Apple has lost it's way without their messiah...

If Steve was there, he'd have made the marketeers walk the plank (off that yacht that he never got to sail) just for daring to think about designing an icon...

And the people who talked to that blogger? Yeah, them too.

Flattening the styling on the layouts is fine - whether your have flat or faux-3d buttons is a matter of fashion, and fashion is dynamic. In the 00's, starting with WinXP's restyling, faux-3d was in fashion, probably in part because computers had reached a point where they could do that and have the result look decent. Now tastes have moved back to a flatter styling (we can all theorize about why - but really, it's fashion - rationalizing only goes so far). Steve might well have come around to this - but if he was in charge, the flat icons that went out on the developer preview would have actually been good.

Sounds like a crap tablet...

The screen is dim, it's heavier than the competition, and thicker too...

The screen resolution is poor (1024x768? please, my 1.5 year old phone has higher resolution), the touchscreen responsiveness is below par...

It's processor performance barely matches that of the Tegra 3, even though the former has been in shipping devices for nearly a year...

Oh, and it's made by Acer, which has a less than sterling reputation for build quality and power management.

This tablet seems to have nothing to recommend it.

I don't call this "making choices as a society"

How could the society have made the choice, when the society in question wasn't even aware of the program until someone leaked a request document?

That blue band sounded interesting (though maybe not in the right place on the physical mouse) until I got to the word "store" and then promptly lost interest.

A sensitive band on a mouse that would act like alt+tab or alt+shift+tab (and maybe a small motion would just bring up the alt+tab window?) could be handy if it was located appropriately. Restricting it to windows store apps, when the quality and functionality of said apps is miserable just needlessly cripples the hardware.

I don't think they actually envision people using it with a tablet except when the device is in it's keyboard dock pretending to be a laptop and the owner is trying to do real work with it. Editing a document is dreadful on a touchscreen (since it's hard to move the cursor to the exact location you want), so you need a mouse if you want to be productive on one. Even if you're not editing text or doing a task that itself requires a precision pointing device, the dearth of useful apps for Windows Store means you're going to be using the desktop UI*, which is hardly ideal for touch...

*Assuming, of course, you're not on a WinRT device - but if you are, the most useful accessory is probably be that pair of skateboard wheels they used to tout the Surface's durability, not a mouse - that way even though you can't get work done on it, at least you can get to work on it.

An iWatch will be a tough sell...

They probably won't be able to include the 3g/4g data connectivity in it, at least without it weighing a ton or having crap battery life. So you'll still need a phone (even if you could somehow use a watch to do all the other things you do with a smartphone) - of course you'll still need a phone, otherwise sales of the iWatch would cannibalize iPhone sales.

The only thing I can think of for it is for notifications, or an alarm if you leave your phone behind. But neither of these require an OLED display - you can do it just fine with LEDs. Indeed, there are at least two kickstarter projects for a bracelet with LEDs and bluetooth in it, to do notifications and warn you if you've left your phone behind (here's one: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/embraceplus/embrace-a-smart-piece-of-wearable-technology ), and another one to do the same thing with your wallet.

In order for Apple to justify the costs associated with the OLED display and the Apple brand, Apple is going to need to do something really cool /and useful/ with that OLED display. And I just don't see any functions like that.

How about Google-

(as in, the opposite of Google+, since you're being subtracted from the google world, just like you've been subtracted from the real world)

Adding it to CALEA will not hurt crims, just US businesses

Because the people who care about privacy will just use software made, and services operated in jurisdictions beyond the reach of the oppressors. So while US companies will not be able to make an attractive product for people who need privacy (for nefarious or legal purposes), everyone outside the US still could (subject to their country's own stupid laws, of course)

Tim Worstall wrote a much better article on the discovery two years ago, wherein he basically trashes the whole stupid idea of dredging mud from the bottom of the ocean for a few tenths of a % of rare earths. The author of this article would have done well to read it, as he seems to have succumbed to the hype.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/04/japan_discovers_rare_earths_under_pacific/

The message is clear - Do not use microsoft for communication

They've borked hotmail several times, forced some hotmail users to switch to outlook to conform with their mad vision of the future.

They're pulling the rug out from under messenger, just to force people to another product of theirs.

In both cases, they're forcing people to use their newer, less desirable product, just to get people onto the new product... Actually, they are doing much the same thing with desktop windows and TIFKaM....

So maybe the message is "Don't use Microsoft, for anything, because they'll shaft you whenever their C-suite has a "vision of the future".

This ain't gonna fly...

