Microsoft doesn't sell a product, it sells a component. It's the OS that OEMs buy when building their products. If an OEM wants to build a low-end, high-end, or vertical-market product using Windows, Microsoft will gladly sell them the OS and let the OEM take the business risk. Some will succeed and some will fail, but all will pay their license fee.
The only high-low positioning that Microsoft tends to do with Windows is the myriad "editions" which everyone tends to dislike anyway.
Unless Microsoft will produce their own hardware for a Win8 tablet, I think we are going to see a whole slew of tablet models with varying (and sometimes dubious) build quality. Like it or not, the iPad is pretty well put-together - I think that the tablet manufacturers are really going to have to scramble to compete on the hardware front.
I actually think that Win8 has some potential as a tablet OS, although my experience with the developer preview on a PC was a little underwhelming.
The standardization of iOS devices is what makes them so easy to use and develop for. Microsoft has done a good job of making Windows behave in a standard manner on diverse hardware configurations on desktops and laptops, so we can hope that WM8 will be equally standardized across different hardware. That would at least give them an advantage over android, and if they don't drop hardware support at certain versions they might be able to take over slowly when the cost of WM8 tablets drop below the cost of an iPad.
The trouble isn't the branding, it's the building. The iPad is recognized as a quality product because it delivers quality experiences.
Microsoft has rightly acquired a reputation for brittle products that will slowly break down in ways you don't know how to fix. "Microsoft" means worrying about obscure error messages, malware, backups, defrag, task management, ad nauseam.
They've made solid incremental efforts with Windows releases, and Windows Phone 7 may well have eliminated all of these experience issues. Trouble is, Apple has now all but eliminated these problems across the entire product line, and they've even solved the meta-problem of tackling the remaining problems through their world-class retail and support presence.
A solid product in isolation doesn't cut it at this point. The competition has a solid complete ecosystem. Amateur hour is truly over.
On a related note, I think that Microsoft and OEMs would have a hard time overcoming consumers' perception of the iPad as 'sexy' or 'luxurious'. Apple's had the head-start to build this sort of brand recognition for the iPad and IMHO, I fear that any attempts by OEMs to budge it will appear 'cheap' (quality-wise) or imitative.
Take the laptop market for example. Some attempts have been made at a sleek design that rivals the Macbook (HP Envy, Dell Adamo etc) but those products haven't really taken off.
As for the software and OS? I really like the Metro interface - I guess we'll have to wait and see how it turns out with regard to the app library and user experience.
I've always thought about the ravages of war nowadays and how many countries are constantly in conflict. As a great admirer of this period in American history, I have to conclude war and pestilence have always been around and are more symptomatic of the human race than of some particular span of time. The reminders were quite eye opening.
My whole family have always been avid readers. Even the younger kids (13-18 years) still read and exchange books on a regular basis at our family gatherings. A while back I asked why none of them had started reading on their i-pads or gotten an e-reader. Their answers were pretty interesting.
They all mentioned not being able to fully utilize their imagination. On a paperback novel, you have the cover artwork, you have the author's bio, and the back cover art. They said most e-readers don't have these and it takes away from the experience. They also said the feel of a book in their hands is an experience they know and love. Even the simplicity of turning pages is lost. Holding a little tablet, they never knew if they getting close to the end of the story or not. With a paperback, it was easy to visually see and know how close you were to the end of the book - and it felt like more of an accomplishment.
I found it pretty enlightening. A lot of simple things people take for granted which can't easily be replaced by a better technology.
Hardly the holy grail they're talking about. The fatal flaw is as soon as you close you one door, the pirates are already looking for 10 other ways to get around your technology.
Case in point? Look at how many times they've tried to shut down Pirate Bay. They just keep re-tooling and continue on.
I found it interesting they made a point about rebooting. Considering if you had people turn off their PC's at night, you could save almost double that when you take into account the energy it takes to run a PC and a single monitor. Although most employees I'm sure would be running dual monitors.
If they were indeed running Linux (which boots at least 5X faster than Windows) you could easily make an argument for the exact opposite.
Also keep in mind this is in a country with around 5 million people and an area of around 330K sq miles. By contrast, Texas has 25 million people in roughly the same sq mile area.
Making such promises shouldn't be hard considering the size of the population and the area you're dealing with in terms of having to lay fibre.
Surely in your example it is actually more economical for Texas than for Finland as the greater concentration of people makes it easier to deliver the service? Sure it would cost more but on a per head basis it should be cheaper . . .
The above is an invalid comparison. A better, more objective measure is linear population density.
Miles of roads in Texas: 152,054 miles
Miles of roads in Finland: 65,617 miles ()
Population of Texas: 25,674,681
Population of Finland: 5,375,276
Linear population density of Texas: ~169 persons per miles of road
Linear population density of Finland: ~82 persons per miles of road
Ergo, it is cheaper per head to provide wireline telecommunications services in Texas than in Finland, when building out to the whole population, as the linear population density is higher in Texas and most, if not all, permanent residences and business are accessible by road.
() This road mileage does not include private roads in Finland. Including these roads would further lower the linear population density of Finland, but these roads were excluded from the calculation as the majority of the private roads are access roads to non-permanent recidency second homes and timer or agriculture roads.
This really isn't a good measure since roads will be denser in urban areas and less dense in rural areas, thus leading to exactly the same issues as directly using population density.
> This really isn't a good measure since roads will be denser
in urban areas and less dense in rural areas, thus leading to exactly the same issues as directly using population density.
Please be so good as explaining you point better, I do not understand it. If you are going to wire up every lot in the state, you will have to traverse all roads in the state to do a cable drop to every lot in order to do so. What does road density have to do with it?
When building wireline communication networks, the deciding factor costwise, is the number of linear cable sheet miles. As such miles of road is a good proxy for comparing deployment costs between locations.
