By all early reports, Windows 8 is going to be a good operating system. Microsoft's hegemony may be crumbling in a mobile computing onslaught, but its core empire remains undimmed. However, whereas Windows 7 had three versions, Windows 8 will apparently be ballooning to 9 versions.
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Member since:2011-01-28
RichterKuato,
"They gimp their versions to get people to pay more. They design obsoletence into their software."
Yes, that's where they cross the line into unethical territory in my opinion. (Not saying that they're alone, mind you).
It's one thing to leave out features which are in the higher versions like VPN security and network file sharing. But to actually spend *more* R&D to deliberately make it *worse* than it would have been, that's distasteful.
Member since:2006-07-04
Apple offers Quicktime Pro for which users have to pay to unlock "Pro" (give me a break) features of Quicktime Player. For years, one of those "pro" features users had to pay to unlock was simply the ability to play a video at full screen size. lol
It's not like MS is the only one that does "gimps" features to get users to pay to "ungimp" said features.
As for "building in obsolesence", Microsoft supports their software for long periods of time (too long, lots of the bashers say). Apple's policy is to support only the latest two iterations of OS X. If you have a version older than that, you get no support, no bug fixes, no security updates; can't even run the latest version of Safari. And Apple's policy regarding much of their OS X software (like iLife and iWork) is for their latest versions to run only on the most recent two OSX releases, arbitrarily so, just to force you to upgrade the OS in order to run the latest versions of those apps. Yet Apple gets a free pass from the "tech geek" crowd.
While MS supports XP for 14 years and gets villified for building in "obsolesence", Apple supports any given version of OSX for about 2 years only, and gets praised to the heights. Funny, that.
Edited 2012-03-03 19:29 UTC
Member since:2008-07-10
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2010-05-14
They gimp their versions to get people to pay more. They design obsoletence into their software. So buying their products feels more like paying a service fee. They only innovate too keep their monopoly rather than to you know improve customer satisfaction. They keep putting more of these little checks in to their software to test if you're payed for it.
I wouldn't know any of this if I'd just bought a PC from the big computer companies like Dell, HP etc. But years ago when they were much more expensive I got one off Ebay. Which is how I first heard about Windows' licensing since the one that was installed was already in use. That's why if given the choice I'll buy a device that doesn't have Microsoft's software installed on it. Which in turn is why I don't like PC's.