Technology Ramblings

So here we are a little past Mid year in 2018 - so here's a quick check in on the PC Market. According to IDC - the industry saw the first sales increase in over 6 years of 2.7% to 62.2M units sold worldwide vs 60.6M in 2017. The top five OEMs (HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple and Asus) control over 77% of that market as the "Others" category continues to consolidate - showing an 11.4% drop in sales.    MS does not report Surface sale unit numbers - but based on their $1.094B revenue number and an estimated average selling price of $1000 - you can guestimate unit sales around 1.1M or around 1.7% market share.  Surface is weird as well since depending on the model may be considered a tablet or a PC and therefore counted differently. Total PC sales for H1 of 2018 are around 122- 123M units - so really about the same as last year.   So unless there are some earth shattering new releases that drive significant demand or some major upgrade cycles - 2018 should come in some wher

On July 25th - MS released two Windows 10 builds - build 17723 (RS5_Release) to Fast Ring Insiders and 18204 (RS_PreRelease) to Skip Ahead Insiders. While both builds were identical in terms of their contents - the 18204 build indicates the beginning of the 19H1 or Redstone 6 branch as far as Insiders are concerned. So in effect the development "window" for 19H1 is going to be effectively 9 months if MS sticks to current release rhythm.  So not sure if this means we will get a much larger feature set in 19H1 or if MS is just hedging to insure a clean release which has been a bit of an issue (re: 1803). As mentioned both builds were identical and contained nearly 40 fixes, plus some unique feature adds like the "mixed reality flashlight", the Emoji 11 collection, some time accuracy updates and kiosk mode updates.  So many features that the vast majority of folks will never use. I configured all 3 of my test machines for Skip Ahead - so all upgraded to 18204.

During this weeks MS Inspire Conference (i.e. World Wide Partner Conference) - Satya Nadella performed a "demo" of both an Android and Apple devices he referred to as MS 365 endpoints.  In Satya's mind - the phone itself is not as important as the MS apps running on it. Basically these were devices that primarily utilized MS apps - so from Outlook, Office & Cortana to Bing and Edge.   The concept did peak my interest a little and I figured I'd give it a whirl and see how much of a MS 365 endpoint I could make out of an Android device. So I started with a 2 year old Moto G4.  This is an entry level device that costs around $200 and runs Android 7.0.   After a complete reset of the device and initial login using my Google account - I started the transformation. So I started with the MS Launcher - followed by the usual suspects of Outlook, Office Apps & OneDrive.    The next tier of apps include Office Lens, Translator, Skype, Cortana, SwiftKey, MS Team

On July 6, then July 9 MS released Windows 10 builds 17711 and 17713.   Build 17711 was primarily a bug fix build (nearly 30) with some updates to Edge,  some Fluent design updates and an update to the Registry Editor.  17711 was also the official end to the Windows Sets feature - which was dropped for the RS5 branch. Build 17713 again added some Edge, Inking and Windows Defender Updates as well as some updates to old favorites like NotePad.  The nice new inclusion was improved login and support for Azure Active Directory (AAD) and the ability to register your machine with the AAD.   With Sets now gone - 17713 also did a reset on the Skip Ahead Ring.  All Insiders were returned to the Fast Ring and Skip Ahead registration will be opened up soon.   Similarly - RS5 builds will now be marked as RS5_Release and we soon see a new fork for RS6 or whatever the next branch of Windows is probably sometime in August.   As with recent builds the only device that easily updated both builds

On July 9, MS announced it's rumored low cost Surface device - the Surface Go. The $399 10" 2-in-1 format device announces the return the small tablet form factor to the Microsoft Portfolio.  You can pre-order now or wait until general availability on August 2.   While other OEMs like Chuwi have been selling small tablet and 2-in-1 form factors for a while - the fact that MS decided to release a product is significant - more on that later. MS choose an Intel Pentium Gold 4414Y CPU with HD 615 to power the device that sports a 1800 x 1200 Pixel Sense 3:2 aspect ratio 10 point touch screen with pen support.  While it seems odd to still be thinking Pentium vs Intel's Core line - the nice thing is - it's fanless and very low power so think 6W TDP. There is Intel 802.1ac WiFi & BT 4.1 support along with a 5MP Front & 8MP 1080P rears cameras with Hello facial sign-on support.    One very absent feature was the lack of LTE support.   There are two choices