Cheap Imitation: The Risk of Windows on ARM
February 17, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
Why Microsoft’s plans for Windows on ARM risk going horribly wrong.
Cheap Imitation: The Risk of Windows on ARM
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Published on 16 February 2012
It is said disappointment comes wrapped in lengthy explanation and it doesn’t get much lengthier than the 8 627 words it took Windows Division president Steven Sinofsky to finally detail ‘Windows 8 on ARM’. ‘WOA’ may sound like a line from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but we were far from wowed – in fact we can summarise Sinofsky’s 8,627 words in just two: cheap imitation.
Here is what we learned:
1. WOA will have a desktop, albeit one that only runs Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) and opens Explorer.
2. WOA will not support virtualisation so no existing x86/x64 programs will ever run on it
3. WOA programmes must be Metro-style apps, only available through the Windows Store
4. WOA’s version of Internet Explorer will not support Flash
5. WOA will be launched at roughly the same time as the x86/x64 version of Windows 8 (Q4 2012), but will not match the latter’s 29 February public beta.
In short: it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but isn’t really a duck. And for the masses who struggle to tell you what version of Windows they currently run, it is a recipe for disaster. Sceptical? Jump forward 12 months and try explaining points 1-4 to any relative when they ask you what to buy. Worse still run through the conversation you’ll have with friends and relatives who have already bought a WOA device and want to know how they go about installing their favourite programs. The Chinese are famous for producing underwhelming knock-offs of long established, trusted brands… it is rarely done by the brand owner itself.
Private Property: What Google’s Unified Privacy Policy Means for You
February 15, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
I enjoy the opportunity to get my teeth into topics in some depth so if you’re wondering what Google’s new privacy policy will mean to its users, read this!
Written by
Gordon Kelly (for IT Pro Portal)
“We’ve been tidying up a little, making our privacy policies and terms more consistent, easier to read and easier to understand. You see while privacy policies, ours included, may not be the most popular read on the Internet, we think they’re important. So instead of over 60 policies for different Google products and features we’re introducing just one with fewer words, simpler explanations and less legal gloop to wade through.”
-Google Privacy Policy Update promotional video (24.01.2012)
One Policy to Rule them all
From 1 March Google is radically overhauling its privacy policies. In broad terms Google’s numerous (70, not 60) policies will be replaced with just one. Consequently instead of a policy for Gmail, one for Google Calendar, one for YouTube, another for Search and so on they will be amalgamated and no longer tied to services, but accounts. Crucially Google will then share the information you provide across all these services, though not with third parties. Again the pitch is compelling:
“Over time it’ll mean better search results and ads, we’ll understand that when you search for Jaguar you’re looking for a jaguar [animal] and not a Jaguar [car],” claims Google. “It can mean more accurate spelling suggestions because you’ve tagged a word before and it may even mean we’ll be able to tell you when you’ll be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and local traffic conditions. All of which means we’re not just keeping your private stuff private, we’re making it more useful to you in your daily life too.”
These benefits are tangible. If you discuss your interest in something in an email YouTube may suggest videos about it and search results will be automatically refined to improve their effectiveness. For Google Apps (professional Google accounts) the situation is slightly different: core Apps services (Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Control Panel) have their own contract which takes precedence over the new privacy terms so they will be unaffected. Access non-core services (YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, etc) with your Google Apps account however and information will be shared between them.
Why you should be worried
Four key reasons: stubbornness, convergence, exposure and track record.
Stubbornness - Google is not budging over the implementation of its unified privacy policy, despite pressure from both the European Union and US Congress. Continue reading
Big Brother: How ACTA Brings SOPA’s Threat to a Global Scale
January 29, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
Most people have never heard of ACTA, but it could soon change the Internet – forever.
Big Brother: How ACTA Brings SOPA’s Threat to a Global Scale
- By Gordon Kelly
- Published 29 January 2012 (for TrustedReviews)
2012: The Crunch Year For RIM
January 24, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
Weekly takeover rumours, plummeting results and the exit of both co-CEOs suggest RIM needs a rethink.
2012: The Crunch Year For RIM
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- Published 21 January 2012
In April last year we posed the question: Is RIM the Next Nokia? Nine months on the continued decline of the Canadian smartphone giant makes that seem like wishful thinking.
