Geek Swagger.
Microsoft
Windows 7 pricing
Jan 27th
I was watching Leo Laporte's live stream this past weekend, and he mentioned something that is very important when it comes to the release of Microsoft's new Windows 7. Pricing and bundling. There was a lot of hubbub made about Windows Vista's many different skews, whether Home Basic, Premium, Business, or Ultimate (am I missing any?). It caused mass confusion for consumers. Compared to Apple's approach of one single version of the OS it was just way too onvoluted. Another obvious comparison to Apple would be OS pricing. How much was OS X Leopard at launch? $129. Vista? It's currently $199.95 for the Basic, near-worthless edition and all the way up to $319.95 for Ultimate.
This is my plea to Microsoft - please take a page out of Apple's book and make Windows 7 relatively inexpensive, and do your best to release as few editions as you can. I think that an $80 upgrade fee from Vista to Windows 7 would be perfect. A cheaper cost, especially considering Vista's tarnished name and the general eagerness of users to move on to the next version of Windows, would do quite well (and that's not even mentioning the economic incentives for not charging an arm and a leg). But that's not all.
It has been said that Windows 7 is basically just what Windows Vista should have been originally. Having used 7 I agree. That doesn't mean that Windows 7 isn't better than Vista, but it's immediately evident to anyone who has used both that they're cut from the same cloth. Microsoft would do well to acquiesce to their customers by admitting that Windows 7 is more or less a fix, upgrade, or patch, and to do so would only require modest pricing. Now if you've read my blog for any amount of time you'll know that I have nothing against Vista, but 7 is Vista done right. Let me say that again: Windows 7 is Vista done right. Don't spurn your customers (especially those who have already adopted Vista) by giving Windows 7 the typically expensive Microsoft operating system price tag.
It's time for Microsoft to rebuild their tarnished reputation, whether that reputation is legitimate or not. I can think of no better way to start such a project than by giving us a good deal. A cheap entry price will get Windows 7 into the hands of the users that want it most as quickly as possible, and Microsoft can begin to cultivate brand loyalty in the operating system market again. That's what they need more than anything right now. Market share is one thing, brand loyalty is completely different - just look at Apple. So then, what do I think is a good pricing model for Windows 7? I already mentioned around $80 for an upgrade. So with an $80 upgrade I'd have to say about $150 for a full retail copy of the operating system would make sense.
Please Micorsoft, it's not time to be greedy. Make your customers happy and you'll be grateful that you did so in the end.
CES 2009
Jan 15th
Today I'm going to continue our trip through early-2009 conventions by talking about some of the announcements from CES that I thought were interesting.
Let's start with the keynote. This was the first year that Bill Gates wasn't the headliner, but I think Steve Ballmer did a good job as far as Microsoft keynotes go. They didn't really announce much, and a lot of the cool stuff was just review of what we've known for a while. It seemed like a sort of "State of the Union" Microsoft style, where-in the crew informed the crowd about all of the great things the company has been up to for the past year. The highlight was definitely the demo of Windows 7, as well as the (predictable) announcement that the Windows 7 public beta would be out soon. It's out now and I've had an opportunity to play with it a bit, but that's for another day. To see the demo, you can check it out here:
The other major announcement that's caught a lot of people by surprise was the "rebirth" of Palm in the form of the Palm Pre. I have to say I met this bit of news with a great deal of anticipation, but then I watched the presentation and I was stunned. The Palm Pre (running Palm's new Web OS) is, in my opinion, the first true competitor to the iPhone. Of course this is all speculation right now because a device looking cool in a demonstration and actually being cool in your hand are two different things, but Palm seems to be the first company since Apple to use the "Apple approach" in creating a touchscreen smartphone. The OS looks great, featuring an easy-to-manipulate interface and some features that might even have iPhone users drooling. I'll save the details for a later post so I can dedicate enough words to the device to do it justice. Just know I was impressed. You can view the Palm presentation here:
Other than that most of the announcements were hardware and gadget-based. It's impossible to do a complete rundown of all of the devices that were announced, so instead I'll just mention a couple of the things that caught my eye. Firstly, the Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds is worth mentioning because it has a freakin' slide-out screen! Pretty cool. Also pretty expensive. This new laptop is meant to be a desktop replacement, and finally solves the conundrum of enhancing a laptop's monitor size without sacrificing portability. It's obvious you can hook most laptops up to an external display, but as I mentioned, you lose the ability to roam because your computer is tethered to that display. The W700ds solves this problem by having a 10" slide-out display, giving the user a whole lot of LCD goodness. It's a little niche, but apparently the W700ds has been targeted towards artists since it has built-in Wacom functionality. Not to mention a $3,663 starting price tag. Ouch.
