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Microsoft Origami "Lifestyle PC"
- Thread starter balamw
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A handtop device running full windows is already out and it's very well done. It's the OQO. www.oqo.com Others have already been released like the cPC which runs XP and Windows Mobile 5.0 at the same time. Why would it be such a strange thing for MS to come out with this product now?
Some of you may remember Starz IP-VOD service 'Vongo'. It still states it 'will be available for Mac user soon (really!)'. What if iTMS (Jobs and Co.) partnered with them, and launches a VOD service within iTunes utilizing the Vongo catalog? Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Knowing Apple, they will not allow stand-alone services use their DRM, but with movies it is a little different as music as for the distribution rights. So, Vongo will be one of their partners, just like Showtime and maybe even HBO.
That combined with a Mac mini/media hub, sounds a winner to me. I am not sure how that then will integrate with a video-pod, if at all, but who knows.
And yes, has nothing to do with this thread, but M$ has nothing to do with a Mac, so we are equal
Knowing Apple, they will not allow stand-alone services use their DRM, but with movies it is a little different as music as for the distribution rights. So, Vongo will be one of their partners, just like Showtime and maybe even HBO.
That combined with a Mac mini/media hub, sounds a winner to me. I am not sure how that then will integrate with a video-pod, if at all, but who knows.
And yes, has nothing to do with this thread, but M$ has nothing to do with a Mac, so we are equal
Polish97 said:
Timing.
Not as in this particular moment in time, more why the same day as Apple's event? If they wanted 100% focus on your product, you wouldnt do it the same day (or week) as Apple...unless its a competing product. MS arent completly inept
I'll stick to what i said ealier: MS know something we dont - and are trying to get in first.
Z
That OQO thing looks awesome. But not $2,000 awesome. If MS or Apple could make an affordable version of that thing, I'd be all over it. Especially if I could have OSX or the iLife apps on it.
I'm sure thats what Microsoft is counting on. The trick is to know when one's product is good enough to present it as a "counter" to the competition... lest they copy it early on.arn said:
I don't think this product is good enough (too thick, screen still using "black" LCD etc.), apple can wait till they have something worthy to present.
For now, it looks like something John Scully would have made...
Does any of you remember...
Back in 199x, I don't remember the exact date, there were some marketing videos of future products from Apple. One that I remember was showing a device that looked like these origami things (I think). If I remember correctly, the ad/video was about sharing some data between researchers or students who were tracking the deforestation in south America, around the Amazons river. It was a long time ago and I don't remember the details, but I was more impacted by that video, at the time, than by this one. Does anybody has a link to that video, remember or know what I am talking about? Anyone from those days around this thread?
P/ I am not sure it has already been mentioned in the thread, so if it has, please accept my apologies.
Back in 199x, I don't remember the exact date, there were some marketing videos of future products from Apple. One that I remember was showing a device that looked like these origami things (I think). If I remember correctly, the ad/video was about sharing some data between researchers or students who were tracking the deforestation in south America, around the Amazons river. It was a long time ago and I don't remember the details, but I was more impacted by that video, at the time, than by this one. Does anybody has a link to that video, remember or know what I am talking about? Anyone from those days around this thread?
P/ I am not sure it has already been mentioned in the thread, so if it has, please accept my apologies.
Actually I found the answer to my question...
Here it is...
http://homepage.mac.com/ericestrada/Movies/iMovieTheater53.html
Here it is...
http://homepage.mac.com/ericestrada/Movies/iMovieTheater53.html
gmanrique said:
Yup: http://www.digibarn.com/collections/movies/knowledge-navigator.htmlgmanrique said:
I'd love something like that. "Hey, Bill Nye, open all the tabs I had open when I accidentally hit the Close button instead of Back."
[edit] Doh! Beat me to it. I think my link has a little better audio, though.
[edit 2] Here's another one that exhibits the rumored "in-screen camera" technology that Apple has come up with recently: http://www.theapplecollection.com/Collection/AppleMovies/mov/parkbench_navigator.html
Sorry..
Thanks for the answer though.
I am not if it is being an Apple fan or what, but after watching both videos today, still the one from the 90's has more "wow" factor.
Thanks for the answer though.
I am not if it is being an Apple fan or what, but after watching both videos today, still the one from the 90's has more "wow" factor.
age234 said:
MacRonin said:
How'd you get that list of features?
Digital camera: No, the video explicitly shows people using other devices to take pictures then send them (via BlueTooth, presumably) to the Origami
Video camcorder: Huh?
Smartphone: Well, it downloaded a picture from a phone ... but I'd hate to see someone holding that plate up to the side of their head. That look went out in 1985.
MP3 Player: Yeah, it showed that
PDA: I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, merely because "PDA" means so many things which at least partially overlap what was shown.
Intenet access & picture frame: Yup, it showed that.
email access: That too
video conferencing: Did I sleep through that one?
All in all, it looks to be just about as functional as my Treo, but four to eight times the size.
IMHO, if Microsoft only had a halfway competent design team on staff they could create a really nice product here. But, they don't, either on the hardware side or on the "throw in every feature and they'll use what they want" software side. As much as I like many of the features WM5 on my Treo, there's a distinct lack of elegance to it and a horribly visible jumbling together of crap trying to make the screen "interesting" when in fact what I want that screen to be is "useful". Microsoft just doesn't get that whole minimalist design philosophy, which is why Windows on any screen larger than 3" diagonal is just too much of an affront to my eyes.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand: call me a Mac zealot, but I'd buy this in an instant from Apple and there's pretty much no way in hell I'd buy it from Microsoft. As was pointed out much earlier in the thread, each company has a long track record which informs a buying decision far more than a slick advertisement ever could.
Absolutely ugly. It looks like they build a giant PDA out of old computer cases from the 80's. It is very interesting, and I would totally be all over this device, but I know Apple can do better.
Fishes,
narco.
Fishes,
narco.
jettredmont said:
That would've been great fodder for Sidetalkin.'
Anyway, I'd like a Mac tablet/PDA that did OSX/iLife apps and maybe had widget support. I mean, there's really no PDA that syncs up to the Mac out of the box, is there? I'd like one of those.
gmanrique said:
yeah, wow Apple spent a lot of time in "blue sky" thinking. Video's like that scream money - and I'm not really sure who or what it was targeted to.
Guess its the good ol days of the 90's showing thought. Like the 70's but with computers instead of acid trip busses....
xPismo said:
That's what I'm hoping a lot of Apple's coming innovations are -- the stuff that Steve canned (and rightly so, imho) in the late 1990's. What happened to the research, the patents, the mockups?
Did Steve wipe out the "Old Guard" Apple projects, only to have his Cocoa devs and NeXT hardware folks review the data, after hours, sifting through the hundreds of flotsam-jetsam casualties of the iCEO's bloody coup?
And when the architects of the NeXTStation and "column view" read through these projects, what do they think? What gets entered in those secret midnight .plans?
And what strange Mac, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Cupertino to be born?
Here's another video Apple did, more general in nature:
http://www.mprove.de/uni/asi/futureshock.html
As an aside, I never saw a Quicktime movie with a chapter menu before.
http://www.mprove.de/uni/asi/futureshock.html
As an aside, I never saw a Quicktime movie with a chapter menu before.
Eh ... I don't think speech recognition will get that advanced. I'd much rather a gesture interface than speech. I don't want to talk to my computer ... and that Bill Nye guy was creepy!gmanrique said:
