Windows 8 Surface versus Apple

Jim Cramer on CNBC just called Steve Ballmer a buffoon.   Microsoft does not get much admiration in the media.   I think Microsoft needs someone hip and cool to run the place if it wants the mainstream media to like it's products.   Someone likeable like Obama or just bring Bill Gates back.

They are all praising the Apple mini and talking about Microsoft bad reviews.  Microsoft just needs to stay steady and be persistent with their product plans like they always do and hopefully sentiment turns.  I just hate watching Microsoft following most of the time.  Can they just come up with more new stuff that someone has not done before? (like the Kinect)

Replacing the CEO does not seem like "staying steady and be persistent like they always do" to me.

SETH GROGAN FOR CEO !

I still dont see why I want a iPad mini when I can just use my Lumia 920 which is very close in size while I can music/web/app/night camera/GPS/make phone call/e-wallet/games all together without carry extra devices. I would rather consider a bigger iPhone instead of smaller iPad.

Ballmer is actually good in my book. Just look at MS profit and profit margin, it it doing great even at slow year. I think the problem with him is, he didn't get enough time with tech team to set quarterly objectives. And his reaction to competition lacks urgency. He is good at crunching number, but, not a really good person to set tech directions.

Jim Cramer? Of all people to call somebody ELSE a buffoon. LOL

Ballmer is too goofy to be the public figurehead for Microsoft. I'd suggest Gates or Sinofsky instead. They can get excited about something without yelling.

But really, Jim Cramer? Do people still listen to him? I thought he just threw chairs around.

44 minutes ago, magicalclick wrote

Ballmer is actually good in my book. Just look at MS profit and profit margin, it it doing great even at slow year. I think the problem with him is, he didn't get enough time with tech team to set quarterly objectives. And his reaction to competition lacks urgency. He is good at crunching number, but, not a really good person to set tech directions.

Analysts and the media seem to only look at one or two segments of MS and greatly ignore the others (e.g. Dynamics, which seems to be racking up a lot of contracts this year).

1 hour ago, magicalclick wrote

I still dont see why I want a iPad mini when I can just use my Lumia 920 which is very close in size while I can music/web/app/night camera/GPS/make phone call/e-wallet/games all together without carry extra devices. I would rather consider a bigger iPhone instead of smaller iPad.

There's a big difference between 4.3" and 7". You're not going to want to carry around a 7" phone. The Galaxy Note II at 5.5" is really pushing the size you want a phone. And as anyone that's used an eReader will tell you, 7" is a wonderful form factor. So the concept of an iPad mini makes lots of sense, though I think the execution was wanting. Microsoft really should be considering a 7" Surface. We actually expected that space to be filled by the "Wookie" (MJF coined name for a theoretical Newco, i.e. B&N/Microsoft partnership, replacement device for the NOOK tablet), but that didn't come to be.

@wkempf: I'm assuming that the other devices we keep hearing rumors about in the "Surface family" will turn out to be a 7" RT tablet and WP8 phone.

@spivonious

What about a new XBox?

XBox Mobile (Sony Vita)?

This would be insanely cool, a mobile phone capable of playing current XBox games.

HD Kinect? Enough for precision Finger joint recognition and facial expression recognition

Imagine a shoot-em-up where your guns are your hands.

For accessibility imagine someone using Skype where their signing is automatic "translated" into text / speech. And the other callers speech is translate into text / signing.

 

Thought that's what XNA is for. Build once, and it works on PC, Xbox, WP7...do they need to push XNA more? Don't hear about it much anymore...

@Harlequin: XNA is now DOA. The Mono guys are working to keep it alive with Mono Game, but microsoft has abandoned XNA. That's just the software end of things, though. For a portable/mobile/handheld device you need hardware. Todays smart phone's don't really cut it, because virtual dpads are nearly unusable. A dedicated game player wouldn't be a bad idea. What I'd personally love to see though is a Windows Phone with a slideout dpad, like we saw with the Sony Xperia Play (http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/xperia-play-game-phone-comes-verizon-spring-125419). Not likely to happen, and even if it did you'd have to write software to contend with the fact that most devices won't have physical controls making it unlikely that you'd see too many games actually making use of the hardware.

@wkempf:

I always thought a dedicated clip/snap-on controller would work well in this case. Basically a small try you put the phone in (with some way to hold it in place) that uses BT to communicate with the phone. I believe you can get controllers like this for the iPhone.

But this has to be a 1st-class, 1st-party accessory, in the sense that there should be bundles up front that contain this accessory so that adoption is high. And MS should encourage game developers to offer this control scheme as an option, almost mandatory via the API.

The problem with pretty much any phone-related games (and also iPad games) is that it doesn't matter how great the hardware/software is, the touch screen is the world's worst control scheme, hence it will never replace any sort of "serious" gaming (lol - "serious" gaming ).

23 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

Thought that's what XNA is for. Build once, and it works on PC, Xbox, WP7...do they need to push XNA more? Don't hear about it much anymore...

 

Ballmer has ceded control over the direction of the company to Sinofsky. WinDiv is the tail that wags the dog, and XNA wasn't a creation of WinDiv.

22 minutes ago, cbae wrote

*snip*

 

Ballmer has ceded control over the direction of the company to Sinofsky. WinDiv is the tail that wags the dog, and XNA wasn't a creation of WinDiv.

Amen to that. Ballmer is too weak to reign him in. Sinofsky is the poor man's Steve Jobs.

1 day ago, TexasToast wrote

Jim Cramer on CNBC just called Steve Ballmer a buffoon.  

That's rich. Cramer makes a living acting like a buffoon.

20 hours ago, cbae wrote

*snip*

 

Ballmer has ceded control over the direction of the company to Sinofsky. WinDiv is the tail that wags the dog, and XNA wasn't a creation of WinDiv.

I'm not sure that's why XNA didn't work out. Without a doubt, WinRT's ability to have C++ apps & DirectX exposure is the way to go for games. There are just too many very good existing game engines out there that can be ported to WinRT with minimal effort.

I've always suspect that XNA was a stop-gap, because it hid only a little bit of DirectX from the hobby programmer, but does impose a huge run-time of .Net for that abstraction.

 

2 days ago, wkempf wrote

*snip*

There's a big difference between 4.3" and 7". You're not going to want to carry around a 7" phone.

If I am not going to want to carry around a  7" phone, I would get a bigger iPad since I don't carry it around all the time anyway.