No, tablets are not a transformative technology, either

About a month ago, I said that while smartphones were transformative, tablets weren't. Smartphones had the power of a general-purpose computer in a form factor small enough to fit in your pocket, which had tons of promise, but they became a thing because they brought more than a promise to the party -- they solved existing problems that people already had. Smartphones were tools: portable, powerful, and immediately useful devices that became an immediate hit, for obvious reasons.

Tablets, though, had none of these advantages. Too big to fit in a pocket, too heavy and clumsy to just carry around, too under-powered to even replace your laptop, let alone a gaming PC, and too ergonomically sub-optimal to be useful for much of anything else, tablets are not tools; they're toys. Good for consuming content, but not for producing it, and not even that good for gaming unless you seriously lower your standards, and with short battery lives that even limit their usefulness as a simple e-book reader, tablets are hybrids of the most awkward kind.

Heavily hyped, they were still popular, but with no obvious uses, and better options for basically every conceivable application becoming less expensive with each passing day, it really was just a matter of time before this happened:

The global market for tablet computers ended 2015 with a whimper, as the once sizzling market cooled further, a market tracker said yesterday.

Research firm IDC reported a 13.7 percent year-over-year drop in worldwide tablet sales in the fourth quarter, with 65.9 million units shipped.

For the full year, IDC said the number of tablets shopped fell 10.1 percent from a year earlier to 206.8 million.

Tablet sales had been gaining momentum through 2014 but failed to live up to many forecasts as consumers shifted to slim laptop computers and kept their tablets longer than expected before replacing them.

The only good news?

One bright spot in the tablet market, however, has been the “detachable” segment with removable keyboards such as the iPad Pro, which is growing at a strong pace, according to IDC.

For 2015, detachable tablets hit an all-time high of 8.1 million units, the report said.

“One of the biggest reasons why detachables are growing so fast is because end users are seeing those devices as PC replacements,” said IDC’s Jean Philippe Bouchard.

“We believe Apple sold just over 2 million iPad Pros while Microsoft sold around 1.6 million Surface devices, a majority of which were Surface Pro and not the more affordable Surface 3. With these results, it’s clear that price is not the most important feature considered when acquiring a detachable — performance is.”

Yes, the one company that was actually ahead of the curve on this trend was Microsoft, whose big idea was to tack a keyboard onto the thing, and their failure to penetrate the mobile market is so total that the Surface Pro is already being outsold by Apple. Tablets are the new netbooks. Do you remember netbooks? Neither does anyone else. And nobody will remember tablets, either, in a few more years.

Update: The other must-have Apple gizmo that everybody couldn't wait to have, and which nobody will remember in a few more years? Their watch, apparently.

Microsoft makes it worse...

.. because of course they were going to.

Microsoft has announced a big change in how the Cortana search box in Windows 10 will work going forward: All searches will be powered by Bing, and all links will open with the Edge browser. This is a server-side change going into effect today. Once it takes effect on your Windows 10 computer, Cortana will no longer be able to serve up results from third-party search providers, like Google or Yahoo, nor take you to a third-party browser, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

To be clear, you will still be able to set the default search engine or default browser in Windows 10 to whatever you want. This only impacts the Cortana search box in the bottom left corner on the Windows 10 taskbar, which lets you search across apps, documents, settings, and the Web with the help of Microsoft’s digital assistant.

Remember when Microsoft used their OS market share to kill Netscape's Navigator, and lost the resulting antitrust action? Because they apparently don't.

Pushing Bing onto users as a hard-coded system default seems to be working, sorta, but let's face it -- if Microsoft had actually built a better mouse trap with Bing, people would have switched already. They didn't, so we haven't, which is why they have to resort to exactly this sort of monopolistic bullshit... again. Just like with the Universal Windows Platform, there's zero benefit to consumers here, just Microsoft abusing their position as the gatekeepers of Windows 10's walled garden to force us to use inferior products and services, rather than actually building better ones that we'd actually want to use instead.

