How to get notified when BioShock for iOS has a price drop
Not keen to spend $15 on the mobile version of the desktop classic? Wait for it to go on sale. Here's how to keep tabs on BioShock's price.
The real shock is the price!Photo by Rick Broida/CNET
In case you missed the news, BioShock just arrived in the App Store for iPhone and iPad.
Actually, that's the good news. The bad news is that it's priced at $14.99 (AU$18.99 and £10.49), making it one of the most expensive iOS games around.
Is it worth it? As a longtime fan of the game, I definitely think BioShock is worth playing. However, the desktop version sells for just $5 more, and routinely goes on sale for under $10. (I've seen it as low as $4.99.) So $15 for the mobile version feels a little steep.
But I guarantee you it won't be that steep forever -- and maybe not even for long. Historically speaking, other "premium" iOS games that have debuted with higher-than-average prices have gone on sale -- or seen outright price drops -- within a couple months. Dragon Quest VIII, for example, debuted in May with a $19.99 price tag, but it's currently on sale for $14.99. Once the dust settles on BioShock, I'm sure it'll come down.
OK, but short of visiting the App Store every day, how will you know when that happens? As it happens, there are a couple ways to let bots do the work for you.
For starters, check out Jason Cipriani's recent tutorial on discovering when apps go on sale. It relies on two services, AppZapp and If This Then That (IFTTT), to deliver alerts when top App Store apps go free or on sale.
Use AppShopper to track BioShock price drops.Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
That's a handy option, to be sure, but it's not specific to BioShock. For that, head to AppShopper, sign up for an account, then search for BioShock. (Needless to say, you could do this for any other game or app as well.) In the search results (making sure to zero in on the "iOS Universal" version), click Want It to add the game to your wish list.
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET
Now, click the Wish List tab up top and then look for the Price Drop Notifications box on the right. Enable "Notify me of price drops via e-mail" and you're all done! Now, as soon as BioShock's price drops, you'll know about it.
That leads to the following question: How low does the price need to go before you'll pull the trigger?
Meet Surface Hub: Microsoft's fresh take on videoconferencing
Two years after acquiring touchscreen maker Perceptive Pixel, Microsoft has an 84-inch display it hopes will transform workplace productivity and teleconferencing.
The evolution of Microsoft's Perceptive Pixel acquisition, the Surface Hub is an 84-inch 4K touchscreen for the workplace.Microsoft
LAS VEGAS -- Nestled between two false walls in a lavish suite at the Venetian hotel and casino is what I think is an enormous television. Here, during the chaos of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in early January, too-large TVs are par for the course.
What gives this particular display away is the word Microsoft emblazoned below the bottom bezel. When Jeff Han, a multitouch researcher who's now a general manager at Microsoft, approaches the device he taps the screen to bring it to life.
The device is called the Surface Hub and it's essentially a gigantic tablet running Windows 10. In fact, it's an 84-inch "ultrahigh-definition" touchscreen display. But it's more than that: packed on top, bottom and to the side of the screen, as well as inside the device itself, are several of Microsoft's Kinect motion sensors.
The company is going to great lengths to get the Surface Hub in the spotlight. Microsoft featured the device during its "Windows 10: The Next Chapter" event at its Redmond, Wash,. campus on Wednesday. It did so stealthily, putting the device front and center with a Windows 10 logo and nothing else,choosing to unveil it later on in the presentation.
The device can notice people in the room and can pick up audio from anyone in its vicinity. It can also run any Windows app, and it can do that through Skype from any connected device, regardless of whether that tablet, laptop or desktop is running Windows 10. For instance, the Surface Hub will let even iPad users connect to it and share files, as long as the iPad is running Windows software like Word or PowerPoint.
Ultimately, Microsoft wanted to create something that could withstand an infinite number of inputs, a device for serious work. "You're not going to use Google, Apple or Samsung," said Mike Angiulo, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Devices Group. "We had to create machinery that didn't exist."
