Comment

I think that was a slip up, when they where talking about the asteroid demo, they mentioned that the xbox one had about 10x the power of the 360.

about 8 hours ago on PS4 appearance on Jimmy Fallon highlights Microsoft's struggle to explain Xbox One policies

Comment

From what I understand the xbox does actually cost more in just hardware and manufacturing cost. I’m also assuming they spend more on R&D with the new kinect and all that as well, so you have to add that on top.

about 16 hours ago on XBOX ONE ...TOP AMAZON BEST SELLERS LIST

Comment

The iPad is the preferred tablet/computer for schools for a very good reason:

There is quite a lot of educational software for windows as well, you do realise that? Plus a lot of resources are online rather than apps, so anything with a web browser will work. The big reason the iPad is popular is because for a long time it was the only real option for a small relatively cheap tablet prior to windows 8, and administrators want to show off about how “advanced” and “up to date” they are with the pile of new iPads they just bought for the school. It’s more of a PR thing than an actual need based thing. Would the students have been better off with a new computer lab filled with boring desktops? Probably, but it isn’t as exciting as a pile of ipads.

Also with the UI thing, I’m pretty sure most kids are also familiar with windows as well as iOS. That and kids are great at picking up new things and learning (the magic of neuroplasticity and all that), so how familiar an 11 year old is with a particular OS is not really as relevant as it is with a 70 year old.

about 17 hours ago on Microsoft offers Surface RT to schools for as little as $199 1 reply

Comment

Apple sells a well regarded full laptop that is 11", and that is plenty usable. I’m not sure why suddenly also having a touch screen somehow changes everything and makes it unusable.

about 17 hours ago on Microsoft offers Surface RT to schools for as little as $199 1 recommend

Comment

Why isn’t rapid task switching something that people want in a tablet form factor? There have been many times where I’ve wanted that kind of feature on my iPad (say switching between settings and a web browser, or a web browser and a document). On my surface it’s just a flick of my left thumb, on the iPad it is that awkward 5 finger swipe, or a double click of the hope button etc.

about 17 hours ago on Microsoft offers Surface RT to schools for as little as $199

Comment

Microsoft studios has said that they will not charge a fee on resold games and will allow them to be giftable. They actually mentioned this really early on, but it seemed to get lost in all the noise.

about 21 hours ago on MS published games to to be resellable and giftable ? 1 recommend

Comment

I’ve had a couple of windows laptops that got great battery life. My old xps m1330 got about 12 if you asked nicely (admittedly with the 9 cell). When i replaced it with the follow up m1340 that got pretty good battery as well with the extended cells, although that got replaced by a MBP because the wifi didn’t work. These where all machines running core 2 duos as well, so not super battery efficient like haswell.

Also, the Sony duo 13 is supposed to get pretty ridiculous battery life.

1 day ago on If PC makers don't start putting out notebooks that get 10+ hour battery life, I'm going mac.

Comment

To be fair, writing long docs on a phone is kind of crazy not matter how great the software is.

5 days ago on Office for iPhone: Microsoft delivers basic document editing, but no iPad version

Comment

The “that” is the key word in that phrase. “It’s not that bad” has a different meaning from “it’s not bad”.

“It’s not that bad” still has the implication that it is bad, just not as bad as what was previously stated.

Saying “it’s not bad” on the other hand does have the implication that it is good (at least a little bit) because the one thing it isn’t is bad. It is usually made in the context that there was an expectation that it was bad.

5 days ago on Office for iPhone: Microsoft delivers basic document editing, but no iPad version

Comment

It they stay on x86 they could just keep increasing power rather than having to reinvent the whole console, so live and it’s activation servers will be running long through the life of the next console and probably the console beyond that.

Also your 3-4 year thing is just rubbish. The current Xbox has been running for more than that and will only be superseded at the end of this year (though will receive support far beyond that).

5 days ago on Xbox One 'may not work' in unsupported countries 1 reply

Comment

Well Sony thinks the internet is good enough that they can stream the whole game to you over the internet (including the round trip of controller commands from the console to the server, render the frame and then send it back to the console, how’s that for latency). Microsoft on the other hand wants to do non-latency dependant things on the cloud, and the game has to be able to work without the cloud as well.

5 days ago on Xbox One 'may not work' in unsupported countries 1 reply

Comment

You can plug any USB 3.0 drive into the Xbox one and install games to it.

5 days ago on Xbox One 'may not work' in unsupported countries 2 recommends

Comment

I’m not even sure it’s only a generation behind, it isn’t even as advanced as the original Kinect.

6 days ago on Motion gaming forfeit: PlayStation Camera isn't bundled with the PS4, and that's a big problem 1 recommend

Comment

No they didn’t invent flat design, but they did popularise it in computer interfaces, particularly on mobile devices

9 days ago on Apple announces iOS 7, 'biggest change' since the introduction of the iPhone, coming this fall 1 reply

Comment

I agree that an actual physical tv wouldn’t make sense, but the device you describe doesn’t sound at all like a device that has been announced recently.

