CES: Microsoft keynote underwhelms with few surprises - Page 4

No, they are being consistent and counting 2000 as the tenth year of the PERVIOUS decade, which started the moment the ball in Times Square dropped to turn 1991. You might object (as I initially did until I thought about it) to this seemingly "off" convention unless you track it all the way back to the reference point of our calendar and notice that... there was not a year "0". So if you count off years from that reference point, the end of the first "decade" is quite clearly the end of year 10, and the next decade starts just after midnight on Jan 1, 11. Follow that logic up each ten years until we reach now... and you find out that they are correct.

Thompson

Not following you. Are you saying that the trivial differences among a few models and generations of iOS devices is somehow equivalent to MS maintaining two entirely separate mobile operating systems?


Seems to me that it's Apple that's in the driver's seat when it comes to fully featured touch based mobile devices.

In iOS they have a substantial subset of OS X running with arguably the best of class touch UI, now several generations old and rapidly maturing.

MS has the well reviewed but generally regarded to be somewhat underpowered (in the manner of first generation software) Windows Mobile 7, and at some point an as yet unknown version of Windows running on ARM hardware.

Apple has already done the work of turning their desktop OS into a lean, touch friendly mobile OS, and extending its capabilities as hardware becomes more capable is just a matter of adding additional interface elements, if necessary. The code to do the heavy lifting is already there.

Jamming a non-backwards compatible Windows onto ARM architecture with the same old funky "touch" capacities that never caught on over the last 10 years isn't bringing new levels of sophistication or capability to the market, it's just reiterating the failed Windows Tablet strategy on less power hungry chips. I suspect that battery life wasn't the only thing keeping these devices from selling in any great numbers.

I dont see Windows 8 on ARM as MS trying to push a desktop version of Windows onto tablets and other mobile handhelds. I see it as MS realizing that ARM will be progressing into and beyond performance areas that Atom is current in, where Windows does run. IOW, I see MS seeing a future market for inexpensive and low power desktops, notebooks, servers, and commercial machines that run a desktop versions of Windows. I think this is smart.

For tablets I would expect MS to have WP7 for tablets by next CES, if not earlier. The only dumb move I think MS has made this past year is pushing WP7 for smartphones which are now fairly saturated and ignoring the brand new tablet market running optimized mobile OSes. I think MS could have taken a pretty good chunk of that marketshare this year and held onto it with the iPad having no contender until HP-WebOS, Android 3.0 and PlayBook start gauchely hitting shelves this Summer or later.

AFAIK, virtually everything a computer does in some way emulates "something already done", from word processing to email to video editing to photo editing. All UIs make heavy use of recognizable "real word" processes, from button pushing to dragging to moving pointers to opening folders.

All unpatentable? On account of the "prior art" of the physical world?

Its beyond my ken but I have read quite a bit about CocoaTouch being tied to the underlying OS in ways that allow it to be smoother and more efficient and how Android and other mobile OSes are slow and require better HW to do the same basic task because the UIs are so poorly designed and integrated. Im sure someone will be along to expound or correct everything I just wrote but it seems to me that if even a part of that is true then that is IP worth protecting.

All said, i think this is the best CES MS has had this decade.[/QUOTE]

Quite a statement considering it's 2011

It's because CocoaTouch uses the GPU to render the UI, where its supposed to render things more efficiently, because the GPU is designed for graphics. Android and the rest use the CPU to render graphics in addition to running the system.

Secondly, who thinks WIndows on ARM is a good idea? Software will have to be re-written to get onto ARM, and you might as well start designing a new interface if that's the case. There's no point for Windows 8 to be on ARM if there's zero third-party software out there that runs on it currently.

I'm talking about what they have claimed isn't possible and what was missing for the first two hardware cycles. No MMS for first gen iPhone because it can't do it? Lie 3G isn't a good experience with a picture on the springboard background? Lie Had one on my 3G the first day I could jailbreak it. Worked just fine up until I wiped it and sold it. Apple says that Game Center isn't supported on the 3G. Why? Because they can sell more hardware that way, not because it isn't capable. Forget all that did you? Jailbreakers were doing all of that, and much much more long before Apple said it couldn't be done on the first iPhone and the 3G. How did Apple introduce those new features? With shiny new hardware that somehow made it possible with the exact same hardware inside a different shaped case (iPhone to iPhone 3G).

