Two things happened recently which delighted me and I thank cloud-based services (vs. locally installed apps/applications) for that.
When Office Web Apps Preview released recently, I noticed that they were talking about Excel Web App supporting the creation of Forms, but in the preview I did not see that functionality. I was really looking forward to using it because that was one thing I liked with Google Spreadsheets and wanted to see it in Excel Web App. However, last week as I was playing around with Excel Web App, I saw the “Form” entry in the Insert tab! It was greyed out but it was there and I did not even know it. No announcement, no updates to make, just there. Nice.
This morning, when I went to share an article I was reading using the Bitmarklet from bitly, I noticed that they had updated the UI for the same. Whereas earlier there was too much “noise” on the screens within that Bitmarklet window, now it was streamlined and looked much cleaner. Again, I had to do nothing to receive the updated functionality.
Granted, not everyone is comfortable getting stuff updated without their knowing, and granted sometimes functionality could be removed as opposed to added, but still, having a constantly updated “app” in the cloud/on the web is a thing of beauty. I have a feeling the next version of Office is going down that route with the Office 365 subscription and I may be one of the customers willing to pay a small fee for getting seamless updates for my software.
As you may have read, we are planning to relocate to Bangalore very soon. One of the first things we have to do is get admission into a good school for both our kids. Since it is highly competitive there, and since the school year has already started, I wanted to get a head start and do some research and maybe even contact some schools to get the conversation started.
To my unpleasant surprise, search results for schools in Bangalore are full of SEO spam. I mean, the results are from a few popular (by visits?) domains but the content is just not there. It is truly pathetic. Content is scraped from one site to the other, so reviews are also copies of each other. Of course, reviews for the same school range from “I am pulling out my kid” to “This school rocks”, so I have learnt to take them with a massive pinch of salt (aka disregard them).
Not only is the content bad, the layout of these sites is also bad. These sites are built for pageviews and so, there are ads galore. I am always looking at how to avoid clicking on ads.
Finally, the schools themselves seem to have bad design taste in building their own website. Considering how much money they make on tuition and other costs, I would think they have to invest in getting their site updated with a more modern look. Most of them still have scrolling lists and Flash and many of them still don’t supply relevant information (like tuition fees!) thereby making the visit to the site futile.
Earlier this year, after about 2 years of thinking about it and not acting upon it, we decided to relocate to India. I have been in the US since 1996, and my wife has been since 2000. So for both of us, it has been a long time and we are quite settled here, so this is going to be a tremendous mental move on top of an already big geographical/physical move.
If all goes well, I will be able to move within my company, which has a big R&D center in Bangalore. That would be ideal, because I already work with folks there. It would be ideal if I can avoid the work place “settling down” while we settle down in our personal lives.
We have told the kids (4 and 6) about this and they seem to be excited but I suppose they have no idea what is coming up. Of course, by now they have also formed some close friendships with some of our friends' kids and in their school, but I am assuming for them it won’t be as hard a move as it seems for us.
Excited. Apprehensive. Anxious.
So, why did we decide to move away from what is clearly a thriving Silicon Valley?
The parents
My parents and my wife’s parents are all getting old very fast. From just a few years ago when they visited us and now, we can see they have physically slowed down and that is only going to get worse. We’d like to be closer to them so they have someone to support them if and when needed. They are still able, but as months and years go by, they won’t be.
The kids
We are currently sending both our kids to private school and it is freaking expensive. The second income in the household ha become a must, rather than a nice-to-have. It is either that, or we move to a place where public schools are excellent. The issue there is that we have to shell out more for the real estate and those areas a total sellers' market, making it hard to get a bargain.
Having gone to school in India, and hearing about the newer schools and newer forms of education, it seems clear that the quality of education in India is high, especially primary and secondary school. Despite the tuition being much higher than what we paid decades ago, it is still very, very affordable compared to the Bay Area. The second income is most certainly a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.
The Indian economy
India’s economy has been growing and many reports suggest that it is only the beginning. Bangalore felt like Silicon Valley from the late 90s when I visited last year - many startups with great ideas, many angels willing to invest, venture capital getting organized, etc. Of course, there are also the big multinationals with varying levels of presence there, so in general, the tech scene is booming. Inflation is a worry and so is the weak Rupee, but there is real growth (i.e. revenues and profits), so there is reason to be optimistic about the next 10 years.
