Apple looking at dual-mode touchscreen desktops and laptops
With Mac OS X and iOS both sharing a lot of underlying code, and touchscreen interfaces becoming more popular, there is certainly reason to believe that Apple could leverage an iOS-like touchscreen interface for future computers. Patently Apple recently discovered a patent application filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization earlier this year, which reveals that Apple has considered how both desktop and laptop computers could switch from a more traditional desktop UI best suited for use with a keyboard and mouse to a UI geared for touch input. Such machines could use a sort of hybrid between Mac OS X and iOS, switching UI layers for the most appropriate context.
When we spoke to a cadre of Mac OS X developers earlier this year, they universally agreed that iOS was having more influence on the direction of Mac OS X than the other way around. Cable Sasser, co-founder and developer at Panic, especially felt that Mac OS X 10.7 could potentially be a hybrid between the two OSes. "I could see a gradual, slow merger between iOS and Mac OS X styles and approaches," he told Ars. "It doesn't make sense for them to be developing two of everything, one good, one not as good—two calendars, two address books—it's got to merge somehow."
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Windows Phone 7 nears the finish line with SDK release date
Even as Windows Phone 7's launch rapidly approaches—currently expected to be October for the EU, November for the US—developers are still using incomplete beta tools for creating applications for Microsoft's new phone platform. Though the company has still not announced exact launch dates for the phones, it has revealed a few more key developer details. The final, complete developer tools will ship on September 16, and Marketplace will start accepting application submissions from early October.The updated SDK will give developers long-awaited built-in support for two of the new OS's key user interface concepts: "panoramas," the sideways-panning mechanism for building the OS's hubs; and "pivots," the building block for showing filtered views of data, seen in the e-mail client. These two concepts are found throughout the built-in applications in Windows Phone 7, and are a key part of its striking appearance—a look many third parties want to replicate. Their inclusion in the SDK is sure to be welcomed by the platform's developers.
And it seems that there will be quite a few to do the welcoming. Microsoft says that the betas have been downloaded some 300,000 times. This figure spans three betas and is sure to include a substantial number of people downloading more than once and people downloading to take a look but not actually create any applications. Still, the number implies that there has been substantial interest, in spite of the fact that no one can buy Windows Phone 7 hardware yet.
The "early October" start date for submitting applications to the Marketplace suggests that the final launch will be mid-to-late October at the soonest. Microsoft will want to ensure that there are plenty of high-quality applications available from day one—the company hasn't invested all this effort in attracting developers just to launch with an empty online store, after all—and it will probably take a week or two for applications to actually be accepted into Marketplace.
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One-night stands make birds uncooperative
To cooperate or not to cooperate is a question that every breeding species has to answer. From an evolutionary standpoint, breeding passes on half your genetic material, while your siblings will pass on a quarter of your genetic material. If life isn't too difficult, then it makes sense to do your own breeding and ignore your siblings—or, perhaps, try to outcompete them. But, if life is pretty hard—and lets face it, life is usually tough for most species—perhaps it makes sense in the long term to forgo having your own children and make sure that your relatives successfully raise as many children as possible. This behavioral adaptation is a key concept in evolutionary theory, but it only works if parents don't cheat. One consequence of this idea is that there should be a correlation between species that breed cooperatively and the amount of cheating that goes on. But does the data support it?
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Microsoft beats Intel, AMD to market with CPU/GPU combo chip
At Hot Chips today, Microsoft's Xbox team unveiled details of the system-on-a-chip (SoC) that powers the newer, slimmer Xbox 360 250GB model. Produced on the IBM/GlobalFoundries 45nm process, it's fair to say that the new SoC (pictured above) is the first mass-market, desktop-class processor to combine a CPU, GPU, memory, and I/O logic onto a single piece of silicon. The goal of the consolidation was, of course, to lower the cost of making the console by reducing the number of different chips needed for the system, shrinking the motherboard, and reducing the number of expensive fans and heatsinks.
The SoC also makes the new Xbox design more power efficient, which is nice for consumers, but the real motivation behind boosting the console's efficiency is to reduce the size and cost of the power supply unit, and to realize the aforementioned savings on cooling apparatus.
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CEA calls out broadcasters over cell phone-FM radio wishlist
Radio broadcasters and music labels are mulling a "performance rights" deal in which they would ask Congress to mandate an FM radio receiver in every new cell phone—even though the cell phone makers aren't a party to the talks. In defending the idea, the National Association of Broadcasters told us last week that the idea was, in large part, about public safety. "There are few if any technologies that match the reliability of broadcast radio in terms of getting lifeline information to the masses," said NAB's Dennis Wharton.
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Leak allegedly shows Nokia N9, could be first MeeGo phone
Pictures have surfaced in a Chinese forum that reportedly show a prototype Nokia handset. Rumored to be the N9, the device closely resembles the N8 but has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The most compelling aspect of this leak is that the device appears to be running the MeeGo Linux platform rather than Symbian.
Nokia recently confirmed that its first MeeGo-based product will launch this year, but the company hasn't officially revealed any specific details about the form factor or other characteristics. It's possible that the leaked photos of the alleged N9 handset offer the first real look at Nokia's upcoming MeeGo product.
