Linked by Kroc Camen on Thu 6th May 2010 07:54 UTC
In 2009 ARM showed off prototype netbooks "capable of driving HD content, can surf the web for 8 hours, and will cost round and about 250 USD". Yet still, none have made it to the market. Why do you think this is so? Because ARM signed a deal with Adobe in 2008 to bring Flash and AIR to the ARM architecture, a promise they will finally deliver later this year. And you wonder why Apple won't have Flash on the iPhone when it can hold back an entire product category for two years.
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RE[4]: RiscOS no no no no
by bhtooefr on Thu 6th May 2010 10:10
in reply to "RE[3]: RiscOS no no no no"
Member since:2009-02-19
There's also a niche market of elderly people that don't know anything other than RISC OS, and are using either circa-1997 233 MHz StrongARM RiscPCs, circa-2000 233 or 300 MHz Kinetic (RAM local to the CPU card) StrongARM RiscPCs, circa-2002 600 MHz XScale-based Iyonixes, and circa-2004 400 MHz ARM9-based A9homes with a beta OS.
Those users, that's all they know how to use, and that's all they'll use until they die. They'll buy new hardware if it's cheap enough, but only if it can run RISC OS. For that matter, a couple companies have sold x86 PCs running Virtual RiscPC, which... isn't very good, and has nasty, buggy DRM.
RE[5]: RiscOS no no no no
by jabjoe on Thu 6th May 2010 10:33
in reply to "RE[4]: RiscOS no no no no"
Member since:2009-05-06
Exactly how small is this niche? I can't see it's more than a few hundred at most. A better solution to help them would be a effort on Rox and RpcEmu. It's not good to be tied to any chip type, even ARM. That's if it's worth getting new machine for them, not like there is new RiscOS software... But honestly, moving OS isn't that big a deal, even if the machine is dead, Linux can actually mount ADFS. For many old Acorn app, bet there is something to convert the files. Like Draw to Inkscape sort of thing. A better business is help emigrate these old RiscOS users left behind to the new lands we all enjoy. Let RiscOS lie in peace.
RE[5]: RiscOS no no no no
by henderson101 on Thu 6th May 2010 10:55
in reply to "RE[4]: RiscOS no no no no"
Member since:2006-05-30
There's also a niche market of elderly people that don't know anything other than RISC OS.
That is PURE fantasy. It's a little like the response often heard when the 17th century Cornish man was questioned in English - "Me na vadna cowz a Sowznack". Which, at the time, was thought to translate as "I can't speak English", but actually meant "I _will not_ speak English".
Anyone still using RISCOS as a primary OS is doing so because they want to, not because they have to.
News
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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-09
Heh, I was reading the linked articles not the OS News one. Ah well...
Regarding RiscOS on these things, I can see it being a hobby project but nothing more without a really serious update to the underpinnings of the OS, which I'm sure would be more time+effort than using Linux.