Jobs and Gates fascinating interview

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did a rare joint interview at D: All Things Digital yesterday. It's a really fascinating and interesting video and the Wall Street Journal has the whole thing for you to watch.

You should definitely check out the Prologue and the Highlight reel, they have some great nostalgic moments with both Steve and Bill reminiscing about the early pioneering days of the PC and software industry.



It's amazing to think how much shared history there is between Apple and Microsoft which people often forget. When you watch the video you'll see that actually the two men have great respect for each other, their companies and achievements.

Check out all the videos here or you can get the transcript here.

Halo 3 coming to UK on September 26th

Microsoft took the opportunity of the Halo 3 public Beta launch today to finally announce the date fans have been waiting for so they can get their hands on the final release of the game.

It will be 25th September in the US and the next day for Europe. As a big fan of Halo 2, I'm definitely looking forward to this one and it will finally give me an excuse to buy a 360.

Check out some videos of the multi-player Beta here and here.

Macbump

The MacBooks got a speed bump, bigger hard drives, faster SuperDrives and 1GB memory across the range yesterday. Nothing special, just a minor update really.

Funny thing is, they're pretty much up there with the lower end of the Macbook Pros now, they even have faster SuperDrives! So that must mean that the Pros will be getting an update soon too.

The middle of the range white MacBook is now really great value at only £829 for a 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1GB memory and a 120GB hard drive. Go get one.

Plasma vs LCD - Plasma best?

I have to admit, I've always had a preference for plasma over LCD. Every time I've gone into any large retailer and looked at all the sets, plasma has always seemed to produce more realistic colours, deeper blacks and much less blur in fast moving scenes, in my opinion.

In recent years, however, LCD has considerably closed the gap and the top manufacturers are consistently producing sets with better contrast ratios and lower response times.

So it was with much interest that I found and read a piece of research on the subject that looks at the views of 603 people in London, Paris and Cologne directly comparing the two technologies in a controlled environment.

The research was commissioned by Panasonic, Pioneer and Hitachi, some of the largest and most respected plasma manufacturers, so clearly their objective was to highlight plasma's superiority. Having said that, Panasonic and Hitachi both also manufacture LCD.

The research was conducted by a completely independent and well respected research company, Synovate. Having checked them out, they do seem to be completely legit.

Onto the results of the research then, this is taken directly from the executive summary:

The results reveal a strong preference for the contrast, black tone, resolution, image depth, sharpness, colour and response speed of plasma.

More importantly, opinions among those who had some prior knowledge of the two technologies swung dramatically toward plasma once they viewed the content side by side in an environment similar to their homes.

Some specifics from the report:

• 65% favour Plasma over LCD for best Colour Quality
• 61% say Plasma delivers the best Sharpness Quality
• 62% indicate that Plasma has the best Response Time
• 72% deem Plasma to have the best Black Quality performance

So, the results of this survey seem very clear then, plasma is superior in almost every way. I have to say, I'm not particularly surprised, as I said, it's been my feeling for a long time.

It's a very interesting read though and even if you don't agree with the results, there are some excellent explanations of the differences between the two technologies and various myths are also dispelled.

I definitely learnt a lot reading the report and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on the subject.

If you're in the market for a new big screen HDTV, you should definitely read the report thoroughly and then go and make your own judgement on all the sets in your nearest big retailer. The best judge will always be your own eyes.

You can read the report here.