Every rose has its thorn
The reason we could not finalize for so long is we kept thinking of the downsides, and there are many. At our age, it is hard to make new friends and we have a bunch of friends now with whom we regularly hang out. We will miss having close friends there. Corruption is rampant and poverty is unavoidable. Pollution and population growth/density creates a disease-spreading melting pot in and around the big cities.
On a macro level, politicians are a joke and because of the Parliamentary form of democracy practised in India, and the fragmentation of the big, national parties into smaller, regional parties invariably creates coaltition governments and as a result very little gets done.
Making the leap
All these factors were making us wary of taking the big step. For now, the benefits have overtaken the possible downsides and with certain assumptions made, we are going to try to make it work there. Not everything will be easy, not everything will be straight-forward, but we could actually benefit big time in the long run.
So here we are, about a month away from starting the next chapter of our lives. We are excited and cannot wait to get it started!
I recently wrote a post about how I was a bit frustrated with the various types of backlogs created by an unexplained need to consume information. This is a follow up to the post. I took immediate action and here’s what I have done so far to make life a bit easier:
Unsubscribed to all but 4 podcasts. Also, changed podcast subscription settings to keep only 2 episodes. If I don't listen to an old one and it happens to be a good one, I will go find it, rather than let it pile up.
Unsubscribed from many high-volume RSS feeds. Most of these feeds were from tech blogs where there is much incentive to keep posting "fresh" content for a variety of reasons (well, no, for one reason - pageviews). I have noticed my "pending" stuff has gone down dramatically as a result.
DVR pain has been eased by the fact that we are in summer and therefore, it is off-peak for most primetime shows. I am sure I will cut down on the shows after seeing what gets cancelled this Fall.
The result of this simplification? The wife and I were able to watch two movies :-) I know, it was also one of the complaints, but it was nice that we were actually able to make a choice about what we want to do rather than letting something else choose for us.
I strongly suggest you take a look at your information consumption habits too, and see where you can trim and enjoy life as it should be enjoyed. :-)
This morning, as I was looking through my unplayed podcasts list, I realized I am (as I am sure many others are) living in a world where we are consuming so much "stuff". There is always a tendency to catch up on things. Some of my pending items to "catch up on":
Unplayed podcasts: I subscribe to 8-9 podcasts of which 2-3 are daily and the rest are weekly. In the end, if I don't keep listening to these every day, they pile up and I have to "catch up on".
Readability: I come across a lot of interesting articles and videos and links in general. I simply add them to Readability to read later. So there is the Readability list to "catch up on".
RSS Reader: I subscribe to *many* RSS feeds, some of which are extremely high-volume (like some tech blogs). There is always a ton of feeds to "catch up on".
Personal email: Bills, statements, friends pinging for meetups, etc. Personal inbox to "catch up on".
Work email: Freaking nightmare. Email flows in faster than I can clean up, despite several filters I have set up on the server. Work inbox to "catch up on".
DVR: We almost never watch anything on TV live (except sports). Anytime we see something interested to watch on the TV, it gets added to the DVR. So we end up having a DVR list to "catch up on".
Movies and music: So many new movies and music is being released. A lot of these are worth the watch, but they end up going into a to do list to "catch up on" sometime.
Books (audio or otherwise): Same as movies and music, so many good books to read. Goes to a list to "catch up on".
Hobbies: Not really a catch up item, but with all the stuff to catch up on, there is no time left for hobbies. This includes side projects, travel, etc.
There is of course a tendency to declare bankruptcy on one or more of these things. I frequently mark my RSS feeds as read, or my delete my podcast queue, but that's only a temporary solution. Perhaps simplifying our digital lives by cutting out many of the above (newsletters, podcasts, feeds, notifications on the phone, etc.) would help.
I am going to give that a shot as I prepare for a simpler, more "offline" life. :-)
Wow, time has flown. It feels like only yesterday that I was rocking my Blackberry Curve 8300 (no WiFi) and actually proud of it. I did not buy into the iPhone hype when it was released and stayed out, mostly because my Curve had video recording capability which the iPhone didn’t. Believe me, I took some videos on that thing that I still cherish, bad quality and all.
