Microsoft Hololens

Could the Death of Groove Music Pass be the Death of Microsoft?

It seems that MS are jumping out of a sinking industry. Getting us users to move from one sinking ship to another and announcing it as great news. How long can Spotify exist with being over 600 million in debt and not making a profit? Just how have they survived so long?

With MS killing of its hardware side, as those in the know have just announced they expect the Surface range to die next year. Could only make people wonder, just how long has the XBox got?

Microsoft is giving every impression of a shrinking company, the average consumer may come to forget who they are. This in turn may affect enterprise customers thinking. Seeing Microsoft retreating into a virtual world where nobody cares about it.

Their competitors have streaked past them in the consumer market to be companies that everybody knows and recognises. Even those companies know that they can use their vast resources and pockets to prop up a side of the business that in turn makes their other products look good. People will become those that only use Microsoft products in the office. A competitor could see just how Microsoft has become and decide then they want that business. By then Microsoft would simply be too small to have the resources to fight back effectively.

Links:

MS Power User

The Register

Update: So when I wrote this I was extremely pissed off at losing such a good service that I love and use all the time. And will continue to do so until December 31st anyway. But seeing as the Spotify app for Windows Phone is so bad and its the only device I would use, I also hate paying for something so poor and buggy. Don’t you just hate it when good things come to an end.

I’ve had my ups and downs with Microsoft as a company. This has just kicked off one of those down periods. Lets hope they do something good soon to turn that around.

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Your Free Windows 10 Upgrade is Here

So are you ready yet to upgrade. Personally I can’t wait but I will be cautious about upgrading my work PC. Of course that’s a company decision. But I will be upgrading the laptops at home. Just have to pry them out of the hands of the owners first.

Of course I will promise them that I won’t break it with the upgrade. Please Microsoft don’t let me down I will never hear the end of it.  At least there is a rollback option but a time limit of 30 days. Why a time limit at all. Guess Microsoft doesn’t want you to go back and I’m pretty sure that I will stick with Windows 10. The preview has been very interesting and much more like the windows that people are used to but with a lot more added bells and whistles.

Should be fun trying to convince the family. But you never know they may want to upgrade anyway. Hopefully.

Here are a few links from the BBC about what they think of Windows 10 and an interview with Satya Nadella.

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HoloLens Is And Isn’t Xbox One’s Answer To PlayStation 4’s Virtual Reality Headset

Microsoft’s Xbox lead Phil Spencer about virtual reality headsets. “For us, I think this is the area,” Spencer told a group of interviewers at yesterday’s Windows 10 event. He was responding to whether there’s also a virtual reality headset in the works at Microsoft, just an hour after the company unveiled HoloLens: a “mixed reality” headset that enables the wearer to see holograms in real life.

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For Spencer, HoloLens is both Microsoft’s alternate answer to the recent virtual reality explosion and a potential answer to Sony’s Project Morpheus headset — a VR peripheral that works with the PlayStation 4, where HoloLens could work with the Xbox One. “It’s very cool. To me there’s not a successful consumer electronics device on the planet where gaming is not a primary form of app category on the thing,” Spencer said. There’s even a “Minecraft-inspired” demo — which answers that question — for HoloLens that shows the implications of gaming with holograms. But no demo showed the headset working with the Xbox One in any capacity. Spencer instead talked around that possibility:

“I think gaming will be important. Specific scenarios with the Xbox, we’re thinking hard about. People could ask about streaming solutions. Could I use it as a display for my Xbox? We don’t have answers to any of those things, but know it’s all part of the same organization.”

And that’s why I say HoloLens both is and isn’t an answer to Sony’s Project Morpheus, or the Oculus Rift, or even Samsung’s Gear VR. It’s similarly impressive, and head-mounted, and even delivers some similar experiences, but it’s not virtual reality and it’s not a head-mounted display. It’s… something else.

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