4 ms·

I never really understood Microsoft wanting to be the center of the living room. Its just a weird concept to me.

WorldMaker 11y ago
The living room is typically the biggest screen in people's homes, the screen they spend the most time with, and the screen they are the "fondest" for as it is the home for much of their entertainment. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to be at the center of that? Microsoft wants to "own" all of your screens, by being the friendly operating system and development tool provider for them, so of course the battle of the living room is huge for them.
- asimuvPR 11y ago
  Yes, that's a good point, and I get that. But these days there are more smaller screens that they don't control because their mobile phone strategy was a huge failure. I would focus on controlling the smaller screens because that's where most entertainment and things happen. Typing this from my android phone.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    I have so many opinions on this and could quickly devolve this into a long winded tangent, but the short answer is: Yes, there are many screens and Microsoft clearly has strategies for all the fronts, mobile included. Also, just because Microsoft is down, don't count them out just yet in the mobile screen front. Microsoft has the best leverage right now, of any company/platform, to turn wins on any screen into possible gains in all of them... Microsoft Lumia owner and fan
    - asimuvPR 11y ago
      I wanted a Windows phone. The GUI was so nice. But they sort of give up. Knowing MS, they are probably cooking something now that they are in the embrace stage of their business plan.
    - FussyZeus 11y ago
      I owned a Lumia Icon for about a year not terribly long ago, about the time WP 8.1 came out. My observations: - The Update system was extremely confusing, I had a hell of a time just figuring out how to update to 8.1, including needing a firmware update, figuring out how to apply a firmware update, then doing it three times over because I had that many. While the system eventually notified me of the system update, it remained silent on the firmware. - The UI language was fantastic, seriously I loved the way the phone handles information. The only issue there is that many apps like Facebook and what have you totally ignored it, and Microsoft let them on anyway. What good is building a UI like that if you're going to let the developers just do whatever they want anyway? - The app store in general is extremely limited. I realize Microsoft can't do anything here but I'm holding them partially responsible because of how late they were to this game. - My Icon would get very hot with only regular use. A quick flip through twitter or even just some websites and the back of the device became uncomfortably warm. - The keyboard is AMAZING. Seriously Microsoft knocked it out of the park on that one. - The device felt well built and (aside of the heat issues) never presented as though it was poorly made. Connectors were solid, battery life was very good, and the bright colored interfaces with the white-on-black text make it genuinely a pleasure to use. Eventually I had to face reality and bail (too limited on capabilities, plus I'm an iOS developer and at the time they just released the 6, the first decently sized iPhone) and went that way. That said should I change careers I'd definitely look the Windows Phone way again.
- scarface74 11y ago
  Is that really true? I would think that most people spend more time on their phones than watching TV.
  - iso-8859-1 11y ago
    You are right. http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-industry-faces-the-perfect-storm-apps http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-i...
  - winthrowe 11y ago
    It may not be true anymore, but it certainly was when the Xbox division was first conceived.
developer2 11y ago
I think the "aha!" moment for this is, today, still another 30-50 or even many more years away. I could ramble on for hours as to what I want the future to look like, but suffice it to say it really would be what we generally refer to now as the "automated home of the future". The largest obstacle right now is branding and current technology. Every individual company is vying to meet all your needs. Microsoft wants you to have a "Microsoft Home", Apple want you to live in your "Apple Home", Google the "Google Home", etc. This is not the future. The future, done right, requires seamless integration of all the devices we will own. To the point where we stop thinking of everything as even being a separate device. A single system that blissfully handles your entire home life. The current situation is laughable. Existing devices in this space are designed as standalone items, which may or may not even be meant to integrate with other devices. The "standards" that have been brought to life thus far are... ugh. Just no! I will be satisfied the day I can turn every wall into a touch display, with wireless speakers everywhere. Every lightbulb, every speaker, every appliance, every goddamn little thing seamlessly integrated into one beautiful system. No push-and-pull of different standards trying to fight for a place in my home. No separate apps on a stupid smartphone depending on what I want to control. Microsoft's example with wanting to be the "home media center" is such an insignificantly tiny part of the whole puzzle. A TV and a set-top box gets me nothing of what I want for the future. They only have their eyes set on media consumption, what you will pay for to download and watch/play on their stupid service. It has nothing to do with actually being the center of your home, only the center of your living room spending habits. I'm so disappointed with how slowly things are moving along. Computing is still in its infancy, and we haven't really advanced very far at all. We need a few true visionaries and inventors to come along and make things start to happen. So far, we've got nothing worthy of being called amazing. tldr; I don't want a home media center. I want Jarvis dammit. Actually, I want more than Jarvis. And fuck 4K TV; I want to skip ahead to 1024K wall surfaces that you can look at with a fkn microscope and not tell the difference between a display and reality. ;)
- asimuvPR 11y ago
  Weird, I'm actually building a system to do just that. Alpha should be out in early May.
FussyZeus 11y ago
I totally get the concept, the problem is the execution is always terrible. The one has extremely similar problems to the PS3 because they both try to be a ton of things they didn't need to be. The PS4 is much better, Sony learned it was better to be great at one thing than to be ok at one thing and suck at a whole bunch of other things, and hopefully Microsoft will learn that too.
chipsy 11y ago
It's brought on by being a big company that wants to leverage existing customer bases into new markets. Both Sony and Microsoft engaged in the "platform strategy" in the last two generations, while Nintendo sat back making traditional gaming consoles, focusing on building their own market rather than invading an existing one. Basically, the console brand, to MS and Sony, is ultimately a tool that can be used to build a potentially bigger empire. Share and revenue prospects come before whether the experience makes sense, and in the echo chambers of such large companies, it's easy to fashion a story where every consumer is hungry for all of this stuff and wants a single source to deliver it.

