1. Microsoft Surface is all about Apple
So the rumors were true about a Microsoft tablet. But Surface? Not Xbox? It's smart branding that pits Microsoft's tablet against Apple's -- industrial design, announcement timing, Surface branding and more.
The Hardware
Quick specs for two models, running either Windows 8 or Windows RT:
Windows RT model: 10.6-inch ClearType HD display; 32GB or 64GB storage; microSD, USB 2.0 and Micro HD Video ports; 2x2 MIMO antennae; and Office 15. Weighs 676 grams and is 9.3 mm thick.
Windows 8 Professional model: 10.6-inch ClearType HD display; 64GB or 128GB storage; microSDXC, USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort Video ports; and 2x2 MIMO antennae. Weighs 903 grams and is 13.5 mm thick.
The Windows 8 model isn't just bulkier, it requires a heftier battery. Welcome to the differences between Intel and ARM processors. As I've expressed before Windows RT is the future.
Scratching the Surface
Observing these tablets, I struggle to see exactly what really makes them different from others, except industrial design and Surface branding. Let's be clear, unless there's some real software magic Microsoft will disclose later, Surface really is more about branding than anything. It's a cunning move.
But there is something else: Microsoft finally gets to design things the way it wants. Too many OEMs make choices that favor their margins rather than the user experience. Microsoft can't compete with Apple on those terms, and there is need as the fruit-logo company makes early mind share and market share gains in the cloud-connected device era.
Finally Microsoft seizes control of the Windows user experience in ways it should have long ago. "What about channel competition?" you ask. Where will partners go? They can't license iOS, and Android doesn't have the enterprise chops -- or at least it's not what big businesses are accustomed to. Microsoft will compete with its OEMs, but they don't have a lot of options.
Channel Competition
Besides, Surface branding is a differentiator that softens channel competition. These aren't Windows 8- or Windows RT-branded tablets. Hell, Microsoft really isn't calling them tablets at all. They're Surface!
More significantly, Microsoft has released the de facto reference design -- the baseline for Windows 8/RT tablets. What I want to know, and surely you also, is pricing. But Microsoft isn't saying: "Suggested retail pricing will be announced closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC. OEMs will have cost and feature parity on Windows 8 and Windows RT".
Yeah, right. Pricing is where channel conflict is most likely. Microsoft has built-in cost advantage because of Windows licensing fees. Something else: Microsoft doesn't have to make a penny on any Surface tablet; selling at a loss is viable option. The company is building out the Windows ecosystem anew -- with Metro UI and energized focus on cloud-connected devices. Gaining market share, particularly against iPad, is more important now than making money selling hardware.
Target: Apple
The question I've been asking for days, why June 18? Why announce now something that won't ship until autumn? The answer: iPad. Back-to-school promises to be big for new iPad and, with OS X Mountain Lion coming next month, MacBook Air. But Microsoft just gave anyone considering Apple reason to wait. The old adage remains true: No one gets fired for buying Microsoft, and Surface is good reason to budget for just that. Frak iPad.
Make no mistake, Surface is all about putting Apple in its place. Microsoft announced today's event short notice; rumors buzzed for days; media turn-out was huge; and the presentation, which emphasized design and manufacturing, and the marketing are very Apple-like. Just look at the Surface product page. The aspirational presentation is oh-so Apple-like. Then there's the industrial design stuff. The molded VaporMg enclosure, built-in kickstand and 3 mm Touch Cover.
Hell, Yeah
Earlier today, I asked: "Should Microsoft release a branded tablet?" Many of you responded affirmatively.
Reader chinch987 smartly answers:
Yes for these reasons:
1. Microsoft Retail Stores coming all over USA.
2. Set reference design with standardized 'options' and 'accessories' which was a huge strength from the original iPod never matched.
3. Set price point and quality baseline vs Fire tablet and/or iPad
4. Wireless carriers shift to shared data plans (see Verizon with $10/mo tablet addon)
5. B&N deal
6. Bolster new media deals (zune replacement and subsequent new subscription plans not yet announced)
7. MS Bundles for holidays with Xbox/Phone
Robert Schiele: "They'd better, and they'd better sacrifice a virgin or whatever it takes to make that branded tablet compete successfully with the iPad and Android tablets. If they can't or don't, the Windows 8 release is likely to be the most epic failure in Microsoft's history".
