Why doesn't the Courier do chicken scratch recognition in the notes? Does this require an Apple Newton license from 1998? Will "text" search actually be a shape search for similar looking chicken scratches? Aside from doing my physics homework, will the Courier do anything that the 10 year old Surface can't? Will the Courier be heat resistant, so I can rest my coffee on it? With all the power of a Zune behind it and the "innovative" (choke, sputter) UI, why doesn't Marcel's journal look more organized than a pigpen?
What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?
They should put a disclaimer on the video saying "Sequences Shortened"
Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall, and knows the desktop PC is going the way of the dinosaur. The problem is, nothing they have made to replace it has gone anywhere. Putting Vista on a UMPC? Whoever thought of that needs to be fired. WinMob? I guess it took Apple with the iphone to tell Microsoft that IE needs to be compatible with today's standards, not 1998's standards. Oh, and the most frequent comment I get about that OS from customers is how it reminds them of how Win98 acts: sluggish, hogs RAM, and needs to be rebooted daily. Surface? That's a great idea; let's sell a $10k PC with no USB ports and expect people to buy it when all that is selling right now is $350 netbooks. And all the pundits said Apple was had or how Apple will scramble to make a comparable product.
What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?
Hi guys, there were some questions on the hardware earlier in the thread (I hope you are still reading) that I can help with.
1. Touch screen sensitivity: The screen is intended to include limited pressure sensitivity. It won't be the same level of fidelity like a wacom tablet, but it will have some measure of pressure sensitivity below the primary screen layer.
2. Bullware: Some of the features make look futuristic, but nearly everything you saw is already in use in Win 7, Surface and MS Research. I'll go through a few examples that I've written up else where.
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface. There's a three part demo of it up on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLI1JtymEVo). I do not believe the physics engine was included in Windows 7 (except for some small things, like gesture bouncing), but the rest of the features I talk about should be there. ... Update: Looks like I was wrong. Inertia and Manip are in there now. You can find more information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
Task-aware Copy and Paste: During the video you'll see an example of a clipper application using a gesture to activate a copy and paste feature. The gesture features can be enabled in any Windows 7 install. For programmers you can explore it via the WM_TOUCH API. It's a good idea to start playing around with this if you're interested in the tablet. Try writing your own clipper application!
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address.
Just a note, if you have multiple addresses it will do the same thing SYNC does, aka, ask if you'd like to see their home location or office location.
I hope that clears up some questions. If you have any just poke me, and I'll see what I can find.
Note: I do not work for Microsoft.
All well and good as far as it goes, I guess, but I think it misses the point, somewhat.
I don't think anyone is imagining that "flicking" is imaginary, or context aware copy and paste, or context aware drag and drop. We're all aware of such things, they're in use now is a variety of contexts.
What doesn't convince is the seamless integration of same, within some very scripted scenarios, on a very unusual hardware configuration.
There's nothing keeping Apple from making a video showing iPhone content "tossed" onto another device by making a physical gesture with the phone-- say video content tossed onto a larger display. They could work that into a little narrative where someone has just shot video with their iPhone of an accident site, walk into their office and toss it onto the big plasma for review, whereupon the iPhone becomes an internet enable remote that can be used to steer the video to the insurance company for review. At the same time, video geotagging could be used to display a map overlay showing the exact site of the accident, with Google street view handling a look around duties.
All of that tech "exists", but the devil, of course, is in the details. Apple doesn't make videos like that because they have no interest in tipping their hand on the stuff they're actually making. MS makes videos like this because they find it strategically useful to keep a bit of churn going in the media-sphere regarding their intentions and coolness and possible any-minute-now awesomeness.
All well and good as far as it goes, I guess, but I think it misses the point, somewhat.
I don't think anyone is imagining that "flicking" is imaginary, or context aware copy and paste, or context aware drag and drop. We're all aware of such things, they're in use now is a variety of contexts.
What doesn't convince is the seamless integration of same, within some very scripted scenarios, on a very unusual hardware configuration.
