Betting on Whether Elop Will Be Microsoft’s Next CEO

Windows 46 Comments
PC Magazine reports that bookies at the Ladbrokes betting service give 1:4 odds that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will be the next Microsoft CEO. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg comes in second place with 7:1 odds against, while Steven Sinofsky, previously head of the Windows division, comes in third at 12:1 odds against.

Without intending any disrespect, I can't imagine a worse choice for the next CEO than Mr. Elop. His blind fealty to Windows at Nokia cost the stock an 85% drop on his watch. Microsoft needs new directions and new ideas, not another Windows loyalist.
Read More

Sailfish runs Android applications, runs on Android devices

Wireless 32 Comments

Users enjoying the unique gesture-based and modern Sailfish OS user experience will be able to take full advantage of the Android application ecosystem available through various app stores globally. Jolla will cooperate with leading global app stores to ensure users can seamlessly download Android apps just as they would do on any Android device.

Android applications, unaltered. Sounds great as a stopgap, but there's always the integration issue (will they make use of, say, Sailfish OS-native notifications and gestures?), and it may hinder the development of native applications. I'm curious to see how well it works.

Jolla has made a major breakthrough in Android hardware compatibility by developing Sailfish OS to run on common hardware produced for Android, particularly smartphones and tablets. Vendors interested to utilize Sailfish OS are now able to develop phones and tablets based on many different chipset and hardware configurations. This new level of compatibility will enable device vendors who use Sailfish OS to fully utilize the existing Android hardware ecosystem.

This is great news. This means that Sailfish OS will become available for popular Android phones, which will surely generate needed enthusiasm among people like us who read OSNews. Of course, the Jolla smartphone (mine's on pre-order, and I cannot wait) will be the optimal device for Sailfish, but this at least gives those who are interested the option to try Sailfish out before plonking down cash for an actual Sailfish device.

Read More

The specter of a Nokia Android phone

Wireless 82 Comments

A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company's Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.

Another person said the idea of Nokia using Android wasn't a part of Microsoft’s discussions with the company about an acquisition, even though that was widely recognized as a possibility.

Windows Phone never fit into Nokia's DNA. It's too closed, too external, too controlled; Nokia had little influence over its own destiny with Windows Phone. It's not surprising that many of the brightest minds in the company left in the wake of the Windows Phone announcement (such as the team now at Jolla).

Nokia should have gone Android.

Read More

Michael Dell buys back Dell

Hardware 35 Comments

Michael Dell has the won the battle for control of the computer company that he created, after shareholders backed his $24.8bn offer to take Dell private and revive the struggling business away from the incessant pressure of Wall Street.

The vote clears the way for the huge buyout, in which Dell is working with private equity partners Silver Lake after seeing off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn.

Must have been hard for him to see his baby slide into irrelevance. I hope for him he can turn things around, but I'm not sure if they'll be able to - they missed the boat, and it's probably in Fiji by now.

Read More

Apple: new iPhone not storing fingerprints

Apple 91 Comments

Apple's new iPhone 5S, which comes with a fingerprint scanner, won't store actual images of users' fingerprints on the device, a company spokesman confirmed Wednesday, a decision that could ease concerns from privacy hawks.

Rather, Apple's new Touch ID system only stores "fingerprint data", which remains encrypted within the iPhone's processor, a company representative said Wednesday. The phone then uses the digital signature to unlock itself or make purchases in Apple's iTunes, iBooks or App stores.

In practice, this means that even if someone cracked an iPhone's encrypted chip, they likely wouldn't be able to reverse engineer someone's fingerprint.

This seems relatively safe - but then again, only if you trust that government agencies don't have some sort of backdoor access anyway. This used to be tinfoil hat stuff, but those days are long gone.

I dislike the characterisation of privacy "hawks", though. It reminds me of how warmongering politicians in Washington are referred to as 'hawks", and at least in my view, it has a very negative connotation.

Read More

Valve launches Steam Family Sharing

Games 37 Comments

Steam Family Sharing allows close friends and family members to play one another's games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing a shared computer.

