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The Jobs Effect

October 6, 2011 in Features, Highlights

Nobody can deny the huge effect Steve Jobs had on the field of technology. Not only did he invent the iPod (the first decent portable music player), the iPhone (the first decent smartphone) and the iPad (the first decent tablet); but with Steve Wozniak he also invented the first successful desktop computer with a GUI. Not only that, he founded what is the largest company in the world (by market capitalisation), ran Pixar, and is the largest shareholder of Disney.

For me, his biggest achievement is the hysteria surrounding luxury product after luxury product, version after version, all the way through this financial crisis. Every year, millions of people that can’t afford to fill up their cars or go on holiday spend thousands of pounds on getting their latest technology fix. Originally with the iPod, it was the only decent music player available, and no other portable device (such as a phone, radio or CD player) could duplicate what you do with it. But now, everyone has a smartphone, and most features can be replicated on any number of other devices, yet they keep buying iPhones, and they keep updating them for every release. That creation of universally-desirable products is genius, and not even the supercar industry has that level of appeal, never mind being within the financial reach of millions of people.

The new iPhone 4S was a let down for many Apple fans. A few behind-the-scenes technical upgrades (which are actually pretty good), an improved camera and a new voice-command system are all well and good, but with no aesthetic changes there was no desirability over the previous iPhone 4 (from June 2010). To use a technical industry term: there was nothing shiny about it. Whilst a tech-spec upgrade and OS update are good things, they should have been released quickly and quietly with little fanfare to allow users to discover its improvements themselves. Let’s face it, news like that isn’t going to go unnoticed by gadget fans. But making a big Jobs-esque presentation over a dull product update, showing graphs of improved performance, is the sort of thing I would have expected Microsoft to do. The big news really was the re-release of the old iPhone 3GS for free on contracts, making iPhones accessible to many more consumers – that is a big wise move for Apple. Read the rest of this entry →

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Living with Windows 8: First Impressions

September 16, 2011 in Features, Highlights


Windows 8 has been a long time coming. Running on from the success of Windows 7, the last of the desktop-focused operating systems, Microsoft have been planning the next big leap behind closed doors since 2009.

Whilst there are a lot of exposés and articles on the features and changes with Windows 8, I’m a bit too hardcore for that. My hard drive has been wiped, and Windows 8 will be my primary and only OS for as long as I can put up with it. This series of articles will cover what life is really like with the Developer Preview of Windows 8.

It’s important to stress that this is a very early iteration of the OS – it’s still very similar to Windows 7, but quite a few individual things have changed, both on the surface and underneath. I’m running this on an i7 2600k box with 12GB of RAM and a range of hardware and accessories, and I’ll be running everything from essential apps to games and a range of legacy and third-party software to give it a thorough test.

Windows 8 is also much more tablet-focused, but it’s absolutely critical that it works well on standard desktop setups of a keyboard and mouse. Not everyone will be buying a brand-new touch laptop or monitor for the upgrade, certainly not businesses. So whilst I may not be getting the best experience, I’ll be getting the same one that most Windows 8 users will get.

Read on to see my first impressions….

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Bing Maps Streetside

September 2, 2011 in Highlights, News

 

 

Bing’s Streetside feature, for exploring streets in 3D at eye level, has  gone live in the UK.

Now at Bing Maps Explore, you can glide into a London street and flip the scenery around in 3D. This is the equivalent of Google’s Street View, but using PhotoSynth and mapping everything onto a 3D plane.

Whilst still in the early stages, this is another advancement in online mapping technology, and there’s a clear path from this to heavily-interactive 3D environments.

It is actually quite nice to be able to focus on a feature, such as a building, and have the camera swoop around to centre your view, maintaining the basic 3D frame at all times, which is better than Google’s Star-Trek-style motion blur. My only complaint is that it’s very slow to load the high-quality images, making the environment less immersive and more like a stab in the dark.

Bing already has a few advantages over Google Maps – particularly the smooth scrolling, which comes from the SeaDragon technology Microsoft have been pioneering; and the simple 45-degree aerial view, which is much more useful than Google’s vertical view.

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