Technology Ramblings

With the Sept 24 release of Windows 10 build 17763 - MS reached the "RTM" milestone for the Redstone 5 branch.  This is the 7th major release of Windows - we had Threshold 1 - the initial Windows 10 release in July of 2015, followed by Threshold 2 in November of that year.  Since then we've been on the Redstone branch following the twice per year rhythm of releases - typically in April and Oct. Has Windows 10 improved ?  Certainly it has.  We've seen continued improvements in areas like Touch, Pen and Windows Hello support as OEMs continued to update their hardware to support it.   We've also seen more and more control panel functions move to the new Settings "app".   We've seen some improvements in stability and I argue that most of the performance improvements are the result of better hardware - not the OS.   But to me the overall UX is still a hot mess.  Some UI components date all the way back to Windows 2000.  MS sti...

Sept 12 was 2018's "iPhone Day" - Apples annual event where they announce their new devices. This year we saw 3 new iPhones - the Xs, Xs Max and Xr.  All 3 had various updates to the core technologies that make up an iPhone as screen size increases.   What we also saw was a price increase at the top end.  So if you buy an Xs Max with 512GB of storage it will set you back $1,449 + tax - so effectively $1,500+.   In a recent interview - Tim Cook - Apple's CEO stated that Apple can justify these prices because it "replaces every other gadget consumers might need".  So Tim is referring to things like digital camera's, video recorders, music players, etc. But does it really ?   And Apple has been kind of on that band wagon for years back when their flagship iPhone 7 for example was about half the price. My point here is this.  While Apple has always placed itself in a leadership position in the Smartphone marketplace and has positio...

It's been over a month since I've posted anything regarding Windows 10 - either the upcoming Redstone 5 - 1809 release or the 19H1 builds... So two reasons - first on the 19H1 side there have only been 3 builds released in the last 40+ days and to be honest they've all been kind of a yawner as MS have been focusing more effort around the RS5 release builds. I tried my first RS5 update in a while on my Dell Venue 8 Pro and I really can't report on anything - because it won't install.   I had previously been on Build 18219 of 19H1 and the Venue continued to fail to install the latest 18234 build. So this morning I downloaded the production RS4 - 1803 build and performed a fresh install - then joined the Fast Ring.   While the latest RS5 Release build 17755.1 update showed up immediately - it failed at the end of the download stage - not moving on the Installation phase with a 0x8844018 error.    To me this kind of reinforces the issues with Windows 10...