Google’s Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple Board of Directors

This is a very interesting development given very recent conflicts between Google and Apple/AT&T.  Sure, Steve Jobs has stated that Eric’s resignation was a mutual decision made by both companies because Google’s encroachment on familiar territory is becoming a conflict of interest.  Still, Android has been out for some time, so why now?

One of the biggest stories last week was Apple’s denial of the Google Voice application on the iTunes app store.  The dispute has since been consumed by the gaze of the FCC to determine if this choice was made by AT&T moreso than Apple, or if AT&T in any way influences the content found on the App Store.  If that’s the case, as it may very well be, the ruling could be important for a couple reasons.

1. Consumers have one more reason to detest AT&T
2. It gives no logical support for the claim that the denial of Google applications has anything to do with Schmidt’s descent from the board
3. Consumers have one more reason to dete….oh, I already said that one

Honestly though it doesn’t sound like Apple’s style to bend to the will of AT&T.  They love their products enough to say something to the affect of “Listen, we have a product that has made you millions, you think this app conflicts with your service then tough cookies – we’re working on a Verizon version of the iPhone anyways.”  I’m getting off-track here.

Does this departure setup a feud between Apple and Google?  The two companies have seemed almost philosophically aligned for some time now, and most pundits don’t really consider Android or what we know of Chrome OS as major threats in their individual markets (phone and PC operating systems).  All this time it has been Microsoft who has been desperately trying to compete with the big G, and just when it seems that they’re making a solid go of it the focus might be shifting towards an Apple/Google main event instead.

There is one area in which the philosophies of Apple and Google conflict, however.  Openness.  It’s been proclaimed that this might be the achilles heel of Apple.  Google always happily opens up their projects to developers while Apple severely shies away from such behavior.  Sure, the iTunes App Store is extremely successful, but the only complaint we seem to hear about weekly is that certain apps get shot down for seemingly silly reasons, and of course Apple’s proprietary take on their hardware and software is always criticized.  If Apple had the market share Windows does, they’d have one of the worst monopolies we’ve ever seen.

The only thing we could possibly say Google has a monopoly on is the search engine market, but with Bing approaching 10%+ market share that’s not as much of a compelling case.

Does “Security Essentials” spell trouble for Microsoft?

Microsoft is doing a very smart thing.  One of the biggest complaints against the company’s flagship product, the Windows OS, is that it has become a victim to malicious software including viruses and trojans.  To help solve this problem Microsoft has turned in-house to create their own security tool/anti-virus program called “Microsoft Security Essentials” (previously codenamed “Morro”).  The free tool will help to keep PCs clean but could also put the likes of McAfee and Symantec out of business.  As a result a very quirky question has been raised: would the current anti-virus application developers have a solid case against Microsoft for holding a monopoly in the anti-virus market?

Sounds ludicrous, right?  Microsoft improves their product by increasing its security, a feature that users have been begging for, and in the end they could be sued for doing so.  Still, people have successfully taken down the Redmond-based corporation in similar disputes.  The EU still requires Microsoft to sell a version of Windows that doesn’t include IE because it’s considered anti-competitive.  Of course the question remains, without a bundled web browser how does your everyday user go about installing their browser of choice easily and conveniently, but I’m not going to argue for the EU’s case logically in this post.

Honestly, I think Microsoft has learned from their prior exploits.  I don’t expect Security Essentials to be bundled with Windows 7.  Instead it will more than likely be acquired in a similar fashion as their Live suite of services.  The user might be prompted to download some of the Windows Live applications (Writer, Live Mail, Photo Gallery, and of course Security Essentials) but the chances of it being installed with the OS is kind of low, at least in my opinion.  That’s not to say I’m against the idea – I think it would be a great help to users to have a built-in anti-virus application that has a fairly small footprint which is integrated into the OS much like Windows Firewall is today.  However, I have a feeling there are some lawyers representing anti-virus competitors who would disagree with me.

