"This is still early, early days for OS X 10.9, and Mavericks will likely change and shift much more before it's released this fall. It's clearly not going to be the total aesthetic overhaul iOS 7 is, though, and that's okay. It’s a simple, familiar operating system, even less of a change than Mountain Lion, just with nips and tucks and a whole lot fewer sheets of weirdly torn paper. It has its bugs, sure, but it's also corrected a number of bugs that somehow made it into the final version of Mountain Lion, and even at this early stage is impressively stable and fast. It's gotten rid of a lot of the design issues that plagued many Mountain Lion apps (except for Game Center, which is still hideous), in favor of a cleaner, softer look that is far easier on the eyes." Hard to complain, really.

The Linuxed - Exploring Linux Distros website has over 170 reviews of distros and common Linux programs by Arindam Sen. What makes it special is that Mr. Sen puts his experiences together in useful charts, such as this one that compares RAM usage for twenty different GUI versions, or this one that compares CPU and RAM usage for 20 KDE distros (page down to see the chart). While the site says it's merely "A non-techie's view of the Linux world," many techies will find it useful as well.

I volunteer as tech support for a small organization. For years we relied on Ubuntu on our desktops, but the users didn't like it when Ubuntu switched to the Unity interface. This article tells about our search for a replacement and why we decided on Xfce running atop Linux Mint.

"Apple's new iOS 7, which the company unveiled last week at its Worldwide Developer Conference, says a lot about the future of mobile devices because Apple owns the future of mobile devices." If you're an Apple fanatic, you're going to love this article. If you're not an Apple fanatic, you'll be shaking your head in disbelief that the once great AppleInsider runs stuff like this these days. Hey, there's always MacRumors - the last great bastion of proper Apple rumour reporting.

"Samsung has just announced one of its latest laptops: the Ativ Q. It dual-boots Android 4.2.2 and Windows 8 in a 13.3-inch device with a super high-resolution display running at 3200 x 1800. Samsung has bundled in its S Pen stylus in a magnesium device. It looks like Acer's Aspire R7, but it's .55 inches and 2.84 pounds so it feels a lot lighter. The Ativ Q has a unique feature that lets it switch to Android from within Windows 8. It appears to be an application that virtualizes the Android experience, with an app pinned to the Windows 8 Start Screen that launches straight into Android. It runs fullscreen, but it's not usable it you try to snap it to the side and continue using a Windows 8 app." Do these dual-operating system things ever sell? It does illustrate how Windows OEMs are struggling with the fact that people don't want Windows 8 - they have to tack Android on there to lure people.

Reddit user mr03 created a very thorough visual comparison to show just how much Android has changed over the years. No text, just pictures. It's amazing how dated older releases look.

"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."

"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move.

Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.

The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.

"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.

A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".

"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.

Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."