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The Reliability of the Microsoft Surface

Posted on August 10, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Consumer Reports recently pulled their recommendation of Microsoft Surface tablets over reliability issues.

Microsoft’s Surface 2-in-1 devices are an interesting product. Supposedly they give you the features of a laptop and a tablet, but in most cases, they’re just ultraportable laptops that offer table features. The real feature of any tablet isn’t just the hardware but the software, so using Windows as a tablet is adequate, but not optimal. Still if Windows works for you as a tablet, then you might as well get a Surface device.

What Consumer Reports claims is that the reliability of Microsoft Surface devices is in doubt. Surface users in the past have complained about software bugs that have caused problems, but Consumer Reports claims that a high number of Surface users report problems. Since Microsoft generally fixes these problems right away, the real drawback is the inconvenience of taking your device in to get fixed. The real reliability problem isn’t just the hardware but the operating system, Windows.

Windows 10 has virtually eliminated crashes that plagued Windows XP. However, Windows 10 still isn’t the easiest operating system to use, especially since it’s the largest target for malware. So not only do Windows users have to deal with less than intuitive user interfaces, but they must also deal with security software to guard against malware. Toss in the higher price of a Microsoft Surface device and suddenly the convenience of having one device act as a laptop and tablet pales compared to the higher price you have to pay for buying and using a Surface device.

If you’re truly interested in a 2-in-1 device that runs Windows, look at rival devices from Dell, Lenovo, and Hewlett-Packard. They’re often cheaper than a Microsoft Surface and likely don’t have reliability issues that Microsoft Surface devices have. If you’d rather skip the headaches of Windows, then consider switching to an iPad or MacBook.

The Microsoft Surface is a decent device that’s priced too high compared to its rivals. Sales of Microsoft Surface units isn’t skyrocketing. In fact, it’s steadily declining. Microsoft never planned for the Surface devices to be massive profit generators anyway, so Microsoft probably doesn’t care that much about whatever happens to the Surface lineup anyway.

Ultimately, the Microsoft Surface is an interesting device that likely will continue improving with incremental updates and minimal market share. If you’re a die-hard Windows user, the Surface is probably for you. For everyone else, there are cheaper Windows alternatives or the iPad or MacBook.

If you want low price, get a Windows alternative to the Microsoft Surface. If you want to pay a higher price and get a smoother user experience, then it might be time to consider an iPad or MacBook. All hardware devices fail so don’t be scared away from the Microsoft Surface. Just don’t expect the Microsoft Surface to be a game changing product like the iPhone, iPad, or Macintosh.

Seeing AI

Posted on July 13, 2017 by admin Posted in Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Microsoft has released a new app called Seeing AI, which helps blind people “see” what’s around them.

The main purpose of technology isn’t to focus on incremental improvements in a laundry list of technical specifications. Instead, technology is meant to improve our lives. As smartphones have become common with built-in cameras, Microsoft has taken advantage of these developments with a new app called Seeing AI.

The idea is that by pointing your smartphone camera at people, objects, or even text, the Seeing AI can tell you what the camera’s looking at including descriptions of people, buildings, or reading text. More amazing is that Microsoft is giving the Seeing AI app away for free.

When you see enabling technology like Seeing AI, you realize how technology can make people’s lives better. Even if you have decent eyesight, you could still use the Seeing AI for reading text out loud. Instead of relying on another person to watch your back while playing a game like paintball, you could strap a smartphone to your arm and let the Seeing AI provide another set of eyes to scan for approaching people.

Seeing AI is proof that Microsoft can innovate. If Seeing AI had been available on the Windows Phone platform, that could have been a major game-changer. As it stands now, Microsoft has seemingly given up on their mobile operating system plans and seem content to focus on making great apps for Android and iOS. That’s great for all smartphone users (at least if you’re running Android or iOS) because now you get the benefits of using Microsoft’s apps without the drawback of being stuck on Microsoft’s operating system.

