July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Imagine all the things you’ve ever wanted iOS to do.

Quick settings from the lock screen, widgets that let you make changes in running apps without opening them, true multitasking in which you can see and flip through all open apps, multiple desktops, the ability to download files and store them locally in a user-accessible location, and much more.

Now, make an awesome video showcasing all those. That’s just what Federico Bianco did:

What’s certain about iOS 7 is that we’re going to see something new and updated under the leadership of Jony Ive. He’s not a fan of the kind of skeuomorphic design that Scott Forstall favored – design that connects the new to the old with decorative but unnecessary elements. So we’re pretty likely to see something streamlined, simple, and elegant.

The question is: Will Ive edit iOS while leaving the core of the mobile operating system’s design ethic intact, or will he massively revamp it and come with a new overall concept?

And whether it will contain these or similar elements, only those in Apple know.

Image credit: Federico Bianco/Flickr; Hat tip: Cult of Mac

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Samsung’s Galaxy phones rank as the most popular Android smartphones in the U.S., according to data collected by mobile game publisher Animoca.

The Samsung Galaxy SIII is the No. 1 Android phone in the U.S., with an 8.8 percent share of the market, based on usage data from Animoca. And the Samsung Galaxy SII comes second, with 6.1 percent of the market. Samsung also has the No. 8, 9, and 10 positions in the top 10, giving the Korean electronics giant 19.2 percent of the overall market in the U.S.

As for the most popular version of the Android operating system, the winner is Ice Cream Sandwich, or version 4.0.4, with 33.5 percent of the market. No. 2 is Gingerbread, or version 2.3.6, with 16.5 percent. Jelly Bean (4.1.1) is No. 3, with 15.4 percent. Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0.3 is No. 4 with 8.9 percent, and Gingerbread, version 2.3.4, is fifth, with 6.4 percent.

Animoca obtained the data from players of its games in the U.S. from Jan. 15 to Feb. 15. Tablets are excluded. The data shows that the U.S. lacks an overwhelmingly dominant Android phone.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After just three months of iPhone supremacy, Android is back as the top-selling mobile operating system in the U.S. And those who want Apple to produce a cheaper iPhone will know exactly why.

Price.

When iOS had the lead with 53.3 percent market share in the three months ending in October 2012, Apple and Android smartphones were about the same price, Kantar analyst Mary-Ann Parlato told me via email. But not in the three month period from October 2012 to January 2013.

“This latest period saw a significant price drop to $95 for Android, while iOS increased slightly to $146,” Parlato said.

The result?

Phones running Android jumped to 49.4 percent of all smartphone sales in America, up 6.4 percent over the same period a year ago. iOS came in second, of course, with 45.9 percent. Interestingly, Windows Phone was the only other mobile operating system to grow, adding over a percentage point of market share, while BlackBerry dropped to only a third of its previous share, to only .9 percent of the market.

The big difference between the August-October 2012 period and the November 2012 to January 2013 period was wireless carrier Sprint, which went from an even split of Android/iOS sales to a 72 percent Android landslide. One big driver was a price drop on the Samsung Galaxy S III from $199 to $99 during the holiday period.

Kantar’s consumer panel, where the data for this report originates, is the “largest continuous consumer research mobile phone panel of its kind in the world,” surveying more than 240,000 people annually to track mobile phone purchase and usage.

Ultimately, Apple still has an incredibly strong hold on the domestic market, with three of the top five selling smartphones in the country and a much more unified OS, device, and apps ecosystem than Android. And that’s clear when you look at what phones wireless carriers AT&T and Verizon are mostly selling:

But those who are calling for a cheaper — or, shall we say, less expensive — iPhone will find plenty to grind their axes on here. Apple could triple its market share in China, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty said recently, if it introduced an “iPhone mini.”

A cheaper iPhone would also help domestically, it appears.

And so the question really becomes: How crazy does Apple want to get? How much does the company that wants more than anything to produce the perfect product also want market share?

photo credit: laihiu via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Donut, Eclair, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean: It’s enough to make Kate Moss hungry.

Google has released five major Android updates since 2010, most named for some kind of food. Today, Android’s developer site revealed that for the first time, more than 10 percent of Android smartphones in the market are running Jelly Bean, the latest version.

