Apple’s market value peaked today, reaching $500 billion, a place not many have gone nor managed to stay for long. The company is already the most valuable in the world and the gap between it and second place Exxon continues to widen as investors jump on the bandwagon of Apple’s recent holiday success and enticed by the possibility of Apple instituting a dividend. Today’s milestone makes Apple only the sixth US corporation to have reached the $500 billion mark.
Individual Apple shares had just surpassed the $500 mark two weeks ago and they continue to rise, reaching $542.41 per share late this morning with the company’s market capitalization near $506 billion. This stock jump comes just a day after Apple sent out invitations for its iPad 3 event scheduled to take place next Wednesday, March 7.
Apple was going neck and neck with Exxon for much of last year, but had blown past the oil company last month by nearly $100 billion. Exxon is now worth about $407 billion and had reached the $500 billion mark for two brief periods in 2007. Microsoft had hit the $500 billion mark briefly in 1999 and again in early 2000, but is now worth $267 billion. Cisco, Intel, and GE had also hit the $500 billion mark in early 2000 with Cisco and Intel now worth a little over $100 billion each, while GE is worth about $200 billion.
The early days of Windows were inauspicious ones. Sitting on top of DOS, it was hardly a revolution in personal computing -- instead it felt like a disjointed platform perched uncomfortably atop a command prompt, ready to come crashing down at any moment. That's what it was, and often that's what it did. The early days of Windows required constant jumps from GUI to shell as users ran a wide assortment of apps, only some of which played nice inside a window.
It was over a decade later, after Windows 95, that the operating system would truly ditch its DOS underpinnings and feel like a totally integrated system. Why are we reminiscing? Because we're reaching that same point again. With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Microsoft is showing off the most complete version of the company's most modern operating system, yet in many ways it feels like 1985 all over again -- like there are two separate systems here struggling to co-exist. How well do they get along? Join us after the break to find out.
The setup
Since you'll surely be wondering, let's run down exactly what we're working with here. This is the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, build 8250 -- for the moment, the latest and greatest version of the latest and (arguably) greatest version of Windows yet.
The hardware isn't so important here, but just the same our build is running on a Samsung developer tablet outfitted with a 1.6GHz Intel Core-i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. Yes, this is an x86 tablet running the non-ARM version of Windows, so it has full backwards compatibility with all the legacy apps Windows users have come to know and love over the years.
We alternated between using the tablet handheld, relying on its 1366 x 768 capacitive touchscreen, and sitting in its dock, where we instead turned on a Bluetooth keyboard and a wireless mouse. So, we had a good mix of general tablet use as well as a more desktop-like experience, and our impressions here will cover both. Also, we'll refrain from giving detailed performance figures, as it's still far too early for that -- though we will say we were quite impressed by the boot time (10 seconds, cold) and the overall responsiveness of things.
The basics
If you're completely unfamiliar with Windows 8, you might want to take a moment to engross yourself into our deliciously comprehensive look at the Developers Preview on a laptop, or our impressions of the same on a tablet. To get you up to speed quickly, Windows 8 marks the biggest change to the OS since the aforementioned 95 flavor (which, shockingly, turns 17 this year). There are a huge number of changes, and these are just a few of the highlights.
With Windows 8 comes the introduction of a Metro-style interface, inspired by the lovely and intuitive presentation found in Windows Phone. In it, apps and functions are pinned to tiles and, to interact with those apps, you simply tap those tiles. The former Start Menu has been replaced by a full-screen view of tiles that you can scroll through horizontally. You can pin applications, shortcuts, documents, webpages and any number of other things, customizing the interface in any way you like -- so long as what you like is rectangular and only extends from left to right. (Perhaps Windows 9 will take a hint from GridOS and extend vertically as well.)
Power users in Windows 8 will be Alt+tabbing far more than ever once Metro apps start taking over the Store.
Additionally, developers can choose to create Metro-specific apps. These can't be run in a traditional, resizeable window as they're intended to be run full-screen, though they can be tacked on to either the left or right of the display, where they'll take up roughly one quarter of available pixel real estate. The lack of windowing greatly simplifies development of these apps, but it also puts a bit of a governor on GUI multi-tasking -- power users here will be Alt+tabbing far more than ever once Metro apps start taking over the Store.