With apps like Seeing AI and OneNote, Microsoft has consistently proven they can innovate on the mobile computer platform. As long as Microsoft focuses on making technology offer clear benefits to people, they can’t go wrong. It’s when they (or any other company) forgets about providing benefits to actual people that any product will ultimately fail.

The End of Windows Phone

Posted on July 11, 2017 by admin Posted in Business, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Today, Microsoft officially ended support for Windows Phone 8.1.

How did one of the most dominant computer companies in the world manage to completely miss the mobile computing market, despite being a leader in that market? Easy. What Microsoft did at first was duplicate their Windows desktop business model by licensing Windows Mobile to multiple phone manufacturers. Windows Mobile used the Start menu interface introduced in Windows 95 and essentially put the Windows desktop interface on a mobile device.

Not surprisingly, this wasn’t an optimized user interface for mobile phones so when Apple introduced the iPhone, Microsoft suddenly found themselves trying to sell an outdated user interface to compete against the iPhone. This would be like trying to sell a more advanced horse carriage while everyone else is buying a car.

So the first mistake was simply coasting along with Windows Mobile and offering incremental improvements to a poorly designed user interface. Then Microsoft made a second mistake by taking so long to offer Windows Phone 7. By the time Windows Phone 7 appeared, most of the world had already adopted Android or the iPhone.

Here’s where Microsoft compounded their mistakes. To create Windows Phone 7 apps, Microsoft chose Silverlight, their Flash clone. That’s because Flash was slowly losing popularity and Silverlight was dying too. That meant Microsoft needed to find another use for Silverlight and they chose to make it into the Windows Phone 7 development language.

So as Silverlight died along with Flash, Silverlight only had a future as a Windows Phone 7 programming language. Then Microsoft made another mistake by introducing Windows Phone 8, which was incompatible with Windows Phone 7 and relied less on Silverlight and more on C# to create apps. That meant all those developers who used Silverlight to create Windows Phone 7 apps had to rewrite them in C# to get them to work on Windows Phone 8.

Then Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 8.1, which still didn’t attract much market share. With a sliver of market share, Windows Phone 8.1 couldn’t attract many customers. Without customers, developers had no one to sell to. Given a choice between learning to write Windows Phone 8.1 apps or make more money writing Android and iOS apps, most developers chose to follow the money and develop for Android and iOS instead of Windows Phone 8.1.

Then Microsoft switched things around with Windows 10 Mobile. Now Windows Phone 8.1 apps couldn’t work on Windows 10 Mobile, forcing developers to rewrite their apps yet again. Not surprisingly, most developers gave up constantly rewriting apps for a nearly non-existent market.

It’s no surprise that Windows Phone 8.1 is officially dead. It’s been unofficially dead since its arrival. Microsoft’s mobile strategy now focuses on making apps for Android and iOS. Windows 10 Mobile still exists, but it’s unlikely to grab any significant market share any time soon. Expect Windows 10 Mobile to quietly fade away. Look for any developers and most will be creating apps for Android or iOS. There’s no room for another mobile operating system at this point. The era of Windows Phone is over for good and Microsoft’s mobile phone operating system strategy looks like it’s gone for good as well.

Volvo Will No Longer Make Gas-Powered Cars After 2019

Posted on July 5, 2017 by admin Posted in Business, Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Volvo announced that after 2019, they will only sell cars that have an electric motor in them.

Volvo can see the future, partly because they’re now owned by a Chinese company and China is plagued with air pollution partly coming from gas-powered cars. China’s air quality is so bad in the big cities that China has the largest number of Parkinson’s Disease in the world. China must either clean up its air or literally kill all its citizens.

That’s why Volvo announced that the future after 2019 will involve either all-electric cars or hybrids. Hybrids can ease the transition to electric cars but the future is definitely no longer gas. If the auto industry plans to shift away from gas, what will happen to the world of gas stations? They’ll need to convert to fast-charging electric charging stations instead. Just as you now pay for gas, you’ll need to pay for electricity to recharge your car. Whether that will be cheaper than gas won’t matter as much as electricity won’t be as polluting as car emissions.

