Monthly Archive:: June 2012

So, the Microsoft announcement - taking place as I write this, 01:45 in my timezone - turns out to be a bigger deal than expected. Microsoft just announced it's going full-on hardware - the company announced a new tablet called 'Surface', and boy, is this thing something to behold. Microsoft's hardware partners? They're not happy right now. Update: Here's Microsoft's official Surface site. I believe someone coined the phrase 'sexy as a succubus' in the comments about Vizio? Stealin' it! Update II: They aren't just taking the iPad head-on - this is a straight-up MacBook Air competitor.

Great find by Hack A Day: "Over on the 68kmla forums, a website dedicated to old Macs built before 1994, released his Android port of Mini vMac, a Macintosh Plus emulator that puts the power of a Motorola MC68000 processor and System 7 on any computer.

In the past year I've reviewed four lightweight Linuxes for OS News: VectorLinux, Puppy Linux, Lubuntu, and Damn Small Linux. This article compares the four distributions. I invite your comments in response: what are your own experiences with these and competing lightweight distros?

"A newly leaked 56-page document sheds some light on the company's plans, for what it calls the 'Xbox 720'. The presentation appears to be from August 2010, and references future improvements like SmartGlass, a Metro dashboard, and Xbox TV apps. Alongside its incremental Xbox 360 updates, Microsoft has a clear vision for its next-generation Xbox 720 console - we've dug into its plans to bring you the best bits." It's important to note the documentation is already two years old - a lifetime in the technology world. Still interesting, though. Now if you don't mind - back to Half-Life 2 on my plain old soon-to-be-outdated Xbox 360.

"One of the casualties of Nokia's latest cuts is Meltemi, the company's effort to create a new Linux-based operating system for low-end smartphones. The project was aimed at offering smartphones at prices that neither Android or Windows Phone could easily reach, but also would have required Nokia to try to woo developers for yet another operating system." I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's Elop's job to make Nokia as miserable as possible, so that when Microsoft finally makes its move, it can be seen a saviour rather than a predator. Everything that can be cut has to be cut to dive the price down.

It's just a tiny example, but it illustrates a far bigger problem. Adam Becker: "So what's the problem? It's that this innocuous little guy is now being used for all sorts of disparate purposes, and every time it's used for another action, it loses more and more of its meaning." This is what happens when consistency is thrown out the door, and developers get little to no guidance from operating systems' parent companies. Mobile applications and the web are a UX free-for-all, and as a result, established iconography and concepts are used out of context and in wildly varying ways. Just because you can code a mobile application doesn't mean you know anything about user interface design - this lack of guidance is where both Apple and Google have failed miserably.