Thankfully, Microsoft has introduced a series of gestures and keyboard shortcuts to help alleviate some of that frustration and give those more intense users the means they'll need to stay in control. Let's take a look at some of them.
The gestures
There are a whole suite of special swipes and taps at your disposal, trying to make up for a general lack of visual indicators. With earlier versions of Windows, everything that needed clicking or attention was usually easy to pick out -- buttons were raised, window edges were highlighted, you get the picture. With Windows 8 a lot of that goes out the window and you're left having to know your way around a bit better. The gestures help to make up for that, though you'll need to learn them. And, yes, each one has a mousy equivalent for those averse to smudges. Here are a few highlights.
Right bezel: charms
Hidden off the right of the screen is a set of so-called charms, which give quick access to a high-level set of system commands. From the top they are:
Search - Opens up the searching interface.
Share - Brings up a list of applications capable of sharing whatever this app is offering.
Start - Takes you back to the Start interface. This is conveniently located right in the middle, where your thumb would presumably be.
Devices - Gives you a list of all connected devices.
Settings - Brings up a high-level list of settings. This is nowhere near as comprehensive as what you can get through the Control Panel, but it is much easier to get to and to parse.
To load up the list of charms, just swipe a finger in from the right bezel. With the mouse, throw the cursor in the upper- or lower-right corner.
Bottom and top bezels: commands
Hiding just off the top and bottom are app-specific commands. For example, the URL bar in the Metro-flavored Internet Explorer sits off the bottom of the screen and the list of tabs is off the top. Drag a finger in from either side to make them appear, or right-click with the mouse.
Left bezel: multitasking
This is the place you'll be reaching for quite often if you're a heavy multitasker. Drag in from the left and your last used app will appear in a small window. Drag it all the way over and it pops to take up the full screen. Drag it only part of the way, though, and it docks onto the left quarter of the display. (You can also drag it over and have it take up the right side of the screen.) Drag out and back and you'll get a list of your most recent apps, and you can select any of them with a tap.
With the mouse it's a little different, but start in the upper-left and you'll see the most recent app. Drag down from there and the list of other apps appears. From here you can just click the one you want, or drag it around if you'd rather.
Start button
With this version of Windows Microsoft has killed off the Start button, and there's no way to get it back.
Okay, so pressing a hardware button isn't exactly a gesture, but if you have a Windows 8 tablet it will have a physical Start button beneath the display. Pressing this brings up the full-screen Start menu. For the mouse you might be thinking the equivalent would be to just click the on-screen Start button that has resided in the lower-left since Windows 95 -- but you'd be wrong. With this version of Windows Microsoft has killed off that button, and there's no way to get it back. Instead, you need to drag down to the lower-left corner of the screen, where that button used to live, and click.
This is probably the most befuddling change in this version of Windows. Even when you get down to the raw Windows desktop there's no graphical Start button to be found on the screen, just the hidden hot-spot waiting for your hovering cursor. You can of course use the Start key on the keyboard (officially called the "Windows logo key"), but we can imagine some novice users on a laptop or desktop dropping down to the desktop view to run some app or another and having absolutely no idea how to get back.
The keyboard shortcuts
Don't worry, mouse-hating power users: Microsoft hasn't forgotten about you.
Don't worry, mouse-hating power users: Microsoft hasn't forgotten about you. Windows 8 features a suite of keyboard shortcuts -- some familiar, others that make the Windows logo key a little more powerful than before. There are hundreds of the things, but here are a few notable highlights.
Windows + arrow keys - This combination, with the left and right arrow keys, moves Metro-style apps into their left or right docked positions. For Windows desktop apps, they do what they do in Windows 7 -- popping over to the left or right half of the screen. Up maximizes, down minimizes.
Windows + C - This brings up the charms bar. You can also replace C with I, K or H to pop straight to the Settings, Connect or Share charms.
Windows + Tab - This toggles between applications, and in this case the Windows desktop is counted as an application. This differs between the classic Alt + Tab, which still works here, tabbing between each individual window on the desktop and the Metro-style apps.
Windows + PrtScn - This captures a PNG of the current screen and saves it in your Pictures directory. As you can imagine, we used this one quite a bit.
