Twitter Chatter: Push Notification vs Background Processes
I recently had a good discussion over Twitter with a PC fan about the reasons for Apple’s iPhone Push Notification in their upcoming 3.0 release.
Here’s the conversation via search.twitter.com:
Way To Go Microsoft; Silverlight Looks Really Cool
I am Jack’s complete sense of surprise.
You must understand how weird it feels to say this, but as a professional web developer, I’m honestly excited to start using a new Microsoft web product. Seriously.
Silverlight is the new flash competitor that Microsoft is rolling out, and without getting into too many details (because that link to TechCrunch does a pretty good job of getting the details out) I couldn’t be more excited to start using it. Well…screw it. I’ll tell you one reason why I’m excited: You don’t have to learn some funky new language that you will never use anywhere else just to make a video player or something simple for your site (cough coughActionscript!). Don’t get me wrong, you are still going to have to kill me before I ever use .NET or ASP but with Silverlight you can use Python for example, or hell, you can even use javascript. Thats the kind of anti-lock-in feature you don’t usually see from Microsoft, just like their efforts to make sure this works on all browsers and platforms including the mobile ones (there’s another exciting feature!).
Look, I gotta go. Veronica Mars is about to come back on, and I’ll get back to the Britney Spears jokes later, I just wanted to go on record with my actual excitement with a new Microsoft web product.
Gundeep Hora thinks that Microsoft should acquire Linux. Well that just makes perfect sense…wait, what?
Although you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that method seems to work with guys named “Gundeep”. (via Daring Fireball)
The Zune is Nice, but Not Nice Enough
The Zune, Microsoft’s new attempt to dethrone the iPod, is nice. Its a little big, but nice. I really mean that. From what I’ve seen so far in the form of video, articles and so forth, the Zune seems to be a decent Video / Photo / Music device. That sounds like me complementing a Microsoft product and, well, it is…but there is a catch. As nice as it may be, I don’t see the Zune even scratching the surface of the mammoth structure that is iPod’s dominance. Here’s why: Right now the iPod has an commanding lead in the market share of digital music players…ok its more like a Super Space Captain Commanding lead in the market share. I couldn’t find the current number, but for the sake of argument, lets say 75% (I’m being generous to Microsoft with that figure, I think.). So lets be generous to Microsoft again and say that every single person that doesn’t own an iPod agrees with me on how nice the Zune is goes out and buys one for Christmas / Festivus. Well even with that uber-generous assumption, you still won’t dent the iPod market share. As well all know, if you have something that dominating competing with you, you can’t win by just rounding up stragglers, you have to win by converting their users. Thats where “nice” just won’t cut it. “Nice” isn’t enough for me to take my $300+ investment in my iPod and put it away in my bottom desk drawer and go out and make another $300 dollar investment to switch to your team. To convert the invested iPod masses, you can’t just come out with a slightly bigger version of what they already paid for and go on about how great your screen is. You’ve got to bring something a little better than that to the party. Oh sure, they have their WiFi features, but those were castrated by DRM long ago with silly rules and axed functionality. The only chance the Zune has if Microsoft cuts the price in half…at least. Even then, its a hard sell.
The OS X Dilemma
One last thing about the Zune and this “big boy” talk before I go concentrating on finding half-naked lady picture for today’s Friday Feature: Why didn’t Microsoft make the Zune work on OS X? If you think that doesn’t matter, go ask your Mom if she knows what the Zune is. Hell, go ask your sister or dad or the guy that sleeps on your couch, they won’t know either. All new electronics go through the trickle-down effect: Geeks to Wanna-Be Geeks to Young People to Everyone Else. So whats the problem? Well guess what a major chunk of Geeks use for their every day computing? OS X. Believe it. I know more and more people in the industry switching to Mac and I live in St. Louis. I would imagine the Geek-Owning-Macs share is a factor of 10 higher out there. So when these Geeks go to try out the new Zune, they can’t. So they obviously won’t use it. Which seems like a minor-issue if a rather small group doesn’t use the product, until you think about the percentage of people in the important “Everyday People” group that are going to call up their Web Developer son to ask if the Zune is worth buying. That Web Developer son would reply “I never could really try it out. You are better off going with an iPod.” It wouldn’t have taken much to put together a version of Zune software for the Mac or even just license another company to do it.
Editor’s Note: I got pulled away at the end of that last sentence to do some, get this…work! I just wanted to let you know that I’m posting this, but if my train of thought wanders in this article or it suddenly ends, its because someone made me work, not because I had a mild stroke halfway through.
