Hasta La Gadget!

Remember how Mad Catz scored the exclusive rights to produce Xbox 360 wireless headphones? Here’s the deal: these cans don’t need to be tethered to your controller for voice chat or plugged into a wall to charge. According to IGN, the new Mad Catz Warhead 7.1 will get everything it needs from a base station connected to your console. String USB and optical cables directly from the Xbox 360 to that tiny tower above, and you’ll reportedly get enough 5.8GHz bandwidth to deliver virtual Dolby surround sound to four pairs of headphones at once — plus wireless Xbox LIVE audio chat thanks to some native support from Microsoft. What’s more, the USB base station will also give you an on-screen battery readout, and if the Warhead runs out of juice, you’ll find a second swappable battery pack sitting in the base station’s charger. If that sounds too rich for your blood, the Devastator will ditch the surround sound and rechargeable batteries while retaining the same connectivity and 50mm drivers of its premium brother. How much that’ll cost you is still to be determined, though Mad Catz told IGN they’ll all ring up under $300 this holiday.

Mad Catz’ exclusive Xbox 360 wireless headphones revealed: integrated voice chat, 5.8GHz base station originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Windows logo planted on upcoming Apple Store in Germany (video)

Windows logo planted on upcoming Apple Store in Germany (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Jun 2011 18:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you work for Sony you might want go watch TV right now — there’s something on Discovery about ostriches and sand. Meanwhile, Microsoft just let us know that it’s sold 55 million Xbox 360s globally, which is very probably enough to maintain its lead over the PS3. Moreover, 360 sales in the US are still accelerating six years into its life-cycle, thanks largely to updates like Kinect — and Microsoft boasts that “no other console in history can make that claim.” Huzzah. Now, we’re not ones to snatch the pen from the victor’s hand, but remember: this claim is based on US stats, whereas the PS3 has generally been doing better in other regions. What’s more, neither the Wii nor the PS3 has yet reached its sixth birthday, so the story isn’t over. Nevertheless, the chart after the break does make Microsoft’s performance look damn impressive. Why is it that when you’re down, life just keeps on kicking?

Continue reading Microsoft sells 55 million Xbox 360 consoles, claims that’s console history

Microsoft sells 55 million Xbox 360 consoles, claims that’s console history originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers hack Kinect for glasses-free 3D teleconferencing (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 shares his vision for the company: Windows will run everywhere.  Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Microsoft has shown an early look at Windows 8. The upcoming OS is designed to run on any machine, from a tablet to a desktop PC, and that’s going to be a problem. While Windows 8 has some genuinely clever features, it is at heart yet another skinned version of regular old Windows.

Below is a video of it in action. Skip to a minute in, if you don’t care to hear about how tired the poor Windows 8 team is after so much work.

On the surface, Windows 8 looks pretty. The tile-based touch interface makes the iPad look old and dusty. The live info that can be seen at a glance, and the fast switching between apps are very slick. So is the split view, which lets you drag a second app in from the side and — after a pause — the existing app shifts over and makes space. Thus you can run two apps concurrently, which is enough to get most multitasking tasks done.

I’m also impressed by the thumb keyboard, an option which splits the QWERTY keyboard into two parts and shrinks them into the corners of the screen. I wish for this every time I use my iPad while standing up.

But under the hood, this is, like every other tablet-friendly version of Windows, a skin over a desktop OS. The fancy new “Windows 8 apps” are written in HTML5 and JavaScript, but you can also run regular ol’ Windows apps like Excel and Word. You even have access to Explorer and the full file system.

The issue? Microsoft is clinging on to its old PC legacy, which won’t help Windows 8 succeed as a tablet — for the same reasons we said Windows 7 wouldn’t be good for slates.  It will carry with it the baggage of the Windows PC legacy: vulnerability viruses, the need to install drivers, and apps that aren’t optimized for tablets. These were all issues that the iPad eliminated to make it better than traditional computers in a few key areas.

Given that developers can just run their existing apps in normal Windows mode, where will the incentive be to make amazing touch-only versions of applications, like the truly excellent Omni Outliner or GarageBand for the iPad? What we’ll get are a thousand Twitter widgets, turning the innovative tile skin into something akin to OS X’s Dashboard.

This also brings the disk-gobbling size of a desktop OS, along with the complications of running Windows (malware and the general weirdness of any desktop OS) and of course, the battery life of a desktop OS.

That’s fine. Many people want a full-featured computer in tablet form.

But remember that the iPad is selling in the millions precisely because it is simple, lacks a complicated file system and the like, and doesn’t require a nerd to keep it humming along.

People who want all that already have a choice. It’s called a laptop.

Microsoft is almost there, but it needs to lose its obsession with putting Windows on everything. Take this cool, tile-based OS and put it on a tablet, sure. But leave the mouse-based, legacy desktop OS out of it. And for God’s sake, don’t call it Windows.

Previewing Windows 8 [Microsoft]

See Also:

• WindPad: $500 Windows 7 Tablet Arrives September
• Windows Phone 7 Series Tablet Concept
• 7 Reasons You Won’t Want a Windows 7 Slate
• It’s Not Easy to Make a Tablet, Stantum Slate PC Proves