Jules recently posted about her web stats. They tell her, among many other things, that she still has one or more readers who are still on Windows 3.1 (originally released on March 18, 1992). I thought I’d check the stats for this site for the same very, very late adopter. No such luck–the oldest visitors that my Google Analytics account shows are on Windows 95 (two of them in the last month, as it happens).
Then I thought to check what percentage of Windows users are using Vista, and what fraction is still on Windows XP. Windows Vista was released a little over two years ago, on January 30, 2007. It has, as I’m sure you’re well aware, been plagued by criticism. I know many XP users who will skip Vista entirely, moving straight to Windows 7 (as of yet, it has no slicker name).
I checked this site, as well as a client’s site (they’re in the software industry). I compared Windows XP and Vista usage for January, 2008 and January, 2009. Here’s what I found:
For this site, as a percentage of all visitors on Windows:
XP
Vista
January, 2008
80%
15%
January, 2009
66%
31%
For a client site, as a percentage of all visitors on Windows:
XP
Vista
January, 2008
81%
13%
January, 2009
74%
21%
Those numbers don’t add up to 100% because there’s a fraction of users on Windows 2000, NT, CE, 98, 95, ME and so forth.
I checked a couple of other sites, and the numbers look more like my client’s site than my own. Vista usage floats around the 25% mark for January, 2009. What should the adoption rate look like? I really have no idea. Microsoft surely hoped that a majority of their users would be on Windows Vista by the time they released Windows 7.
We were on our property on Pender Island again this morning, meeting with our architect and builder. While they staked out the precise location of the house, garage and the walkway between the two, I snapped 160 photos from, roughly speaking, where my future office will be located. I then used Microsoft’s new Photosynth project to magically stitch them together. You have to have Photosynth installed (Windows only, I’m afraid) to view the, uh, thingie (which I removed from my page, as it was causing some dogdiness).
I have mixed feelings about the results. To be honest, I read almost nothing in the way of tips or best practices before I started, and snapped the photos in a pretty haphazard fashion. You can get a reasonable sense of panorama, but I’d prefer it to feel more seamless. Maybe I’ll try another one in six or eight months when we’re (assuming the stars align) in the construction process. It also took about an hour to ‘render’ on my old Windows PC.
I don’t want to force anybody to install Photosynth, so I made a quick 40-second screencast of my Photosynth in action. I’m uploading it now, and will embed it once Vimeo finishes munching on it.
Microsoft named this developer platform “PlaysForSure”, and they (and their partners) ran many, many ads decrying the fact that music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Music Store would “only” play in iTunes and on iPods. This was, technically speaking, true — and indeed it is still true, and it is why I have cautioned Dora and you and anyone else who would listen that you should never “purchase” anything from the iTunes Music Store that you might want to “own” longer than Apple was willing to allow.
I can’t get very excited about digital rights these days, but this is a well-written explanation of why this stuff might matter to the average Normal Human.
All I can say is that the Boss is going to be pissed.
I like how it ends with “our ecosystem rocks!” I kept looking for a hint of winking irony, but I didn’t see any. Thanks to Lee for the linkage.
UPDATE: A Microsoft representative says that it’s a spoof, though intended for an internal audience. That may be why there’s no apparent indicators of irony (an important aspect of satire, I think)–the target audience would recognize it for what it was.
I was reading the local paper today, and perused an article about Microsoft targeting smaller companies in their forthcoming acquisitions. The article featured a photo of a couple Microsoft ‘booth babes’ at a tradeshow, showing off some peripherals (copped from Yahoo! News):
Maybe I’m just getting old, but don’t these young women look about twelve years old? Particularly the one on the right, who has ‘Hardware’ emblazoned on her crop-top. Of course, there’s a big market for webcams among paedophiles, so maybe it’s just good marketing.
It has nothing to do with so-young-it’s-creepy girls, I’ve always really liked Microsoft’s keyboards. I pretty much buy them exclusively.
