If you ever needed any proof it's anything but roses ans sunshine over at Microsoft's Windows Phone division, it's this. The next version of Windows Phone, WP8, will run on the NT kernel, which marks a pretty substantial departure from the current release. This raises the question: will current handsets be upgradeable to WP8? First, Microsoft indicated no. Then they said yes (interview retracted). And now, they're saying no again.
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Member since:2010-04-07
This is the Kin story repeating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin
Developers don't want to support a "third ecosystem" right now. Market share numbers mean you can cover almost the whole public by supporting just iOS and Android. This, and the fact that Microsoft has demonstrated once and again what a marvelous business partner they are.
Carriers and handset makers just take the marketing dollars/patent abuse and do whatever minimum effort they need to do in order to tick the agreement boxes.
The same way that Linux on the desktop (as an alternative to Windows) has no big numbers, Windows Phone will fail to capture a significant share of the market. There are too many network effects at work in the current ecosystem.
Apple came first with a nice, new and working product.
Android got permission to live just because Apple's offer was so one-size-fits-all and people liked to have different options... a choice on the price/quality trade-off, and the possibility of using their hardware the way they liked.
Microsoft's offer is just a me-too on the locked side of the spectrum, with just a different GUI and a marginally wider range of terminals. And it's late to the game. Windows Phone is still several iterations behind Android and iOS, and thus if any platform is a Beta at all, it's Windows Phone.
You don't need to resort to conspiracy theories about sales channels boycotts or Skype-related carrier boycotts. It's just potential buyers not seeing the point of buying Windows Phone.
Member since:2008-04-08
Member since:2005-06-29
That's not entirely true, and for a lot of people it's simply impossible. Like it or not, Windows as a desktop OS is a requirement for some, and to them I say make the move to Windows 7 if they haven't already. Yes it's still Microsoft but it's seriously the best thing they've put out in a very long time, and the best Windows OS by a huge margin.
Personally I'm moving away from Windows on all my devices except my media center/PVR (Windows 7 offers the best, most complete support for my hardware) and I'm stuck with my WP7 phone for at least another year for financial reasons (that said, being "stuck" with either OS is just fine from a usability standpoint). Everything else in my home runs either Lubuntu, Arch Linux or Android.
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Member since:
2005-07-06
As usual Microsoft is confused and not sure how to work on mobile and web platform. I hate their inconsistency. First they announce some xyz mobile platform and scraped it within 2 months... I was hoping that after my android becomes old (already 1 year old) I will definitely try WP7 but this news is not that good! I'll have to rethink if I should wait for WP8 rather than buying the buggy WP7!