AT&T Customer? Prepare to get Nickeled and Dimed (Pennied too)

I’m usually enraged with everyone that runs the show in the mobile consumer space.

Over the years, I’ve found (as well as you’ve found I’m sure) that the major players do their level best to squeeze every copper penny out of the American consumer, trying to back up that squeeze by telling us about service enhancements and whatnot that come with that charge.   What AT&T is now doing in that spirit doesn’t even come with a veiled attempt at justification.  Soon all AT&T wireless customers will have an additional $0.61 tacked on to their monthly bill.  Now sure that doesn’t sound like too much – I mean we’re only talking about an additional hit of $7.32 to your yearly mobile expense, but that adds up.  Maybe it doesn’t add up to you personally, but add up that $7.62 per customer over their entire customer base and it adds up a little sweeter to them – to the tune of $500-600 billion added to AT&T’s yearly bottom line.

And why?  According to analysts, because they can.

Now let’s take a look at the evil genius of it all.

1. AT&T has a clause in their contracts that if there’s a price increase outside the scope of the contract, the customer has an opportunity to get out of it without having to pay a termination fee.  The fact that they call it an administrative fee means it’s not technically a rate increase, so that clause doesn’t apply.  Take a look at section 1.3 if you’re interested in their terms of service and make note of administrative fees being explicitly excluded.

2. $0.61 isn’t enough to scare customers away – no one’s going to cancel their contract and pay a huge termination fee over $7.32.  Now no one’s going to like it, but it’s jut not enough to quit.  This is half a billion dollars pretty much for free as a gift to themselves from all of you.  Joe Hoffman, principal analyst at ABI Research had the following to say:

“But why 61¢, why not $1 or $5 or $10? Because AT&T understands price elasticity of demand. When AT&T raises the price by 61¢, they know hardly anyone is going to bail on them, and so can impose this with impunity. $1 or $5 or $10 is just too much to swallow all at once, but give them time. For now, $500 – $600 Million will flow right to the bottom line. Brilliant! No fancy software tools, no focus groups, no high priced engineers and programmers, and no iPhone subsidies. Just a raw, brute force price increase. In six to 9 months, add another fee, then rinse and repeat a few more time. Marketing beats engineering every time!”

Now an AT&T spokesperson says that this is pretty in line with what other carriers do or will charge, and I totally believe it.

It’s $0.61 now, but when is that line going to be $0.90? or $1?  It’s going to creep over the years while our phone bills skyrocket, and the average consumer will barely notice.  Not exactly much we can do about it, but you should all fully understand what the mobile industry sees us as:

Cash piñatas that always pay out.

nVidia at PAX East: Project Shield Hands-On

Back in January we saw Project Shield from nVidia making its debut at CES in Las Vegas.  It was shown off as a mobile gaming device that looked like an Xbox controller with a screen conveniently attached to it for gaming on the go.  There weren’t many details available at the time aside from touting Steam streaming, gaming from the Android market, and streaming games from PC’s running nVidia cards.  Outside of that there wasn’t much else available, but suffice it to say that I was intrigued and looking forward to getting my hands on it.

I was able to do just that at PAX East a short while ago, where the nVidia crew gave me a hands on tour of their still-in-development foray into mobile gaming.  While they were getting a unit ready for me to test drive we got down to the brass tacks of system requirements and capabilities.  The Shield is packing a quad-core Tegra 4 and GeForce graphics on a 5″ 720p multitouch HD display on the visual front, with Android Jelly Bean running the unit’s software guts.  A micro USB port and wi-fi run the connections for charging and streaming, and the unit is capable of playing any Android game that supports a controller, anything from nVidia’s TegraZone,  and anything streamed from a PC running at last a GeForce GTX 650 video card.  OK, basics gotten.  Now to sit down and see what this handheld could do.

We started the session with PC streaming, the part I was most looking forward to seeing.  There was a PC sitting next to me running the appropriate spec running Skyrim in HD.  I picked up the Shield and started moving around with the control sticks and could see the controls being sent to the PC at the same time as they were taking effect local on the handheld unit.  The graphics and textures looked great on the small screen and the control was smooth.  But above everything else, the most pleasantly surprising part was that the lag between PC and Shield the two was impressively negligible.  As it was explained to me, the Shield plugs in with nVidia’s GFE (GeForce Experience) and employs their Kepler hardware, which includes an H.264 encoder that helps reduce latency and lag time with low power consumption while streaming.  That’s why you need at least a GTX 650 to get it going.

Next I took at look at how it ran on the Android side with some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  The game felt good to play and the controls were very responsive.  There were a few graphical glitches though, where sometimes building edges would bend or ramps went through other structures.  It didn’t affect the gameplay, but it was definitely noticeable during gameplay.

Aside from that there were a few issues with navigation through the menus on the home screen getting between Android, TegraZone and PC stream, but the unit is still under development so I’m not going to hold that against them too much.  What I wanted to see was a success – and that was the PC streaming.

What I really liked about the Shield was how it opens up some options for you.  If you look at iOS or Android as a gaming platform you’re pretty much restricted to what’s available on the App Store and Google Play, assuming you already don’t have access to TegraZone with your Tegra-powered device.  Even units like the DS are limited to some extent.  The Shield’s real power is availability – on the go you can get stuff from Google Play and TegraZone, but once you get to your wireless network and your entire game library is now available to you, including what you have on Steam.  On other specifics, the folks at nVidia weren’t ready to comment on specs like internal memory and gave me a Q2 release date range.

All in, I’m curious to see what the release model can do.

Tech, Law, and the DMCA (Part I of II) - Unlocking Your Phone is Now Illegal

I love technology and the explosion of mobile tech in the last decade - it's allowed users in the United States and around the world to completely change and enhance the way we communicate and run our day to day lives.  Availability of information empowering the American consumer.  Activism.  Giving users a voice.  And as much good as it's brought, it's also brought its own set of problems.  With every new service made available to the American public comes an additional way to screw the American public - be it another veiled method of control or a straight up financial jack.  Tech rivals make backroom deals while suing each other to take customer favorites off the market.  Some folks still pay a 7,000% upcharge for something as simple as sending or receiving a text message.  And now, while your mobile bills can top $150 a month based on your device and expanding data usage, the industry is still a cash-devouring beast that cannot be fed.  The end result?  American consumers paying more money for less control over devices they own, which on their own can cost upwards of $600 if not subsidized with a contract renewal or some other pricing scheme.

If you know me on Facebook or Twitter you would have seen me ranting this past Friday about a new law that went into effect this weekend affecting mobile tech, complete with pleas to the big three carriers Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile.  The reason was some new legal developments that went into effect this past weekend.  According to the Librarian of Congress and the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), unlocking your phone or mobile device is now against the law.

Yes, you read that correctly.  From now forward, if you unlock your phone, you have committed a Federal crime.  And I'll repeat myself, because I feel this bears repeating: If you decide to unlock your phone - the one that you own, which you spent hundreds of dollars and hours of research to purchase, under the DMCA you are a criminal and punishable by the law.

