The Insider News

Hal's (Im)Perfect Vision[^]:

The core problem for OEMs is this: they want to offer a unique OEM-specific experience as a way to differentiate from their competitors and allow them to squeeze a little extra margin out of otherwise undifferentiated systems. Most of the time what you see out of OEMs just seems like a hack. This isn’t just about PCs. Wonder why Android Tablets haven’t made a dent in the iPad? It is the same factors that are causing PCs to lose ground to Apple products.

8vo[^]:

After computers were made of bronze cogs but before they were made of integrated circuits, they were made of paper, they were found in books. All of this is just another dimension of the relationship between book and computer. More than containers that sometimes compete for the same information, they are on the family tree of a daunting ambition to compute and compile all that can be known. Each in their own time they are the best-fit materials for the job.

UX Movement[^]:

Have you ever wanted your users to click your links, but didn’t know how to get them to act? When some designers run into this problem they’re tempted to use the words “click here” on their links. Before you give in to the temptation, you should know that using these words on a link can affect how users experience your interface.

Ars Technica[^]:

It's certainly safe at this point to say that flash has won the war in the mobile space—I don't think we'll ever see another tablet or phone based on anything other than solid state storage. The war for the proverbial desktop (which includes most laptops) is far from over, with hard disk drives still outnumbering SSDs in most traditional computers. Still, SSDs are in enough places doing enough things that modern operating systems have changed to accommodate them.

PandoDaily[^]:

The touchpad problem illustrates why Microsoft had to build the Surface rather than let its hardware partners take the lead on Windows 8 tablets. Making a great trackpad isn’t easy. Humble as it seems, perfecting the interface depends on a host of skills that most companies don’t possess—top-notch industrial design, perfectionist control over manufacturing processes, and, most importantly, software that’s finely crafted to work with the hardware. If PC vendors can’t even get this small thing right, how could they possibly make something as polished as an iPad?

RedMonk[^]:

Software licensing is and will remain a viable revenue stream for the foreseeable future. But both public market valuations and observed behaviors of strategic software players indicate that the days of software licensing as a primary revenue stream are potentially over. If the world’s largest software firm pivoting into hardware doesn’t convince you that the world is changing, my question to you is: what would?

The Laboratorium[^]:

It is time for the participants in the Tracking Protection Working Group to take a long, hard look at where the process is going. It is time for the rest of us to tell them, loudly, that the process is going awry. It is true that Do Not Track, at least in the present regulatory environment, is voluntary. But it does not follow that the standard should allow “compliant” websites to pick and choose which pieces to comply with.

The Endeavour[^]:

When I was learning PowerShell, I thought of it as a scripting language that has a shell. But the right way to think of it may be the opposite, a shell that has a scripting language. Apparently others have followed this same change of perspective.

Marco.org[^]:

One of the biggest problems Microsoft will face with the Windows 8 platforms is that they’re effectively starting from zero apps. What can Microsoft do to encourage developers to create great Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps?