Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 8th Sep 2010 18:53 UTC
Hold on to your security blanket, people, because Google is rolling out a pretty big change to its search engine. Not too long ago the internet was in a shock because Google rolled out a new feature that allowed you to pick a background image for the Google home page, just like Microsoft's Bing. Google went a lot further today, and has launched Google Instant, adding search-before-you-type results to the Google home page.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
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.More News »
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2010-03-08
Touchscreen is not that special, an good UI team could code something for it in a matter of months. That is, if the widget set is flexible enough.
In my opinion, this is Nokia's problem : the UI code in s60 was probably made with only keyboard interface in mind, with manually specified pixel size for buttons and so on. So adapting symbian to touchscreens require a major rewrite, a rewrite which takes time, even when they have the necessary skills around.
Apple did not have that problem because they started coding with touchscreens in mind right away.
Sure. That's normal, because
1/They took the market by surprise
2/They were there first, so they have a reputation advantage
3/Their product is of reasonably good quality
4/The app store is the only mean of getting applications on the device, and because of this monopoly Apple can introduce insanely high charges for developers who use it.
5/They sell only one device and charge an insanely high price for it
My point is that they could have made more money. By being more attractive for the BlackBerry userbase, as an example. Apple could have made more money with things like better mail management, a user-accessible and properly organized filesystem, and arguably in the long term if they did not choose the App store-only + iTunes-only business.
Do you think so ? This is not certain, because the current iPhone ecosystem only appeals to the wealthier people, while the Android ecosystem is for almost everyone.
If Apple hits 10% of the market with a device which costs $700 (actual cost for Apple : $200) and Android hits 80% of the market with a device which costs $300 (Actual cost for the manufacturer : $150), the sad truth is that Android still wins, because 8x150$ = 1200$ and 1x500$ = 500$. App sales undergo a similar equation : less profit per user, but on a much larger user base, can mean more profit.
So in the end, unless Apple understand that and sell lower-end models, or let other brands do it, they will lose the game. But, in my opinion, Apple probably won't allow other brands to make iOS device because they are still pissed off an obscure Macintosh clones story and won't dare to admit that the PC was successful because of its clones. History made them control freaks.
Who knows... Discussion gets too speculative on this path, so I think we should stop it there, and wait to see how things go.
May you be right. We can't afford another Windows story, the current shape of the smartphone market would make it far worse, partly due to jerky moves from Apple (*cough* App Store *cough*) that have been widely accepted and have now become the norm.
May you be wrong. Nokia is one of the best phone makers out there, it would be great if they came up with their great ideas on the touchscreen market.
As of RIM, their problem will be to change their use base : their smartphones are seen as a products for boring people in smoking and ties, changing this image without losing their current user base will be difficult, though they try their best with things like BlackBerry Messaging.
Again, this can be a way to profit. Thin margins + Much higher market acceptance = Higher profit, in the end...
This again becomes too speculative, so I won't answer that.
Indeed, they have surprised me with this one. Guess this means that they're finally fully ditching the Mac platform. One victory for software freedom in the mobile space, though many ugly things still remain...
Edited 2010-09-09 20:16 UTC