From the Apple press release regarding this incident:
" iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements)."
So, using triangulation, just using cell phone towers they can locate users with way greater precision than just 5 to 10 miles.
Also, this data was crowdsourced. Which means that, for those users that have their GPS turned on, both the GPS location and the visible cell towers and WiFi access points were logged, in order to build said database.
The NSA documents that Snowden made available specifically say that the NSA was using a location bug to track apple users.
From the Spiegel article:
"The NSA analysts are especially enthusiastic about the geolocation data stored in smartphones and many of their apps, data that enables them to determine a user's whereabouts at a given time.
According to one presentation, it was even possible to track a person's whereabouts over extended periods of time, until Apple eliminated this "error" with version 4.3.3 of its mobile operating system and restricted the memory to seven days."
4.3.3 was the version in which this particular bug was fixed. Highly unlikely that it was just a coincidence and the NSA were speaking of another bug entirely.
Those are not real 4k Blu-ray players - they only upscale standard Blu-ray discs to 4k. When the 4k standard will be ratified, even if it will still use Blu-ray discs, those discs won't play in these players because the standard will almost certainly use new codecs.
Also those 4k discs you can buy are really only standard 1080p discs. They are "4k mastered", meaning they are encoded from a 4k source, but downscaled to 1080p, and are usually using a much higher bitrate than ordinary Blu-ray discs in order to preserve as much of the quality of the picture as possible, since they most likely will be used in those upscaling players. Upscaling magnifies encoding artefacts.
Those 4k mastered discs also play in normal Blu-ray players, since they are really only 1080p. At the moment they are probably the highest quality video source available for consumer purchase.
The Start Menu allows you to do exactly the same thing: customize the apps displayed and access the rest via search. You can even delete the shortcuts from the All Programs view, and since they're only shortcuts the programs themselves won't go anywhere.
In my opinion Microsoft got so many things right with Windows 7 that it's baffling that the same company could get so many things wrong in Windows 8 just three years later.
Also they kind of missed the point of rapid iteration of releases, that it allows you to make the changes gradually and in small steps and get feedback all the way. There was no reason to make 8 so glaringly different to 7 and split their user base.
Both the current PS3 and Xbox 360 models use less than 80W. The figures you cited might have been accurate at launch, but they have progressively been lowered since then. Both consoles got to around 100W in 2008.
Also, while the Wii U itself uses 32W, the gamepad uses something over 5W (it cannot be powered from a 5V 1A usb port, since it draws more), bringing the total closer to 40W. So, in fact, both Xbox 360 and PS3 use about double the power of the Wii U, not six time more as you imply.
Except, you know, exactly the reverse, since the number of Windows RT and Windows Phone users who would be familiar with said environments is pretty much insignificant and they are selling this to the very numerous Windows PC users, who are thus forced to learn to a new interface.
Microsoft still does not get it. It tried to put a desktop interface on tablets and phones and it failed. Now it's trying the reverse and it's not exactly working either. Putting the same interface everywhere does not make it universal; carefully designing it from the beginning to work for different environments does. Windows Desktop and Windows Phone are specialized interfaces and they suck mightily when utilized outside their intended use case.
The difference between buying or subscribing is not in deductible costs, since both are deductible, but in the fact that buying means you have to spend all the money upfront, but are deducting it over the lifetime of the product, while a subscription means that all the money that you spend you deduct right away (well, over the period that the subscription covers).
Let's say you have 1000$ in the bank. You can get software either as a one-time cost of 600$, amortized over a period of 3 years, or a 200$ annual subscription. Those should be about even from a business'perspective? Well, if you buy the software you now have only 400$ in the bank, but can only deduct an expense of 200$ per year over the next three years. If you buy the subscription, you can deduct the same 200$ annually, but you still have 800$ in the bank <i>right now</i>.
So, it's not about deductible expenses, but about cash flow. And available liquidity matters very much in business.
