Windows Phone fans pining for the days of Metro panoramas and integrated experiences have had a tough couple of years, with Microsoft steadily removing many of the platform's user experience differentiators. But as I've argued, there's reason behind this madness. And now an ex-Microsoft design lead who actually worked on Windows Phone has gone public and agreed with this assessment. You may have loved Windows Phone and Metro, but it had to change.

Rumors of a Microsoft and Cyanogen partnership have been making the rounds recently, and the Android mod maker is confirming them today. In an email to The Verge, Cyanogen says it's partnering with Microsoft to integrate the software giant’s consumer apps and services into the Cyanogen OS. Bing, Skype, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, and Microsoft Office will all be bundled later this year. As part of the partnership, Microsoft has committed to creating "native integrations" on Cyanogen OS.

Nearly 15 years ago, I wrote my first review of Mac OS X for a nascent “PC enthusiast's" website called Ars Technica. Nearly 15 years later, I wrote my last. Though Apple will presumably announce the next major version of OS X at WWDC this coming June, I won't be reviewing it for Ars Technica or any other publication, including the website you're reading now.

The combined company will have unparalleled innovation capabilities, with Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs and Nokia's FutureWorks, as well as Nokia Technologies, which will stay as a separate entity with a clear focus on licensing and the incubation of new technologies.

Feature-wise, 4.0 doesn't have all that much special. Much have been made of the new kernel patching infrastructure, but realistically, that not only wasn't the reason for the version number change, we've had much bigger changes in other versions. So this is very much a "solid code progress" release.

The FCC officially published its new net neutrality rules to the Federal Register yesterday, opening the door to legal challenges. Opponents wasted no time. CTIA, the trade association that has represented the wireless industry since 1984, filed a lawsuit with the DC Circuit Court of Appeals today. In a blog post, the group wrote that it intends to push back against "the FCC’s decision to impose sweeping new net neutrality rules and reclassifying mobile broadband as a common carrier utility." The National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the American Cable Association also filed suits along similar grounds.

Contrary to some news items posted on certain websites, Hyperion Entertainment CVBA is not in a state of bankruptcy. Due to an unfortunate set of cirucmstances, the company was temporally listed as "bankrupt" despite the fact that the conditions for bankruptcy were never met and that in the eyes of the law, the company was never bankrupt.

Development of AmigaOS 4 (which recently culminated in the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition) is and has been ongoing albeit that some resources had to be directed away to support the upcoming hardware of A-EON Technology.

Microsoft has been keeping its promise on releasing more frequent builds of Windows 10, but this is not stopping private versions to leak onto the web. Windows 10 build 10056 was just spotted outside the walls of Redmond, and it shows significant cosmetic changes and various improvements coming to the operating system.

To fully understand the Android rendering optimizations and pipeline a low-level understanding of GPUs graphics pipeline is necessary. Because no vendor is very specific about the internals of their GPU architecture, one has to sift through marketing presentations, blog posts and white papers to find the relevant pieces of information. Therefore, most of the information presented here is to be considered a simplification of what the hardware actually does.

How to improve user experience? How to invent new ideas? Why are some designs changing? How to ensure that new ideas actually improve the user experience (UX)?

There are many more design related questions for sure. In this blog we will start to provide you with design insights, explain what is important to us, what is our way of working, our project objectives, evaluations and conclusions as well.

In short: how we design Sailfish OS.

Overall, further testing of the One M9 basically confirms my fears, which were that the One M9 is effectively a sidegrade of the One M8 at best. I really did want to like this phone, as I still find the One M7 to be a great phone to use. I really wanted to see a phone from HTC that was worthy of an upgrade from the One M7, but the One M9 isn’t that phone. In fact, given that the One M8 is at least 200 dollars cheaper than the One M9 on contract, I find it incredibly difficult to recommend the One M9. It will definitely have its fans, but overall there are more negatives than positives. Given the competitive positioning of the One M9, the timing of the Snapdragon 810, and the strength of the Galaxy S6 I’m faced with an intense sense of déjà vu. It almost feels like we’re back where we started 3 years ago with the Sensation and Galaxy S2. I can't think of a better way to describe the situation HTC is in, which is alarming to say the least. The One M9 can't be another Sensation, but it feels like it is.

The folks over at WindowsMania.pl have gotten their hands on a new build of Windows 10 for phones; this latest build comes with a set of UI changes and enhancements; mainly a revamped multitasking screen. The new multitasking screen shown above displays open/recent apps in a card like manner, similar to how Meego or BB10 showed them, allowing you to quickly view all your open apps at once, while presumably still swiping them away (or simply pressing "x") to close them.

Some folks like to call it fragmentation, others call it choice, but by any name there are certainly a lot of different Android phones. Building applications that need to work with all of them is no easy task. You have wildly different hardware configurations that make for a big difference in performance, and even though one apk file can work on every one of them, there's still the issue of needing an app to run smoothly on low-end devices without sacrificing features on high-end devices. When you're talking about an app as popular as Facebook, this can quickly become a nightmare for the folks doing the coding.

Facebook showed everyone at the Big Android Meat and Greet a new solution that's simple - the Device Year Class component.