Monthly Archive:: June 2010

Hobbies. Where would the computer industry be without them? Arguably, there wouldn't be a computer industry had it not been for hobbyists in the first place. The ineffable need to scratch an itch does still percolate even in this closed down world of big mainstream technology from big companies opposed to the little guy innovating. OSNews asks, what are you working on? We want to hear from you about your hobby projects (technology related or otherwise) to get a sense of what the community is cooking up for love of it, rather than because you're paid to do so. Share and enjoy!

We're a little late with this one, but hey, I have to sleep too. In the middle of last night, Apple released version 5 of its Safari web browser for both Mac OS X and Windows, and it contains some very interesting improvements, including an extensions framework.

"As Apple's CEO introduces his new iPhone today, and its market cap passes Microsoft's, the man who infamously fired him, John Sculley, tells The Daily Beast's Thomas E. Weber about his regrets, their rift - and how their partnership could have worked: Jobs should have been CEO, and Sculley's boss, rather than the other way around. Plus, other 1985 board members on Jobs then and now, and where they are today."

"Expression Studio 4, the latest version of Microsoft's design-oriented development tools, was released to manufacturing today. The software is available immediately to MSDN subscribers, with retail availability coming later. The three main components of Expression Studio are Expression Blend, for producing XAML designs for use with both Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation applications; Expression Web, for creating webpages; and Expression Encoder, for encoding and streaming video."

As everybody already expected, Apple "unveiled" the new iPhone tonight. It's called the iPhone 4, and brings the iPhone up to par with what's already available on other smartphone platforms, hardware wise, while raising the bar on a few specific points (the display, mostly). The company also announced a name change for its mobile operating system - it's now called iOS. What we didn't get during this year's WWDC keynote? News about the Mac, Mac OS X, or the Apple TV. Make no mistake: the iPhone and iPad is where it's at.

While the spotlights are usually all over Apple's iPhone, there's another phone company out there which is busy winning the hearts and minds of many: HTC. Founded only 13 years ago, the company has become the primary supplier of top-notch Android phones. Last Friday, Sprint launched the HTC EVO 4G to raving reviews and considerable consumer interest.

"The latest in the 4.x series of the KDE Software Compilation is due to be released in early August 2010. With the first beta of this release recently unleashed, I thought I'd download the openSuse packages and see what 4.5 has got in store for us."

A number of recent reports provide a new picture of the current smart phone market landscape and the trends likely to impact that landscape over the coming year. The latest US market share report by Nielsen shows both the iPhone OS and Android growing at the expense of Windows Mobile and the Blackberry OS.

So, what to do with this. If we don't run it, we're pro-Linux. If we do run it, we're pro-Microsoft. And I'm sure that whatever we do, we're anti-Apple somehow. In any case, here we go: the latest market share figures from IDC about servers show that Windows is by far the most popular server operating system in terms of unit sales, increasing its market share even further. Linux, on the other hand, saw its market share in the server market sink a little.

Earlier this week, Apple launched a HTML5 Showcase page, displaying several uses for HTML5 and related technologies. However, it turns out that Apple is using trickery to block out browsers other than Safari, with the end result that browsers with better support for web standards than Safari can't access the demos.

Another mobile Linux consortium? Yup, another mobile Linux consortium. "ARM, Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, today announced the formation of Linaro, a not-for-profit open source software engineering company dedicated to enhancing open source innovation for the next wave of always-connected, always-on computing. Linaro's work will help developers and manufacturers provide consumers with more choice, more responsive devices and more diverse applications on Linux-based systems."

"Tuxera today announced the release of Tuxera exFAT for Android and other Linux systems. Developed using technical documentation provided by Microsoft Corp., Tuxera exFAT provides outstanding performance and stability, and meets the latest SDXC memory card standards."

Last week's release of MeeGo v1 is an effort by US chip maker Intel and European cellular giant Nokia to enter the mobile OS arena. Will it be able to compete? While Apple and Google vie for market dominance, MeeGo offers itself as a 3rd choice with strong Linux roots.

A lot of people point to a possible Verizon iPhone as the one thing that will staunch Android's remarkable growth. Sadly for those of you stuck on AT&T, there won't be a Verizon iPhone any time soon. Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson has said that his company has "no plans to carry the iPhone in the immediate future". Bummer for all you frustrated AT&T people.