The incentive for manufacturers to ship USB peripherals was the existence of a critical mass of devices supporting said standard, which the iMac most certainly was not, and the appearance of better use cases for said interface. Yes, the iMac was trendy at the time, no surprise there, and manufacturers tried to capitalize on the style, but also USB was better, technically, and enabled for example scanners that did not need their own expensive interface card, or cheaper Winprinters because USB had the bandwidth to push rendering in the driver instead of the device.
What I was getting at is that USB was an established standard that Apple adopted and promoted but did not create it and wasn't either the first or the largest manufacturer to use it. To put all the merit on Apple's shoulders for USB's success is disingenuous. If we want to see what happens when Apple creates and is the first and largest adopter of a new technology, Firewire is a better example. Was it better then alternative technologies? Hell yes. Did it ever get mass market penetration? Sadly, no, because it never got to a critical mass of available devices. 5% is not enough.
When will this myth ever die? The USB standard appeared in 1996, the USB iMac appeared in 1998 and it wasn't even the first with USB 1.1. Not to mention that the Mac marketshare was below 5%, how exactly did they manage to "push" USB. You want to talk about a standard that Apple really pushed and the PC largely ignored, talk about Firewire. How well did that go, exactly?
I'm from Europe and in all the cars I've owned or driven, which were mostly manual, turning off the key never engages the steering lock. The steering lock is engaged only when you remove the key.
That said, the car being a Renault Laguna and presumably a rather recent one it most likely comes with Renault's keycard ignition. Basically the key looks like a fatter credit card, and it goes into a slot. The car starts by pressing a Start button. In that case, the card is blocked inside the slot while the car is in motion, so it can't be removed at all.
Yes, I agree that unlike Bluray the lowly DVD still has a price advantage compared to thumb drives, but I would not call a 25 cents DVD archival material. And when you are talking about larger sized backups usb hard drives start to become a better alternative, since a decent quality DVD comes to about the same price per GB, and hard drives have both the advantage of speed and convenience on their side.
In what way are the thumb drives not universal? They are supported on pretty much every device with a standard USB port and work with no extra steps on all major operating systems. Most computers (if not all) made in the last 6 years or so can boot from them. That's as good as universal in my book, certainly more than needing a separate reading device in all computers.
Also the quality of optical device readers has taken a very sharp turn for the worse since they have got to commodities level. I have encountered many cases where a DVD unit would not read rewritables, or even read CDs but refuse to read DVDs, and the culprit was not wear and tear. In fact, I own a DVD reader that has not been used 100 times in its lifetime that has become unable to read rewritable DVDs. Optical drives on laptops are even poorer quality. So, having optical media and the corresponding unit in a device is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to use said media. In those cases, ironically, it's usually the USB thumb drive that saves the day.
At this point in time a 25 GB rewritable Bluray disc is about 15$. A 32GB SanDisk Cruzer is 17$. A thumbnail sized 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 is 21$. Out of those, I think the thumb drives are a much better value for money, even ignoring the fact that most computers would be unable to use the Bluray disc.
I also live in a metric country and there is no such thing as "a beer". The seller is obligated to specify the exact size of the container. So, even if I order "a glass of wine", the menu or the displayed price list specifies that said glass is 100 ml or whatever. Usually, strong spirits are sold in 50 ml or 100 ml doses, wine in about 250 ml, and beer in 500ml, 750 ml or 1l (a glass, big glass or extra big glass). There's also a "billy goat" beer glass that is 300ml, but that is pretty rare.
Also, similar to Germany, the supermarkets display on the price tag, below the unit price, the price/kg or price/l, so comparison shopping is easy. It's probably a european directive at work.
You seem to act as if the metric countries don't have any builders. Guess what, they do, so your argument that metric is hard is pretty damn weak, too.
In fact, I think your argument boils down to "American builders are stupider than those in the rest of the world". They are not. If the rest of the world can use metric, I guarantee they they can too.