I'm going to try and split this up because I'm throwing a lot of information at you.  For those of you that don't want to read through this entire thing and get right to the brass tacks, skip ahead to the "How this can affect you" section.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Exemptions

The DMCA was established in 1998 to criminalize the creation and distribution of any technology that could bypass digital rights management systems implemented in various forms of media, as well as the people who use or host those technologies.  Stuff like software key generators, hardware hacks and modded game consoles fall under this.  The way it's set up, the power to name exemptions to DMCA enforcement rests with one person, the Librarian of Congress.  These exemptions have a shelf life of three years, at which time the group requesting the exemption must re-lobby and re-convince Congress to keep that exemption in place.  It's that arbitrary system that is causing this headache now.  Back in October, the recent list of exemptions was released, and included an extremely convoluted list of what's exempt and what's not involving your mobile tech.  Now the way it stands for the next three years:

On cell phones purchased in January 2013 or after, jailbreaking is acceptable, but unlocking is not.  That OK for jailbreaking, however, does not extend to your tablet.  So if you want to do the same to your iPad, you're out of luck.  These rules come with some very specific language - saying that the phone has to be "originally acquired from the operator of a wireless telecommunications network or retailer no later than ninety days after the effective date of this exemption."  What this means is that on your current phones, purchased in December 2012 or earlier, can still be unlocked without penalty.  But if you want to unlock something you bought this month or later, you can do no such thing without your carrier's permission.  The Librarian set this up in October, but was nice enough to give people a 90 day grace period until January 2013 so people could buy phones they planned to unlock later.  But that time's over now, kids.

I just don't see the authority here.  What the hell does this have to do with piracy and copyright infringement?  Kind of reaching, Mr. Librarian.

Jailbreaking vs Unlocking

While these two terms may sound like the same thing, they're actually quite different.  Jailbreaking a device means that it has the capability to download 3rd party apps not sold or released by the manufacturer.  This phrase became popular with the iPhone, where users would jailbreak their devices to download apps not purchased from Apple's App Store.  Unlocking a device means that you remove the software that locks a device to a specific carrier.  For example, if I wanted to use an AT&T device on Verizon Wireless, then that device would have to be unlocked to allow me to do so.  So you can see how carriers would love keeping those locks down, so they can keep you right where you are.  Phone carriers offer subsidies on contract renewals so they can make up that difference over a 1 year or two year contract (similar to a loss leader kind of sale).  With data heavy customers, they make that back in about 2-4 months of a contract.  Unlocking your phone and jumping ship, even after paying a huge termination fee, still loses them some profit.  Not really money, but profit.

We've Played by Your Rules

Termination fees.  Yeah.  If the above described action happens, I owe my carrier up to $350 in the form of a termination fee.  I can't refute that, it's in my contract that I agreed to.  So there's already a mechanism in place to protect the carrier from little ol' me.  Without Federal law.  Just throwin' that out there.

How this Affects Users

For a lot of people this probably isn't going to be a big deal as far as how they use their devices because they don't jailbreak or unlock them.  But there's an increasing number of people that do.  Even if you don't do anything like this with your devices though, it's still something to pay attention to because this new set of exemptions affects us all in a number of ways.  On a fundamental level, this move is a strike against digital freedom and sets exactly what degree we actually own the tech we think we do.  If I buy a house I can paint the walls any color I want to.  When I buy a car I'm not restricted to what kind of gasoline I can use.  And when I buy a PC, there's no rule that says that I can't replace my OS.  But now if I buy a cell phone, my actions with it are now somehow up to the Librarian of Congress.

And part of that is thanks to the 2010 court case Vernor v. Autodesk, where  it was decided that we own our phones, just not the software that sits on it.

Financially is where the impact will be felt a little more heavily.  With the legal inability to unlock your own phone, if you want an unlocked phone you'll have to buy one unsubsidized at full price.  For example last year when I bought my Droid Razr MAXX, I got it at a significantly discounted cost (i think it was $299) because I was renewing my Verizon Wireless contract at the time and reaped the benefit of VZW subsidizing my purchase.  Now if I want to buy a phone of the same grade but have it unlocked, I would have to shell out somewhere in the neighborhood of $650 and up for that device.  For those that were unaware, yes, that's how much good smartphones cost on their own these days.

Travelers can also face some issues.  Someone with an unlocked phone can take it global, and just switch SIM cards at each destination to be able to use their own device.  This kind of convenience just became a lot more expensive.

Users can still buy phones that are already unlocked from their carriers, but it might cost them a pretty penny.  Some devices, like the iPhone 5 and Google's Nexus 4, come unlocked out of the box, which is OK under the new law, and under certain situations the carrier will unlock a device for you, but don't expect them to just go along with it.  Either way, the bottom line is that carriers win, and users lose.

So what are these consequences one would face should they choose to unlock their phone?  The CTIA has been kind enough to outline them for us on their official blog.  They, and subsequently the carriers, are the biggest beneficiaries of this whole mess:

"The penalties for unlocking a subsidized wireless phone without carrier consent can be severe. Civil penalties are based on the carrier’s actual damages and any additional profits of the violator, or a court can award statutory damages of not less than $200 or more than $2,500 per individual act. Criminal penalties are even more severe: any person convicted of violating section 1201 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain (1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and (2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense."

This is of course by no means an exhaustive analysis of the situation - there's a number of factors involved.  There's another part of this exemption list that involves DVD/blu-ray media and your mobile devices, and I'll cover that in part II.

Windows 8 RTM Part III - The Windows Spin on Social

[Article first published as Windows 8 RTM Part III - The Windows Spin on Social on Blogcritics.]

Over the first two parts of this Windows 8 feature I described the OS as turning my laptop into some sort of giant phone.  Today we're going to get into that a little further by looking at something that's going to be used by every Windows 8 user in both the desktop and mobile space- and that's the social aspect.  Built-in apps to manage your social networks and photos look pretty good so far, and again it makes operation more like a big smartphone than a traditional Windows system.  One of the things that makes social possible are networks of "friends."  Be it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social service you use, without them your social network becomes very... well... antisocial, I suppose (womp woooomp).  The problem is that you're probably connected with them on a variety of networks and sometimes that can be hard to track.

Having all your friends' information in one place makes it that easier to manage, now that a decent chnk of internet communication these days is conducted through social.  Mobile gets that - one of the things I like about my Android devices is that they consolidate my contacts into single, detailed entries, making it a lot easier to keep track of everything that's going on.  So if I have three entries in my phone for one person - a phone number entry, a Facebook entry and a Twitter entry, the device will automatically link them together if they have similar name and email addresses, or give me the option to manually link entries for those that don't really look the same.  Thankfully, that's also the case with the Windows 8 mobile interface.