There's nothing keeping Apple from making a video showing iPhone content "tossed" onto another device by making a physical gesture with the phone-- say video content tossed onto a larger display. They could work that into a little narrative where someone has just shot video with their iPhone of an accident site, walk into their office and toss it onto the big plasma for review, whereupon the iPhone becomes an internet enable remote that can be used to steer the video to the insurance company for review. At the same time, video geotagging could be used to display a map overlay showing the exact site of the accident, with Google street view handling a look around duties.
All of that tech "exists", but the devil, of course, is in the details. Apple doesn't make videos like that because they have no interest in tipping their hand on the stuff they're actually making. MS makes videos like this because they find it strategically useful to keep a bit of churn going in the media-sphere regarding their intentions and coolness and possible any-minute-now awesomeness.
Ah, to this I cannot say exactly. The Surface does some beautiful things with device / software integration. If your phone has wifi/bluetooth and support for it, you can drop it on the Surface, it will detect it and be able to show contacts and pictures. They pop out from the phone and then you can manipulate them.
It's one of those pointless demo things that is neat to show to people the first time.
I find it hard to imagine that MS is working on those applications that were 'hinted' at in the video. I have not seen an example of them doing application com besides the integration in Office which is rudimentary compared to that. If anyone has an example otherwise that would be nice.
OK, heres a huge change, for me, the biggest Apple funboy and former Apple worker bee: The new MS Courier looks very practical. Sure it's operation probably sucks, but for an electric book, it sure fits human history. To get a bigger version of an iPhone, call it, "iBook" say, will be dangerous. Think of it this way; you're reading your favorite book in bed and fall asleep. Your iBook falls on the floor and you get out of bed in the morning and step on it! I can hear the Genius say, "$899!". Or your at school with your iBook and you turn to answer the blonde in the desk behind you. Your iBook slides off the formica desk onto the hard linoleum floor! The Genius response is the same! The MS Courier (named after an early Mac font from 1984) will take a fall much better than a bigger iPhone. Plus, I love the form factor of having a real, open book to read! For hundreds of years we have used this format and it works. To tote it around, you fold it and take a walk. The cool looking big form iPhone will have to travel in a case, which covers the coolness, and once you slide it out to use it, it will be just as slippery as any iPhone, but perhaps worse! So for lots of practical reasons, the Courier fills the bill! Plus using a quill to write is as old as civilization. (I still have a Newton 100, and we had to use EasyPay at Apple-both used the quill for input!) Now, having said that, I will choose the easiest and slickest device for an eBook, but the Courier form factor does look far better than a blown up iPhone!Plus, I'm a serious book and blog reader, not interested in wasting time shooting at drug addicted stick figures with shading! (Phil told us how so many people are wasting the Touch capacities instead of just using a dedicated PSP!)
[QUOTE= ... 2. Bullware: Some of the features make look futuristic, but nearly everything you saw is already in use in Win 7, Surface and MS Research. I'll go through a few examples that I've written up else where.
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface....
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address. [/QUOTE]
Instead of just capabilities, these functions all exist currently on the Mac platform and are even featured in one of the lastest iPhone commmercials ...
OK, heres a huge change, for me, the biggest Apple funboy and former Apple worker bee: The new MS Courier looks very practical. Sure it's operation probably sucks, but for an electric book, it sure fits human history. To get a bigger version of an iPhone, call it, "iBook" say, will be dangerous. Think of it this way; you're reading your favorite book in bed and fall asleep. Your iBook falls on the floor and you get out of bed in the morning and step on it! I can hear the Genius say, "$899!". Or your at school with your iBook and you turn to answer the blonde in the desk behind you. Your iBook slides off the formica desk onto the hard linoleum floor! The Genius response is the same! The MS Courier (named after an early Mac font from 1984) will take a fall much better than a bigger iPhone. Plus, I love the form factor of having a real, open book to read! For hundreds of years we have used this format and it works. To tote it around, you fold it and take a walk. The cool looking big form iPhone will have to travel in a case, which covers the coolness, and once you slide it out to use it, it will be just as slippery as any iPhone, but perhaps worse! So for lots of practical reasons, the Courier fills the bill! Plus using a quill to write is as old as civilization. (I still have a Newton 100, and we had to use EasyPay at Apple-both used the quill for input!) Now, having said that, I will choose the easiest and slickest device for an eBook, but the Courier form factor does look far better than a blown up iPhone!Plus, I'm a serious book and blog reader, not interested in wasting time shooting at drug addicted stick figures with shading! (Phil told us how so many people are wasting the Touch capacities instead of just using a dedicated PSP!)