Source: Google

Android system distribution

A major developer complaint about Android has always been its version fragmentation. While iPhone users typically update their devices to new software versiosn from Apple very quickly, Google’s position as the provider of a free and open-source mobile operating system has led to much less power with carriers, who can in many cases block Android system updates.

That’s led to a situation in which the majority of Android smartphone owners are still using older versions of Android. In fact, 47.4 percent are still using Gingerbread, which Google released in December of 2010.

Google announced Jelly Bean in late June last year — a few days before the previous version, Ice Cream Sandwich, reached 10 percent penetration. That took almost nine months, which means that Jelly Bean’s achievement of the same level has happened significantly faster.

That’s at least some good news for developers, who have to keep multiple operating systems in mind while building apps.

Google still has a ways to go, however: In one day, Apple had higher uptake of iOS 6 than Google has achieved in six months.

The developer site for Android also revealed the latest data on screen sizes and resolutions. By far the majority of Android smartphones are now using high-density and “extra-high” density screens, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S III’s 306 pixels per inch, if not quite at the iPhone 5′s 326.

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography via photopin cc

Hat tip: The Verge

Windows Blue should arrive sometime in mid 2013 … and take Microsoft away from massive, world-changing OS upgrades every three or four years to something much more Apple-ish: evolutionary updates every single year. Reporter Mary Jo Foley posted today about the news.

The new approach will inevitably include user interface updates and changes; every new release does. But it also means that whatever changes are present will be smaller and easier for users to adapt to — a problem Microsoft has encountered with Windows 8.

In addition, Microsoft will likely adopt Apple-style pricing: $20-30 per point release, rather than a big $100+ hit for each new system upgrade.

Massive new operating system updates are risky for Microsoft. Some fail — see ME or Vista — while some succeed. Windows 95 and 7 are probably the best examples of that, while Windows 8 is still up for debate. They’re also dangerous for enterprises, which have to upgrade thousands of PCs to new software if they want to stay current, incurring millions of dollars in cost and significant business risk as the inevitable challenges of software compatibility arise.

The point-release strategy has worked well for Apple, which is known for quick adoption curves of new operating systems … and which has not released a real clunker of an operating system since, perhaps, the very first version of Mac OS X.

Windows Blue will also focus on synchronizing the Windows Phone and Windows Desktop platforms, according to the Verge, which has already been partially achieved with Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

One persistent rumor I’m wondering whether we’ll see more of in Windows Blue: an ad-supported operating system. In other words: a free update if you consent to having ads on your computer. We’ve already seen some of that in Windows 8 apps — more of a trial balloon than a serious attempt.

But the rumors have been around since 2005 … so an ad-supported Windows may be the PC equivalent of an Apple flat-screen TV: always-rumored, never real.

ChromeOS, which runs mini laptops from Acer, Asus, and Samsung among other partners, may soon follow Windows 8 in making touch a core part of the laptop user experience. According to a report from Taiwan, Google is testing the waters with a small run of touch-compatible Chromebooks, to be released under Google’s own Nexus brand.

According to the report, Compal will be providing components for 20 million units, set to start shipping late this year. That’s a large number for a device with limited commercial success so far — Google has not released sales figures for any generation of Chromebook yet.

Chromebooks, which you can buy from Google directly as well as from partners such as Best Buy, feature an operating system based on the Chrome browser. With minimal local storage and intelligence, the laptops — netbooks, really — are essentially cloud devices, booting in seconds, needing little or no configuration, and plugging users directly into the Google ecosystem of search, docs, and other tools, plus anything else online. They’re cheap as well, priced at between $200 and $500, or leasable, starting at $30/month.

Adding touch may be a sign that Google plans to launch a convertible device similar to Lenovo’s Windows 8 devices where the screen flips, rotates, or even detaches from the keyboard. Or Google may simply be experimenting with the existing clamshell devices. Either way, price will go up as component costs for touchscreens get added into the mix.

Any device launch is not likely until sometime well into 2013.

Hat tip: PCmag

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The best way to assuage fears that a new technology is too complicated? Get a toddler to use it!

Change-averse folk have expressed concerns that Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system targeted at consumers, will wreak havoc on their user interace. It will be available to download from the Microsoft website on Friday, October 26.

This week, the Associated Press reported that consumers were “baffled” by the preview. In response, a Windows fan demonstrated how his three-year-old son could confidently navigate through major applications, the online store, and so on. It proves a point but is also adorable — check out the full video below!

