Microsoft finally admits what’s wrong with WinMo
Wed, Apr 1, 09
A short but remarkably revealing report in DetroitNews, Microsoft to chase iPhone:
Microsoft Corp. plans to bring some of the features of rival Apple Inc.’s iPhone to a broader market through its Windows Mobile software, said mobile-phone chief Andy Lees.
Microsoft will use its ties with handset makers to encourage iPhone-like functions in a range of less costly devices, Lees, a senior vice president, said in an interview ahead of the CTIA Wireless show.
In one example, the iPhone advanced the technology around so-called graphics acceleration, which allows the software design to be more fluid and movie-like, he said.
When, for well over a decade, every single smartphone manufacturer failed to even try, how did a newcomer like Apple do that?
“Apple took a bet on expensive hardware and designed the software around the hardware,” Lees said. “That allowed Apple to design a phone with superior graphics capabilities.”
In other words, Apple’s unique ability to integrate hardware and software, and being in charge of its own systems-design destiny was the secret. Why not Microsoft?
Microsoft, [Lees] said, wasn’t set up to help match that in its software.
But wasn’t the separation of hardware and software what made Microsoft the most powerful technology company in the world? Haven’t Microsoft executives (and tech pundits) been telling us this separation (choice and reliance on “partners”) was what made Microsoft’s platform superior to Apple’s foolish insistence of going it alone?
What will Microsoft do now?
Microsoft is working with its hardware manufacturers to make those kinds of innovations more rapidly available as an industry, Lees said.
Welcome to the absurdity of design coordination across several continents among “partners” with different cultures, innovation capabilities, corporate agendas and competitive pressures. Unfortunately for Microsoft to repudiate this is tantamount to repudiating its PC history, which still provides the vast majority of its revenues. Welcome to the Zune generation, Microsoft. Rock. Hard place.
Noted: Braille on mobile touch screens
Wed, Apr 1, 09
From NewScientist, Vibrating touch screens spell out Braille:
In Braille, letters are encoded using a two-by-three matrix in which each character is represented by a different configuration of raised and absent dots at the six locations. To display these dots on a touch-screen device, Jussi Rantala of the University of Tampere in Finland and colleagues used a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, which has a piezoelectric material built into the touch screen that vibrates when an electric signal is applied to it. The team installed software that represents a raised dot as a single pulse of intense vibration, and an absent dot as a longer vibration made up of several weaker pulses.
The team developed two methods: (1) the user moves a finger horizontally across the screen to detect the bumps, and (2) the finger stays still but the screen vibrates the sequence of six dots, each 360 milliseconds apart. In the latter method, once users got used to it, they could read a character in as little as 1.25 seconds.
The team’s next step, says NewScientist
will be to present entire words and sentences. Screen-reading software is already available that “grabs” information displayed as text and turns it into speech. The same information could be turned into Braille characters on phones with vibrating touch screens.
