I have owned just about every Nintendo console since the Super Nintendo.  I bought each one when they came out because they were fun.  But, now that I am older and have less time to game, I don’t just buy every console for the sake of owning one.  They really have to be fun.  In the age of Kinect, that is becoming harder and harder.  My Wii is now collecting dust somewhere, and I totally skipped the PlayStation without regret.  So, I approached the Wii U with a lot of trepidation.  And, right now it looks like it is going to be the first Nintendo console I am going to pass on in a long time.  It just does not look fun anymore.  Demos such as this chase demo show off the new type of game play that the console will enable, a hide-and-seek of sorts. But, it really does not look too exciting past the initial gimmick.

So, how do they fix this?  Well, the easiest way would be to copy the Kinect.  But, I don’t think this is viable because of the legal issues.  So, if I was running Nintendo I would run with their current concept, but supplement that weird controller with smartphone apps.  Allow any touch platform (iPhone, iPad, Android, Win Phone 7, Win 8 tablet) to act as a controller for the device.  In addition, allow these platforms to download games from the device and play them anywhere.  Make your whole library available.  Think onlive for Nintendo games enabled by this new console.  That alone would make the platform a success.

Right now, their current strategy seems a little limited and honestly pretty boring.  But if they would embrace other major platforms, I think it could be compelling enough to compete in the world of Kinect.

Since we will probably see the UI for Windows 8 in the next couple months, I figured now was a good time to speculate on what it is going to look like.  If you have read my blog in the past, you know I wasn’t too far off in my description off the next generation task bar.  So, hopefully, I will be on point for this as well.

So far we don’t know a whole lot about Windows 8.  We do know that the primary direction for Windows 8 is to marry the touch based UI with a point and click UI.  This is so the company can finally compete in the tablet space.  There seems to be three prevailing theories for developing an OS for a tablet (1) scale up a mobile OS (iOS), (2) develop a completely new tablet-oriented OS (Android 3), or (3) modify a desktop OS.  So far #3 has not worked at all.  But, I think we will see if this is a viable strategy with Window 8.  Personally, I think it will be viable.  But, it is all based on execution.

So, what is Windows 8 going to look like?  I actually think we have seen a lot of what it is going to look like.  I think it is going to be heavily metro inspired.  So, the UI will look like a combination of what we have seen with WP7, Zune, IE9 beta, the new Xbox Dashboard, and the original metro interface Windows Media Center.  What does this mean?  There will be a lot more white-space, larger fonts, subtle animations, and a lot more movement.  I think the most telling look at Windows 8 is seen in a video of the Flickr Windows 7 app.  The great thing about the UI is that it is built for touch.  So, I think it will make tablet-lovers happy.  The big question mark is getting this thing to run well across all the new platforms they promised.  I would guess this is going to take a large effort in improving the overall performance of Windows so that it runs smoothly across ARM and x86.

I do have a lot of questions around the core of the OS, specifically the taskbar and windowing systems.  The current functionality of the taskbar is stellar.  We might see a few tweak here-and-there, but I think that it is here to stay.  I am less sure about the windows.  I think with tablets, there is much less importance on the ability to size your window.  So, we might see some tweaks in the window management UI.  Another big question is the overall look of the taskbar and windows.  With Windows 7, there is a high reliance on transparency.  But, this doesn’t seem to jive with the metro style.  It will be interesting to see if they marry the two, or if they simply ditch transparency altogether.  I am personally hoping that they get rid of most of the transparency and really only show it when needed (for instance, when using Aero peek).

Anyways, those are my thoughts on what Windows 8 will look like right now.  What are your thoughts?

…or why the current selection of tablets suck.  Tablets are getting a whole lot of hype right now.  But, I have no plans on buying one in the near future.  The problem with tablets is three-fold.  First the current generation of tablet operating systems suck.  You pretty much have to choose between a giant smart phone (iPad and Android 3.0) or an OS that is not really built for touch.    As smart as a smartphone is, it still does not compare with my laptop.  And, as awesome as it sounds to have a full OS on a tablet, you really need to have a good touch experience to make it work.  The second problem is that if you actually create content (via typing), tablets are horrible.  Sure, when you want to hit up Engadget, a tablet works fine, but when you want to bang out some code, everything breaks down.  If I am spending $500, I would expect to use the machine for more than surfing the internet and playing Fruit Ninja.  And, that leads to the final reason, I will not be buying a tablet this year, they are too expensive.  Not to sound too much like Mike over at American Pickers, but I am pulling the trigger at $200.  For me, these devices are way too expensive for what amounts to a leisure device.

With all that said, I can really only think of one good reason to have a tablet.  And, that is for travelers.  Laptops and netbooks suck on planes.  If I was flying around a bunch (not via Flight Control), I would pull the trigger.

By all accounts, WP7 devices aren’t flying off shelves.  I am personally not too surprised by this.  The mobile market is saturated.   WP7 does a lot of things better than both Android, iOS, and Blackberry.  But, it has yet to garner the same caché as the other devices.  Android really made its mark when the Droid commercials painted the device (and related OS) as being diametrically opposed to the iPhone.  It eschewed the fancifulness of iOS for a fast, productivity-based device.  While the “save us from our phones” campaign for WP7 is funny, I really don’t think it does much to differentiate WP7 from the pack.  Maybe this is just a long play to introduce the phone in Q4 of this year, and really hammer on it after the Q1 update.  But, I really don’t see this working in the long term.  If I were in charge over there, I would have spent my money focusing on its really unique features such as its XBOX integration or Zune pass.  I think you would have gotten a whole lot more early adopters if the general public saw it as a phone+gaming+music platform versus just a productivity platform.