Xbox integration
The Xbox 360 has been an undeniable slam dunk success for Microsoft, so it's natural that we'd see it making an appearance in the company's latest OS. Indeed, Xbox Live is one of the most prominent pins in the new Start menu, and once tapped you'll be prompted to sign in to your account.
After a few moments of pondering, the machine will display all your gaming habits in a presentation that's not too dissimilar to the one found on the console. Even your avatar will strut his (or her) smug little self across your screen, dressed as you remember them, and you can indeed make costume changes here -- they'll show up back on your console momentarily.
But that's just fluff. The real interesting bit comes when you start navigating through your recently played games and accessed Xbox apps. You can launch those titles directly from your Windows 8 device and, once they're up, even control them -- though there are naturally a number of restrictions.
To begin with, your controls are limited to up / down / left / right and you only have access to the four face buttons, so you can really only navigate through menus and make selections. That's just fine for cruising through the Netflix app -- less so for a round of MW3. You also are naturally limited to launching games that are downloaded to the console or are printed on a disc that's sitting in the console's tray. Sadly, Windows 8 will not get off the couch and put in a new game for you.
The interface here is a bit clunky and sluggish; we'd definitely prefer reaching for a controller or a Harmony remote or the like, but the potential is quite intriguing. We'd love to see the Netflix integration taken a step further, for example, where you choose your movie on the tablet and it plays on the console. And we can't help dreaming of Wii U-like console / tablet harmony as well, with games played on both the slate and the screen, but perhaps that's just a bit optimistic.
The apps
Windows 8 naturally includes a suite of apps to make it more than the foundation of an operating system. This is no different than previous versions of Windows, but these provided apps are, by and large, Metro-themed and well-integrated to the new Start menu. In other words, they help encourage that feeling of excitement about our tiled future-- or of dread if you're the sort who is going to be dragged kicking and screaming away from your desktop.
Mail, People and Messenger
The Mail and People apps quickly tie to your chosen email and social networks, pulling in contacts and updates and letting you push your own out there. There's also the Messaging app, which connects to Microsoft's own Messenger service and Facebook as well.
SkyDrive and sharing
SkyDrive is effectively Microsoft's version of iCloud, and while it's a little more manual it's also potentially more powerful.
SkyDrive makes uploading and downloading files from one machine to another very easy. First launched in 2007, this is effectively Microsoft's version of iCloud, and while it's a little more manual it's also potentially more powerful. You can push files of nearly any type up to your cloud account, even marking them as public for sharing. That said, you'll need to explicitly select which files are uploaded and where they go.
Microsoft is exposing SkyDrive to developers so that future apps can tie directly in to it. In fact, in true MS fashion, the best parts of the operating system are completely open to interaction by developers. For example, there's the Share charm on the right, which enables the quick and easy sharing of content from one app to another.
You can, for example, share a photo with the Mail app, which emails it as an attachment. Share a page from IE, though, and it includes it as a link. That, of course, is just the beginning, with Microsoft exposing hooks so that third-party apps can not only share their content, but also accept the shared content of other apps. This is a stark contrast to OS X Mountain Lion, where Apple is tightly controlling which apps will be doing the sharing -- and the receiving.
The overall experience
Disjointed is the key word that comes to mind after you spend some time with Windows 8. As a tablet OS, if you can keep in Metro land, things feel good. Very good. The gestures are a bit more complex and less intuitive than we've seen on other tablet operating systems, but more savvy users will appreciate that. That said, Windows is still primarily a desktop operating system, and once you get to that level the cracks in the foundation start to show.
Jumping back-and-forth between Metro and desktop is hugely disorienting and, at least in the early days of Windows 8, you'll be doing a lot of that. The simple task of switching between apps using the mouse has become painful. In Windows 7 it's just a matter of clicking in the task bar on the icon of the one you want. Now, if it's a Metro app you want back it's a matter of going to the upper-left corner, then dragging down and trying to figure out which of the little pop-up windows is the one you want. Meanwhile, desktop-style apps are listed along the task bar on the bottom as before.
It feels like Windows 8 wants you to runeverythingmaximized, and that is going to be a problem for heavy multi-taskers who are used to a traditional windowed environment.
