magnetic interaction machines.
If you think QR codes are a bad joke then consider NFC. Near Field Communications’ evangelists have been trying to get smartphone owners to share stuff by bumping and grinding their phones for years. And progress has been painful, to put it mildly. The reality is NFC is an ugly wasteland of non-use. Ever seen anyone IRL tapping their phones together? Or tapping on an NFC tag or reader? It’s about as rare as hen’s teeth.
Granted NFC is used in some countries as a payment solution but as a general, catch-all system for close data transfer, it’s a dud. The latest setback for the NFC-pushers’ cause comes courtesy of Apple. During Monday’s WWDC keynote, Tim Cook & Co. were cracking jokes at the tech’s expense as they previewed a feature coming in iOS 7 that does the job of NFC without any of the awkwardness of NFC. It’s a classic Apple move to eschew complexity and avoid technology-based redundancy (see also: wireless charging).
It also suggests Apple is in zero hurry to add NFC to its devices. So no NFC in the iPhone 5S then. Instead, it’s adding AirDrop to iOS 7, which uses peer-to-peer Wi-Fi to allow content to be shared to nearby iOS 7 devices without having to physically tap anything together. Or, as Apple’s SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi, put it — whilst miming said NFC-induced social awkwardness — “No need to wander around the room bumping your phone.”
Of course there is a snag: Apple’s AirDrop is limited to sharing between iOS 7 devices, so it’s not an open pipeline. Still, neither is NFC — since sharing using that transfer tech means both people have to have NFC-enabled devices. It’s also worth flagging that Apple’s support for a standard can be the tipping point for the industry to coalesce around a particular technology (e.g. USB, or helping to kick Flash in favour of HTML5). Add to that there are other Wi-Fi sharing apps for iOS that work across Apple and Windows (e.g. Filedrop) and use a Wi-Fi pipe for the transfer. No NFC required.
Apple often talks about how the things it chooses not to do are as defining as the things it does. Well Apple doesn’t do NFC. And that speaks volumes. Don’t forget, NFC is not new. It’s been kicking around in phones since forever. And Apple still reckons it sucks. AirDrop isn’t the only example of Cupertino deliberately eschewing NFC, either: The Passbook ticketing and loyalty card hub introduced in iOS 6 uses visual barcode scanning to deliver its discounts. The phone owner calls up the barcode on their device and the retailer scans it with a barcode reader. NFC? Not a bit of it.
Another of NFC’s myriad problems — i.e. in addition to actually needing its users to act out the physical transfer themselves – is there’s no emollient term to oil the wheels of its use, especially in the commerce space. Want to use NFC on your phone to pay for something? Asking the cashier ‘can I tap that?’ just sounds euphemistic. Falling back on miming the action is the most elegant of the various inelegant options here. It’s another instance of the social awkwardness of NFC.
Just going ahead and trying to tap phone to reader won’t necessarily work either since some NFC POS terminals need to be switched on specifically to conduct the contactless transaction. Before even getting to that point, of course, the phone owner also has to have figured out they are looking at an NFC-enabled terminal. Some resemble standard POS terminals so wanting to pay by NFC means hunting for a ‘pay by contactless’ sign, or asking if NFC can be used at that outlet.
All these barriers to contactless entry fatally erode its convenience… at least for now. Sure it might one day provide a slick way for phones to be used to pay for stuff — but that requires NFC readers to be everywhere. Which they certainly aren’t yet, despite all the hype and cash poured into the space over the past five+ years. And sure, NFC technology can work well in more simple use-cases. London’s Oyster travelcard ticketing system uses NFC to replace paper tickets, for instance. But really, if the best you can say of NFC is that it’s a bit more convenient than paper, that’s not saying an awful lot.
Shortcutting settings or grabbing content was another use-case envisaged by the NFC pushers. Phone owners would be tapping their devices to NFC tags stuck on movie posters to get content downloaded to their handsets, or be sent to a URL to watch a film trailer (an idea which has been kicking around since the turn of the century, I might add). This sounds like exactly the sort of not-IRL scenario that gets dreamt up in marketing departments. If that’s the best you’ve got NFC, you need to try a lot harder. And an NFC tag for pre-setting an in-car phone profile? Oh pleeease.
It’s fittingly ironic that NFC is termed a ‘contactless’ technology when its proximity requirements necessitate physical contact — or at least getting so close it’s academic. ‘NFC: irritatingly invading your personal space’ doesn’t sound quite so handy does it?
Apple’s developer bits are generally the bigger picture story that comes out of WWDC, and some details are slowly emerging about those 1,500 or so new APIs Apple has added for devs to take advantage of. Some of the better news is around new gaming technologies, which should result in much improved experiences for both gamers and the people creating the games they play.
iOS 7 will introduce support for “Made for iPhone, iPod and iPad” (MFi) program-compatible game controller hardware (via 9to5Mac), which means developers will finally be able to access system-level tools for building in support for a wide range of devices from accessory manufacturers. The new API supports both controller sheaths that hold the iPhone or device itself, and standalone controllers that would more closely resemble your traditional gamepad.