Many people prefer the Xbox controller design. I have both consoles, and the PS3 controller cramps up my hands something fierce and that's a pity, because overall I refer the PS3 just because it's quieter and most multiplatform games are pretty much on par these days across the two. I still haven't found a third party Xbox style controller for the PS3 that wasn't crap (I'm waiting for a Gioteck HF-2 at the moment, I'll see how it goes).
The PS3 controller uses Bluetooth, so I guess it will be possible to pair it with the Ouya for those that prefer it. In fact it's very likely, and if not there will surely be a third party app for this if if it won't work out of the box. But for me the fact that the Ouya has a Xbox style controller is actually a plus, shame that they also took the directional pad. This is a decision that I do not understand.
While I agree with your opinion that the BSD license was respected, I have to point out that both CUPS and Webkit are not Apple creations.
CUPS was started in 1997 by Michael Sweet, was adopted by Apple in Mac OS X in 2002 and in 2007 Apple bought the CUPS source code.
Webkit is a fork of KHTML. KHTML started in 1998, was forked in 2001 by Apple into Webkit and Webkit itself was open sourced in 2005.
Apple did indeed give their contributions back to the community, but those projects are not Apple creations as a whole. Also, the fact that Apple has given back more than they have benefited is debatable, if those two examples are the only things that spring to mind.
The male micro USB connector is not symmetrical as its big brother, as it is trapezoidal, and on the wider side it has two small hooks that anchor it inside the female connector on the phone. So, as long as you have memorized the orientation of the female connector on the phone, it is dead easy to plug in the male connector, even in the dark. It's pretty much what i do almost every night before bed. The hooks are really easy to identify by touch.
I use a Smart Master/Slave Power Strip for this. The computer is the master, and when it goes to standby all the other stuff (monitor, speakers, printer, desk lamp) get a hard shutdown. They are not too expensive, I think they start at around 20$. I recommend you search for one with adjustable sensitivity for the master outlet draw just in case, but I don't think event the cheapest fixed ones are calibrated for less than your 6W.
My laptop is neither giant, nor ugly, nor noisy, and can connect to my TV with a (ok, not really so) tiny HDMI cable. It's way more powerful than my 360 and can use its controller. Still I game on the 360, because it's a gaming system and I don't have (or even can) to fiddle with it in order to game.
And yes, I am married and I can guarantee that the moment I connect the tablet to the TV my wife will absolutely need it just then to look up something online. Or my phone will ring if I try to do the same.
I don't think I really got why Murphy's Law was so important until I got married.
Also, it's not really the same thing if before I start a new game I have to waste half an hour to tweak an acceptable gamepad profile for my hacked DS3 controller. That half hour might well be all the gaming time I'll have that evening.
I definitely wasn't implying that. What i was saying is that the argument of "Why would people want to game on a Ouya, when they can game on their phones/tablets?" is very similar to "Why would people want to game on consoles, when they can game on their PCs/laptops?", and that consoles still dominated general purpose devices this gen (and previous gens, probably).
Also, i don't think that Ouya's success depends on basement dwelling developers, because it should support pretty much all higher-profile Android games with minimal effort from their developers, and should provide a better experience than a phone/tablet tethered to a TV and with no standardized controller, even if said phone/tablet was superior hardware wise.
Anyway, we are still very early and although I think Ouya appears to get many things right (for example an integrated gaming environment similar to Live will be a very big draw, and they appear to be preparing that), there are many ways in which all of this could go south. And even if it will prove to be a non starter as a gaming platform (and I don't think it will, although I would not hazard to predict its long term success), I still am excited about having an officialy supported XBMC box for 110$.
I'm afraid I can't follow your argument. I probably should have been more specific and say that i was referring to the current generation of consoles versus PCs, as the arguments made by brunes69 apply almost verbatim there.
But I really must ask: what relevance has 1977 in this case? The PC as we understand it today came out in 1981. 2600 was itself a console. The holy trinity I presume refers to the other consoles released in that year. Apple I was launched in 1976, but I don't think you were referring to that, either.
The fact is that those exact same arguments could be made about consoles vs. PCs, and we all know how that went. The main advantage that a console (including this one) has is the fact that it is a standardized platform. Android games at the moment have very bad or nonexistent gamepad support. Because the Ouya will be a consistent target it will pretty much guarantee that the Android games that will appear going forward will have a controller profile for it. And a TV friendly layout. And will just work with no extra fiddling.
Exclusive games are a big boost for a console's adoption, but I think that it is not a strict requirement. COD was a natural fit for PC, and still most of its sales were on consoles. Because consoles are easier to use, cheaper and require very little hardware knowledge to operate.
The fact that their hardware was pretty much outdated at release time has never stopped the actual generation of consoles. And I don't think it will matter much for the Ouya either. What will make the difference will be the developer support for it, and at this time the signs for it are pretty positive.
And finally, this device is not made particularly for the average geek. Yes, they are using our interest to get and keep the buzz online, but this device is for the average gamer or even casual that will, hopefully, be interested in a cheap console. I hope it succeeds, we could use a console that is developer and hacker friendly being adopted by the general market.
What do you mean? You have this exact choice in Windows 7: multiple instances represented by a single icon, or every instance a new slot on the taskbar.
To wit: Taskbar - Right click - Taskbar - Taskbar Buttons: Always combine, hide labels (default Windows 7 setting), Combine when taskbar is full (XP behavior), Never combine (Windows 9x behavior).
No, it does not expand. Default behavior in Windows 7 is that a taskbar item has no text, only an icon. So, if you open an app, its icon gets a raised background; multiple instances of the same app have a stacked and raised effect on the background. What you are describing, expanding pinned apps, happens only if you choose the XP behavior for the taskbar.
Again, in Windows 7, the default behavior is that a pinned app icon never moves on the taskbar.
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From the Apple press release regarding this incident:
" iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements)."
So, using triangulation, just using cell phone towers they can locate users with way greater precision than just 5 to 10 miles.
Also, this data was crowdsourced. Which means that, for those users that have their GPS turned on, both the GPS location and the visible cell towers and WiFi access points were logged, in order to build said database.
The NSA documents that Snowden made available specifically say that the NSA was using a location bug to track apple users.
From the Spiegel article:
"The NSA analysts are especially enthusiastic about the geolocation data stored in smartphones and many of their apps, data that enables them to determine a user's whereabouts at a given time.
According to one presentation, it was even possible to track a person's whereabouts over extended periods of time, until Apple eliminated this "error" with version 4.3.3 of its mobile operating system and restricted the memory to seven days."
4.3.3 was the version in which this particular bug was fixed. Highly unlikely that it was just a coincidence and the NSA were speaking of another bug entirely.
Those are not real 4k Blu-ray players - they only upscale standard Blu-ray discs to 4k. When the 4k standard will be ratified, even if it will still use Blu-ray discs, those discs won't play in these players because the standard will almost certainly use new codecs.
Also those 4k discs you can buy are really only standard 1080p discs. They are "4k mastered", meaning they are encoded from a 4k source, but downscaled to 1080p, and are usually using a much higher bitrate than ordinary Blu-ray discs in order to preserve as much of the quality of the picture as possible, since they most likely will be used in those upscaling players. Upscaling magnifies encoding artefacts.
Those 4k mastered discs also play in normal Blu-ray players, since they are really only 1080p. At the moment they are probably the highest quality video source available for consumer purchase.
The Start Menu allows you to do exactly the same thing: customize the apps displayed and access the rest via search. You can even delete the shortcuts from the All Programs view, and since they're only shortcuts the programs themselves won't go anywhere.
In my opinion Microsoft got so many things right with Windows 7 that it's baffling that the same company could get so many things wrong in Windows 8 just three years later.
Also they kind of missed the point of rapid iteration of releases, that it allows you to make the changes gradually and in small steps and get feedback all the way.
