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Apple outgrows PC industry 4.5 years straight

1 Comment / Computers, News / By /

At the Apple Special Media Event this past week, the Apple slogan was “Back to the Mac”.

We found out that the Mac makes up 33% of Apple’s revenue stream which is equal to $22B. If Apple spun the Mac division off, the Mac division would instantly rank as a Fortune 110 company. Last year, Apple sold 13.7M units which is three times as many as in FY 2005 with an install base now just shy of 50M users.

Additionally, year over year growth has standard PC growth around 11% while Apple is growing at 2.5x the market rate at 27% growth and the Mac has outperformed the PC for the past 18 quarters straight (4.5 years). Apple is on a roll as their stock price demonstrates.

Finally, developers have are coming to Apple as there are 600k registered developers releasing titles including Afterlife, AutoCad and Office 11 with Outlook. Game developers have finally started to come back to the Mac platform after nearly disappearing in the 90s.

There are 318 Apple stores in 11 countries (and the Beijing and other China stores are the busiest) with 75M visitors. 2.8M Macs are sold in the stores and about 50% of the Macs sold are to consumers NEW to the Mac.

Kinect Can Finally See Lazy Gamers

1 Comment / Gaming & Toys / By /

Microsoft Kinect Eurogamer reports that Microsoft fixed a major Kinect implementation issue by allowing Kinect to recognize players who are seated. The method Microsoft used to create skeletal models in the software set the base node at the bottom of the spine. When people were seated with knees in front of their pelvis, Kinect got confused. Microsoft engineers modified the base node from the bottom of the spine to the back of the neck.

Previously, developers had to specifically code for lazy (sitting) gamers but this functionality is now built into the system. Unfortunately these changes will miss most of the peripheral’s launch line-up.

Web Browsers Benchmarked

2 Comments / Networking & Internet / By /

October 2010 Browser Benchmark

Ars Technica performed a battery of tests with modern browsers. All tests were run on the latest stable and the recent nightly build of each browser.

The tests included SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark to measure JavaScript performance, V8 Benchmark Suite which is developed by Google, Nontroppo General Browser Load-Time Test and the Peacekeeper: The Browser Benchmark.

What’s the verdict? Chrome one again performs best with Opera in second. Safari barely beat Firefox for the number three spot and Internet Explorer continues to bring up the rear. In Ars Technica conclusion:

Chrome: it’s fast!

Chrome is the obvious winner in these tests. It has a such a significant lead that we doubt it’s going to be bumped out of the top spot anytime soon, especially if we take into consideration that the team wants to release a major version every six weeks. Still, competition in the browser market is only getting fiercer, so Chrome’s king-of-the-hill status may not last forever.

Microsoft shows off Street Slide, trumps Google’s Street View

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Microsoft Street SlideI don’t know about you, but I use Google’s Street View option in Google Maps all the time.  It is just one of those completely ‘wow’ products that is also totally practical.

Well guess who’s knocking on the ‘wow’ door of street level imaging? Microsoft. They just showed off their new Street Slide (hmm… nice similar name) at a technical conference and produced a video showing it off.
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6 Funniest Customer Calls Ever

1 Comment / Audio/Video, Home Theater, Miscellaneous / By /

I was re-introduced to my favorite call center conversation a day or two ago and thought I’d compile half a dozen of my favorite customer support/complaint/sales calls in one place. Most of these videos are not suitable for work or to be watched around kids without ear muffs.

Let the countdown start with a Dell support call where a man is trying to turn off his mom’s laptop. This clip has more bad words strung together than the recent MTV Video Awards:

Check out the rest!

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Microsoft’s Project Natal Released as Kinect

Gaming & Toys, News / By /

Project Natal has been released as Microsoft Kinect with fanfare today. The black Kinect sensor plugs directly into the Xbox 360 and contains a camera, audio sensors and motion-sensing technology that tracks 48 points of movement on the human body and includes the ability to recognize faces and voices and is billed as Microsoft’s “Controller Free Game Device”.

With Kinect, game-players no longer need to memorize different commands for a hand-held control. “You are the controller,” said Mike Delman, corporate vice president of Global Marketing for the Interactive Entertainment Business. “You simply step in front of the sensor and Kinect sees you move, hears your voice and recognizes your face.”

Microsoft makes patch for Windows 7 to run WinXP Mode without special hardware

Computers, Software / By /

windows 7Here’s a good piece of news for those of you running Windows 7 or worried about migrating to it. Microsoft has just put out a patch so you can run apps in Win7 Pro’s XP Mode without specialized hardware.

Prior to this patch, Win7’s XP mode needed a PC with hardware-assisted virtualization.

Of course, most XP applications will run just fine under Windows 7, but there are still others that require this mode.

This is welcome news, as most Windows know the pain of having to migrate to a new OS and leave your favorite apps behind. Heck, I’m still running great apps from Win95 and Win2k days.

Microsoft’s Bing team giving away free WiFi service in exchange for searching

Networking & Internet, News / By /

I’ve spent my own share of time criticizing Microsoft for their buggy software and unethical business practices, but I’ve got to give them kudos for this move. They are exchanging free (1-time use) WiFi service for just a single search on Bing, their new search engine. Pretty smart.

The goal is to get more people familiar with Bing and hopefully get them using it. The Bing team is working with JiWire which works with 60-70% of the WiFi market for airlines and hotels.

This is probably going to cost MS some dough, but they have it and it can potentially reap significant rewards. However, they’ll need to keep running creative ad programs like this if they want to really dent Google’s market share in search.

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