New images found by Touch Arcade from the iOS 7 developer’s guide shows that controllers will be able to offer support for configurations of two joysticks, a directional pad, and up to six buttons at least, so that it should be able to replicate the setup of traditional controllers like the PlayStation DualShock or Super Nintendo gamepad pretty easily. For retro titles and core games alike, this should be a tremendous addition to the arsenal, and you can expect third-party hardware accessory makers like Griffin, Belkin, etc., as well as startups on Kickstarter, to be all over this. There are third-party controllers already out there, but they’ve always required devs to integrate an external SDK to get games working with them, that’s not going to be the case anymore.
Retro games should also get a nice boost from SpriteKit, Apple’s new framework for developing more simple, 2D style games and creating interesting physics effects like the one shown in the video below. Sprite Kit looks to be pretty powerful, but has the disadvantage of not reaching outside of Apple’s ecosystem, or of supporting older devices. Still, Apple has a very fast-adopting user base for new versions of iOS, and there are a lot of dev shops that focus only on iOS, so we could see some very cool stuff built with this new, simpler Unity-type engine on Apple’s devices.
Other new gaming features include turn-based multiplayer game modes, ladder rankings for high score leaderboards and more. But the game controller element alone could have a huge impact on iOS and its role in the mobile gaming market, and it’s quite likely that Nintendo and Sony should be watching very closely to see how the ecosystem around that feature develops.
Google Glass isn’t in the hands of consumers yet, but a pair of intrepid Glass explorers didn’t let that stop them from taking the thing apart to see what makes it tick. This teardown is also especially pleasing in terms of shot composition and image quality, so if you’re hankering for a really good, close-up look at the tech inside of Google Glass, I highly recommend checking out what the Catwig guys have put together (via 9to5Google).
Not only do they take Glass apart, but they also put it back together Frankenstein-style in some surprising ways, including by attaching the business bits to a pair of prescription glasses. The hack works, they say, but only in a rudimentary sense; the proximity sensor built into Glass wasn’t working quite correctly when positioned as it was with respect to the prescription lenses, but it doesn’t look like there are any major barriers to making Glass eyeglass compatible.
Other interesting finds from the treasure trove include a specialized Synaptics touchpad controller to handle the touch-based controls, as well as a battery module that’s tiny at only 570 mAh capacity, and a technological marvel of a display that’s smaller in surface area than a dime and yet has 640×360 resolution, with each pixel around 1/8th the size of the ones found in Apple’s iPhone 5 Retina display.
There’s no telling how the final shipping version of Google Glass will compare in terms of hardware and build to the current Explorer edition, but this still provides a very interesting look behind the curtain at how Google’s big wearable tech experiment performs its wizardry. Oddly, this unceremonious deconstruction actually has me wanting Glass more, despite my earlier, more tepid interest in the still very unproven hardware.
It seems a week doesn’t go by without finding out about a malfunctioning Jawbone Up band. The wearable step tracking bracelet measures how much you move each day and how well you sleep.
It was relaunched late last year in the US, and came to Asia in March.
I have five people on my Up friends list (all with new bands less than two months old), and already four of them are facing issues. Some are saying their LED lights have stopped working, and one of their bands is not being able to track sleep anymore.
My own band coughed and died just two weeks after I purchased it from an Apple store in Hong Kong. It stopped being able to retain a charge, and its purported ten-day battery would go flat within half a day.
A Japanese user I met this week saw I was wearing one, and informed me that his stopped working as well after about a month.
This is not good.
The Up is currently in its second generation. The first was a fiasco. Shortly after a triumphant launch in 2011, users complained that the band wasn’t holding a charge, and the company was forced to issue a global refund.
It came back a year later, full of promise, but these anecdotal stories of woe keep popping up.
When I went to return my band, one of the sales staff at the International Finance Centre (IFC) Apple store in Hong Kong informed me that the store was running dry on supplies because it had sent back a large batch of devices back to Jawbone. This was prompted by numerous customer returns, she said.
A user in Singapore, Kimberly Mah, had a band that had battery issues as well. She wrote to Jawbone, but was informed that the company would not ship a replacement “due to international shipping regulations”. Jawbone said she should check with the retailer she bought the band from.
But when she went to the Challenger outlet at Funan Centre, the retailer was completely out of stock, saying new bands wouldn’t come in for at least another month. Could this be signs of technical issues with production at Jawbone?
A survey of the numerous PC stores at Funan Centre also showed that each had just one or two bands on the shelf, potentially indicating a supply issue. The Apple Singapore online store lists an 8- to 10-week wait for new bands, as well. Jawbone has a lot resting on this new product — it’s raised about $210 million so far from venture firms, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer joined its board a little over a month ago.
At the top of the supply chain, the company who brings in the bands to Singapore, Digital Hub, couldn’t help with a replacement either, because they too were out of stock.
Jawbone’s response to all of this is that it’s a supply problem due to the bands selling like hotcakes. “It’s one of our fastest-selling products in Jawbone history… we are working to keep up with the incredible demand,” said a spokesperson.
On any new technical issues, she simply said that the band is “entirely new, inside and out” with regard to its redesign after the first generation, and pointed me to the testing processes they put the bands through before they’re sent out of the warehouse.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