This was the case with my friend Mikey.  Yeah that's right Mikey, we're on YOU now.  He goes by his real name on Facebook, but on Twitter he goes by the much more sleek and numeric "Ocho."  Much like my Android device, Windows had a bit of trouble reconciling the two, as nothing about the name "Michael" corresponds with the Spanish language or the number 8 at all.  But also like my Android device, I was able to manually link Mikey with his "Ocho" persona.  Linking the two together let me see all of his updates and notifications in one steady stream instead of having to jump back and forth between the two.  Outside of keeping your contacts in order, the People app lets you consolidate your own profile, setting status updates for the supported social media services you have you have connected to your Microsoft account.  Right now all I've really been able to play with is Facebook and Twitter.  Consolidated messaging works the same way with your messaging services.  Right now all I can see is MSN and Facebook chat, but it works with the same idea.

No Google+ though... weird, right?

Next is pictures.  Just like social, Windows 8 can aggregate all of your albums in one place.  From the photos app tile, a user can see both their local pictures as well as any albums on synced accounts like Facebook albums.  So far it will let you add Flickr albums, whatever's on your SkyDrive, and any devices you manage through SkyDrive.  Again, it's one of those minor conveniences that make things a bit quicker, but a lot of minor conveniences can add up to a noticeable increase in a decent user experience.

I've actually grown kind of fond of the new social interface, and could definitely see myself using it, especially on a tablet.  I've been working on a laptop so far and it's worked, and I actually have been finding myself using the tiles from the new interface over the Windows 7 style desktop.  Naturally there's going to be a pretty decent learning curve for most standard Windows users, but I think for users that are all about social media and photo sharing on the go that it's intuitive enough to pick up in a few minutes.  On the upcoming Surface tablets that can provide the touch interface this was designed for, this OS will allow the most social of butterflies to get it done. 

Windows 8 RTM Part I - Initial Impressions

[Article first published as Windows 8 RTM Part I - Initial Impressions on Blogcritics.]

I started playing around with Windows 8 when I got my hands on the Developer Preview a while back.  At the time poking around in there showed me a lot of things that looked very promising.  I saw an OS that was setting itself up to be a decent touch-based platform for mobile devices that retained some (some) of the old school "Start Button" love from previous Windows iterations.  Today I started working on Windows 8 Pro (the actual retail version).  It'll be available to the general public in October, but my tech pro ilk and I are kind of special, and those of us that are TechNet / MSDN users are pulling it down to play with it now.  So I got a chance to see what's up.  Keep in mind that I installed this on a laptop though, so I don't have the ability to review any of the touch features here.

What I noticed wasn't really wholly different from the Consumer Preview that was released a couple of months ago.  It still has the same look and feel, but the user is offered a few additional options for personalizing their start screen and user profile designs.  It's quite a bit more colorful and bright than users of XP of Windows 7 are probably used to.  And sure, it does look nice.  So for those of you that put a premium value on colors and look and feel, there you go. But if you haven't seen anything on Windows 8 yet then you're probably more interested in function.  In the words of King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when asking about the holy hand grenade -

"So, uh... how does it work?"

After logging in with your Microsoft ID (or an unlinked local account if you choose), Windows 8 operates in 2 modes - the first is what you start off in, which I'll be calling "8 Mode" for lack of a better term. Call it whatever you want, really, as long as you don't call it "Metro."  They kind of frown upon that one now.  8 Mode made my laptop feel like a huge phone, with apps and live tiles for basic settings and social media.  8 mode is also what triggers when the user clicks the Start button.  Then there's Desktop mode, or what I call 7.5 - it's reminiscent of Windows 7, only minus the traditional start button and minus aero glass.  It's where users can still get to regular things like "My Computer" and document/picture libraries.

"8 Mode"

As you can see from the screenshot at the top of the page, 8 Mode looks like a big cell phone interface.  Imagine swiping left and right on that screen to get to a number of tiled apps, just like you do on your Android or iDevice.  It runs on live tiles and apps as opposed to full applications that users are accustomed to.  Instead of opening and closing programs like we did in XP and 7, the apps stay on and running all of the time (again, like mobile), letting the user switch between them with Alt-Tab or other mouse driven means.  While the apps aren't active, Windows drops their resources down to run in the background so it doesn't hog up system memory.  The design from the Developer Preview and the Consumer Preview has been altered slightly, and the newer scheme really reminds me of the tile system for what currently runs on Windows Phone 7 devices.  The advantage of this interface is really geared for mobile devices - something akin to what we can expect from the ARM Windows RT powered Surface tablets to be released later this year.  There's also an option to show more tiles, covering quick access to common functions like the control panel and other system settings.

I can at least say that there more apps on the Microsoft Store than I remember there being while playing with the Consumer Preview.  8 Mode comes stock with a "Games" app, linking up with a user's Microsoft / Xbox Live ID, as well as built-in "all in one place" social apps.  Another default app is for mail, which handles both Microsoft and third party email accounts.  A number of other apps exist for sports, news and travel, which basically act as RSS feeds that look a lot brighter and more colorful than what you're used to on your basic feed reader.  See? A big phone.  But there's one thing that gives me pause so far, and that's the Microsoft Store. Like its competitors, Microsoft lets users broaden their experience by downloading apps for multiple things, but the problem is that it still needs some development.

If you look Microsoft's future competition in Android and iOS devices, there's a large gap that has yet to be covered.  Those mobile platforms rely very heavily on the Android Market and App Store to provide a vastly expandable and richer mobile experience to users.  This "8 Mode" interface, which in my opinion would in fact work great with a touchscreen and is posed to compete in its own right, is only going to be able to deliver an experience to rival the other heavy hitters in the mobile space if they can expand what's available in the Microsoft Store.  Microsoft's also trying to cash in on the cloud trend with their new SkyDrive initiative for those who love to share and/or overshare on the run, but the whole package is going to need a little more substance.

7.5 (Desktop mode)

From 8 Mode users can click the desktop tile (or Alt-Tab) over to Desktop mode.  Navigation here runs a little bit differently than it did in Windows 7.  Instead of a single start button that's the kickoff point for the programs a user would want to open, it runs on a basic premise of corners.  Moving your cursor to the upper right corner opens up a sidebar and the Windows 8 version of the Start menu, which puts you into Metro mode.  A cursor to the upper left acts as a quick alternative to Alt-Tab to switch between apps that are currently running.  Moving the cursor to the lower left does open a "Start" icon, but it only takes the user back to 8 Mode.  What I did notice about this iteration of the desktop is that things loaded and reacted a little bit quicker then they did on Windows 7 using the same hardware.  Maybe it's because aero's not taking up as much from the resource pool?  That's my theory, but either way in addition to that my battery seemed to drain just a little bit slower.  At least that's what it seemed like.

