are you are saying that a tablet form is not useful, and it must have the baggage of a KB and mouse to be so?
No, I'm saying the exact opposite. If a tablet needs that baggage, then the tablet will fail. Like the Surface really needs the TouchCover to be useful, thus it fails as a tablet. The iPad and Android tablets are winning because they don't need anything extra in order to be useful.
A UK court recently ruled that Microsoft's SkyDrive name infringed on a trademark owned by British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), and the software maker has agreed to change the name of its cloud-based service worldwide as a result. In a settlement issued on Wednesday, BSkyB notes that Microsoft will not appeal the court ruling and that the company will allow Microsoft to continue using the brand "for a reasonable period of time to allow for an orderly transition to a new brand."
The agreement includes financial and other terms, but neither BSkyB or Microsoft will disclose the details as the agreement is confidential. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the name change in a statement to The Verge.
I can't believe they thought it would be. A touch-friendly version of Office might be good, but even that probably will depend heavily on a physical keyboard to do some actual work. And guess what? People already have machines with a physical keyboard running Office on them.
What do mcafee and the anti-virus mafia bring to the US economy per year?
I wouldn't be surprised if the combined time a virus scanner takes away by using system resources and asking users for updates and other stuff is more than the time it saves by blocking malware and viruses.
This is exactly why Facebook's entire business model would collapse if people could buy their way out of seeing ads. Even if only 1% of the users would disable ads this way, companies purchasing ads would surely miss out on the 1% of the most addicted, most active users. The people who would pay money to disable ads are exactly the people advertisers want to target.
Some percentage of them will pay a monthly fee for an improved experience.
Did you ask them? The fact they are using Facebook's service doesn't mean they are in love with it. Most of the people I hear talking about Facebook are complaining about it.
It used to be the case that Facebook was sort of OK. Nothing special, but not too bad too. But in the last couple of months (years maybe even), it really has declined in quality a lot.
I fully agree that some edge cases are always going to be a problem, but Facebook's utter randomness really goes way beyond acceptable behavior from a software product.
It seems to me that the more you use Facebook, the more you grow upset with it. Which is kind of hard to combine with the "lets let people who love Facebook pay for it" idea, as it really are the people who should love the platform the most who are the ones having the most issues with it.
Anywhoo, now that I’m using it and thinking about it, I’ve got an idea for Facebook. They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some special features too. If 10% percent of Facebook signed up, that’s $1B a month in revenue. Not too shabby.
The problem is highlighted in bold. People who love Facebook and are willing to pay $10 a month isn't 10% of Facebook's user base, it probably isn't even 1%. I think hardly anyone really "loves Facebook" at all actually, the only reason people stick around is because that's where their friends are.
Facebook really needs to improve their platform *a lot* if they want to charge people money for it, because in it's current state, it isn't worth a dime.
What "reports"? Surface RT sales being weak is reported all over the internet. Literally nobody is saying it is selling well at all, including Microsoft themselves.
Yeah. And it's "selling better than their previous tablets", but this is their first one. Right...
Sure they tried to push Windows onto other people's tablets before with things like XP Tablet Edition, but they haven't made their own tablet until the Surface. And it's a bomb, just like the Zune.
The problem, and the real reason the stock is down so much, is because Microsoft's new direction isn't catching on. The iPad was an instant success, but the Surface RT isn't selling at all. This combined with the declining PC-market makes investors nervous, as it seems Microsoft is unable to be successful in the future.
The number of systems with Java enabled in the browser is rapidly declining.
You really can't depend on Java being available in a client when developing a web application these days, especially if you're also targetting mobile devices (and with the popularity of iPads these days, you probably are).
Yeah, I believe that was the second time Java didn't catch on, right after it failed the first time in embedded systems and before it failed the third time in desktop applications.
Because of how bloated Windows 8 is, a serious chunk of storage space isn't available at all to the user. You might think 32 GB oughta be enough for anyone, but half of that is reserved for the system.
According to Microsoft:
* The 32 GB version has approximately 15 GB free hard disk space. * The 64 GB version has approximately 45 GB free hard disk space.
People pledging through Kickstarter aren't investors. They pay money to enable the creation of a product. That product is being made and because there is more money, the product is bigger and better than advertised. Never ever did they promised a delivery date and I doubt anyone really cares if the game is released in October or January or July.
The problem isn't in the code. I'm sure the adventure game engine is more or less the same for a 400K or a 3M dollar game. The extra money goes to a bigger story, more characters, more locations etc. That's all creative work (writing, drawing, voice acting etc.) on which you can't save a dime by keeping in mind a bigger project while creating a smaller project.
They could have made the 400K game, but that basically would have meant the 3M game would never have been created at all.
The $ 400K project is really a different game than the $ 3.3M project. The bigger budget allowed for a bigger story, a wider scope of characters and locations and in the end basically a whole different game. A better game probably. So what's the problem? That it's taking a few months extra? Who cares?
Three million dollars isn't "a giant stack of money" for a game studio. Remember that John Carmack interview on games for mobile, where he said it's cool because you only need 30 million to create a great game instead of 300? AAA-games cost a shit load of cash to develop. Having a talented team working for over a year on something burns money like crazy.
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are you are saying that a tablet form is not useful, and it must have the baggage of a KB and mouse to be so?
No, I'm saying the exact opposite. If a tablet needs that baggage, then the tablet will fail. Like the Surface really needs the TouchCover to be useful, thus it fails as a tablet. The iPad and Android tablets are winning because they don't need anything extra in order to be useful.
