Honestly, if you are not tired of Apple's excessive and awesome hyperbole then you must be extremely and definitively deaf.
Also every "new" feature Tim Cook announced in iOS 7 I am thinking about how Android already does that. Apple needed to bring iOS 7 back into the 21st century as everyone else seems to have move forward with flatter looks and innovative features, but Apple is decidedly playing the game of "Lets take every Android feature and make it slightly better".
Also OS X is looking decidedly antiquated. When they were showing off OS X Mavericks (really Apple?) I couldn't believe how old it looked. Also they stopped making OS X internally better, instead every new version of OS X is simply a package update of the apps running on it.
As for Mac Pro, while it will sell like well to many graphic designers and video editors at first, about a year after its release people will feel the backlash of buying an uber-expensive sealed box with limited upgrade-ability. Forget about slapping in a new GPU or CPU or memory to boost video editing or rendering performance, you will have to buy a whole new sealed box. Apple just slapped every professional in the face by forcing them to upgrade their Mac Pro more quickly then "every other decade". Once customers get tired of stroking their expensive new black cylinder they are going to realize the pain of getting screwed by it.
I walked by our IT department today and it looked exactly like they did 15 years ago at any company I worked at. A bunch of open PC's with parts and wires dangling out of them, a bunch of server racks in the never ending process of being upgraded, a bunch of obsolete parts strewn over shelves and desks, boxes of wires old keyboards and mice in the corner, old monitors and brick thick laptops that once cost a fortune now collecting dust because nobody knows how to get rid of them.
The actual server room is a way too cold room filled with racks of mismatched components from HP and Dell and homegrown solutions humming noisily away, the acrid smell of ozone and general neglect filling the air.
The eclectic collection of socially challenged uber-nerds that usually fill IT department staff, walking around with whatever phone was released just last week and squirreling all the best workstation tech for themselves..
You can walk into any "enterprise" IT department and see the exact same thing, over and over and over again.
All the "cloud" has done for the world is given consumers a place to store pictures of their cat's and access to music they would have otherwise (or already have) stolen. It has allowed people with a guilty conscience to stream movies and TV shows on demand for a low monthly fee.
For enterprise, Cloud is just another buzzword that IT managers love to throw around but the non-IT corporate execs will never let their company's intellectual property reside on some external 3rd party storage server.
All that will change is that in 5 years that room full of shitty server components will be called the "cloud" room, and no longer the "server" room us ol' timers call it. Every enterprise will try and build their own local "cloud" to try and remain hip to the lingo of the era.
Of course in 5 years nobody will use the terminology "Cloud" anymore. Either it will become Cloud 2.0 or Web Infinity or some kind of shit like that.
But the IT department will remain steadfast and unchanged.
I am sure BBC News will blame the inaccuracies of their home page clock due to the devastating effects caused by Global Warming as they blame everything wrong with the planet on that ol' scapegoat. Something about excessive Carbons in the atmospheres interferes with the correct calculations of the Maths involved to tell Times.
Also if you can't report accurate time then what does that say about your news reporting abilities?
Finally, as with all well oiled government run tax based enterprises, 100 days to fix an online clock in the 21st century would actually be quite an amazing feat, but probably would cost billions.
Have a bunch of unopened Atari games, still worth $2 each, like the price they were originally sold for. Why? because nobody wants them just like most old games. If you buy a video game as an investment, you need to get a life.
Just Kickstart it, there are enough bleeding hearts out there willing to separate themselves from from a few hundred dollars on a 'scause for applause, just offer them an orange wristband as a reward.
Windows Desktop on a touch device is useless, period.
It doesn't work with finger touch. It barely works with a Stylus You really really want to plug in a mouse and keyboard to work with desktop apps on a tablet. This after 10+ years of creating Tablet PC's, Surface Pro is an embarrassing product, period.
Microsoft needs to end the Duality of Windows and keep it separated. Without that then they can never have a successful hybrid product.