Basic compatibility so far

I've tested general usability using a limited test run of programs that I routinely run in Windows XP and 7 and haven't experienced any problems. All of my hardware picked up with no incident, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be the same for everyone. Of course there were no problems with Microsoft software like Office programs and basic stuff like antivirus.  Next I tried something a little more important, namely World of Warcraft.  It ran pretty smoothly without any performance drop from Windows 7.  It doesn't look like basic users are going to have any issues.  Power users will be glad to know that virtual desktop does exist like it did in Windows 7 should any compatibility issues come up.

Unfortunately I don't have a stack of laptops and machines laying around to run exhaustive compatibility tests, but I will have more in depth stuff after I do some extended testing for you next week.

Initial Impressions

While I had no issues testing the system on this limited run, my experience was on a laptop.  So while sitting here with a fully functional keyboard and a 1080p screen, I never felt any need for the "8 Mode" layer on this OS in a laptop or desktop scenario.  I don't need "apps" - I have the full internet for pretty much anything I need.  Where this operating system is really going to make sense is on mobile.  The 8 Mode UI would be great for touchscreens with the option to switch over to desktop mode should the need arise.  But personally, I'll be sticking with Windows 7 so far for my desktop and laptop work and play.

I also see potential usability problems with the 8 Mode interface for users that aren't up on their keyboard shortcuts.  There were a number of times where I was forced to back out of an app using the Alt-F4 "kill" keyboard shortcut because I simply didn't see a clean exit outside of using the windows key on my keyboard to switch out to the desktop.  If you're running a shop where users had a hard time adjusting from Windows XP to 7, then I fear for you if you choose to deploy this.

This by no means says that this is a bad operating system, just one that would provide a better experience on a phone or tablet. And like I said, that mobile experience is going to rely on the fate of the Microsoft Store.  We'll see how things go with the scaled-down Windows RT on the Surface tablets in a couple of months, and I'll have more for you soon.

Coming up in Part II: the Enterprise edition's Windows to Go, Windows 8 file history mode, media codecs, and whatever else I can find

Mobile Tech Patent Fallout: The Only Winning Move is Not to Play [tf charts]

Today's chart is more of a comparison - 1980's military fiction vs present day mobile tech reality.  I can't even remember what I was looking for online when I stumbled onto a War Games fansite and became nostalgic.  So here's the result.

This morning we learned that Sprint users rocking the Samsung Galaxy S III are without one of their features thanks to an over-the-air security update.  That update removes universal search functionality from their handsets.  This is fallout from Apple's patent lawsuit regarding universal search and their attempts to ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus.  The Nexus is apparently next, as Google and Samsung have reported an upcoming software patch to disable universal search on that model as well.

As I've always asserted, corporate patent wars ultimately hurt paying customers.  This may only be one feature, and maybe there's not a lot of people that use it, but what's next?

Mobile Tech. Fanaticism. Instagram. Reality.

[Article first published as Mobile Tech, Fanaticism, Instagram, Reality. on Blogcritics]

Given all the tech I’ve played with over the years, I’d be comfortable calling myself a Windows/Android guy with some earthy tones of Linux and the occasional smooth draws of Mac.  I like to keep up to date and current on what’s going on in commercial tech platforms for two (and a half) reasons. The first is personal – i’m a tech geek, and being more informed and knowing different platforms makes my purchasing decisions more well informed and in line with what I need. The second is professional – my career is primarily one of being the IT and technology alpha nerd, and I’d call geeking out part of my job description. That last “and a half?”  The more platforms, operating systems and “sides” I know, the more credibility I have talking tech, and the less I have to deal with folks associating my opinions with being a pure fanboy of any given platform.

Because fanboyism and fangirlism irk me.  Ohhh kids it irks me something improper. I like what I like because I’ve tested a lot of things, and through that testing formulated my own opinion based on a wide array of experiences.  I like PCs running Windows 7.  I prefer Android-powered devices.  It’s just how I roll.  That doesn’t mean I hate all things Apple – on the contrary I feel the vast majority of their products are really a solid set of devices.  And they back that up with sales, as well as a fiercely loyal fan base that in my opinion has supported the "Cult of Mac" moniker that it has come to be known as over the last decade, rivaling the following of some organized religions.  But when the iPhone was still pretty much on its own in the touchscreen smartphone game, it was all about “cool.”  With the rise of Android, the sentiment of “cool” was somehow converted into one of elitism.

You see kids, the iPhone isn’t iAlone anymore (see what I did there?).  It has competition now.  What the rise of Android has done is one very major thing sociologically, namely the creation of two completely polarized groups of users:  the "I won't touch anything non-Apple" camp and the "Apple is for the computer illiterate, sheep and hipsters locked in groupthink" faction.  Adding competition naturally drove the poles of these groups to consider each other the enemy, instead of just two kinds of tech that accomplish similar goals.  Hell I’ve never seen anything this heated in consumer tech before, including Intel vs. AMD.  That fierce brand loyalty Apple has built does come off as elitist fanaticism sometimes, but at the same time Android side is no less guilty of elitism.

Don’t get me wrong.  Like I said, I’m not a fanboy, and acknowledge the guilt of both “sides” when it comes to this sort of fanaticism.  My problem is with users.  Multiple people I'm friends with and work with run all Mac at their homes, and brag about how their new iPhones are "10x times better" than Android devices – in every iteration of course –  3, 3gs, 4 4s, because they've bought them all.  The problem is, they've never touched, much less used an Android device.  So how could they possibly know?  "But why is it better?" I ask.  No joke, most answers dance around "because Apple/Steve Jobs would never make a bad product."

Ok, that may support why it's a good product, but not why it's "100 times better." How was that purchase fueled by anything other than blind brand loyalty?  I know people on the other end of the spectrum too, who have purchased top-of-the-line Android smartphones and touted their superiority over iAnything while at the same time having never even held any sort of iPhone in their hands.  I have no respect for these kinds of opinions on either side, because they're not based in any kind of logic or fact.  And while I see this on both platforms, I do get it more from Apple users than Android users.  There is still the minority of users that have actually played with both and have a logical preference one way or the other.  THAT I can get on board with.  I've used both and I prefer Android.  Other colleagues have used both and prefer Apple.  Some are warming up to WIndows phones.  Fair enough.  I can't argue that because they’ve done the research to actually know.

With this so called battle raging on for years, why do I decide to bring this up now?  One word, kids: Instagram.  That’s right, the photo app loved and adored by scores of iPhone users is no longer Apple exclusive, and as of yesterday was free to download for Android users.  Now I never truly realized the wonder of this product – in my eyes it was a photo editing app that allowed a user to put a limited number of effects on a picture, providing one-click sharing to social media.  And after I downloaded it myself, my opinion didn’t really change.  It’s still nothing more than a handful of post-processing options that allows me to share to social media from within the app.  As such my personal reaction, and the reaction of most Android users I know, wasn’t too much more than a collective “Meh” for the day.  I just don’t feel the need to make my pictures look like they came from 1977, like one of the named filters the app can do.  And I’m perfectly capable of instantly sharing pictures from my phone to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ with the touch of a button.  So even having Instagram now, the chances of me regularly using it are fairly slim.