1DaveN shares my sentiments about the channel: "To gain traction in the established tablet market, Microsoft might have to price an entry lower than an OEM would or could. Think of the XBox, which they subsidized for a long time to gain market share. OEMs will not, and should not, lose money on hardware to gain market share, but that might be appropriate and necessary for Microsoft".
Indeed, yes. Now these readers expressed their opinions before Microsoft announced anything, when there were rumors of a Barnes & Noble-manufactured tablet or Xbox branding. So...what do you think of Surface?
2. Energy efficiency in the cloud
We’re obsessed with building energy efficient data centers that enable cloud computing. Besides helping you be more productive, cloud-based services like Google Apps can reduce energy use, lower carbon emissions and save you money in the process. Last year, we crunched the numbers and found that Gmail is up to 80 times more energy-efficient (PDF) than running traditional in-house email. We’ve sharpened our pencils again to see how Google Apps as a whole—documents, spreadsheets, email and other applications—stacks up against the standard model of locally hosted services. Our results show (PDF) that a typical organization can achieve energy savings of about 65-85 percent by migrating to Google Apps.
Lower energy use results in less carbon pollution and more energy saved for organizations. That’s what happened at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which recently switched its approximately 17,000 users to Google Apps for Government. We found that the GSA was able to reduce server energy consumption by nearly 90 percent and carbon emissions by 85 percent. That means the GSA will save an estimated $285,000 annually on energy costs alone, a 93 percent cost reduction.
How is the cloud so energy efficient? It’s all about reducing energy use for servers and server cooling. Here’s how it works:
A typical organization has a lot more servers than it needs—for backup, failures and spikes in demand for computing. Cloud-based service providers like Google aggregate demand across thousands of people, substantially increasing how much servers are utilized. And our data centers use equipment and software specially designed to minimize energy use. The cloud can do the same work much more efficiently than locally hosted servers.
In fact, according to a study by the Carbon Disclosure Project, by migrating to the cloud, companies with over $1 billion in revenues in the U.S. and Europe could achieve substantial reductions in energy costs and carbon emissions by 2020:
U.S. companies could save $12.3 billion and up to 85.7 million metric tonnes of CO2
U.K. companies (PDF) would save £1.2 billion and more than 9.2 million metric tonnes of CO2
French companies (PDF) could save nearly €700 million and 1.2 million metric tonnes of CO2
We’ve built efficient data centers all over the world, even designing them in ways that make the best use of the natural environment, and we continue working to improve their performance. We think using the super-efficient cloud to deliver services like Google Apps can be part of the solution towards a more energy efficient future.
3. Linux / Unix Desktop Fun: Text Mode ASCII-art Box and Comment Drawing
Boxes command is a text filter and a little known tool that can draw any kind of ASCII art box around its input text or code for fun and profit. You can quickly create email signatures, or create regional comments in any programming language. This command was intended to be used with the vim text editor, but can be tied to any text editor which supports filters, as well as from the command line as a standalone tool.
4. Linux Continues to Dominate List of Top 500 Supercomputers
According to the latest list of the world's top 500 supercomputers, Linux is dominating the space with 462 of the planet's 500 fastest computers running the open source operating system...
5. Project management isn't just for big business
Project management software is usually thought of as being expensive, complex and mainly for big business. Which is a shame, because really the technology is just about documenting some complex task to help you better understand it. And that can be useful in all sorts of situations (as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to organise a large wedding, say).
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. GanttProject is a compact open source project management tool which is free for anyone to try. Its main focus is ease of use, so previous experience isn’t essential (though it’ll definitely help). And the project is Java-based, running equally happily on Windows, OS X or Debian Linux.
The best way to get started is probably to open the sample project (there’s a link on the Windows Start menu, or you can open it directly from the GanttProject folder). You’ll see various tasks displayed and organised on the Gantt chart. Double-clicking provides more information on a particular task (when it starts and finishes, its priority, any associated notes or web link, the people allocated to the task, and more).