Sounds neat, but it does look convoluted and complex. I have a simpler system, which is quite revolutionary. It's called physical copies and I can just give them to friends. It's magic.

Read More

Apple announces new iPhones

Apple 119 Comments
Apple's event is going on right now - and most of the new stuff already leaked weeks and months ahead of time. So, we're getting an iPhone 5S, an iPhone 5C, and iOS7 will be available later this month. I like the design of the 5C more than of the 5S; it's more playful, colourful - harking back to the coloured iMacs and PowerMac G3s. Too bad it doesn't come in red.

The fingerprint sensor in the 5S is interesting, but I wonder how accurate it will be in the real world; on top of that, with all the NSA news, I'm not particularly keen on Apple reading my fingerprint all the time. Supposedly, applications don't have access to it and it's not stored in the cloud, but I have little to no trust for companies.

The biggest news for me is the fact that the iPhone 5S has a new chip - the A7 - which has the honour of being the first 64bit chip inside a smartphone. iOS7 and first party Apple applications are all 64bit, and Xcode obviously supports it. While this obviously future-proofs the platform for more RAM, I wonder what other motives are involved here. ARM desktops and laptops, perhaps?

I doubt 64bit will provide much benefit today, but you have to hand it to Apple: at least they're done with the transition before it's even needed.

Read More

The Z-80 has a 4-bit ALU – here’s how it works

Hardware 28 Comments

The 8-bit Z-80 processor is famed for use in many early personal computers such the Osborne 1, TRS-80, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and it is still used in embedded systems and TI graphing calculators. I had always assumed that the ALU (arithmetic-logic unit) in the Z-80 was 8 bits wide, like just about every other 8-bit processor. But while reverse-engineering the Z-80, I was shocked to discover the ALU is only 4 bits wide! The founders of Zilog mentioned the 4-bit ALU in a very interesting discussion at the Computer History Museum, so it's not exactly a secret, but it's not well-known either.

I have been reverse-engineering the Z-80 processor using images from the Visual 6502 team. The image below shows the overall structure of the Z-80 chip and the location of the ALU. The remainder of this article dives into the details of the ALU: its architecture, how it works, and exactly how it is implemented.

Ken Shirrif's blog is an absolute must for fans of ultra-low-level hardware stuff. This goes way over my head, but interesting nonetheless.

Read More

How Chrome Apps will finally take on Windows

Google 118 Comments

The new apps look and behave much like the native apps you find on Windows and OS X. They're built using web technologies, but also with Chrome-specific code that means they won't be able to run on other web browsers - they're truly Chrome apps. They can exist outside of your browser window as distinct apps, work offline, and sync across devices and operating systems. They can also access your computer's GPU, storage, camera, ports, and Bluetooth connection. Chrome Apps are, for now, only available through Chrome on Windows or Chrome OS on a Chromebook. Mac users will have to wait another six weeks before their version of Chrome will be updated.

This is very important for Chrome OS - since this means it can now have applications outside of the browser. Google's plans for Chrome OS suddenly became a whole lot clearer.

Read More

Samsung Galaxy Gear unveiled

Wireless 47 Comments
The Verge on the Galaxy Gear:

There are a couple of significant downsides that temper my enthusiasm for the new Gear. First and foremost is the speed and intuitiveness of the user interface - or rather, the lack thereof. There's a tangible lag to anything you do with the Gear, while the swipe gestures are hard to figure out and do different things depending on where you are in the menus.

Also important will be the Galaxy Gear's battery life. It does use the Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy standard to communicate, but at 315mAh its battery is decidedly small. Samsung promises "about a day" of endurance from the Gear, but by the end of our briefing with the company, the cameras on most of its demo units were refusing to turn on due to the watches running low on power.

Yeah, no. I don't know what a smartwatch is, but this, is not it.

Read More

Nokia confirms: its patent attacks may continue

Legal 36 Comments

Microsoft paid billions for a license to Nokia's patents, but the company has made explicit that Nokia still owns the patents. The genius of this move is that it allows Microsoft to double down on its patent war with Android. Microsoft boasts that the majority of Android phones sold worldwide have already paid for a license to Microsoft patents. By 2011, patent licensing revenue exceeded Microsoft's revenue from Windows Phone.