MeeGo is a Linux-based operating system that emerged earlier this year when Nokia and Intel brought together their respective mobile Linux platforms. MeeGo is more closely aligned with the upstream Linux stack than other mobile Linux platforms and offers a more inclusive and transparent development process. The MeeGo handset user experience is still at a relatively early stage of development, however.
The device in the leaked photos certainly looks like a Nokia product, but its authenticity has not been confirmed yet. The device has a Nokia logo and photos of the inside show Nokia stickers. Unlike the N900 and other recent Nokia handsets with keyboards, the device in the photo has the space bar in the correct location. This is either a very welcome improvement to Nokia's phone design, or evidence that possibly contradicts the leak's authenticity.
The product number shown in the photos has appeared in some interesting places on the Internet. For example, a software engineer in Nokia's device division cited the device's product number in a bug report that he posted in the public bug tracker for Qt—Nokia's open source application development framework. The bug report describes a minor issue with the QCompass class, which is part of the Qt Mobility framework.
Regardless of authenticity, it's an impressive-looking device that seems to build on some excellent industrial design ideas. The combination of Qt and MeeGo has a ton of potential, but it's unclear still if Nokia can deliver a user experience that is truly competitive with Android and the iPhone.
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Macs making bigger enterprise gains than rest of PC market
Apple has not had much of a history with respect to enterprise computing, but an analysis of second quarter sales shows Apple making big gains in business and government sectors. According to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, sales of Macs to large businesses in particular grew far more than overall sales of PCs in the same timeframe. The specific reasons for the uptick aren't clear, but Apple could sustain the growth with a more proactive enterprise strategy.In a research note, Needham compared growth in shipments between Macs and the PC market in general in several market segments. Macs grew less than the overall PC market in education—traditionally one of Apple's stronger segments, but one that has sagged recently with tight education budgets leaning in favor of cheaper Windows boxes. In the home market, Mac sales outpaced overall PCs by a slight margin, in line with Apple's consumer focus and the success of its notebooks.
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Plants vs Zombies coming to DS, bringing exclusive content
The handheld version of the game will feature all of the original modes—including adventure, survival, and puzzle—as well as "new and exclusive game content." What that exclusive content is remains to be seen. Previous versions of the game introduced features like the buttered popcorn mini-game and the upcoming multiplayer modes of the XBLA version. Presumably the game will feature the excellent touch controls found in the iPhone and iPad versions of the game.
The game is expected to be released on the DS on January 11 for $20.
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Valve: no plans to bring Steam to Linux
Close scrutiny of the Steam port for Mac OS X led to the discovery of evidence which suggested that a Linux version might be coming soon. Sadly, Valve marketing vice president Doug Lombardi dispelled these suspicions in a recent interview during which he confirmed that the company is not actively working on Steam for Linux.Steam is a popular digital content delivery channel for computer games. It allows users to purchase and download games from a wide range of mainstream vendors. The service is developed and operated by Valve, the company behind Half-Life, Portal, and a number of other well-known games. Steam was originally only available for the Windows platform, but Valve officially launched a Mac OS X version earlier this year.
Linux hardware news site Phoronix discovered that a shell script in the Mac OS X version of Steam includes a conditional expression that checks to see if the user is running Linux. There are also some strings that refer to Linux in several of Steam's binary components. These bits of evidence strongly indicate that Valve has at least experimented internally with a Linux port of Steam.
It's possible that the company began evaluating Linux portability and decided that there wasn't enough business value in pursuing it to completion. The total number of desktop Linux users is a considerably smaller audience than Mac OS X and Windows. It's also worth noting that a big chunk of Linux desktop installations are probably never going to be used for gaming (netbooks that don't have sufficient hardware capabilities, university computer labs, free software enthusiasts who are ideologically disinclined to purchase proprietary software).
Despite the fact that the number of Linux users who are interested in buying games is relatively small, there is a lot of evidence that members of this demographic are eager to open up their wallets to vendors who support gaming on the Linux platform. This group of gamers is going to be disappointed by Valve's decision.
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Geoengineering smackdown: how 5 methods might impact rising sea levels
The scientific community's take on geoengineering might be described as resigned—many researchers that study climate change or evaluate solutions feel that reducing carbon emissions remains the easiest and safest option. But they also seem to have concluded that our continued failure to do so means that we need to continue studying geoengineering in case we end up needing it. This week, PNAS will be releasing a paper that does just that, comparing five different methods of cooling the climate in terms of their effectiveness at limiting sea level rise. Historically, ocean levels have tracked the global temperature. As the Earth cools, more water gets stored as ice, and the oceans themselves contract in response to decreased temperatures; both processes reverse as the planet warms. Because of the warming that's prevailed over the last century, instrument records show an increase in the ocean levels that appears to be accelerating. The last IPCC report suggested that we'd likely see between 20 and 60cm of sea level rise over the course of this century, but its authors admitted significant uncertainty in that number; the new paper cites three studies that have since suggested the number would be over a meter.