This is evidence that the design changes to the OS are far from insurmountable. Like all new tech, it simply takes some getting used to.

Got questions about what to expect? Here are the top eight things you need to know about Windows 8.

Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon is actually in the testing phase with suppliers in Asia, which would seem to put an eventual product launch right smack dab in the middle of the Christmas shopping season. And with almost five million units of Kindle Fire sold last holiday season, Amazon knows how to move a holiday product.

A new Amazon device would add yet another twist to the ever-more-complex smartphone platform wars. On the surface, it’s almost guaranteed to be an Android device, bolstering Google’s Android platform numbers.

Source: VentureBeat/ Devindra Hardawar

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with the original Kindle

However, like the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s smartphone will certainly be a Google-less Android. Running a customized version of Android that hooks into Amazon natively for content and apps, an Amazon smartphone  would reduce the company’s current dependence on Apple and Google-owned mobile platforms to deliver digital products to the increasingly important mobile market.

It’s the ultimate corporate jiujitsu: using the enemy’s strengths against them.

Google, of course, is firing back at the Fire with the Nexus tablet, by all accounts a better device than Fire, and is pushing its own Nexus phones in an attempt to give users a full, complete, and great Android experience.

But Amazon has shown significant capability to launch and market device platforms, winning significant consumer and enterprise wallet share.

In the mobile industry, there are two things we know for sure: Smartphones are eating the market alive, and the platform wars have just begun.

Image credit: Ralf Juergen Kraft/ShutterStock

New details have emerged regarding Microsoft’s strategy to get its customers to upgrade their operating systems to the long-anticipated Windows 8.

Details of the company’s strategy first surfaced earlier this month, with Microsoft offering a $15 upgrade option that will give any Windows 7 PC buyer the Pro version of Windows 8 (even if they only get Windows 7 Home or Basic versions). And now, we’re hearing a bit more about the perimeters of this deal.

The upgrade deal will be eligible for anyone who purchases a Windows 7 PC from the Microsoft Store after June 2, according to a report from The Verge that cites people with details of the plan. The deal will run through January 31, 2013, which basically helps snare in all the holiday spending associated with Christmas and the gift cards redeemed thereafter.

Also interesting is that Microsoft will be offering a workshop to anyone who takes advantage of the upgrade offer, according to the report. Essentially, this will be similar to what Apple is already offering in its own retail stores, with employees walking customers through the basics of the new OS. Anyone who participate will also get a $20 gift card to the Microsoft retail store — making your upgrade more or less free.

That’s a decent incentive for the “not-computer people” who don’t really care about upgrading their OS the way an average tech geek (or knowledgeable consumer, I should say) would.

It’s nice to see Microsoft stepping up its game on the OS upgrade strategy. In the past, the company’s lack of effort in getting people to switch over resulted in millions of computers still using Windows XP and (groan) Vista.

Photo via Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Microsoft’s research division comes up with some pretty cool stuff, like its Holoflector augmented reality mirror, but its latest project is much more homely.

To be more precise, the company debuted HomeOS today, an operating system designed to make all your devices work in conjunction with how you live at home.

“It is no secret that homes are ever-increasing hotbeds of new technology such as set-top boxes, game consoles, wireless routers, home automation devices, tablets, smart phones, and security cameras. This innovation is breeding heterogeneity and complexity that frustrates even technically-savvy users’ attempts to improve day-to-day life by implementing functionality that uses these devices in combination,” Microsoft writes in a post announcing HomeOS.

The operating system works in conjunction with a “HomeStore” app market, where you can buy apps to orchestrate activities around the house. The basic idea is to have device makers make their home appliances compatible with HomeOS, and then let developers take over.

Microsoft is testing the current prototype in over a dozen homes, with researchers from universities across the globe experimenting with the technology. The OS is free for non-commercial use.

We’ve embedded a demo of what the OS can do below, with a slightly longer video available on Microsoft’s website. And having watched  some of the videos, I can say this is probably the closest we’ve come to recreating the “House of the Future” attraction in Disney theme parks’ Tomorrowland.

Photo courtesy of Disney via Yesterdayland

With each new release of Apple’s operating system, several older Mac models get left out in the cold when it comes to support. The just-announced Mountain Lion OS is no exception, and thanks to TUAW we now we have a list of several machines that won’t run it when it comes out late Summer 2012.