C/C/P isn't as serious a deal to me, it wasn't a huge feature for me then and it's nice to have now. But it's nothing to flame WP7 about. At least they aren't taking two years to put it in there. It's amazing that Apple didn't have this much much sooner though, given all the complaining people were doing. Same with MMS, same with making your own ringtones rather than buying them, same with sending an SMS to more than one person at a time, same with forwarding an SMS. They were very late with every basic feature with the excuse that it 'wasn't good enough for Apple' or 'we finally did it right' when in fact jailbreakers had it working long before Apple deemed it good enough, and it was indeed possible. They lead the pack in touchscreen phones, not phone features. They lied to sell more next gen handsets and drew out feature implementation to aid this. For cripes sake we still can't set any system sound other than a ringtone. That's total bs this day and age. That feature should have been there in 1.0! 4 major iOS releases and we just now get to change an SMS tone to ones that are about 15 seconds too long. That's really leading from the front. If Microsoft is stupid for not having c/c/p in WP7 version 1.0, then what is Apple for (finally) allowing you to set a text tone that's 14 seconds long? Geniuses? How about let me make a tone of something I want of my own liking without having to resort to a jailbreak? Is that so hard? Is that unApplefan of me?

I didn't mean to imply that Apple isn't doing a fantstic job on the mobile phone front, they are by a longshot. But to criticize WP7 for not having the basic features of a phone, c/c/p ,MMS, and so on is disingenuous at the least. Apple went two years without having these things and Microsoft started from scratch throwing out everything they had and are rapidly updating their feature set. Give them time, they'll come into their own. I don't understand why Apple wasn't drawn across the coals for missing something like MMS when the hardware was capable of it and other examples of why some things couldn't be done in a timely manner. Most of the features that they were missing for two years were on phones that didn't have a fancy touchscreen and were out long before the iPhone. 6 months is a lifetime in the mobile phone industry.

They weren't leading anything back then, they were way behind on every basic feature. I fail to see how 'stepping in Apples footsteps' equals trashing every single line of code from their previous mobile OS and starting anew. They are implementing the same features that were around when Apple started and pushing them out faster without lying about why it can't be done with what they have. Christ it's been not even six months since it was out and their updates are coming much quicker than Apple had done, and I'm not talking games and other apps just bare bones basics, and they aren't trying to get you to buy next gen hardware to get said features.

You can't rake one over the coals and not the other, it's not subjective. I love my iPhone 4, but I also know that Apple released a crap first gen phone feature wise and has steadily released new features to coincide with new hardware. Microsoft isn't doing that. That's fact.

Don't get me started with iOS's extremely stupid/infuriating and extremely broken notification system. They continue to cling to the worst notification system by far in the mobile space.

1) I dont think they ever said a word why MMS wasnt there. I have to assume it was something contractual with AT&T. If true, that sucks but they were also the carrier that allowed the iPhone to take root and make every other cellphone better for consumers because of it so any short-term quirky network reasons AT&T had I consider it the less of two evils. Or it could be that Apple just didnt care. Meaning they focused on things that were more important to them, like building a new QuickTime framework, getting a mobile version of Safari that would be useful, etc.

2) The wallpapers you added to your iPhone 3G wasnt the same that Apple has on theres. There is actually quite a bit going on there. Sure, they could have made it simple like the JB apps but this is Apple were talking about. They either do it the right way or not at all. Which of those apps are adding the drop shadows to the text and icons? The iPhone 3G with 128MB RAM was already hurting enough on 4.0 without adding to it.

3) Game Center isnt on the 3G and FaceTime isnt on the 3G or 3GS. Your expectations that every feature should be available is erroneous. Unless you have stats of how much RAM and stability data you cant really say that they were wrong. Your assumption that its to sell new iPhones is also ignoring that you got an update at all. The Sony Xperia with Android 2.1 that came out 6 months ago in August is officially not getting an update. IOW, Apple has no requirement to have giving your 3G an update and based on how poorly 4.0 ran on many of them even with resource heavy features removed I say they should just reduce it to only the previous model if users are feeling an entitlement with a 3 generation old device.

4) As previous stated, MS isnt having to figure out the logistics of cut/copy/paste the way Apple did. Those silly comments people made that its been around for decades and all you need are a clipboard are asinine. Even the first iOS App Store developer that created an app that allowed for it stated that Apple would have a much harder time of it since it would have to be universal to the OS, not something that could alter between apps. Again, Android still doesnt have it figured out.

5) Youre again ignoring that MS had touch-based mobile OSes with cut/copy/paste for many, many years and now they release a new version without it and yet you arent saying MS held off on this feature so they can sell more WP7 licenses a year later. In fact, youve completely ignored MS coming in years later, covering no new ground, having this be an extension of WinCE at the foundation, but Apple starting from scratch was holding out the whole time. Do you realize how that makes you look?

6) Apple has never led any pack on having the most features. If you judge CE by the length of the spec sheet then no Apple product will ever be for you. I bet you are crying foul on Apple for talking up Safari on the iPhone and yet its still the best mobile browser Ive used. Scrolling, tap to zoom, etc. But hey, phones had WAP browsers before the iPhone came along so they get no credit for releasing something that technically existed on some level.

I truncated your post there. I think a half-dozen body slams is enough.


PS: Im a fan of WP7 and think MS is doing a great job with it, but your claims that Apple is lying with no proof to back it up and common sense refute your claims, well I just cant let that slide.

Before anyone ever again complains about the general vibe of Apple product releases, they should be required to go here and look at the Samsung freakshow that got put on at CES (you have to scroll from the bottom up.

I'm speechless. This is even weirder and more off-putting than Microsoft's stabs at youth market cred. It's like a parody of a trade show circus from a David Lynch movie.

Also, before Samsung gets all up in our grill about their awesome smart TVs, they should maybe do something about the complete shit pile that is their current internet enabled TV UI. It's hideous, it looks like it was tossed together from random parts and graphics and it just barely passes muster because all it has to do is let you cursor around big panels and select them. If they think that shit will fly when you're trying to do Google TVish things they're looking at a complete non-starter.

Super skinny bezels and cable for your tablet are nice, though.

That kid on stage gave me an idea to bring Mad Max: The Road Warrior to broadway.

As reenacted by edgy, technologically sophisticated teens. Beyond Thunderdome. Way Beyond.

For all you simple-minded people comparing Kinect sales to iPads, it's not units. It's never been units or market share with Apple. When will you people learn?
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/...raphic-med.jpg

Is it really that hard to understand why MS chose to compare the Kinect to the iPad?

It's hard to say what the hell Microsoft are thinking... maybe they don't even know themselves!

The keynote (Windows will be everywhere) makes it sound like they are going to spend the next 12-24 months porting Windows to ARM, then release the same old desktop-merged-with-mobile strategy they have been slugging away at for a decade.

It seems like they have no intention of releasing a purpose-built tablet OS. It almost sounded like they intend to push the Windows Core running on ARM down into the mobile segment currently filled by WP7.

However, then I hear that they are actually working on a totally separate "panel" (my guess: WP7 inspired) based touch shell UI for Windows 8.

The standard UI in Windows 7 is a totally pluggable component. The same core OS as Windows 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 can run headless. So it's feasible to have the same core OS and separate user interfaces plugged on the front depending on the form factor. It could even switch between the two if you wanted to dock the tablet.

It was also leaked that they will be releasing an "App Store" in Windows 8 which will presumably cover tablets as well as the desktop.

With Silverlight coming to Xbox, as well as cable TV over IP in Australia and Microsoft's support of UltraViolet it seems like they are finally starting a push into the digital living room and they are using the Xbox to do it.