Might get some niche use for major live events... but for the most part, people using mobile devices are not going to be interested in watching something that runs at a scheduled time with no pause/rewind/skip - they're used to doing that with video on the same device; any service that doesn't let them do that will seem antiquated by comparison.

I'm sure the operators wish this would take off, but the viewing experience is just all around worse from the consumer's perspective.

RIM is hanging, alright...

It's amazing how when you see something every day for years, it becomes invisible to you - like how these analysts (and RIM itself) can't see the writing on the wall, even though it's been there for at least three years. RIM needed compelling devices three or four years ago, when real smartphones (not blackberries) were taking off and RIM wasn't making them. It's like if Amiga or some other also-ran tried to resuscitate their brand by introducing a new desktop OS a decade and a half ago.... just totally hopeless.

At this point, RIM is a zombie, eating the shareholders' money (it's not like there are any brains to be had there...), and I'm amazed that they haven't realized this and shot it in the head (or put a stake through it's heart, or whatever you do to zombies) and sold it's assets and IP and wound down operations gracefully...

HP website claims it has gigabit ethernet....

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-Spectre/A9G16AV?HP-Spectre-XT-TouchSmart-Ultrabook-15t-4000

Also according to that, 2 USB ports are USB 3.0, audio is a mic/headphone combo jack, which means you need a stupid adapter if you want to use a normal microphone with it, and it DOES have a digital media card slot - looks like an SD card slot, though curiously the specs neglect to mention it.

Why is that an Asus laptop depicted falling in the image for this article?

Asus is one of the manufacturers whose sales are increasing (and with good reason - they've been producing products that are a real cut above their competition in terms of build quality and their IPS LCDs are beautiful, and they've been selling said better products at only a small price premium.

That should have been an Acer laptop falling, what with their 28% decline and all... Acer laptops are more fun to drop, too. They just kinda explode. The Asus zenbook depicted would probably just get a dent in the corner of the case.

Do want!

That looks really cool.

Kudos to them for giving it a decent screen resolution, too.

The biggest question is whether there will be enough apps that take advantage of this. It makes me want to put it on a table and use it to play multiplayer games with other humans (in meatspace, not online)... but the feature you'd want for that, orienting display toward current player, etc, would need to be implemented on a per-app basis, and I don't think we'd see this unless there were a hell of a lot of sales.

If I was more of a baller, this would totally be on my shopping list.

Seriously? A million units in 2015?

These guys are crazy.

There's no way people are going to jump all over a TV format only available to people with the space and money for a 60-100 inch TV, when there's no content for it. All you'll be able to watch is upscaled HD (or heaven help you, upscaled non-HD) for years. And they're gonna have to be considerably more expensive than current TV's, if the manufacturers want to make money off them (which they seem to be having a hard time with at present). The only way anyone will buy 4k in the next few years is if they're deceived about what it's capable of (which we can count on marketing to work overtime on) or if they're doing something niche (like the reader proposing using it at a computer screen).

If you're charging people money to message me, give me a damned cut of it. Let's split it 50:50?

Doesn't facebook have a microtransaction system to pay for games and crap? Even if we got paid in facebook funnymoney, that'd be a nice gesture.

This seems useful for spear phishing...

Don't have to get em to open a poisoned document, or enter info on a phishing site. Just get em to open an inoccuous page in another tab, and then go back to what they were doing (maybe a page with a video on it that'll take a while to load, so they'll get bored and tab away), or let it open a pop-under advert. And then wait for them to log onto the system with an onscreen keyboard. You know where to expect the clicks for each key because you've gone to the login page and been asked to enter the PW on the onscreen keyboard yourself.

For home users, it's just a typical advertising/privacy concern. But in situations where security is critical, it provides a way of bypassing a standard defense against keylogging, and gives spear phishers another weapon.

The only saving grace is the fact that noplace where security matters uses IE, and if they do, they deserve what they get - but this isn't an excuse Microsoft would hold up for why they don't need to fix it.

I don't see that working out well...

Amazon and Google are already selling tablets at cost...

It's very hard to make a profit undercutting someone who is selling stuff at cost. So they need to cut costs enough to both undercut Google/Amazon AND make a profit. I don't see how this is going to happen without terminally compromising the user experience. All this will do is waste development money and further damage the reputations of the companies involved, and possibly the reputation of tablet computing in general.

Sounds like he ran out of bath salts

and came to his senses.

How did it take the crooks this long?

One of the first things that came to my mind when I saw QR codes on posters was that someone could put bogus QR stickers over the real ones.

