Be Excellent To Each Other

Microsoft are holding a press event in an hour or so, with a "major announcement". There's been speculation that they're announcing a tablet/range of tablets. And there's maybe going to be something Xboxey about them.

Liveblog here, dunno if it's being livestreamed.

I will be interested.

I'd be more interested if they announced a direct competitor to the PS Vita.

Live blog starts 11:30pm London time apparently.

Which seems a bit ridiculous for a Big Announcement. Apple hit the sweetspot for both the US and Europe with their 6pm UK starts.

I don't give a fuck.

Yet.

I hope it plays Zune!

Surely you mean Microsoft Music... This week.

Odd to be coming a week after E3. Particularly considering they announced an Xboxey tablet thing at E3.

It's more "Windows RT tablet" than "Xbox tablet", accordingly to the more frequent rumours, which would explain the E3 thing. But overall it doesn't seem to make a lick of sense.

Yeah, that makes sense to me, but we do know quite a lot about Windows RT already.

If it is going to be Xbox related, I can't imagine it being something connected specifically to Xbox 360 hardware, more the wider set of services and infrastructure related to the Xbox brand, or some connectivity between new tablets and Xbox consoles that would work with a new Xbox console too.

If you mean "so that's not big enough to be news", the rumours are of a Microsoft-branded hardware tablet, which would be huge news.

NEW XBOX!!! Is there a stream then?

Agreed, if MS are manufacturing their own tablet, that would big news. I guess I meant if it's just "Here's a look at some Windows 8 tablets from the usual suspects", that would be potentially interesting, just not much of an announcement. We'll see, I guess.

Oh, right. Well that's a different story. A quite dull story

It's starting.

Whatever it is, it won't beat this: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/30929 ... onstration

it's a tablet made by Microsoft. The "Microsoft Surface".

This cover keyboard is interesting.

I'm fairly impressed so far. Price is going to be important.

Looks like a big Windows Phone - it'll never catch on.

Are they just chasing the iPad?

Isn't everyone? Just like they chased the iPhone, with varying amounts of success.

Stop protecting your awful decision to buy a Windows phone.

In terms of it being a workplace tool, for where I am at least, it seems like a good idea but a bit late. iPads are all over now (even though they are kind of ill-suited in many ways) and crucially there are hundreds of job-specific apps available for iOS. Our exec directors and some of our doctors are increasingly welded to the things and really a Microsoft tablet which plays better with the rest of the work stuff and has a built in keyboard would be loads better but, yeah, just seems about a year or so too late really. I'm sure that we'll be getting some to have a look at, though.

Imagine all iOS games with their gamecenter achievements, but instead they're worth GamerScore.

Now you're tempted.

Well, given that I genuinely don't care about gamerscore (except for a teensy tingle of excitement as I passed 10,000) and think that touchscreen gaming is mostly utter dogshit, not so much.

Like a Windows Phone, you mean?

I was mainly talking about Android, actually. WP7 hasn't been very successful at all.

No, like an iPad version with gamerscore. Not a phone.

You'll be able to plug an Xbox controller into this to play games that are better with physical controls. Dunno if I would though.

Edit: Or, indeed, use a wireless one.

That's a pretty nice touch.

I'd be more excited about an Xbox Vita.

I am quite impressed, there needs to be a decent tablet that is not IOS or Android..

If it can be locked down like Windows it will be useful.

The confusion between Windows 8 and Windows RT is going to be bad for consumers. Two tablets there, that look almost the same (one 9.5 mm thick, one 13.5 mm; but the same industrial design and the same Metro desktop on boot). But one has x64 and runs old Windows software, and the other has ARM and doesn't. That's inherently confusing and inherently hard to communicate to people.

Can they both play Angry Birds?

Which will the new one have?

There's two new ones, that's what everyone's talking about dude.

See?!

I'm not sure we can take Kovacs as being representative of, well, anything really. Except himself I suppose.

So the other interesting angle is: is MS pissing on its chips with the OEMs, or what? I can't figure this out.

I am not confused, I just have not ready anything yet, other than seeing a picture.....

I am not going to do a JC and jump to wild conclusions without reading up on it.

Is there a link for it?

It might well be to an extent, but what are they going to do? Stop making computers? Build their own OS? Even if they are pissed off, realistically what can they do?

Also, there's an argument that MS could use their clout and these first generation machine to essentially create a Windows tablet market that really doesn't exist right now, allowing the OEMs to then step up and start selling to that market with their own machines in future (which then allows MS to sell Windows licenses for people that might have bought an iPad previously). Similar to what Google sort-of do with their reference phones to herald new Android versions. Them doing a single hardware instance per 'generation' doesn't stop Samsung et al from selling shitloads of Android phones.

Some info here, more in-depth stuff from the Engadget home page.

I tweeted something to this effect earlier. Like all new platforms, Windows RT is in a chicken/egg problem: no users mean no devs writing software for the platform which makes it hard to attract users. Perhaps, behind closed doors, the OEMs have expressed nervousness to Microsoft, and this is MS's way of priming the pump for the OEMs.

From a dev perspective, what kind of likely cost are we looking at to port something from Windows 8 to Windows RT? Is it likely to be generally 'recompile with tweaks' or is it a relatively massive effort? Or is there simply no way to know at this stage?

I ask because Windows RT would get a good boost as a 'mobile OS' if porting stuff that's already working on the full version of Windows is a relatively easy affair. I've no idea whether that's a reasonable expectation though.

Do we have any idea of price for these yet? I hope the Windows 8 is really expensive.

I have very strongly stressed this point to Microsoft. My dread is two executives, one with a Win8 tablet and one with a WinRT tablet, and having to explain to them why one can access XYZ and the other can't.

What is Windows RT?