Monthly Archives: January 2014

gaming

Here comes Steam Machine: a quick look

At CES in Las Vegas I got a first look at Valve’s Steam Machine. This Brix Pro model comes from Gigabyte and will cost $499 for bare bones – no RAM or storage.

I was surprised by how small the thing is – quite cheap-looking in fact, especially when compared to something like Microsoft’s Xbox One which is large and sleek, and costs a similar amount (though smaller is good in most ways).

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Next to it you can see the controller, which gives you an idea of the scale.

Ports on the back are hdmi, DisplayPort (better quality), Ethernet and 2 more USB 3.0.

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and on the front, two USB and an audio socket (supports digital as well as analogue).

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Power is on top.

What counts though is the spec. Core i5 4570R (an i7 is also available), Intel Iris Pro 5200 graphics with 128MB ED RAM, wifi included. Max RAM is 16GB. It’s going to cost at least $100 –$150 extra to make it a working box.

Intel showed the Brix Pro driving a large display at 1080p.

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However, I was told that the little box has enough power to drive a 4K display as well as a second display at 1080p. In principle, you could have a Steam Machine with 3 4K displays for the perfect setup; Intel said that its Iris Pro 5200 is capable of this though not in this particular configuration.

Running Linux (SteamOS) and tapping into the huge Steam community and app store, Steam Machine is one to watch.

mobile

CES analyst predicts flat global consumer tech sales, massive dominance of smartphones and tablets, drift towards low-end

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At CES in Las Vegas yesterday, CEA Director of Industry Analysis Steve Koenig presented data and predictions on global tech spending trends. The figures come out of CEA Research and are based on sales tracking at retail outlets around the world supplemented by other data.

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This being CES, I was expecting a certain amount of hype around how consumer technology is changing the world, but in fact Koenig’s presentation was matter-of-fact and somewhat downbeat. He said that the overall consumer tech spending trend is flat, with rising spend in emerging markets (especially China) more or less making up for declining spend in mature markets, which he says is due to market saturation. His figures show 2% growth in spending in 2013 but a 1% decline in 2014. Given the uncertainty of this kind of forecast, let’s call it flat.

The “market saturation” factor is a point to ponder. It suggests that technical devices are “good enough” for longer. It also suggests that overall the new gadgetry on show at CES is not sufficiently exciting to persuade us to spend a higher proportion of our income on consumer electronics.

Looking at his figures though, it is not just a matter of saturation. Another factor is device convergence. We are spending less on cameras and camcorders because a smartphone is good enough. We are spending less on printers because there is less need to print stuff; we can view it on a tablet. We don’t need a SatNav any more; we use a smartphone (or it is built into the car’s dashboard). In fact, we are loving our smartphones and tablets so much that spending on almost any other kind of tech is in decline. Here’s the slide showing how these mobile devices are forecast to account for 43% of consumer tech spending in 2014:

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Spending on smartphones is forecast to increase by 9% in 2014, and on tablets 6%. Almost the only other broad category for which significant revenue growth is forecast in 2014 is video games consoles, thanks to the launch of new generation Xbox and PlayStation boxes (maybe Steam boxes too). That is a product cycle, not a long-term trend. Personally (my thoughts, not Koenig’s) I reckon games consoles will decline thanks to competition from smartphones, tablets and smart TVs. Global TV sales are expected to increase by 2% in units.

The other big picture trend identified by Koenig is the reduction in the average selling price (ASP) of smartphones and tablets. Smartphone ASP is down from $444 in 2010 to $297 in 2014.

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This trend is partly because the quality of cheaper devices has improved, but also because the emerging markets which are spending more are also markets that want lower prices. Taken together, this translates to a significant shift towards the low end. Overall, CEA forecasts that tech spending in developing markets, primarily on low end devices, will equal tech spending in mature markets for the first time in 2014.

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Of course this is largely an Android story. I will add though some reflections on what has happened with Windows in the light of these trends. Microsoft was right to adapt Windows for tablets, but if you look at how Windows 8 was launched there was too much focus on the high-end, trying to copy Apple rather than compete with Android. That was a mistake, and it is only recently that OEMs like Asus, with its T100 Windows 8.1 tablet, have started to come out with decent low-end devices. Nokia on the other hand has done exactly the right thing with its Lumia Windows Phones, building market share with excellent low-end smartphones. Whether that momentum will be sustained following Microsoft’s acquisition will determine the fate of the phone platform. 

Finally, note that forecasting the future is never easy and this time next year the picture may look quite different.