Clicking the Resources Chart then displays all the people working on this particular project. You can see at a glance who’s working 24-7, and who’s got nothing to do. And in a click or two you’re able to take people off one task and perhaps allocate them elsewhere.
And because of course all you’ll need to share your decisions with others, it’s good to see that GanttProject has plenty of ways to help. It’s easy to save individual charts as images, say. The program can quickly generate HTML or PDF reports on your projects. And there are even options to import and export projects in Microsoft Project and CSV formats, as well as share projects directly with others via WebDAV.
Once you’ve got a feel for the basics, it’s then not too difficult to start creating a project of your own. More (or indeed any) local Help would be useful here, but even without that we had no problem exploring the menus, browsing various dialogs, and quickly building up a detailed picture of our test project.
There are some issues, too. The interface didn’t always seem intuitive. The report generator occasionally failed to generate anything at all (although this seemed to be an intermittent problem). And if you’re a project management expert then you’ll probably find GanttProject to be just too basic. (There’s nothing on costing, for instance, which for some is the main reason to use project management software at all.)
We found nothing that would stop us from getting our work done, though. And so if your project management needs are simple, or your budget limited, then GanttProject deserves a closer look: it’s small, relatively easy to use, and has plenty of useful features and functionality to explore.
6. One Sentence You Shouldn't Forget in a Job Interview Followup Letter
Following up after a job interview without being annoying is tough. We put together a few suggestions, but we missed one important sentence. Sean Weinberg, co-founder of resume-grading web app RezScore, suggests that there's one line you don't want to leave out: "Please let me know either way." He explains why: More »
7. This Is Airbus’ Crazy New Aeroplane Design
If you thought that the monster A380 wasn’t crazy enough, you have to check out Airbus’ latest design, which just got awarded a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
I dunno if it's branding or magic, but Microsoft's "big-ass" Surface table suddenly is smaller. In a jam-packed media event this evening, the software giant unveiled a 10.6-inch display tablet. Case is magnesium with beveled edges that give a sleek appearance. The tablet weighs as little as 676 grams. That's a helluva lot lighter than the Surface table introduced 5 years ago. That baby measured 30 inches and newer Samsung model is 40 inches. The tablet is pretty compact compared to the table.
So the rumors were true about a Microsoft tablet. But Surface? Not Xbox? It's smart branding that pits Microsoft's tablet against Apple's -- industrial design, announcement timing, Surface branding and more.
The Hardware
Quick specs for two models, running either Windows 8 or Windows RT:
Windows RT model: 10.6-inch ClearType HD display; 32GB or 64GB storage; microSD, USB 2.0 and Micro HD Video ports; 2x2 MIMO antennae; and Office 15. Weighs 676 grams and is 9.3 mm thick.
Windows 8 Professional model: 10.6-inch ClearType HD display; 64GB or 128GB storage; microSDXC, USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort Video ports; and 2x2 MIMO antennae. Weighs 903 grams and is 13.5 mm thick.
The Windows 8 model isn't just bulkier, it requires a heftier battery. Welcome to the differences between Intel and ARM processors. As I've expressed before Windows RT is the future.
Scratching the Surface
Observing these tablets, I struggle to see exactly what really makes them different from others, except industrial design and Surface branding. Let's be clear, unless there's some real software magic Microsoft will disclose later, Surface really is more about branding than anything. It's a cunning move.
But there is something else: Microsoft finally gets to design things the way it wants. Too many OEMs make choices that favor their margins rather than the user experience. Microsoft can't compete with Apple on those terms, and there is need as the fruit-logo company makes early mind share and market share gains in the cloud-connected device era.
Finally Microsoft seizes control of the Windows user experience in ways it should have long ago. "What about channel competition?" you ask. Where will partners go? They can't license iOS, and Android doesn't have the enterprise chops -- or at least it's not what big businesses are accustomed to. Microsoft will compete with its OEMs, but they don't have a lot of options.
