Random Pages

Last week Microsoft announced that it was closing its retail store presence and Mixer , it’s game stream service. The timing is probably related to the end of the Microsoft financial year on 30 th June 2020 more than any deep sense of timing. Both of these closures are heavily focussed in the consumer market. Retail stores are normally for people to buy products and Mixer was acquired to provide a service for gamers. Microsoft has spent recent years focussing on cloud based business services rather than everyday consumers so these areas of its business were outliers. Retail stores were primarily in the USA with just a small number at “flagship locations”. Most notably London, which opened in 2019. The flagship locations are going to continue as “experience centres”. I am assuming that this will mean no actual products are going to be sold but rather as places to get the Microsoft brand on display. Mixer has struggled in the streaming and esports space. The market leader is Twit

WWDC is the Apple World Wide Developer Conference .  Apple now makes most money from the iPhone , wants the Ipad to be taken seriously as a laptop replacement and still has a tiny share of the personal computer market.  WWDC is an annual event for people who create the software, make money from the iPhone app store and “live” in the Apple ecosystem of devices.  Apple also want even more control of their devices. For this reason they have decided to accelerate the impact of making their own chips for devices. In the next two years Apple will move the Mac from Intel chips to ARM based chips that they design.  On the other hand the iPhone will get the ability to actually customise more of the experience bringing “widgets” and allowing users to set a default browser and mail application. Not revolutionary but annoyances for iPhone users.  Apple always announce these things as “world changing”. Mostly it’s catch-up. Android has allowed many more configuration options for years and is more a

Lockdown Metro Time travel is becoming possible. Not literally but metaphorically. The lockdown process has accelerated technology changes that were already sitting there waiting to happen. Working from home is the most obvious example. Before coronavirus (BC) we were in a situation that some people did work from home but it was nowhere near a majority that could. There will always be jobs that can’t be done from home but the creation of a knowledge economy has made homework possible. With a laptop, phone and website you can start a small business from your house. Call centres have had part time staff logging in from home. Some staff would work from home when they couldn’t get into the office. The barriers to home working have rarely been technological. Some managers felt they needed to see their staff working. Some staff wanted a firewall between work life and home   so work didn’t become 24x7. There was also the social aspect of work. The simple idea that you meet people and exchan

Windows Hello is Microsoft’s answer to the problem of passwords. These days almost all smartphones allow you to unlock your device with face id or a fingerprint. All premium priced iphones have come with this for a couple of years. However going passwordless is not so common on a PC. Some business PCs have supported logging in with a smartcard or fingerprint reader. However, security was originally quite alien to PCs. The first computers didn’t even need passwords. To get onto one the administrator had to know you and setup your account. Then as more people got access it became necessary to secure systems with passwords. PCs were not originally connected to networks and they went through a similar security transformation. A transformation accelerated by the internet. Your user account name (username) is often public information. An email address is common. Your password is something you keep secret. These are your personal credentials. Unfortunately, people don’t easily create comp