Sometimes I feel as though Microsoft simply can’t win.  If you look at all of the cool products they’ve produced since 2005 you’d think consumers would cut them some slack, but everyone loves to hate on them.  It must be residual feelings left over from their glory days when Microsoft was, for all intents and purposes, the only player in the PC marketplace, but it seems impossible for the company to shed its “big brother” persona.  Me personally?  I feel that if you have to speculate about a company holding too much power in the tech industry it’s Google by far.  That doesn’t seem to be a commonly shared sentiment, though.

E3 2009 – Rumors and Such

It’s that time again.  This year’s return to the E3 of yesteryear should produce some exciting news.  This post is really just a roundup of some of the rumors I’ve heard and what I’m looking forward to most.  We’ll start with Microsoft and the Xbox 360.

Not much is known about what Microsoft is going to show this year.  You can bet that Halo 3: ODST will play a big role, but otherwise they don’t have the laundry list of announced megaton games to talk about like they have in years past.  One rumor going around is that they’re working on a motion controller (in fact, the same rumor is going for Sony) so we may see the debut of a new motion controller initiative to compete with Nintendo’s ridiculously successful Wii.  There’s also a rumor that the 360’s dashboard will see another massive update similar to the “New Xbox Experience” we saw last holiday season.  This might be tied into the Zune / Xbox Marketplace integration that was announced this past week (along with the new Zune HD).  However, as far as games go, I’m kind of at a loss.  Some folks are saying that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will be debuted during Microsoft’s conference despite the fact that it’s traditionally a PC franchise.  I’m not sure about that but Episode 3 is definitely a game I’m interested in seeing.

The Sony press conference is the one I’m the most excited for because they have the biggest list of announced games to look forward to.  There has also been some interesting information leaked about possible revisions to their hardware which have me excited.  Let’s start with the games, though.  Currently the games they’ve announced that I’m interested in:

• Uncharted 2 - A sequel to my second favorite game on the console.  What I’ve seen so far looks even better.  Can’t wait for this game.
• Heavy Rain - Should be interesting, comes from the same folks that made Indigo Prophecy.  The gameplay seems to rely heavily on quick time events but the visuals are great as a result.
• Project Trico - This game isn’t technically announced yet, but some footage was released not long ago and it looks promising.  Unfortunately I wasn’t around for ICO on the PS2, but I’m looking forward to playing my first game from Team Ico.
• God of War 3 – This one’s obligatory.  Another game from a series I haven’t had the opportunity to try out yet but if nothing else the gameplay looks extremely fun and the visuals are amazing.

So that’s just the software, how about the hardware?  I’ve been flirting with picking up a PSP (for the second time, I might add – I bought the original when it was first launched but there were no games so I traded it in to put towards my 360), and all rumors point to an announcement of a new version of the PSP this year during Sony’s press conference.  Apparently called the “PSP Go,” this new portable console will be focused on digital rather than physical media.  You’ll be able to download games from a PSP store which is very appealing to me, and very appealing to Sony because it should cut down on some of the rampant piracy issues associated with the device.  A lot of folks are pointing to this as the rebirth of the device, and I know that if it’s announced I’ll buy one, plain and simple.

There’s also the question of the Playstation 3.  Despite having a solid line-up of games Sony is still struggling in this department.  Some shots were recently leaked of a PS3 “slim” redesign, and originally these images were scoffed at.  There is a bit of a twist however – sites that put these images up were contacted with cease and desist notices, giving this rumor some credibility.  Could Sony finally be making a big push to put the PS3 on the map?  A slim and sexy version of the console could do the trick, though a price drop wouldn’t hurt either.  We shall see.

As for Nintendo?  Who on Earth knows.  They maintain that they’ll have games for core gamers (i.e. gamers who aren’t interested in doing exercises on a balance board or playing their Wii remote like a pretend saxophone) but we’ve heard that before.  All I know is that it really doesn’t matter what they do at this point, the Wii and DS combined will continue to sell like gangbusters and completely outshine the 360 and PS3.  My only concern is that Microsoft and Sony will begin to think that motion controllers are “where it’s at” and give up on traditional gaming as we know it.

