The Insider News

Wired.com[^]:

The heart beating beneath the surface of the re-imagined SimCity is the new GlassBox engine. “It’s a new simulation engine that was developed here at Maxis to support agent-based simulation,” Lead Producer Kip Katsarelis told Wired.co.uk. “It’s not necessarily related to cities, it’s a general engine; we’ve kept the code separate from SimCity. It lets you simulate very simple objects that, when composed together, can do very complex things.” “The genesis of GlassBox goes all the way back to SimCity 4,” added Creative Director Ocean Quigley, “when [engineer] Andrew Willmott and I imagined what the ultimate simulator might look like. At the time, computers weren’t powerful enough for us to implement that at any reasonable scale, so our ideas had to lie fallow until we finished Spore.”

PCWorld[^]:

When multitudes of Windows 8 users start playing with newly purchased hardware in the coming weeks and months, they'll encounter an indignity that once afflicted only smartphone and tablet users: dirty, smudgy, fingerprint-riddled touchscreens. Ah, yes, the dreaded smudge. It's a problem we've all come to grudgingly accept on mobile device screens, but PC users generally aren't so accepting of people touching—let alone leaving fingerprints on—their desktop displays.

The Verge[^]:

"Tape and strings literally made Surface." Panos Panay, general manager of the team behind the Microsoft Surface, touches an old mockup made of black and white plastic. He's forgetting glue, certainly – two panels appear to have been hot-glued to form the "tablet" part of the device — but tape and strings really are two key ingredients in this prototype, the one Panay's team used to show off what Surface would look like. It's crude and fragile, but it's also unmistakably Surface.

Microsoft[^]:

Surface delivers the power of amazing software and the feel of premium hardware in one exciting experience. Originally unveiled in June, Surface with Windows RT will initially be available in three SKUs: a 32GB version priced at US$499, a 32GB version bundled with a black Touch Cover priced at US$599, and a 64GB version bundled with a black Touch Cover priced at US$699.

Gamasutra[^]:

For the first time in the history of the PC, Microsoft is rolling out a new Windows ecosystem for which they will be the sole software distributor. If you buy Windows 8, the only place you will be able to download software that integrates with its new user interface will be the official Windows Store. Microsoft will have complete control over what software will be allowed there.... But how realistic is the assumption that the Windows desktop will still be a usable computing platform in the future? And what would be the consequences were it to disappear, leaving Windows users with only the closed software ecosystem introduced in Windows 8?

FierceCIO

The operating system's Metro interface is almost sure to cause a surge in calls to the enterprise help desk as users contend with tiles where the familiar 'Start' button and 'Explorer' icon used to be.

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With a host of new tools and capabilities--such as Secure Boot, Windows To Go and greatly improved file management--Windows 8 may have broad appeal in a variety of businesses.