“We haven’t considered acquiring the firm and are not interested in it”. This was Samsung’s brutal and dismissive response to news last week that Research in Motion was trying to sell itself to the South Korean giant. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the put down, RIM also denied the reports – as it has denied sales to Nokia, Microsoft and Amazon. The picture is getting tired. Much like a teenager looking for a date it allows rumours of interest to escalate then becomes angry and curt when each potential partner shoots them down. The “well-I-didn’t-care-about-them-anyway” approach.
Regardless of whether any of these stories are true, however, being shot down so comprehensively by its peers can’t be doing RIM’s confidence any good. And sure enough, over the weekend both co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and James Balsillie [above] stepped down from their roles to be replaced by previously little-known executive Thorsten Heins [below], who for the time being will continue with the company’s existing plans.
“The last few quarters have been some of the most trying in the recent history of this company,” admitted Balsillie after the company’s latest round of financial results in December. “We recognize that our shareholders may feel we have fallen short, in terms of product execution, market share, and financial performance… We are leaving no stone unturned, and are evaluating a number of areas including product management and the number of SKUs offered, supply chain and bill of material cost efficiency, marketing and advertising, partnership and licensing opportunities, organizational and management structure, [and] opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry infrastructure.”
In short: RIM will try anything. Continue reading
Why Microsoft Is Turning Into Apple
January 15, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
A raft of company decisions show its focus is changing dramatically, but why and is it a good thing?
Why Microsoft Is Turning Into Apple
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 14 January 2012
CES 2012 is at an end, and with it, so is the event’s final Microsoft keynote. CES 2013 will be a very different show without the presence of the Remond-based company, but those changes could be minimal compared to how Microsoft hopes to change over the same timeframe. Whisper it: Microsoft is turning into Apple.
“We won’t have a keynote or booth [at CES] after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing,” forewarned Microsoft corporate communications VP Frank X. Shaw in December. “As we look at all of the new ways we tell our consumer stories – from product momentum disclosures, to exciting events like our Big Windows Phone, to a range of consumer connection points like Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft.com and our retail stores – it feels like the right time to make this transition.”
Shaw could well be right about CES’s timing. This year the show was moved back a week to make it easier for companies returning from the Christmas and New Year break, but its placement hasn’t hindered Microsoft much in the past. Over the years CES has been the stage Microsoft has delivered a raft of important firsts including the first public demo of the Xbox, Windows Media Center (at the time called ‘Freestyle’), the first beta of Windows 7 and the news of ARM support in Windows 8. Microsoft has also been the key CES partner, with Gates and Ballmer in turns hosting the pre-show keynote address.
Numerous reasons have been levelled for the split, from stand rates to contract lengths, but the truth is Microsoft these days seeks something CES cannot deliver: control. While the company talks up search, the Cloud and its Metro UI, the real focus for the years ahead is to take back control of its image and to lock down the performance of its PC and mobile platforms which have been damaged so badly by lackadaisical third parties.
Inside Intel’s battle to keep Stephen Hawking talking
January 12, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
Over the weekend of 7-8 January I attended Stephen Hawking’s 70th Birthday Symposium held at Cambridge University. I learnt about science, the cosmos and the very human battle waged to keep one of our generation’s most important scientists in contact with the world. Here is my write-up of that battle for Wired UK.
Inside Intel’s battle to keep Stephen Hawking talking
“I was here in October and I plugged my phone in when I went to bed and when I woke up in the morning it was completely dead. It would not boot, would not charge, would not do anything and I suddenly had the realisation my whole life had collapsed into this little device.”
Justin Rattner could not have begun our conversation more aptly. Intel’s chief technology officer has been at the Mountain View, California company for nearly 40 years. He has two Intel Achievement Awards, stands on its Research and Academic Advisory Councils and has been named one of the 200 individuals currently having the greatest impact on the US computer industry. He also has a passion project: heading up the team that works tirelessly to evolve the technology that keeps Stephen Hawking communicating with the outside world.