Now, Nokia can go after Android phone makers for royalties - even ones that have already paid Microsoft.

When pressed on the issue today, a Nokia spokesman confirmed that more patent licensing is indeed part of the plan.

So, without products, Nokia will become a true patent troll. Good to know.

Read More

Microsoft raced to deal with soul-searching Nokia

Microsoft 47 Comments

Microsoft's agreement to buy Nokia's handset business, codenamed Project Gold Medal, was more of a sprint than a marathon.

Talks between the two companies began in February after both sides agreed a two-year-old collaboration on smartphone development wasn't working, according to people familiar with the deal.

This cannot be true. Internet commenters told me in no uncertain terms that Nokia and Windows Phone were doing just fine. And internet commenters are always right.

Read More

Google unveils Android KitKat

Google 41 Comments

Android is the operating system that powers over 1 billion smartphones and tablets. Since these devices make our lives so sweet, each Android version is named after a dessert: Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean. As everybody finds it difficult to stay away from chocolate we decided to name the next version of Android after one of our favorite chocolate treats, Kitkat!

Not a whole lot of information just yet. The page says "It's our goal with Android KitKat to make an amazing Android experience available for everybody", which could mean either a focus on lower-end, cheaper devices, improved support for more form factors such as laptops, or both.

As for the name - the BBC reports that Nestle is okay with Android using the KitKat name, and that no money is exchanging hands. A deal was reached within 24 hours.

Read More

The Nokia 8800

Wireless 10 Comments
In light of today's news, this is my favourite Nokia device of all time. The 8800 was gallery play in design, construction, and attention to detail. Not even today's phones come even close to how beautiful, sleek, and incredibly sturdy the 8800 felt. I reviewed it for OSNews way back in 2006.

The slider mechanism used ball bearings. Ball bearings.

Read More

Google is defragging Android

Google 15 Comments

Google's strategy is clear. Play Services has system-level powers, but it's updatable. It's part of the Google apps package, so it's not open source. OEMs are not allowed to modify it, making it completely under Google's control. Play Services basically acts as a shim between the normal apps and the installed Android OS. Right now Play Services handles the Google Maps API, Google Account syncing, remote wipe, push messages, the Play Games back end, and many other duties. If you ever question the power of Google Play Services, try disabling it. Nearly every Google App on your device will break.

Fragmentation addressed through the backdoor. Too bad it's too technical for most blogs, so the fragmentation line will be parroted for years and years to come.

Read More

Tide rolls in: Microsoft acquires Nokia’s devices unit

Microsoft 145 Comments
Ever since Stephen Elop became CEO of Nokia we knew this outcome was inevitable. It was his job to make it as easy as possible for Microsoft to acquire the vital parts of Nokia, and here we are: Microsoft is acquiring Nokia's devices unit for 3.79 billion euro, and another 1.65 billion euro for its patents. It's a bit of a complicated deal in that Microsoft buys the Asha feature phone brand and Lumia smartphone brand outright, but will only license the Nokia name for current Nokia products; the Nokia brand will remain under the control of Nokia the company. This means Nokia as a phone brand is effectively dead.

In addition, Stephen Elop will return to Microsoft. I'm sure entirely coincidentally, Ballmer announced recently that he's stepping down.

All this was as inevitable as the tides rolling in. Nokia has been going downhill and has stagnated ever since the announcement it would bank its future on Windows Phone. It went from being the largest smartphone manufacturer to an also-ran, which is made painfully clear by the fact that Microsoft paid more for Skype than it does for Nokia's devices unit.

A painful end for a once-great phone brand. This was the plan all along, and in essence, Nokia's board has executed it masterfully; the Finnish company has switched core markets several times in its long, long history (it started out as a paper company), and the unprofitable phone business was a huge liability for the company, despite claims by some that Nokia was doing just fine. Nokia's board has masterfully gotten rid of this money pit so it can focus on the parts that are profitable.

And, as always, the next Lumia will turn it all around.

Read More