Channel Competition
Besides, Surface branding is a differentiator that softens channel competition. These aren't Windows 8- or Windows RT-branded tablets. Hell, Microsoft really isn't calling them tablets at all. They're Surface!
More significantly, Microsoft has released the de facto reference design -- the baseline for Windows 8/RT tablets. What I want to know, and surely you also, is pricing. But Microsoft isn't saying: "Suggested retail pricing will be announced closer to availability and is expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel Ultrabook-class PC. OEMs will have cost and feature parity on Windows 8 and Windows RT".
Yeah, right. Pricing is where channel conflict is most likely. Microsoft has built-in cost advantage because of Windows licensing fees. Something else: Microsoft doesn't have to make a penny on any Surface tablet; selling at a loss is viable option. The company is building out the Windows ecosystem anew -- with Metro UI and energized focus on cloud-connected devices. Gaining market share, particularly against iPad, is more important now than making money selling hardware.
Target: Apple
The question I've been asking for days, why June 18? Why announce now something that won't ship until autumn? The answer: iPad. Back-to-school promises to be big for new iPad and, with OS X Mountain Lion coming next month, MacBook Air. But Microsoft just gave anyone considering Apple reason to wait. The old adage remains true: No one gets fired for buying Microsoft, and Surface is good reason to budget for just that. Frak iPad.
Make no mistake, Surface is all about putting Apple in its place. Microsoft announced today's event short notice; rumors buzzed for days; media turn-out was huge; and the presentation, which emphasized design and manufacturing, and the marketing are very Apple-like. Just look at the Surface product page. The aspirational presentation is oh-so Apple-like. Then there's the industrial design stuff. The molded VaporMg enclosure, built-in kickstand and 3 mm Touch Cover.
Hell, Yeah
Earlier today, I asked: "Should Microsoft release a branded tablet?" Many of you responded affirmatively.
Reader chinch987 smartly answers:
Yes for these reasons:
1. Microsoft Retail Stores coming all over USA.
2. Set reference design with standardized 'options' and 'accessories' which was a huge strength from the original iPod never matched.
3. Set price point and quality baseline vs Fire tablet and/or iPad
4. Wireless carriers shift to shared data plans (see Verizon with $10/mo tablet addon)
5. B&N deal
6. Bolster new media deals (zune replacement and subsequent new subscription plans not yet announced)
7. MS Bundles for holidays with Xbox/Phone
Robert Schiele: "They'd better, and they'd better sacrifice a virgin or whatever it takes to make that branded tablet compete successfully with the iPad and Android tablets. If they can't or don't, the Windows 8 release is likely to be the most epic failure in Microsoft's history".
1DaveN shares my sentiments about the channel: "To gain traction in the established tablet market, Microsoft might have to price an entry lower than an OEM would or could. Think of the XBox, which they subsidized for a long time to gain market share. OEMs will not, and should not, lose money on hardware to gain market share, but that might be appropriate and necessary for Microsoft".
Indeed, yes. Now these readers expressed their opinions before Microsoft announced anything, when there were rumors of a Barnes & Noble-manufactured tablet or Xbox branding. So...what do you think of Surface?
2. Energy efficiency in the cloud
We’re obsessed with building energy efficient data centers that enable cloud computing. Besides helping you be more productive, cloud-based services like Google Apps can reduce energy use, lower carbon emissions and save you money in the process. Last year, we crunched the numbers and found that Gmail is up to 80 times more energy-efficient (PDF) than running traditional in-house email. We’ve sharpened our pencils again to see how Google Apps as a whole—documents, spreadsheets, email and other applications—stacks up against the standard model of locally hosted services. Our results show (PDF) that a typical organization can achieve energy savings of about 65-85 percent by migrating to Google Apps.
Lower energy use results in less carbon pollution and more energy saved for organizations. That’s what happened at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which recently switched its approximately 17,000 users to Google Apps for Government. We found that the GSA was able to reduce server energy consumption by nearly 90 percent and carbon emissions by 85 percent. That means the GSA will save an estimated $285,000 annually on energy costs alone, a 93 percent cost reduction.
