The Venue Pro delay situation certainly isn’t getting any clearer with Dell’s latest update on its support forums, but we know this much for sure: the new kid on the smartphone block still has a few things to learn about shipping handsets. A post from a Dell moderator says the company is working directly with Microsoft to draft a battle plan and that current Venue Pro owners (those that got their devices early on from Microsoft stores, that is) “might require another hardware swap” to get their issues solved. The rep says that she’s hearing that some orders could still potentially ship this week, but she doesn’t know which ones, and that affected customers are welcome to cancel their orders if they wish. So yeah, kind of a good news / bad news situation there. We’re still clinging to hope that we’ll see these things on the streets before the end of 2010, but it certainly seems like an iffy proposition at this point.
Update: Dell’s posted a new blog entry on the matter, too, though it’s not much help — basically, you could get your phone before January 6th, but it’s anyone’s guess. They’re promising to keep people abreast of the situation as it develops.
This article was written on April 12, 2007 by CyberNet.
Apple iTunes which launched in 2003, has managed to turn themselves into an extremely successful media store. Up until this point, Apple has always said that they would never consider turning to a subscription service. Now rumor has it that they may be changing their tune.
Other music services on the web like Yahoo’s Music Unlimited have taken the subscription route, but yet none of these services have become too popular. Why is that?
Some analysts are saying that subscription models haven’t worked yet for other services because iTunes hasn’t gone that route yet. Is iTunes really THAT influential? Or are these other services just lacking something?
Phil Liegh who’s a senior analyst with Inside Digital Media spoke to CNN Money and said:
“The number one factor regarding the acceptance of the subscription model is the dominance of Apple. The idea of subscribing to music is new to most consumers so when the dominant player doesn’t talk about it, the idea seems out of the mainstream for most consumers.”
While some are saying that an iTunes subscription is definitely a possibility, others are saying that this isn’t very likely. Dan Moren over at MacUser.com says:
I think the deluge began in my newsreader sometime last night: “Apple to consider iTunes subscription service!” You’d have thought that perhaps the clouds had parted and the smiling visage of Steve Jobs had blazed forth, sending down word from on high that Apple would offer iTunes subscriptions. Not exactly.
The whole rumor of Apple starting a subscription service came from the CEO of Intent Media Works who works with peer-to-peer networks. If Apple was going to start such a service, I doubt they’d be telling them their plans first.
Whether or not this rumor is true, I think most people would be happy with a subscription service, particularly if they purchase media regularly.
—
As a side note, you just might be able to purchase your favorite Beatles songs from iTunes soon. The Beatles recently settled a $50 million royalty dispute with EMI that has kept their music from the iTunes store thus far.
Word on the street is that Microsoft plans to announce a Windows-powered iPad contender at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show.
We’ve seen this movie before.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer waved around a Hewlett-Packard “slate” running Windows 7 at CES 2010. HP later hyped up the device with specifications and a possible price tag, and then killed it before it even shipped.
So it’s a bit like dèja vu reading in The New York Times that Ballmer is taking the stage to talk slates again. Mind you, this time he’s going to show off not just one Windows 7 slate, but several, according to NYT’s Nick Bilton.
But increasing the device count isn’t going to make a Windows 7 slate any better. Here are seven reasons buying a Windows 7 slate would be a bad idea.
• Windows is not for fingers.
Windows 7 is designed for desktop computing, not multitouch tablets. Dragging around windows to switch between applications is not the kind of thing you’d do on a tablet. It’s why we use keyboards and mice.
At CES 2010 there were a few pilot tablets running Windows 7. They were difficult to use, because the Windows 7 interface on a tablet was an ergonomic nightmare. Scrolling was laggy, and some devices we tested even froze while we were shooting video demonstrating the products.
Even with a touch-friendly skin on top, there are still going to be times when you wish you had a mouse — like when a dialog box pops up that hasn’t been optimized for touch, and its control buttons are too tiny for your fat digits.
• Windows is too bloated for mobile devices.
Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista and XP, but it’s still got a lot of the same Windows headaches. Plug in a peripheral, for example, and Windows 7 has to search a sluggish database for a device driver. The idea behind a mobile device is that you’re on the go and you need apps that keep in pace with your movement, and Windows just isn’t optimized for that.
On top of that, the power management is not designed for an always-on, carry-everywhere experience. For a tablet competitive with the iPad you need an OS with extremely fast boot times that can run on low power for epically long hours, and Windows 7 has neither of those features. (The iPad, for instance, has a standby battery life of 30 days.)
• There will be too many unpredictable variations.
Microsoft’s modus operandi with Windows is to license the OS to any manufacturer that wants it, and the OEMs ship Windows notebooks with their own custom software (aka bloatware). There are a thousand different variations on keyboards, controls, aspect ratios and more. The same would happen with tablets. By contrast, Android and iOS have more-or-less predictable hardware, something that Microsoft itself recognized was important in Windows Phone 7, its mobile OS.
• You’ll have to maintain it like a Windows machine.
Windows has always been a prime target for the authors of viruses and botnets because of its gigantic userbase. On a Windows 7 tablet you’d have to install antivirus software, which would inevitably affect battery life and overall performance.
Then you’d probably want to install memory-optimizing utilities, a better disk defragmenter, and maybe a registry cleaner. After a year it would start slowing down like Windows machines always do, and you’d have to do a clean install of the OS.
In short, a Windows tablet would give PC users lots of flexibility — but it would be antithetical to the experience of an easy-to-use consumer device that you don’t have to maintain.
There’s not much to see right now, but it appears that Red MR is well on its way to becoming one of the most advanced (and probably the most amusing) karaoke bars in the world. Ahead of its Hong Kong debut this Saturday, said company has already installed six Surfaces in its two bars, and is aiming to fit more to fill up all 80 rooms — and that number could go up to 300 in the near future — once Microsoft has ramped up production. With Red MR’s customized software (still under wraps), customers will be able to pick songs, order food, watch TV, and play games on the Surface while listening to a drunk rendition of My Heart Will Go On. Oh, and there’ll also be a few Kinects dotted around the bars, but it’s not exactly clear whether they’ll be in the rooms as well. Anyhow, we’ll be flying out to Hong Kong to check it out later this week, so stay tuned. For now, you can watch a demo of the Surface’s Liar’s Dice game after the break.
Update: Our friends over at M.I.C Gadgetfound a video from Apple Daily that teases the karaoke UI. Have a look after the jump.
The only limit to the applications Kinect can be put to is imagination. The more of it you have, the more things you can use the peerless Xbox 360 peripheral to achieve. To wit, some eager chaps have put together the Keyboard Anywhere hack, which employs a little Python and the libfreenect library to offer up a piano keyboard on any flat surface of almost any size. You can practice your Mozart concertos on a desk, or, as they so ably demonstrate, imagine yourself as a young Tom Hanks skipping along on the FAO Schwarz floor piano in the movie Big. It’s all up to you.
In what very much appears to be a controlled leak from Microsoft, The New York Times has detailed “rumors” of upcoming Windows “slates” that will be shown off by Steve Ballmer at CES next month. Just like last year. And again like last year, it seems that Microsoft still hasn’t got a clue about tablets.
According to the Times, “Microsoft hopes these slates will offer an alternative to the iPad because they move beyond play, people familiar with the tablets said.” And how will Microsoft differentiate its brand-new slate offering from Apple’s hugely successful iPad? By using a tablet-optimized and touchscreen-centric version of Microsoft’s new, innovative and highly-regarded Windows Phone 7 mobile OS? Nope. By using a desktop OS, and slapping a skin on top. Again.
Microsoft is working with several hardware partners to make machines. One, from Samsung, runs regular Windows 7 in landscape mode and then, when turned upright, draws a finger-friendly skin over the top. It also has a keyboard that slides out in landscape mode, making this otherwise iPad-sized tablet quite a bit thicker.
So, instead of offering the intuitive experience of other tablets, you get a jarring two-mode machine that likely doesn’t do either job properly.
And then there are the apps. Of course there are apps. But there will be no app store. Microsoft is encouraging development of HTML5-based applications for the slates, but these will be scattered all over the web on the various developers’ sites. To find them, you will search, and they will be “highlighted in a search interface on the slate computer.”
The most telling quote from the NYT’s insider is this one:
The company believes there is a huge market for business people who want to enjoy a slate for reading newspapers and magazines and then work on Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint while doing work.
This may explain the company’s inability to make a “computer” that isn’t aimed at business. The iPad’s runaway success shows that there is a demand for an easy-to-use computer that doesn’t look or feel like a computer. Yet Microsoft just isn’t willing to — or just plain can’t — make a tablet that doesn’t look like a computer.