9 days ago on Why would Apple ever release a television?

Comment

Charger and monitor cable is all you need. Don’t need an Ethernet cable due to this fancy new technology called WiFi.

9 days ago on Surface Pro replaced the iPad... and my DV7... now my desktop?!?! 1 reply 2 recommends

Comment

The 720 will get updates along with every other windows phone 8 (and considering wp8 is new, there are quite a few updates coming). You’re should expect at least 2 years of updates from when wp8 was released. The HTC is far more likely to leave you waiting on updates, and even if the updates do arrive they will probably be late.

The 720 is actually quite a striking phone. It looks and feels like a high end device, and the performance doesn’t really give you any reason to believe otherwise. Specs are only relevant if they give an idea of the performance, but they don’t here.

If you’re obsessed with apps and games (which it sounds like your not) the 720 is probably not the best choice, that would be the iPhone.

If you’re looking for a phone that looks fantastic, gets epic battery life, gets timely updates and does pretty much everything you need without getting in your way, the 720 is a great choice.

11 days ago on HTC M4 vs. Nokia Lumia 720 1 reply

Comment

That would be interesting, trying to make a phone call with a telephoto lens attached…

11 days ago on WHY get Nokia's EOS when one can get the Android version of it, with a completely original design?

Comment

That calendar tile is from a third party app called chronos calendar, not the default windows phone one.

11 days ago on Leaked Windows Phone screenshots reveal notification center, UI changes, and more 1 reply

Comment

Wouldn’t your phone (be it android or an iPhone) be a better tool for spying on you though? It’s an internet connected device with a camera, a microphone and a GPS that is always carried around by one person. I would expect that a device stuck in the living room would have very little utility unless peoples reaction to the red wedding is now a national security issue.

11 days ago on Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and more deny providing direct access to PRISM surveillance program

Comment

It took 5 weeks for 10.8 to be installed on >20% of OSX machines, 6 months for it to reach 1/3rd of all machines, etc

And has now stopped at a little under half. You have to realise that there was a different environment for upgrades for mountain lion than windows 8. Mountain lion came after lion, which is generally regarded as one of the worst recent OS X releases (currently snow leopard is more popular than lion). It also didn’t bring much change other than the notification centre and fixes for lion. Windows 8 upgrades came on a background of windows 7 which is an excellent OS. Windows 7 users didn’t have as much of a need to upgrade as lion users did.

There is also the difference of pricing. Not only is full upgrade pricing for OS X is 25% cheaper than the discounted upgrade pricing for windows 8, but in general, the users of OS X are wealthier than windows users (ignoring all the enterprise customers who take years to upgrade to anything anyway).

A lot of the innovation introduced in windows 8 is focussed more on allowing new devices and experiences. People are more likely to pay for a software upgrade than buy a new device.

even in fan forums like Microsoft Tribe, seem to be outnumbered by critics

The Microsoft Tribe forum that seems to be mostly filled with android and apple fanboys spewing out rubbish despite never having used the operating system? yeah, that sounds like a great place to gauge the reaction to windows 8. The microsoft tribe has many many members that are not fans (case in point you).

A lot of the criticism of windows 8 relates to what people think it is like, not what it is actually like. Criticism is almost always shouted louder than praise. And remember that people tend to criticise change, regardless of how good it is or how much it benefits them. Windows 8 is a lot bigger change than vista to windows 7, or OS X 10.7 to 10.8.

13 days ago on Is the general lack of Apple criticism directly tied to their lack of innovation 1 reply

Comment

There isn’t a difference. The point is OS X market share is not independent of windows market share, or operating system market share in general.

Claiming that a particular version OS X is more popular than windows 8 because it makes up a bigger portion of a small subset of the market than windows 8 does of a much larger subset of the market is kind of like saying the chromebook pixel is a popular laptop because it’s proportionally more popular with chromebook users than say a ThinkPad is with windows laptop users. While it’s technically true, it’s meaningless, and it still doesn’t support your earlier argument anyway.

13 days ago on Is the general lack of Apple criticism directly tied to their lack of innovation 1 reply 1 recommend

Comment

Only you would claim that what Microsoft as been doing recently is not innovative. Only you would argue that windows 8 and the new devices it enables is not innovative. These are devices that meet new requirements, that are more effective in particular aspects than anything else available.
Only you would argue that the new version of the operating system that dominates the market place is not important.

that is so obnoxious as to be very unpopular, cannot be considered an innovation, by this definition

Windows 8 has more market share than any version of OS X. Would that mean that OS X is obnoxious too? Or would you use a different definition there?

14 days ago on Is the general lack of Apple criticism directly tied to their lack of innovation 1 reply 3 recommends

Comment

Actually on windows 8 that’s not quite true any more. If you have a metro app for each of those things installed it will do definitions and translations etc. when you “search” the app. Obviously it’s different from OS X because it’s not built in and it doesn’t phrase things like calculations. But each method has its benefits.

14 days ago on Why is OSX better than Windows?