surface

How trapped are your digital movies and TV shows?

Have you decided to ditch DVDs and Blu-rays to instead buy movies and TV shows only in a pure digital format?

There are certainly advantages to that. But one of the biggest downsides of going all digital is that how you can view your content is largely dependent on the service you purchased it from.

Digital video providers In this column, I look at how "trapped" video content purchased from iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Xbox and Google Play may be. The first four video marketplaces were listed yesterday by NPD as among the top ways people purchase digital video. … Read more

iPad still top tablet but keeps shedding market share

The iPad remains the king of the tablet world, but Android rivals continue to carve off some of its market share.

Apple shipped a total of 22.9 million iPads worldwide last quarter thanks to demand for the iPad Mini and the availability of the 4th-gen iPad, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. That number was in line with IDC's forecast and showed a 48.1 percent jump in shipments over the same quarter in 2011.

But for the second consecutive quarter, Apple's share of the global tablet market fell. In the fourth quarter of 2012, … Read more

Microsoft Surface sales well below shipments, says iSuppli

Sales of Microsoft's first Surface tablet fell well short of the 1 million mark, while return rates were high, IHS iSuppli told CNET.

Shipments of the Surface RT device, which debuted last quarter, into the channel were about 1.25 million, but sales out of the channel "were significantly lower, maybe on the order of 55 to 60 percent of that figure," said Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at iSuppli, citing the market research firm's estimates.

That would put sales in the range of between roughly 680,000 and 750,000 based on those percentages.

That kind … Read more

Surface Pro to launch at Best Buy in NYC on February 8

Following the pattern it set with its Surface RT launch in October 2012, Microsoft is planning to launch its Surface Pro devices just before midnight the day before they'll be commercially available.

On Friday, February 8, Microsoft is holding a private evening reception for select guests before the event, and then holding the formal launch just before midnight, February 9, at the Best Buy in Union Square in New York City. The invited guests will be among the first people eligible to buy the new Surface Pros -- or, as Microsoft calls them officially, the "Surface Windows 8 … Read more

Apple getting 'defensive' with 128GB iPad, says analyst

With its new pricey fourth-generation iPad 4, Apple has one eye on Windows 8 hybrids, a Citibank analyst said today.

"At $799, this latest iPad [model is] priced above the average selling price of a laptop ($703), bringing the two squarely into the same wallet discussion," Glen Yeung of Citibank said in a research note.

Yeung continued: "Given what we estimate to be a 3-quarter slide in 10" iPad unit sales, we can't help but detect a defensive element to Apple's latest iPad [model]."

That defensiveness is rooted in "trying to head … Read more

Microsoft Surface Pro software devours disk space

Microsoft's Surface RT tablet was knocked for the dearth of storage on the low-end version. Surface Pro isn't faring much better.

The 64GB version of the upcoming Surface Pro -- due for release February 9 -- will offer only 23GB of available storage space for user files, according to a statement CNET received from Microsoft.

"The 128GB version of Surface Pro has 83GB of free storage out of the box. The 64GB version of Surface Pro has 23GB of free storage out of the box," a Microsoft representative said in a statement.

(Note that a report … Read more

Eating your own, Microsoft style

Eat your own, or somebody else will. That's the new mantra in the device world.

Here's what Apple said this week on that topic.

In terms of cannibalization and how we think about this, I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity for us. One, our base philosophy is to never fear cannibalization. If we do, somebody else will just cannibalize it and so we never fear it. --Tim Cook.

This was said in response to an analyst's question during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call. Earlier in the call, Apple, in its prepared remarks, said that … Read more

Facebook unfriends Twitter's Vine app

Friday's CNET Update is looking so Vine:

Today's tech news roundup looks at the latest skirmish between Facebook and Twitter. The new iPhone app Vine (owned by Twitter), lets users create six-second mash-up videos and share it on social media. But Facebook has blocked Vine from being able to find Facebook friends in the app. The move is similar to how Twitter shut off Facebook's Instagram from accessing its user data.

As the world is still learning what a Vine is, take a look at CNET's tips for using the app. Keep in mind that although … Read more

Microsoft: We're going to broaden Surface lineup

During Microsoft's second-quarter earnings conference call today, the company's chief financial officer reiterated that the lineup of Surface devices will expand.

After Microsoft reported reported earning today, Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein spoke about future Surface products -- though he was mum about specifics.

"We had limited distribution this quarter in our stores and we're excited about expanding that [distribution]," he said, responding to an analyst's question.

"We're going to expand geographically, we're going to expand the product lineup, we're going to expand retail distribution and capacity," he said, … Read more