Microsoft’s future is looking a lot like IBM’s when Microsoft ate its lunch years ago: It’ll still be a big, big business company, but the general public will no longer be buying its wares (Xbox aside).
This article was written on May 24, 2007 by CyberNet.
When we mentioned the Vystal software a month ago I was pretty excited. It was the first solution to come forward which offered Vista-like visual effects in Windows XP. Now there is another one called FastAero (Download Mirror) which hopes to do the same kind of thing, but it looks much more promising.
On FastAero’s homepage you’ll find several downloads available, with the latest claiming to be pretty unstable. I decided to give build 0510 a go (Download Mirror) on my only remaining XP machine, and getting it to run couldn’t have been much simpler since you don’t have to install it.
Unfortunately it didn’t work quite right probably because my graphics card in this machine isn’t the greatest, but I was still able to see the blurring effects in action. There were no borders to the windows though, so I took the liberty of outlining the borders in red so that they were a little easier to see:
I tried multiple versions of FastAero, and the latest one was the best. None of them put the minimize, maximize, and close buttons on the top toolbar for me though. If you do get it to work properly it would look something like this:
I recommend trying it out just for giggles if for nothing else. A new version is expected next month that takes advantage of the Mirror Driver. This will mean that a direct link can be made between the video driver memory and FastAero, effectively bypassing the CPU for much of the processing.
After you get done trying it out leave a comment letting us know how well it worked.
Note: This will not “skin” windows that you currently have open, instead it will only skin windows that are opened after enabling FastAero. And after closing FastAero, it will automatically restore the normal Windows XP borders so there should be no concern with it screwing up the appearance of your operating system.
The CES 2010 Ballmernote has become something of a black mark for Microsoft — the company’s delivered almost nothing in the year after Steve demoed the HP Slate and talked about future Windows 7 Slate PCs — but as one would assume, Redmond’s expected to pick up right where it left off in just a few weeks at CES 2011. According to the New York Times, Microsoft’s prepping to explain how it will target the iPad with the help of a number of partners, including Samsung and Dell. While the article is quite vague, it looks like the keynote will include a few new tablet demos, including one of a new Samsung device that sports a “slick” slide out keyboard — we’d put money on that being the 10.1-inch Gloria. The Times says the Samsung tablet (not to be confused with the Samsung Galaxy Tab) will run some sort of software layer when “the keyboard is hiding and the device is held in portrait mode,” but Microsoft’s is also reportedly eschewing a central app store for native tablet apps and instead encouraging software companies to build HTML5 -based web apps. That certainly sounds a lot Google’s Chrome strategy (and a strategy that could backfire since HTML5 apps will work on Chrome OS devices and iPad equally well), but the Times‘ source didn’t know if these “apps” would be ready for CES as they are “still in production.”
As far as we can tell, a lot of this is still built upon Windows 7, but it’s also rumored that the Redmond gang will tease Windows 8 on stage — something that sounds extremely plausible to us, since we’ve heard from numerous sources that Microsoft’s real tablet strategy will rely on Windows 8 and a new all-touch interface that the company has been working incredibly hard on. While Windows 8 isn’t due out until the later half of 2011 / early 2012, Ballmer would do well to use his CES time to tell us about Microsoft’s “riskiest” product bet and finally do something to address Microsoft’s notable absence from the modern tablet market. Of course, nothing’s for sure, except for the fact that we’ll be there, providing live coverage of the entire thing.
Update: We’ve been thinking about it (as well as keeping an ear on our chatty Tweeps) and there’s also a chance that Microsoft could show off its own Windows 7 software layer for tablets. Either way, we’re hoping to get some major answers.
Though the final nail in the Microsoft Kin coffin has yet to be tapped into place, the software that made the pair of ill-fated handsets strangely compelling will soon get the axe. Come January 31st, Kin Studio will be no more, effectively neutering existing Kin phones by removing them from the cloud. They’ll still be able to make calls, send SMS, email, browse the web and even stream music via Zune Pass, but their formerly live homescreens will become lifeless, stripped of social networking functionality — and will actually remain stuck on their very last status update, much like a broken clock. Their online repository of pictures, videos and contacts will cease to exist, though you can back them up to a personal computer if you act now. Thankfully, Verizon seems to understands that not all Kin customers will be happy with a zombiephone, and has taken a drastic measure to help them out — through March 31st, 2011, Kin owners can trade it in for a free 3G phone of their choice. How kind. Find full Verizon FAQs on the transition at our more coverage links.