Did I mention that my summer project involves learning my way around Linux/SteamOS, so that I don't have to put up with Redmond's bullshit anymore?

The Casual/Core Fallacy

As an avowed filthy casual gamer, this take on the false casual/hardcore dichotomy really struck me:

I hate that "casual" is used as an insult; I hate that people on forums across gaming use "casual" as an excuse to dismiss the views and opinions of people who hold opinions they don't agree with.

I'm a casual gamer -- I have a full-time job, and friends, and family, and thus can't spend 60 hours a week diving deeply into a game the way our current semi-pro/streaming "hardcore" players seem able to.

Even if I did have the time, I wouldn't want to play any one game that intensively -- games are my favourite leisure time activity, but I really don't want gaming to turn into a job. Turning your passion into your full-time job just means that you have nothing in your life except work. And yes, that happens:

So, next time someone tells you that your opinion isn't valid or valuable because you're too casual, or tells you that you're not really experiencing a game unless you dive deep into its hardcore mode? Tell them they're full of shit. And then link to one of these videos to prove it.

Slow clap, because it's about fucking time...

Having given Google a hard time about their incoming blipverts bumper ads, I suppose it's only fair that I acknowledge when they've done something good:

We understand just how important revenue is to our creator community, and we’ve been listening closely to concerns about the loss of monetization during the Content ID dispute process. Currently videos that are claimed and disputed don’t earn revenue for anyone, which is an especially frustrating experience for creators if that claim ends up being incorrect while a video racks up views in its first few days.

Today, we’re announcing a major step to help fix that frustrating experience. We’re developing a new solution that will allow videos to earn revenue while a Content ID claim is being disputed. Here’s how it will work: when both a creator and someone making a claim choose to monetize a video, we will continue to run ads on that video and hold the resulting revenue separately. Once the Content ID claim or dispute is resolved, we’ll pay out that revenue to the appropriate party.

We’re working on this new system now and hope to roll it out to all YouTube partners in the coming months. Here’s a closer look at how it’ll work once it’s live:

We strongly believe in fair use and believe that this improvement to Content ID will make a real difference. In addition to our work on the Content ID dispute process, we’re also paying close attention to creators’ concerns about copyright claims on videos they believe may be fair use. We want to help both the YouTube community and copyright owners alike better understand what fair use looks like online, which is why we launched our fair use protection program last year and recently introduced new Help Center pages on this topic.

WTFU? Well, as of five minutes ago, you can find some in YouTube's contentID system. Although, personally, I think that Jim Sterling's solution was far more entertaining than simple escrow:

Now, if they can just fix the broken dispute resolution process... Oh, well. Baby steps.

UPDATE: Jim Sterling has done a followup video on his ContentID Deadlock (patent hopefully pending, because genius), and OMFG his new YouTube Technique Is Unstoppable:

Today in Windows 10 over-reach...

Have I mentioned before that Microsoft is pushing Windows 10 way too hard?

From hothardware.com, via Slashdot, comes a high-profile example of exactly what I'm talking about:

We’re glad that Slater was able to have some fun with this minor annoyance; other Windows users haven’t been so lucky. It was reported in early March that Microsoft was going way overboard by automatically upgrading Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers to Windows 10 without permission from customers. Reports confirming the occurrences were widely reported on the internet, but Microsoft would later deny that anything nefarious was going on.

GG, Microsoft.  GG.

Your Media Business Will Not Be Saved

This was a good read:

The media industry now largely thinks its only working business model is to reach as many people as possible, and sell — usually programmatically, but sometimes not — as many advertisements against that audience as it can. If they tell you otherwise, they are lying.

They are also wrong, I believe, in the long run.

And every few months — or let’s say annually — a technology, or idea, or person comes along and the very stupid and slow media industry thinks that New Thing will fix everything. Get them back to the good times. Make those pennies into actual dollars. One year it might be the iPad, the next it might be an “amateur journalist” network, maybe last year it’s You Won’t Believe What Happens Next, maybe next year it’s video (or live video?), maybe it’s bots. Maybe it’s Instant Articles. Maybe it’s your new app.

