One Finite Planet

One Finite Planet

No new Surface ‘Pro 5’ after all?

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Lots of others ‘crystal ball gaze’ into the future of Microsoft’s ‘Surface’ products. Here is another perspective. A lighter tone than the usual post, here is a look at both what Microsoft are likely to do, and what they should do. 🙂  Ok, it is largely crystal ball gazing, but so it seems is every other prediction on the ‘Surface Pro’, so here is a different perspective.

1) There may be no ‘Surface Pro 5’, as a name change really makes sense.

Since releasing the original ‘Surface’ and then ‘Surface Pro’, the ‘Surface product line’ has evolved to a point where the original names are in serious need of review. Which is the most ‘professional’ product of the current range? The ‘Surface Pro’, the ‘Surface Book’ or the ‘Surface Studio’?   The ‘Surface Pro’ was ‘Pro’ relative to the original ‘Surface’, and the two names made sense.  Now ‘Surface’ is a family and ‘Pro’ does not describe where the ‘Surface Pro’ fits in that family.  How about ‘Surface Tab Pro’ or ‘Surface Pad Pro’?  Microsoft can afford to pay people to come up with a better name, but a new name is needed.

2) Two new products, one Qualcomm based, one Intel Based!

“We need to be willing to lean in to uncertainty, take risks and move quickly when we make mistakes, recognising failure happens along the way to mastery,” Nadella wrote in a 2015 memo to Microsoft employees

So what will be the new ‘non pro’ device?  The philosophy of the ‘Surface’ products is to do things differently and take risks. Innovation. But as the most successful product in the Surface line-up, there is a limit to the risks that can be taken with the Surface Pro.  Which is why, beyond the logic for the name change, there will logically be a new Kaby Lake CPU based device to follow on from the Surface-Pro.

Contrary to other suggestions, the USB-3 port should stay, and instead the mini-display port should upgrade to Thunderbold-3.  Re-chargeable pen, improved battery life, incremental improvements.

3. The ‘Surface’ replacement, the bold step!

This is where the room to take risks exists.  The recently demonstrated ability to run full windows on a Qualcomm CPU opens the door for something new, lighter and with LTE connectivity.  Such a device would be the logical reason for display at MWC 2017.  Running full windows on such a CPU enables a phone, but this new device needs to be another leap, and something targeting both phone and tablet is the logical solution.  Phones today are ready for the next step, with so many people using hands free or earphones/headphones, do we really need a device designed to be held to our head anymore?

Table of Contents

Categories

RCS – The SMS successor and blue bubbles vs green culture war.

The world and usage of SMS has moved on since the introduction in 1992, and the system lacks many features now seen as essential including, even the ability to see if a message has been received.

Apple has its own proprietary “iMessage” SMS/MMS successor for communication between iPhones within the Apple walled garden and the bubble wars, Facebook has its own messages system and has “What’s App”, but is there room for a true SMS successor that is not a walled garden fully controlled by one technology company to create division into “tribes”, and instead is able to connect all devices just like the original SMS system?

RCS is simple to enable and is the best messaging solution for Samsung and other Android phones and to end culture wars and walled gardens.

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A different perspective: Humans maybe the greatest threat to life on Earth but also the only hope.

The title ‘one finite planet’ can be mistaken to be yet another proclamation of how we live on this amazing planet which could even be unique, and we humans are foolishly placing it all at risk. Boring.

No. Instead, the perspective is we are living on a planet that is naturally hostile to humans, where nature dictates only a limited total amount of life, can only exist for a limited time, and that time is almost at an end. When seen from this perspective, even the environment mission changes from just not interfering, to the more complex task of tackling the challenge of overcoming nature, while yes, quite importantly, not bringing life to an early end in the process.

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Surprise, Shortest day ever recorded: Not just the solstice, but climate change?

This page is more under the heading of ‘fun facts’.

The first ‘fun fact’ is that while everyone knows how the length of daytime and nigh time vary throughout the year, it may come as a surprise to realise the length of the entire day, also varies. Partly because, second fun fact, the a day is a longer than one rotation of the Earth, which lead to the third fun fact: we just had the shortest total day ever recorded.

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WordPress.com to the Next Level: Plugins, Elementor, CoBlocks?

Something completely different. A discussion on how this site is hosted: on wordpress.com.

Anyone who has started a “blog” or other site on wordpress.com, may get to wonder, what are the options for upgrading the website? What is the value of the free, personal or premium plans and beyond? What real world benefits are there, and, alternatively, what would you lose and/or gain from moving away from wordpress.com. This is a page discussing being in that situation. If you are not considering having a website, it may be of little interest.

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Images, Making Animated GIFs & Solving colour problems.

This is part of series of pages I will be adding on things I have learnt as part of building this website, and I will soon try and enable following by topic (when I get this page working), so people can separately select notification on building websites and/or population or other issues, without being notified of things outside their interest. Standby for that update.

Meanwhile this page provides general help on making an animated GIF for a series of images, specific help on a challenge with animated GIFs, and a list of sites with free images as a resource for those building images.

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Hydrogen Future of Fool’s Gold & Scams: “Where does the hydrogen come from?”

The race to stop CO2, has led to many ‘scams’ projects involving hydrogen, but it is not always clear who is being scammed: the public, or the proponents of hydrogen projects. What is the attraction behind the obsession with hydrogen? This is a look at the motives, the myths and the facts around hydrogen projects.

Spoiler: There are some valid roles for hydrogen, but hydrogen has no remaining role as an energy source, and even any potential role as an energy carrier is highly questionable.

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