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Its not as bad as everyone makes out. On the macbook pro retina running windows 8 it’s useable and I wouldn’t go back to “blockiness”, it looks so much better. Parallels VM can be set to display w8 in full resolution. Its just some things like buttons on toolbars on some apps (I think IE does this if I remember rightly) are rendered pretty small compared to the app window.

At the end of the day computers are about forcing the issue and living ahead of the curve. Otherwise we’d all be still using ega cards with 4 colours!

Once you go retina though every normal display will look bad. Just like going from normal to HD tv. I also think that if you wear glasses retina makes even more of a difference because most peoples eyesight isnt that sharp so the quality is lost on them. Glasses tend to make everything 20/20 so you kind of see the difference between the retina and normal a lot more.

2 days ago on Toshiba Kirabook review: finally, a flagship Windows 8 laptop

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Nothing has to make sense. If they dont want to play ball, they dont want to play ball.
It was google who put up the billion dollars for YouTube when everyone thought they were nuts because Viacom and all the content sites were going to drown the thing in law suits.
It was google who spent years working out a bandwith solution, legal solutions, court battles etc.. to get the service to work.
And it’s now google’s right to do whatever they want with the damn thing, It’s called entrepreneurial risk. You gamble, you win, you get to do whatever you want. Simple.

3 days ago on Google demands Microsoft remove YouTube Windows Phone app, cites lack of ads

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Windows doesnt “offer” anything. Its sold as an open OS with an API that allows anyone to write software for it. It was Microsofts choice to create an OS like that, they could have done a Nintendo or Xbox and required a licensing agreement to write software for it if they wanted to.

No one has to provide content to another party via an api. This is not some public domain website. Youtube is paid for by it’s owners in terms of bandwidth, indemnity when they were sued by Viacom and compensation to owners of content on the site. It is run for the profit of the google group of companies. It is not some “buffet” that anyone can have access to.

Likewise, if MS wanted to restrict skype from Android they are well within their rights to. (as suicidal as that would be).

3 days ago on Google demands Microsoft remove YouTube Windows Phone app, cites lack of ads

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So lets get this straight. There are really only 2 smart phone OS’s in the world that can be used by OEM’s. Windows Phone and Android. They are the only 2 systems in direct competition in reality. People expect google to increase the viability of Windows Phone to consumers by allowing there biggest property on the only direct rival platform to Android?

Weed must be good round here.. damn..

3 days ago on Google demands Microsoft remove YouTube Windows Phone app, cites lack of ads 1 reply

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Metro feels like one of those toolbars* that you accidently download from website and dont know how to get rid of. The kind that always launch first before anything you really want to do on your pc and you spend the day trying to avoid it.

My question would be.. if you could turn it off, how many of the 100m users would turn it off for good and just have w8 desktop? Going by the “civilian” users I know who have w8, I think about 80% would turn it off.
(just my wild guess from the feedback I’ve had). I think MS get 1 free “get out of jail” pass on this one. I cant see the Windows surviving another failed product launch.

7 days ago on Microsoft responds to Windows 8 criticism, defends upcoming changes as 'a good thing' 1 reply 3 recommends

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are all the films and tv shows not DRM’d? In fact, do any vendors (MS/Google/Amazon) sell none DRM films and tv shows?

8 days ago on Microsoft wants an iTunes app for Windows 8, but it's not coming 'any time soon' 1 reply 1 recommend

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This laughable! It was going down yes, but his “burning platform” speech did ridiculous damage.
1) he signalled the end of life of product lines he still had in the sales channel for the following year! What fool in retail is going to buy millions of phones no one wants and which you basically trashed publicly?

2) so they end up discount their stock to shift them because of point a. More lost revenue!

3) The basically shrunk the company 80%, laid off any engineers capable of moving them forward. Refused to release product on territories where they had demand (Nokia n9) because they wanted focus on the messiah WP phone (which wouldnt be released for another 3-4 months).

4) Its easy to be in the black when you sack 3 qtrs of your staff and shut down all your manufacturing plants. Big deal, an 8 yr old can fire people.

5) There stock lies at 3.5 or something crappy. They are getting killed on the low end by a super agressive samsung. They are not faring too well with Lumia either.
For comparison, Sony’s latest Xperia sold 5m in a month or so, and its taken Nokia 4 months to sell 5.6m lumias. Thats Sony!! Sony arent exactly kings of the smart phone business and they outsell Nokia easily.

Ultimately, no one was saying to not try Windows Phone. But to go “balls deep” with no plan b is the height of corporate irresponsibility. Thats a heck of alot of jobs gone needlessly and the shrinking of a massive global company in like 2-3 yrs. All he had to do was hedge and have a Nokia Android phone as well and see how it did. If it did bad, then leave it and carry on with WP. But the dude sold the companies soul and future well being to Microsoft for a $1b a year.

I still dont get it. I still dont see who gained, the shareholders who backed the plan have lost pretty much everything.

10 days ago on Shareholders fed up with Elop 2 recommends

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I think a lot of people miss the context of Nokia’s situation. Nokia “was” a huge company before Elop cut it down. It “was” the biggest mobile phone company by far in terms of market share and revenue. HTC “was” tiny compared to Nokia. LG’s phone division was pretty small and so was Samsungs.