Much like the jump from Leopard to Snow Leopard, the upgrade to the new Mountain Lion OS will act as a minor update to last year’s Lion OS. The Mountain Lion update will mostly look just like Lion, except it will add in iOS-like features. It will offer deeper integration with iCloud (even though iCloud is still mostly a failure), and it will offer a Notification Center and Game Center for staying better connected. It will also add in iMessage, Reminders, and Notes from iOS.

TUAW dug into the system requirements to find out which Mac models will be to run Mountain Lion. According to TUAW’s list, the following models will support the new OS:

• iMac (mid 2007 or newer)
• MacBook aluminum edition: (13 inch 2008 or newer)
• MacBook plastic edition: (early 2009 or newer)
• Macbook Pro (2009, or late 2007 if you had a 17-inch version or newer)
• MacBook Air (2008 or newer)
• Mac Mini (early 2009 or newer)
• Mac Pro (early 2008 or newer)
• Xserve (early 2009 or newer)

And of course, this means that the following older models will not run Mountain Lion:

• Late 2006 iMacs (iMac5,1, iMac5,2, iMac6,1)
• All plastic MacBooks that pre-date the aluminum unibody redesign (MacBook2,1, MacBook3,1, MacBook4,1)
• MacBook Pros released prior to June 2007 (MacBookPro2,1, MacBookPro2,2)
• The original MacBook Air (MacBookAir1,1)
• The Mid-2007 Mac mini (Macmini2,1)
• The original Mac Pro and its 8-core 2007 refresh (MacPro1,1, MacPro2,1)
• Late 2006 and Early 2008 Xserves (Xserve1,1, Xserve2,1)

Did your machine make the cut or will you stuck with Lion?

Mountain lion photo: Mountains Recreation & Conservation Authority

Microsoft on Tuesday showed off more features of its new Windows 8 operating system at the Microsoft BUILD developers conference in Anaheim, Calif.

The OS was first previewed back in early June and is being designed explicitly with the purpose of working on touch devices as well as using traditional PC methods.

“I promise you, the minute you use a touch device with Windows 8, the moment you go back to your laptop or desktop, you’ll have fingerprints all over your screen,” Windows President Stan Sinofsky said while demonstrating. “It’s touch first but equally at home with a mouse and a keyboard.”

Sinofsky boasted that the new OS considerably boosts performance. He showed an older netbook with 1GB of RAM and said it would use even less memory for processes with Windows 8 than Windows 7. The screen below shows that the first Windows 7 release used 540MB of memory while the current build of Windows 8 uses 281MB of memory to run the OS.

Julie Larson-Green, VP of Windows Experience, showed off the new “Metro style UI” user experience, which is designed explicitly with touch in mind along with stirring animations and typography. It offers touch gestures, “live tiles” and super simple ways to interact with content and apps.

The new Internet Explorer 10 also features a touch-optimized “Metro-style” browser. What sets it apart is that the navigation bar only appears when you ask for it, and it doesn’t have add-ons or plug-ins that can slow performance.

The Windows team also talked a lot about apps. First, the company confirmed that there will be a new “Windows Store” where developers can deploy apps and customers can easily download them, mimicking Apple’s Mac App Store. Programming apps in Windows 8 will be easier, and one on-stage demonstration showed a simple app being programmed using a stunning 58 lines of code. Microsoft said almost all of the Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit applications would be compatible with Windows 8.

Microsoft said Windows 8 hardware will come in all shapes and sizes. The OS will support ARM-based chipsets, x86 devices, touch and sensors. This means it will work across a wide spectrum of hardware from 10-inch tablets and laptops all the way up to all-in-one PCs with huge high-def screens.

Check out more photos of Windows 8 and its interface below:

Two researchers told a crowd at the Black Hat security conference today that they had used web-based hacker tricks to compromise the security of the Chrome OS, which is the software that powers recently launched laptop-like Chromebooks from a variety of vendors. The hacks let the researchers get access to a user’s emails, Google Docs, contacts, and Google Voice messages. If Google doesn’t patch the variety of flaws found or if researchers uncover more, then hackers could have a field day accessing data on Chromebooks.

Matt Johanson and Kyle Osborn, two researchers at White Hat Security’s Threat Research Center, said in their talk that they spent months doing research on Chrome OS. They found a flaw in ScratchPad, a preinstalled extension to the Chrome OS that lets people take notes and save them to cloud-based Google Docs. On stage at Black Hat, the researchers showed both videos of the hacked documents and live demos as well.