You can of course dock those Metro apps to the left or the right side of the screen, and multiple monitors are very much supported as you'd expect, but it feels like Windows 8 wants you to runeverything maximized. That is going to be a problem for heavy multi-taskers who are used to a traditional windowed environment. The idea is to stack and arrange windows exactly how you want them, then click quickly between them with the mouse. You simply can't do that here, and that feels like a step backwards.
Take Winamp, for example. It's an old-school app but an enormously popular one nonetheless, and something you'll often see hanging out at the top of people's screens -- shrunk down so it only takes a few pixels of vertical space, but always on top of every other window so you can see what is currently playing. You can set that up here, too, but once you hop into a Metro app Winamp -- and everything else running on the desktop -- disappears.
Wrap-up
We really liked Windows 7 when it launched. It felt like a big step forward in the short time that had passed since Vista. Now, as we creep closer to a likely release near the end of this year, we can't shake a sense of doubt. Windows 8 still feels like two very different operating systems trying to be one. The potential is hugely alluring -- a single OS to rule both the tablet and the desktop -- and with each subsequent version we keep hoping this will be the one that ties it all together. Sadly, as of the Consumer Preview, we're still seeing a lot of loose threads.
As it stands, Windows 8 is a considerably better tablet operating system than any previous version has managed to be. However, it's still a clumsier desktop OS than Windows 7. That's a problem Microsoft must fix before release.
Update: We've clarified the reference regarding iCloud and SkyDrive that made it sound as if SkyDrive was a response. SkyDrive, of course, predates iCloud by quite a few years.
Apple announced a new program today called Developer ID that will allow third-party developers to distribute apps outside of the Mac App Store, while keeping things safe for consumers. The move comes after Apple introduced a new Gatekeeper feature in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, which only allows users to install apps from the Mac App Store in order to safeguard against malicious software.
This Gatekeeper feature, although well-meaning, obviously brought on criticism about Apple’s direction, which seemed towards a completely closed desktop operating system. Hence, to ease concerns, Apple has introduced the Developer ID program that will certify apps so that consumers can have the confidence to download an app outside the Mac App Store.
In OS X Mountain Lion, the Gatekeeper option will be turned on by default, which will only allow apps to be downloaded from the Mac App Store or apps that have the Developer ID signature. User can still download unsigned apps if they wish, but they’ll have to manually configure Mountain Lion to accept such apps.
Photoshop maker Adobe Systems, Inc., released a long-expected iPad companion aptly named “Photoshop Touch.” The Android version demonstrated at Maxx earlier this year and released shortly afterwards.
The first in a series of six touch-optimized apps (the other five are Collage, Debut, Ideas, Kuler and Proto), it supports Photoshop layers—arguably the basic and most-oft used Photoshop feature. With simple finger gestures, users can combine multiple photos into layered images, make popular edits, and apply professional effects. It also provides advanced selection tools and adjustments.
According to Adobe’s website, the tablet-exclusive Scribble Selection Tool lets you extract objects in an image by simply scribbling on what to keep and then what to remove. With Refine Edge technology from Adobe Photoshop, even hard-to-select areas with soft edges, such as hair, are easily captured when making selections. Photoshop Touch also plays nice with Creative Cloud—a brand new paid cloud storage service from Adobe for seamless sync of your Photoshop files between desktop and iPad.
Social sharing is also supported through Facebook or email. You can also import images from Facebook, Google Image Search, and your iPad’s camera roll. Photoshop Touch works only on iPad 2 and requires iOS 5. The app is a $9.99 download from the App Store. Photoshop Touch became available on Android devices last November.
Apple just aired a new television commercial for its iCloud service that works between Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches. The ad features no spoken words and opens by demonstrating how easy it is for a new iOS device user to enable iCloud on a device. The ad then goes through the different services within iCloud, such as Photo Stream, Automatic Downloads for songs, iBooks, apps, and wireless calendar syncing.
The Financial Times reports that Intel is expecting its22nm Ivy Bridge processors to be delayed until June, according to Executive Vice-President of Intel and Chairman of Intel China Sean Maloney.
Intel expects its next-generation microprocessors to go on sale eight to 10 weeks later than initially planned, according to Sean Maloney, executive vice-president of Intel and chairman of Intel China.