There was no reason to make 8 so glaringly different to 7 and split their user base.
Both the current PS3 and Xbox 360 models use less than 80W. The figures you cited might have been accurate at launch, but they have progressively been lowered since then. Both consoles got to around 100W in 2008.
Also, while the Wii U itself uses 32W, the gamepad uses something over 5W (it cannot be powered from a 5V 1A usb port, since it draws more), bringing the total closer to 40W. So, in fact, both Xbox 360 and PS3 use about double the power of the Wii U, not six time more as you imply.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_hardware#Form_and_power_consumption
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware#Power_supply
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-wii-u-is-the-green-console
Except, you know, exactly the reverse, since the number of Windows RT and Windows Phone users who would be familiar with said environments is pretty much insignificant and they are selling this to the very numerous Windows PC users, who are thus forced to learn to a new interface.
Microsoft still does not get it. It tried to put a desktop interface on tablets and phones and it failed. Now it's trying the reverse and it's not exactly working either. Putting the same interface everywhere does not make it universal; carefully designing it from the beginning to work for different environments does. Windows Desktop and Windows Phone are specialized interfaces and they suck mightily when utilized outside their intended use case.
The difference between buying or subscribing is not in deductible costs, since both are deductible, but in the fact that buying means you have to spend all the money upfront, but are deducting it over the lifetime of the product, while a subscription means that all the money that you spend you deduct right away (well, over the period that the subscription covers).
Let's say you have 1000$ in the bank. You can get software either as a one-time cost of 600$, amortized over a period of 3 years, or a 200$ annual subscription. Those should be about even from a business'perspective? Well, if you buy the software you now have only 400$ in the bank, but can only deduct an expense of 200$ per year over the next three years. If you buy the subscription, you can deduct the same 200$ annually, but you still have 800$ in the bank <i>right now</i>.
So, it's not about deductible expenses, but about cash flow. And available liquidity matters very much in business.
The incentive for manufacturers to ship USB peripherals was the existence of a critical mass of devices supporting said standard, which the iMac most certainly was not, and the appearance of better use cases for said interface. Yes, the iMac was trendy at the time, no surprise there, and manufacturers tried to capitalize on the style, but also USB was better, technically, and enabled for example scanners that did not need their own expensive interface card, or cheaper Winprinters because USB had the bandwidth to push rendering in the driver instead of the device.
What I was getting at is that USB was an established standard that Apple adopted and promoted but did not create it and wasn't either the first or the largest manufacturer to use it. To put all the merit on Apple's shoulders for USB's success is disingenuous. If we want to see what happens when Apple creates and is the first and largest adopter of a new technology, Firewire is a better example. Was it better then alternative technologies? Hell yes. Did it ever get mass market penetration? Sadly, no, because it never got to a critical mass of available devices. 5% is not enough.
When will this myth ever die? The USB standard appeared in 1996, the USB iMac appeared in 1998 and it wasn't even the first with USB 1.1. Not to mention that the Mac marketshare was below 5%, how exactly did they manage to "push" USB. You want to talk about a standard that Apple really pushed and the PC largely ignored, talk about Firewire. How well did that go, exactly?
I'm from Europe and in all the cars I've owned or driven, which were mostly manual, turning off the key never engages the steering lock. The steering lock is engaged only when you remove the key.
That said, the car being a Renault Laguna and presumably a rather recent one it most likely comes with Renault's keycard ignition. Basically the key looks like a fatter credit card, and it goes into a slot. The car starts by pressing a Start button. In that case, the card is blocked inside the slot while the car is in motion, so it can't be removed at all.
Yes, I agree that unlike Bluray the lowly DVD still has a price advantage compared to thumb drives, but I would not call a 25 cents DVD archival material. And when you are talking about larger sized backups usb hard drives start to become a better alternative, since a decent quality DVD comes to about the same price per GB, and hard drives have both the advantage of speed and convenience on their side.