(Of course the real question is how will that electricity be generated? If it’s done by coal-burning plants that pollute the air, then the savings in air quality from electric cars will need to offset that pollution created by power plants. The difference is that power plant emissions can be relatively isolated while car emissions follow cars wherever they go.)

Look at the ripple effect electric motors will have in the future. The way we drive tomorrow won’t look like the way we drive today. Expect too see fewer cars on the road (thanks to ride-sharing services), fewer accidents (thanks to self-driving car technology), and fewer car dealers because fewer people want or will need to own their own car.

This is why Apple, Google, and Tesla are charging ahead in the self-driving technology field because they know it will be profitable. Whether the Apple Car becomes a product or not, the research learning about self-driving technology will prove valuable in itself. If Apple never releases the Apple Car, they’ll have the know-how to create an integrated experience for cars that will only benefit them in the future when they further develop CarPlay as an entertainment option in cars.

Apple, Google, and Tesla know the future. Even Blackberry is shifting towards self-driving technology with their real-time operating system, QNX. Strangely, one major company that seems to be ignoring self-driving technology is Microsoft.

Without self-driving technology experience, Microsoft won’t be able to benefit from the coming self-driving technology breakthroughs because they won’t have any experience working with self-driving technology. Why Microsoft seems to be deliberately avoiding self-driving technology makes little sense since they’re searching artificial intelligence and self-driving cars is just another aspect of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

What Microsoft could learn from self-driving cars would directly apply to their research in machine learning for other fields like voice recognition. Avoiding self-driving car technology research is like avoiding the mobile computing market.

Most likely there will be no single winner in the self-driving technology market. The Apple Car isn’t going to dominate the market because other companies will be offering roughly equal technology. The real treasure isn’t in trying to be the only or best self-driving car company in the world, but in learning what’s possible and knowing how to benefit from self-driving car technology.

The future is clear. Volvo can see the short-term future in electric cars. Apple, Google, and Tesla can see the longer future in self-driving technology, but both are right. The people who are wrong are the ones who always say the world won’t change and then get surprised when it does.

Getting People to Buy iPads Again

Posted on June 17, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware Leave a comment

What it is: iPad sales have been steadily dropping over the past few years, so how can Apple get people to buy more iPads?

It’s easy to get people to buy new iPhones because after two years, most people can upgrade to the newer model. With some carriers, you can even upgrade to the latest model every year. Because carriers subsidize or lease iPhones, people don’t need to pay full price ($700 or more) every time they want a new iPhone.

However, when people want to buy a new iPad, they’ll have to pay for the whole price themselves. That alone keeps people from upgrading every year or two. Now combine the fact that each iPad tends to still be useful years later and there’s little reason to upgrade for anyone.

So that’s why Apple just made the iPad obsolete for everything except the first generation iPad Pro. That’s because Apple’s new augmented reality kit (ARKit) only works on the iPad Pro or later models. That means every single iPad model (except for the latest iPad Pro models) is now obsolete.

That’s only a problem if you want augmented reality features on an iPad, but when Apple introduces augmented reality on the next iPhone this fall, you can bet that most people will want augmented reality on the iPad. That means every current iPad owner will need to upgrade to the iPad Pro.

The key is whether augmented reality will capture the imagination of people or not. It’s easy to see the appeal of augmented reality games like Pokemon GO. It’s harder to see the appeal of augmented reality for everyday use. That’s why Apple is also promoting the Apple Pencil as an additional user interface tool for the iPad Pro.

Right now, the Apple Pencil is mostly useful for artists and other people who need to draw. For non-artists, the Apple Pencil can be handy for jotting down notes just like using a pen and paper. Still, this feature alone likely won’t be enough to convince people to buy an Apple Pencil and a new iPad.

Eventually, the only way Apple can get people to upgrade to another iPad is to keep improving its features to the point where the older models just won’t do what the newer models can do. That’s why Apple is also promoting their optional keyboard to help turn the iPad Pro into a laptop computer. With the new Files app that lets you manage files, and multitasking, the iPad Pro with iOS 11 will make the iPad nearly equal to a laptop but with the greater convenience of a tablet.