In his first interview to discuss Intel’s business in China, Mr Maloney told the Financial Times that the start of sales of machines equipped with Ivy Bridge – the 22nm processor set to succeed Sandy Bridge in notebooks this year – had been pushed back from April. “I think maybe it’s June now,” he said.
Digitimes originally reported the delay, but V-R Zone said it was only for certain dual core chips that would most likely not affect Apple’s products. From the comments above, it seems the delay is broader than expected.
Along with Photoshop Touch for iPad 2, Adobe today officially announced ‘Primetime’ this morning. Primetime is a mashup of its video publishing, analytics and advertising platforms which aims to provide end to end video solutions for video publishers. Viewers on all four major platforms: Windows, Mac, iOS and Android will be able to use the output and Adobe specifically mentions that it will work on Apple’s native video, without requiring any tricks.
Video and release follows:
We are excited to announce Project Primetime, Adobe’s integrated video technology platform to enable smooth, TV-like experiences for ad-supported videos across Web-connected devices.
Primetime creates a single workflow for premium video publishers and media companies that interconnects Adobe streaming technologies, content protection, analytics and optimization with the recently acquired Auditude video advertising platform.
By integrating content publishing, advertising, and analytics – video publishers will be able to give consumers a superior viewing experience through seamless dynamic ad insertion into any content type, whether linear, live or on-demand across Web-connected devices. Adobe Digital Marketing Suite is integral to Primetime, ensuring that media companies are able to combine consumption and revenue data to increase the relevance of their content and ads.
The Industry Needs Integrated Video Solution to Bring Content and Ad Dollars Online
The adoption of web-enabled devices by consumers over the past few years has been staggering. Between desktop computers, tablets, smart phones, game consoles, and SmartTVs, consumers have at their fingertips billions of devices that can deliver media experiences over the Internet.
And, advertisers have long shown their desire to reach audiences in engaging experiences like video. The “offline” TV advertising market will be $200+ B by 2014. Within online advertising, advertisers want to shift spending video. A recent eMarketer report (June 2011) forecasts video growing from about 14% to over 32% of total digital advertising spending by 2015, taking market share from both banner and rich media advertising.
The audience is enabled, the advertiser is interested – so why is less than 5% of professionally produced content available online?
1. The user experience for audiences viewing video ads today is inferior to television. I don’t know about you – but my TV attached to my set top box doesn’t buffer between the programming and the ads. But, with online video, the processing required to load client heavy advertising plug-ins often triggers that flickering circle. And who wants to wait for an ad to buffer? No one – and that’s a problem for viewers, publishers and advertisers alike.
Primetime eliminates the need for heavy advertising plug-ins by moving more of the processing to the cloud, which means no more flickering circles waiting for ads to load, whether you’re on a desktop or mobile device. It feels like what you see on TV, but on any device.
2. Connected devices are fragmented. My set top box could connect to any TV and playback the same content stream from my PayTV provider. But online the opposite is true. Every device platform supports largely different technology – making it complex and expensive for publishers to build video experiences for every device. Today, publishers have to make hard tradeoffs on which devices to support – which reduces their audience size and revenue potential
Primetime enables a single workflow to reach the majority of web-enabled device platforms, whether smartphone, tablet, game console, desktop or SmartTV.
3. Inserting ads into connected devices is hard. Connected device platforms have introduced new technologies and workflows for streaming video content – where ad insertion has not been well defined. Creating scalable models for inserting ads into connected devices is exacerbated by the lower processing power of connected devices, versus desktop computers.
Primetime enables both server-side and client-side integrations of content and ads that allow for efficient and scalable delivery of monetizable video content.
4. Ad and content analytics are siloed. Video publishers typically use separate systems (usually from different companies) to measure how their audiences engaged with content from how their audiences engaged with ads. This impairs visibility into the correlation between audience engagement with content and ad revenue.
Primetime combines site-side analytics from Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite with ad analytics from Auditude to provide revenue-base analytics used to increase revenue and engagement.
In short – through an integrated content and advertising workflow and better data-driven monetization, Project Primetime will empower the content and ad ecosystem, which will make it possible for more content to flow online.