The factory-reset USSD code, when that exploit worked on Samsung's top-line phones, would have been a great choice for that. Except I like Samsung; If there was a nasty exploit like that that worked on iPhones, i'd be tempted to do it (since I don't have any malware or phishing scams to promote)

Please provide the video to us readers

When you use the next laptop review sample to fend off fireworks.

That would be fun to watch - a tech writer using the latest ultrabook as a shield to block fireworks fired at him by the rest of the office. If it had a solid state drive, and decent build quality, and the hack didn't drop it, it'd probably survive.

Actually, that might be a good test of build quality, you know...

Support for 512 tape drives?

Who ordered that?

Sounds like a redhat customer is doing something huge with tape.

It's the distribution.

The surface RT needs proper distribution (that means IN STORES - maybe Steve Ballmer can afford to buy a high-end tablet without getting to try it out, but most people can't, and it's not like there are microsoft stores everywhere). It needs this much more desperately than it needs a price cut. And it needs a price cut pretty badly.

Seriously, if I was seeing one every time I went into Micro Center or Best Buy, it'd start to tempt me. But as it is, I don't even know where a Microsoft Store is.

A tablet computer that feels good (like the surface) and looks good (like the surface) and has a novel keyboard (which looks like it'd suck, but is pretty good) - you need to get that into the hands of shoppers so they can see it and try it.

Regardless of his motives for doing so, we should thank Steve Jobs

He killed Flash - it had been the insecure scourge of the internet for many years, and everyone was afraid not to support it, so people kept using it. Even though it was crap, and insecure, and slow, and buggy, everyone accepted it. He told Flash to go to hell - and by denying it a place on the iPhone, hurried it on it's way there*.

There are very few other people who could have killed Flash, and it very much needed to be killed.

75% of users are pirates?

With a price tag like that, no wonder! Nobody's going to pay $50 for a mobile phone app, especially one that replaces free online services - unless they can charge it to an expense account or something.

So it's hardly surprising that the majority of users are pirates who wanted a dictionary app and snagged the most reputable looking dictionary app they could get their hands on (er, hooks on, these are pirates right?).

The thing that goes is the membranes...

The "switching" is done by a set of three plastic membranes that sit under the keys.

The top and bottom one have contacts on them, the middle one just has holes where those contacts are.

If even a tiny amount of liquid gets between these membranes (usually easy , since no effort is put into sealing them in consumer keyboards - though they're usually fused in enough places that it's difficult to separate and reassemble them), it will spread out over a surprisingly large area. If it's something acidic like soda, it will corrode the contacts. If it's something else, it'll still dry into a non-conductive layer blocking the contacts. If it's water, you might think you're fine - but if it sits there, it will eventually corrode the contacts - and how clean do you think that water really is after it filters through the crud under the keys?

It would be fairly simple to make a keyboard that was immune to water damage - just seal the membrane and pot the electronics in something waterproof. But keyboard manufacturers have a vested interest in not doing that.

If someone buys a keyboard and trashes it by spilling soda on it, they feel like it's their fault. They won't hold it against the manufacturer, and they may well buy another from the same supplier. Even if they do blame the manufacturer, worst case, no repeat business.

If someone buys a keyboard that's immune to spill damage, they won't have to replace it for ages - because the vast majority of keyboard failures are from spills. They won't ever need to buy a new one. No repeat business.

Making water resistant keyboards is a losing business proposition - unless the keyboard is so crap that the buyer can't stand typing on it and has to get a real keyboard again. And indeed, these sorts of water-proof keyboards work. Or if you made the keyboard wireless, and sealed it's non-rechargeable battery into it so it was a consumable. Which someone did, and the register had an article on recently.

Filling in the gaps only?

Are you guys over in the UK that awash in free hotspots which your phones automatically connect to and which work, that you can use cellular data only to fill in gaps?

Over here, in geek central on the east coast (Cambridge MA, right near MIT)...

60-75% of the AT&T wifi hotspots that my phone automatically connected to didn't have any connectivity forcing me to turn off autoconnect (since it won't fall back to 4G when connected to an AT&T notspot)

Almost all of the non-AT&T free wifi hotspots require you to clickthrough a terms of service page. Unfortunately, about half of these pages are designed for non-mobile browsers, and even on my galaxy note, the page is unpleasant to work with. I encountered one that just redisplayed the clickthrough agreement, regardless of how many times I clicked through it. That tech that's going to be in the new ultrabooks to automatically log into these cannot come soon enough. Worse still, some of these hotspots require a login from the cashier in order to connect, some have timelimits. And THEY ARE ALL SLOWER THAN MY CELL CONNECTION!

mankind has somewhat different biology and behaviour?