It would be a sad day if that were to happen.

Windows Mobile 6.5 – the new WinMo user interface

This is interesting.  Everyone knows that Windows Mobile has been looking a little long in the tooth as phone manufacturers race to compete with the iPhone’s touch interface.  I’m happy to say that with 6.5 Windows Mobile will also enter the manual touch market.  The new homescreen does a horizontal scroll to move through the user’s day (whether you’re navigating through emails, appointments, text messages, or photos) – it sort of reminds me of the Xbox 360’s interface in ways.  It’s a unique way of navigating though, and from what I’ve seen it’s my favorite part of the OS.

From there you can go to the new start menu which houses your applications.  The applications are now arranged in honeycomb-shaped bubbles making each a little more accessible with your finger.  That’s cool because anyone who has used an older WinMo phone can attest that they’re difficult to navigate without a stylus most of the time.

The only thing I’m a little concerned about is that the scrolling seemed a little chunky at times.  It didn’t flow as well as the iPhone’s scrolling.  They’ve also worked in the classic “snap-back” for menus, so that when you reach the top or bottom of a menu the content will snap up or down.  I think Palm is in some hot water for incorporating that feature because Apple has a patent on it, so I wonder if Apple will go after Microsoft now too.  Here’s the video:

Windows Mobile 6.5 Running on HTC from Jesus Diaz on Vimeo.

I don’t get it.

The main argument I’ve heard against maintaining one single version of Windows 7 is that Microsoft has a ton of customers, nearly 1 billion, and they all have different needs.  That much makes perfect sense to me.  Unlike Apple all of these people are running various hardware, they’re using their machines for various reasons, I got it.  So why can’t there be just one box copy of Windows 7?

One of the cool things about Vista is that you’ve got every version on one disc.  In order to upgrade you didn’t have to buy a whole different version, you just had to buy the license and you could upgrade from your current disc.  All of the install files for each version of Vista are contained on every disc.  The license is what makes your version different, not the disc.  So…since we can put all of the files for Windows 7 Super Mega Edition on every disc and just compartmentalize the installation….why not just have one version?  Let the user decide if they want Windows 7 Basic, Home or Professional while they’re installing.  Better yet let OEMs figure that out ahead of time.

Unfortunately it seems as though there will be many versions of Windows 7.  An Ultimate version is confirmed.  There’s a starter version (read Basic), Home (read Home Premium), and Business (Professional).  Hopefully that’s it.  I really, really, really want to believe that Microsoft has learned a lot from Vista.  This is one of the areas in which they have the opportunity to get things right with 7.

Oh well, I guess I still have great pricing to hope for.

Windows 7 pricing

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

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:

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/events/ces/default.aspx

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:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/palm-pre-ces.html

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:
Flogging Molly – Laura
Prince of Persia

Live Mesh for Mac

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:
Jedi Mind Tricks – Tug of War
Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty : World at War

The New Xbox Experience

This morning (yesterday morning, by the time you’re reading this) I awoke and one of the first things I did was turn on my Xbox 360 to grab the latest software update from Microsoft.  This update at last brings the New Xbox Experience (NXE) to Xbox 360 consoles the world over, giving the platform a refreshing and perhaps much-needed new look.  Of course software plays into Microsoft’s hand quite handily, so they’ve been able to essentially give us an entirely new console experience without giving us a new console at all.  So, how does it work?

Well the first thing that happened after I installed the NXE update was I was prompted to create an avatar.  This is a feature that’s becoming more and more popular these days on gaming consoles, and I’ve blogged about it before.  Basically your avatar is a cartoony representation of yourself.  You get to pick your body type, skin color, facial features, what kind of hairstyle you’d like and so on so that your friends can see and interact with you online.  The hope down the road is that more games will integrate NXE avatars into the gameplay by pulling in a gamer’s avatar rather than relying on their gamertag or gamerpic for identification.  There are two games right now that do just that – firstly is the new title called Kingdom of Keflings, a sort of RTS in-which a giant version of your avatar manages and builds infrastructure.  I haven’t played this game but one of my friends assures me it’s fun.  Secondly is the old standby Xbox Live Arcade classic Uno.  Uno however just lets you project your avatar’s likeness into the game for identification without adding any true gameplay value (after all, what can you add to Uno?).

