So, here it is, the lengthy 80-minute press conference from Microsoft at CES 2009.
Gary Shapiro, who is the head of CES takes the stage first. He talks about the show and that it was a "tough 2008." He mentions a couple of keynoters. He introduces Steve Ballmer and he mentioned that he scored an 800/800 on the math part of the SAT's. Impressive. They show a quick video about some Windows products, before Ballmer comes.
Steve Ballmer finally takes the stage. He mentions that Bill Gates used to do Microsoft's keynotes at events like CES, but he is now devoting his time to help people around the world, especially in Africa. Ballmer and the crowd applaud for Gates and his efforts. He talks about our digital lives and that they will only continue to get richer even in the midst of the current recession. Ballmer mentions the 3 different screens that everyone uses everyday: the PC, phone and the TV. He tells us that only a billion people in the world have a PC. This leaves 5 billion other people without a PC and this is why they are trying to make things more affordable. Ballmer says that the TV has been the center of family entertainment and that we should expect the TV to be more "sophisticaed and connected." In the future, the PC and the TV's different worlds will combine and that their current boundary will "dissolve," since they are going to be more connected. He plays a video featuring a bunch of products using Windows: Samsung X360, Dell Studio Hybrid, Toshiba Portege R600, Minew S10, Acer Aspire 8930g, Sony Vaio TT, Asus U6V Bamboo, Lenovo IdeaPad Y650, Toshiba Qosimo X305, HP Touchsmart PC, Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds, HP Firebird with Voodoo DNA, Sony Xperia X1, HTC Touch HD (!!), Samsung Omnia and the HTC Touch Pro (see above picture). All of these aforementioned products have either Windows Mobile, Windows Live or Windows Vista pre-installed. Steve talks about Windows 7 and that it is putting in all the right ingredients, reliability and speed into it to get it right. He officially announces that MSDN and TechNet customers can now download the Windows 7 beta for free and that on Friday, it will be available to everyone else. Ballmer also had another 3 announcements. One was that Windows Live Essentials now had a worldwide availabiility. The other 2 announcements could've been summed up into 1, but he split it up. There were 2 partnerships: 1 with Facebook and the other with Dell. The partnership with Dell is that they are now going to pre-install Windows Live Essentials on their PC's. In 2008, 11 different Windows Mobile-running phones sold over 1 million units. He then introduces Charlotte Jones.
Charlotte Jones introduces the new Windows 7 first. Jones is actually the first female to actually present something at a press conference at this year's CES, i think. She shows off some new Windows 7 features. They aren't entirely new, but new to the modern Vista user. She shows that in the bottom right corner, you can use the "Aero Peek" feature to see through all of your open windows. She shows the split screen-window feature thing, pinning windows onto the taskbar. She also shows the crowd "jumplists." This is where you can click on an application on the taskbar and it will give you a couple of different options, in just a single-click. I don't know how else to explain that, without a demonstration. She shows a new feature called "Homegroup" to setup a network at home. Windows 7 will have touchscreen's in mind and is "in it's DNA." This is so that it is easier for their partners to create touch-screen based programs. She encourages the crowd to go and check out Windows 7 and touch-screens at their booths after the press conference. She mentions the new browser for the mobile phone and Internet Explorer 8 (and it's integrated language translator, still a fail browser). She shows a Silverlight slideshow of pictures from Windows Live, with a click of a button. She shows new features in Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger. Messenger now has a Windows Video user tile where you can record a 4-second dynamic display picture. With this new feature, you can also create emoticons, so that when you make a smiley face, your display picture will show your video clip that may include your own smiley face. This is recorded by your webcam. She shows us her smiley face, sad face and a wink-y face. She even throws in a kiss emoticon (Yay!). The crowd went nuts. After she exits the stage, a band comes on stage, known as Tripod.
They sing a fairly comical song, regarding games. I've never heard of them, but yeah... After they finished, Robbie Bach took the stage.
Bach mentions connected entertainment. There will be a new Microsoft Sync for Ford vehicles. The Zune was successful in 2008, expanding Zune's network to 2 million. Windows Media Center's users also increased to 10 million. There is a 250% increase in Microsoft's MediaRoom. He mentions a feature called MediaRoom Anytime, which is kind of like video on demand, i guess. Finally, some Xbox news. Xbox had a spectacular year and also the best year ever in terms of sales. The 360 sold 28 million units worldwide. The Xbox live users increased to 17 million members, which was a 70% growth from 2007. He pushes this further and mentions that in the last 3 months, they added 3 million new members. He talks about the future, 2009. He mentions that Halo sold 25 million copies and that the average Halo player played an average of 150 hours (which is not a lot, in my book). Anyways, in 2009, there will be 2 new Halo releases: Halo Wars, which is a Real-Time Strategy that will be released on February 28, with a demo coming out on February 5. The other Halo release this year will be Halo 3: ODST, which is like the original Halo series and it will be released in Fall, with a bunch of new features. He backtracks to Xbox live again and mentions that after launching the New Xbox Experience, their growth has expanded. In the Spring, Xbox Live will be launching PrimeTime, to create scheduled programs and events. He shows a demo of 1 vs 100, which is a winner-take-all question and answer game. He shows Netflix and mentions that you can control your queue of Netflix movies with your mobile phone. They will be launching Kodu, a game creator that reminds me of LittleBigPlanet. A 12-year old girl by the name of Sparrow, comes on stage and shows the crowd how to design a game on Kodu. She beats Robbie at a game, that seemed to be easier for her to win. Sparrow exits the stage and, soon after, Robbie Bach says his thanks and also exits the stage
Steve Ballmer mentions that displays will be everywhere and will be cheaper / affordable. All the other devices will become a single-platform. He invites Janet Galore with him on stage.
Janet Galore (the second female now) shows us a couple of prototypes. One being a touchscreen tablet-like gadget. She shows off a simulation of different parts and all different systems of our bodies. When she finishes with that, she moves on to the Surface Computer, which is incredible. I have actually seen these protoypes on Youtube. It was an amazing display and even involved the interactivity of a phone, the 'tablet-like gadget' from earlier and even a model of the brain. After that, she fashioned a very flexible protoype display, which was less than a mm thick. This was also amazing and i'm excited to see what our future has in store for us.
Steve Ballmer shows up on stage again and mentions that he is optimistic about the future. He says his goodbyes.
Tripod does another song. This one was fairly un-entertaining. That concludes the long, but informative press conference from Microsoft at this year's CES.
Microsoft press conference video: http://wm.istreamplanet.com/customers/ms/750_ms_ces_090107.asx
Windows logo: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/20/developers-alarm-200-hotkeys-to-boost-your-productivity/
HTC Touch Pro picture: http://www.itechnews.net/tag/htc-touch/
Windows 7 picture: http://eideard.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/
Xbox Live Logo: http://www.theaveragegamer.com/tag/xbox-live/
Surface computer picture: http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2007/05/microsoft_surface_computer_set_to_wow.html
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