Wozniak hates the Apple vs. Samsung verdict

About the Apple vs. Samsung jury verdict: "I hate it," Wozniak told Bloomberg, "I don't think the decision of California will hold. And I don't agree with it - very small things I don't really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody's technologies." From the mouth of a real inventor and engineer.

BlackBerry 10 video shows MeeGo-like UI

A video demonstrating the multitasking gestures of BlackBerry 10 has surfaced. The UI looks like a combination of PlayBook OS and Nokia's ill-fated MeeGo operating system. However, CrackBerry notes "... consider the video shows as being dated for June, yet is only appearing now in September. Something tells me someone sat on this until it was possibly no longer really relevant and therefore, may not matter all that much if people see it now."

Apple announces iPhone 5

As expected, Apple announced its new iPhone tonight, dubbed the iPhone 5. The rumours and leaks nailed it, with the most prominent feature being the move from 3.5" to 4" (1136x640). Due to the way iOS handles resolutions, applications need to be adapted for this new display, and if they are not, they will be letterboxed (black bars). It has a faster processor, better camera, LTE, and several other improvements, while the. As always, Apple does it right: shipping 21 September in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore - the rest of the world will follow later.

‘Rift’ within Apple over skeuomorphism fetish

Ah, skeuomorphism - my favourite punching bag. Austin Carr has spoken to former Apple designers and people within the company, and they're all confirming there's a rift within Cupertino between people who want to move away from skeuomorphism, and people who want to retain it as much as possible, and even want to expand it. Since I've long hoped for Apple to ditch this "visual masturbation", as one former Apple designer calls it, I'm happy to learn not the entire company supports skeuomorphism.

Laptop inventor Moggridge dies at 69

"Bill Moggridge, the London-born industrial designer credited with creating the first laptop computer,died on Saturday aged 69 after a battle with cancer. Moggridge is best known as the creator of the GRiD Compass, a device which introduced many of the design traits used in modern laptops, including the hinged case, the flat display and the low-profile keyboard. Moggridge said that when he tested the device prototype in 1981, it was the first time he had used a computer."

Mystery Google device appears in small-town Iowa

"Google calls itself one of the world's largest hardware makers. For the past 10 years, the web giant has designed much of the gear driving the massive data centers that underpin its web empire, but it treats the particulars of this hardware operation as the most important of trade secrets. That's why the Pluto Switch is so intriguing." It's easy to forget large web companies like Google actually design and build their own hardware.

‘What really made Steve Jobs so angry at Google?’

Written by Scott Cleland: "With so many fanboys spinning Silicon Valley history, it's sometimes easy to forget about the real chain of events that led to the ongoing Apple-Google thermonuclear war, how the romance turned to hate. This timeline presents an interesting case about why, despite patents and prior art, Steve Jobs had plenty of personal reasons to despise Schmidt, Page, and Brin." Cleland has a very, very good point; quite coherent and well-reasoned... That is, if you haven't got a single shred of historical sense and completely and utterly ignore the 30-odd years of mobile computing development that preceded our current crop of smartphones. It's hard not to be reminded of how certain groups of people dismiss millions of years of fossil records because this record inconveniences their argument. In any case, a comment on the article answered the question properly: "Jobs was a businessman. He was angry he was losing money. Simple."

Valve brings Steam to your TV today

"Today, Valve will launch the beta of Big Picture mode, a version of Steam designed for your television. That's right. The de facto central hub of PC gaming is now designed to run while you're lounging in your living room - and with a controller, no less. I've tried out Big Picture. It's sleek, intuitive, and groundbreaking in several ways." We've talked about this before. If there's one company that can upend consoles, it's Valve. Everything is falling into place, and I wouldn't be surprised if this - what is essentially the software for the 'Steambox' - will have a tremendous effect on the games industry. Looks great, too.

‘Tablets are changing the tech you use’

"The rise of the tablet has heralded changes big and small across the tech ecosystem, from a booming market for cloud storage to the fall of Flash. If the computing industry was a stagnant pond in late 2009, the introduction of tablets a few months later was less akin to a pebble flicked from the shore and more like a boulder hurled from 10 feet up. The ripples have been widespread and lasting." Simple question: if an ordinary user used her laptop to check Facebook, the news, and read a few blogs, and now uses a tablet to do the exact same thing - how much has really changed? Are any of the things mentioned in this article - the rise of HTML5, streaming video, and internet storage - really the result of tablets?