How is the cloud so energy efficient? It’s all about reducing energy use for servers and server cooling. Here’s how it works:
A typical organization has a lot more servers than it needs—for backup, failures and spikes in demand for computing. Cloud-based service providers like Google aggregate demand across thousands of people, substantially increasing how much servers are utilized. And our data centers use equipment and software specially designed to minimize energy use. The cloud can do the same work much more efficiently than locally hosted servers.
In fact, according to a study by the Carbon Disclosure Project, by migrating to the cloud, companies with over $1 billion in revenues in the U.S. and Europe could achieve substantial reductions in energy costs and carbon emissions by 2020:
U.S. companies could save $12.3 billion and up to 85.7 million metric tonnes of CO2
U.K. companies (PDF) would save £1.2 billion and more than 9.2 million metric tonnes of CO2
French companies (PDF) could save nearly €700 million and 1.2 million metric tonnes of CO2
We’ve built efficient data centers all over the world, even designing them in ways that make the best use of the natural environment, and we continue working to improve their performance. We think using the super-efficient cloud to deliver services like Google Apps can be part of the solution towards a more energy efficient future.
3. Linux / Unix Desktop Fun: Text Mode ASCII-art Box and Comment Drawing
Boxes command is a text filter and a little known tool that can draw any kind of ASCII art box around its input text or code for fun and profit. You can quickly create email signatures, or create regional comments in any programming language. This command was intended to be used with the vim text editor, but can be tied to any text editor which supports filters, as well as from the command line as a standalone tool.
4. Linux Continues to Dominate List of Top 500 Supercomputers
According to the latest list of the world's top 500 supercomputers, Linux is dominating the space with 462 of the planet's 500 fastest computers running the open source operating system...
Project management software is usually thought of as being expensive, complex and mainly for big business. Which is a shame, because really the technology is just about documenting some complex task to help you better understand it. And that can be useful in all sorts of situations (as you’ll know if you’ve ever tried to organise a large wedding, say).
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. GanttProject is a compact open source project management tool which is free for anyone to try. Its main focus is ease of use, so previous experience isn’t essential (though it’ll definitely help). And the project is Java-based, running equally happily on Windows, OS X or Debian Linux.
The best way to get started is probably to open the sample project (there’s a link on the Windows Start menu, or you can open it directly from the GanttProject folder). You’ll see various tasks displayed and organised on the Gantt chart. Double-clicking provides more information on a particular task (when it starts and finishes, its priority, any associated notes or web link, the people allocated to the task, and more).
Clicking the Resources Chart then displays all the people working on this particular project. You can see at a glance who’s working 24-7, and who’s got nothing to do. And in a click or two you’re able to take people off one task and perhaps allocate them elsewhere.
And because of course all you’ll need to share your decisions with others, it’s good to see that GanttProject has plenty of ways to help. It’s easy to save individual charts as images, say. The program can quickly generate HTML or PDF reports on your projects. And there are even options to import and export projects in Microsoft Project and CSV formats, as well as share projects directly with others via WebDAV.
Once you’ve got a feel for the basics, it’s then not too difficult to start creating a project of your own. More (or indeed any) local Help would be useful here, but even without that we had no problem exploring the menus, browsing various dialogs, and quickly building up a detailed picture of our test project.
There are some issues, too. The interface didn’t always seem intuitive. The report generator occasionally failed to generate anything at all (although this seemed to be an intermittent problem). And if you’re a project management expert then you’ll probably find GanttProject to be just too basic. (There’s nothing on costing, for instance, which for some is the main reason to use project management software at all.)
We found nothing that would stop us from getting our work done, though. And so if your project management needs are simple, or your budget limited, then GanttProject deserves a closer look: it’s small, relatively easy to use, and has plenty of useful features and functionality to explore.
Following up after a job interview without being annoying is tough. We put together a few suggestions, but we missed one important sentence. Sean Weinberg, co-founder of resume-grading web app RezScore, suggests that there's one line you don't want to leave out: "Please let me know either way." He explains why: More »
7. This Is Airbus’ Crazy New Aeroplane Design
If you thought that the monster A380 wasn’t crazy enough, you have to check out Airbus’ latest design, which just got awarded a patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
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