Links for Thursday January 6^th, 2011

• This is the most exciting CES ever: Horace Dediu on CES, 2011:

  "At this year’s CES two unthinkable things happened:

  1. The abandonment of Windows exclusivity by practically all of Microsoft’s OEM customers.

  2. The abandonment of Intel exclusivity by Microsoft for the next generation of Windows.

  Many of Microsoft’s customers chose to use an OS product from Microsoft’s arch enemy. Some chose to roll their own. Microsoft, in turn, chose to port its OS to an architecture from Intel’s arch enemy."

  Yes, there have been major annoucements at CES. But I'm not declaring wintel to be dead until all of these things actually ship. I mean, who knows — maybe NVIDIA's "Project Denver" will be a total clunker, and Windows 8/ARM will never ship? I mean, when was the last time that Microsoft announced something, that they couldn't actually ship? (via Daring Fireball)

• BlackBerry PlayBook preview: Be sure to watch the video — the performance of the PlayBook looks great (especially on the web browser). And the software looks much closer to shipping (as opposed to Android Honeycomb). But there is one enormous "gotcha" buried in Engadget's post:

  "We weren't able to see any of the BlackBerry applications (like BBM, Calendar, and Messages), since they require you to be tethered over Bluetooth to your BlackBerry phone, and RIM wasn't ready for that."

  If it's true that you have to have a Blackberry phone just to check your e-mail or calendar on the PlayBook, then that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, and this thing will be a total dud on launch. (via Daring Fireball)/

• Motorola Xoom first hands-on! (update: video!): Be sure to watch the video — the OS that this Motorola tablet is running, Android 3.0 "Honeycomb", doesn't look anywhere near completion. And supposedly just thing is going to ship in Q1 (which means March).

  I'm highly skeptical.