Instead of doing a normal retrospective I thought I’d pick up random articles written around the time the iPhone launched, and laugh at the ones that mocked the iPhone and predicted its doom, some even before it was released. Hindsight is so beautiful, innit?
Prediction No. 1: The iPhone will be a major disappointment.
The hype has been enormous. Apple says its iPhone is "literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone." A stock-market analyst says, "The iPhone has the potential to be even bigger than the iPod."
Prediction No. 2: The media will blame the execution, not the concept.
Instead, the iPhone is going to fail because its design is fundamentally flawed.
First, the iPhone ignores the main reasons that the iPod succeeded: simplicity and ease of use.
Second, the iPhone crams too many functions into a single box.
Third, users will detest the touch screen interface due to its lack of tactile feedback.
An iPod with just a cell keypad on the back would have been, may still be, a smash hit product for someone. But the iPhone as currently consituted? Forget it.
Because its designers forgot Platt’s First, Last, and Only Law of User Experience Design (“Know Thy User, for He Is Not Thee”), that product is going to crash in flames. Sell your Apple stock now, while the hype’s still hot. You heard it here first.
This one is a great read because all the reasons mentioned in the article are exactly what Apple destroyed with the iPhone. Incredibly, a lot of the same type of chatter is heard now for the TV business, except the bad guys in control are the Hollywood mafia and not the carriers. We shall see how that story unfolds later in 2012.
But then – and here’s my prediction part – something strange will happen. In a week or two the fuss will fade and people will start to realise an important point: it’s just a phone, and not a particularly “smart” one at that. And then people will start to find flaws in it, because let’s face it, version 1.0 of anything is going to have flaws, particularly something loaded with sensitive radios and electronics like a mobile phone.
And finally, there’s the competition. The likes of Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG won’t be idle bystanders as Apple tries to do to the mobile phone market what it did to MP3 players with the iPod. Building a mobile phone isn’t rocket science – it’s much more complex than that. And the traditional guys have been doing it for the best part of 20 years.
It’s hardware, it’s proprietary, so I really planned on keeping my mouth shut about it. But there is one point I have decided to make, one related directly to this beat, which is the real reason I believe the iPhone will, at best, disappoint in the market.
Open spectrum. We don’t have much, and we are nowhere near getting more.
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant.
First, Apple is late to this party.
Next, the mobile-phone industry depends on cooperation with the big networks.
Lastly, the iPhone is a defensive product. It is mainly designed to protect the iPod, which is coming under attack from mobile manufacturers adding music players to their handsets.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.
What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a “reference design” and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.
It should do that immediately before it’s too late. Samsung Electronics Ltd. might be a candidate. Otherwise I’d advise you to cover your eyes. You’re not going to like what you’ll see.
(Thanks to Kevin Nunez for reminding me about Dvorak’s classic.)
Oh, how the world has changed. “Late to the party” is now Motorola and Nokia. “Carriers control the whole thing” is now flipped over to carriers like TMobile begging to get the iPhone. “Too complex” is now flipped over to the iPhone being the simplest and the most intuitive user interface.
Let’s all use this 5th anniversary of the iPhone to thank Steve Jobs and everyone at Apple who opened this new world up for us, where it’s not just smartphones but mobile, highly-connected devices that help to get work done more efficiently and in more places than ever before.
If you are not aware of the “Blown Away by Lumia” contest, it is the Nokia’s version of “Smoked By Windows Phone” contest started by Ben Rudolph of Microsoft, at the 2012 Consumer Electornics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Nokia took that contest global, and here are some videos of former Miss World Priyanka Chopra competing with challengers with various smartphones and beating them. Quite cool, although she comes off as a bit too chirpy.
I remember sometime last year I took my then 3-year old son to a post office. Along the way we also stopped by at a coffee shop or Noah’s bagels (don’t remember which). Those two stops blew his mind - at the coffee shop he saw someone reading a newspaper and he asked me what a newspaper was. It was hard to explain. Then, we went to the post office because I had to return something and the pre-paid postage was for USPS. As we walked into the post office, he asked where we were and I had a hard time explaining him what “sending mail” meant!
