Microsoft announced to financial analysts last week that it has already shipped over 60 million copies of Windows Vista, in addition to 42 million corporate licenses of the operating system. More than 20 million were sold in the first month, making about 40 million in the last four months. By comparison, computer makers only sold 67 million copies of Windows XP in the first year and total sales were just 46 million after nine months. Analysts believe Microsoft has already sold close to 60 million of the shipped copies.
The Xbox 360 has a lesser quarter, shipping just 700,000 units in the last quarter, down from 1.8 million the same quarter the previous year. It’s worth mentioning, though, that the previous year was the launch year. Also, Microsoft flooded the channel in the holiday season, meaning there were more consoles than necessary, so more than 700,000 may have been sold, even if less were shipped.
Microsoft did break down the revenue of some products, showing that Xbox brought in $4.1 billion in revenue last year, an amazing number comparable to Windows Server and shoulders above SQL Server, advertising, Exchange, and other businesses.
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Corporate, Xbox 360, Xbox, General |
no comments
EA just released Wing Commander Arena to the Xbox Live Arcade, and to celebrate it, they’re giving away in a contest a grand prize of seven game systems, every copy of Wing Commander released for those systems, and some other cool stuff. Head here to enter.
Winners get:
- One Sega Genesis w/Sega CD
* Two Controllers
* Four-way Controller Adapter
* Wing Commander (Sega CD)
- One Super Nintendo
* One Controller
* Wing Commander (SNES)
* Wing Commander: Secret Missions (SNES)
- One Playstation Console
* One Controller
* Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (Playstation)
* Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom (Playstation)
- One Panasonic 3DO
* Two Controllers
* Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (3DO)
* Super Wing Commander (3DO)
- One Game Boy Advance
* Wing Commander Prophecy
- Gateway 2000 Pentium One PC w/Windows ‘95
* One CRT Monitor
* One Mouse
* One Keyboard
* One Set of Speakers
* Wing Commander
* Wing Commander: Deluxe Edition
* Wing Commander II: Vengence of the Kilrathi
* Wing Commander II: Vengence of the Kilrathi Deluxe Edition
* Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
* Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
* Wing Commander Academy
- One Xbox 360 Elite console and 11,200 Microsoft Points
- Two runners up will receive 11,200 points for Xbox LIVE!
Jeez, that’s seven consoles, fifteen games, a bunch of controllers, a really old computer (where’d they find a Windows 95 system?) and enough Microsoft Points to buy everyone you know, and everyone they know, a copy of Wing Commander Arena. Crazy.
(via Digg)
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox Live, Xbox 360, Xbox, General |
one comment
This stunned me: Apparently, you can’t use Google Maps’ website on your iPhone because the gesture-based UI won’t allow for drag-and-drop. The UI interprets all drags of the finger as dragging the page, not elements on the page (even if those elements are designed to be dragged), making it impossible to use Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, any maps mashup, any Web 2.0 site that uses dragging, because they never coded the UI to be smart enough to know the difference.
Yes, the iPhone has a Google Maps application, but that doesn’t cover mashups, it doesn’t cover using a non-Google site, and it completely throws out the window the idea of the iPhone having a “real” web browser and showing the “real” internet. Apple’s given Google a monopoly on the device, hamstringing the ability to use better options, and removing choice –
Wait. Apple? Choice? Forget it, I’m just being silly.
But seriously, short of hacking, it is utterly impossible for a developer to release a Google Maps-like site on the iPhone. Why does Google get that monopoly? Did they pay Apple to lock out competitors? Wouldn’t the Justice Department want to know?
(via Digg)
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Apple, Google |
5 comments
Microsoft has been supplying beta testers with two special patches for Windows Vista, patches that are designed to improve the performance and compatibility of the operating system. The two patches, distributed through Connect to a select group of beta testers, have leaked onto the internet, and you can download them here (or here for 64-bit systems).
What do the patches do? The Vista Performance and Reliability Pack improves some things that hurt the performance of systems running Vista, including file copying, corrupted AVI files, Canon RAW files, memory corruption, and more. The Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack fixes some common compatibility issues that could hurt your system, including external displays on laptops, video drivers, HD DVD and Blu-Ray playback, printer drivers, and more.
The full list:
938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:
• Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
• Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
• Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
• Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
• Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
• Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
• Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
• Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
• Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
• Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
• Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.
938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:
• Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
• Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
• Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
• Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
• Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
• Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
• Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
• Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
• Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
• Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
• Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.
Some are calling this the Holy Grail for Vista users, that which fixes Vista. Mary Jo Foley notes that these patches are likely to be the centerpiece of Service Pack 1, so getting them now will give you an early preview of how SP1 systems will run. She also notes improvements that have leaked and will be in SP1, incuding booting from EFI
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Windows |
no comments
Windows Live Search’s image search engine has three new features that let you filter images. You need to type these features alongside your search term in the search box, but their blog post says they are considering ways to add the option to page UI. Adding “filter:face” filters the search to images of faces, “filter:portrait” gets you posed pictures of people, and “filter:bw” gets you black and white images.
You can even combine the filters, searching for portraits in black and white, or faces in black and white. Obviously, you cannot combine the face and portrait filters in the same search.
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Windows, Search |
one comment
Hitwise reports that searches for searches for the Xbox 360 have overtaken those for Nintendo’s Wii for this first time since the Wii’s release, with the PlayStation 3 lagging behind all the way. The chart above should give an idea of the hot buzz the Wii has enjoyed since its release; however, in the last two months, the 360 has enjoyed a nice boost that has taken it past the Wii in the interests of web searchers. The chart below, from Google Trends, shows the 360 (in blue) still hanging behind the Wii, although searches for “Xbox” (as opposed to “Xbox 360″) are more popular than searched for “Wii”.
xbox 360 | 
wii
Hitwise’s data also shows the Xbox 360 Elite to be the second most popular related search term, which might explain some of the increase in interest, and it also shows more interest by searchers in a price drop for the 360 than for the PlayStation 3.
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Nintendo, Sony, Xbox 360, Xbox, General |
one comment
