Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 1st Sep 2012 21:15 UTC
The Verge published a video demonstrating how desktop mode and Office 2013 - a desktop application - work on Windows RT, the ARM version of Windows 8. The video showed a desktop mode that clearly didn't work well for touch, and even Office 2013, which has a rudimentary touch mode built-in, didn't work properly either. It looked and felt clunky, often didn't respond properly, and even showed touch lag.
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RE[3]: Tired warn out company...
by ricegf on Sun 2nd Sep 2012 16:19
in reply to "RE[2]: Tired warn out company..."
Member since:2007-04-25
Canonical has reported about 20 million desktop/laptop users (based on unique IP addresses to their update servers), but more importantly, they have a serious monetization strategy that includes:
* An excellent store for both free and paid products (Software Center) built on apt that tightly links to their OS (e.g., Unity Dash shows both installed and available products matching my search, and purchasing and installing the available products is as simple as clicking the one I want)
* An excellent cloud service (UbuntuOne) that sells media and offers automated off-site backups, highly customized multi-OS synchronization, collaboration, etc.
* An active vendor affinity program for pre-installs
* A cross-product strategy covering desktops/laptops, servers, tablets, smartphones, TVs, and other embedded opportunities.
You can argue over whether they will succeed or fail in the long-term, but their founder has exceptionally deep pockets, extensive business experience, and a strong ideological commitment to "paying forward" the FOSS philosophy that he credits with enabling him to make is billions.
I'm a paying customer, so you needn't ask on which side I would argue. :-)
News
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
Google 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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/15/13 23:03 UTC
"During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function - you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal spent some time discussing what Google's search functionality will eventually morph into. Google's strategy is summarized by three words: answer, converse, and anticipate. Singhal explained that many of the pieces of these upcoming changes can already be seen in products that Google has recently introduced - namely, Google Knowledge Graph and Google Now, with perhaps a splash of Google Glass, too." I hold on to my hat every time Google changes Search. It's such a vital product in my daily life.More News »
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Member since:
2006-01-24
Lol, Red Hat built their brand name (and fortune) by providing stellar support for a kernel and software ecosystem (both for which they wrote tons of code) which anyone could download and use for free, that is quite a feat. Pricey? In comparison to Microsoft?
It's certainly true though that the type of technical support on offer to the enterprise is not something you can sell to the end user desktop. In fact there is really no market for support on the end user desktop at all.
As such there is very little business potential on the Linux desktop as it's not only open source but also GPL licenced which means there's no 'we'll keep the best parts proprietary as a competitive edge which you will have to pay for' option.
Again the only really serious attempt at pushing money onto the Linux desktop is that of Canonical. I suppose their endgame is to make Ubuntu the enterprise desktop choice and OEM deals where it's preinstalled?
That said Ubuntu has certainly made a huge splash in the (albeit small) Linux desktop pond, and I'd certainly attest to it being the most user-friendly and polished out-of-the-box distro I've come across (yes, even with Unity!).
And while I personally prefer distros like Arch, Gentoo etc where you have total control, I find that Ubuntu is the one I recommend to Linux newcomers and it's also what I've installed for my parents. It will also be interesting to see how they will leverage the potential that native Steam brings, and how (if) it will mesh with their own app store.