To think that Nokia had no chance with Android is to deny basic economic theory. You have a comparable company in size and reach as you (i.e. Nokia vs Samsung). Yet people say that Nokia could not compete with them for the 50% market share Samsung has with Android? Thats just barmy!

In fact there “was” no better company equipped to compete with Samsung 2/3 yrs ago than Nokia. No one had the distribution worldwide that Nokia had or the engineers and product knowledge.

The only difference between Nokia and Samsung is ego. Samsung have none and only seek to sell what consumers want to buy, just a little cheaper. Whereas Nokia have this fascination with leading the line in terms of OS’s and eco-systems. They tried it with Symbian / Meego etc.. and now they’ve tried it by co-opting Windows Phone all the while thinking there’s some value in being the biggest fish.

Ego driven economic failure.

10 days ago on Shareholders fed up with Elop 2 replies 3 recommends

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“Nokia gets to assume the value of the WP brand, "

HAHA… I thought you weren’t performing on stage until 11? :-)

10 days ago on Shareholders fed up with Elop

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In the long run all the platforms will consolidate into a handful worldwide players. So eventually, there will be a far more unified situation. Hardly any of these companies are making money so the majority of the owners are just trying to build market share to make themselves attractive to buyers in the long run.

In my opinion the one giant that will emerge out of all these is Whatsapp. They have refused to sell just like FB did and now people are noticing that they really have created a social network that people actually pay for unlike Fb and Instagram. Its a future gold mine. I see whatsapp buying out alot of the players in different regions over the next few years and will be sitting on maybe a 500m network that is far more important than than Twitter or even FB.

16 days ago on Alone together: will one messaging app rule them all?

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Windows isn’t going to die. Its too useful, too widespread and actually good at the job it is required to do for a vast amount of users.

What is happening is that we are seeing a long over due “correction” in the market place. That correction is a direct result of the EU & US government reigning in MS a decade ago. MS’ wings were “clipped” and the unnatural dominance of their OS which was achieved illegally has been loosened. This has allowed companies like Google and Facebook to grow without being hindered in some illegal, underhand “Gatesian” manner (e.g. preventing IE working with google search or some other bullshit that they could have done).

Apple could also grow again because html was allowed to flourish without MS embracing and extending it which meant that the playing field has been levelled.

So what we are seeing is no cause for concern in my opinion. If it is unnatural for the mobile market to have 1 dominant OS, why is it natural for the desktop market to have 1 dominant OS? Windows shouldn’t really have more than 50% of the market. Its monopoly is not natural and will be corrected. If we were to lump in iOS/Android and Windows 8 (being it a desktop/tablet hybrid) in the same market, over time we should see a fairly even split among operating systems.

This is good for consumer choice and for the growth of our industry as no one vendor can rest on their laurels and therefore consumers will get the best product. MS will still make money regardless, maybe a little less and maybe they’ll have to focus a little more (goodbye Online division!) but ultimately it will be good for them to. In 10yrs time MS’s money will come from Azure, Server Tools and Office, Windows will just be humming along but not the dominant force it once was.

Good times I think! :-)

20 days ago on Six months on, Windows 8 sales are a mystery

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Dude is smart. Heard he had 2m users at about $3 dollars upfront as well, that’s a lot of money for 1 guy! To stay on iOS was a good business decision for him because that’s where most of the mobile browsing is done especially on iPads vs android tabs. Also just less hassle, 1 product to manage not 2.

Pocket are trying to “amazon” him by going free and hoping to become the only reader out there. It gets harder and harder to compete with free so you have to exit some day. I think pocket must be freaking out because if beta works do compete on price (I,e. go free), pockets business model will need some revision.

23 days ago on Instapaper acquired by Betaworks, owner of Digg 2 replies 1 recommend

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I don’t agree. No OS has true resolution independance. Everyones tried it but they all run in to the same problems that all “one size fits all” solutions run in to. You end up either designing for the lowest common denominator or your product doesnt meet all edge cases. There is no way you can 100% optimize anything without focusing on 1 specific context. Its impossible.

Now you can “get good enough”. And you can get “Not noticeable” enough to bother caring. And that might happen over time when more things converge. But right now, with hardware at the level it is there is no 1 solution for everything that can give the consumer the very best product.

The proof is in the pudding, barring games (which are all developed at low level c/c++) are there any of these “responsive apps” on Android that have better UI than their ipad/iphone equivalents? You need to point them out to the world, because I’m not really seeing them.

24 days ago on Cook says no bigger iPhone display with current tradeoffs 1 reply

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I cant imagine that this solution produces pixel perfect designs as intended by the designer. At best it can give you “adequate” or “good enough” looking apps, that are functional but you cant have your cake and eat it.If you want perfection in anything you have to hone in on a specific context to get the best out of it.

Apple’s way of standardizing things has made it easier for designers and developers to perfect their applications. Even Google make better versions of their applications on iOS than on Android. I doubt that is because its absolutely impossible to achieve perfection on Android (i.e. FB Home looks very good) but it’s impossible to achieve that result for “any” type of device/screen size.

In the same way that Ruby or Rails favors convention over configuration, iOS favors convention and standardized behavior to allow for better products. It’s that simple.

24 days ago on Cook says no bigger iPhone display with current tradeoffs 1 reply

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I think it’s missing a ‘W’ somewhere ….

24 days ago on Samsung Galaxy S4 review