In what way are the thumb drives not universal? They are supported on pretty much every device with a standard USB port and work with no extra steps on all major operating systems. Most computers (if not all) made in the last 6 years or so can boot from them. That's as good as universal in my book, certainly more than needing a separate reading device in all computers.
Also the quality of optical device readers has taken a very sharp turn for the worse since they have got to commodities level. I have encountered many cases where a DVD unit would not read rewritables, or even read CDs but refuse to read DVDs, and the culprit was not wear and tear. In fact, I own a DVD reader that has not been used 100 times in its lifetime that has become unable to read rewritable DVDs. Optical drives on laptops are even poorer quality. So, having optical media and the corresponding unit in a device is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to use said media. In those cases, ironically, it's usually the USB thumb drive that saves the day.
At this point in time a 25 GB rewritable Bluray disc is about 15$. A 32GB SanDisk Cruzer is 17$. A thumbnail sized 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 is 21$. Out of those, I think the thumb drives are a much better value for money, even ignoring the fact that most computers would be unable to use the Bluray disc.
Hey, the K7S5A from ECS was a great board!
Bandwidth and data caps, probably.
I also live in a metric country and there is no such thing as "a beer". The seller is obligated to specify the exact size of the container. So, even if I order "a glass of wine", the menu or the displayed price list specifies that said glass is 100 ml or whatever. Usually, strong spirits are sold in 50 ml or 100 ml doses, wine in about 250 ml, and beer in 500ml, 750 ml or 1l (a glass, big glass or extra big glass). There's also a "billy goat" beer glass that is 300ml, but that is pretty rare.
Also, similar to Germany, the supermarkets display on the price tag, below the unit price, the price/kg or price/l, so comparison shopping is easy. It's probably a european directive at work.
You seem to act as if the metric countries don't have any builders. Guess what, they do, so your argument that metric is hard is pretty damn weak, too.
In fact, I think your argument boils down to "American builders are stupider than those in the rest of the world". They are not. If the rest of the world can use metric, I guarantee they they can too.
Many people prefer the Xbox controller design. I have both consoles, and the PS3 controller cramps up my hands something fierce and that's a pity, because overall I refer the PS3 just because it's quieter and most multiplatform games are pretty much on par these days across the two. I still haven't found a third party Xbox style controller for the PS3 that wasn't crap (I'm waiting for a Gioteck HF-2 at the moment, I'll see how it goes).
The PS3 controller uses Bluetooth, so I guess it will be possible to pair it with the Ouya for those that prefer it. In fact it's very likely, and if not there will surely be a third party app for this if if it won't work out of the box. But for me the fact that the Ouya has a Xbox style controller is actually a plus, shame that they also took the directional pad. This is a decision that I do not understand.
While I agree with your opinion that the BSD license was respected, I have to point out that both CUPS and Webkit are not Apple creations.
CUPS was started in 1997 by Michael Sweet, was adopted by Apple in Mac OS X in 2002 and in 2007 Apple bought the CUPS source code.
Webkit is a fork of KHTML. KHTML started in 1998, was forked in 2001 by Apple into Webkit and Webkit itself was open sourced in 2005.
Apple did indeed give their contributions back to the community, but those projects are not Apple creations as a whole. Also, the fact that Apple has given back more than they have benefited is debatable, if those two examples are the only things that spring to mind.
The male micro USB connector is not symmetrical as its big brother, as it is trapezoidal, and on the wider side it has two small hooks that anchor it inside the female connector on the phone. So, as long as you have memorized the orientation of the female connector on the phone, it is dead easy to plug in the male connector, even in the dark. It's pretty much what i do almost every night before bed. The hooks are really easy to identify by touch.
I use a Smart Master/Slave Power Strip for this. The computer is the master, and when it goes to standby all the other stuff (monitor, speakers, printer, desk lamp) get a hard shutdown. They are not too expensive, I think they start at around 20$. I recommend you search for one with adjustable sensitivity for the master outlet draw just in case, but I don't think event the cheapest fixed ones are calibrated for less than your 6W.