“You basically grab and download someone’s contacts like this,” Osborn said, demonstrating the deed on a big screen.

In a statement, a Google spokesman said, “This conversation is about the web, not Chrome OS. Chromebooks raise security protections on computing hardware to new levels. They are also better equipped to handle the web attacks that can affect browsers on any computing device, thanks in part to a carefully designed extensions model and the advanced security available through Chrome that many users and experts have embraced.”

Google also recently published information about writing more secure extensions to the Chrome OS, and it explained why it thinks the Chrome OS is more secure.

With Chromebooks, no data is stored on the device and everything takes place in the cloud and is accessible via the Chrome web browser. By attacking browsers with known exploits such as cross-site scripting, cross-site requests, and “clickjacking,” hackers can get around the Chrome OS’s security protections. The researchers say they can do high-speed scans of intranets via the hack and can view active host Internet Protocol addresses (which let them figure out what websites you’re looking at). They also say they can take over a user’s Google account by stealing session cookies, which can contain user password data.

Chrome OS is not unique in having these types of vulnerabilities. Other OSes are also subject to similar attacks.

Google was informed of the vulnerabilities and addressed some of them, including the ScratchPad flaw, but the researchers said some of the underlying weaknesses remain.

The demonstration is a pointed reminder that the shift toward cloud computing is not a panacea for all security problems.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple announced Thursday that its latest operating system — OS X 10.7, codenamed Lion — has sold more than 1 million copies since it made its debut on the Mac App Store just one day earlier.

The new operating system costs $29.99 on the App Store. That means that Apple has raked in a little less than $30 million. That amounts to around 0.1 percent of the company’s quarterly revenue, according to the company’s most recent earnings report. The OS has proved pretty popular so far on the store, with around 90 percent of people who download Lion leaving positive reviews.

Apple distributed Lion through the Mac App Store as a 4-gigabyte download rather than on a physical DVD or hard copy like most operating systems. That made it possible for more people to download the operating system quickly. It also sets a standard for future software releases, Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg told VentureBeat.

“Typically the idea of downloading the 4 gigabyte operating system and installing it over existing stuff and expecting it to work isn’t a common expectation for a lot of users,” he said. “Conventional wisdom says you should do a clean install, and broadband connections are finally fast enough.”

Lion is built to be a more lightweight operating system that takes a lot of inspiration from the company’s mobile iPhone operating system, iOS. (See our hands-on look at OS X Lion.) It features a springboard-style Launchpad for opening apps and introduces a lot of multi-touch gestures that are already prevalent on the iPhone and iPad.

“At the end of the day, it’s not the $30, it’s about how this will continue to drive Mac sales and how it continues to drive iPad and iPhone sales,” Gartenberg said. “The whole experience is evocative of using an iPad, and that’s going to drive more iPad and iPhone sales.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s latest Mac operating system — OS X 10.7, codenamed Lion — has finally come out. It’s designed to invoke the same kind of lightweight hands-on feel the iPhone operating system, iOS, has made popular. With just about every computer carrying a multi-touch trackpad, that should be pretty straightforward.

Right?

Well, not quite. After spending some time with OS X Lion, I get the impression that Apple made a lot of unnecessary changes to add a layer of gloss to the operating system. It’s trying hard to be like the iPhone, but at the end of the day it feels like a Mac with iOS features hastily duct-taped to the surface. And the tape peels away rather quickly when you try to stress-test each application.

The new operating system boasts more than 250 new changes, with a lot of that happening under the hood thanks to the operating system’s transition from Carbon to Cocoa. Most of the new features, like the Launchpad and Mission Control, in the operating system are inspired by the iPhone operating system. Lion is in some ways the end of an era for the Mac OS X operating system, as the company transitions to a more lightweight operating system like iOS.

I’m just not sure if that’s a good thing yet.

Scrolling

Let’s start with the first thing you’ve probably heard about Lion: Scrolling is backwards. That is, when you use two fingers on the trackpad to make the current window scroll up and down, the window moves in the opposite direction as it did in previous versions.

