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PCs are more complicated and less reliable than they should be. They require too much maintenance, like a car that requires you to top off the oil, check the tire pressure and fill the gas tank on every trip. Even though they use chips that are far more powerful than the ones in the iPad, they’re often much slower. They rarely have built-in wireless broadband. Every moment I spend dealing with this stuff is a moment I’m not spending creating content. I find that deeply frustrating. Is the iPad good for content creation as well as content consumption?
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I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was Windows 95. In the subsequent 17 years, we've seen a stream of mostly minor and often inconsequential design changes in Windows – at its core, you've got the same old stuff: a start menu, a desktop with icons, taskbar at the bottom, overlapping windows, toolbars, and pull-down menus.... Windows 8 is, in my humble opinion, the most innovative version of Windows Microsoft has released since Windows 95. What's good about Windows 8? A ton of stuff.
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I'd argue that the last truly revolutionary version of Windows was NT4.
It marked the transition from a personal OS to a business-capable OS - Win95 was more revolutionary with it's UI changes, but NT4 was the game-changer for MS.
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NT4 brought a lot to the table, but I thought Win2k brought the best parts of NT to an OS that was better suited to day-to-day desktop use.
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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Today at the annual Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, Canada, Microsoft shared the details about the upcoming Windows Milestones with its partners. The Windows Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller provided details on Windows 8 General Availability.
Windows 8 is on track and all set to Release to Manufacturing (RTM) in the first week of August. The enterprise consumers with Software Assurance benefits will have early access to RTM or final build of Windows 8 in August.
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If you read your Insider or looked a few messages down, you'd find that this "news" was posted last night.
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Sorry for reposting
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak quips Steve Jobs "came back reincarnated at Microsoft" referring to the Redmond-based company's recent design breakthroughs that have culminated in the new Surface, a tablet which sports a marriage of art and technology reportedly befitting of the late tech guru
Haven't he said that about Windows phone already?
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On a somewhat related note... I chanced upon a Windows phone last night and came away pretty impressed. This 1 month old LG phone (probably an Omnia variant)fared better than my 3 month old Galaxy 3 in terms of responsiveness and overall graphics.
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Do you find all the apps you want?
I'm getting a new phone in december so I'm interested in knowing if you find all you want.
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I already have the Samsung Focus (AKA Omnia) running WP7.5. By December, the new WP8 phones should be hitting the shelves. Expect the next gen Lumia to be scrummilicious.
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From what I have read, most people only really use a few apps. Tons of apps do no good if they don't do what you want. How many apps does one tend to use on a PC, and that is an environment that is a lot easier to use (but a lot harder to carry around).
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Looks like they finally got their own Audible app so now it appears pretty complete. If that had happened sooner i'd probably be using my wp7 now instead of my shiny new droid.
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If you already have an idea of what you want to be able to do you can always search the marketplace to see if it's there. So far, there are over 100,000 apps but if the kind of thing you want to do is not there it doesn't matter whether there are 5 apps or a million.
Kevin
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Spot on!
But sometimes you don't even know you need an app until your're told that it exists.
That was the case with Tasker[^] for me, and therefore my question.
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Rest assured.. all the necessary apps ( Skype , App launchers etc.) are either already there or on their way to hit the Marketplace.
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SalCon wrote: I chanced upon a Windows phone last night and came away pretty impressed.
I gather that most people who have one like it. I have one and I like it. However, it is also the first smartphone I've owned so I can't say how it compares to iPhone and Android - except that my Apple fan boy brother was also impressed with it (Nokia Lumia).
Kevin
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That way I can consider myself a little experienced ... Have owned Galaxy S1 then the S3 and also tested iPhone 4. Sans the hype.. IMHO when it comes to functionality Android usually scores over iPhone but my brief encounter with the windows phone made me think about a possible switch in the future.
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I've had both iPhone and WP7.5. I like the windows phone better. The only thing that is really annoying is that the facebook integration doesn't filter out all the game statuses, etc. This is due to an integration issue since it is an external app and I beleive the claim is that they cannot do that with an external app.
The graphics are responsive, the live tiles are really nice, I like having them. The UI design with the keyboard (on the HTC Titan) is really nice, I like the keyboard staying on the bottom and the suggestion bar as well. I like that the browser address bar is on the bottom and always visible. This lets you interact with it without putting your hands in the viewing area. I think they should go further with the theme and let you colorize the main tiles to different colors instead of restricting you to one color.
There are a few minor things that can can be corrected, such as if they have a .com button on the keyboard and the last character you typed was a period, it would be left with ..com. This can be easily addressed.
Overall, I do like it better than the IPhone, especially having a device with a larger screen. I can type faster with the windows phone and make corrections easier as well. The suggestions bar works much better than the suggestions on the IPhone.
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Considering that WinPhone is a new platform there might be a few glitches initially , as was the case with the "pre-2.0 Android".
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I assume that WP 8 will be better still, though of course will require a new phone. In the meantime it will be interesting to see what if anything WP 7.8 adds apart from the start screen. Personally, I'm not that bothered as I'm happy enough for the time being.
Kevin
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I've had a Windows Phone 7, the HTC Trophy, since January. It's my second smartphone, the first being an Android.
I loved the droid for about 6 months, until the apps I downloaded and used started slowing it down. I used app killers to free memory, and they helped somewhat, but never solved the problem, and seemed to become less effectgive over time. It eventually got to where I was pulling the battery out every week to reset it just so that I didn't have to wait literally minutes for the phone to respond to every button press. I hate Apple, but if my choice was limited to iPhone or a droid, I would pay the premium for an iPhone before I every buy another droid. I'm happy to say that Microsoft gave me a better choice.
My WP7 is a 3G, single-core device, with lots of apps loaded and used, and yet its performance never suffers. It's very fast, always responsive. The navigation is intuitive, I can get to every function I need with a few finger motions, the Metro interface can be customized much more than the droid (although not as much as I'd like) and for some apps is more useful than a static icon, giving you information without having to start the app itself.
There's room for improvement, but it's vastly superior to the droid, hands down.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave.
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Under what circumstances is it acceptable for a programming language to admit undefined behaviors? Here I mean undefined behavior in the C/C++ sense where, for example, “anything can happen” when you use an uninitialized variable. In my opinion, five conditions need to be fulfilled. Five ways it works... if you know what you're doing.
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