A UK court recently ruled that Microsoft's SkyDrive name infringed on a trademark owned by British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB), and the software maker has agreed to change the name of its cloud-based service worldwide as a result. In a settlement issued on Wednesday, BSkyB notes that Microsoft will not appeal the court ruling and that the company will allow Microsoft to continue using the brand "for a reasonable period of time to allow for an orderly transition to a new brand."
The agreement includes financial and other terms, but neither BSkyB or Microsoft will disclose the details as the agreement is confidential. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the name change in a statement to The Verge.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/31/4574878/microsoft-skydrive-name-change-bskyb
So there you go.
It has already been confirmed that indeed SkyDrive will be renamed worldwide.
Exactly. And even for typing on a sofa, a laptop is much more convenient than a tablet.
A tablet cannot succeed when it depends on accessories to be useful, especially when those accessories are optional and hurting mobility.
I can't believe they thought it would be. A touch-friendly version of Office might be good, but even that probably will depend heavily on a physical keyboard to do some actual work. And guess what? People already have machines with a physical keyboard running Office on them.
What do mcafee and the anti-virus mafia bring to the US economy per year?
I wouldn't be surprised if the combined time a virus scanner takes away by using system resources and asking users for updates and other stuff is more than the time it saves by blocking malware and viruses.
This is exactly why Facebook's entire business model would collapse if people could buy their way out of seeing ads. Even if only 1% of the users would disable ads this way, companies purchasing ads would surely miss out on the 1% of the most addicted, most active users. The people who would pay money to disable ads are exactly the people advertisers want to target.
Some percentage of them will pay a monthly fee for an improved experience.
Did you ask them? The fact they are using Facebook's service doesn't mean they are in love with it. Most of the people I hear talking about Facebook are complaining about it.
It used to be the case that Facebook was sort of OK. Nothing special, but not too bad too. But in the last couple of months (years maybe even), it really has declined in quality a lot.
I fully agree that some edge cases are always going to be a problem, but Facebook's utter randomness really goes way beyond acceptable behavior from a software product.
It seems to me that the more you use Facebook, the more you grow upset with it. Which is kind of hard to combine with the "lets let people who love Facebook pay for it" idea, as it really are the people who should love the platform the most who are the ones having the most issues with it.
Anywhoo, now that I’m using it and thinking about it, I’ve got an idea for Facebook. They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some special features too. If 10% percent of Facebook signed up, that’s $1B a month in revenue. Not too shabby.
The problem is highlighted in bold. People who love Facebook and are willing to pay $10 a month isn't 10% of Facebook's user base, it probably isn't even 1%. I think hardly anyone really "loves Facebook" at all actually, the only reason people stick around is because that's where their friends are.
Facebook really needs to improve their platform *a lot* if they want to charge people money for it, because in it's current state, it isn't worth a dime.
What "reports"? Surface RT sales being weak is reported all over the internet. Literally nobody is saying it is selling well at all, including Microsoft themselves.
Yeah. And it's "selling better than their previous tablets", but this is their first one. Right...
Sure they tried to push Windows onto other people's tablets before with things like XP Tablet Edition, but they haven't made their own tablet until the Surface. And it's a bomb, just like the Zune.
The Verge currently has an article running on how similar the failure of the Surface RT is to the Zune: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/19/4537944/surface-rt-mistakes-look-like-zune-2
How do you know it "sold well"?
If Surface RT is selling so well, why then the price drop? Why the write-off? Why doesn't anyone I know have a Surface RT?
So the Zune was a huge success as well then, according to you?
Writing off almost a billion dollars in a quarter and slashing prices by 33% within the first year of launch isn't a success by any standards.
The problem, and the real reason the stock is down so much, is because Microsoft's new direction isn't catching on. The iPad was an instant success, but the Surface RT isn't selling at all. This combined with the declining PC-market makes investors nervous, as it seems Microsoft is unable to be successful in the future.
The number of systems with Java enabled in the browser is rapidly declining.
You really can't depend on Java being available in a client when developing a web application these days, especially if you're also targetting mobile devices (and with the popularity of iPads these days, you probably are).
Yeah, I believe that was the second time Java didn't catch on, right after it failed the first time in embedded systems and before it failed the third time in desktop applications.
Because of how bloated Windows 8 is, a serious chunk of storage space isn't available at all to the user. You might think 32 GB oughta be enough for anyone, but half of that is reserved for the system.
According to Microsoft:
* The 32 GB version has approximately 15 GB free hard disk space.
* The 64 GB version has approximately 45 GB free hard disk space.
Source: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/storage-files-and-folders/surface-disk-space-faq
350 bucks for an e-mail reading machine? Really?
People pledging through Kickstarter aren't investors. They pay money to enable the creation of a product. That product is being made and because there is more money, the product is bigger and better than advertised. Never ever did they promised a delivery date and I doubt anyone really cares if the game is released in October or January or July.
The problem isn't in the code. I'm sure the adventure game engine is more or less the same for a 400K or a 3M dollar game. The extra money goes to a bigger story, more characters, more locations etc. That's all creative work (writing, drawing, voice acting etc.) on which you can't save a dime by keeping in mind a bigger project while creating a smaller project.
They could have made the 400K game, but that basically would have meant the 3M game would never have been created at all.
The $ 400K project is really a different game than the $ 3.3M project. The bigger budget allowed for a bigger story, a wider scope of characters and locations and in the end basically a whole different game. A better game probably. So what's the problem? That it's taking a few months extra? Who cares?
Three million dollars isn't "a giant stack of money" for a game studio. Remember that John Carmack interview on games for mobile, where he said it's cool because you only need 30 million to create a great game instead of 300? AAA-games cost a shit load of cash to develop. Having a talented team working for over a year on something burns money like crazy.