“It got started about 15 years ago,” says Rattner, an endearing man with a broad, almost child-like, smile. “Stephen and Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore were at a conference together and Gordon saw the machine Stephen was using had an AMD processor and he said something to the effect of ‘How would you like a real computer?’ and Stephen said ‘Fine, that would be great’. Gordon asked the UK team to get engaged with Stephen and his support folks and provide him with a new Intel-based machine and it has just carried on. As the technology has improved they have continued to upgrade his system.”
Hawking has motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons in the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their motor functions. He was diagnosed in 1963, shortly after his 21st birthday, and given just a few years to live. Fast-forward five decades and Rattner was in town because the renowned scientist was about to celebrate his 70th birthday and a symposium with friends, family, scholars and noted academics had been arranged by the University of Cambridge in his honour. As if to remind the world of his fragile condition Hawking ultimately missed the event due to ill health, but left arousing pre-recorded speech that looked back on his life, studies, illness and the importance of hope: “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet”.
This bout of illness will pass, but for Rattner the challenge of Hawking’s ALS will not. Continue reading
Why Ultrabooks Are Enforced Common Sense
January 12, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
The Ultrabook is an Intel intervention for the wayward PC industry… and crucially, it might just work.
Why Ultrabooks Are Enforced Common Sense
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 09 January 2012
2012 is predicted to be the year of the tablet, but if aliens had landed at CES this week they would have their attentions drawn by another product entirely: the Ultrabook. In the show’s first 24 hours Acer launched the Aspire S5, HP the Envy Spectre, Lenovo the T430u, LG the Z330 and Z430, Samsung the Series 5 and Dell the XPS 13.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Intel PC client chief Mooly Eden used the company’s press conference to proclaim ”75-plus” Ultrabooks will be released in 2012, 50 per cent of which will have 14- and 15in displays. Have Ultrabooks taken over the PC industry? No, enforced common sense has.
If the last few years have proved anything, it is that the majority of PC makers had no idea what they were doing. Like kamikaze pilots they have savaged their own business models: eroding profit margins, cutting corners and casting aside creativity to produce generic machines only differentiated by their company logo. This trend reached its nadir with netbooks. These once lean, flash memory-based devices with Linux operating systems were ruined in a spiral of self destructive greed.
In the very definition of quantity over quality, PC makers swamped netbooks with Windows, plugged in cheap hard drives and stuck rigidly to underpowered specifications dictated to them by Microsoft. Why? In exchange for a few dollars off a licence fee for the aged XP operating system in the hope bargain-basement pricing would ensnare the mass market. It did, but so poor was the experience, so mis-sold was it in a desperate attempt to shift units, that PC makers all but killed any chance of repeat business – and in doing so laid the foundations for disgruntled punters to jump ship to the iPad.
The Biggest Winners & Losers In 2012
January 9, 2012 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials, Guide
I take a look ahead at who will rise and who will fall over the next 12 months.
The Biggest Winners & Losers In 2012
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 07 January 2012
With CES nearly upon on (the intrepid TrustedReview team flies out today) andMobile World Congress next month the technology landscape hits the ground running every year. So who is likely to make the winners circles in 2012 and who will wish theMayan prediction was actually true? Let’s break down our four major categories:
TVs & Entertainment
2012 looks set to be the year television gets a much needed shake-up. We railed against the Idiocy of Smart TVs in January last year and in 2012 these fragmented, unintuitive devices look set to make way to the same mobile platforms which have dominated smartphones. The big news is the rumoured Apple television, but this has a Q4 timeframe and remains vapourware until we hear more. Until then expansion of the Apple TV media player will be crucial. Much like iPods are gateways to iPhones, the Apple TV is a cheap access point to iOS and potentially an Apple television and App Store access is surely inevitable. Siri voice control and using iOS devices as touchscreen remotes seem obvious future attributes as well.
As a unified platform Google and Android won’t be far behind with interest in Google TVagain rising. Both Google and Apple are rumoured to be interested in bidding for Premier League TV rights too and their app store video content already provides a mass of on-demand content. As with smartphones it seems their platforms hold the key to television’s evolution with only Microsoft’s united phone, PC and Xbox infrastructure likely to represent a challenge.