So, for you, what you imagine a speculative MS product might be like in everyday use is better than what you imagine a speculative Apple product might be like in everyday use.
I'm just having a hard time seeing how that makes any sense.
I mean, this doesn't even rise to the level of informed guessing, in that the MS video almost certainly bears no resemblance to any actual product on their roadmap, and we know nothing whatsoever about what Apple intends to release.
So, for you, what you imagine a speculative MS product might be like in everyday use is better than what you imagine a speculative Apple product might be like in everyday use.
I'm just having a hard time seeing how that makes any sense.
SPECULATION you say? Can you imagine why I no longer work for Apple?
Dreams are for Steve. But one can input here, just in case Steve dreams about comments in AppleInsider! Can you see him running to the secret R&D rooms and screaming, "Put two of those things together, in the coolest binder the world has ever seen and make them work together, like a Day Planner and real text book! And do it now! "
"Right chief!"
That would be another nightmare for the fat, blustering Ball-mur!
"Apple had the audacity to copy our speculative prototype!"
What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?
The 'touch screen' implementation of the ZUNE HD is impeccable, with much faster than ANY competitor responsiveness and accuracy.
It really is in an entirely different league in this respect, with only the Sony X1K's display responsiveness coming remotely close.
Check it out at a local retailer to experience what I've posted, which is sadly something I venture none of these 'naysayers' have ever attempted to do...
And your reply has absolutely NOTHING to do with the originally posed question regarding Touch Screen responsiveness...
Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post
"What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?"
It's widely known that the Zune Apps capabilities has yet to be fully optimized/implemented, so the fact the this app took a while to load is irrelevant at this point.
I fully understand that you're (very obviously) threatened at the premise of something actually performing better than your beloved iPod Touch/iPhone, but in the area of screen responsiveness (again: the subject at hand), the ZUNE HD leaves the Apple equivalents in the dust.
And your reply has absolutely NOTHING to do with the originally posed question regarding Touch Screen responsiveness...
Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post
"What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?"
It's widely known that the Zune Apps capabilities has yet to be fully optimized/implemented, so the fact the this app took a while to load is irrelevant at this point.
I fully understand that you're (very obviously) threatened at the premise of something actually performing better than your beloved iPod Touch/iPhone, but in the area of screen responsiveness (again: the subject at hand), the ZUNE HD leaves the Apple equivalents in the dust.
Start with slow loading, add annoying ads = a bit of a buzz kill from the outset. I've watched the videos and the screen responsiveness that you are talking about seems fair, not dust worthy. You have to distinguish between people who feel threatened, and people who feel duty bound to keep people honest.
More so because, at this point, they don't even have a 'concept' as far as anyone knows/has seen.
Say what you will, but whatever the MacPod is/does, there's little chance that it will be anywhere near this advanced, given the somewhat lethargic development of their current products (iPhone/Touch, OSX, MacBook, and the like).
Heck, they only just saw fit to finally put a radio in an iPod, and even then only the Nano got one...
Apple has never announced that they were working on a tablet, as you know.
MS has announced lots of vaporware over the years, most of it has never become a product, and the rest hasn't caught on very well.
Anyone can do what they did in animation, that doesn't mean that they will, or even can come up with the product.
MS promised that the current round of tablets would be compelling, but they aren't.
Your boy Baller makes lots of statements that are cockeyed about their own, and Apple's products.
In that, you are a lot like him, but you're not worth $11 billion (down from $22 billion).
I don't know about the others but I'm not spelling doom for Apple. I'm just being extremely wary about the situation. And if Steve Jobs is smart (and we all know he is) he should now be EXTREMELY WARY about this development.
I hope to gawd that Jobs knows what he's doing with this project. I hope he hasn't underestimated it's importance to his company and the tech industry as a whole. And I hope he hasn't underestimated the competition. He singlehandedly embarassed the entire mobile industry with the original iphone.
The mobile industry (including Microsoft) doesn't want that to happen again!
Sorry to have to correct you on this point, but it's pretty well established that FUD was originally developed at IBM.
Nah, this is obviously derived from Elemer Fudd from Warner Brothers. It's an old idea, goes back to the 1930's. That's when most of MS's ideas were born.
...The iphone was the culmination of years of MS messing up the mobile phone market and the PDA industry...mix in a little Apple's old Newton, and you've got the iPhone. ...
I was content to read previous comments and just shake my head and continue skimming through. But this claim is just magnificently dopey. That formula you describe has NOTHING to do with the actual iPhone. Have you even used one? WinMo + PDA + Newton? Are you kidding?
Previous cellphones were phones with various other functions clumsily and uncomfortably appended. For example web browsing has been available for many years on cellphones but it was almost unusable. The difference is that the iPhone has a unix based OS with a UI that has been tailored to work in a size and power limited environment. But it has more in common with a computer than a telephone. Telephony is another app that runs on it but it isn't the core of the device. The iPod touch from Apple makes that clear. Try to imagine Nokia (for instance) selling 20 million cellphone type devices without the cellphone functionality.
Apple may get unfair credit sometimes but the innovation in the iPhone is unmistakable and may be largely due to the patience to wait until the technology was "ready" so a full OS could fit in a handheld device. If the rumors about an Apple tablet are accurate (several prototypes over the past six years that have been deemed not ready to release), then it may follow a similar path.
A concept video can be fun to contemplate but Apple's similar effort, "Knowledge Navigator" dates from the late 80's and both are just videos. But Apple's video was an attempt to predict a possible future (twenty years and counting) while Microsoft's is likely a defensive move to buy time for product cloning. I hope I am wrong and Microsoft brings more than me-too to the party but that takes optimism and a disregard for the past.
Comments
Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall, and knows the desktop PC is going the way of the dinosaur. The problem is, nothing they have made to replace it has gone anywhere. Putting Vista on a UMPC? Whoever thought of that needs to be fired. WinMob? I guess it took Apple with the iphone to tell Microsoft that IE needs to be compatible with today's standards, not 1998's standards. Oh, and the most frequent comment I get about that OS from customers is how it reminds them of how Win98 acts: sluggish, hogs RAM, and needs to be rebooted daily. Surface? That's a great idea; let's sell a $10k PC with no USB ports and expect people to buy it when all that is selling right now is $350 netbooks. And all the pundits said Apple was had or how Apple will scramble to make a comparable product.
What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?
Well .. this is how they handled the calculator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bObe0YeLYoc
Hi guys, there were some questions on the hardware earlier in the thread (I hope you are still reading) that I can help with.
1. Touch screen sensitivity: The screen is intended to include limited pressure sensitivity. It won't be the same level of fidelity like a wacom tablet, but it will have some measure of pressure sensitivity below the primary screen layer.
2. Bullware: Some of the features make look futuristic, but nearly everything you saw is already in use in Win 7, Surface and MS Research. I'll go through a few examples that I've written up else where.
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface. There's a three part demo of it up on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLI1JtymEVo). I do not believe the physics engine was included in Windows 7 (except for some small things, like gesture bouncing), but the rest of the features I talk about should be there. ... Update: Looks like I was wrong. Inertia and Manip are in there now. You can find more information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx
Task-aware Copy and Paste: During the video you'll see an example of a clipper application using a gesture to activate a copy and paste feature. The gesture features can be enabled in any Windows 7 install. For programmers you can explore it via the WM_TOUCH API. It's a good idea to start playing around with this if you're interested in the tablet. Try writing your own clipper application!
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address.
Just a note, if you have multiple addresses it will do the same thing SYNC does, aka, ask if you'd like to see their home location or office location.
I hope that clears up some questions. If you have any just poke me, and I'll see what I can find.
Note: I do not work for Microsoft.
All well and good as far as it goes, I guess, but I think it misses the point, somewhat.
I don't think anyone is imagining that "flicking" is imaginary, or context aware copy and paste, or context aware drag and drop. We're all aware of such things, they're in use now is a variety of contexts.
What doesn't convince is the seamless integration of same, within some very scripted scenarios, on a very unusual hardware configuration.
