re: Windows 10 unveiled - new Spartan browser, universal apps, Cortana, and more

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What difference does it make to the end user if they sold the hardware or not, if the release no longer will run on his equipment?

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Every computer sold with Windows 7 installed can run Windows 10.

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It does not make a difference to the end user who sold unsupported hardware.

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Microsoft's ability to leverage the tech media's credulity is weakening, as is evident from the emerging skepticism of its ability to deliver upon its latest product demonstration: HoloLens.

A show in need of a star:

Without introducing HoloLens, Microsoft's post-CES product event—which droned on for two hours and twenty minutes—would have had nothing to show but a series of reminders that it is working on products that are increasingly irrelevant.

Apart from HoloLens, Microsoft showed off another overview of Windows 10, demonstrating a doubled-down commitment (if slightly backpedaled) to the colorful, Live Tile user interface that the market has consistently, stridently rejected, first on the Zune, then on Windows Phones 7 and 8, Windows 7 and 8, Windows RT and Surface hybrids.

Even people who love Windows hate Metro, making it bizarre to perpetually feature as the lynchpin of the last three editions of Windows. It is however unique to Microsoft.

That can't be said of the company's other Windows features highlighted at the event: ostensibly free OS updates, a standards compliant web browser with Safari Reader, Office running on a mobile device, third party apps that run on a mobile device, AirPlay wireless distribution and Siri.

These weren't even new features for iOS 7 back in 2013, but they're coming "later this year" to Windows PCs—with the exception of Surface RT users (you know, the ones Microsoft spent over $1 billion advertising as a good dance partner).


HoloPromises: Microsoft is not only broadly claiming credit for lots of stuff that's already been public for years, but it's grossly misrepresenting the potential of the technology. The introduction video (below) starts off associating the phrase "we use it in every aspect of our lives" with Microsoft Band, but that's not the most ridiculous part by far.

It portrays the appearance of augmented reality images (not new) that it calls "the world of holograms" (not true), but the most absurd part is that it depicts virtual wall mounted TVs in the user's line of vision (not something you'd do).

If you're going to walk around your house with goggles on, you'll want to take full advantage of all the pixels on those tiny screens to see whatever TV image you're trying to watch, not reduce the viewable image down to a box that virtually obscures only the part of the wall you have free to virtually mount a TV.

Similarly, when you want to watch a web video on your phone, you don't want it to play inside of a tiny box on the screen, just because that's what you might do on a PC. You'd generally want it to use the whole screen to show you as much detail of the video as possible. The virtual TV in Microsoft's demo would be like watching a tiny video taking up one square inch of your phone's available resolution.

Next up: "new ways to visualize our work," showing a woman designing a motorcycle at a PC CAD workstation, but wearing goggles that create a lower resolution copy of what's on her (presumably professional grade) monitor. More than anything, this demonstrates Microsoft's lack of imagination and understanding of how technology can be applied.

Next, she walks over to a real motorcycle and augments the reality with virtual images she can freely manipulate. This sort of makes some real sense (but its exactly the same sort of thing PrimeSense depicted two years ago). Microsoft is claiming credit for the same augmented reality games and visualizations that PrimeSense showed off two years ago

Next, another woman walks through an office where a Google Glass image of somebody she's FaceTiming somehow mysteriously fails to cause her to walk into one of those desks, breaking her hip and those expensive glasses.

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