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More in the bottle: the dubious value of game length
Whenever a game is previewed, a writer is going to ask about the length. Whenever the length of a game is given in a review, there is bound to be someone in the comments wailing about the state of modern gaming, and it's always the same gripe: "Since when is it okay to release a game at X price that's only Y hours long?" Last week a group of developers wrote a series of articles arguing that more isn't always better, and that a focus on length is destructive.Read the comments on this post
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Harvard professor found guilty of scientific misconduct
After a three-year internal investigation by Harvard University, animal cognition researcher Marc Hauser has been found "solely responsible" for eight counts of scientific misconduct. Since its beginning, the matter has been shrouded in secrecy, with Hauser admitting only to certain "mistakes." However, Hauser is now on a one-year leave of absence from Harvard, and in response to the investigation’s findings, the University's Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has vowed to "determine the sanctions that are appropriate."For more than two decades, Hauser has been a leader in the field of animal cognition research and has been an outspoken advocate of the idea that animals possess many of the abilities that we think of as uniquely human. He has also done work suggesting that morality has an evolutionary basis in animals, and has written two well-received books on the evolution of cognition, morality, and behavior. Hauser has worked at Harvard since 1992, receiving the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005.
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Halo: Reach put on Xbox Live for reviewers, then pirated
As with every Halo game before it, Halo: Reach is a big deal. So it's not particularly surprising that a group of hackers has managed to get their hands on a copy of the game nearly a month before its September 14 release.A prerelease copy was made available to select members of the media on Xbox Live Arcade, for the low, low price of 99,999 Microsoft Points. Members of the gaming forum GameTuts learned of the release, and subsequently managed to hack their way to a full version of the game, posting YouTube videos of game content that have since been pulled.
Microsoft has remained relatively quiet on the matter, telling Joystiq simply, "We are aware of claims being made regarding a security exploit related to Halo: Reach and are aggressively investigating the matter. We have no further details to share at this time."
This isn't the first time that a Halo game has been made available before its intended release, as Halo 2 was similarly leaked a month before its November 2004 release. Halo 3 likewise hit the Internet before its release. Sales of both games seem to have been unaffected by the leaks.
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California moves to outlaw online "e-personation"
Hoping to administer a powerful sockdolager to online fraudsters, the California legislature passed a bill earlier this month that makes it illegal to impersonate someone else online. Its backer, state senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), says that the old laws against fraud or defamation just aren't cutting it anymore. "In the age of the Internet, pretending to be someone else is as easy as using their name to create a new e-mail account. When that is done to cause harm, folks need a law on the books they can turn to," he said. "New laws are needed to crack down on this form of harassment."
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Sprint addressing coverage problems with free femtocells
Femtocells are slowly becoming more popular among US cell phone customers who get poor reception in their homes. The carriers that offer the devices, however, are taking decidedly different stances on how to handle the devices. Unlike some of its competition (AT&T, most notably), Sprint seems to be taking a particularly customer-friendly approach and is supposedly offering free femtocells to customers having coverage problems, though each situation is evaluated on a case-by-case basis.The device that Sprint is distributing is the Airave, which uses your home broadband connection to help you make and receive calls in a low-coverage area. When you leave your house, your calls are automatically transferred to Sprint's cell network. (Read our feature on femtocells to learn more about how they work.)
Normally, the Airave would cost customers $99.99 plus a monthly subscription to an Airave plan, but Sprint is willing to give one to customers with "specific in-building coverage issues," and for no additional monthly charge. "Each customer situation is reviewed independently to determine whether the customer would qualify and benefit from Airave use," Sprint spokesperson Mark Elliott told FierceWireless. He added that customers will be getting an updated version of the Airave that supports Sprint's 3G (EVDO) network.
So far, Sprint seems to be the only carrier making such an offer to affected customers. AT&T and Verizon also offer femtocells, but both carriers require all customers—no matter how bad their reception is—to pay for the privilege of making calls over their own Internet connections. (We have heard from one reader who keeps calling AT&T for "help" with his home reception problems in hopes of getting a free femtocell, but has yet to succeed.) At the very least, Sprint is the only carrier to publicly admit to giving femtocells away, but the potential for positive media coverage and warm fuzzies from customers likely outweigh any risk from would-be freeloaders attempting to get in on the femtocell action.
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Good-bye Shark Week? Large sharks in decline due to fishing
Sharks have been honed into efficient predators by over 400 million years of evolution, but that didn’t prepare them for commercial-scale fishing. Sharks, skates, and rays are fantastically abundant in unexploited parts of the ocean, but a new review shows that even light fishing—both targeted at sharks and other species—can send populations into a tailspin. Large, top-predator shark species appear to suffer the most, and their dwindling numbers are drastically affecting many marine ecosystems. The review, which appears in Ecology Letters, synthesizes dozens of research papers on sharks, skates, and rays to draw a picture of declining large shark populations. There has been a commensurate rise in what ecologists call mesopredators, like rays, small sharks, dolphins and turtles—animals one step down from apex predators.
Fishing operations appear to be at fault. Targeted commercial fishing, by-catch, and even subsistence fishing are rearranging the chips in many marine ecosystems, knocking large sharks from their positions as top predators and sending waves throughout the rest of the food web.
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