Now for the Apple side.  iPhone Instagram fans flooded Twitter upon release of Instagram for Android to not only express their surprise, but their disdain and outright disgust at the mere thought of sharing their precious app with filthy Android users.  Go ahead and look up the #instagram hashtag.  While some Android users are displaying their pleasure and joy at having this app, and the rest of us really don’t care, tweets from iPhoners are overwhelmingly negative.  Check the compilations of hate tweets put together by Android Community and BuzzFeed.  Responses ranged from do not follow requests to Android users to feelings of “eww” and “gross” and “fail” to suggestions to perform lewd acts upon and/or kill ourselves.   Reading these and actually going through the hashtag search actually made me angry.  Not angry because I’m an Android user, but at the pure venom that poured forth from the iPhone community.  Apparently android users are “ghetto” and my access to Instagram now makes it “the projects.” Really? We pay $300-$400 for our devices with 2 year contracts, so I hardly see how we’re the poorhouse alternative to the Apple country club. After the anger came jealousy – because this is clearly the most important thing these people have to address all day.  Following the jealousy however, was a complete 180 into intense laughter.  Why?  Because all I had to do to ruin the lives of a million elitist jerks was download a free app to my Droid Razr Maxx that I'll probably never use.  So on some level, thanks guys, you made me feel all iPowerful today, and sad for you that this is really all it takes for your world to crumble.  I understand it's not ALL iPhone users, but man does that community come off like a bunch of whiny children.

But still, why the hate people?  It's not that earth shattering of an app.  And I really hate to break it to you folks, but Android didn’t crash your party, we were invited.  Instead of being happy that the number of users and photos being available now increasing my a few million and the ability to follow and be followed by Android using friends, hell even instead of being indifferent, iPhone users are clearly filling the stereotypical role of the hipster, complaining that their exclusive underground club’s gone mainstream.  It's like the sound of a million fixed gear bicycles grinding to a halt.

Deal with it.  This has, if any at all, a marginal effect on your lives.  And technology is for everyone.  My apologies on behalf of the entirety of the Android community that you’re no longer the only ones that can add simple-minded single-touch “retro” post-processing to camera phone pictures in an exclusive community.  On behalf of the OG’s of nerd culture on the other hand, I have demands, not apologies.  Give us back cloud computing that made your iCloud possible.  Touchscreen tech in general.  Video games.  Advanced web tools.  The stuff my guys had to manually code that you do with a finger tap.  Alllll the stuff we nerds had exclusively before they went mainstream to the masses only so you could complain about trivial garbage now.

The bottom line is that everyone wants to be one of the cool kids.  Everyone wants to belong to some exclusive club that they can lord over others, as trivial as it may be, when the real truth is that Android devices and iProducts do the SAME. DAMN. STUFF.  When someone says "I love Apple and Android is for the dirty" or "Android is awesome, Apple is the evil empire," 95% of the time what they're REALLY saying is "I love mobile technology, and haven't the first damn clue what the real differences between the tech and platforms are."

Because to the 5% of those of us that know - those of us who actually care to know about and understand this tech that rules our very lives instead of form over function, it’s mathematically impossible for us to care less.

Takeaways from CES 2012

[Article first published as Takeaways from CES 2012 on Blogcritics.]

Time for everybody to pack it in and head home.  CES is done for 2012 – all the tech is being packed up and shipped back, and attendees were probably trying their last minute luck on a couple of slots before they fly out. But they didn’t leave without onlookers being able to check out a couple more digital goodies. Even though there were hundreds of things to share from the show, over the course of this feature I really focused on stuff that I could picture purchasing for myself.  So today I’m only going to highlight a couple of items, one of them for mobile media and the other as something that could make you the Obi-Wan Kenobi of your television. 

Macrovision and WOWee join forces

I love all the things my mobile device is capable of doing, including the ability to view media on the go and store it in my pocket.  But what would be really nice is to be able to project that media onto a screen or a wall and get not only decent picture, but some deep sound too. Yesterday, a little tech teamwork from WOWee and MicroVision may make that possible. MacroVision already manufactures the PicoP laser projectors, which provide some pretty nice picture for a pocket-sized portable device. WOWee already manufactures the ONE speaker, which is one of the better devices on the market that claims to be able to turn any surface into a speaker. But as of the end of this show, both companies have entered into a partnership, and will begin bundling their devices together to provide mobile users with “an immersive viewing experience virtually anywhere.”  The new partners are advertising that mobile and tablet users will be able to use these bundles to watch media on a 200” diagonal projection with booming sound. They may be only bundled devices for now, but I can see this partnership eventually making one hybrid unit that provides both video and sound. Something like that would definitely be a traveling media junkie’s best friend, and doubles in usefulness with some business potential – an easy set up for client presentations on the road or board meetings too.

Jedi mind tricks on your TV

We already took a look earlier this week about controlling Windows 8 navigation with your eyes, now how about controlling a TV with your mind?  We’ve all wished it at one point or another – sometimes those remote controllers seem to just grow legs and hide.  To initiate mind control, Haier has developed their Brain Wave headset that puts a little metal pad on your forehead and a clip on your earlobe to translate your thought power into control.  Unfortunately Haier didn’t have a traditional TV interface for doing regular TV things like volume control and changing channels.  Instead, they had a little game where you use the controller to guide a bird through a maze.  But so far it doesn’t look like it may be very easy to use. In Engadget’s hands-on video, you can see that there was a little bit of trouble doing much more than making the bird float and move up and down. I’m sure there’s more improvements to come with this technology, but it still doesn’t remedy one problem versus a standard remote control – if you’re not wearing it, you can still misplace it.  So I guess you can put the lightsabers away for now.

CES Takeaways

CES always sets the tone for the kind of consumer tech we’ll see over the year.  There’s still a number of trade shows yet to come in 2011 and a lot of stuff we haven’t seen yet –  we still have the Mobile World Conference in February, E3 later this year, and of course Apple’s WWDC always has some interesting stuff.  Nevertheless, there are still some themes set at CES, specifically two main ones in my eyes.

Not surprisingly, the first clear theme is mobile.  There were an overwhelming number of products that are aimed at being useful on the go.  Ultrabooks got more exposure than both tablets and traditional laptops over the four days of the show.  Manufacturers really focused on showing off notebooks with super-thin form factors that don’t force users to have to trade portability for power the way current-gen netbooks do.  For me personally that tradeoff is a big problem, and I imagine I’m not the only one.  There’s one very prominent problem that prevents me from buying a tablet or a slim netbook right now – they just don’t do everything my laptop does. There’s no sense in me spending that kind of money (and even more on peripherals) when I’m not getting everything I want.  HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung and Vizio have tried to remedy that problem by putting out some really sleek units that use the strength of newer construction materials to lower unit weight – carbon fiber, glass, gorilla glass and magnesium alloy.  And if there’s one thing I like more than power, it’s power that weighs in at 3 pounds.