Maybe they decided that having three major platforms (WP7/Xbox/Windows) was unsustainable and they needed to consolidate before they could move forward. It's hard to say!

I still think they should have announced an Xbox branded tablet based on WP7/ARM. Probably Microsoft's biggest (only?) advantage over competitors at the moment in the mobile consumer space is gaming.

A tablet that people saw as being basically the same as the iPad... only with better games, would have sold. Maybe not enough to worry Apple at all, but it would have put Microsoft in the game until Windows 8 hit the market.

i'm saying that as mobile devices mature MS doesn't have to follow the same path as Apple. they can just take the full Windows OS which starting with 7/2008 R2 is very modular and UNIX like and put it on a mobile device with minimal development effort. they already have experience with the x-box which uses a lot of code from the main Windows OS. starting back in 2002 MS has had a secret project to rewrite Windows almost from scratch and make it more modular.

same as Windows 95 and NT4. with the Pentium CPU Intel had a nice chip to run Windows and that's when it took off.

the A4 has around 260 million transistors. not sure if it includes the PowerVR. the new i core CPU's are at a billion and that includes the IGP.

i hear the biggest complaint about the TV apps is they are slow. i played with the Yahoo apps on a 2010 LG LED TV and they are beyond slow. it's like watching trees grow. i was over at family over the new year and the LG TV software was upgraded from version 6 in the summer to version 8 something now. big difference and a lot better

if you read the engadget hands on reviews with the products most mention that they are a bit laggy. especially the Android stuff.

I would assume that refers to the entire chip, not just the Cortex-A8 part of it.

I found one sight that references Tegra 2s transistor count and the Cortex-A9.

and that's with the 512MB of RAM. as the mobile OS's and apps mature expect RAM needs to grow. at some point someone will take the RAM of the SoC and start putting so-dimm's in mobile devices

just look at the last 5 years or so. 2006-2011 cell phones went from lite network usage of checking email, web access and light text based tasks like ebay or amazon searching. to 2011 when people expect to stream HD video over the cell network and get annoyed when a million people can't do it at once

Time will tell but I think Win CE is toast.

MS probably do have other valid reasons for porting Windows to ARM, but now that they are doing that AND not releasing a tablet OS based on WIn CE(WP7) it seems to me that they are going to deprecate WInCE. They don't even *talk* about tablets running on WinCE. And MS is the king of FUD. Notice how little was said about WIn CE in general at CES. That silence is telling IMO.

Most SW developers are taking SW developed for mobile phones and scaling it up to work on tablets. I think MS will take their tablet OS (Win 8) and scale it down for mobile phones. Whether or not this is a good idea, I don't know. But Ballmer in the past has questioned why Google has 2 OSs. Looks like he wants to eliminate that 'problem' at MS.

Maybe, but WP7 was talked up quite a bit and I think it’s pretty good. If I couldn’t have my iPhone I’d have an HTC/WP7 device next.

They don’t have a tablet version, which I think is a mistake, since they could have had the first real competitor to the iPad and had very little resistance from others had they focused on that first over smartphones.

PS: I wonder if Win8 on ARM may indicate MS is planning to use the same kernel across the board for smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers. Giving MS two years to get Win8 out that puts it 6 years behind Apple’s first iPhone based on OS X. That sounds about right.

I think this is exactly what MS will do.

From what I've seen I agree that WP7 is nice. I'd take it over Android, which my wife already has.

Well, they "could" do all that, but given how easy it apparently is, why haven't they already? And how is that different from what Apple has already done, in moving OS X to iOS by taking advantage of OS X's modularity?

And that still doesn't address the real issue, which is that "full Windows" on mobile devices has been around for years as Windows Tablets, and it never caught on because the UI is ill suited for touch.

The fact is that full Windows is built on a bunch of UI paradigms that are touch hostile, and to make a viable mobile Windows MS would have to go beyond the bolt on stuff they've done to date and make a Touch Windows that feels designed from the ground up. Modularity and ease of portability aren't really the problem.

