Monthly Archive:: April 2012

"Ballmer's visit takes place shortly after LG Electronics' executive said during an earnings conference session last week that the company is planning to focus on smartphones running on Google's Android mobile operating system. The executive also said LG is taking a step back from Windows phones powered by Microsoft's platform, adding that it will 'continue research and development efforts' on Windows Phones." Anyone surprised by this should have their peepers checked.

Java creator James Gosling: "Just because Sun didn't have patent suits in our genetic code doesn't mean we didn't feel wronged. While I have differences with Oracle, in this case they are in the right. Google totally slimed Sun. We were all really disturbed, even Jonathan: he just decided to put on a happy face and tried to turn lemons into lemonade, which annoyed a lot of folks at Sun." Ouch. Also, doesn't jive with Schwartz' comments - might be illustrative of how bad things really were at the once great Sun.

Barnes & Noble is spinning off its Nook e-reader business into a new company - which will be a cooperation with Microsoft. Redmond will invest $300 million into the new company, and on top of that, the two companies have settled the patent litigation, which was part of Microsoft's string of mafia practices against Android vendors. I have a sneaking suspicion this will be the end of the line for the Android-based Nook e-readers and tablets. Get 'm while supplies last.

"I've been developing a new tweak for iPads called Quasar. Quasar is a tweak that allows you to run your apps in windows in your iPad. Just like in a window-based operating system, you can resize, move, close or full-screen windows." This is really, really cool - and quite useful, too, especially for iPhone-only applications. It's in the Cydia Store for $9.99.

"Apple, the world's most profitable technology company, doesn't design iPhones here. It doesn't run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn't manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby. Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states." Sure, this is all legal for companies to do (and Apple obviously isn't alone) but it does show you how much sense of morality companies have. Answer: none. But hey, it's legal, and the law is never wrong, right?

"Today, after 1 year and 4 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.10, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.8. In the 4.10 cycle we mainly focused on polishing the desktop and improving the user experience in various ways." A detailed overview of the changes compared to Xfce 4.8 and Xfce 4.10 preview releases can be found in the ChangeLogs. Xfce 4.10 will make its way to your distribution of choice, but of course, you can always download it and build it yourself.

"Ultimately, Haiku represents a different way of viewing your personal computer. If you think that software shouldn't be riddled with bugs and incompatibilities and inefficiencies, if you hate being forced to swap out your hardware and software every few years because 'upgrades' have rendered them obsolete, and if you find that the idea of using an operating system that's fast, responsive, and simple is refreshingly novel and appealing, then maybe, just maybe, Haiku is for you." What fascinates me the most is that Haiku's not working on a tablet version. How delightfully quaint.

"Over a year ago, Microsoft executives sent out feelers to Facebook to see if the company would be interested in acquiring Bing, though the overture was not officially sanctioned by Steven A. Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, one of these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg declined, saying Facebook had too much else to concentrate on. Dawn Beauparlant, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, declined to comment, as did Ashley Zandy, a spokeswoman for Facebook." Seems Facebook is smart.

"Sir Jonathan Ive has been crowned British Visionary Innovator in a competition, run by the Intellectual Property Office. Ive won by a large margin with almost fifty per cent of the vote (46.6%). In second place was Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the world wide web) with 18.8 per cent of the vote. James Goodfellow OBE (the inventor of PIN technology and the cash machine) was in third place with 15.2 per cent of the vote." Alan Turing was also nominated. If you ever needed an illustration of everything that's wrong with the technology industry today, it's this. Guy who designs the exterior of mass-market gadgets wins over guys who actually really contributed to technology. Telling.

"Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand here today as a witness for the defense, and disputed Oracle's claim that Java APIs were proprietary code from Sun. Google's lawyer, Robert van Nest, asked Schwartz whether, during his tenure at Sun, Java APIs were considered proprietary or protected by Sun. 'No,' Schwartz said in explaining the nature of open software, 'These are open APIs, and we wanted to bring in more people... We wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as possible.'" Whoopsie for Oracle.

The Canonical team has released Ubuntu 12.04 - a new long term support release. The biggest new feature is the HUD, an addition to the traditional application menu system, where you can search for the actions you want to perform instead of having to hunt for them in menus. Unity overall has been improved, and I must say that even though this new release is simply not at all ready for Asus ZenBooks, Unity runs perfectly well on it, and to my own shock and surprise, I'm slowly warming up to it. It's starting to make sense, it looks nice (especially after some custom tweaking), has become a lot more configurable, and it's really, really, really fast.

Steve Jobs once considered an ad-supported version of Mac OS 9. Users would see a 60-second Apple-updated commercial during boot, as well as several other ads throughout the system. This all was tied to selling operating system updates - "this is how Microsoft does it... It's like printing money", Jobs said. While the idea was financially sound, Apple decided against it because too many negatives arose.

I wasn't just wrong, I was being an idiot. "When Google was in the thick of Android's development in 2006 and 2007 - long before the platform ever reached retail - it was a very different product, almost unrecognizable compared to the products we used today. Documents dated May of 2007 and made public during the course of Oracle's lawsuit against Google over its use of Java in Android show off a number of those preliminary user interface elements, prominently marked 'subject to change', and you can see how this used to be a product focused on portrait QWERTY devices." I'm hoping I can dive into this a little deeper tomorrow; since it's the busiest period of the year for my little company right now, I don't have the time to do it today. Just to make sure nobody thinks I'm just going to ignore this, I figured it'd be a good idea to post a quickie today. I'll get back to this tomorrow, or Friday at the latest.

Another solid quarter for Apple. "The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter." The official Apple Money Pile: $110 billion. That's where those 47% profit margins you pay go to!