CES Keynote

I watched the annual keynote by Microsoft at CES. This year it was announced that this would be the last time Microsoft would do this event, after appearing at the conference to keynote since the late 1990s.

Sadly it felt like a sign off end of an era rather than Microsoft showing new technology, it was done in a "conversational style" with Ballmer being asked questions by a main presenter, and then other people doing some demos.

The first segment was all about Windows Phone, and how they are taking a "social" integration view of the whole thing. I'm sure the handsets and platform is good, but you could not help feeling there was an elephant in the room (getting out sold and having to rely on patent litigation to get revenue from other vendors who have more successful products).

Then we went onto Windows 8, for me this is what Windows 7 should have been to anticipate a fashion for tablet computing (something Microsoft failed to start in the mid 2000s). But as we know Windows 7 put Vista right, and Microsoft fell behind. Stil Windows 8 may get this right, although you can see it being niche for these devices, I do not think they will get across the platforms right or popular.

Finally to end on a high, there was an Xbox and Kinect demo. Every year we get told that this will become the content center piece of the living room. Maybe it is true this time, and they did announce content provider deals this time. The voice control demo also looked good, although I think I would find it frustrating to use even though it looks fairly slick.