I'm hoping this comments section doesn't devolve into Mac/PC flame fest. Saad, you had some valid points (not all, but some), just tone down the passion and snarkasm a little bit. Yes, that segment did go on for a bit long than they intended, but I guess that, in some ways, is a reflection of how these blog sites have been affected by these commercials.

The points from the podcast that I would argue against are:

1 - that these commercials are any different than the "I'm a Mac" ad campaign. For the most part they both do the same thing, which is focus on superficial aspects, and never really focus on the product itself. You can look at the 2006 ads on Apple's site to compare.

2 - that Microsoft isn't justified in "firing back" against those Apple commercials. If you poke the bear... Apple chose to do attack ads (as funny and well done as they were), and that makes them fair game. They could have easily done Mac commercials similar to those great iPhone ads.

3 - that Vista is a terrible piece of software. It ain't great...BELIEVE ME. But I do no many people who use vista daily for their needs and have never had a problem (except understanding the office 2007 ribbon). I know because I'm the guy they would call if they did. That said, I'm still running XP, because I think it's better.


Best line in the whole podcast "we are not our devices" (I'm paraphrasing). That and how someone was dreaming about John Hodgman (creepy)

This was my thought exactly. GM has this habit "faking" progress for PR reasons.

Big O! It's showtime!

No. A one-to-one deal would be Japan gets the A-bomb mission, and the U.S. gets the "Fly two planes into the sides of heavily populated buildings; watch people jump to their death" mission.

It's not censorship, it's called "Sensitivity". And sometimes, that not a bad thing.

I had the same problem. It's being blocked by my company's firewall. I had to connect via my laptop tethered to my winMo phone.

Oops, misread your post.

But, Apple has around 8.5% market share as of last quarter; which puts them in third place behind Dell and HP.

It runs on windows mobile. They just did a good job covering it up.

- For the Party System: To share a netflix movie with your party, does everyone have to have the netflix subscription (I assume yes :-), and added to their queue?

- What does happen to all the current themes and gamer pictures? And are their new themes?

- Video chat with more than two people? (hoping against hope)

@ those complaining about cost

This is a great idea. I hope Microsoft and the community continue to support this endeavor.

When I went to college I had some aspirations to do game development. At the time all of these "Lean Game Development" schools were not around. This would have been an excellent way for myself and other developers to wet our feet and build some credibility withing the industry.

Compare the cost of trying to promote an independent game by an unknown to an overly-saturated market, to having direct marketing access to the millions of xbox live users. $100 is a sound investment. I hope a lot of aspiring developers take advantage of this service.

Yeah, the infamous IPTV demo that they showed a year ago looks alot slicker that this offering by Sony(no PSP connectivity though). But the big question is will their bids with the major cable companies ever pan out? And will using a 360 as my cable box give me a RROD during my favorite episode of Heros?