Techno rants

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo co, Ltd. Today Nintendo reported its first operating loss in 30 years, a loss of $530 million. Nintendo sold 13.51 million 3DS units, 9.84 million Wii's and 5.1 million DS family units (nintendo DS, DSI & DSI XL). Nintendo predicts that the next financial year, they will be back in the black with a net profit of $245 million, this is due the 3DS will no longer be sold below cost and the upcoming launch of the Wii U. We see from these earnings, the impact of smartphones and tablets. The economy is also a compunding factor where gamers, especially casual gamers (Nintendo's target market) don't want to spend $30-$50 on games. When games on their smartphone or tablet provides a similar of in some cases a better experience than the hand held gaming system at a fraction of the price ($0.99 for angry birds, $14.99 for infinity blade, etc). Though Nintendo is predicting and profit of $245 million, next financial year. I am less enthu...

The battle for the "cloud" just heated up again with today google launching or rather renaming their google docs to google drive. Out of the gate google offers unparalleled search and file type support, does this makes the google drive a force to be reckoned with? NO a free account offers 5 GB of storage and then there are tiers which people can buy for example 25 GB costs $2.50/month Microsoft's ubiquitous Skydrive (personally I find this name to be the coolest names for all the cloud storage options) currently offers 25 GB of storage for those who lock it in now or in the future will be 7 GB of storage. The tiered plans for Skydrive are also very competitive. Box offers or recently offered 50 GB of free storage to all android users. Thus the list goes on, and the google drive is not the revolution which was gmail with gigabytes worth of storage. Insted google is comming late to the game and offering minimal storage when compared to its competitors. does t...

Ditching the expected nomenclature, Apple has launched its new tablet device today, "The new iPad". What was the point in bringing out iPad 2 then going back to the old days of how iPods are named, the blasted generation title. So whats on everybody's mind is, should I upgrade or not? For me its a no, but that's me. Apple has bumped up the hardware in the "new iPad", while keeping the design the same. Frankly that is a pretty good idea as the iPad 2 still has a fresh design. So what's changed, first and foremost is the screen. It has been given the retina title, with a resolution of 2048 * 1536, that is a mind blowing number of pixels, when a full 1080p HD screen is olny 1920 * 1080 pixles. Everything is much more crisp on "the new iPad", you no longer see a grid but a seem less image. Next is the backward facing camera, which apple renamed the isight camera. Its now 5MP and takes decent images. I found myself scratching my head at thi...

Getting out if the clasps of apple, i have moved to google's android platform in particular the motorola DROID RAZR. Hardware wise the phone is great, it has awesome battery life, great screen quality, its light but feels sturdy and with its kevlar, steel and gorilla glass build it is definitely a premium device. So whats wrong, well its android itself. Though i absolutely hate apples business practices, such you can't offer anything cheaper at another outlet if your in apple's development ecosystem. Which frankly i think is anti-competitive, due to the giant market share apple possesses, it pretty much shift market prices towards apples favor. The best example of this is the ebook market. Prior to ibooks l, ebooks were at low prices such as $3-5, ibooks launched, apple and publishers wanted higher prices and due to these broad market altering agreements prices of ebooks are now at $12. Getting back on track, i want apple to have an ecosystem competitor, so they c...

After the death of Steve jobs there has been rampant speculation that apple will launch their own TV set so a real Apple TV instead of a set top box. Apple will not get in this business as we have seen in the 2011 Christmas sale season, even at rock bottom prices people are just not interested in television sets. If apple was to produce a TV set, it would at odds at apples previous successful business entrances. The iPod and iPhone were introduced when phones and personal music players were popular, and further more if apple were to produce a groundbreaking TV, it would need to have great streaming content. Apple is yet to offer any true streaming content and witnessing the attempt's of NetFlix and HULU, the content providers/creators are unwilling to change to a new business model. These are some of the many reasons apple will not launch a television set, but if they were theses might be some of features we might expect; apps high resolution display unibody/aluminum ca...

this september Microsoft announced their new operating system, windows 8. It is supposed to be the answer to the tablet phenomena currently ripping across the tech landscape and the king is apple with their iPad. Set to launch late 2012, meaning sometime in Q3 Q4. This really worries me as Apple and Android would have then at least 3 generation in this category to refine their respective operating systems, getting a general mindshare in the populace and not to mention the huge lead in market share android and iOS would have over windows 8 at that point. I'm starting to get the vibes that Microsoft might have become a dinosaur, i will justify my analogy with the fact that Microsoft still has 90% marketshare in the desktop and laptop business, thus they are big but as we have seen thought out last year and this year, all the growth thus the money is in mobile devices such as tablets and phones. which Microsoft missed with windows phone 7 only started to get attention this year...

HP the other day shattered everyones dreams of WebOS. In a surprising announcement, HP is discontinuing its Personal Systems group, basically they will stop making all electronics that we consumers buy such as desktops, laptops, WebOS, etc. but they will keep making printers as they make money for the ridiculous price of their ink cartridges. The dying gasps of WebOS came today as, in Australia the touchpad which only on sale for 4 days was pulled then sold again for 98 bucks. As you would imagine, it sold out in 60 minutes around the country. But what does this mean? Tablets need to be an impulse item? Or was the touchpad just priced incorrectly at $499? Most people I asked said that they went to buy it because it was $98 and it was a average tablet, this i feel what HP should have done from the start. Lose money in the short term with touchpad though it was pretty crappy hardware with its plasticy finish and slow hardware so i dont how ...