Certainly it could be a little bit of all of those things. But actually it’s not any of them. You can always get some runway out of the New Thing. You can always get a quick hit that looks like success from the New Thing. But rarely — almost never — is the New Thing what fixes your problem.

Your problem is that you make shit. A lot of shit. Cheap shit. And no one cares about you or your cheap shit. And an increasingly aware, connected, and mutable audience is onto your cheap shit. They don’t want your cheap shit. They want the good shit. And they will go to find it somewhere. Hell, they’ll even pay for it.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Found via Slashdot.

20 minutes into the future...

For some reason this:

Called Bumper Ads, the short videos last just six seconds each – unlike most YouTube ads today that typically range between 15 seconds to a minute. According to Google and YouTube, Bumper Ads work best on mobile as viewers are often watching on the go, or have even shorter attention spans for what they’re trying to watch.

Reminded me of this:

I really don't know what Google is thinking here. A big part of the problem with ads for mobile users is that they burn through those users' expensive bandwidth while delivering nothing that those users value, along with a side-helping of malware and other annoyances. If there was value to the users in ads, people wouldn't be ad-blocking in the first place, but there isn't, and there's no way to filter them, which is why we're increasingly choosing to tune all of them out.

If these blipverts bumper ads were skippable, then no problem – viewers/users could opt in if the ad content looked interesting enough to be worth spending some of their bandwidth – but these ads won't be skippable. Blipverts bumper ads will cost viewers money every time they run, which means that Google is literally taking money from their customers' pockets, using it to line their own, all while delivering nothing except content that Google gets for free – this is vanilla YouTube, remember, not premium YouTube Red.

Call me crazy, but blipverts bumper ads seem more likely to drive people to ad-block, rather than convincing them to watch more ads – exactly the opposite of the effect that Google say they're aiming for. Srsly, WTF? 

Also, I have to wonder how that whole YouTube Red thing is working out? Because based on this new blipvert bumper ad initiative, I'm guessing that Google haven't had too many takers. Ad-blocking is available for free, or at most for a couple buck as an Android app, so why would I pay a monthly fee for the same service? It's not like YouTube Red has wholesale lots of shit-hot must-have content, or anything – it's just more of the same kind of shit that vanilla YouTube has on tap for free. I don't mind paying extra for really good shit, but I have no intention of paying extra for more cheap shit, just so that Google can pad their bottom line with a few extra billions. I need the money a lot more than they do.

As if MS weren't already pushing Windows 10 way too hard....

Excerpts from PC World: Windows phones' free-fall may force Microsoft to push harder on Windows 10 adoption.

Poor little Windows phone could have a bigger effect on Microsoft's business than you'd think. As the company's mobile device strategy continues to disintegrate, Microsoft may feel compelled to push harder on Windows 10 adoption and paid services to prove it can survive without a viable smartphone—and that could be bad news for consumers. 

[...]

Microsoft really wants [...] to sign you up for paid subscription services: Office 365 and Xbox Live, plus the corresponding enterprise licenses for Windows 10, Office 365, and Azure. ”Overall, the thing that we’re most focused on with Office 365 is how do we make sure we have the Office 365 endpoints everywhere, [with] good usage,” Nadella said.

[...]

Here's the catch: "Even though they still have twice as many users using Microsoft services on PCs versus smartphones," Verksala pointed out, "the mobile segment is the growth area.” Lacking a viable mobile device, Microsoft is missing out on opportunities to get even closer to users—and their wallets—in this growth area. 

[...]

All this means that the process of locking in customers to the Microsoft platform might be taking longer than expected. To date, investors haven't minded, generally cheering Nadella’s leadership and sending the company’s stock up to near its all-time high in 1999.

But given Microsoft's lower earnings and revenue—and downward guidance in key business units—it’s possible Microsoft may come under greater pressure to make its Windows 10 vision a reality. That’s not necessarily great news for consumers.