Camera and display technology was also a big hit this year at CES, but I'm going to stay with notebook computers. The Dell Adamo looks quite stunning. It's a very thin machine sporting an almost Macbook Air-like quality to it. The Adamo has been branded a "luxury laptop." It's extremely thin and has some industrial design that's only rivaled by Apple's line of notebooks. Dell was kind of sketchy on the details but it seemed to me that the notebook wouldn't be the only computer or device in the line, perhaps they're looking to debut some multimedia devices with it as well? At any rate this is a product to keep your eyes on, if only because it looks so cool.
Now Playing:
Livestation – Video Streaming for Mac, Windows and Linux
Dec 13th
I've got another application screencast for you this weekend. This time I talk about a handy little video-streaming program called Livestation. It lets you get news (and other TV channels from around the world) delivered right to your desktop. Thanks for watching, as always. =)
LittleBigPlanet and the holiday rush
Dec 2nd
There's been a lot made of LittleBigPlanet's sales numbers lately. LBP was supposed to be a huge release for the PS3, the trademark hit of the season that would not only sell a lot of PS3s but also further Sony's gaming brand. Leading up to the launch of LBP the marketing blitz (beginning at E3) hinted at the potential for Sackboy, LBP's main character, to take the helm as the PS3's system mascot. Now the November NPD sales numbers have been released and it seems that sales are rather dismal. LBP was outperformed by SOCOM: Confrontation on the PS3, slipping out of the top 10 completely with only around 200k units sold. So...what happened?
A few things. First the ones that aren't as noticeable. I think that LittleBigPlanet should have been released a month or two earlier. Obviously nothing can be done about a development cycle, and it's optimal for a developer to hold onto their product until it's absolutely ready to go out to the public, but around the game's release date it seemed a lot of the hype died down really fast. In August and September there was a ton of buzz because the media had their hands on the beta and the game was showing a ton of potential. In the weeks leading up to October 27th (LBP's North American release date) there seemed to be a decent amount of buzz from gamers. Then a week after the game came out, poof, the buzz died.
There has been some claims that this happened because the online service backing LittleBigPlanet didn't work straight out of the gate. As with most popular game launches there was a huge amount of stress on the game's servers, and with LBP the case was doubled as a lot of the online functionality has to do with uploading user-created content so other users can then download and try out what you make. Another possible reason for the slow sales could be that people got distracted. I know this happened to me despite having purchased the game. When I got LBP I played it for about a week, and then Fallout 3 came out. Because Fallout 3 was a mastodon of a game including hours and hours of story-based campaign gameplay, I put LBP on the back burner assuming I'd come back to it when I had time. I justified this move at the time because there really isn't a story holding LBP together, and it's the perfect game to pop in and play every now and then without having to dedicate large amounts of time to it in succession to get through. Perhaps people wanted to pass up on LBP so they could get through the more traditional campaign-based games first? If that's the case then we're facing a dilemma.
The question is, why are there still so many damn games released from October to December every year? Obviously the holiday rush is important, but I think the number of games coming out quickly reaches a saturation point, especially considering the crappy economic situation we're in. There have been around 10 purchase-worthy games released between October and December of this year:
- LittleBigPlanet
- Fallout 3
- Gears of War 2
- Call of Duty: World at War
- Mirror's Edge
- Resistance 2
- Far Cry 2
- Prince of Persia
- World at Warcraft : Wrath of the Liche King
- Left 4 Dead
That's over $600 worth of games alone, and I'm leaving out biggies like Guitar Hero World Tour, Wii Music, portable games (PSP or DS), and some others I'm sure. A lot of people don't have $600 to spend paying bills let alone buying games, so gamers have to pick and choose. If however, game studios and developers finally realized that gamers don't just play games during the last quarter of the year, but year-round, this problem could be easily remedied. For instance had LittleBigPlanet come out next March I'm positive it would have sold much better. In March chances are good that there won't be nearly as many games to play because that's typically the beginning of the Spring to Summer drought. Because of this people would be more willing to jump into a game that has a ton of content considering the ability to create, share and play content in LBP. When you're 1 of 3 big games coming out you're going to sell more than when you're 1 of 15.