Microsoft did nothing for the desktop user in Windows 8. Metro skin aside, they ruined the desktop experience by going to a flat monochromatic UI. They broke almost every UI rule in the book and on a subconscious level you hate using Windows 8 on the desktop because it lacks any visual pizazz. Visual Studio 2012 and Office 13 exemplify how poorly Microsoft's decision to strip down the UI to a flat monochromatic palette, these are boring and uninspired applications and without any visual UI cues, are actually more difficult to use. Any real performance or stability improvements of Windows 8 over Windows 7 is lost compared to how bland they made Windows 8. I am not saying you have to bring back cheesy glassy buttons and panels, but you can do something a little more than battleship grey applications with bright primary color highlights.
The only real desktop customers left are in the corporate world, and so it makes no sense for Microsoft to try and force tablet like features on the corporate desktop. They should revert to a Windows 7 era of desktop design and just promote Windows 8.x as a fast, stable, mature desktop OS that helps to build up their enterprise portfolio.
Since the mainstream consumer is going mobile Microsoft should focus more on Tablet ONLY offerings, I think Microsoft has a decent tablet OS in WIndows 8 (sans desktop mode), I mean, compared to iOS and Android Windows 8 ( the Metro skin of it) is a great Tablet OS. It's touch friendly and innovative, and the Live Tiles are ahead of the curve when it comes to other mobile OS'es. The problem with a lack of Surface RT and Windows RT sales comes down to the same old problem with any alternative tablet OS...Applications. However I am at a loss here because Microsoft offers some of the best development tools out there and one of the most expansive development communities. Remember, if Apple counts a million apps in iPad, Microsoft can count hundreds of millions of applications designed for Windows OS over the years.
But the biggest issue with Windows tablets is trying to sell in the same price range as iPad's, and that is just not going to do it. Android tablets only took off when they are cheaper than iPad's. Microsoft has to change their pricing strategy for Windows RT tablets if they want them to survive, I think the Apps will come when their market share improves, but that will not change selling tablets that are the same or even more expensive than the iPad.
Until MIcrosoft realizes that hybrid devices don't work and don't sell, they will not be able to revive Windows 8 so they may as well save face and separate the Desktop from the Tablet and focus on bringing the best features to each individual platform rather than mashing a bunch of haphazard features that do not work well on either. Microsoft should kill Surface Pro and end any 3rd parties trying to promote hybrid touch/laptop hardware. There is a reason why Apple is refusing to offer touch on a Mac, because Apple realized that touch does not work on the desktop, period.
What's the point? Windows is a dying platform, why make a clone of it? I don't think the problem with running Windows apps is running Windows and need an alternative.
Also no point trying to dethrone anyone when the throne is on a sinking ship. Anyone vying to replace Windows on the PC desktop has not crawled out of their cave long enough to realize everyone has moved over to tablets and phones as their primary computing device.
For a Pledge of $1000, Jaqen H'ghar will kill 3 people of your choosing using this product. Just don't waste it on the wrong 3 people that could have ended the book series quickly.
LOL, OMG, Email (in general) is broken, and has been, for years. Please start making Email into something new.
Gmail is trying to make sense of the countless amount of pure garbage sent to your inbox, even from your friends, family and co-workers.
Even at work, 90% of the email I get is only valid for the 5 minutes after it was sent, and is usually something I can toss away. In fact I have gotten used to the idea of being able to Ignore entire conversation threads in Outlook based purely on the fact the original message is meaningless to me, but I got CC'd on it.
While Google is trying to organize and make sense of it, I think that email in general needs to change. Its become a kind of sms/message service where people feel the need to try and maintain some kind of real time conversation, and email inbox's are just not designed for that.
I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.
Apple typically has a "big year" followed by nothing. Feast followed by famine.
2012 saw major and minor updates of almost every product Apple makes including new product roll-outs.
So I fully expected 2013 to be a very slow year for Apple announcements and full of wild speculation and rumor mongering about what they are planning next. This has been a trend for Apple for almost 15 years since they rolled out the first iMac that iconized their iProducts into stuff people actually wanted.
But people seem to forget history even when it was only a few years old.
Also, I still can't understand how people believe Tim Cook is relevant. He orchestrated a disaster that plunged Apple's stock over $300 a share. I mean, most CEO's do not even have the luxury of having a stock reach a value of $300 a share, but Cook lost this much value in under 6 months. How is he still running Apple??? He has shown lack of vision, lack of passion, and a lack of experience running Apple and people hang on his every word? Make Ives CEO at least and maybe Apple will enter an era of innovation again.