Which is precisely what Apple has done with OS X/iOS, which is why I'm not getting your "MS can go its own way" argument. The issue isn't that iOS is some kind of crippled baby OS and if MS could unleash the full might of "Windows" on mobile it would have a strong competitor. iOS is exactly as much of OS X as makes sense for the form factor and can easily scale to utilize more powerful hardware. There's no reason to think iOS won't be every bit as capable as today's Mac in a year or two. OTOH MS could put stock Windows on a phone today and it would be horrible unless they figure out how to make it at least as touch friendly as their Windows Phone 7 OS. The very existence of which is a whole other wrinkle.

Apple and AT&T were no longer sharing revenue for sold iPhones at that time, they wouldn't have been hinged on AT&T contract obligations by then. The original iPhone and the iPhone 3G have the exact same hardware minus a 3G radio and the different baseband for it. There is absolutely no reason the original iPhone couldn't have MMS especially since SwirlyMMS made it not only possible but it worked just fine on either hardware. To get that ability you had to upgrade so it's easily possible it was in conjuction with AT&T's failure, but what about the rest of the world? Why were they left out? AT&T was at fault for not having it available at launch, but saying it couldn't be done and leaving the feature out is a slap in the face for the original iPhone owners. Easiest way to get it? Buy a new handset that had no hardware speed improvements, only a radio upgrade. That's deliberately withholding features to sell new hardware.


How is it different? What's different about Apple's implementation versus the jailbreak one? If it worked with a jailbreak tweak perfectly fine, then why couldn't Apple do the same? I had BossPaper rotating backgrounds, long before Apple decided to include a picture background, with minimal performance lag. Not just one simple static image, rotating images from a local folder. The only way to get that feature, upgrade. Buy new hardware.


I've never said that FaceTime should be included on the 3G and 3GS. The reason it's not is obvious, there's no camera on the front. That is a legtimite hardware upgrade feature, not what they've done with the other gripes I've had. I don't expect them to include something that depends solely on the hardware having it. I can see Game Center sucking up performance when logging an achievement, it stutters on my iPhone 4 (very rarely anyway, and only when I'm stuck on EDGE) when the popup drops down to say welcome back, but not having the basic app can't be that big a performance hit. I don't see how anyway. It's just another app that connects to a network and it doesn't have to be running when you are playing a game. The achievements can be logged and not written until after the app is closed, or even have a switch in settings not to log in as soon as you start a game. Hell almost half of my games aren't showing the things I've completed anyway, so I guess it's still broken. Maybe I'm wrong but it seems that Game Center isn't a very hardware intensive app to not include. 4.0 quibbles aside of course, heard horror stories about how bad it was on a 3G, but Apple should be better at that. After all, it isn't uncommon for them to remove features in the middle of a hardware refresh. I don't believe that every generation of handsets needs every feature, Apple has withheld features that work perfectly fine on previous gen hardware for no reason other than 'it's not done right' or 'we aren't happy with the way we have gotten it to work'. Jailbreak tweaks are proof that it does work and pretty well at that.


Starting over from scratch on a mobile OS and rapidly updating it rather than waiting 2 years isn't that bad to me. They are already moving on performance increases and feature additions and it's been out since the end of October. They could follow Apples pattern and wait until end of 2012 to do so. WP7 is damn near completely different presentation wise than any other mobile OS out there and it's a great 1.0 release after the misery that was Windows Mobile. I'd say they are doing a pretty good job so far.An Android is pretty crappy all around to me, I agree on that.


Proof they are going to charge you again to update for the features when they hit? Proof MS is going to charge you to update to a point release to get them on your fancy new phone? Proof it's going to require a whole new hardware change to get them? WP7 hasn't shown any indication of needing a whole new HTC handset to get this feature. Not one tech site I've seen has stated that MS is going to wait until October 2011 to implement these features and require that you buy new hardware to get them. Apple has done this with MMS, with Game Center and wallpapers. Game Center is probably the exception but the MMS is BS because there was no hardware improvement and wallpapers work just fine on the 3G if Apple would care to make it work like jailbreakers did. Three things that Apple has done that MS is showing absolutely no signs of doing themselves.