The new guide system is really pretty, if a initially somewhat confusing.  Everything is much more graphically designed, and artwork has been placed where once there were only lists of text.  There are also many more “blades” on the new dashboard, including sections such as My Xbox for all of your personal info, the Friends section to see and interact with your friends’ avatars, Video and Game Marketplaces, and the Events sections just to name a few.  Basically it’s a lot of content that was already on Xbox Live, but now it has been organized in a much prettier and easier-to-interact with way.

Another of NXE’s cool features is the new party system.  You’ve always been able to get in parties when you’re playing a game, but this functionality has been applied to the dashboard experience as well.  Basically parties let you get a group of your friends in one voice chat instance, and then the party leader can move everyone in the party from one activity to the next.  I tried playing around with the party system a bit today and I have to say it works pretty well once you figure it out.  From the dashboard I was able to get together with a couple of my friends on Xbox Live, and then from there we moved into a few games seemlessly without having to worry about sending or re-sending invites.  The parties also finally add private voice chat for more than 2 players, which is a huge feature that I’ve been waiting for since voice chat was first revealed.

With NXE you can now control a lot of your Xbox 360 from the guide as well, not just the home screen dashboard.  If you’re playing a game or watching a movie and you don’t want to exit, you can do pretty much anything you’d want to do aside from playing with system settings from the guide.  The new guide lets you form parties, listen to music, play whatever is in the disc tray, send messages and view game information.  Top it off with the same fit and finish as you’ll find in the rest of the NXE and you have a winning piece of functional software.

The last feature I want to talk about is Netflix integration.  Netflix has moved into the video streaming space, and more and more players are starting to take advantage of that.  The most popular Netflix set-top box is the Roku which costs $99, but if you take into account the Apple TV these gadgets can cost as much as $300.  In the Apple TV’s case you even have to do some firmware updates just to get the thing to work with Netflix.  Netflix on the Xbox 360 with NXE is extremely simple.  So simple and convenient that I had to fire up my Netflix subscription again just to take advantage of it.

With the launch of NXE, Microsoft has also unveiled their Netflix “Watch Instantly” application which – you guessed it – lets you watch streaming Netflix content.  The application is only about 3 megabytes and installs in seconds, and once you get everything setup you’re presented with all of the Watch Instantly Netflix titles that are on your queue.  That means you get to watch HD content on your TV instead of from behind your computer.  The quality is typical streaming quality, that is to say it’s not the best, but I never ran into any buffering hiccups and the interface is easy to use and very slick.  My only gripe about the whole thing is that originally you were supposed to have the ability to bring parties in to watch Netflix movies.  Unfortunately that feature didn’t make it into the initial release of the NXE, but hopefully they’ll hit us with a patch down the road which takes care of that.

Overall for a free update you can’t really go wrong with the NXE.  It brings the Xbox 360 out of the playskool bright-primary-colors era of 2005 and gives us something much easier on the eyes.  It also adds a lot of functionality, some of which is shallow and aesthetic but there are also plenty of features that make you wonder how you ever lived without them.  Bravo Microsoft.  I also have to give them a tip of the cap for having a relatively painless upgrade process.  For me I never experienced any network issues or errors, everything worked as it should.  That’s a huge contrast with Sony’s recent Playstation updates which have been pretty hit-or-miss, and have needed patches a lot of the time.

Now Playing:
Joystiq Podcast
Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead

The seeds of change have been sewn

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.  Did you expect something else? =)

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 (click here to read) 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.

As a side note, if you’re feeling the Windows 7 love you can grab the PDC Windows 7 desktop wallpaper by clicking here. Is it weird that I’m using it on my iMac?

Now Playing:
The Real McKenzies – Wild Mountain Thyme
Fallout 3