I’ve never had much respect for CNN as a news organisation, but I didn’t realise they’d taken to publishing press releases as news. Here, Microsoft (through CNN) tells us how Vista will change the world, end terrorism, cure cancer/malaria/impotence, etc. without actually being able to make a PC user-friendly:
Just as Windows 3.1 led to mass adoption of the graphical user interface and Windows 95 popularized the browser, Vista will slowly but surely transform the PC into a true multimedia device. The computer has already absorbed the telephone’s capabilities; Vista’s role is to throw in the TV too…
That means Vista automatically recognizes most digital cameras and camcorders and has sophisticated video-editing software built in. It also means better photo and video organization, TV recording (assuming your PC has a cable card or TV tuner), and vastly better graphics processing.
And that in turn will prod consumers to buy better hardware, fancy peripherals (especially speakers, screens, and HD-DVD drives), and more graphics-rich software and Web services.
For every $1 that Vista earns for Microsoft (Charts), IDC analyst Marcel Warmerdam says, it will pump a minimum of $12 into the global economy. So if the OS generates $9 billion in revenue for Redmond, that’ll mean about $110 billion for other tech firms worldwide.
What they don’t explain is that $9 of the $12 will go to perpetuating the IT industry, which thrives because Microsoft’s operating systems are unnecessarily difficult to use. And another $2 will go to anti-virus software.
Nice to see that Windows users will finally be able to have their computers automagically recognise their cameras and camcorders – after five years of being thusly spoiled by my Mac, it’s a feature I can’t live without! (Slowly but surely is right!)