Mobile Safari is by far and away the best browser. Far and away. I have no qualms with that at all, nor do I find and fault with the touchscreen performance of any iPhone. I've said nothing that would indicate I don't like Safari, all I've said is that Apple was missing basic features from the start and every one of them being released coincided with new hardware releases. WP7 is a fresh start and they are rapidly updating it unlike Apple. That's all I'm getting at. You can't fault one and not the other, especially when the development cycle was so slow and without reason on Apples side. I applaud Apple for iOS, it's fantastic. But there are a few features it does need, better notifications for one, and it's matured massively over the 4 years it's been around. Still needs some improvements that don't necessarily require new hardware to achieve.

Quite a few of those features had been done just fine by jailbreakers long before Apple did them and they worked just fine. We still can't set SMS tones, still can't do bluetooth file transfer (pictures, docs), still can't set received email tones, still can't use it as an external disk. Jailbreakers can and there is absolutely no reason stock iPhones can't other than what I suspect is brand recognition. Apple seems to want everyone to know you have an iPhone when the 'ding ding' chime sounds when you recieve a text or email. Nearly every story/article I read was flabbergasted that the new text tones were way too long and way too lame to use. Why is Apple holding out on this? I suspect again that it's brand recognition. There can't be any other reasonable explanation for it.



Same to you I think I provided enough proof on my own considering all the gripes I've got are fixed, and very well done, by jailbreaking with absolute minimal impact to performance, and without buying new hardware.



If you've ever jailbroken an iPhone that's all the proof you'd need that Apple is withholding features to get you to upgrade. I think either you've never jailbroken an iPhone or been around someone that has to improve the experience, your common sense argument and proof argument would probably change. I think WP7 is a great mobile OS that needs improving, and I think the same of iOS. iOS is by far and away the best mobile OS and Apple has done great things with it but to criticize WP7 for missing features from an OS written from scratch is not fair to iOS either. They were missing basic features that handsets that weren't touchscreen and fancy had for years. I'm saying that if people are going to hold WP7's feet to the fire then the same needs to be done to iOS. That's all.

I love my iPhone 4, it's the best hardware on the market right now by a long shot, the OS needs improving and it will be improved. But until then I'll be a jailbreaker to have things like biteSMS with quick replying, my own SMS and email tones so I know that it's my phone making a noise, SBSettings to quickly change various things and having disk storage among many others. All improvements that don't necessarily fit every users need but they fit mine. Can't wait to see what Apple does about the extremely stupid notification system though. Unfortunately that can't be fixed by jailbreaking.

It's still slightly false though. Apple was selling a $500+ tablet to people without one, Microsoft was selling a $150 accessory to a games console with 50 million owners. It would be like Apple selling a $150 10" screen to the 100 million iPhone/iPod users.

The Kinect sales however are still good at 8 million and they have made a great piece of hardware, designed and marketed well. It just won't make much profit.

I think Microsoft have done ok in some recent endeavours but they should have been doing it years ago. The people running the show are old, tired and desperate for relevance.

There is nothing false about it. They were using the most popular CE on the market to advance the press on their Kinect. They made a wild claim about unit sales and they actually met it. I guess we could compare it to the AppleTV which is in the living room, it an accessory device for a TV, and costs ⅔ of the Kinect but that wouldnt have served MS purpose as well, and it makes the achievement seem even smaller despite outselling the AppleTV by 8x despite the AppleTV sales are for a 50% longer duration. MS did good with the Kinect.

Well, since Apple ended the profit sharing I guess that means there has been no contract for the past 3 years¡


Take a look at their logic boards. The whole thing was redesigned. Even the model number on the CPUs are different even though they were the same type of chip.

Who's the troll?

http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pi...rticleid=25791





Doesn't matter how they fit in the case if it's the exact same hardware with different numbers or different packaging, they are still exactly the same performance wise. Since the chips were the same, which they were down to the CPU/GPU/RAM, how does that mean the 3G with it's renumbered chips had the horsepower and the 2G didn't? Answer: it didn't.