This article was written on June 27, 2007 by CyberNet.
It’s time for your daily fix of iPhone updates! The first reviews are in from The Wall Street Journal (Walt Mossberg), The New York Times (David Pogue), USA Today (Ed Baig), and Newsweek (Steven Levy), and overall I’d say the reviewers were pretty impressed and generally had nothing but good things to say about the phone. My biggest concern after reading the reviews however, is that they mentioned that AT&T’s Edge Internet service is slow. I’ll get more into that later, but first we’ll start with the areas where they were all in agreement.
Areas of Agreement :
Worth the hype?
Is the iPhone worth all of the hype that it’s been receiving lately? The general answer is absolutely! Pogue of the New York Times says, “most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years,” while Baig of USA Today says “This expensive, glitzy wunkerkind is indeed worth lusting after.”
Design, Screen and User Interface
Good news! All four pointed out that it’s practical, but more importantly fun to use. And in a nutshell, it’s slim, sleek, and comfortable in the hand to use and touch.
Regarding the screen, many people including myself were wondering how the screen would stand-up to heavy use. I was thinking that users would end up using a screen-protector of sorts to keep it scratch-free, however that may not be needed. All four reviewers noted that the screen doesn’t scratch easily, and after weeks of use, it was nearly as good as new. Now, whether or not the phone will look “as good as new” a year from now we have yet to know.
Edge Internet/Wi-Fi
While they were all in agreement here, they’re not agreeing that the Internet is great. Instead, the resounding agreement was that it was slow. Not good!
Excruciatingly Slow (Pogue)
Pokey; far slower than Verizon or Sprint networks (Mossberg)
Pokey, compared with 3G data networks (Baig)
Feels like dial-up
The one thing that will help compensate with the slow Internet is the Wi-Fi access which Levy notes is partial compensation, and Baig says is iPhone’s savings grace for data. Mossberg says that it doesn’t fully make up for the lack of a fast cellular data, but Pogue says it is fast and satisfying.
I have a feeling that users will be quick to switch to a Wi-Fi network for data when one is available if the Edge Internet is as slow as all four said it was.
Areas of Disagreement :
Typing
I had already been hearing that the keyboard is difficult to use for typing, however it may be one of those things that just takes getting used to. The reviewers didn’t all agree here with Pogue saying it was frustrating, especially at first, and Mossberg saying it’s a non-issue because of smart software.
Apple has actually put together a video specifically for typing on the iPhone. I must say, it does look like there is pretty amazing technology behind the keyboard. While they recommend getting started with just one finger, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult before you’re using both of your thumbs to quickly type emails and text messages (unfortunately, no instant messages).
Battery Life
Just a couple of weeks ago, Apple surprised everyone with battery life details for the iPhone saying that it will get 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback, and 24 hours audio playback. While those numbers are impressive, how did the reviewers rate battery life?
Well, three of them thought it was great with comments like “impressive,” “so far so good,” and “generally lasts the day.” Pogue however, said that it was not quite as impressive.
I think we’ll wait for the masses to give their opinions on this one, because I’m sure it will widely vary depending on what people are doing with their phones.
Overall
Overall, I’d say wait for the masses to give their opinions. While I think all four reviews had a lot of great insight in them, I tend to find the average-joe review to be more accurate, and I’m sure we’ll be reading plenty of those within the coming weeks. From the sounds of it, the iPhone will in fact live up to its hype and really change the cell phone industry.
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.
The Venue Pro delay situation certainly isn’t getting any clearer with Dell’s latest update on its support forums, but we know this much for sure: the new kid on the smartphone block still has a few things to learn about shipping handsets. A post from a Dell moderator says the company is working directly with Microsoft to draft a battle plan and that current Venue Pro owners (those that got their devices early on from Microsoft stores, that is) “might require another hardware swap” to get their issues solved. The rep says that she’s hearing that some orders could still potentially ship this week, but she doesn’t know which ones, and that affected customers are welcome to cancel their orders if they wish. So yeah, kind of a good news / bad news situation there. We’re still clinging to hope that we’ll see these things on the streets before the end of 2010, but it certainly seems like an iffy proposition at this point.
Apple iTunes which launched in 2003, has managed to turn themselves into an extremely successful media store. Up until this point, Apple has always said that they would never consider turning to a subscription service. Now rumor has it that they may be changing their tune.
It’s time for your daily fix of iPhone updates! The first reviews are in from 