Microsoft is busy trying to turn a laptop into a tablet with the Surface Pro. Apple is trying to turn a tablet into a laptop with the iPad Pro. The Surface Pro is far better as a computer than a tablet. The iPad Pro is far better as a tablet than a computer.

The difference is what you want. Do you want a laptop? Then get a Surface Pro. Do you want a tablet? Then get an iPad Pro. Do you want both? Then neither works equally well as a laptop and a tablet.

As the iPad Pro gets more powerful hardware, it will soon rival the power of as laptop. The key is whether the iPad Pro can remain light and easy to carry while offering the equivalent power of a laptop. To duplicate a laptop, an iPad Pro would need to duplicate a Windows PC.

If the processor in the iPad Pro becomes powerful enough to surpass Intel processors and be capable of running Windows, that’s when you’ll know that the iPad Pro won. If Intel processors can get more power efficient and the Windows operating system gets more tablet apps, then the Surface Pro will win.

The race for the future is split between the Surface Pro and the iPad Pro. Chances are good both will survive in the long run.

ARM Processors Running PCs

Posted on June 3, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software Leave a comment

What it is: Microsoft and its partners are working to bring Windows-powered devices on ARM processors.

Microsoft revealed their vision for always connected PCs that have long battery life yet retain the familiarity of Windows. To attain this goal, Microsoft is developing Windows to run on ARM processors like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor.

Of course, Microsoft already has Windows running on ARM processors using an operating system called Windows RT. The big reason why Windows RT flopped was because developers had to create programs specifically for Windows RT. If you wanted to run ordinary Windows software on Windows RT devices, you couldn’t.

If Microsoft can create a Windows PC, powered by ARM processors, that can still run Windows software, they could create a new family of PCs. The big difficulty is getting ARM processors to run Windows software designed for x86 processors created by Intel and AMD. One solution is to force developers to rewrite and compile their code for ARM processors, which is what Microsoft did with Microsoft Office. However, this is time-consuming and recreates the same problems of Windows RT all over again. Developers aren’t going to spend time developing for Windows RT until the market expands, and the market won’t expand without software.

A far more difficult approach is to emulate x86 processors on ARM processors. A program called Virtual PC for the Macintosh used to do this when the Macintosh used a PowerPC processor. The PowerPC processor would emulate a x86 processor to run Windows on a Macintosh. Unfortunately, emulation is slow. Even worse, ARM processors are typically slower and less powerful than x86 processors although that’s slowly changing. For emulation to work, ARM processors would need to become far more powerful than x86 processors and that’s probably not going to happen since x86 processors have a head start and can keep improving at the same rate as ARM processors.

So where does that leave Microsoft’s Windows on ARM project? They absolutely must solve this software dilemma or wind up repeating their Windows RT fiasco all over again.

Here’s one way Apple is approaching ARM processors. Besides making their own ARM processors that are faster than anything on the market, Apple also has plans to recompile code automatically. When developers post programs on the Mac App Store, Apple can automatically recompile the code for ARM processors. Now developers don’t have to spend the time to rewrite their programs themselves.

This would allow Apple to offer the Macintosh on ARM processors. If Apple can get their ARM processors to run at least equally as Intel processors that are currently used in the Macintosh, people could buy a Macintosh running an ARM processor and have access to plenty of software rights from the start. This avoids the problem of Windows RT. The key is making sure ARM processors can be at least equal in power to x86 processors.

If Apple can get the macintosh to run on ARM processors acceptably, they could simply create a new class of Macintosh computers. Then the Macintosh would also be able to run iOS apps as well.

The technical challenges in getting a PC to run on ARM processors is difficult, but not impossible. The bottleneck lies with getting software to run on ARM processors. How Microsoft solves this problem will go a long way towards bringing PCs on ARM processors, unless Apple gets there first.