I was reminded of these this morning when I thought we have hardly used our landline. Kids earlier used to run to the home phone when it rang, just so they could answer the call. Now, with cell phones, it is usually one of the parents who picks up the phone since the phones are always with them. Answering a “home phone” - yet another thing kids won’t do in the future, starting now.
Plex, the “media center” software application built for a multitude of devices, has a Windows Phone app now. They wrote up a blog post about it and while I am excited that there is a WP7 app now, it was heartening to see the praise they had for WP7 both from a user’s perspective as well as from a developer’s perspective.
There are so many gems in that post, I felt compelled to not only write this blog post, but highlight a bunch of the gems from the post:
Android phones never managed to capture my interest. They just looked and felt like bad photocopies of the iPhone, and didn’t offer anything new I was interested in, like the ability to install a custom theme that looked even uglier than the default, or download torrents on my phone, or play a Matrix animation in the background, or remove my battery, or spend time killing random processes, or over-clock my CPU, or any other beardy sort of thing.
Fast-forward to this January, I ordered a second hand Samsung device to help with development, and promptly fell in love with it.
As much as Android felt like (poorly) recycled ideas and bad new ones, Windows Phone felt original, well designed, and fun to use.
The performance was great, really smooth in a way iOS is and Android isn’t even in ICS.
The “pivot” and “panorama” UI concepts were fresh and a great way of making good use of a small screen in portrait mode. The typography was clean and brazen.
The integration of Facebook and Twitter made them feel like first class citizens, not an afterthought.
The live tiles on the home screen were a great way to make the phone feel alive.
But the iPhone felt staid, for lack of a better word. I wanted to be able to pin a few email folders to my home screen and watch them update live. I wanted to see all my social updates in a more integrated way. I missed being able to go to a contact (which I could also pin to my home screen), and easily see the conversations (Facebook, or SMS) I was having with them, and recent photos they’d uploaded.
The iOS development environment is quite good, with the weakest link being Objective-C, which has a steep learning curve and feels like it stepped out of the 80s with a cocaine hangover.
Android, oh, Android, I don’t mean to pick on you once again, but your edit-build-deploy cycle is long enough to make a grown man cry, and then stab himself in the eyeballs, and then cry some more. Java is fine, but the surrounding environment and piss-poor emulator makes it much harder to develop for than it should be.
So how is the Windows Phone development environment? It’s scary good. C# is a great language, .NET is a solid framework, XAML is a really nice way to design user interfaces, and the edit-build-deploy cycle is fast.
We were able to write the [WP7] app from start to finish in two months, between two engineers working part time, which is almost an order of magnitude faster than it took for the iOS and Android app.
Related (linked to from the blog post):
58 minutes later an a new wp7 Instagram client is born. I think that's a record for me (but #nuget helped me along the way)
My last thought on Windows Phone is that it’s got all the ingredients it needs to be successful: It’s a fun, useful, well-designed platform, with sexy (Nokia) hardware, and it’s as good for developers as it is for users. It deserves much more marketshare than it has, and Microsoft seems to be making most of the right moves (about time).
Since I use WP7 all day and follow a bunch of WP7 developers on twitter, I am very well aware of all these benefits. I am glad the folks at Plex thought of putting all these thoughts on their blog.
Hope to see many others release their WP7 apps. Are you listening, Instagram?
As you can see, I was a bit skeptical about the Android bit because Verizon Wireless, especially, has sold a ton of Android phones, of all shapes and sizes. Turns out, Android owners don’t quite like their phones/OS. It’s not surprising, most Android phones start out cool (or “not iPhone”) but they deteriorate over time with battery issues, lags, etc.
Windows Phone and iOS on the other hand, have extremely high satisfaction rates, and it shows through these Readers' Choice Awards. Another interesting thing, on AT&T, the Samsung Windows Phones rated higher than the iPhone. Whaaaa?
Regardless, as an unabashed fan of Windows Phone, I am delighted with this!
Manan Kakkar just blogged about how some of Microsoft's iOS apps are a bad thing for Microsoft, and how the SkyDrive app for WP7 is useless to him. I'd like to use this blog post as a response to some of his remarks, criticisms and rants.