Thankfully, another theme was that no one really cares about 3D in their living rooms. Well, not as much as the industry was banking on (I do so love it when industry agrees with me). Instead of televisions that attempt to provide huge strides in 3DTV technology, what we saw instead were units that enhance the 2D HDTV experience with newer technologies that finally made it to larger screens. Samsung and LG showed off some excellent units using OLED technology and Sony showed us a prototype of their Crystal LED televisions – both technologies that take backlight out of the picture, providing true blacks and sharper picture. As we already looked at though, it wasn’t just about beauty.  There were also some enhancements in the “brains” department.  Integrated voice command technology, built in receiver boxes and built in DVR’s were touted to make television sets not only brighter, but smarter.  All of this is made possible by TV sets that speak to the outside world, thereby connecting the user without any other tech necessary.  And again, none of that was in 3D.

Well that’s all I have for you for CES 2012. Part of me is a little upset that I didn’t take some vacation time and just go myself, but another part of me is relieved after reading about the experiences ZDNet’s Ed Bott shares with us about the hassle, sea of humanity, the secondhand smoke, and the invariable colds and flus that get passed around when that many people are crammed together like sardines in a jar. But oh, all the toys! 

97. Smartphone Spy - Mobile Carriers Caught Secretly Skimming Android User Info

[Article first published as Smartphone Spy - Mobile Carriers Caught Secretly Skimming Android User Info on Blogcritics.]

While I enjoy the increasing number of things I have been able to do with each iteration of mobile technology on the market, I’ve always held a dark spot in my heart for wireless carriers.  First there’s the financial factor – the amount of money they charge for what should be no additional charge, caps on tiered data, or even just cost to the user in general (I enjoy a $100+ per month phone bill for all the crap I have). 

As mobile technology has become more developed though, the prices seem to be going up, and what the consumer is getting seems to be less.  On top of that there’s the creep factor, which is really nothing more than privacy and business practices. Recently Verizon Wireless sent me a letter about an opt-out option for their new ad tracking system that would serve to provide me better targeted ads based on my activity and location.  I opted out due to a certain level of discomfort with privacy when I had the chance, but I give Verizon credit for voluntarily saying “Hey Tushar, here’s some things that what we want to do, are you in?”  They laid out what they were doing, and after understanding it I had a choice.  Now granted any doctors or lawyers reading this are going to cringe at the phrase I’m about to use, but if the activity has the informed consent of the consumer (yeah I said it) then that’s something I may be able to get on board with.  I would assume that other carriers do something similar as far as activity-based targeted ad programs.  After all, ad revenue does make the world spin ‘round.

But then I read today about something that could be a tremendous breach in privacy and almost tantamount to data theft, perpetrated by mobile carriers against their customers.  This revelation came from security researcher Trevor Eckhart concerning a software package called Carrier IQ, which seems to be embedded in at least some phones on major U.S. carriers.  Carrier IQ claims that their software gathers “information off the handset to understand the mobile-user experience, where phone calls are dropped, where signal quality is poor, why applications crash and battery life.” Turns out that while it wasn’t really a secret that this function was installed on many Android phones, no one really knew any of the inner workings of the software and what kind of data it actually captures. That is, until Eckhart found some things that can only be described as suspect at best last week. Carrier IQ tried to hand him a cease and desist letter to quiet him down a bit, but with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Carrier IQ not only backed off but issued an apology (in which they lay out their argument above). He followed up by releasing a video playing around with it on his HTC Evo. You can see the video on YouTube here.

The video paints a pretty creepy picture about what kind of data this software is able to pick up and I warn you, you may feel a little ill watching it. Eckhart uses a factory-reset, non-rooted HTC Evo (as he says, not to single out HTC but it was just what he had on hand) to show not only how the software is hidden and unable to be shut down, but how it appears to also have a built-in keylogger. Each key press looks like it has its own code, so anyone taking a look can see what letters and numbers are being entered.

The killer is that this also covers passwords, browser entries, and even HTTPS browser entries, which is supposed to be encrypted. HTTPS browsing is designed to encrypt data so anyone planning to pick up any data would be thwarted.  Oh right, text message and SMS content counts too. Data from messages gets sent off to Carrier IQ’s servers without anyone being the wiser. Eckhart classifies this as a rootkit, which is a label I wholeheartedly agree with.  It gets into your system, acts with administrator privileges, and you can’t get rid of the software unless you void the warranty and do the rooting yourself.  But it gets even worse.  Even as Eckhart was running in airplane mode (cellular radio off) and on wifi only, the app still logged everything that was going on while “disconnected” from the Sprint network.  It’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder if all the conspiracy theorists are right and that I should be equipped with a tinfoil hat.

So where do we go from here?  No users were ever explicitly told that data would be collected down to the keystroke and screen tap – if that had been the case no one would have a smartphone right now.  And that leads into what may be the inevitable fallout.  Paul Ohm, a former prosecutor for the Department of Justice and current professor at the University of Colorado, weighs in with his professional opinion.  “If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap.” he says. “And that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.”

Without a law degree, I came up with pretty much the same thing.  There wasn’t even an attempt at corporate transparency to the consumer here.  A “no, it’s cool guys we’re not doing anything wrong” issued only after they were caught just isn’t enough.  From what I’ve determined this seems to not affect all Android devices, but I can confirm that Carrier IQ has dealings with both Sprint (from the video) and T-Mobile (via a T-Force poster on their support forums).  I personally have not found any such software on my Verizon Wireless Droid X, so can only speak to that from personal experience.

If this video holds water, consider the game changed.  By Professor Ohm’s argument, the people wiretapped includes every single Android user on carriers that do business with Carrier IQ.  As of yet I don’t have a complete list of affected carriers and models, but that number still has to register pretty high.  After the class action lawsuits all hit and the smoke clears, maybe then we’ll be able to have some sort of serious discussion in this country on the internet and cellular networks at large, specifically concerning user privacy in the digital age.  People do a lot of stuff on mobile – important password protected stuff – now that we have these super fast 4G speeds mobile carriers are all-to-quick to advertise.  That only bolsters the point that privacy is the single greatest challenge we have to solve with current technology.

So even if Carrier IQ only uses the information for aggregate reporting and even if Sprint does actually only use it for diagnostic purposes without any malicious endgame, what happens when someone that does have less than noble intentions figures out how to control it?  There goes your money. There goes your credit.  There goes your reputation.  There’s just too much at risk.

95. Apple's Newly Awarded Patent Shows Cracks in a Broken System

[Article first published as Apple's Newly Awarded Patent and a Broken System on Blogcritics.]

If you read my stuff with any sort of frequency then you know how I feel about the current state of the American patent system as it’s applied to software and technology.  The people that originally developed the patent system had no way of knowing what it would mean in today’s explosion of technological advance. 