Microsoft
It may seem like a strange, meandering return to the original Surface, those coffee-table-like touchscreen gadgets that the company first unveiled in 2007. A few companies used it -- retailers such as AT&T had a few in their stores help customers understand the differences between various products placed on its surface -- but it ultimately didn't catch on. In 2012, the company unveiled a tablet called the Surface, and renamed the table PixelSense.
Still, the company has ambitions beyond a computer, smartphone or video game console. Microsoft is one of several companies attempting to build devices for several users to interact with at once. Lenovo, for example, unveiled a 27-inch tablet computer in 2013.
To Microsoft, the Surface Hub isn't just a way for several people to interact with a computer at once. It also replaces projectors, teleconference technology, team video chatting and scores of other activities. The Surface Pro Hub is both an attempt to get Microsoft products on the walls of every business, and a way to further push Microsoft software into the workplace, even as the company opens its arms to other companies' devices running its applications.
The Surface Hub is the fruits of a 2-year-old acquisition of touchscreen maker Perceptive Pixel. That brought Han, the startup's founder, to lead the project. Before that, Perceptive Pixel sold $80,000 touchscreens to TV media organizations like CNN and Fox News, which rely on those types of mammoth devices for election coverage and other events.
But who else needs, or let alone wants, an 84-inch touchscreen? Microsoft's answer -- and its hope -- is any company or team that uses a conference room at all.
Microsoft's Hayete Gallot demoing the Surface Hub onstage at Microsoft's "Windows 10: The Next Chapter" event at its Redmond, Wash. headquarters on Wednesday, January 21.CNET
Microsoft won't say what the device will cost. Perceptive Pixel's $80,000 devices eventually plummeted in price, down to $7,500 for a 55-inch version. Microsoft plans on offering a 55-inch Surface Hub as well as an 84-inch version. Still, at $15,000 to $20,000 for the flagship model, the displays are not casual purchases and won't be finding their way to small businesses any time soon.
More important than cost, however, is whether other companies will buy into Microsoft's vision for multi-touch, multi-person productivity.
Teleconference systems cost upwards of six figures, and many large corporations use legacy software and industry standard equipment to conduct audio and video meetings with employees around the globe. Companies such as Cisco and Polycom have worked for years to build "telepresence rooms" with multiple HD displays and well-placed audio microphones.
The Surface Hub wants to accomplish with one gadget what many devices accomplish in tandem.
"There are no cables dangling, no projectors, no phones," says Angiulo. Because the device is running on the same base of code as other Windows 10 machines, developers will be able to customize productivity apps for the 55-inch and 84-inch screens and take into account how the software can be shared among dozens of participants.
In my time using the device, the Surface Hub proved unlike any other gadget I've ever used before. The touch interface is as responsive as any smartphone, and writing and operating with multiple hands is flawless. Intuitively, I was able to pull up Bing Maps, zoom out to space and spin a virtual Earth to find the location of the CNET offices in downtown San Francisco.
Jokingly, I wondered how long before we'll be playing the popular military shooter Call of Duty on the 84-inch 4K monitor. Han says the Surface Hub has been used any way imaginable inside Microsoft's offices, including hooking up an Xbox One game console to it.
Yet it's still unclear how the Surface Hub will be used to enhance the productivity of large groups of people beyond Microsoft's whiteboard brainstorming and Skype video conferencing examples. With a presumably high price point, little evidence of how companies will use it and questions about how developers will treat it as part of the Windows ecosystem, the device still feels like a gimmick waiting for a cause.
But Microsoft's intention is to convince businesses that thinking, communicating and collaborating in the workplace will in fact improve with the presence of these colossal screens, even if they marvel only with hardware for the time being.
"Our intention," Han says, "is to make this ubiquitous."
Microsoft gives us a look at Project SpartanPhoto by Nate Ralph/CNET
At Microsoft's event today in Redmond, the company unveiled a new concept Web browser it calls Project Spartan. Joe Belfiore, VP of the operating systems group, gave a brief tour of some of the new features and how it would work on all Windows devices.
He started by talking about an all new rendering engine and by showing off real-time annotation features that let him use his finger to draw directly on a Web page to call out certain areas for someone else. He noted that the comments would all be saved to the cloud via OneDrive so you can share your comments with collaborators.