In Snow Leopard, windows scroll up when your fingers move down, as if the trackpad were a wheel rolling against the window. In Lion, windows scroll down when your fingers move down, as if the trackpad were a virtual part of the window. It’s more iOS-like, and arguably more logical. But it will take some getting used to.

I tried using it for an evening, and I wasn’t a fan. Fortunately, you can turn it off in System Preferences.

Spaces and Mission Control

The largest change is the addition of “Mission Control,” which replaces the old Exposé feature in Snow Leopard. OS X originally featured a way to quickly page through four separate versions of a desktop laid out on a virtual grid. Mission Control lets you add an unlimited number of new desktops — called Spaces — that you can access through a similar fashion. One quick hand gesture lets you quickly view every Space you currently have open.

The unlimited number of desktops is important because a lot of the apps are now designed to run in full screen mode. I know personally I used to reserve one or two spaces for specific apps, such as Mail, so the new way of doing it felt more or less natural. Instead of having a space reserved for a windowed app, it’s a full screen app. It’s an elegant solution for cutting down clutter on your screen.

Only a few native applications currently support the full screen feature, and it doesn’t work for every app. Chrome, for example, supports a full screen mode, but because it isn’t yet native for Lion, it doesn’t work quite the same as other full screen apps. The operating system still reserves one “main” space that takes up a majority of the screen when you want to browse through all your spaces at once, which is useful for apps that are designed to be used simultaneously — such as a chat app and a web browser.

Switching spaces isn’t as pleasant an experience as it was in Snow Leopard. The transitions in the old operating system were smooth, compared to the jerky jumps in Lion. Icons on your desktop also re-render for each new space, which feels pretty weird. Snow Leopard had the advantage of letting you jump to a specific space with a single keystroke, thanks to the grid-style layout. With Lion, you have to page left and right between spaces, so a lot of time is spent jumping over unused or less frequently used spaces.

The main Mission Control screen helps circumvent that, but it still feels slower than the old way of accessing a space in Snow Leopard, which was basically a single keystroke.

Launchpad and Apps

Finding apps can be a touch difficult for newbies in prior versions OS X. Apps either show up in the dock on the side of the screen, or you have to dig through the Mac’s file browser, the Finder, to get to the Apps folder and launch a program.

Enter Launchpad, Lion’s simplified spot to launch applications. Like many other aspects of Lion, it feels like the iPhone operating system.

Lion automatically lays out your applications in a grid that you can access with a gesture or by dragging your mouse to a corner of the screen. The first page of the Launchpad is reserved for Apple native apps, and then the rest of the pages are populated by apps you personally install.

It was frustrating at first when I tried to access Chrome, only to find that my most-used app on the computer was excluded from the first page. Luckily, you can re-order the launchpad to suit your needs, but I wish the operating system could automatically handle organization to make my most-used apps more accessible.

It’s a problem because the Launchpad is populated with every app on my system. That means that while I have an icon for Gimp, an open-source photo-editing client, I also have an icon for all the extra video codecs, Silverlight, uninstaller programs and a whole lot of other things I will never use. They clutter the Launchpad and are a pain to remove (which took a little bit of time to figure out.)

It feels like the Launchpad is, and will be, useful, but the whole process of re-configuring it took out a little chunk of time and left a bad taste in my mouth as part of the whole experience. Luckily, you can ignore the whole experience my turning off the gesture and the corner access, and going back to the old Dock- and Finder-based way of launching apps.

App Makeovers

Three of Apple’s basic applications received serious redesigns in Lion. The Mail App now features a three-column display similar to the iPad, while Contacts and iCal — the Mac’s native calendar app — received face-lifts.

The mail redesign is sensible, but it has slowed the app down a little bit. In the old Mail App, I could quickly page through more than a hundred emails in the span of a few minutes and have each of them register as read. With the new app, I have to sit on a single message for around a second and a half before it is registered as read. I’m pretty nitpicky about this because I prefer to have an empty inbox whenever possible, so even that minor delay is annoying.

But the address book and the calendar apps are writing checks the OS X design can’t cash. In Leopard, both apps were very easy to quickly access and edit and they weren’t flashy. In Lion, the new apps received a visual face lift and now feel more garish than anything else when compared to the typical minimalist feel of OS X.

The calendar app still retains a slightly similar feel to its predecessor, and it works well as a full screen application. But the change to the design of the app feels unnecessary and is more disorienting than anything else. It’s pretty clear that Apple is trying to evoke an iPhone-like feel for the calendar, but it falls short of even that — the iOS calendar app is also minimalist, like the Mac calendar app’s predecessor.