There is hope, however. We have seen some big games slip to different times of the year - Bioshock comes to mind most memorably. There's hope for LBP too. What I think will happen is that a lot of late adopters will end up picking LBP up through the middle of next year when they don't have much to play and when they're ready and willing to spend time creating and downloading levels. By that time I'm sure a lot of the online issues will have been resolved as well. Anyways, sorry for the extremely long post. This is just something I kind of wanted to get off my chest. Let me also say before wrapping it up that LittleBigPlanet is an awesome game despite the disappointing sales so far. It's a game that I can't wait to jump back into when I make it through some of the more linear games I'm working on right now. If you own a PS3 you should definitely give it a shot.
Now Playing:
Young Dubliners - McAlpine's Fusiliers
Gears of War 2 Review
Nov 25th
Okay so we're making some progress on the deluge of games coming out lately! Last week I did my review of Fallout 3, and today I'm going to talk to you about Gears of War 2. It goes without saying that Gears 2 is one of the most popular titles that has come out this year, and it's certainly a goliath when it comes to Xbox 360 exclusive titles. The Gears of War franchise is fast approaching and overtaking the Halo franchise's position as Xbox system-seller, and for good reason in my opinion.
Gears 2 was one of those games that just is. What I mean by that is it's an immensely popular game that you know you're going to buy if you're a gamer with a 360. It's like how football fans regard the superbowl. Sure your team might not be playing but chances are you're going to watch regardless. In that way I wasn't really excited for Gears 2. I knew it was coming, I knew I was going to play it because I had it preordered, but I was more interested in titles like Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty : World at War - games that were shaping up to be great but didn't exactly have the "blockbuster" tagline that we've come to associate with Gears of War. It may be because of my hands-off approach, but I have to say I'm splendidly surprised by Gears.
The biggest critique you may have heard about the original Gears of War was that it was a bit repetitive, and not just from a gameplay aspect. Not only was a lot of the combat the same throughout the game, but the environments were near identical. That's right, the good old gray and brown palette that had become associated with so many Unreal Engine 3 games from the early bit of the engine's lifespan also plagued the first Gears of War. I'm happy to say that Gears of War 2 is completely different in this regard. Barring the first act of the game which plays out in areas that are similar to the first, the game's environments are of a much larger range representing many different colors from red fire to blue snow, and even a bit of green forest thrown in for good measure.
Epic didn't skimp on varied gameplay, either. You'll find yourself in a lot of different scenarios, most involving riding in huge vehicles or...well, on mythical beasts. The point is you won't get tired of the same old 'take cover, shoot locust' gameplay over and over. The game features some huge setpieces and as implausible as they are they're damn fun levels to play. I think what surprised me the most about the game was how long it was, and especially the fact that they kept the gameplay varied and interesting enough that it didn't get old. There are a couple boss battles that put those from Gears 1 to shame, a competent storyline, a few new characters and of course the old standbys. Epic has also added much more fun-to-play boss fights for the most part. All told it took me at least 8 hours to complete which is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you're playing through with a co-op partner who has already beaten the game rather than playing alone and having to figure things out as you go.
On to multiplayer. As I just mentioned 2-player co-op is back, and that's definitely the way to play through the game. There's nothing better than playing together with a buddy, and just like Gears 1 there are plenty of scenarios baked into the game with cooperative play in mind. After that you have the more traditional competitive deathmatch-style multiplayer, which I have to be honest I haven't exactly played much of. I find that if I'm looking for a competitive multiplayer experience I tend to put in Call of Duty : World at War rather than Gears 2. I have no doubt that the competitive multi is fun unless they've departed greatly from the first game which I played a ton of, but I find World at War to be exceptional. Last but not least (and this is all-new for Gears 2) you get a 4-player cooperative "horde" mode, in which you and 3 of your friends can fight off up to 50 waves of enemies that are progressively more and more difficult. It isn't cooperative play in the most traditional sense, that is to say it's not story-related and the horde mode has nothing to do with the Gears 2 campaign, but it's surprisingly fun nonetheless. I was able to make it through all 50 rounds and that alone took around 5 hours to do.
So what can I say really? Gears of War 2 is the cheesey action movie game of this holiday season. The story and dialog are laughable a lot of the time, but the gameplay is fun enough to keep you coming back for more. Also the game is damn pretty, and that never hurts. Is it game of the year? Not mine. Is it a game you should own if you have an Xbox 360? Of course.