Could have fooled me re: behavior...

Also, C for writing and D for for the title. Sometimes El Reg goes over the top with the titles (er, i mean, too far over the top, they're always a bit over the top...)

I think we're seeing a few things here, and none of them reflect well on Apple

They're out of exciting new features (or so it seems). All that's left is to improve processor speed.

Their competitors have a 6-9 month product release cycle, while apple has had a 1 year one. That doesn't cut it anymore.

Everyone who buys iStuff has piles of 30-pin accessories. Switching to lightning in time for the holidays means more sales of adapters and new accessories.

The Apple visionary is gone - and he has not risen from the dead (at least not yet).

Also, Tim Cook sucks at product launches.

I got to touch one today

I found a promo event outside the local microsoft building while getting lunch.

I got a free shirt, water bottle, and a cup of cider that gave me a stomach ache, and I got to play with a surface tablet for all of 2 minutes (I'd like to say that it gave me a headache, but the screen's actually pretty good).

The hardware is very well made - the kickstand is a good idea, and actually feels like it will last well. Device has an excellent feel, screen is great, touch is very responsive. The connectors for the keyboard are not normal - it consists of a set of contacts, with a magnet on either side; the keyboards practically jump onto the bottom of the tablet, and it looks like it would be hard to mangle the connector, or get crap stuck in it.

They had both a touch and type keyboard cover there. The type keyboard is a typical too-thin-to-feel-good mobile keyboard, with a little touchpad on it. Nothing special. The cheaper touch keyboard, though, really impressed me. It performed far better than I had expected - it wasn't ideal to type on, but I've used keyboards that made a much worse first impression on a daily basis. This isn't some squishy foamy thing with a membrane switch buried in it (or if it is, it's not obvious, which is what matters) - the responsiveness makes me think they're using a proper touch sensor. And it has it's own touchpad too, which works quite well.

I'm not sold on Win RT though - the metro part is a great match for the tablet form factor, and looks and feels good... until you start office. Switching between start screen and office was jarring, I don't like it. They didn't have the wifi working (probably because they were a block away from their HQ, and that block was occupied by a big steel-and-brick wifi absorbing building), so I couldn't check the windows store, but I hear it's pretty barren, which is another big downer. But the hardware looks excellent.

Wait, ReRAM needs EUV litho?

Did that claim surprise anyone else?

That would seem to be a pretty big barrier to ReRAM adoption, considering that EUV lithography has been "a few years away" for close to a decade now, and doesn't seem to be moving any closer to production...

Re: U3, they saw the light in 2009 and dropped it.

The trick is to get other people to take it...

What I do is to find something that someone else actually wants. Then I bring it over to their place with a pile of other crap - and make them promise that they won't throw any of the junk out, and will instead pass it along to someone else if they don't want it - Presto - it's now someone else's problem. And if they throw it out, they're the ones who have to feel guilty for breaking the no-trash promise

My cardboard bins of 50-year old microswitches (well older than I am - they have Bakelite cases!), parallel+serial printer networkifier and stack of 40GB PATA drives were still sitting in his living room last time I went there. I forget what it was that he actually wanted...

How will the users feel about this?

I don't know about the rest of you, but while I can deal with advertising on a computer with tons of screenspace (as a proper Reg reader, I won't touch systems with low res screens) and an accurate mouse for clicking close boxes, and a fast processor and GPU to power the garish flash animations, and plenty of RAM to store the advertisements on .

My phone has none of those things. An advertisement takes up a large amount of precious screenspace (even on my Galaxy Note, I can't spare the screen real estate! God help the people with 3.x inch screens). I need to get the stylus out to hit the tiny close box on those horrible popup advertisements that don't open in their own tabs, and I frequently hit the wrong link when using my fingers, and could easily open an advert by mistake. And unlike a computer, where a quick press of the back button will get me out of such a mistake and pay hardly any penalty in time, on a mobile app this will start a new app to handle the ad mis-touch, which won't respond to the back button until it's done starting up, only to be exited.

And I think this is the problem with advertising on mobiles, and why it hasn't been as profitable as companies would like - advertising is much more disruptive to the user experience on mobile devices - computers can handle it because they've got specs so far in excess of what's needed for most tasks; the inconvenience is countered by brute force. Mobile devices are still back in the late 90's, when bad advertisements could make a page unusable without some means of blocking ads. Which makes users much more hostile to advertisements, and sets up a more adversarial relationship between the ad and the user.