Monthly Archive:: October 2013

Microsoft is talking to HTC about adding its Windows operating system to HTC's Android-based smartphones at little or no cost, people with knowledge of the matter said, evidence of the software maker's struggle to gain ground in the mobile market.

Terry Myerson, head of Microsoft's operating systems unit, asked HTC last month to load Windows Phone as a second option on handsets with Google's rival software, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Myerson discussed cutting or eliminating the license fee to make the idea more attractive, the people said. The talks are preliminary and no decision has been made, two people said.

Whether or not the Open fits your needs, one thing is clear: Mozilla needs more capable hardware to demonstrate Firefox OS' potential. The Open is good for someone whose alternative would be a basic flip phone, but the camera quality, connectivity, display and performance don't do full justice to the software.

Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete.

Windows 9 unifies previous contrasting paradigms, taking design cues from all platforms and recent innovations.

The Frameworks can be divided into three categories:

Functional elements have no runtime dependencies. For example, KArchive handles compression and decompression for many archive formats transparently and can be used as a drop-in library.

Integration designates code that requires runtime dependencies for integration depending on what the OS or platform offers. For example, Solid supplies information on available hardware features and may require runtime components to deliver some of the data on some platforms.

Solutions have mandatory runtime dependencies. For example, KIO (KDE Input/Output) offers a network-transparent virtual filesystem that lets users browse and edit files as if they were local, no matter where they are physically stored. And KIO requires kioslave daemons to function.

I'm proud to announce that, at last, the package management branch has been merged into the main development line, aka master branch. The builds and nightly images from hrev46113 on will include the new feature.

I only notice now that I should probably have given Matt a heads-up upfront, since due to the somewhat changed build process the build bot will need an update. So there might be a bit of a delay until the first Haiku PM nightly images will hit the website. Sorry for that.

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to August 2013, shows Windows Phone has posted its highest ever sales share of 9.2% across the five major European markets* and is now within one percentage point of iOS in Germany. Android remains the top operating system across Europe with a 70.1% market share, but its dominant position is increasingly threatened as growth trails behind both Windows and iOS.