Spartan also has a reading mode, similar to Apple's Safari, that formats articles in a way that's easier to read. It also has a reading list, another favorite of other modern browsers. Content in the reading list will save offline and syncs to your account using Spartan on other devices like phones and tablets.
Cortana will be built right into Spartan. The assistant will pop into Spartan at the right moment to be helpful in both simple situations and in other nuanced ways. For example, Belfiore demonstrated how Cortana autofills a search for the airline Delta with Belfiore's wife's flight information pulled from his other apps.
Cortana will give you more details about what you're looking at in a sidebar on the right.Photo by Nate Ralph/CNET
After spending years as the world's top browser maker with Internet Explorer, other browsers such as Google Chrome have made inroads into the market. Even though Internet Explorer still holds more than half of all users, Microsoft unveiling a new browser eliminates the challenge of redesigning Internet Explorer to work across multiple devices. Also, creating a single browsing experience for Windows computers, tablets and phones helps promote Microsoft's new unified experience.
Microsoft wouldn't say when Project Spartan would be released, but pointed out many of the technologies announced today will come out at different times later this year.
Microsoft shows off new features that indicate soon, your Xbox won't be just a game console, but a TV-connected Windows PC, too.
The Xbox One has always been a big black box full of promise. Would it be more than a game console? With Microsoft's Windows 10, it looks like the Xbox One's big convergence moment is finally here. Microsoft wants your Xbox to be your Everybox.
For one, universal Windows apps will work on Xbox One. That was just announced during Microsoft's Windows 10 event Wednesday by Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems.
Universal apps are specific cross-platform apps: Skype is one of them. These apps will offer a sort of follow-you-anywhere computing experience across phones, tablets, PCs, and -- it looks like -- Xbox One. There are specifically optimized versions of Office apps, which look somewhat like Google's cloud apps. Microsoft demonstrated a variety of universal apps across phone and PC: a mobile version of Microsoft's Inbox app for email, using Outlook, Calendar, a Photos app, a People app, Maps, and more. Basically, they're core apps that cover the bases for everyday communication. And there's also a new browser, too, still codenamed Project Spartan.
CNETXbox app on Windows 10: also, Windows apps will run on Xbox One.
Yes, Windows 10 is coming to Xbox One, but it sounds like it might be a more limited experience than what was largely demoed on phones and tablets and PCs. Those who want to move their application over to the TV screen will be able to do so, but Xbox head Phil Spencer admitted that this may not be an area where Office apps are envisioned per se.
How they work with Xbox One hasn't been fully detailed yet, but stay tuned.
Part of Xbox will also work its way onto Windows 10: Phil Spencer also unveiled an Xbox app for Windows 10, which will finally aim to knit Xbox Live users more deeply into Microsoft's newest OS. It looks to combine gaming activity feeds from your Xbox Live friends with other game-specific interactions.
Microsoft is also pushing cross-play, once again, across Windows and Xbox games. Fable Legends is one of the games that will work via a "cross-play" mode on Xbox One and PC. This has been something Microsoft has attempted for years, going back to the Xbox 360 version of Shadowrun. Cross-play hasn't been a great success yet, but this new effort might be a different story.
Windows 10 PCs will also allow game streaming of Xbox One games later in 2015. This technical trick sounds a lot like what Sony has been allowing between the PlayStation 4 and mobile phones and tablets via Remote Play, but in this case it's limited to tablets and PCs -- no phones, yet. A game was demoed, and of course, game play looked smooth, but in actual practice these types of local-streaming games can be a mixed bag.
Off-TV play is already a trend in play everywhere from the Nintendo Wii U, to PlayStation, to Nvidia's latest tablet, Apple's phones and iPads, Chrome/Google devices, and Razer's latest Android TV microconsole. Microsoft's play to unite its devices makes sense, and feels overdue. How it performs, of course, remains to be seen.
Stay tuned for more, but it sounds like the Xbox will soon be not just a game console, but a TV-connected Windows PC, too. And it sounds like Microsoft is hoping that its PC, tablet, and console hardware will work together to spark more interest, and more sales.
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