SYNAPSE CIRCUIT MICROSOFT TALK SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

How much???? Are you nuts????

SYNAPSE CIRCUIT 

MICROSOFT TALK 1:
BELOW THE SURFACE
Goodhour, Synapse Circuit Readers! What’s happening? It’s always good to see you! Good news if you are interested into making music as I have the latest Magix Music Maker software coming soon! And if you want to create 3D animations then standby for the Synapse Circuit iClone 5 competition! Whoohoo!

What’s up with Microsoft, huh?

#Microsoft #Surface #Digitalworkshop #Reallusion #Magix #Roxio #Incomedia #Roxio #Android

OH YEAH? TAKE THIS!
Sadly, for the consumer, Microsoft and Apple have a warlike attitude towards emerging technologies such as Google for example. Apple, as we all know, has taken great strides into mobile device technology out of reinventing the MP3 player, mobile phone and tablet computer. Apple’s mobile devices have overshadowed its computers for a good while and now that mobile device windstorm has petered out the consumer can see more clearly.

For a long, long while Microsoft has been trailing behind Apple’s iPod and who can forget the Zune? Oooh, it died a death! However, if the truth be known one could get great MP3 playing devices that didn’t need the iTunes ecosystem. Because the Windows PC was and still is commonplace its users could enjoy the countless free and commercial MP3 creation software. PC users could determine the quality of the MP3 from the original recording on vinyl or CD. I know... By today’s standards a generation has spawned without the warmth of vinyl or the CD... I used to love vinyl (singles, LPs & albums) but as a collector with a small abode it became impractical. I warmed to the CD especially due to the extra information / media that could be had from a collector’s edition Enhanced CD that contained a multimedia presentation not unlike a PowerPoint presentation complete with a video or two of much loved singles, interview, etc. This got replaced by the DVD. The point I am making is that Apple and its bloody iTunes killed off the music industry. I mean... ...how bad must the industry be if you can’t even give away an album? Because Apple were great at publicity it made people want to buy into its products and right from the start I could see through it!

Microsoft felt that it had to come up with an alternative to the iPod when it was impractical due to the fact that most of us PC users were happy to go out and buy the music in a retail outlet: Virgin, Our Price Records, Tower Records and HMV! Oh, not forgetting the various independent music shops in London’s West End! We were happy to go out there buy the music, convert it to MP3 and place it on our MP3 players or the mobile phones that could handle the format. We PC users didn’t care for iTunes at all! We never needed it and still don’t! I thought the iPod was a load of crap – I still do think that! I thought the Archos media players were so much better!

Microsoft started to fall down the Apple rabbit hole.

ALONG CAME ANDROID
When the first Android handset hit the market in the form of a HTC designed flip-out QWERTY keyboard it looked very raw and most importantly it was perceived by many as a fad that wouldn’t go the distance as the iPhone was all the rage! But we all know the story of Android... As Android started to take off with the HTC Hero and the Samsung Galaxy S I started to hear rumours of Microsoft working on its own handset. Can anyone remember when it made its debut? I can’t and that’s the point with Microsoft – it can’t do anything beyond the operating system and Office!

Sadly... I say “sadly” because Microsoft didn’t take – in my opinion – enough time to study the marketplace to make educated anticipations upon where Apple would end up... Microsoft was so busy lashing out to preserve this fallacy of a technological giant when all it really did was to give the IBM compatible PC a visual user interface. Okay, I shouldn’t appear ungrateful because Windows is GREAT and it is was and still is a LIBERATOR! Without Windows we would never have gotten a myriad of wonderful software houses such as:-

Serif
Magix
Roxio
Digitalworkshop
Reallusion
Incomedia

There were many, many more but they fell by the wayside as they were not able to keep up with the innovation and take initiative in a different approach to things we do on a PC! The software houses mentioned above not only showed MAC users that great things can be achieved on the PC such as DTP via Serif PagePlus, PhotoPlus and DrawPlus; Music Composition from Magix Music Maker and Music Studio; Video Editing through Serif MoviePlus and Magix Movie Edit Pro; Web Design from Incomedia WebSite X5, Magix Web Designer and Serif WebPlus and so on! Once upon a time there was a widely held view that in order to do the above well one had to:-

A. Own a MAC.
B. Own Adobe software (for the MAC).

Sure, one could own a PC and use the same Adobe software but that was very, very costly! The aforementioned software houses have done so much to empower ordinary users with extraordinary ideas! The above software houses made and still make their products cost effective to the point of mocking Adobe and MAC users that think little of the PC and non-Adobe software. For a good, good while it was a pain in the ass to take PC produced documents to be printed at MAC based print bureaus. To be honest with you a lot of MAC based designers were too far up themselves to recognize what a PC and non-Adobe software can do! The one good thing that Adobe gave us was the PDF format which helped to take the befuddlement out of the printing game! THANK GOODNESS!!!