Everybody assumes that because a billion people have an iPhone or iPad and they play "games" on it, this means that game consoles are dead.
However, these "open" gaming platforms have done one thing, they have gamified billions.
What they have done is exposed billions to games that otherwise would never have bothered to buy a game console in the past to play a game.
Gaming is like crack. You start off with a little taste, but eventually you want more and a stronger dose.
Someone playing Angry Birds is going to get bored of it after a while, and when there is just a bunch of Angry Bird knock offs along with a slew of other tepid offerings available on the iDevice platform, people are eventually going to grow tired of it and want more.
Now enter a new generation of game consoles that not only offer games with far more entertainment value, but also a slew of connected and smart services that currently require a handful of different devices to access.
I am not saying a billion people are going to jump into game consoles, but there are millions and millions of people that have been newly exposed to games over the last 5 years through their phones and tablets that are going to want to check out what a game console can offer.
You can argue that game consoles have always been a niche market. In no generation of game console has there been more then maybe 100 - 200 million units sold, the current gen (Wii, PS3, 360) have sold over 250 million units combined, and that does not include the handheld market. So while sales are not in competition with phones or tablets, sales HAVE grown between generations.
So, while everyone is evangelizing the death of the game console, I think they are set for a huge boom because more people are gamified now than ever before, and eventually some of them are going to want to do more then flick raster birds at pigs. Sony and Microsoft (and sigh, even NIntendo) are going to be sitting there waiting for the sames to come over the next 5 - 8 years when people get bored of the same derivative games available on their phones and tablets.
This is talking about server products, not your beloved I7 PC.
Supercomputers are not about the performance of a single CPU, but the aggregate performance of a slew of CPU's. And considering the desire to reduce the power consumption of Data Centers, any time you can get real gains in power reduction means real gains in profit.
Not only that but its pretty clear the average PC user was happy to switch from mainstream Intel to ARM based tablets and phones. I agree its a step back in the evolution of computers, but when a billion people decided that a tablet is "good enough" for them, the market listens. Even Intel is struggling now to make a CPU with the performance/power ratio of ARM rather than worrying about kick-ass home CPU's for the few million PC DIY'ers left in the world.
Again major backlash against always-on. But I mean this is coming from the same people that probably spend 8 hours playing Call of Duty or Gears of Wars with all their buddies on the weekend. Guess what, your box is always one then too. Watch Netflix, its always on, browser Xbox Live features, its always on.
I mean, in what reality are people actually using a PC or game console that is not connected to a network?
Also while turfing used games sales is bad, I would rather have $30 games than $60 games. I mean you are only getting a $10 - $20 discount buying used from a store, I'd rather games just come down $10 - $20 in price FOR EVERYONE. And yes it sucks I can't just lend a game to a friend to try out but I've reached a stage in my life where both me and my friends can afford to drop money on a game without worrying about affording food or rent. If that is an issue for you, perhaps you need to reprioritize your spending and NOT buy a game console.
The internet is becoming a place for people to bitch about non-issues, even on Slashdot people can't get their outrage organized into one cohesive issue, its just "blah blah blah, always on, Microsoft, hate, DRM! hidden agendas, have no clue how it actually affects me, down with Microsoft, thats why I run Linux"
I mean really, while I hate URL squatters, the fact that someone created a website that happened to coincide with a future product is not "in dispute".
The fact that Microsoft's Marketing department didn't spend more than a minute coming up with the new Xbox name is obvious.
I mean really most people do not buy CD's anymore or use PC's to listen to music, Rootkits are no longer an issue for the vast majority of multimedia content users. No need to get your knickers in a twist.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, if you are not tired of Apple's excessive and awesome hyperbole then you must be extremely and definitively deaf.
Also every "new" feature Tim Cook announced in iOS 7 I am thinking about how Android already does that. Apple needed to bring iOS 7 back into the 21st century as everyone else seems to have move forward with flatter looks and innovative features, but Apple is decidedly playing the game of "Lets take every Android feature and make it slightly better".