Microsoft’s Cultural Blunders
CNet has an article up today recounting a speech by Microsoft’s own Tom Edwards, who is the head of their geopolitical strategy team, made on the different little mistakes Microsoft has done that have pissed off a section of the world. For instance Microsoft lost millions when they had to pull back some 200,000 copies of Windows 95 because a section of India (only eight pixels) were colored differently than the rest. The Indian government didn’t like that Microsoft was pointing out the disputed Kashmiri territory and got pissed and, I don’t know…held back the export of Quickie Mart employees and Microsoft had to pull it all back and fix it.
There are more examples of Microsoft missteps, like included a track of people reading the Koran in the soundtrack for a video game or when, in another game, they included Muslim warriors turning churches into mosques. But my personal favorite Microsoft cultural blunder is this one:
Microsoft has also managed to upset women and entire countries. A Spanish-language version of Windows XP, destined for Latin American markets, asked users to select their gender between “not specified,” “male” or “bitch,” because of an unfortunate error in translation.
I can just picture is some old Mexican lady starting up her Windows XP machine (She got it as a gift or something ok!) and when it asks her for her gender she graps her chest and yells out “¡Dios mio!”
The one cultural mishap they failed to mention was when Microsoft inflicted Windows ME upon the earth. Thats gotta be the worst one of all time right?
Windows Vista: Deja Vu All Over Again
Microsoft recently gave a preview of Vista at CES and someone decided that the speach about the great new interface sounded a little like some other OS. Here’s a video that illastrates the point:
Windows Vista: First of a Kind Features
The mac-geeks will get a kick out of this.
Microsoft To Buy McDonalds and Taco Bell
Deciding it wasn’t enough to just make computers bad with their cumbersome OS and Office products, Microsoft is in talks to buy both McDonald’s and Taco Bell in order to also be responsible for making our meals bad as well. An anonymous source familiar with the nearly finalized proceedings, stated “We at Microsoft know that people run out of the office at lunch to take a break from their Windows computers, and if we can figure out a way to get into the lunch game and somehow ruin the one break these people have, we would make every effort to do that.” When asked about the rumored “Google PC” sporting a possible new OS, directly from Google, the source merely scoffed at the notion. “Most people don’t need another PC, but they do need to eat, everyday, without fail. Our approach is flawless: Get them where they eat. We can do anything, put advertisements on the buns or taco shells, whatever we want. People can switch to Mac or Linux at the drop of a hat if they want, but the fat-asses in this country will never stop coming to McDonald’s or Taco Bell. Never.” Before walking away, the source interjected “Plus, lets see those dumb-ass rumor-mongering tech blog writers see this shit coming!”
Check that out: I can make up rumors too! It doesn’t take an “A-List” blogger to post wild rumors, we here at Hell Yeah Bitch! .com can do that just as well as the big boys. Seriously, one look at tech.memeorandum.com and you think all the tech business leaders hung out all Christmas break smoking weed and eating Cheetos thinking up crazy deals. It can’t be all true. It just can’t. Lets just all remember that when we check out the news around the “blogosphere” in the next couple of weeks.
Examples:
When $80 Billion Is Not Enough
Blog debate: is Apple making a game console?
Industry Feeling Presence of the 800-Pound Google
Xbox 360 Ups the Ante For Xbox Hacking
Remember when I said I would only buy a Xbox 360 when its officially hacked? Well it seems that task is going to be a infinitely more difficult that hacking the original Xbox was. Engadget has compiled a quick list of the road blocks in the way to a hacked 360.
- The flash is encrypted with a per-box key
- The key is stored inside the CPU
- The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU
- Also inside the CPU is a hypervisor that verifies the running state of the kernel, making sure there is no modification (RAM checksums), else the Xbox 360 panics and blows up!
The CPU contains RAM inside of it to store the checksums- All interrupt/exception handling is done by the hypervisor
- All code runs in kernel mode
- The emulator for first generation games can be updated via an official Microsoft download burned to CD by the user, though the CDs’ content will be encrypted and signed with public key cryptography.
- The boot ROM is stored inside the CPU.
Yikes. Anyone think Microsoft is using the 360 as a test run for their “Trusted Computing”? I guess they figured they would throw it all in the 360, and if all the geniuses out there working day and night out of their parent’s basements can’t beat it, then its golden (for now)…and if they can beat it, then they move on the 2.0 for the next try.
Either way, I’m thinking that I won’t be parting with my money for the joy of a new Xbox 360 anytime soon.
Would You Run An Ad-Based OS?
So would you? Would you run an ad-based operating system? Maybe the OS would be cheap, or free, and in a bar across the top would run ads that you can’t remove, would you run that on your machine? Everything else worked fine, there were just ads on it. Maybe the ads took the form of a pre-install spyware machine, with the occasional pop-up and a start page you can’t change. Or maybe the ad was a wallpaper that changes every 30 minutes to a new ad. Would that be worth the cost of an OS? According to a leaked memo, Microsoft has at least been exploring the idea.