Regardless, I have never purchased a device for its sales numbers.  But, I am worried that if Microsoft doesn’t get its act together a really cool platform might get discontinued because a couple of execs didn’t see the true value of the platform.

I just got my Samsung Focus in the mail yesterday, so it has been well under 24 hours using the device.  But, so far I am extremely happy with it. The main reason I chose WP7 was the UI.  After regular use, I am still blown away by how good it is.  It is just so damn interactive.  There is really nothing like it on the market today.  The big difference is that rather than focusing on transitioning from one static screen to the next, WP7 transitions the entire UI.  When you click on a tile, you don’t get a traditional pop or fade, the tile literally flies off the screen.  And, the app just does not just appear on the screen, the text of the app pivots from some invisible horizon to come into view.  It is ridiculous and completely awesome at the same time.  And it doesn’t just stop at transitions, you get these subtle animations throughout the experience.  My favorite so far is that when you read an email and return back to the list, the subject and body exert from the email you were on flies back to its place in the email list.  Overall, it feels like someone at Microsoft channeled a UI from ten years in the future and configured it to work on today’s devices.  It is that good.

So today we finally got to see what Apple is cooking up for its next gen OS and laptop line.  With the air, Apple has continued its leadership in bringing awesome hardware to the laptop segment.  The new Air is impossibly thin, albeit a bit underpowered.  In terms of OSX, I really didn’t see anything announced that would have me running back to the platform.  Multi-tasking  still seems a bit of a mess.  Mission control just seems to add to the confusing UI.

After about a year and a half of  using a Macbook as my primary development machine at home, I finally decided to go out and get my own computer.   After a lot of research, I decided to go with the HP Envy 14.  I was primarily looking for a machine with the hardware prowess of the Macbook and the awesomeness that is Windows 7.  Did the Envy live up to my expectations?   Hell yeah.  My favorite part of the Macbook was its hardware.  It had a beautiful screen, an awesome keyboard, and a fairly good touch pad.  While I don’t think the touch pad of the Envy lives up to the Macbook, the screen and keyboard more than make up for its deficiencies.  The monitor on the Envy is the best I have ever seen.  Windows 7 looks absolutely stunning on the device.  And, the keyboard seems to have a nice balance of clicky-ness and softness.  The only complaint I have had after a weekend of use, is that the two finger scrolling does not work very well.  I have not found a fix, so I just have went back to the scrollable regions as a work around.  While not perfect, it certainly is effective and I really don’t miss the multi-touch at all.  Of course, the best part of having the Envy is that it runs Windows 7 by default. After using XP at work and OSX at home, Windows 7 is quite refreshing.  And, this machine powers through it.  Out of the box, I have a WEI of 5.9 with the limiting factors being the RAM and the disk speed.  Everything else (graphics, gaming, and processor) are all around 6.7.  I have been running Aptana, XAMPP, Zune, Seesmic, and a browser without a problem.  Overall, I think that the Envy has been a great purchase.  I would highly recommend the machine to someone looking for a premium laptop running Windows 7.

After a bit of research, I came across a post on the notebook review forums that fixes the 2 finger scroll issues I was having.  Now, it works almost exactly like my Macbook.  Too bad it doesn’t come installed out of the box.

I had extremely high expectations for the Windows Phone 7 launch after they initially announced the platform a few months back.  I am a big fan of Windows 7,  Xbox and Zune UIs.  So, a device that combined all of these into a portable form factor sounded to good to be true.  But, after taking in the announcement today and watching videos of my future phone (the Samsung Focus), I was completely blown away.  The new platform met my expectations and then some.  For what it lacks in season, it really makes up for in style and cohesion.  I am not sure how the rest of the market will react.  And, frankly I don’t care.  This looks like an awesome platform.  And, I am pretty pumped about its prospects.

Galen Gruman epitomizes what is wrong with tech journalism today. We see it with the iPhone reception debacle and now with Windows Phone 7. Tech reporting is dead.  No one takes the time to test or actually use anything anymore.  They just look for what is wrong, harp on it for 2000 words, and then hope their crap hits the first page of techmeme.   And then when it does, a bunch of no-name traffic scabs repeat what the first idiot says and it becomes a popular meme.  It is getting to the point where the only places to get  “real” reviews of a device are engadget and cnet.  Lets hope these two bastions of actual tech reporting don’t fall.

Update:  For a point of comparison, compare Gruman’s drivel with someone that actually has used and develops for the device.

About a year and a half ago, I had to make a decision on which platform to build my personal projects on. At the time, I had a pretty deep knowledge of .NET, a decent knowledge of Java, and a very minimal knowledge of PHP. I immediately threw Java out the window because of my horrible experiences trying to build large Java projects at University and at my 9-5. I then did POCs of both .NET and PHP. I really liked .NET but hosting was more expensive. PHP was a bit awkward at first, but after a couple weeks I grew to love it. So, I decided to go with PHP as my platform of choice. After a year and a half, I couldn’t be more happy about the decision. I have not run into any platform limitations and best of all, I no longer have to compile. Removing this restriction has really sped up my workflow and removed a completely unnecessary distraction. If I had the choice, I would not ever go back to compiled development environments.