What Apple did for its computers was very, very, very smart! Apple recognized that PC users were benefitting from these wonderful inexpensive software and decent PC set-ups that it created cheaper MAC computers with a set of bundled software to get the user going: iWork. Adobe also recognized what was happening and released consumer versions of its professional software i.e. Photoshop Elements but what Adobe failed and still fail to understand is that its direct competition, Serif, released fully professional software that produced documents that a professional printer can understand i.e. CMYK files such as TIF, PDF and JPEG. Today, CMYK isn’t much of an issue as many print bureaus have large scale domestic printers that will do the job of producing your flyers, newsletters, etc. The big music software creators such as Cakewalk, Steinberg, etc did the same thing and produced cut down versions of their respective software titles but such efforts weren’t enough to stop Magix, Synapse Audio (Orion Studio) and lately Cockos (REAPER) from producing music composition software that delivered!

At that point Microsoft could have easily gotten into PC hardware production – especially as there quite often hardware that conflicted with the various versions of Windows. Microsoft could have standardised the PC and worked with the aforementioned software houses provide a bundle of great software to match iWork. It would have made the PC even more ubiquitous than it already is and helped to make the software houses (and products) even better known than they are today!

What did Microsoft do instead? In a nutshell they went so far up its backend that it weakened its position. What do I mean?

1. Microsoft concentrated on its Internet Explorer web browser so that it dominated the competition at the time i.e. Netscape! Not only that, Internet Explorer played by its own rules and did not adhere to the current web standards: W3C

2. Produced a potentially good WYSIWYG web design software, FrontPage. The trouble with FrontPage produced websites was that they would only look good and function with Internet Explorer. What if the user viewed the website on a MAC? How about another browser such as Netscape Navigator? DISASTER! By the time Microsoft realized the error of its ways it lost the web design software market just as fast as they started it.

What a waste! As a result I do not use Internet Explorer! Internet Explorer is the Internet equivalent of faecal matter! Microsoft continued to make the imperfect operating system releases expensive. How many times have you bought a legitimate Windows operating system and you get a message to say that what you have is an illegal copy? That’s bloody annoying! Rather than perfect releases of Windows Microsoft kept releasing product that had to be fixed by these constant Service Packs that could sometimes mess up a PC even more! Grrrrrr! What? A Windows phone??? £*@% OFF!!! That’s how I feel about anything Windows and that’s Microsoft’s doing!



Above: As you can see, Windows Phone 8. Below: The screenshot of an Android handset using a Windows style launcher. 



INSIGHT
Had Microsoft taken the time to be analytical it could have foreseen that the iPad would clash with the Macbook. What business model can survive a yearly complete hardware overhaul? This is why the MAC computer and PC aren’t going away anytime soon as much as the tech media loves to report the drop in PC sales!

Analysis would have led to the understanding that Android handsets and tablets can complement both Windows and MAC computers. The Android tablet is phenomenal not only due to its cost effectiveness but its longevity! And as I have stated before, many of the productivity applications are fully functional in its own right and / or can act as a sketchpad for PC and MAC set-ups in that one can produce Office compatible documents; MIDI for music; MP4 video and so on. I would rather take out a 7” Android tablet that can, incidentally, make and accept phone calls! Why on Earth would I want an iPad? And why on Earth would I or anyone else want a Surface tablet???

Look at how much Microsoft has lost on the ill-fated Surface Windows RT tablets; $1.2 BILLION!!!! Just how much more does Microsoft has to lose before it realizes that the Surface is not going to fly???

PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL
Because of this ‘us against them’ attitude Microsoft, like Apple, does not think of unification and harmonizing with new, exciting emerging technologies. They (Microsoft and Apple) want our custom and will – if they had their way – litigate the competition out of business. Look how that’s turned out for Apple? It is ugly for the consumer! I as a PC owner feel that my custom is unappreciated with idiotic messages informing me that my copy of Windows is illegal! A few years ago I tried to update my Windows XP Professional with a Service Pack and I got a message to say that my copy was illegal and was not able to perform the update, caught a virus in the process and lost a couple of years of work! This will be the last time I mention it but I was super-pissed off at the time! All that work lost because of Microsoft’s crappy software! And they want to move into phones and tablets without perfecting what they have???? That’s insane!

That $1.2 Billion could have easily funded Microsoft branded computers with an operating system to be proud of and a great bundle of software to get the user started. There are some amazing Windows based laptops out there with a touch screen that should have seen Microsoft invest into Android phones and tablets to compliment the Windows computer! Microsoft could have set-up a division for the creation of Android applications.

The only reason why I still use the PC is because of the amazing aforementioned software houses that produce cost effective products that deliver professional results each and every time – unlike bloody Microsoft!

Microsoft, if you are reading this please compensate me for my loss and get it together! Stop scratching the surface and embrace Android!

That’s something to think about!

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ECHOES OF CEO LARRY PAGE’S WORDS IN MY MIND - STILL! WHY I LAUGH AT SOME FANBOYS & GIRLS.

"Android is very bad! Windows RT is so much better!"

"Being negative is not how we make progress...”

SYNAPSE CIRCUIT

ECHOES OF CEO LARRY PAGE’S WORDS IN MY MIND - STILL!

WHY I LAUGH AT SOME FANBOYS & GIRLS.
#LarryPage #Fanboys #Fangirls #Microsoft #Surface #MSSurface #WindowsRT

Good afternoon, Synapse Circuit Readers! Yes, it’s a boy! Well done Prince William and Kate!

I hope that you all are in the best of health and making the most out of your beautiful tech! Yes, indeed... Tech should enhance our wonderful lives and that’s why the words of Google CEO still echoes in my mind and why I laugh at some Fanboys and Fangirls.

GOOGLE CEO LARRY PAGE’S WORDS
“We should be building great things that don't exist... Being negative is not how we make progress...” I so strongly agree with those sentiments and it is chiefly why I haven't been happy with Apple and Microsoft; the two technological giants seem to have this Cold War agenda against each other and, of course, Google. I think it is silly! It’s counterproductive!

What do we want from an operating system?

Security.

To be able to do perform day to day tasks such as word processing, photo editing, video editing, etc with ease.

To connect - whether it’s going online or using communications applications.

All of the above can be applied to just about every operating system on the planet. Naturally, there will be some advantages and disadvantages between the respective systems but they share a great commonality. And with commonality there is scope for a unified effort to bring us together regardless of our preferences. Some people like iOS but I don't and that’s good. But I am very happy to be able to communicate with my Adorable Friend through apps like Viber, WhatsApp, HeyTell and so on. How would it be if the producers of Viber said, “We're only going to stick to Android”?

I am quite sure that we'll be seeing more technological enterprises producing more mobile operating system alternatives which are an exciting prospect for those who love technology rather than Apple, Google or Microsoft. Me? If something new comes onto the market that will be of benefit then I am all for it! And that’s why I laugh at some Fanboys and Fangirls who have allowed themselves to become so trapped in their thinking with stupid sentiments such as, “Nokia is just fine with Windows 8. Why spoil a good phone with Android?” This dumb viewpoint arose from my articles on why I think Nokia should go Android. I am not advocating that Nokia should drop Windows 8 all together, far from it. It’s just that I think Nokia can always bring something new to the Android table and serve those who have a preference for the popular operating system (Android). My reply to that person is, “Freedom of choice.” Seriously, I have no time to waste in telling others why I think their non Android preference is wrong, bad or dangerous to their health: If people are happy with iOS and Windows etc then that’s fine with me. But I am always interested to learning the advantages and disadvantages of these operating systems though as this is a fascinating subject for me.

RESURFACING
I wonder as to why the two main technological giants have become so rigid with their approach to consumer products. If you have been reading my articles on Apple then you will know that my attitude is: Give the iOS users what they want and not what you think they want. With Microsoft I think the current CEO Steve Ballmer comes across as a little stubborn in his ways and I think that this is based on Microsoft in its heyday – if they ever had one because they keep stuffing it up with some stupid crap with just about every operating system release.

I noticed that although many, many people read my little ‘Tech-Game’ article that I posted yesterday they didn’t play it because they know who’s who! Lol! Yes, I think Steve Ballmer is very much Dr. Evil! Ha ha! Ballmer thinks that the best way for Microsoft to beat the competition is to say uncomplimentary things about them. YAY! Way to go, Steve! As another distinguished doctor would say, “How’s that working for you?” Yes, Steve... Just how is that working for you and Microsoft? That’s right: Billions of dollars down the pan! Nice going!

Again, the biggest mistakes regarding the Surface tablet is that it does not feature the Intel chip and it runs Windows RT. The biggest mistake that Steve Ballmer has made is to not understand the market. Despite the calm claims of Apple’s Tim Cook, Windows desktop computers rule and that’s Microsoft’s strength and weakness at the same time. Let me explain...

A Windows desktop PC can have a long shelf life and therefore Windows PC owners do not have a tendency to discard it a year later as (some) tablet owners do. This is a great strength. The weakness aspect is that many families are bypassing the PC because all they primarily want to get online and surf the web. Back in the day if I wanted to enjoy the Internet in all its glory then my only recourse would be to purchase a Windows or Mac PC and because I had lofty ideas on becoming a graphic / multimedia designer the PC was perfect. Today, many households do not have such creative ambitions in mind. Oh, I also do music once in a while with the aid of a PC and given a good wad of cash I’d probably buy a better PC to that end goal. Yes, so because the average household has no desire to use their desktop PC for anything other than social networking and surfing the Web it has become redundant to the tablet which, as you know, is portable and inexpensive where Android tablets are concerned or if iPad inclined many folk can pick up an iPad through computer exchange stores and online.