The living room is typically the biggest screen in people's homes, the screen they spend the most time with, and the screen they are the "fondest" for as it is the home for much of their entertainment. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to be at the center of that? Microsoft wants to "own" all of your screens, by being the friendly operating system and development tool provider for them, so of course the battle of the living room is huge for them.

asimuvPR 11y ago
Yes, that's a good point, and I get that. But these days there are more smaller screens that they don't control because their mobile phone strategy was a huge failure. I would focus on controlling the smaller screens because that's where most entertainment and things happen. Typing this from my android phone.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  I have so many opinions on this and could quickly devolve this into a long winded tangent, but the short answer is: Yes, there are many screens and Microsoft clearly has strategies for all the fronts, mobile included. Also, just because Microsoft is down, don't count them out just yet in the mobile screen front. Microsoft has the best leverage right now, of any company/platform, to turn wins on any screen into possible gains in all of them... Microsoft Lumia owner and fan
  - asimuvPR 11y ago
    I wanted a Windows phone. The GUI was so nice. But they sort of give up. Knowing MS, they are probably cooking something now that they are in the embrace stage of their business plan.
  - FussyZeus 11y ago
    I owned a Lumia Icon for about a year not terribly long ago, about the time WP 8.1 came out. My observations: - The Update system was extremely confusing, I had a hell of a time just figuring out how to update to 8.1, including needing a firmware update, figuring out how to apply a firmware update, then doing it three times over because I had that many. While the system eventually notified me of the system update, it remained silent on the firmware. - The UI language was fantastic, seriously I loved the way the phone handles information. The only issue there is that many apps like Facebook and what have you totally ignored it, and Microsoft let them on anyway. What good is building a UI like that if you're going to let the developers just do whatever they want anyway? - The app store in general is extremely limited. I realize Microsoft can't do anything here but I'm holding them partially responsible because of how late they were to this game. - My Icon would get very hot with only regular use. A quick flip through twitter or even just some websites and the back of the device became uncomfortably warm. - The keyboard is AMAZING. Seriously Microsoft knocked it out of the park on that one. - The device felt well built and (aside of the heat issues) never presented as though it was poorly made. Connectors were solid, battery life was very good, and the bright colored interfaces with the white-on-black text make it genuinely a pleasure to use. Eventually I had to face reality and bail (too limited on capabilities, plus I'm an iOS developer and at the time they just released the 6, the first decently sized iPhone) and went that way. That said should I change careers I'd definitely look the Windows Phone way again.
scarface74 11y ago
Is that really true? I would think that most people spend more time on their phones than watching TV.
- iso-8859-1 11y ago
  You are right. http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-industry-faces-the-perfect-storm-apps http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-i...
- winthrowe 11y ago
  It may not be true anymore, but it certainly was when the Xbox division was first conceived.

developer2 11y ago

I think the "aha!" moment for this is, today, still another 30-50 or even many more years away. I could ramble on for hours as to what I want the future to look like, but suffice it to say it really would be what we generally refer to now as the "automated home of the future". The largest obstacle right now is branding and current technology. Every individual company is vying to meet all your needs. Microsoft wants you to have a "Microsoft Home", Apple want you to live in your "Apple Home", Google the "Google Home", etc. This is not the future. The future, done right, requires seamless integration of all the devices we will own. To the point where we stop thinking of everything as even being a separate device. A single system that blissfully handles your entire home life. The current situation is laughable. Existing devices in this space are designed as standalone items, which may or may not even be meant to integrate with other devices. The "standards" that have been brought to life thus far are... ugh. Just no! I will be satisfied the day I can turn every wall into a touch display, with wireless speakers everywhere. Every lightbulb, every speaker, every appliance, every goddamn little thing seamlessly integrated into one beautiful system. No push-and-pull of different standards trying to fight for a place in my home. No separate apps on a stupid smartphone depending on what I want to control. Microsoft's example with wanting to be the "home media center" is such an insignificantly tiny part of the whole puzzle. A TV and a set-top box gets me nothing of what I want for the future. They only have their eyes set on media consumption, what you will pay for to download and watch/play on their stupid service. It has nothing to do with actually being the center of your home, only the center of your living room spending habits. I'm so disappointed with how slowly things are moving along. Computing is still in its infancy, and we haven't really advanced very far at all. We need a few true visionaries and inventors to come along and make things start to happen. So far, we've got nothing worthy of being called amazing. tldr; I don't want a home media center. I want Jarvis dammit. Actually, I want more than Jarvis. And fuck 4K TV; I want to skip ahead to 1024K wall surfaces that you can look at with a fkn microscope and not tell the difference between a display and reality. ;)

asimuvPR 11y ago
Weird, I'm actually building a system to do just that. Alpha should be out in early May.

FussyZeus 11y ago

I totally get the concept, the problem is the execution is always terrible. The one has extremely similar problems to the PS3 because they both try to be a ton of things they didn't need to be. The PS4 is much better, Sony learned it was better to be great at one thing than to be ok at one thing and suck at a whole bunch of other things, and hopefully Microsoft will learn that too.

chipsy 11y ago

It's brought on by being a big company that wants to leverage existing customer bases into new markets. Both Sony and Microsoft engaged in the "platform strategy" in the last two generations, while Nintendo sat back making traditional gaming consoles, focusing on building their own market rather than invading an existing one. Basically, the console brand, to MS and Sony, is ultimately a tool that can be used to build a potentially bigger empire. Share and revenue prospects come before whether the experience makes sense, and in the echo chambers of such large companies, it's easy to fashion a story where every consumer is hungry for all of this stuff and wants a single source to deliver it.