A week doesn’t pass without another Apple rumor. But with Christmas approaching, a lot of the latest rumors may make you want to check to make sure you got a gift slip.
That’s because this week’s batch of rumors indicates a lot more competition for the iPad coming soon, and a confluence of events that might lead to a price cut after the holidays on the existing iPad—as Apple tries to clear the decks of inventory before introducing the next-generation iPad in the early spring.
In his latest post on Internet Evolution – Microsofts Missing the Boat on Kinect for Office – Dan Rasmus takes Microsoft to task for not thinking in a broader context about the overlap of gaming tech and the enterprise. Who wouldn’t kill for gesture-based controls in, say, PowerPoint, to get that “Minority Report” thing going?
Kinetic is becoming the latest favorite toy of interface hackers. The folks at the MIT Media Lab have already done the hack with Google’s Chrome web browser. So why can’t Microsoft make it happen for Office, or for any number of other application interfaces?
The reason is that Microsoft’s left hand doesn’t talk to its right hand. People have fallen so far down their particular vertical holes that there’s no cross-pollination going on.
This is a familiar problem to people in government, where the wheel gets re-invented with startling frequency from agency to agency–and sometimes from team to team.
Sean M. Gallagher 