The result, in my humble opinion, is that the system is broken for the modern age and in need of an overhaul.  Over the last few years I’ve seen patents, which were originally developed as a form of protection for an inventor, become a corrupted version of its original intent.  Instead of protection they’re now used primarily as strategy and legal weaponry against competition.  And the reason is the pure power behind it – a patent grants exclusive rights on the technology in question for 20 years.

Outside of basic patent trolling, there are a number of examples that can be cited here that illustrate the shambles that our patent system is now plagued with, but it was the most recent one that set me off this week.  Just recently Apple, which is a perennial member of the patent lawsuit club, was just awarded patent 8,046,721 (7,657,849 is the same thing just older) by the good ol’ USPTO, entitled “Unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image.”  I’m going to let that one sink in for a second and let you read some of that patent I linked before the tirade that’s about to follow, divided cleanly into three (3) parts for your convenience.  And before I get to it, let me put a disclaimer out there that I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have any formal legal education or professional experience.

You good?  OK.

1.  On the grounds of ridiculousness and greed

A lot of the big sites that are covering this are making a big deal that “Slide to Unlock” has now been patented, and that any other system, as in targets, i mean devices running Android or Windows Mobile that uses a sliding system as a means for device unlock are now all immediately infringing on Apple’s patent rights.  But they’re missing the bigger point, and/or they didn’t actually read the patent before they excitedly posted it as news.  But I’m not going to leave you in the dark like that.  I like you guys.  You read my stuff.  So the link I have above goes to the actual text of the patent on the official US Patent and Trademark Office website.  Search the text for “slide to unlock.”  Can’t find it, can you?  That’s because that phrase isn’t mentioned once in the entire text of the patent.  What is mentioned is “gestures.”  This means that not only sliding, but as the patent says (I’m paraphrasing), any continuous touch motion following a predefined path on a predefined unlock image for means of unlocking a device is covered.  Even if instead of a slide, your device requires you to sketch the Mona Lisa over a specified unlock region to unlock your phone, it’s still infringement on Apple’s new patent in the United States.  As most smartphones today have a full touch screen in a “candybar” form factor, what does apple suggest we do to unlock our devices?  The only option left is a series of hard button presses.  Oh right, or keep the gesture unlock, and pay apple a few bucks for every unit sold.

2. On the grounds of prior art

OK, so “ridiculousness and greed” wasn’t really much more than just my chagrin articulated in text, but prior art is a legitimate thing when it comes to evaluating patents and intellectual property.   Based on my perusal of patent rules and the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the MPEP for short, and man is that thing complex) the nutshell definition of prior art is that “it’s been done before.”  Now while people were marveling over the iPhone when it was released in the summer of 2007, no one seemed to recall the Neonode N1m, a Windows CE device released in 2005, almost 2 years prior to the iPhone.  The N1m was a touchscreen device that had one very relevant feature to this story:  you slide your finger from left to right on the screen to unlock it.  There’s a video review of the N1m on YouTube that was made around the time of the iPhone release (via Android Central).  You can skip the beginning and start at the 4:00 mark.  It clearly shows the sweeping left to right motion over a visibly marked lock area to unlock the device and get back to the functional menus.  This case was dismissed by Dutch courts for this very reason.  While Apple and Samsung are taking shots at each other across the pond, the N1m came up, forcing the judge to rule that Apple’s patent claim as “non-inventive” and likely invalid.

3.  On grounds of “for the good of the game”

When it comes to software and especially mobile tech, it’s relatively easy for large corporations to either file trivial patents for the sole purpose of extracting money from others or to acquire smaller companies and get ownership of their patents, again for the sole purpose of extracting money from others.  Weaponizing a practice that was originally meant to protect an inventor from unjust theft changes the game.  With this new strategy, fear of a lawsuit creates a huge new barrier to entry for small startups and inventors, who could be forced with a horrible decision between huge licensing fees and closing up shop.  And as for patent wars between tech giants, why invest in R&D and engineering to try to come up with something new and inventive for consumer-generated revenue streams when you can buy or bully a startup for less and charge licensing fees?  Take a look at the recent Microsoft-Compal deal.  Now Microsoft collects licensing fees from over half of Android device manufacturers.  So instead of tech teams trying to innovate, surprise!  A new patent troll comes screaming and kicking into the world.  Look at all that wasted talent.

I don’t know exactly how to fix the system; I just know that a system that let this through needs to be fixed.  Software and tech aren’t really “things” the traditional way most static or mechanical patentable things are, which means that a traditional system can’t work. 

89. Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop

[Article first published as Windows 8 Hands-On: A Mobile OS that Still Has Love for the Desktop on Blogcritics.]

** UPDATE: This article is on the Windows 8 Developer Preview from September 2011 - for more info on the actual release version, my series on Windows 8 RTM starts here. **

I had a lot of reservations about Windows 8 since i started seeing leaked PowerPoint slides detailing it ages ago.  From those leaks, it looked like it was going to be nothing more than some sort of mobile OS designed to compete with Google’s Chrome OS, and wouldn’t really be very useful for desktop users.  Old screenshots of the Metro interface made me think that it was just a larger size version of the Windows Phone, without a lot of additional functionality behind it.  As of Microsoft’s BUILD conference keynote just this past Tuesday, I’m glad to say I was wrong.  Microsoft released the Windows Developer Preview (I’m going to just call this WDP from here on out) Tuesday night, and after a number of tries just downloading the image, I finally got it dual booted with my Windows 7 on my laptop.  Now granted, running the preview on a laptop isn’t going to give me the complete mobile experience that I see this being great for, but it’s at least given me a taste.

One of the phrases that gets tossed around the web so much to describe the current state of computer technology is “post-PC era.”  With all due respect to proponents of this philosophy, what the hell is the matter with you and your technological world view?  I’m not saying mobile is worthless; on the contrary I think mobile is an extremely important component in today’s era of computing.  But that doesn’t mean I’m going to confine my gaming to casual games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja while running out to replace all my users’ machines with tablets and spend insane money on peripherals. Let’s face it, most high-powered gaming and traditional applications used by gamers and business users is still going to be run on traditional desktop PC’s.  As it would appear, Microsoft agrees with me, and Windows 8 still provides what I affectionately refer to as le olde school, namely Windows Explorer.  Outside of the new Metro interface, a very familiar setting awaits those of us that primarily compute mouse-and-keyboard style.  Users still have full access to a familiar Windows desktop, where they can peruse files through Windows Explorer, add desktop shortcuts, gadgets and pin applications to the taskbar.  Working with multiple monitors has also become a little bit easier, with the frustration of being unable to stretch the taskbar across multiple screens is now gone.  Exploring files includes common window and file commands on an optional menu in-window, pulled from their Office 2007 and 2010 ribbons.  Want to go virtual?  The preview has a built-in hypervisor for Hyper-V, which currently is only available as part of a server OS package.  And as far as compatibility, nothing is going to change for users used to running a Windows 7 environment.  I ran a guildie through Stratholme in World of Warcraft from it last night with no problems whatsoever.  The one thing that may take some getting used to is the lack of a start button similar to what we’ve seen in most Windows iterations.