As such the losers could well be everyone else, at least by 2013. Hardware makers like Sony, Samsung and LG – already Android handset partners – are set to adopt a similar manufacturing only role over time (plus the inevitable third party Google TV skins). This isn’t to say these companies lose out financially, but their control over the sector certainly hands over to the platform makers while they squabble over hardware differentiators such as the impending clamour for OLED and glasses-free 3D. Likewise Sky’s vice-like grip on broadcast content seems only to have a shelf life for as long as it takes the UK time to attain ubiquitous high speed Internet connections.
Winners: Apple, Google, maybe Microsoft
Losers: Traditional TV manufacturers as hardware margins squeeze & platforms unify
Continue Reading for Cameras, Laptops & tablets, mobile phones, gaming and social networking.
The Biggest Tech Stories of 2011 & Why
December 31, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials, Guide
We take a look at the 10 biggest tech stories of 2011 and round-up the rest in what proved a year of shocks.
The Biggest Tech Stories of 2011 & Why
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 31 December 2011
It is hard to sum up the technology landscape in 2011, but the word which dominates our minds is “shock”. So here in no particular order (except for one) are what we found to be the biggest developments of a turbulent 12 months.
Microsoft Partners With Nokia
Just one month had passed before one of the biggest shocks of the year: Microsoft’s exclusive agreement to put Windows Phone on all Nokia smartphones. No figure for the deal was formally announced, but industry talk puts it at an initial £1bn with numerous clauses that could see this figure skyrocket. The price was understandable given the risk is all on Nokia’s side having found its feet too late and it could easily become one of the biggest stories of 2012 with persistent rumours Microsoft will simply buy Nokia’s phone division in the coming months.
A deal would make sense for all sides with Nokia absolving itself of its troubled unit and returning to its networking history and Microsoft finally evolving its business model to challenge Apple’s hardware/software unity. Our money is on a deal being done and Finland not worrying too much.
Google Buys Motorola
Microsoft wasn’t the only company suggesting it has long term hardware ambitions. In August out of the blue Google bought Motorola for $12.5bn. Like Microsoft the Android owner insisted the buy had nothing to do with starting its own handset line, but Google hasn’t been slow in showing manufacturers “how to do it” in the past. With the company’s frustrations growing at the ubiquity of Android skins we wouldn’t be surprised to see continue an iPhone-esque strategy of releasing at least one flagship handset on an annual basis. Of course the real motivation for the purchase was said to be patents and with Motorola having over 17,000 we wouldn’t doubt that. The deal saw Google both strengthen its legal stance and protect partners while gaining new hardware capabilities at the same time. A smart deal by a smart company.
Continue Reading to find out why Patent Wars, Riots & Social Media, PSN Hacking, Facebook Timeline, Android 4.0, Windows 8 supporting ARM, Carrier IQ & The Death of Steve Jobs all made our list as well as a look at the Best of the Rest.
How Technology Changed Christmas
December 25, 2011 by Gordon
Filed under Features & Editorials
Our desire for technology is insatiable, but that creates both pleasures and problems…
How Technology Changed Christmas
- By Gordon Kelly (for TrustedReviews)
- 24 December
Chances are you’ve read, watched or listened to one of the many versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but we suspect even The Ghost of Christmas Future would feel a little lost by all the technology which will surround us tomorrow.
According to T-Mobile its customers will send 95 million texts on Christmas Day – an average of 3.9m per hour and up 15m on 2010. Remarkably this figure relates to just its UK users, excludes partner Orange and, lest we forget, T-Mobile is only one of five major networks in the UK and the second smallest.
Yet SMS is positively old hat when it comes to modern technology and social media will predictably be the fastest growing area. According to a poll by mobile app Celebalike, one in three Brits surveyed will update their Facebook status or use Twitter on Christmas day – a scary percentage considering the age of these services and those traditionally outside their demographic. Even more telling is the poll finds six in 10 will shoot video and snap pictures on Christmas Day and over half plan to post them online.
Whether this is indicative of a more open, sharing and communicative culture or one with a growing sense of self importance and inanity will depend on your stance towards social media in general. Regardless today it is unlikely the Ghost of Christmas Future could pay anyone a visit without its arrival being tweeted, texted, documented, recorded, uploaded, shared, liked and retweeted. Within a few hours there would probably be a video remixed to Nyan Cat…