Documents and Versions

TextEdit, the document editing tool built into OS X, has also received a makeover. That change is pretty welcome, because it even finds a way to be more minimalist and accessible than the last version. The new app adds more formatting features to the top bar, but the biggest change in the app is versioning.

Whenever you make a change to a document, you save it as a “version” rather than overwriting the old file completely. Lion saves the changes to the document, rather than the full document, so in theory it shouldn’t take up an enormous amount of disk space no matter how many revisions you make. When you want to browse old versions, the document app jumps to a full-screen view that shows two versions side-by-side.

That’s a great idea — in theory. But the full-screen view is also populated with an obnoxious animated background of moving stars in space that is distracting. It would make more sense to just open up a second version of a document and display it without having to feel flashy.

Aesthetics

You’ll quickly notice a few subtle things have changed about the way Apple displays windows. The most obvious aesthetic change is the scroll bar for a window. What was once a sugar-coated shiny piece of candy of a scroll bar is now a subtle gray bar that disappears when it isn’t in use in native apps. It evokes the same feel the iPhone operating system has. That makes sense of a 3.5-inch screen, because real estate is a premium. For Lion, it works, but doesn’t add a whole lot to the experience.

The rounded, bold blues of the Aqua user interface are now more subdued and considerably less shiny. Most rounded-style buttons and radio buttons have been replaced with a duller, more minimalist hue. It actually feels more welcome than any of the other design changes, because it gets another part of the operating system out of the way of the user and lets them focus on the experience of an app or a web browser.

The Finder has also picked up a redesign, with the bright and colorful icons replaced with a monochrome gray set that homogenizes the sidebar. You can switch icons in the Finder to a cover-flow style display that lets you flick through them quickly with a finger gesture.

Speed — or lack thereof

It feels like Lion is missing a level of polish that is typically present with the company’s other operating systems. Snow Leopard felt crisp and the installation was smooth as silk (it even showed off a little by shrinking the size of the operating system on your hard disk.) More than anything else, my Mac felt faster after the Snow Leopard installation.

Lion, by contrast, has added a layer of sluggishness to my day. Whether it’s nitpicky little concerns like having to page through multiple spaces or the frequent times the operating system has borked and left my computer hanging for upwards of 30 seconds, it’s frustrating. It’s even more frustrating when I’m on a deadline and I feel like I have to fight with the operating system to get it to work.

I have never had more issues installing and initially running an operating system than I have had with Lion. The Launchpad, Mission Control and a whole host of other goodies introduced in Lion have occasionally left my Mac hanging with little recourse other than to restart the thing. It feels like Apple has made a lot of changes that were unnecessary, and those changes have slowed down the operating system considerably.

The app is available for $29 on the Mac App Store. It’s hard to argue against an upgrade simply because Apple will inevitably address user concerns in future updates. But at the end of the day, I can’t help but feel like I want to switch back to Snow Leopard.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Search giant Google, which dove into the mobile market just a few years ago, announced today that it has activated 100 million Android devices to date.

At its Google I/O conference in San Francisco, the company said the Android marketplace now sports more than 200,000 apps. Hugo Barra, director of product management, said Android users have downloaded more than 1 billion applications in the past month and have installed 4.5 billion apps to date.The company has gone head to head with Apple, which has more than 350,000 applications on its App Store and has led the charge in the smartphone and tablet races with the iPhone and iPad.

Google also announced Ice Cream Sandwich, the next version of its Android mobile operating system. It should come out in the fourth quarter this year. The top priority is to give app developers a development kit that runs on every device regardless of the fragmentation that has happened in the mobile operating system space. Google basically wants to eliminate differences between devices and create a homogenous operating system that works on any kind of form factor without custom applications or modifications. That’s been a major drawback of the operating system to date.

The company said it is rolling out the next version of Honeycomb, its mobile operating system that’s optimized for tablets. As previously demoed, Google revamped the task switching that creates a sidebar that users can browse through, similar to the slider at the bottom of the iPad and iPhone for multitasking. Android users can also stretch widgets on the main page, giving users a little more customization of their home screens.

Android devices can now act as USB hosts — meaning users can import photos and other content from cameras and other devices directly to the Android device. Android users can now also use other USB-enabled devices, such as game controllers and keyboards.

