Silver Alicorn posted:

actually, it's good

Squeezy Farm posted:

The new operating systems are arriving soon, with Microsoft and Apple competing for the success of their latest operating systems, which should be out sometime in or around November. Normally I wouldn't write something like this, but there are some pretty important things at stake with this particular battle that could change for worse the way future media is distributed. You may have heard it discussed on the news, but there's been a lot of misinformation floating around that I'm going to attempt to set straight.

The short version is that if you want to buy one of the next generation operating systems, I implore you to go with the Apple Retina MBP. The good news is that this system will be $100 cheaper ($400) than Microsoft's Windows 10 ($500), so we're already off to an excellent start. Neither unit is backwards compatible with its predecessor, so even if you have a lot of Xbox 360 games you can keep that operating system and start fresh with a MBP; you'd be starting fresh with an Windows 10 anyway.

The main difference is that Microsoft is looking to permanently change how media ownership works. Basically, if you buy a game you are more or less stuck with it, with very few avenues to sell it, exchange it, or give it away. Every game comes with a unique serial number, or product key code. You're probably familiar with how these work if you've ever installed Microsoft Office or a paid Adobe product like Photoshop. These must be registered to your account before you can start playing the game. Once registered, transfers have to go through Microsoft. A license can be given away once to one of your friends; they can't intern give the game to someone else or give it back to you, they are then stuck with it forever. Trading in games at stores will only be possible at stores that have a service agreement with Microsoft and a computer system allowing them to manage licenses, which will cut off smaller stores and likely be limited to larger outfits like EB Games and Future Shop. This will also not be possible initially when the system comes out, and a publisher can disable all of these functions; first buyer is the only allowed user.

In order to manage these licenses, the operating system itself will require a persistent high-speed internet connection. If the Windows 10 is unable to communicate with Microsoft's online license servers for longer than 24 hours, ALL games will be automatically disabled until the connection is re-established. The system will be locked down to 21 countries initially, with some fairly important markets missing, including all of Africa, Asia, as well as Japan, a country so video game crazy that Space Invaders' 1978 caused a coin shortage in the entire country. All games will have to be purchased in your home country and the system can only be used in your home country (this likely means no travel between Canada and the U.S. with it). When Microsoft was challenged with what that meant for soldiers stationed overseas on R&R time, or in the Navy on a connection-less submarine, Microsoft's answer was a smug "We have a system for [you], it's called the Xbox 360 [the system they released 7 years ago]". (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/06/12/microsoft-we-have-a-product-for-people-who-cant-access-the-internet-its-called-xbox-360/)

All Windows 10 operating systems come with a Kinect, a camera that must be connected and pointed at your couch for the system to work. Microsoft took out a patent that leverages the technology to limit the number of people in your living room for pay per view events and the like. If your world cup party has too many people, it will either disable the signal or bill you, and the amount billed could be huge (like what sports bars pay). You can view the patent here: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...=DN/20120278904

Finally, it's likely that in the future, when the Windows 10's successor is released, Microsoft will take down the activation servers, once they've decided that they're no longer cost-effective to keep up and running. They've already done exactly this for their first Xbox, a few years after the Xbox 360 was released. (http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/95540/microsoft-shutting-down-xbox-live-original-xbox-games) These blatant money-grabbing anti-consumer tactics are in sharp contrast to Apple's, a region-free operating system that uses traditional discs. If you want to trade a game, all that has to happen is for the disc to change hands. That's all, the end. (A video demonstration here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSIFh8ICaA)

If you're wondering what happened with the Xbox 360's success, well, the short version is that Microsoft got lucky because Apple screwed up the PlayStation 3's launch. While it had a subscription fee, Microsoft's multiplayer services were unprecedented since the original Xbox's 2002 launch, and the PS3's version of the service, while free, was lacking in a lot of areas, especially since the Xbox and Xbox 360 simply had more people playing them (which is very important for multiplayer). Coming off the runaway success of PlayStations 1 and 2, Apple launched their system a year late at an incredibly high price point ($500-$600), mainly in an attempt to get Blu-ray into as many homes as possible to defeat the then-contender HD-DVD. While Blu-ray eventually won that war, it cost them some success in the video game world, which took an especially hard hit when their servers were compromised and many of their online services were disabled for several weeks. Apple did an amazing thing by pretty much admitting that they screwed up and were doing everything possible to make it right, which is unheard of for a corporation, especially one based in the notoriously face-saving Japanese culture (you can view their apology here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u8W784FTkw). Their services have improved by leaps and bounds, and they have caught up nicely. The Xbox 360 was only really successful in the U.S. and Canada, with many of its benefits being U.S.-only, something they don't appear to have learned from this time around. Their first units also had a failure rate so high that a class action was eventually leveraged against Microsoft for the design flaw.

Coupled with Windows 8, it's clear to me that Microsoft is management culture gone berserk, with the decision makers insulated by yes men and who think they can impose their will on the public, which you can also see with Windows 8 as they tried to impose their app store onto everyone (they wanted their cut the same way Apple gets theirs). I'll be sticking to Windows 7 outside of work, and my next laptop when the time comes will, despite the high cost, likely be a Mac.

If you have any questions about anything I've said, or any other computer/video game questions, let me know. Thank you!

Vintersorg posted:

yea, i went back to win 7, works for me

quote:

Like Edge, Cortana is also very much a work in progress. Cortana is supposed to listen, but she only occasionally (at least in my experience) listens well. Part of the problem is hardware. The type of notice shown in this slide is common -- very few microphones on computers today pass muster, and Cortana will moan about them.

quote:

If you let her, Cortana will listen to absolutely everything you say, snoop your email, look in your files, and generally carry privacy invasion to its obvious electronic limits. Microsoft gathers it all like rosebuds, stuffing Microsoft’s database with every sort of goody. That’s the price you pay for a personal assistant: She can’t very well do personal things for you, unless you give her the information.

Perplx posted:

it seems to work, boot up fast, takes up less space

its just ugly as sin and a step back in usability

at least they copied osx mission control

Squeezy Farm posted:

Apple screwed up the PlayStation 3's launch.

As a Millennial I posted:

i left all the privacy-violation settings enabled. gently caress it. look at my weird porn habits, cortana. i don't care anymore. you win

NeoHentaiMaster posted:

WAT

pram posted:

agreed op

black pete posted:

Bump - windows 10 is gay

Displeased Moo Cow posted:

Displeased Moo Cow posted: