"The Surface is a nice tablet. The design and aesthetic are pleasing, the feel in the hands, particularly of the kickstand and magnetic cover connection is excellent. But is it worth buying on the day of release?" After these three reviews, I still want a Surface RT. As much as I think Metro - and especially its applications - has a long way to go, I feel like I should reward the fact that Microsoft dares to be different. Too bad Microsoft doesn't want me to buy one.
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Member since:2007-02-18
That's the difference between MS customers and Apple customers. Apple customers will more than happily reward Apple for being daring and will blatantly overlook any flaw that would be deal breaking for an MS/non-Apple product.
Member since:2009-03-17
No that is the simplistic childish view, not everything is based around the silly dramatic dynamics of a grade school playground.
First off, Apple's stock has been down almost $100 in the past 6 weeks, which means that Apple's customers are not returning/growing at the same rate since their product offering is stagnating. So they have to come up with something big and new soon, if they want to keep being at the top.
But Apple's initial success in the mobile markets, at least in the US, is due to the fact that Apple understood that these devices would be used as media/content consumption devices mostly. And they provided an ecosystem that could give customers a very very convenient way of addressing most media needs: Apple has a very large selection of music, video, books, etc. And it is very easy for people to access and consume all that content. And yes, some people seem to really like the design and style of Apple's products. But the reason why people bought the iPhone/iPad/iPod in droves is not because they just looked good, but also because those products did exactly what they wanted and they could access the media they craved. So there is more than just style and fashion sense.
Microsoft does not seem to understand that. They think people chose apple because of stylistic concerns, but that is only a part of it. MS has a monopoly on the Desktop, so they assumed they can leverage Office, once again, as the value proposition for their nice and shiny tablet. Which is ironic, because MS does have a good strategy with the Xbox as a content consuming device for the living room, but they do not know how to execute it in the mobile space (e.g. Zune). The irony is that Apple has not been able to execute a good strategy on the living room with their AppleTV.
I can see windows RT and Windows Phone to be a success with the business crowd, not in the consumer space. Probably RIM, and to a lesser extent Google, are the ones in trouble with the new MS strategy, not Apple.
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN.""Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Member since:
2005-07-11
...reward MS for being daring, though I give them credit for it!!!
I will reward MS if the product is a good one and is sustainable, does what I want and so forth...
I rewarded Google earlier this year by buying a Nexus 7 (rewarding is such the wrong term, LOL). Now I have had the Nexus for a while, I wonder if I wasn't a bit too hasty with my praise, but it's a good tablet all the same.