[ http://goo.gl/iH6xo ]
They "accidentally" "leaked" public access to the social network they're building. It's called Tulalip and the screenshot of the login page looks like your typical Redmondian drek.
Give it up already, Microsoft. You're the Office-and-Windows company and you suck at everything else (actually, those products suck too but people buy them anyway).
Microsoft still thinks it can be all things to all people. They still think that their fair share of any market that they happen to enter is 100.0 percent.
And as Paul Graham pointed out a few years ago, they still don't realize how much they suck.
Their sideshows are an impressive insight on how they earn far too much money to fool around with these things. I mean, honestly, their mobile phone os, zune, xboxes all this crap they are pushing on the markets costs lots of money and doesnt pay (at least that is my uneducated guess). Techincally, this means that they could concentrate all this manpower into improving their main sellers (their os and office suite) to the point where it becomes bugfree, useful and a joy to work with. All this without charging a penny more than they already do. Hell, they might even beat apple in stylishness if they tried.
The problem is, the company needs to change direction and management styles, but they haven't figured it out yet.
They want to continue to grow. They can't. So they need to do something entirely different.
I think they're also very much afraid that they will be obscoleted by newer technologies. That's a valid concern, but one that I think they will not have much chance to combat, given how they suck at everything they do.
Either that, or maybe that strategy simply never worked at all and Netscape just sucked at competing. If the behavior of douchebags like Mike Shaver and Jamie Zawinski is any indication, maybe Netscape simply felt that their having created the mainstream Internet and owning it forever was fait accompli and they didn't have to work to fight off Microsoft.
On the other hand, maybe they are learning....
http://www.businessinsider.com/is-microsoft-about-to-drop-windows-2011-7
There are rumors of Apple making their desktop more phone-like as well, and I think it's a stupid thing for them to do as well.
I agree with that. The interface should make sense with the tool's form-factor and purpose. Using a phone's interface for a desktop doesn't make much sense.
If you want to take advantage of the spiffy nifty multi-touch screens coming out for desktop machines, you probably need to do something other than the phone interface, regardless of how successful that interface has been.
Honestly, you could do some very cool things with multi-touch desktop machines, if only someone had the imagination to make it happen. But, ultimately, you'd have to get passed the current keyboard-mouse paradigm... if you can make multi-touch desktop better to use than keyboard-mouse, people will go for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NesSYWODmM (Microsoft Surface v2 [tm])
--
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com
multi touch for your everyday work is an ergonomic nightmare as long as you put screen and touch surface together.
I agree to all of the above. Touch interfaces look hip and cool if you flash out your iphone and show off some images. But they are awkward for everything else. I once saw a prof at the university showing off with his touch enabled notebook by underlining stuff in his script. This is so unfluent, unnatural looking and slow, I can't find words for it. It still looks like you did a read line on a photographed text using MSPaint and a mouse.
Touch panels which are ruggadized enough to withstand everyday usage are so unresponsive and crappy, I want to touch them with an axe. My bank uses them for some machines. Also the Deutsche Post uses them on parcel boxes and I managed to freeze one of them today. And it is far to geeky for the regular person, like your parents.
Of course there are exceptions and I heard of some 80 year old guy enjoying an Ipad, but thats not your regular user. My mom still has a hard time getting along with keyboard and mouse. Also if you gave her a touch tft, she'd want to clean it every ten minutes, thats not green it.
I also think that the whole iphone and android (read: touch interface) hype is mainly driven by people not needing to type relevant things: Designers, Marketing Whores, Blogger, etc. They either have a Net/MacBook for writing "long" texts (not scientifically-or-done-by-real-textproducers long!) or have some secretary typing their texts. Virtual keyboards are ok to tweet or write sms, but they suck for constant use. But these people are among the most verbose on the internet and since the old media needs to lap up everything the internet vomits in order to not become extinct, they hype it as well. So instead of going blackberry and give serious users a serious mobile device MS now jumps the wrong train again and will lose their business clients while at the same time not gaining any of the abovementioned hipsters, because they either can afford an iphone or use android (because they can't afford an iphone ;).
They really don't seem to understand that no matter how many fashion consultants they hire to dress up their tech people who give talks, nobody considers them a hip and trendy provider of consumer gear. They've done ok with the xbox, but that's about it.
Not only is the desktop becoming less relevant, but nobody who really cares about computers is using Microsoft's desktop anyway.
the_mgt, you realy should try swype. one gets pretty quick with that on those virtual keyboards, since most of these touch interfaces don't act good on tapping, but pretty well on dragging your finger across the screen.
Wed Jul 20 2011 08:01:30 AM EDT from dothebart @ Uncensoredthe_mgt, you realy should try swype. one gets pretty quick with that on those virtual keyboards, since most of these touch interfaces don't act good on tapping, but pretty well on dragging your finger across the screen.
thus why i have a Droid 2 Global. physical slide-out keyboard. swype never hit well with me, kept fumbling my fingers or stopping at the wrong time. swype takes a large amount of practice and the learning curve sucks. 'portrait' style virtual keyboard sucks ass, the landscape touch keyboard is decent, but not great.
I still prefer a physical keyboard for my heavy-demand typing, even if im only using my thumbs. I can type 40+ wpm with my thumbs alone on this phone, 80-90 wpm on a full desktop keyboard.
--
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com
but next to being expensive, physical keyboards tend to be the weak spot of mobiles.
my htc wizzard died due to me carying it while cycling, and the connection between keyboard unit and display unit breaking.
just having one brick with as less joints and inroads for sweat, sand, .... is the basic requirement for a durable mobile.
The snapout-keyboards or clamshells are nice, but they prove as archilles heel all the time.
something like a lazer projected keyboard to write on the empty desk would probably be the best thing to have.
I've never had that problem, but, then again, I'm not really rough with phones and I keep them as clean as I can. The last phone I had with a slide-out keyboard lasted over 3 years before the connection between the keyboard and main body started to degrade. I've had friends with the same style phone only have theirs last 6 months, but they had children that destroyed the phone for them. It all depends on the person using it. I'm a huge fan of a physical or projected keyboard. virtual on-screen keyboards are my downfall... i fumble with them or hit the wrong key, my typing speed decreases to around 10wpm with an on-screen keyboard because of how un-trained my thumbs are to it.
--
Stephen D King
skpacman8629@gmail.com
I had swype installed, but it didn't have a german language module. Do I have to download that somewhere?
My onscreen keyboard has some feedback when not on energy saving mode, uses the phone vibration, works well for me. Originally I wanted a slideout keyboard too, but the prizes were too high and after testing the onscreen one I decided I don't need it. Also, the same fault-tolerance reasons you mentioned above spoke against a physical one.
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/08/htc_cha_cha_smartphone/
maybe thats the better option, a durable smartphone with android and keyboard ;-)
last similar HTC device I used at $work was the HTC XCalibur (which wasn't received good by the market, because of it was running with the "phone" version of windows ce, not the smartphone/touch one.
but it was clearly pointing at the older blackberries too.