Now for the other side of the OS.  There’s the new mobile half of it using Microsoft’s Metro interface.   I like it, and can definitely see how this would be a very intuitive and easy interface to use on a tablet.  Right now i’m scrolling left and right with my mouse, but on touchscreen enabled devices movement would be swipes from side to side.  The Metro interface works almost like a layer on top of a Windows 7-ish OS.  In that sense it has a very similar feel to Android device manufacturers’ custom UI’s that lay on top of the operating system like Motorola’s MotoBlur and HTC’s Sense, where users have tiles for shortcuts and instant information.  The preview includes a bunch of tiled apps that come pre-loaded that make it very easy to access basic information like weather and stock reports and social media apps for facebook and twitter.  It includes “touch” versions of your control panel and the new Internet Explorer 10, which I have to say, runs pretty nice.  Also, on the touch front, they demoed 5-finger multi-touch during Tuesday’s BUILD keynote.

While there is a lot I like about it, it does have its drawbacks – little things like no way to just shut down.  If I want to turn off the machine I have to switch to desktop mode and then go through the Alt-F4 menu to get there.  Then there’s the whole tiled app thing – tiled apps mean that whatever you run in Metro (social, weather, games) will always be running in the background.  Android devices work exactly the same way, and it’s the reason why apps like Advanced Task Killer are extremely popular downloads.  The Preview does have a way around it, by dropping individual background processes to use 0% CPU when not in use, but there is still memory usage there.  On my laptop I have the power to Alt-F4 an app to kill it, but that might not be so easy on tablet and mobile devices employing the OS with a virtual keyboard (also means Alt-Tabbing through everything that’s open).  And call me a traditionalist, but I still favor the full-function start button of Windows past.  But I’m going to cut Microsoft a lot of slack here – this is a developer preview, which means beta and release candidates still yet to come.  So they have a lot of time to make tweaks.

So in the end Microsoft has made a good start in making a single OS which bridges the gap between a desktop and a mobile solution for part of their single ecosystem, even though functionality still leans in favor of mobile.  As it stands now I wouldn’t buy Windows 8 to replace Windows 7 on my laptop or desktop without a little additional power on the desktop side – even though it has native tools I would normally download 3^rd party software for (I don’t need Alcohol 52% anymore for mounting ISO’s) I would at best I’d have it in a dual-boot setup.  BUT, I think slates or tablets running Windows 8 could be real winners.  The OS really seems like it would shine for casual users with its simplicity, which is one of the reasons iPads running iOS are so popular.  We'll see how they fare late next year.

I’m looking forward to what’s next.  I’d like to see how they’ll handle Xbox Live integration, since Games for Windows will be scrapped and lumped into the XBL environment.  I’m also looking forward to developers making some apps for this so we can see how the marketplace is going to flesh out.  And since this OS is targeted for both desktop and mobile, my biggest question arises:  What’s pricing and licensing going to look like?

63. mobile casual vs console - those birds may be angry but they don't know everything

what is a "casual game?"  the term has been around for a while, so it does actively differentiate itself from what could be considered a "standard" game.  i guess.  to me it means games that aren't as in-depth or involved as a standard game on a console or PC, but still retain that short-term fun factor.  so as an example, final fantasy VII - not a casual game.  farmville - yes, a casual game.  we've seen casual gaming build up a lot of steam over the last couple of years, with either positive or negative affects on your psyche, i'm sure.  how many of you have seen farmville notices from your friends polluting your facebook feeds or someone requesting that you help them in their mafia war?  too many, i would gather.  stop messaging me people, i don't care that a cow wandered off of your damn farm.  learn to be a better farmer. casual gaming isn't restricted to facebook or social networks though, of course - i myself have been known to play a number of games on kongregate and test my gelatinous architecting skills in world of goo.  all very fun, but i'm not doing stat calculations in the back of my head or trying to figure out what the increased damage output on a new weapon would be like in world of warcraft.  i'm just chilling.

mobile platforms really made the difference though.  games in the "casual" category generally don't require fast processors or high-end video cards, so mobile makes a lot of sense for publishing.  not only does it have the low-end chops to make it happen, but the market is much larger - pretty much everyone has a cell phone these days with an increasing number of them being smartphones, while not everyone has a console system or pimped out gaming rig.  so now we have apple's app store and the android market filled to the brim with these casual games as apps, from anywhere to free (on android anyway) to $0.99 to a few bucks for a download.  these include stuff like fruit ninja, doodle jump, and of course, angry birds.

angry birds took flight as an extremely popular casual game on both the apple and android platforms.  free on android and $0.99 on apple, the game flew by the 100 million download mark, which is for lack of a better phrase, impressive as hell for pretty much any software.  but that seems to have given game developer rovio just a bit of a hubristic tone in some of the statements he's recently been making.  recently at the SXSW conference in austin TX, peter vesterbacka, "great eagle" at rovio, argued that console games are "dying" in the face of the growing gaming market.  he went on to say that the model of $40-$60 per game that are difficult to upgrade simply doesn't work anymore, and more than implied that big budget console games are stagnant and lack any new innovation, leaving mobile casual games as the way.  of course i think his opinion maaaaaay have been slightly biased being the head of rovio.  maybe just a bit.

which i can sort of understand on some level.  console game budgets rival those of hollywood blockbusters (example: final fantasy xii was $48 million and it's small compared to others), and the sheer amount of capital investment means that large studios sometimes do play it safe in big projects.  but i think i speak for most people here when i say that doesn't mean that i'm always going to prefer a cheap mobile game over console.  if i'm in my living room, and i have my droid x sitting in my pocket, a ps3 and an xbox 360 hooked up to my tv, and a laptop nearby, chances are i'm not pulling out the phone and firing up angry birds.  9 times out of 10 if i'm not already playing world of warcraft i'll be clicking on one of the consoles.  hell, most of the time i'd click on a ps2 over a mobile game in this scenario.  if i'm lounging at the house, i want something complex.  something with some depth.  something that will look good 46" large.  not a pocket game on my phone, and probably not a mini game off of PSN or xbox live.  for me and presumably "my type" of gamer, that's just how we prefer things.  the casual mobile games or downloadable console mini games appeal to players that like games the way they used to be in the early 90's and earlier - short, sweet and to the point.

but i'm not always home in front of my tv or laptop.  sometimes i'm in a waiting room at the doctor's, or on a train or short flight.  then i'll definitely break out the phone for something casual like angry birds.  it is a fun game, and i'm not trying to knock it at all, but to me it serves as more of a short term diversion than anything else.  and to be honest reminds me of catapult games from kongregate.  just with birds.