My laptop is neither giant, nor ugly, nor noisy, and can connect to my TV with a (ok, not really so) tiny HDMI cable. It's way more powerful than my 360 and can use its controller. Still I game on the 360, because it's a gaming system and I don't have (or even can) to fiddle with it in order to game.
And yes, I am married and I can guarantee that the moment I connect the tablet to the TV my wife will absolutely need it just then to look up something online. Or my phone will ring if I try to do the same.
I don't think I really got why Murphy's Law was so important until I got married.
Also, it's not really the same thing if before I start a new game I have to waste half an hour to tweak an acceptable gamepad profile for my hacked DS3 controller. That half hour might well be all the gaming time I'll have that evening.
I definitely wasn't implying that. What i was saying is that the argument of "Why would people want to game on a Ouya, when they can game on their phones/tablets?" is very similar to "Why would people want to game on consoles, when they can game on their PCs/laptops?", and that consoles still dominated general purpose devices this gen (and previous gens, probably).
Also, i don't think that Ouya's success depends on basement dwelling developers, because it should support pretty much all higher-profile Android games with minimal effort from their developers, and should provide a better experience than a phone/tablet tethered to a TV and with no standardized controller, even if said phone/tablet was superior hardware wise.
Anyway, we are still very early and although I think Ouya appears to get many things right (for example an integrated gaming environment similar to Live will be a very big draw, and they appear to be preparing that), there are many ways in which all of this could go south. And even if it will prove to be a non starter as a gaming platform (and I don't think it will, although I would not hazard to predict its long term success), I still am excited about having an officialy supported XBMC box for 110$.
I'm afraid I can't follow your argument. I probably should have been more specific and say that i was referring to the current generation of consoles versus PCs, as the arguments made by brunes69 apply almost verbatim there.
But I really must ask: what relevance has 1977 in this case? The PC as we understand it today came out in 1981. 2600 was itself a console. The holy trinity I presume refers to the other consoles released in that year. Apple I was launched in 1976, but I don't think you were referring to that, either.
The fact is that those exact same arguments could be made about consoles vs. PCs, and we all know how that went. The main advantage that a console (including this one) has is the fact that it is a standardized platform. Android games at the moment have very bad or nonexistent gamepad support. Because the Ouya will be a consistent target it will pretty much guarantee that the Android games that will appear going forward will have a controller profile for it. And a TV friendly layout. And will just work with no extra fiddling.
Exclusive games are a big boost for a console's adoption, but I think that it is not a strict requirement. COD was a natural fit for PC, and still most of its sales were on consoles. Because consoles are easier to use, cheaper and require very little hardware knowledge to operate.
The fact that their hardware was pretty much outdated at release time has never stopped the actual generation of consoles. And I don't think it will matter much for the Ouya either. What will make the difference will be the developer support for it, and at this time the signs for it are pretty positive.
And finally, this device is not made particularly for the average geek. Yes, they are using our interest to get and keep the buzz online, but this device is for the average gamer or even casual that will, hopefully, be interested in a cheap console. I hope it succeeds, we could use a console that is developer and hacker friendly being adopted by the general market.
What do you mean? You have this exact choice in Windows 7: multiple instances represented by a single icon, or every instance a new slot on the taskbar.
To wit: Taskbar - Right click - Taskbar - Taskbar Buttons: Always combine, hide labels (default Windows 7 setting), Combine when taskbar is full (XP behavior), Never combine (Windows 9x behavior).
No, it does not expand. Default behavior in Windows 7 is that a taskbar item has no text, only an icon. So, if you open an app, its icon gets a raised background; multiple instances of the same app have a stacked and raised effect on the background. What you are describing, expanding pinned apps, happens only if you choose the XP behavior for the taskbar.
Again, in Windows 7, the default behavior is that a pinned app icon never moves on the taskbar.