There's nothing keeping Apple from making a video showing iPhone content "tossed" onto another device by making a physical gesture with the phone-- say video content tossed onto a larger display. They could work that into a little narrative where someone has just shot video with their iPhone of an accident site, walk into their office and toss it onto the big plasma for review, whereupon the iPhone becomes an internet enable remote that can be used to steer the video to the insurance company for review. At the same time, video geotagging could be used to display a map overlay showing the exact site of the accident, with Google street view handling a look around duties.
All of that tech "exists", but the devil, of course, is in the details. Apple doesn't make videos like that because they have no interest in tipping their hand on the stuff they're actually making. MS makes videos like this because they find it strategically useful to keep a bit of churn going in the media-sphere regarding their intentions and coolness and possible any-minute-now awesomeness.
Well .. this is how they handled the calculator:
Well at least they give you something pretty to look at while the device is doing nothing.
Well .. this is how they handled the calculator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bObe0YeLYoc
Oh wow. That's sad.
All well and good as far as it goes, I guess, but I think it misses the point, somewhat.
I don't think anyone is imagining that "flicking" is imaginary, or context aware copy and paste, or context aware drag and drop. We're all aware of such things, they're in use now is a variety of contexts.
What doesn't convince is the seamless integration of same, within some very scripted scenarios, on a very unusual hardware configuration.
There's nothing keeping Apple from making a video showing iPhone content "tossed" onto another device by making a physical gesture with the phone-- say video content tossed onto a larger display. They could work that into a little narrative where someone has just shot video with their iPhone of an accident site, walk into their office and toss it onto the big plasma for review, whereupon the iPhone becomes an internet enable remote that can be used to steer the video to the insurance company for review. At the same time, video geotagging could be used to display a map overlay showing the exact site of the accident, with Google street view handling a look around duties.
All of that tech "exists", but the devil, of course, is in the details. Apple doesn't make videos like that because they have no interest in tipping their hand on the stuff they're actually making. MS makes videos like this because they find it strategically useful to keep a bit of churn going in the media-sphere regarding their intentions and coolness and possible any-minute-now awesomeness.
Ah, to this I cannot say exactly. The Surface does some beautiful things with device / software integration. If your phone has wifi/bluetooth and support for it, you can drop it on the Surface, it will detect it and be able to show contacts and pictures. They pop out from the phone and then you can manipulate them.
It's one of those pointless demo things that is neat to show to people the first time.
I find it hard to imagine that MS is working on those applications that were 'hinted' at in the video. I have not seen an example of them doing application com besides the integration in Office which is rudimentary compared to that. If anyone has an example otherwise that would be nice.
Wow, that actually looks cool!
OK, heres a huge change, for me, the biggest Apple funboy and former Apple worker bee: The new MS Courier looks very practical. Sure it's operation probably sucks, but for an electric book, it sure fits human history. To get a bigger version of an iPhone, call it, "iBook" say, will be dangerous. Think of it this way; you're reading your favorite book in bed and fall asleep. Your iBook falls on the floor and you get out of bed in the morning and step on it! I can hear the Genius say, "$899!". Or your at school with your iBook and you turn to answer the blonde in the desk behind you. Your iBook slides off the formica desk onto the hard linoleum floor! The Genius response is the same! The MS Courier (named after an early Mac font from 1984) will take a fall much better than a bigger iPhone. Plus, I love the form factor of having a real, open book to read! For hundreds of years we have used this format and it works. To tote it around, you fold it and take a walk. The cool looking big form iPhone will have to travel in a case, which covers the coolness, and once you slide it out to use it, it will be just as slippery as any iPhone, but perhaps worse! So for lots of practical reasons, the Courier fills the bill! Plus using a quill to write is as old as civilization. (I still have a Newton 100, and we had to use EasyPay at Apple-both used the quill for input!) Now, having said that, I will choose the easiest and slickest device for an eBook, but the Courier form factor does look far better than a blown up iPhone!Plus, I'm a serious book and blog reader, not interested in wasting time shooting at drug addicted stick figures with shading! (Phil told us how so many people are wasting the Touch capacities instead of just using a dedicated PSP!)