Now Playing:
Live Mesh for Mac
Nov 22nd
Here's my video post for the week. I decided that since I did a video about Dropbox, and since I sort of criticized Microsoft during that video for not rolling out Mac support with Live Mesh, I'd go ahead and follow up now that that support is available. Live Mesh is a lot like Dropbox with some unique features that make it either better or worse, depending on your point a view. Take a look and leave a comment if you have anything to say! Thanks for watching!
Now Playing:
,
Gears of War 2 Limited Edition Unboxing
Nov 8th
I switched it up a bit this week and decided to do an unboxing rather than a screencast for a couple reasons. First and foremost is the fact that I couldn't think of anything else to talk about, and second I figured it would be a good way to switch up the content. When I originally started doing videos I didn't plan for them all to be Mac-related screencasts, that just happened to be how it turned out. As always thanks for watching!
The seeds of change have been sewn
Nov 6th
It shouldn't be news to anyone at this point. Here in the United States we've made some groundbreaking change in the hope for a better tomorrow. After months of nail-biting, finger-pointing, and heinous attack ads we can finally move forward and put this dark time behind us. I am, of course, talking about the unveiling of the new Windows 7 at PDC2008. =)
I have to admit that the first time I saw screenshots from PDC2008 of what Windows 7 would look like, I was kind of concerned. The UI is very blue. The toolbar has been reworked; it's now larger and reminds me of some of the older distributions of KDE linux I used to mess with. For some reason when I see the new Windows 7 clock in the lower right hand corner I have flashbacks to Knoppix, and the horribly ugly digital clock they had set as default. It also looks a bit like an operating system that may have been specifically developed for UMPC or tablet devices. Obviously these observations are completely arbitrary because I haven't actually played with Windows 7, but those were just some of my initial reactions.
After further examination though, I'm really starting to understand the new direction they've taken and am growing to like the new taskbar. The taskbar as it was really isn't that much different in Windows 7 when you think about it. There has always been the ability to add little quick-launch items in the taskbar (I know it was in XP and Vista, can't remember any further back), but now Microsoft has decided to expand that functionality. First, they made the quick launch icons much larger - about the size of standard icons you'd find on your desktop. Then they added the ability to easily "drag and drop" new applications to the taskbar so it's easy to customize with whatever applications you want to have available. Obviously these icons serve as launch and switching points, so in effect the new taskbar works similarly to how alt+tab works in previous versions of Windows.
Another cool feature is when you open up multiple windows inside the same application. For example if I'm working in Word and I have two documents open, if I point my cursor to the Word icon in the taskbar I'll get two preview thumbnails, one for each window. A similar feature is already in Windows Vista, but now as I said it works for multiple windows and also it allows you to interact with the application from the thumbnail. You can do things like open/close the window obviously, but more interesting is the new feature called Aero Peak. Basically what happens is, if you have 2 windows open, say 2 very similar Word documents, you can hover your cursor over one of them and all of the other windows on the desktop will turn into glass. This allows you to get a good look at whichever window you want without having to physically cycle through the windows on the desktop. My only question about this feature is what happens when your taskbar gets filled with a bunch of applications and you have a lot of windows open...seems like things could get cluttered in a hurry but that's yet to be seen.
This version of Windows is definitely an aesthetic upgrade. I don't mean that in a condescending way, as if to imply that the only updates to the OS are visual, but they obviously want things to look nice for the user on top of having new features to play with. The new taskbar integrates into the look of the UI very nicely, and Aero glass is definitely back in full effect. That's cool with me, I always liked the look of Aero. I think that the new look will lure in users as long as the OS is stable and efficient with system resources at the same time. All indications say that Windows 7 will run on much more modest hardware, including the likes of netbooks. That's a huge deal because the birth of this netbook craze has really pushed people to move back to Windows XP because of Vista's hardware requirements. According to a laptopmag.com article () Windows 7 only uses up 512mb of memory. It seems that Windows 7 has been sculpted with the Atom-based system in mind, which is good.
So in the end I'm kind of excited for Windows 7. It's much too early to build expectations, but I like the direction that the project is headed. Rumor has it that Microsoft may get Windows 7 out the door as early as June 2009, but I'm expecting sometime in 2010 or later. That tends to be the trend, especially if you look at Vista's development time, and I don't want them to rush anything. This is a very important release. One major release mired in negativity from the general public (Vista) is easy to rebound from, but make a habit out of it by rushing the next version and things will get difficult.
Is it weird that I'm using it on my iMac?
Now Playing:
The Real McKenzies - Wild Mountain Thyme