Update: Koenig’s slide deck is here.

mobile

Nine months with Truphone: a solution to mobile roaming?

At last year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a UK company called Truphone gave out SIMs to journalists for review. The claim is that rates are better for travellers than using roaming rates on typical contracts. The company also offers extras including the ability to assign multiple international numbers to a single SIM.

It is not my only SIM, but I have been trying it out with reasonable results. The best thing about it from my point of view is that calls home from the USA are a reasonable £0.10 per minute, which means I don’t need Skype and a decent wifi connection in order to call without worrying too much about the cost.

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Bizarrely, it is actually more expensive to call a UK number from within the UK, at £0.15 per minute, even though I have a UK number:

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It is more expensive for both calls and data in Spain, at at £0.21 per minute for calls and at £0.36 per MB for data:

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Data is a problem and I carelessly racked up a rather large bill in the US; £0.20 per MB does not sound too bad but a single MB does not go far with normal use.

Still, I can say in Truphone’s favour that signal quality is generally good and the rates better than most roaming deals. If you want to avoid the hassles of a local SIM in each country you visit Truphone is worth a look.

microsoft, software development, visual studio, windows

Figuring out Project Siena: a Windows 8 app to build Windows 8 apps

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A couple of weeks back I took a look at Project Siena, a preview of a new tool for building Windows 8 apps. Project Siena features a simplified user interface builder, an Excel-like expression language, and data-bound controls. It generates Windows 8 JavaScript apps. Project Siena is itself a Windows Store app, and runs fine on Windows RT (the ARM version). I have been using it successfully on Surface 2, on which it runs sweetly.

When I first looked at Project Siena I tried to build the same first app that I have used for numerous simple tests of development tools over the years: a to-do list. I was impressed by how easy it was to create the user interface, but unable to work out the code to complete it. Unless I missed it, the key information is not included in any of the initial documentation. I found this disappointing, since it has been easy to work out the code in every other programming environment I have tried.

I gradually worked it out. Here is the app:

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The idea is that you have a listbox, an input box, and two buttons. One button takes the contents of the input box and adds it to the list. The other button removes the selected item in the list. All the functionality you need for a to-do list (actually a simple memo control would do, but that would be a bit too simple).

In Siena, data is stored in Collection objects, and you can bind a listbox to a collection. By default, a new listbox is bound to an object called ListboxSample, but you cannot use it for this; if you try, you get a squiggly line error with the message that ListboxSample is not a collection.

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Instead, you have to create your own collection object. In Siena, you declare a variable by using it and its type is inferred. Enter this for the OnSelect property of the Add button:

Collect(mycollection,{Value: InputText1!Text})

This is the code that took me so long to work out. The Collect function adds an item to a collection. If the collection does not already exist, it creates it. The first argument to Collect is a collection object, and the second, an item. What is an item? In effect, a record or row in a table. The syntax for an item in Siena is:

{Fieldname1: fieldvalue1,Fieldname2: fieldvalue2,…}

where the dots represent additional fields as required. Therefore, the code I entered for the Add button creates or appends an item with a single field, called Value, to a collection called mycollection.

Now you can select the listbox and tap Data and then Items. The collection called mycollection magically appears for selection. Select it. In the case of multi-field collections, you can also choose which field appears in the list. Only one field it seems; yes, Siena needs a grid control.

Then you can run the app, tap Add, and see the content of the input box added to the list.

The Remove button is easy:

Remove(mycollection, Listbox1!Selected)

However, our app has a flaw. The data does not persist. Next time you run the app, the list will be empty. This is easy to fix too. Go back to the OnSelect property of the Add button. Type a semicolon after the existing line of code, and then:

SaveData(mycollection,"mycollection")

This saves the collection to isolated storage on your PC. Alternatively, you could call a web service and save to the cloud, but I am not sure of the code for that yet.

Next, we have to load the data when the app starts. You can use the OnVisible property of the screen for this. Type:

Clear(mycollection);Collect(mycollection,LoadData("mycollection"))

Note that since Collect appends to the collection, we have to clear it first, to avoid duplicate items.

Now the app is complete.

What do I think of Siena after doing this? It certainly has its frustrations, but I like it. I do think that the designers have gone too far in pretending that code is unimportant; it is silly that you have to type into a single line editor. It would also have saved me time if Microsoft had provided a syntax guide and programming guide, rather than concentrating on how to show pretty pictures.

Who is going to use Siena, if anyone? That is the harder question.