The most common question I've seen is the issue of flicking items across the screens. This come from the physics API driving Microsoft Surface....
The flicking object ability has been variously available to Windows developers for a long time (if horrible). I'm sure a few of you remember Win32 OLE/COM horrors. .NET uses WCF which is not... as horrible to program for (It's XML-based). The examples you saw were just simple mockups of the capabilities of applications that interact via WCF. Aka, dragging a user name onto Google Maps hands her address. GM receives the address and refreshes to the address. [/QUOTE]
Instead of just capabilities, these functions all exist currently on the Mac platform and are even featured in one of the lastest iPhone commmercials ...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ads/#share-medium
Apps featured are Mover and Bump.
Works great, works now. Nothing futuristic about it.
OK, heres a huge change, for me, the biggest Apple funboy and former Apple worker bee: The new MS Courier looks very practical. Sure it's operation probably sucks, but for an electric book, it sure fits human history. To get a bigger version of an iPhone, call it, "iBook" say, will be dangerous. Think of it this way; you're reading your favorite book in bed and fall asleep. Your iBook falls on the floor and you get out of bed in the morning and step on it! I can hear the Genius say, "$899!". Or your at school with your iBook and you turn to answer the blonde in the desk behind you. Your iBook slides off the formica desk onto the hard linoleum floor! The Genius response is the same! The MS Courier (named after an early Mac font from 1984) will take a fall much better than a bigger iPhone. Plus, I love the form factor of having a real, open book to read! For hundreds of years we have used this format and it works. To tote it around, you fold it and take a walk. The cool looking big form iPhone will have to travel in a case, which covers the coolness, and once you slide it out to use it, it will be just as slippery as any iPhone, but perhaps worse! So for lots of practical reasons, the Courier fills the bill! Plus using a quill to write is as old as civilization. (I still have a Newton 100, and we had to use EasyPay at Apple-both used the quill for input!) Now, having said that, I will choose the easiest and slickest device for an eBook, but the Courier form factor does look far better than a blown up iPhone!Plus, I'm a serious book and blog reader, not interested in wasting time shooting at drug addicted stick figures with shading! (Phil told us how so many people are wasting the Touch capacities instead of just using a dedicated PSP!)
So, for you, what you imagine a speculative MS product might be like in everyday use is better than what you imagine a speculative Apple product might be like in everyday use.
I'm just having a hard time seeing how that makes any sense.
I mean, this doesn't even rise to the level of informed guessing, in that the MS video almost certainly bears no resemblance to any actual product on their roadmap, and we know nothing whatsoever about what Apple intends to release.
So, for you, what you imagine a speculative MS product might be like in everyday use is better than what you imagine a speculative Apple product might be like in everyday use.
I'm just having a hard time seeing how that makes any sense.
SPECULATION you say? Can you imagine why I no longer work for Apple?
Dreams are for Steve. But one can input here, just in case Steve dreams about comments in AppleInsider! Can you see him running to the secret R&D rooms and screaming, "Put two of those things together, in the coolest binder the world has ever seen and make them work together, like a Day Planner and real text book! And do it now! "
"Right chief!"
That would be another nightmare for the fat, blustering Ball-mur!
"Apple had the audacity to copy our speculative prototype!"
"Payback, Sir!"
What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?
The 'touch screen' implementation of the ZUNE HD is impeccable, with much faster than ANY competitor responsiveness and accuracy.
It really is in an entirely different league in this respect, with only the Sony X1K's display responsiveness coming remotely close.
Check it out at a local retailer to experience what I've posted, which is sadly something I venture none of these 'naysayers' have ever attempted to do...
Well .. this is how they handled the calculator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bObe0YeLYoc
And your reply has absolutely NOTHING to do with the originally posed question regarding Touch Screen responsiveness...
Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post
"What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?"
It's widely known that the Zune Apps capabilities has yet to be fully optimized/implemented, so the fact the this app took a while to load is irrelevant at this point.
I fully understand that you're (very obviously) threatened at the premise of something actually performing better than your beloved iPod Touch/iPhone, but in the area of screen responsiveness (again: the subject at hand), the ZUNE HD leaves the Apple equivalents in the dust.