Also OS X is looking decidedly antiquated. When they were showing off OS X Mavericks (really Apple?) I couldn't believe how old it looked. Also they stopped making OS X internally better, instead every new version of OS X is simply a package update of the apps running on it.
As for Mac Pro, while it will sell like well to many graphic designers and video editors at first, about a year after its release people will feel the backlash of buying an uber-expensive sealed box with limited upgrade-ability. Forget about slapping in a new GPU or CPU or memory to boost video editing or rendering performance, you will have to buy a whole new sealed box. Apple just slapped every professional in the face by forcing them to upgrade their Mac Pro more quickly then "every other decade". Once customers get tired of stroking their expensive new black cylinder they are going to realize the pain of getting screwed by it.
It will look exactly like they do today.
I walked by our IT department today and it looked exactly like they did 15 years ago at any company I worked at. A bunch of open PC's with parts and wires dangling out of them, a bunch of server racks in the never ending process of being upgraded, a bunch of obsolete parts strewn over shelves and desks, boxes of wires old keyboards and mice in the corner, old monitors and brick thick laptops that once cost a fortune now collecting dust because nobody knows how to get rid of them.
The actual server room is a way too cold room filled with racks of mismatched components from HP and Dell and homegrown solutions humming noisily away, the acrid smell of ozone and general neglect filling the air.
The eclectic collection of socially challenged uber-nerds that usually fill IT department staff, walking around with whatever phone was released just last week and squirreling all the best workstation tech for themselves..
You can walk into any "enterprise" IT department and see the exact same thing, over and over and over again.
All the "cloud" has done for the world is given consumers a place to store pictures of their cat's and access to music they would have otherwise (or already have) stolen. It has allowed people with a guilty conscience to stream movies and TV shows on demand for a low monthly fee.
For enterprise, Cloud is just another buzzword that IT managers love to throw around but the non-IT corporate execs will never let their company's intellectual property reside on some external 3rd party storage server.
All that will change is that in 5 years that room full of shitty server components will be called the "cloud" room, and no longer the "server" room us ol' timers call it. Every enterprise will try and build their own local "cloud" to try and remain hip to the lingo of the era.
Of course in 5 years nobody will use the terminology "Cloud" anymore. Either it will become Cloud 2.0 or Web Infinity or some kind of shit like that.
But the IT department will remain steadfast and unchanged.
I am sure BBC News will blame the inaccuracies of their home page clock due to the devastating effects caused by Global Warming as they blame everything wrong with the planet on that ol' scapegoat. Something about excessive Carbons in the atmospheres interferes with the correct calculations of the Maths involved to tell Times.
Also if you can't report accurate time then what does that say about your news reporting abilities?
Finally, as with all well oiled government run tax based enterprises, 100 days to fix an online clock in the 21st century would actually be quite an amazing feat, but probably would cost billions.
Now it will force users to buy iPhone 5 and iPad 3 or Mini instead of cheaping out on an older model. Its a win win here.
A lot of disappointed dreams coming out of this thing, just like what comes out of a dollar store.
Have a bunch of unopened Atari games, still worth $2 each, like the price they were originally sold for. Why? because nobody wants them just like most old games. If you buy a video game as an investment, you need to get a life.
They all end up in equally in divorce anyways.
Wonder if this one ever found a boyfriend yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP4NMoJcFd4
Just Kickstart it, there are enough bleeding hearts out there willing to separate themselves from from a few hundred dollars on a 'scause for applause, just offer them an orange wristband as a reward.
Beer?
Cellular?
Beer?
c...e...l...l...
b...e...e...r
Windows Desktop on a touch device is useless, period.
It doesn't work with finger touch.
It barely works with a Stylus
You really really want to plug in a mouse and keyboard to work with desktop apps on a tablet.
This after 10+ years of creating Tablet PC's, Surface Pro is an embarrassing product, period.
Microsoft needs to end the Duality of Windows and keep it separated. Without that then they can never have a successful hybrid product.