Keeping an open mind, I'll look at the Anniversary Update to see if there are any "must have" features that would change my mind on Windows 10, but right now, there's just nothing the new OS will do for me that Windows 7 doesn't already do, and sometimes do better, and Microsoft's switch from offering Windows 10 a free update to essentially forcing upgrades on users has turned me off completely.

Combine that with Windows 10's significant privacy issues (seriously, if you're running Windows 10 then you should absolutely have at least looked at an antispy tool like Anti-Beacon or ShutUp10), and you have a situation where people are starting to view their Windows OS as basically spyware. Crazy, innit? Except that Windows 10 and UWP are basically Microsoft's entire strategy for establishing a Windows foothold in the mobile space—although, given how badly their smartphone division seems to be cratering, I have to agree with previous Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: it's not going to work.

So, it's come to this... My planned summer project is now turning my Windows 7 gaming PC into a dual-boot system that also runs SteamOS. Yes, by Canada Day, my Windows PC will double as a Steam Machine, and  if the SteamOS/Linux gaming experience continues to improve at the same pace that it has for the last few years, I fully expect to eventually transition to SteamOS/Linux for most of my home computing, if not all of it, long before Windows 10 looks like an attractive enough package that I'll want to turn my desktop into a UWP-powered app store.

Now, all I really need is for Grinding Gear Games to release a native Linux client for Path of Exile. Pretty please, GGG? I'll buy another supporter pack.

UWP disappoints with Quantum Break

OK, full disclosure to start: I wasn't actually looking forward to Quantum Break.

I'm not a big fan of FPS games, or of first-person perspective games in general, and I'm also a life-long PC gamer, so Microsoft's XBOne-exclusive first-person shooter was never really on my radar. When Microsoft announced a few months ago that XBox "exclusivity" also meant XBox-Live-on-Windows-10, I was only mildly interested, mainly because it seemed to me like another data point confirming the imminent end of the console gaming paradigm.

Quantum Break has another interesting property, though, and one which I find much more interesting: it's the first AAA game release which makes use of the Windows 10's Universal Windows Platform. Much has been written about the limitations of UWP, and how it's problematic for games, but Quantum Break would make for a high-profile test: a much-anticipated, AAA, FPS game, one which really needed to leverage the power of the PC to perform at its best... well, this would really show us the sort of impact that UWP will have on games that use it.

The results are not encouraging for Microsoft:

Overhyped and over-marketed, Quantum Break was supposed to be a proud flagship exclusive for Microsoft's Windows 10 PC platform. Instead, the game released as a total mess on PC; it can't even hit 60FPS, the 30FPS hard-lock doesn't work, there's crashing, screen tearing, ugly texture pop-ins, and other performance stutters marring the game. All of that is on top of the awful roadblocks of the Universal Windows Platform.

The Xbox One version of Quantum Break, however, is running smoothly. There's no hitches or hiccups, just the designated 30FPS hard cap and 720P upscaled to 1080P graphics. Normally, I'd just chalk this up to standard industry practices. Developers have long been releasing unfinished PC games alongside their more-optimized console ports simply because consoles take precedence. [...] 

I've looked around to see what gamers are saying about Quantum Break, and the major consensus is that Microsoft purposely encouraged Remedy to ship the PC version early, knowing full well it wasn't optimized. Why? To drive up Xbox sales, and build up morale within the Xbox community.

So... will the XBox One become the definitive place to play XBox games, simply because of the horrible limitations of the UWP framework? Is UWP actually a move by Microsoft to sabotage PC gaming, to convince more people to buy their second-place console rather than playing games on the expensive gaming PCs they already own? Or are Microsoft cutting their own throat here, giving more gamers a reason to look at PS4 instead, a platform which now allows you to stream games from your PS4 console directly to your PC?

I think that UWP is doomed to fail, and I'm not alone; when the developers of high-profile releases like Final Fantasy XV talk about using the "best PC tech out there," without mentioning UWP once, I think it's safe to say that Microsoft are failing to win over both the developers and the players of PC games.