Primetime Highlights
As part of the first phase of Primetime, we are showcasing Primetime Highlights, which enables video publishers to create and publish live event highlights, with ads, in minutes.
Event highlights are a great way to show the power of integrating video publishing and advertising. First, viewers only watch highlights for a few hours after events occur. If you can’t quickly publish and monetize a highlight, it’s not worth creating it. Second, user experience really matters with short form content – viewers are more likely to abandon if there is buffering, etc.
How does it work? We’ve created a highlight tool that is tightly integrated with the Auditude ad platform. The highlight tool lets you set the in and out points of the clip, and add metadata like title, genre, etc. Once you hit publish, the Auditude platform automatically knows that ad inventory is available, and can target ads based on the metadata entered in the highlight tool. To make this even easier to implement, we are also providing a full video player*.
After acquiring Auditude about three months ago, we are thrilled to be bringing Primetime to market to accelerate online video, starting with Primetime Highlights. Expect us to be equally aggressive in supporting 24×7 linear, on-demand, and live with more announcements coming throughout 2012.
Check back tomorrow for Jens Loeffler’s take on our Adobe Access support for iOS. And, for more insight into our MPEG-DASH announcement, see Kevin Towes’ blog post here.
Some new tidbits are coming our way as the days until Apple’s next major announcement dwindle down. The first item of note is a purported shipping document for iPad 3 units. The document appeared on Twitter-like website Sina Weibo, and it is highlighted by Apple.pro. The origin seems to be in the WeiPhone forums. According to the image’s poster, the shipping document (shown below) details shipments beginning Feb. 26 from Foxconn to the United States. A machine translation from Weibo and WeiPhone forum posts (respectively):
Friends broke the news: Chengdu International Airport at major international cargo charter flights, cargo owners demanding security, from CTU takeoff by stop PVG Shanghai, and then directly to ORD Chicago, the JFK New York, LAX in Los Angeles, March 9, completed before transport. According to the privately disclosed the Chengdu F production for the U.S. A company’s latest products…
Received friends inside information, Chengdu International Airport night cargo charter flights, said the owner of the security demanding, and in private that the Chengdu Fu X Kang new products. Takes note of the location of the United States (ORD Chicago, JFK New York, LAX in Los Angeles)
A translation from a Chinese-speaking reader:
Our company started undertake a load of top-secured cargo. The owner has extreme requirements for the security. In order to prevent the cargo from being dragged on the airport ramp for too long, as well as shortening the time the cargo stay on the airport ramp, we hereby require XXXX to schedule all the XXX cargo planes from Feb. 26 to Mar. 9. to XXX slot.
To summarize, the image uploader said iPad 3 (or whatever Apple chooses to call it) shipments are already coming from China for delivery to three of America’s biggest airports. The poster also said the initial deliveries would begin March 9. In typical Apple fashion, the cargo flight organizers are demanding unusual security for the cargo.
Read below for more information :
Next: Sources said Apple could take iPad 3 pre-orders. Some might remember Apple did not take pre-orders for the iPad 2, but it did for the original iPad. Sources also hinted that the pre-orders could (based on supplies) begin March 7, but they may only begin a few days later. For the iPhone 4S, Apple announced the product on Oct. 4, but it only started taking pre-sales on Oct. 7.
Interestingly, we also heard Apple could gear up to launch two major products in March. The iPad 3 would be the first product, but this second product is currently unspecified. A new Apple TV box could be this product. We heard supplies of the Apple TV are severely constrained, but it is hard to see a reason for this besides an imminent refresh. We’ve been hitting hard with evidence for the past few months that suggest a new Apple TV is in development, and what better time to launch it than alongside the latest and greatest mobile iOS device? 1080P video streaming and a faster chip are both rumored, and we have presented evidence for Bluetooth 4.0 support.
Additionally, our sources pointed to the discontinuation of all iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G models and all iPad 2 Wi-Fi-only models (except the black and white 16GB units—at least initially) when the iPad 3 launches. This would refute rumors of Apple launching the Retina Display-packing iPad 3 as an extension of the iPad 2 line, and it would seem to back up rumors of Apple keeping the 16 GB iPad 2 around at a lower price point. The iPad 2-model discontinuation information originated from Apple product supply checks.
