Monthly Archive:: November 2012

"In August, Mozilla's Director of Research Andreas Gal, and one of the lead engineers for Firefox OS, Philipp von Weitershausen, gave a couple of presentations in Brazil about Firefox OS. We're now happy to share both the videos and the slides, in various formats for you to see or use, giving your own presentations!" Lots of background on Firefox OS.

Something truly interesting is currently happening in the PC space. Ask any random internet commenter how the PC market is doing, and I'm pretty sure you're going to get something along the lines of 'everybody but Apple is failing'. Turns out this isn't the case - Lenovo has just become the world's largest PC and laptop vendor, after three years of steady growth in sales and profits. "During the second fiscal quarter, Lenovo's worldwide PC shipments grew 10.3 percent, in a difficult market that was down eight percent year-over-year, the 14th quarter in a row that the company has grown faster than the PC industry as a whole. In this challenging environment, Lenovo achieved its highest-ever worldwide market share of 15.6 percent, gaining share points in every geography, every product category in which it competes, and in every respective customer segment." Very impressive.

Microsoft is discontinuing Windows Live Messenger in 1st quarter 2013, forcing users to switch to Skype. Most would want to switch to Skype anyway with its more advanced capabilities, and the switch makes sense to Microsoft, since they purchased Skype for $8.5 billion last year. However, the move may be seen as typical Redmondian high-handedness by those using Messenger with dial-up. Technically Skype works with dial-up but in practice most agree you really need broadband for decent use. Will everyone view Messenger as replaceable by Skype?

"I've made clang the default on x86 systems. There will probably be a few bumps as we work out the last kinks including a ABI issue for i386 system libraries, but the transition is expected to be fairly smooth for most users."

Bart Eppenauer, Microsoft's chief patent guy, in an interview with The Verge: "We believe our patent laws have served the country very well." Loosely translated, this reads: "This system that gives me my six-figure income and is a fine anti-competitive tool for my company have served me and my company well, the damage to the industry be damned."

Back when I reviewed the Nexus 7, I mentioned that I was disappointed with Chrome for Android. It often felt slow, would hang, and typing in the address bar and input fields on webpages would lag. Scrolling wasn't always optimal, and sometimes, it would simply freeze up altogether. We're several months down the line now - has the situation improved for me?

The Verge is reporting Microsoft is building its own gaming tablet. "The Xbox Surface will likely include a custom ARM processor and high-bandwidth RAM designed specifically for gaming tasks. We're told these specifications could be altered to accommodate an unannounced Intel SoC and that the Xbox Surface is being developed independent of specific hardware architecture. Microsoft's Xbox Surface won't run a full version of Windows, rather this 7-inch tablet will run a custom Windows kernel. Messaging and other tablet functions may be supported, but the focus is on gaming." Custom kernel. So, incompatible with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Question. Why?

The desktop and laptop world is dominated by x86, the mobile/embedded world by ARM. Conventional wisdom, right? Not really. There's also MIPS - hundreds of millions of embedded devices run on MIPS, and for years now, the architecture has been trying to break into the mobile world dominated so much by ARM. They just a got a boost: MIPS has been acquired by Imagination Tech, most known for its PowerVR graphics chips used in a lot of smartphones and tablets.

Another Apple-to-switch-Macs-to-ARM post. "Apple engineers have grown confident that the chip designs used for its mobile devices will one day be powerful enough to run its desktops and laptops, said three people with knowledge of the work, who asked to remain anonymous because the plans are confidential. Apple began using Intel chips for Macs in 2005." No idea when Apple will make the switch, but they will do it. I'm thinking 5-10 year timeframe.

Some good stuff from Begeistert 026, the recurring get-together for BeOS and now Haiku programmers. A lot of work is being done on the debugger, the Auckland Layout Editor (which sounds very impressive), and the Haiku port to ARM. Haiku on ARM is getting closer and closer to booting - for now it ends up in Kernel Debugging Land (a kernel panic).

"The Nexus 4 is absolutely wonderful, but it's also vexing. Frustrating. Annoying. It's easily the best Android phone on the market right now, and has some of the most powerful software that's ever been put on a mobile phone. It's an upgrade from last year's Galaxy Nexus in every way. It's terrific - save for one small thing. " Lack of LTE, obviously. Bigger issue for me as a European: glass back. Apparently it cracks. Who'da thunk?

"Earlier this week Apple fired Scott Forstall, the architect of its iOS platform, and handed his duties over to the company's chief industrial designer, Jonathan Ive. Ive and Forstall had an infamously chilly working relationship, and one of their biggest disagreements was over the role of so-called 'skeuomorphic' design in Apple's products. Forstall, like his mentor Steve Jobs, favored it; Ive disliked it. To many observers, Forstall's forced exit looks like a vindication of Ive's stance. But if he wants to continue Apple's enviable trend of innovation, he'd be a fool to throw the baby of skeuomorphism out with Forstall's bathwater." Hoped for a thorough article on the benefits of skeuomorphism - got the age-old and intrinsically invalid excuse 'because it sells'. Windows isn't he best desktop operating system because it sells so well. Lady Gaga isn't the best artist because she sells a lot of records. This argument is never valid, has zero value, and adds nothing to what should be an interesting discussion.

"Enlightenment is one of the oldest open source desktop projects in existence. With E17, the developers are gearing up to their latest release, an occasion that has been a long time in the making. The word is that the team will make some announcements at the EFL Developer Day taking place as part of Linuxcon Europe on 5 November. With a release likely being close at hand, The H spoke to project leader Carsten 'Rasterman' Haitzler about how the desktop environment has been progressing and what the goals are for the project."