Microsoft did nothing for the desktop user in Windows 8. Metro skin aside, they ruined the desktop experience by going to a flat monochromatic UI. They broke almost every UI rule in the book and on a subconscious level you hate using Windows 8 on the desktop because it lacks any visual pizazz. Visual Studio 2012 and Office 13 exemplify how poorly Microsoft's decision to strip down the UI to a flat monochromatic palette, these are boring and uninspired applications and without any visual UI cues, are actually more difficult to use. Any real performance or stability improvements of Windows 8 over Windows 7 is lost compared to how bland they made Windows 8. I am not saying you have to bring back cheesy glassy buttons and panels, but you can do something a little more than battleship grey applications with bright primary color highlights.
The only real desktop customers left are in the corporate world, and so it makes no sense for Microsoft to try and force tablet like features on the corporate desktop. They should revert to a Windows 7 era of desktop design and just promote Windows 8.x as a fast, stable, mature desktop OS that helps to build up their enterprise portfolio.
Since the mainstream consumer is going mobile Microsoft should focus more on Tablet ONLY offerings, I think Microsoft has a decent tablet OS in WIndows 8 (sans desktop mode), I mean, compared to iOS and Android Windows 8 ( the Metro skin of it) is a great Tablet OS. It's touch friendly and innovative, and the Live Tiles are ahead of the curve when it comes to other mobile OS'es. The problem with a lack of Surface RT and Windows RT sales comes down to the same old problem with any alternative tablet OS...Applications. However I am at a loss here because Microsoft offers some of the best development tools out there and one of the most expansive development communities. Remember, if Apple counts a million apps in iPad, Microsoft can count hundreds of millions of applications designed for Windows OS over the years.
But the biggest issue with Windows tablets is trying to sell in the same price range as iPad's, and that is just not going to do it. Android tablets only took off when they are cheaper than iPad's. Microsoft has to change their pricing strategy for Windows RT tablets if they want them to survive, I think the Apps will come when their market share improves, but that will not change selling tablets that are the same or even more expensive than the iPad.
Until MIcrosoft realizes that hybrid devices don't work and don't sell, they will not be able to revive Windows 8 so they may as well save face and separate the Desktop from the Tablet and focus on bringing the best features to each individual platform rather than mashing a bunch of haphazard features that do not work well on either. Microsoft should kill Surface Pro and end any 3rd parties trying to promote hybrid touch/laptop hardware. There is a reason why Apple is refusing to offer touch on a Mac, because Apple realized that touch does not work on the desktop, period.
There are just too many stupid people in society today, so the smrt people feel they need to cater to them.
If they make this movie any darker we won't be able to see what is going on.
What's the point? Windows is a dying platform, why make a clone of it? I don't think the problem with running Windows apps is running Windows and need an alternative.
Also no point trying to dethrone anyone when the throne is on a sinking ship. Anyone vying to replace Windows on the PC desktop has not crawled out of their cave long enough to realize everyone has moved over to tablets and phones as their primary computing device.
Let me lick the cheesy poofs off my fingers before I reply...
For a Pledge of $1000, Jaqen H'ghar will kill 3 people of your choosing using this product. Just don't waste it on the wrong 3 people that could have ended the book series quickly.
Google can push out 20 versions of chrome in 7 days.
LOL, OMG, Email (in general) is broken, and has been, for years. Please start making Email into something new.
Gmail is trying to make sense of the countless amount of pure garbage sent to your inbox, even from your friends, family and co-workers.
Even at work, 90% of the email I get is only valid for the 5 minutes after it was sent, and is usually something I can toss away. In fact I have gotten used to the idea of being able to Ignore entire conversation threads in Outlook based purely on the fact the original message is meaningless to me, but I got CC'd on it.
While Google is trying to organize and make sense of it, I think that email in general needs to change. Its become a kind of sms/message service where people feel the need to try and maintain some kind of real time conversation, and email inbox's are just not designed for that.
I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.
Is everything made in China these days?
This is a typical Apple product cycle state.
Apple typically has a "big year" followed by nothing. Feast followed by famine.
2012 saw major and minor updates of almost every product Apple makes including new product roll-outs.
So I fully expected 2013 to be a very slow year for Apple announcements and full of wild speculation and rumor mongering about what they are planning next. This has been a trend for Apple for almost 15 years since they rolled out the first iMac that iconized their iProducts into stuff people actually wanted.
But people seem to forget history even when it was only a few years old.
