LAS VEGAS - We approaching great things from Microsoft. After the firm voiced that this would be its final keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show - that it would say goodbye to fifteen years of speeches at the annual gadget-fest - you insincere it would go out with a bang.
Instead, you were greeted with a bid for consideration from a firm struggling to stay applicable in an industry increasingly feeling with newcomers similar to Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
Yes, Microsoft gave us a retrospective of its keynote performances over the past 15 years - a good bit of nostalgia - but with a who's who of the tech industry watchful earnestly to see what the Redmond, Washington-based tech hulk has programmed is to forthcoming year, the debate from CEO Steve Ballmer unsuccessful to deliver.
Over the past decade, big-name companies are scaling back their use of traffic shows for leading product let go announcements. Apple even over Macworld, the uncover that grew up around its products in particular. Apple instead hosts launch events at its own Cupertino HQ, together with its developer discussion hold in downtown San Francisco. Google followed suit, right away hosting its own events at its Mountain View campus, whilst hosting its own developer discussion at the same San Francisco discussion center.
Microsoft's one after another appearance at CES - a traffic uncover that has been around for over forty years - was rather analogous to Microsoft's own location in the marketplace at the moment: Out of touch. Antiquated. Lacking innovation.
So it's usually right that the firm should step in reserve from CES. But it could have completed so with more style.
At smallest Microsoft wants to change. The firm has rededicated its efforts in mobile in 2011, fostering a burly partnership with Finnish mobile hulk Nokia, that will create the next call of Microsoft-powered mobile devices. Or, as Nokia CEO Stephen Elop mentioned on Monday, "the initial actual Windows Phones."
The company's bid to change is exemplified by the user interface that Windows Phone pioneered: The Metro UI. And Ballmer of course talked it up. But that was about it.
Based on Seattle's King County Metro network typeface, the Metro UI includes bright, sundry colors, interactive tile icons backing menu screens in a live action mosaic, and a uniform, frail rise selection. By many vicious accounts (including ours), it's dazzling - a indeed splendid leaving from lookalikes Android and iOS. It's the "heart and soul" of Windows Phone, according to Ballmer says.
"You saw Metro in the phone, in Windows, in Xbox. it's everywhere," Ballmer said. "Metro will expostulate the new illusion opposite all of our user experiences." As we've been reminded countless times now, the Metro UI will moreover brief over in to the next iteration of the Windows Personal Computer OS, Windows 8.
The UI has been hinted at and previewed too many times to count, and during its keynote, Microsoft pulled back the screen once again ever so slightly, display the minute bit of the much-awaited working system's skin. For one thing, there's a intelligent picture-based lock-screen, that unlocks formed on heartwarming pre-determined areas of a pic of your selecting (though it sounds silly, it's rather charming).
What's more, Windows 8 will run on both ARM and X86 processors - and Microsoft demoed the program using a antecedent Samsung inscription powered by NVidia's new Tegra 3 quad-core chip. And at last - and many compellingly - every Personal Computer currently running Windows 7 will be able to ascent to Windows 8. (It's a good thing, deliberation over half a billion Windows 7 licenses have sole to date).
Still, we'll have to wait for for more on the new OS - Microsoft says we'll see "the next milestone" in Windows 8 advance late February, then a launch to follow at a after that (as nonetheless unspecified) date.
In the meantime, however, the firm will try and jazz up PCs by bringing a few of its newest and many innovative technology to them. The company's Kinect camera technology - the popular, cheap motion-sensitive camera that Microsoft has sole to go with their XBox gaming consoles - will entrance for Windows PCs this February 1.
Like Metro, Ballmer said, Kinect is "a leading e.g. of what you similar to to call a innate user interface."
Bridging that hole creates sense. Xbox and Kinect have been two of Microsoft's renouned products, having sole over 66 million XBox consoles worldwide, and over 18 million Kinects given its launch final year.
It's brought the firm back in to the innovative limelight, a space it has long given occupied.
But sadly, we're left wanting for more with this, Microsoft's grand culmination as the CES headliner. We longed for that Oprah moment, that cocktail of astonishment when a horde pulls an genius from his sleeve. We longed for our "one more thing."
Ballmer and firm left it back in Washington, where the firm waste hard at work on the OS it hopes will change its picture in consumers' eyes and minds.
Instead, ample similar to other exhibitors at CES press conferences on Monday, Microsoft resorted to carting out celebrities similar to Ryan Seacrest, and sitting room tricks similar to a tweet-singing choral ensemble. As for our one more thing - it looks similar to we'll have to wait for compartment February.
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