Global Nerdy

The Windows 8 Launch Event

The Windows Phone 8 launch takes place later today. At 1 p.m. Eastern (10 a.m. Pacific), Microsoft will unveil the latest version of Windows Phone, whose SDK has been unavailable to most developers in a bid to “build up excitement”. You’ll be able to watch the stream of the event at the Windows Phone News Center, and TechHive, PC World, and Engadget will be live-blogging it.

Windows 8 Dev Tutorials on Channel 9

If you want to learn how to develop apps for Windows 8, take a look at Microsoft’s Channel 9. They’ve got “85 videos and 17 hours of free developer content”, with most of the tutorials covering Windows 8 development in both C# and JavaScript (that’s right, you can do Windows development in JavaScript now).

iOS 5 By Tutorials Updated

The excellent ebook iOS 5 by Tutorials has been updated for Xcode 4.5 and iOS 6. Created by the team at the indispensable iOS developer site RayWenderlich.com, this book is for intermediate to advanced iOS developers who want to know about ARC, storyboards, iCloud, Game Center, Core Image, JSON parsing support, Twitter support, the APIs for the address book, location, calendar and more. It’s been updated to cover the new language features in Objective-C (which I talked about in an earlier article) as well as some new enhancements that came with iOS 6.

Do you know why the flames about consumer electronics are so vicious? Because the stakes are so low.

— Reg “Raganwald” Braithwaite, adapting Wallace Sayre’s quote on academia in a call for civility on Hacker News

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Microsoft will have a proper Microsoft Store in Toronto — it’ll be at Yorkdale Mall — but it’s not scheduled to open until November 16th. That’s a couple of weeks too late to capitalize on the buzz about Windows 8 and Surface, so they decided to set up a pop-up store in the Eaton Centre, located right in the middle of downtown Toronto. It’s on the bottom level, close to Sears’ south entrance. I had a meeting only a couple of blocks away, so I decided to take a look.

I arrived at the Eaton Centre around noon and made my way to the pop-up store, which maintained a constant crowd of a hundred or so people surrounding it. I approached from an upper level of the mall so I could get some overhead pictures. I wasn’t the only one taking photographs of the pop-up store; there was easily a dozen other people doing the same. That’s not surprising; people tend to take photos of queues for new stuff, and while a long line for new Apple goodies like the iPhone 5 is expected, a line for something from Microsoft is downright surprising, even for Microsoft fans.

The pop-up shop have demo units set up on three sides, where you can wait your turn to take a Surface for a spin. The fourth side, the one facing Sears, is where the cashiers are located, and it’s the end of the line for people who want to purchase a Surface. When I was there, this line was about three or four dozen people deep. I saw a number of people walking away with brand new tablets, which the staff placed into large, reusable Microsoft- and Surface-branded bags.

When I was there earlier today, the following were available:

• The 32GB model, without a cover, for CDN$519
• The 32GB model, with touch cover (the one with the flat keys), for CDN$619
• The 64GB model, with touch cover, for CDN$719
• The type cover (the one with the shallow-throw keys), for CDN$139

My first impression of Surface: pretty good. It’s a responsive tablet, with butter-smooth scrolling on par with the iPad and much better than all but the very latest Android tablets. The body feels solid and reassuring, the kickstand’s better than I expected, and the magnetic connection between tablet and keyboard is strong and makes a satisfying “click” when you dock the two together. There’s a lot to be said for being able to use the touch or type cover, both of which include a trackpad: it feels faster and more satisfying than typing on a screen. It also feels more “done” than Windows Phone 7 did when it came out, which is a good sign: it means that Microsoft has taken some launch lessons to heart.

My startup, CTS, is in the business of building mobile apps for enterprises, so we’re keeping an eye on Surface. Although I managed to take it for a spin for only a handful of minutes, it shows great promise and looks like a great platform to write apps for. We’ll be watching to see what the enterprise uptake on these devices will be.

Photo by Nick Wingfield.

The crowds came out to Times Square last night — well, they usually do, anyway; it’s probably the most iconic intersection in North America — but many of them were there to get their hands on Microsoft’s Surface.

“I’m not sure it’s a sight I’ve seen before,” tweeted Ina Fried about the scene pictured below. It was taken last night at Times Square:

It’s been a while since we’ve seen photos of a line for a Microsoft product (at least outside of a Microsoft developer conference, anyway), so this is a good first step.

Here’s a photo from Tom Warren, taken inside the Times Square Microsoft Store last night:

Here’s a photo of Times Square from Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft’s supreme corporate communications guy:

The on-the-street demo tables of Surface and other tablets are by the big, brightly-coloured banners made up to look like Windows’ “Modern UI” tiles on the right. Here’s a closer look taken at 10:45 last night, courtesy of the Times Square webcam:

Here’s a shot from the same webcam this morning at 10:43…

I’m heading downtown today for a meeting at a place only a couple of blocks from the Toronto Eaton Centre, one of the locations where Microsoft is opening a pop-up store to show Surface to Canadians. I’ll head down for a peek, take some pictures, play around with it and post my findings here.

Microsoft pop-up store at Toronto Eaton Centre, earlier this week.

If you’re in Canada and want to take Surface out for a spin, Microsoft’s pop-up stores are in these locations:

• Metropolis at Metrotown, Burnaby, British Columbia
• Oakridge Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia
• West Edmonton Mall, Edmonton, Alberta
• Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto, Ontario

Here’s MobileSyrup’s video of what’s happened so far at the Eaton Centre, published earlier today:

Just in time for the AndroidTO conference taking place in Toronto today, here’s Shit Android Fans Say. Created by the folks at MobilePhoneFinder, it’s a great response to the video Shit Apple Fanatics Say. The Android fan in this video is perfect.

My thanks to Claude Moelan from MobilePhoneFinder for pointing this one out!