Kinectimals for iOS leaves no USP for the Microsoft ecosystem in the living room
I agree with Manan that there was an implicit promise of Windows Phone working very closely with Xbox and Windows in a way that iOS and Android could not and would not. At the same time, you have to remember - Microsoft is clearly pitching Xbox as a platform. If they want the Xbox to become a platform, they will need many more consoles out in homes. At the same time, the reality is that most Xbox users are most likely users of iOS devices of some shape or form.
Giving a taste of how a mobile device can work tightly with the Xbox gives Microsoft several wins:
Exposes a Microsoft Studio game (in this case) to iOS users. If they don't have an Xbox and they like the game, they may start thinking about it.
Shows how Microsoft can integrate the mobile phone into its console. "With Windows Phone, the experience would be even tighter" could be the carrot.
If the iOS user already has an Xbox, they may be tempted to look at other add-ons for the game, perhaps other games, other content, etc. In other words, fueling the increased use of the console, leading to potential increase in revenues related to Xbox content.
All of these create the vicious circle of creating a bigger market for the console as well as selling more content off the console. For a platform company, is there a better recipe?
Microsoft is at a very interesting stage in its history. For the first time since it became the most dominant company in the world, it is facing a world where its operating system (note: not "software") may not be the most popular system. The world is moving towards smaller, lighter computing devices where so far, we have not seen Windows at all. Until we see Windows 8 succeed, we will continue with the argument that Microsoft is not a player in this new world where PCs will be outsold by smart devices which do not run Windows.
Why should I own a Windows Phone and not an iPhone, if the Xbox integration is going to be so tight with the iPhone?
First, I don't think every game is going to be made available on iOS. Kinectimals is one of those games Microsoft may be toying with, to see if there is any sense in pursuing that market.
So from a user perspective, you can be assured that Windows Phone will continue to have Xbox LIVE games which won't be on any other platforms, it will be the only platform with Xbox Achievements, and if there are games which get on iOS, Windows Phone will get them first for sure. It may not be a convincing argument, but frankly, if it were a convinving argument, Windows Phone would have sold way more than it has already.
Clearly, users don't really care much about Xbox on their phones enough to keep it a strict exclusive.
You bring one game, you have to bring all
I am not sure why they should be forced to bring every game with such tight integration. They chose this game just like EA Games or Pop Cap Games chose to bring one or two games to Windows Phone. I don't see any logical reason to bring every single title to iOS necessarily.
WP7 SkyDrive app is useless
This one confused me. Not because there is no basis for Manan's point. WP7 after all has an extremely efficient concept of Hubs which in fact avoid the need to have separate apps for each service. In that regard, my SkyDrive pics/vids can, and are available in the Pictures Hub. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote can, and are available in the Office Hub. So I'd call the new SkyDrive app redundant in some ways, but not useless.
SkyDrive app provides a single place to see "your personal cloud". What about generic files on SkyDrive you may have uploaded, like for example, an AutoCAD file? Where would you find that file on the current WP7? Nowhere, actually.
SkyDrive app allows creation/modification of folders and deletion of files. Given that Microsoft is pitching SkyDrive against the likes of Dropbox and box.net, having a "drive" to access in one place would be better than spreading it all over the place.
SkyDrive app allows you to selectively share files/folders via links for read and read/write scenarios. Again, tying this back to using SkyDrive as a cloud storage option, it is easier to have all the stuff in one place.
Hubs are meant to make it easy to see and share stuff that you care about like Pictures, Music, Office docs, etc. The purpose of the SkyDrive app is not to just let you browse the stuff, but also allow it to be selectively shared with others.
Finally, I believe Manan has concluded that the app is useless because it does not serve two of his wishes (more than being really useless) - being able to save an attachment to SkyDrive, and being able to see files on other PCs and devices from SkyDrive. The former is a missing feature of the Mail application and perhaps of the OS itself (not exposing the file system) and the latter is a missing feature of SkyDrive the service. Neither is a shortcoming of the SkyDrive app.
By having an app, Microsoft can also rev it faster than the OS updates, much like Google's apps on Android which are now de-coupled from the OS itself.
I feel bad having the need to write a long response but twitter's 140 characters were just not enough to make my point.
Manan, cheers :-)
SkyDrive app? It's as if the Gods at Redmond have finally heard the prayers of the peasants! Not very useful on WP7 though.