Hackday with Jolla and friends

Several presentations about mobile Linux technologies, such as Mer, Nemo, and Jolla. Mer is openly developed and meritocratically governed mobile Linux core distribution, which was forked from the various components of the Meego project when it was abandoned by Nokia and Intel. Nemo is a community project which continues the effort of the Meego handset branch. And Jolla is a new startup company created by former Nokia Linux engineers, who participated in Maemo and Harmattan projects, and decided to continue on their own, when Nokia lost their interest in Meego. Their goal is to release end user products (initially handsets) using an operating system based on the Mer core and some components of Nemo, which will be providing their own user interface.

Sony does teardown of its latest Xperia tablet

"Today the new Xperia Tablet starts hitting doorsteps and store shelves. And how do we mark this momentous occasion? Well... Sony engineer Takuya Inaba ripped apart the gear and explained what's inside. Okay, more like gently opened. Either way, if you love geeking out on parts, then this is the article for you." Sony - or, well, at least its mobile department - is starting to get very cosy with us on the geek side. I approve - although the company has a long way to go before it cleared its name.

From Linux to OS X: 1 year later

"A little more than an year ago I wrote my rant post The Linux Desktop Experience is Killing Linux on the Desktop and for the first time in 8 years I wasn't a desktop Linux user anymore. I spent about a month wrestling with Windows 7, but let's face it - Windows is ill suited for professional Ruby programmers like me (and it's ill suited for most programmers, except maybe Java & .Net I guess). Anyways, it was never my intention to stick with Windows - I was just doing my Mac due diligence. Now with 1+ year of OSX usage I'd like to share a few things about my experience thus far with you."

Via’s APC, A $49 Android desktop

"We've seen a profusion of relatively low-cost PCs and tablets over the last few years, but Taiwanese electronics company Via's APC is cheap even by these standards: it's a $49 low-power desktop computer running a modified version of Android 2.3. Announced today, the APC is meant as a simple way to connect to the internet, so you won't get a great deal of computing power. It contains an 800MHz processor, 512MB of DDR3 memory, 2GB of flash storage, and can connect to a monitor or TV to output a resolution of up to 720p. It also consumes a fraction of a standard desktop's power: 13.5 watts at maximum and only 4 watts when idle."

Disks from the perspective of a file system

"Most applications do not deal with disks directly, instead storing their data in files in a file system, which protects us from those scoundrel disks. After all, a key task of the file system is to ensure that the file system can always be recovered to a consistent state after an unplanned system crash (for example, a power failure). While a good file system will be able to beat the disks into submission, the required effort can be great and the reduced performance annoying. This article examines the shortcuts that disks take and the hoops that file systems must jump through to get the desired reliability."

Samsung derides Android’s multitouch, Apple praises it

"While Apple's technology is a 'very nice invention', the technique used in Android differs from the iOS solution, argued Bas Berghuis van Woortman, one of Samsung's lawyers. Because the Android based method is more hierarchical the system is more complex and therefore harder for developers to use, he said. Apple disagrees. 'They suggest that they have a lesser solution, but that is simply not true', said Apple's lawyer Theo Blomme to judge Peter Blok, who presided over a team of three judges, in a response to Samsung's claim." I just wish these companies and their lawyers could see and hear themselves. If only for a few seconds. Not even Monty Python could write this. By the way, all these patents were already thrown out last year by the Dutch courts, but Apple started a 'bottom procedure', a more thorough handling of the case. Three expert IP judges preside, and due to the earlier ruling, Apple is fighting an uphill battle.

A Firefox smartphone for the developing world

"The smartphones going into the world's next two billion pairs of hands may not belong to either Google or Apple, but to Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation, which oversees open source software projects like the Firefox Web browser, expects to release a mobile operating system for smartphones early next year. Its target market is Latin America, then the rest of the developing world, where smartphones from Apple and Google are still too expensive for most people." Let's hope so, because at the rate things are currently going, we'll end up with like 90% Android, 9% iOS, and 1% other stuff. Who wants that?