Way to miss the part that states "New Agreement With Apple. So again, where is the part that says there has been no contract with Apple since both agreed to eliminate profit sharing.


So they had same CPU clock speed and RAM, You really should look up what the word exact means, especially when youre referencing the entirety of a device, not one or two aspects of it.

Why am I even bothering.

Quit while you're ahead before you get dragged down into HKZ's intellectual mud.

I agree mostly... Remember though that Kinect is bundled with the Xbox in one of two Xbox models offered (Xbox360 4GB with Kinect).

The falseness is in the importance of the sales. If I sell a computer mouse at a break-even price of $50, does it have any relevance to selling a profitable $99 video streaming box? It's a different market with different demands and different price points and different manufacturing costs and yields.

It was an off-the-cuff remark by Kudo Tsunoda who gets upset by the amount of coverage Apple's products get in the media. As a form of vindication, he used a false comparison between different products to say 'yay, we beat Apple in sales'.

I don't really think it was a serious remark though. It's just one of those types of comments that seems to be an important statement in the context of the great Apple vs Microsoft war.

If he wasn't an Apple hater, he would have said 'Kinect sales will blow away the PS3 Move', as that is their direct competitor but he knew it wouldn't. Sony sold around the same amount albeit over a longer period of time and that's even despite Sony's product looking like a giant dildo.

Do you mean WP7 ported to tablet or Windows 8 on ARM with a WP7 shell? I think it would be really interesting if they released a WP7 tablet port... but I have a feeling CE is dead (or dying).

Which brings me to...
I think that might be what they are aiming for. Don't forget the next Xbox though. For various reasons I stated in an earlier post I think the Xbox is a major platform for Microsoft (at least in the consumer space) and they see it - and are treating it - more like a living room entertainment hub than a games console.

Wouldn't any remaining iPhone 2G contracts still be subject to that?

Way to miss the part where I didn't say there was no contract between to two. I stated that since profit sharing was gone, which is a huge deal, they didn't seem to big on what AT&T was wanting contract wise. By that point Apple and AT&T were at odds, and it was known. There is nothing there to indicate anything that would prevent Apple from including MMS features in every phone model at that time due to what AT&T said contractually. They didn't provide that on networks that weren't AT&T worldwide and they could handle that feature if AT&T's failure is the reason why it wasn't introduced from the get go.



So having the same CPU, the same GPU, and the same amount of RAM isn't exactly the same hardware? Maybe you should look up common sense. Having the same core hardware arranged in a different orientation is still exactly the same hardware. The chip maker Apple used for the 2g's radio said themselves there was no limitation on MMS functionality hardware wise (it was down to software) compared to the 3G's radio and it worked just fine with the 2G. Tell me, how does a different shaped contour on the back make the 3G magically able to do things that the 2G couldn't do? The shape of the phone doesn't make any difference, the internals do. It would have been slower over EDGE, and where I live that's all I get and it works perfectly fine, not because it isn't capable.



I've provided facts in rebuttal to saying that Apple said it wasn't possible to do what in fact can be done and very well at that. All of the things that couldn't be done were somehow possible when 'new' hardware came out. I'm not stupid, the majority believes that what Apple says it the truth and it's not. I'm sorry if I don't blindly believe everything that Apple PR says and I'm sorry if the facts fly in the face of PR speak.

Why are people so obsessed with MS making a tablet os as if the future of the company depends on it. There aim is to get windows into everything literally everything! Even if it doesn't have a screen there's a version for it. Think cars, tvs, petrol pumps, ticket machines, screens at bus stops telling you when the next bus will come. Did you know there's even a version of the .net framework that's small enough to fit in a digitol watch! A tablet is just one product, its an important one but given you can already get a tablet for £99 the revenue for just doing the os might not be that big.

Exactly. Imagine if Apple offered an iPad/Apple TV bundle. Does anyone think that would not boost Apple TV sales? But why are we comparing Apple TV to the 360/Kinect anyway? Just because they both exist "in the living room"?