The Valley Fair Microsoft Store opened last week. I intended to go for the opening, but saw the long lines being reported, and decided not to bother.
So finally, today I went to check the store out. It is almost exactly opposite the Apple Store in Valley Fair, but I didn't care about that too much. My idea was the check out the Microsoft Store and see if there is anything to like, and then compare the experience to that of being in an Apple Store.
The store is big, and has a lot of open space. The first thing you see from the outside is a bunch of people playing Dance Central on the Kinect. That is clearly the crowd-puller, both to get the people to come in, and also to get people to gather around.
As you enter, you notice the red color like the new Windows Phone theme across the entire store. You also notice video running on the giant screen that wraps the store. It has videos of Windows Phone, Xbox games, PCs, etc. showing in a loop.
Another thing I immediately noticed was the familiar fonts from Windows Phone and elsewhere, identifying the various sections in the store, like Windows Phone, Xbox and accessories, Service, Business, Cloud Services, etc. The middle of the store had a few tables with various laptops. The all-in-one PCs and tower desktops were lined up along the side. Xbox games and accessories were on the back and so was boxed software on the other side at the back.
The Windows ecosystem has a huge benefit in terms of choice it offers customers when it comes to buying a PC. I saw several laptops, from the regular and boring types to ultrabooks/ultralights and large-screen, gaming type of machines. I saw slates running Windows 7 from multiple providers, all-in-one PCs of different sizes and desktop PCs with large monitors set up for gaming and high-end graphics work.
I saw the new Windows Phones (and in fact, witnessed a regular guy buying a Windows Phone!), many custom Xbox consoles including a Stanford themed box and of course the "Service" desk which imitates the Genius bar from Apple Store. I saw a lady who had brought what seemed like at least a 5 year old laptop, trying to get something addressed there.
The very back of the store had a giant (~70 inches easily) screen hooked up to Xbox (I think). Since I went so early (almost at the time of store opening), I didn't see that area being used.
I settled down at the Samsung slate and was playing with it when Foo (seriously, his name tag said that!) came by, introduced himself and started a casual conversation about tablets, technology, etc. No sales pressure, mostly consulting/advice and product stuff ("yes, all these PCs are upgradeable to Windows 8"). After a few minutes of discussion I went over to see the other PCs. I was actually impressed with the various ultrabooks on display. I liked them a lot and can't wait for one of my PCs to die so I can replace it with an ultrabook.
The other PCs I liked included an HP laptop with red accents (seemed like a gaming machine?) and the Samsung Series 9 laptop, which I saw for the first time. After seeing those ultrabooks, the Series 9 seemed just-ok.
Finally, the had Windows Phone placed in multiple places and I especially liked the HTC Radar and the Samsung Focus S. The Focus Flash, which looks chunky (to me) in pictures, is actually quite cute. Speaking of the Focus Flash, as I entered the store, I overheard one of those consultants talk to a customer and the thing I heard was the customer saying "what? it's only $50??". Later, I saw him buying the phone. I guess the hard cost of the phone is in fact important sales factor, never mind that the cost of the phone with the 2-year contract includes a $15 data plan for 24 months.
Finally, the "Service" area, aka Genius Bar for the Microsoft Store. I did not actually interact with them but while I was waiting for closing out my transaction I saw a lady who had got her old (seemed VERY old) laptop with keyboard, extra battery, power, etc. and was talking to the consultant about the problem. Compared to the Apple Store, these "geniuses" have to understand/handle such a large variety of software and hardware combinations. Wonder what kind of quality of service they provide.
I ended up buying a Nyko Kinect accessory (to reduce the distance requirements in my house) and the 320GB Xbox hard drive.
I typically don't go to Apple Store, and I don't see myself going to the Microsoft Store much either. However, I do see that the store becomes a place where Microsoft can show off their consumer-related stuff like Windows Phones, Xbox, Kinect and also a place where they can aggressively sell "pure" PCs with the Signature image. In my limited experience with the Apple Store in the same mall, I felt the Microsoft Store was more cheerful, happier, colorful and generally, more fun.
These things will not be making money for Microsoft anytime soon, but will definitely help in increasing awareness among the non-tech crowd, brand recognition, and hopefully for them, therefore, sales.
