Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 15th Jan 2013 23:28 UTC
The smartphone world is, at this point, a two-horse race. Android has the numbers, Apple's iOS has the figures. Everything else - Symbian, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, etc. - are also-rans. Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Even though, say, Windows Phone not making any serious headway into the market, despite boatloads of money poured into the platform, RIM still thinks it can do better with BB10. Austrian website Telekom-Presse has a pretty detailed video hands-on with a BB10 device - the Z10 - and it left me with one burning question: what is BB10's identity?
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Don't agree. Here are some points that will make BB10 devices stand out. Some points are classical BB, others are new:
One-hand use:
BBs are known for that! If you are a busy guy travelling around, luggage in one hand, BB on the other will do. RIM thought really hard about that for the new touchscreen phone. For right-handed people the gesture to peek/go into the hub is killer and perfectly done with your thumb while still having a rock solid grip on the device. The same thing is true for the back button, which is consequently positioned at the bottom left, again easily accessed with your thumb. Compare that to iOS especially on the iPhone 5. Ouch!
The Hub:
While the concept of having one central place for all of your communication isn't new, I have to say the hub in combination with easy access to it could be killer for communication heavy users. Plus, it seems to support pretty much everything you could think of, SMS/MMS, Email (IMAP, POP3, Exchange Active Sync), CardDAV, CalDAV, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and more.
Keyboard:
BlackBerries have always been known for the best hardware keyboards in business. They will be able to defend this position and maybe gain many users who care about 'real keys'. But on top of that, they may now have the best default software keyboard of any full touch smartphone in the world. I obviously have to check it out for myself once they hit the stores, but from the videos I've seen the sw keyboard is just amazing.
BlackBerry Balance:
While this is for enterprises, it's still a cool feature that every enterprise customer gets.
So, my conclusion would be: BB10 is for you if you value productivity, communication (I have no doubt BB10 phones will have top-notch call/reception quality) and getting things done over style. Like previous BBs, it will be a super efficient communication tool right out of the box. But with a modern OS platform that is super fluid and even has modern Apps and all kinds of media stuff.
As for Android's identity: 4.x has one I really like, but all to often this remains invisible to many customers, because they get to see childish TouchWiz, Sense and all that. That still hasn't hurt Android. WP undoubtly has a unique/memorable look, but doesn't seem to be widely accepted. IMHO it's too alien.
Edited 2013-01-16 00:22 UTC