Absolutely wild that there was a time when Microsoft had three generally well regarded consumer products in Windows 7, the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 all at the same time, compared to where they are now in all of those product spaces.
Windows was Windows, but 7 was largely consistent and didn’t need to be fought with like its successors.
The 360 was the go-to console for developers and gamers, despite the RROD issues, which I’d even give them credit for for handling (eventually) after lots of us got 2 free games and a free controller from them following the debacle.
Windows Phone 7 had a superb interface, great hardware and genuinely stood out.
Now they have nothing and are hated more than ever.
We also see ourselves inversed in a mirror, and are more used to that representation of ourselves, which makes it easier to be critical of the true-oriented image from a camera.
The picture we have of ourselves in the mirror is at odds with the version that others see.
That was part of Microsoft's pitch - they wanted it to be the central device. I was in the minority that thought it was a great idea at the time, but then I'd been running a dedicated Windows Media Center PC under the TV for years until that point, so to me it was a shinier upgrade.
That and the one thing I thought was awesome - split screen TV so I could play a game and have a live football match or something on part of the screen. That was amazing at the time, I was gutted when they killed it off to get more resources for games.
My kids were like 3 and 5 when Kinect was released and they bloody loved it. Also Dance Central was superb for drunken adults.
Plus if Alien Isolation wasn’t scary enough already, a Kinect would dial it up a notch.
Definitely limited appeal and the tracking wasn’t great on the 360 version, but for those first two scenarios (younger kids and late night dancing) it was a superb party game.
Yeah sure, if indeed it happens outside of the realm of parody. But otherwise it’s the equivalent of getting annoyed by every The Onion post, where the intent is already to satirise those people.
I’ve just done a whole bunch of investigation into this because my daughter had succumbed to the current Gen Z compact camera trend resurgence, and had asked for one for Christmas. The bottom line is that the market has almost entirely been wiped out by smartphones. There are only either very cheap trash compacts or very expensive high quality travel cameras on the market these days, and there’s little to no middle ground.
As a result, her generation seem to have latched onto “vintage” 10yo+ compacts that we all used to take out on nights out or on holiday.
The best option I discovered was getting hold of “new” old cameras. I found a new Panasonic Lumix T-57 on eBay for about £200 which was originally sold in 2015. It ticked all my boxes - decent optical zoom, flip-selfie screen, WiFi, pocketable, and good picture quality.
The lack of new middle-tier options has really inflated prices. Anecdotally I bought a second hand Sony RX100 some time ago for £200. I sold it 3 years later for £250. Similar quality ones are now going for closer to £300.
Some of the comments on this and similar threads are wild. A dedicated major contributor to the fediverse as a whole, working almost entirely alone, who is solely responsible for bringing many of us to it that were looking to escape the social media capitalist hellscape via Pixelfed, creates another alternative with Loops and publishes some detail regarding how it works, and a bunch of keyboard-warrior nerds try to take it apart.
So many people contribute entirely fuck-all to fediverse platforms beyond the odd bit of content, myself included, and it always amazes me how quickly they want to tell him he's doing it wrong. So many opinions for one person producing so much, from so many people producing nothing.
In the 2010s I had a Windows Phone which I thought was amazing. I bought the original Surface Pro too, because at the time I thought it was incredible. A full operating system in a tablet form factor that was incredibly fast and touch screen.
In the IT office I worked in, we had a dartboard. It was great for just stepping away from your desk if a problem had stumped you, throwing a few darts to take a break, and inevitably the answer would come to you. It was our rubber duck.
Trouble was, all of us were terrible at the basic maths involved with darts matches. So I thought, what if we mounted the Surface to the wall, and could just tap where the dart had hit, and get scores instantly.
So I wrote this darts score-keeping app that worked on everything from Windows Phones to tablets, and even an Xbox at one point, thanks to the way Microsoft had implemented their cross-device app deployment.
We used it every day in the office. I think in 10 years it’s sold about 3 copies.
Probably less, but it may well have been roughly similar. I think when you were younger they ended up getting more “stuff” but it was cheaper items. Mostly board games and toys that I thought they might like, rather than specific stuff they ask for these days. Well, I ask them, because I’d rather get them stuff they want/need.
I feel like the pile of presents was bigger in those days at least.
Parent of late teens here - around £200 each (usually clothes or various bits they’ve asked for), unless there’s a big present involved that I’m interested in too (like a new games console), which would be a more expensive year.
Absolutely wild that there was a time when Microsoft had three generally well regarded consumer products in Windows 7, the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 all at the same time, compared to where they are now in all of those product spaces.
Windows was Windows, but 7 was largely consistent and didn’t need to be fought with like its successors.
The 360 was the go-to console for developers and gamers, despite the RROD issues, which I’d even give them credit for for handling (eventually) after lots of us got 2 free games and a free controller from them following the debacle.
Windows Phone 7 had a superb interface, great hardware and genuinely stood out.
Now they have nothing and are hated more than ever.