Also, I still can't understand how people believe Tim Cook is relevant. He orchestrated a disaster that plunged Apple's stock over $300 a share. I mean, most CEO's do not even have the luxury of having a stock reach a value of $300 a share, but Cook lost this much value in under 6 months. How is he still running Apple??? He has shown lack of vision, lack of passion, and a lack of experience running Apple and people hang on his every word? Make Ives CEO at least and maybe Apple will enter an era of innovation again.
I think people have this all wrong.
Everybody assumes that because a billion people have an iPhone or iPad and they play "games" on it, this means that game consoles are dead.
However, these "open" gaming platforms have done one thing, they have gamified billions.
What they have done is exposed billions to games that otherwise would never have bothered to buy a game console in the past to play a game.
Gaming is like crack. You start off with a little taste, but eventually you want more and a stronger dose.
Someone playing Angry Birds is going to get bored of it after a while, and when there is just a bunch of Angry Bird knock offs along with a slew of other tepid offerings available on the iDevice platform, people are eventually going to grow tired of it and want more.
Now enter a new generation of game consoles that not only offer games with far more entertainment value, but also a slew of connected and smart services that currently require a handful of different devices to access.
I am not saying a billion people are going to jump into game consoles, but there are millions and millions of people that have been newly exposed to games over the last 5 years through their phones and tablets that are going to want to check out what a game console can offer.
You can argue that game consoles have always been a niche market. In no generation of game console has there been more then maybe 100 - 200 million units sold, the current gen (Wii, PS3, 360) have sold over 250 million units combined, and that does not include the handheld market. So while sales are not in competition with phones or tablets, sales HAVE grown between generations.
So, while everyone is evangelizing the death of the game console, I think they are set for a huge boom because more people are gamified now than ever before, and eventually some of them are going to want to do more then flick raster birds at pigs. Sony and Microsoft (and sigh, even NIntendo) are going to be sitting there waiting for the sames to come over the next 5 - 8 years when people get bored of the same derivative games available on their phones and tablets.
How can you claim this is insightful?
This is talking about server products, not your beloved I7 PC.
Supercomputers are not about the performance of a single CPU, but the aggregate performance of a slew of CPU's. And considering the desire to reduce the power consumption of Data Centers, any time you can get real gains in power reduction means real gains in profit.
Not only that but its pretty clear the average PC user was happy to switch from mainstream Intel to ARM based tablets and phones. I agree its a step back in the evolution of computers, but when a billion people decided that a tablet is "good enough" for them, the market listens. Even Intel is struggling now to make a CPU with the performance/power ratio of ARM rather than worrying about kick-ass home CPU's for the few million PC DIY'ers left in the world.
Again major backlash against always-on. But I mean this is coming from the same people that probably spend 8 hours playing Call of Duty or Gears of Wars with all their buddies on the weekend. Guess what, your box is always one then too. Watch Netflix, its always on, browser Xbox Live features, its always on.
I mean, in what reality are people actually using a PC or game console that is not connected to a network?
Also while turfing used games sales is bad, I would rather have $30 games than $60 games. I mean you are only getting a $10 - $20 discount buying used from a store, I'd rather games just come down $10 - $20 in price FOR EVERYONE. And yes it sucks I can't just lend a game to a friend to try out but I've reached a stage in my life where both me and my friends can afford to drop money on a game without worrying about affording food or rent. If that is an issue for you, perhaps you need to reprioritize your spending and NOT buy a game console.
The internet is becoming a place for people to bitch about non-issues, even on Slashdot people can't get their outrage organized into one cohesive issue, its just "blah blah blah, always on, Microsoft, hate, DRM! hidden agendas, have no clue how it actually affects me, down with Microsoft, thats why I run Linux"
Just pay a few million and buy it.
I mean really, while I hate URL squatters, the fact that someone created a website that happened to coincide with a future product is not "in dispute".
The fact that Microsoft's Marketing department didn't spend more than a minute coming up with the new Xbox name is obvious.
All water can be cleaned using energy. Nobody drinks from a lake river or stream anymore.
I mean really most people do not buy CD's anymore or use PC's to listen to music, Rootkits are no longer an issue for the vast majority of multimedia content users. No need to get your knickers in a twist.