Please note that I am discussing wireline broadband. If you have you heart set on wireless coverage, then we have to talk different measures, and even there population density is not the tell all metric.
My bad. However that does not still make it cheaper to build in Finland, it merely brings up Texas and Finland to par on miles of road per population. Several things still favour Texas in the cost per capita, such as: economics of scale, ability to perform construction year around and no need to put utilities under the frostline.
There are no technical or cost reasons for Texas to be unable to offer the same level of broadband service as Finland. It all comes down to other reasons, perhaps such as lack of political will in Texas.
Imagine a layout where cables do not have to follow roads.
Imagine a layout where one cable can serve buildings on two roads. Certainly much, much easier when the buildings are dense.
Imagine a thousand people living in one building in the center of a thousand square miles, served by one cable. Imagine a thousand people living one per square mile in a thousand square miles. The population densities are the same. The cabling costs are not.
Imagination will take you very far, and in this case, very far from the matter at hand. Texas and Finland are real places, not figments of imagination.
> Imagine a layout where cables do not have to follow roads. Imagine a layout where one cable can serve buildings on two roads. Certainly much, much easier when the buildings are dense.
Not very likely in the real world. Easements and rights of way are not available or not readily available among arbitrary paths. In any case, even if you were to cut through peoples back yards, you would still most of the time just be following a parallellish path to the roads.
> Imagine a thousand people living in one building in the center of a thousand square miles, served by one cable. Imagine a thousand people living one per square mile in a thousand square miles. The population densities are the same. The cabling costs are not.
These are real places we are talking about. Have a look at a map.
A very important point is that while Finland has an area of 330K km^2, almost all of the population is concentrated on the coasts and a few in-land cities. You can probably get 95% penetration with less than 30K km^2 coverage. The rest will likely be served with wireless broadband.
Agreed. I know a lot of people who start to flirt with the notion of using Bitcoin, only to have their dreams smashed when they learn how frequently these companies and their accounts are hacked.
It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.
To my knowledge, the bitcoin system itself has never been compromised. Unfortunately, there are a lot of services built /around/ the bitcoin system that have been set up by teenagers... If you were to deposit $100K of platinum in a reserve set up by teenagers, I wouldn't have much sympathy when you lose it. Doesn't mean platinum is useless, however.
> It may be anonymous, but its far from being secure.
Would you mind clarifying what you're meaning by 'it' and 'secure'? To me, the (in-)security of a particular bitcoin site is orthogonal to the security of Bitcoin as a protocol/currency, though the security of bitcoin sites does have a huge impact on mainstream use.
Sorry, should have been more clear. By "it" I meant the sites where bitcoins are being traded. And yes, seeing these sites getting hacked frequently makes mainstream acceptance a lot harder. Which in turn makes changing the paradigm take a lot longer.
The thing that's scary is how easy it is for these people to get away with what they're doing. I wonder how much money is lost every year and how many hackers you never hear about going to jail for this stuff. I'm pretty sure this is the motivation to do a lot of this stuff. The risk/reward level is completely slanted.
I see a LOT of stories on HN and other Tech sites about these kinds of attacks. Unfortunately, I rarely, if ever, hear about hackers getting arrested for this sort of activity.
I'm actually glad they are continuing on and fighting the stigma of the "best social network that never was".
I have used Diaspora's site for a while and prefer it to Facebook and Google+. The problem is trying to maintain three separate social networks. Since most of the people I like to keep up with are on FB and G+, my use of Diaspora has slowed down over the past year or so.
Only times I visit is when linked, and it's often some OSS-guru who has written something there but I dont ever use it, nor does anyone I know, not even remotely.
We have 50 employees in 3 offices - and have found it to be a really useful internal communication tool.
Each person has a 'private' G+ (apps) account; we share stuff, have threaded conversations, etc - it's WAY better than email for a variety of things, and all the conversations remain limited to people from our organization.
It's totally not what G+ was intended for, but it works well.
Google Hangouts, while being buggy as hell and locking up constantly (at least on OS X), are still unrivaled in the video chat / desktop sharing space.
G+ is ideal for me. I live far away from my family and using Google Picasa I upload photos that I only share with my family.
I don't trust Facebook with my photos. At any moment they could make a deliberate privacy change and expose private family photos to the Internet.
I value that privacy, and although Google might one day make a mistake and accidentally open a security hole, they don't have a history of deliberately reducing users privacy without their express consent.
All my family are signed up, so G+ is no longer an empty ghost town for me. My 'friends' on the other hand are still all on Facebook. I'm just a lurker now on FB.
I have a group of 20 or so friends who all use it because we've got them using it. Every Friday we start a thread and it gets up to several dozen or even hundreds of comments.
These are average, non-technical men and women in their 20s and early 30s mostly.
I have a a couple huge circles of tech and science people that are quite active on G+. It allows for more intelligent posts and conversations than twitter and that's how I primarily use it.
I visit most days. It's like long-form Twitter, so more depth to the discussions. I have some friends on there, but it's mostly to read and lightly interact with industry or interests.
Great point. I had a friend who worked as a salesmen at Thomson West when they still owned Thomson Learning which published all their academic materials. To say the industry is entrenched is an understatement. My friend told me once a publisher was in with a university, there was virtually no way other publishers could get in there. Even the professors had little or no say who they could buy their books from.
That's weird to hear. Lots of professors use their own textbooks in their undergrad and (especially) graduate classes (e.g., Yaser Abu-Mostafa uses his own textbook for http://www.work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html).
Also, there are certain canonical texts that are used almost universally across all universities during a certain time frame (say, the CLR algorithms book, or the Cover and Thomas information theory book).
If they think their product is better, then sell it as such. Actually say your product is better and therefore, it's going to cost more.