For me, the two most interesting products in the operating system space to look forward to are Windows 8 (due to just how different it is), and BlackBerry OS 10. BlackBerry? Yes, and it's simple to see why. The BlackBerry Playbook, while not the most successful tablet, seems to be loved almost universally by its users, which bodes well for BB OS 10. On top of that, it's based on QNX, which is some major brownie points right there. The company has released information on which resolutions the operating system will support.
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Member since:2005-07-07
Gestures from outside the view area are actually one of the best things about the user interface.
While one might not discover that when handling someone else's device, as a device owner this is the very first thing that is demonstrated to you (short but very nice tutorial).
Once you understand that the part around the screen is not just wasteland but actually an interactive part of the device, you almost immediately appreciate the consequences.
One such consequence is that gestures inside the applications content area will never trigger those system gestures, i.e. operating system and applications are not trying to make sense of the same input. It is either the app's job (movement originating within the screen boundaries) or the job of the control interface (movement starting outside the screen boundaries)
This also means that those system gestures can not be broken by a faulty app.
A swipe from the bottom bevel upwards will always minimize the currently running app, a swipe from the bottom left corner inwards will always bring up the virtual keyboard, a swipe from the top left corner inwards will always bring up the status bar (e.g. for quickly switching wireless off/on).
Member since:2006-06-02
Thanks for the explanation; if I come across another PB I will give it a further and more extensive go. Now it's been unpacked, it makes sense that system and app gestures be kept separate.
Showing my ignorance again I suppose but has RIM trumpeted this enough as a distinctive and efficient UI difference? Why don't I kind of know this as part of the PB 'package' as a potential consumer? I am no hacker but I hardly have my head buried in the sand, either. Perhaps this is the bigger problem that RIM has?
Thanks again,
Orf
Member since:2005-08-27
Chiming in in agreement.
When using these gestures, you do not have to look at a particular part of the screen to click something. Your mind is at ease knowing that if you want to close an app, and my thumb is already near the bottom bezel, I can "just swipe" up to minimize and close. Or if I want to switch between applications, I can "just swipe" up and scroll apps, or do full scrolls.
Member since:2008-06-03
I wish I knew what you were talking about. 
Was thinking of getting a PB when it first hit stores here, but I just couldn't justify buying a tablet (any tablet) back then.
I've not even seen one in action since they're not really common over here (Singapore), but I was watching a demo reel over at Teknision's website while searching for the Chameleon Launcher (for Android tablets), and happenened to see a demo of the PB as well.
http://www.teknision.com/
Scroll down and click on "2012 Demo Reel" and fast forward to the ~26sec mark. Is that really what the PB looks like in use? If so, that's pretty nice, I have to say.
Member since:2011-01-14
That's a similar system to what Nokia have on the N9 with MeeGo Harmattan - if you swipe from the edge of the glass, it's an OS-specific gesture. If you only swipe on the screen itself, that's an application-specific gesture. A couple of people I've shown this to have said similar to you, but I have to say I love it after the first hour or so of use, and it's uniform across everything on the device so there's no inconsistency from certain apps or screens.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
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.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.
"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.
"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."
"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.
"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.
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."
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."
"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."
Member since:
2006-06-02
I had the chance to have a play with one in an airport electronics store; a good opportunity because I was able to compare directly with an iPad 3 and several Galaxy Tabs. I so much wanted to love it, with the QNX pedigree, and my sometimes nostalgic desire for the return of my Blackberrry and all but it was, for me, rather more "meh" than "gimme".
Judged against the above major competition, I found the UI confusing (starting an action from beyond the screen? What's that about? Non-intuitive, much) and the device itself physically clunky and heavy. The Galaxy Tabs won hands down (just on the initial experience).
Sorry to rain on the RIM parade but as much as I have wanted to root for them in the past, and thus see more competition in this space, you really cannot keep resting on one's laurels as a business, and relying on the general sentiment out there that there should be alternatives to the other tablet players. That line of credit/credibility won't last very long.