I kind of feel this isn’t quite the way to do flat design. Taking away unnecessary textures and toning down the shading does help, but going flat like this seems a bit odd.
Ironically, I feel Windows Phone kind of did flat in a more correct way. They started from scratch with the flat design rather than trying to retrofit a UI developed in the old paradigm. That’s not saying WP8 is completely there yet, but if flat is your thing, WP8 is really the only good choice.
Well, we certainly wouldn’t want to overcompensate for anything, would we? :)
I thought the games answered the question about whether XBox One can game quite well. We’ll see what the PS4 conference shows, but my guess is that it’s effectively a tie. Both consoles will have exclusives that look on par with the other side.
For me, $500 would be a bit high for just a game console. If such a console can succeed in enhancing the living room experience successfully, it is well worth it. That is certainly what the X1 is trying to do. And if PS4 is really only about games, then $399 would be the right price for that.
So, up in the air for me. I won’t be buying either initially – will be waiting for objective, hard hitting reviews of both consoles before making a decision.
How does it look that way? We simply don’t know, yet. Kinect 1 was hampered with high latency, low resolution, lack of fine grain articulation, and lack of ubiquity. If Kinect 2 indeed solves all those issues, it’s entirely possible that game developers will make good use of it.
I like what they’ve done with this, and I think I will consider buying it. Looks like it does a lot of the things I care about in the living room, and can hold its own with gaming. We’ll see what the games look like at E3, so I’ll reserve final judgement. But living room Skype, IE, media center, games, and video streaming sounds great to me. If PS4 can do all these things, too, it’ll be a hard decision to make.
But count me out of the drama queen / fan boy discussions – this looks very interesting to me.
I think HTC’s problem was that whatever message they were sending with the HTC One line, they dilute that message at every turn with distractions like the First and some of its other Android and Windows Phone models. It’s at times like this that they need to focus on a singular brand.
Now before Windows Phone fans slay me, I actually think what HTC needs to do is to do as Nokia is doing. I think their best bet is to adopt and dedicate a single line of phones to WP8 and beyond. They’ve lost the opportunity for Android differentiation, but there is still a lot of growth left in WP.
The more pixels the merrier, I say. I’d love to get a laptop with this, but only if its graphics hardware can provide a perfectly smooth experience on it.
If I had to choose between an upgrade from 256GB → 500GB SSD versus 1080p → this, I’d choose the capacity upgrade. Running out of space is far more troublesome than a barely noticeable decrease in text sharpness, IMO.