And your reply has absolutely NOTHING to do with the originally posed question regarding Touch Screen responsiveness...
Originally Posted by anantksundaram View Post
"What's the word from the field on how touch is working for MSFT (Zune HD)? Is it something they've managed to make look/feel as smooth as Apple has done?"
It's widely known that the Zune Apps capabilities has yet to be fully optimized/implemented, so the fact the this app took a while to load is irrelevant at this point.
I fully understand that you're (very obviously) threatened at the premise of something actually performing better than your beloved iPod Touch/iPhone, but in the area of screen responsiveness (again: the subject at hand), the ZUNE HD leaves the Apple equivalents in the dust.
Start with slow loading, add annoying ads = a bit of a buzz kill from the outset. I've watched the videos and the screen responsiveness that you are talking about seems fair, not dust worthy. You have to distinguish between people who feel threatened, and people who feel duty bound to keep people honest.
The Zune has been way improved, no doubt.
More so because, at this point, they don't even have a 'concept' as far as anyone knows/has seen.
Say what you will, but whatever the MacPod is/does, there's little chance that it will be anywhere near this advanced, given the somewhat lethargic development of their current products (iPhone/Touch, OSX, MacBook, and the like).
Heck, they only just saw fit to finally put a radio in an iPod, and even then only the Nano got one...
Apple has never announced that they were working on a tablet, as you know.
MS has announced lots of vaporware over the years, most of it has never become a product, and the rest hasn't caught on very well.
Anyone can do what they did in animation, that doesn't mean that they will, or even can come up with the product.
MS promised that the current round of tablets would be compelling, but they aren't.
Your boy Baller makes lots of statements that are cockeyed about their own, and Apple's products.
In that, you are a lot like him, but you're not worth $11 billion (down from $22 billion).
You're probably correct as often though.
I don't know about the others but I'm not spelling doom for Apple. I'm just being extremely wary about the situation. And if Steve Jobs is smart (and we all know he is) he should now be EXTREMELY WARY about this development.
I hope to gawd that Jobs knows what he's doing with this project. I hope he hasn't underestimated it's importance to his company and the tech industry as a whole. And I hope he hasn't underestimated the competition. He singlehandedly embarassed the entire mobile industry with the original iphone.
The mobile industry (including Microsoft) doesn't want that to happen again!
You know that I didn't write that to you.
Sorry to have to correct you on this point, but it's pretty well established that FUD was originally developed at IBM.
Nah, this is obviously derived from Elemer Fudd from Warner Brothers. It's an old idea, goes back to the 1930's. That's when most of MS's ideas were born.
http://www.gamepolitics.com/images/elmer-fudd.gif
...The iphone was the culmination of years of MS messing up the mobile phone market and the PDA industry...mix in a little Apple's old Newton, and you've got the iPhone. ...
I was content to read previous comments and just shake my head and continue skimming through. But this claim is just magnificently dopey. That formula you describe has NOTHING to do with the actual iPhone. Have you even used one? WinMo + PDA + Newton? Are you kidding?
Previous cellphones were phones with various other functions clumsily and uncomfortably appended. For example web browsing has been available for many years on cellphones but it was almost unusable. The difference is that the iPhone has a unix based OS with a UI that has been tailored to work in a size and power limited environment. But it has more in common with a computer than a telephone. Telephony is another app that runs on it but it isn't the core of the device. The iPod touch from Apple makes that clear. Try to imagine Nokia (for instance) selling 20 million cellphone type devices without the cellphone functionality.
Apple may get unfair credit sometimes but the innovation in the iPhone is unmistakable and may be largely due to the patience to wait until the technology was "ready" so a full OS could fit in a handheld device. If the rumors about an Apple tablet are accurate (several prototypes over the past six years that have been deemed not ready to release), then it may follow a similar path.
A concept video can be fun to contemplate but Apple's similar effort, "Knowledge Navigator" dates from the late 80's and both are just videos. But Apple's video was an attempt to predict a possible future (twenty years and counting) while Microsoft's is likely a defensive move to buy time for product cloning. I hope I am wrong and Microsoft brings more than me-too to the party but that takes optimism and a disregard for the past.