Monthly Archive:: December 2012

"Sources familiar with the ongoing negotiations between Apple and Microsoft tell AllThingsD that the companies are at loggerheads not over the 30 percent commission Apple asks of storage upgrade sales made through SkyDrive, but over applying that same commission to Office 365 subscriptions sold through Microsoft Office for iOS, which is expected to launch sometime next year." iOS could end up being the only mobile platform without Office.

A change to anything related to Google Search - the product so many of us rely on - is never going to go by unnotoced. This time around, Google has altered Image Search for US users to alter the way it handles that ever so important aspect of the web - adult content.

Samba 4 has been released. It supports being a free/libre Active Directory domain controller and supports two distinct file servers, two DNS solutions, NTP and a lot of new features.

"As early as mid-December, consumers will be able to go to retail stores in the United States and Australia to purchase a Surface with Windows RT. Additional availability will be added in a number of countries in the coming months." Sales might indeed benefit from, you know, allowing the world to actually buy your halo product. Us Dutch won't be getting the Nexus 4 and 10 either.

So, last night, Windows Phone 8 got its first update - specifically for the HTC 8X. In this day and age, where iOS is the gold standard and shows the industry how it ought to be done, and Android is the exact opposite, Windows Phone 7 was a bit of an in-between - every phone got every update, but the staggered rollout was slow and frustrating, often due to carrier meddling. How will Windows Phone 8 fare?

"Research In Motion today released the 'gold' build of the BlackBerry 10 developer toolkit. The 'gold' build includes all of the final tools, components, and APIs that will enable developers to create integrated, social and beautiful applications for BlackBerry 10, and have the confidence that their apps will delight customers at launch." Let's hope so. This industry needs more viable players.

The Contiki open source OS for the Internet of things works on a bunch of different hardware platforms that operate in large, potentially lossy, wireless networks. How can the Contiki developers be sure that the system works in such networks during development of core Contiki functions? To make this easier, Contiki just got a new regression test framework, ported over from Thingsquare Mist, that allow the entire Contiki system to be run through 42 automated tests on 9 emulated hardware platforms with 4 different microprocessor architectures on 1021 network nodes with 3 different network stacks and 16 different network protocols, for every commit. There's more details available.

Confirming the industry's worst-kept secret, Valve CEO Gabe Newell has confirmed Valve is working on its 'Steam Box', a Steam-powered HTPC geared towards console-like gaming. It'll most likely run Linux. "Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he told Kotaku. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room." Steam has 50 million subscribers, so there's a market here. As a comparison: Xbox Live has 40 million subscribers.

Let's continue our impromptu Asian theme for today, and move from South Korea's Samsung to China's Xiaomi. "China's Xiaomi Technology is a fairy tale for nerdy entrepreneurs. Less than three years after its founding, the smartphone maker is valued at $4 billion and evokes Apple-like adoration from its fans, some of whom are desperate enough to skip work for a shot at buying the latest product the day it goes on sale."

"So sprawling is Samsung's modern-day empire that some South Koreans say it has become possible to live a Samsung-only life: You can use a Samsung credit card to buy a Samsung TV for the living room of your Samsung-made apartment on which you'll watch the Samsung-owned pro baseball team. Samsung is South Korea's greatest economic success, and, more recently, the subject of major controversy. Economists, owners of small- and medium-size businesses, and some politicians say Samsung no longer merely powers the country but overpowers it, wielding influence that nearly matches that of the government." Campaign contributions, moles in political offices and chambers, this Samsung stuff - this is what happens when companies are left unchecked. It's cute if you think this only happens in Korea. Much of it all is legal, but that doesn't make it right.

"Haiku, the open source re-creation of BeOS, threatens to become 'The Duke Nukem of operating systems', joked long-time contributor Ryan Leavengood. Actually, after eleven years of development, Haiku still falls four years short of Duke Nukem Forever's long delay, but few other projects have been so long in development. However, with the recent release of Alpha 4.1, Haiku is at last nearing general release." 2013 is going to be very exciting for Haiku.

So, Apple is serious about this thing. Tim Cook has said in an interview the company plans to manufacture one line of Macs in the US, starting next year. Coincidentally (or not?), Foxconn has just announced it plans to expand its production facilities... Into the United States. There's no indication as of yet that the two are linked, but the coincidence is at least interesting.

Patrick Gibson (via Daring Fireball): "My friend and co-worker Tom has a thesis about Apple's biggest problem: Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services." Apt.

"The European Commission has fined seven international groups of companies a total of EUR 1,470,515,000 for participating in either one or both of two distinct cartels in the sector of cathode ray tubes. For almost ten years, between 1996 and 2006, these companies fixed prices, shared markets, allocated customers between themselves and restricted their output. One cartel concerned colour picture tubes used for televisions and the other one colour display tubes used in computer monitors. The cartels operated worldwide. The infringements found by the Commission therefore cover the entire European Economic Area. Chunghwa, LG Electronics, Philips and Samsung SDI participated in both cartels, while Panasonic, Toshiba, MTPD (currently a Panasonic subsidiary) and Technicolor (formerly Thomson) participated only in the cartel for television tubes." The EU can do good things.