Monthly Archive:: June 2012

Yesterday, we were treated to another preliminary injunction on a product due to patent trolling. Over the past few years, some companies have resorted to patent trolling instead of competing on merit, using frivolous and obvious software and design patents to block competitors - even though this obviously shouldn't be legal. The fact that this is, in fact, legal, is baffling, and up until a few months ago, a regular topic here on OSNews. At some point - I stopped reporting on the matter. The reason for this is simple: I realised that intellectual property law exists outside of regular democratic processes and is, in fact, wholly and utterly totalitarian. What's the point in reporting on something we can't change via legal means?

"Whenever there is a conversation about the future of computing, is discussion inevitably turns to the notion of a 'File'. After all, most tablets and phones don't show the user anything that resembles a file, only Apps that contain their own content, tucked away inside their own opaque storage structure. This is wrong. Files are abstraction layers around content that are necessary for interoperability. Without the notion of a File or other similar shared content abstraction, the ability to use different applications with the same information grinds to a halt, which hampers innovation and user experience." Aside from the fact that a file manager for Android is just a click away, and aside from the fact that Android's share menu addresses many of these concerns, his point still stands: files are not an outdated, archaic concept. One of my biggest gripes with iOS is just how user-hostile the operating system it when it comes to getting stuff - whatever stuff - to and from the device.

"Google is making another attempt to fix the Android update problem at the Google I/O conference. The plan is to give smartphone, tablet and chip manufacturers earlier opportunities to adapt their current and new hardware to forthcoming Android versions. Google said that it hopes that this will allow users to receive their updates faster. To achieve this, Android executive Hugo Barra announced a 'Platform Development Kit'." I have my doubts.

And so, Flash on mobile is now completely dead. "There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1. Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th."

Exactly five years ago today, Apple officially released its entry into the mobile phone market, the iPhone. Immediately loved by customers the world over, ridiculed by the competition, and, in my book, not particularly innovative feature-wise, it changed the mobile phone industry virtually overnight. Love the iPhone or hate the iPhone, its industry-changing impact is evident.

RIM just announced some pretty disastrous financial results, but in the press release, there's something very telling, and quite worrisome for those of us rooting for the Canadian company: BlackBerry 10 has been delayed until the first quarter of 2013. I don't want to call it at this point, but it ain't looking good.

"The failure of Minitel was not one of technology, It was the whole model that was doomed. Basically to set up a service on Minitel, you had to ask permission from France Telecom. You had to go to the old guys who ran the system, and who knew absolutely nothing about innovation. It meant that nothing new could ever happen. Basically, Minitel innovated from 1978 to 1982, and then it stopped." This is what the World Wide Web could one-day look like. Dearth of innovation for the want of permission.

Since its introduction at Microsoft's BUILD conference last September, Windows 8 has garnered a large measure of attention, especially with regards to the new Metro interface. The feature that intrigued me the most, however, was the inclusion of Hyper-V.

The WebOS team has released the code of a "community edition" of the operating system, a development base to get to the Open WebOS image due for September. Also, a WebOS ports team has been set up "to support Open webOS 1.0 on well-documented mobile devices with readily available hardware drivers". Let's hope they are targeting some good Android phones.

So yeah, Google totally just won the conference showdown by easily beating both Apple and Microsoft. Not only did Google announce Android 4.1 with some really cool new features, a cheap but non-crippled tablet, and a new Android device called the Nexus Q, but they also opened up pre-orders for Google Glass. So yeah.

"It wasn't quick or easy, but we are extremely proud of this release and what it represents for us as a group. The jump from 2.3.7 to 4.0.4 in many ways was a fresh start for this project, and as much as the code changed, the structure and organization of CM as a whole changed as well. It meant a lot of hard work, and late nights, but also a ton of fun. We are in this for the challenge, and the reward is always the satisfaction received when we release it to the masses as a 'stable' product. This RC1 brings us a step forward toward that payoff." CyanogenMod is an absolutely amazing project, an amazing piece of software. Been running CM9 on my SII for months, virtually without issues. It absolutely baffles me OEMs don't just use this instead of their own Sense or TouchWiz crap. This is so much better it's just not funny anymore.

Benedict Evans: "How do you segment without fragmenting? Apple achieved this pretty easily with the iPod by varying the storage, but that wouldn't be meaningful for the iPhone. The cheap one has to run the apps, but people still have to have a reason to buy the expensive one. What you can do is vary the Apple supplied features, without varying the hardware and API platform that your third-party developers are targeting." Like I said: iOS 6 Starter, iOS6 Home, iOS 6 Professional, and iOS 6 Ultimate. Microsoft got blasted for confusing and arbitrary segmentation - rightfully so - but as usual, Apple gets a free pass when it does the exact same thing. At least Microsoft uses different names and forces OEMs to be clear about what they're shipping. I've said it before: I find calling all these different versions "iOS 6" without modifiers pretty scummy and misleading.

"In the wake of the Flashback botnet which targeted Mac computers, Apple has removed a statement from its messages on its website that Mac operating system X (OS X) isn't susceptible to viruses." It was an untenable statement anyway. Security is an illusion.

"If you are on Facebook but have never taken a particular shine to Facebook's e-mail capability, Facebook is intent on changing your mind. As of Friday, the company seems to have quietly given or replaced the display e-mail addresses of all of its users with an @facebook.com address, routing any e-mail communiques you would have received back to its own Messages inboxes." Scummy doesn't even begin to describe this.