In my mind Windows RT and Surface was never going to fly; it’s a good idea poorly executed. I am inclined to think that Microsoft blew an opportunity to create an affordable PC in a tablet form. There could have been at least two versions:

A netbook experience for non power users and practically a desktop PC in a tablet form for power users whereby the user is able to, like me, do their music, video editing, desktop publishing while not being chained to a desk so to speak like I am right now. Mass produced these ideal PC tablets would be a lot cheaper.

COULD ANDROID SAVE MICROSOFT’S BACON?
I would imagine that it should be possible to gut Windows RT out of the Surface tablet and replace it with Android due to the ARM chip compatibility. If it wasn’t for Steve Ballmer’s pride I believe that the Surface sales would increase with the knowledge that Android could be installed on it instead. I am surprised that Cyanogenmod or someone else hasn’t done that already. I predict that over the coming weeks, months that the Surface will continue to plummet in price purely because there is not a high demand for it.

I guess that Microsoft would never back down from their current stance and produce cost effective Android tablets that have such a good quality as the Surface. I can just see Microsoft making a fairly good compromise in producing inexpensive Android based tablets that will feature the Office in app form – not that people really need Office in app form due to great alternatives that are available on both Android and iOS. That said, I do see a scope for people, like me, who have a decent desktop PC and a tablet of some sort, most likely Android, to create documents on one platform and edit / finish on another i.e. from Android tablet to Windows PC. I can do that now on my Samsung Galaxy Note 2!

I have also been thinking a lot about the possibility of acquiring the Samsung ATIV Q. That’s something that Microsoft can explore: dual Android and Windows devices. I think it’ll work. Sadly, due to such rigid thinking Microsoft would never do it. Steve Ballmer would rather lose more Billion$ than to join forces with what he sees as the competition. Besides, he, like the late Steve Jobs and now Cook and co have kicked up a stink against Google Android that would make any of them look a little silly in collaborating. I think it is a shame.

On the other hand when the Surface reaches a rock bottom sale price of £150 I might just snap one up in the hope that independent developers such as Cyanogenmod would have the Surface on the list of devices! You just never know! Lol!

Take good care!

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MICROSOFT $1BN DOWN ON THE SURFACE

SYNAPSE CIRCUIT
MICROSOFT $1BN DOWN ON THE SURFACE
#Microsoft #SurfaceRT #WindowsAndroid #HybridTablets

Good evening, Synapse Circuit Readers! The fan is blazing on full blast and I am still burning! Still, it’s a beautiful night!

Have you heard the news about Microsoft losing $1 Billion with the failure of the Surface tablet and its shares have fallen by over $32 Billion!

STRANGE GAMBLE  
Yes, what a strange gamble Microsoft placed on the Surface. Windows 8 RT???? Bizarre! Rather than playing to its strengths i.e. a tablet PC with a full version of Windows 8 they tried to take on the iPad and the army of Android tablets and without a great portfolio of apps! I would have thought that Microsoft would have known better than to try and create an operating system for the ARM chip when that horse has bolted from the stable. Personally, I think it makes better sense to buy a decent laptop than to waste money on a Windows RT tablet which is more expensive and for no justifiable reason. Ok, it does look aesthetically pleasing plus the stand and keyboard are great ideas too!

Windows RT has more success on the mobile phone but not much in comparison to Android and iOS.

TABLET PC  
If you have been following the history of technology you’d know that the tablet computer is nothing new and that Microsoft had created one when Bill Gates was knocking around but at the time the tablet PC was too costly to produce. They were on the right track but did not follow through! What a shame!

All those billions of dollars would have been better spent on mass producing a tablet PC thus bringing the costs down. December last year I visited a technology exhibition and came across the HP stand; I had a play with a nice looking tablet PC with the full blown Windows 8 OpSys and thought it was quite good. I thought the build was pretty solid. But I almost passed out when I was told the price! I think it was something in the region of £799! Gosh! For that money I’m better off with the good old fashioned desktop and a Google Nexus!

I am also surprised that Microsoft didn’t come up with the idea for a hybrid full Windows 8 and Android tablet thus combining the best of both worlds!

It remains to be seen if there’s a market for the full blown Windows 8 tablet experience let alone hybrid models such as the forthcoming Samsung ATIV Q. But I fear the price tag for these things will put it out of reach for most people. I can see shares falling some more!

Let me know what you think!

Take good care!

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Thank you for watching and reading!

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