I just finished a really enjoyable book called The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Highly recommended.
I’ve been planning my midlife crisis for awhile. These things need planning of course. Last year I hit 40. That’s the age where denial over middle age is over. It’s arrived.
I’m a man of many interests. I just don’t know what to focus on nor do I know if I want to focus on anything in particular. The problem is incentive. I’d rather have more hours in the day to spend time with my two sons and daughter (not to mention my wonderful wife).
As some of you may know, Windows 8 has been pretty upsetting. It’s not just that it’s crap (which, make no mistake, the current build is), it’s that it shakes my previously solid faith in Microsoft to its core. I look at Windows 8 and I see a product made by dumb people. That’s too harsh. But certainly not the Microsoft of the 90s. It’s just another big company that makes crap without knowing what it’s doing. You can argue that Microsoft of the 90s made crummy software but that was more an issue of development talent. Bill Gates knew what he wanted, he just didn’t always have the people under him to execute. Now, they don’t even have that. It’s depressing.
Most of my time these days is spent on Intel WiDi. If anything is going to make the Window PC relevant in the next few years, this is it. If not WiDi, then Apple AirPlay is going to wipe out much of the niches PC’s currently inhabit which would be bad news for Intel (let alone Microsoft). WiDi is the ability to take what’s on your PC (and Stardock’s EdgeRunner technology allows you to take a piece of the desktop, like say a window or a media player) and stream it to a WiDi device. The goal is that in a few years, all your displays (monitors and televisions) will be equipped with WiDi technology.
One reason I’m not bullish on consoles in the long-term is because of AirPlay and WiDi. Why should have be stuck with some box connected to my TV when I can use my iPhone or my PC to just stream what’s on it (and by stream I don’t mean mirror) its content to a display?
My goal is to make sure Intel wins this battle. But it’s going to be an uphill battle. My house is fully equipped with a combination of Control4 and Apple AirPlay and it has a huge lead right now.