Honeycomb 3.1 is also coming to Google TV, and the Android Market, or Google’s version of the App Store, is heading to Google TV as well. Android developers can create apps for Google TV based on the same Android development kit.

The next version of the Windows operating system — for both consumers and businesses — might be an operating system that is stored and powered on remote cloud servers and streamed to personal computers, according to leaked information from Microsoft’s architectural summit held in London in April.

Cloud computing allows computers and mobile devices to ship all the resource-intensive data crunching off to beefy remote servers run by companies like Rackspace and Amazon. Tools ranging from facial recognition to collaboration software like Yammer and Huddle are already making strong pushes into the cloud.

Desktop virtualization, which involves storing and running a user’s operating system and programs on more powerful remote servers and streaming the results to a PC, is not a particularly new idea either. It’s a practice that many businesses already employ to allow their employees to access a personalized desktop and access work information from any device. Windows 7 already offers virtualization of a user’s settings and applications. Microsoft also recently brought all of its Office applications into the cloud and offers the programs as part of its Windows Live service.

The next version of Windows would strip the operating system from the actual piece of hardware a user is working on and stream it through the Internet, according to the presentation. But this wouldn’t just be a play from Microsoft in the business space. This would be the first high-profile move into expanding use of cloud technology into the consumer space. The move could finally make buzzwords like “software-as-a-service” and “cloud infrastructure” sexy the same way Apple turned around the mobile phone market — a very explicit goal on Microsoft’s end, according to the slides.

Does this mean the next wave of operating systems will run on subscription fees, like many other cloud services already use? It makes sense until you pull the ethernet cable out of the PC or run into a dead spot in terms of wireless coverage. The operating system is just about the last thing that doesn’t require a computer connected to the internet at this point.

But most tech gurus don’t foresee that being a problem as wireless networks expand and technology marches onward. Tech evangelists ranging from investing titan Marc Andreessen to Google’s Eric Schmidt have repeatedly called to bring everything into the cloud. Schmidt particularly heralded the next rollout of wireless technology, the LTE network, as a significant step toward an always-connected planet.

The tech world is all for finally making the cloud as sexy as Apple’s next gadget. And what a world we live in if Microsoft, traditionally the black sheep of operating systems and web browsers, is the company to finally pull it off.

[Photo: mendhak]

Don’t miss VentureBeat’s first live webinar — “Demystifying the Business Cloud” — on Nov. 17 at 11 am Pacific Time. Join VentureBeat Founder & Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall and Huddle Co-Founder Andy McLoughlin for an in-depth discussion about migrating core business processes to the cloud. Sign up for free now. This webinar is part of a series co-hosted by Huddle, an innovative online-collaboration startup based in the UK and San Francisco.

Almost a year after the operating system’s release, we can look back to see just how well it did — and the numbers look good. A Microsoft exec revealed to Bott this past spring that it had sold 100 million Windows 7 licenses, and that number jumped to 175 million in a July quarterly earnings call. The company expects to sell 350 licenses by the end of the year — or about 30 million copies per month globally.

Strangely enough, Microsoft hasn’t really publicized the success of Windows 7. Apple, meanwhile, gave up on its “Get A Mac” ads, featuring Justin Long and John Hodgman, shortly after Windows 7′s release. With so many positive initial reviews from journalists and users alike, Apple would have seemed out of touch if it continued with its mocking ad campaign.

This is one of those situations where Microsoft’s marketing ineptitude becomes clear. In late 2008, the company tried to revive its lagging image after the failure it experienced with its Vista product with a series of irreverent ads starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld (which director Michel Gondry was reportedly involved with), but it killed the project after a poor public response. As a volley against Apple’s then-ubiquitous ads, it was also a failure.

Now that Microsoft actually has a legitimate success on its hands, it doesn’t quite know how to sell it. We’re still seeing the same “Windows 7 was my idea” ads that have been around for months and that try to convince viewers that the operating system is worth their time. Perhaps in the near future, we’ll see ads more along the lines of “We’re kicking butt, and here’s why.”

Bott also figures that Windows 7 has a good shot of knocking out Windows XP as the preferred corporate operating system in the next few years. “Today, roughly 70-75% of corporate desktops are still running Windows XP. If enterprise adoption rates for Windows 7 continue at the seemingly slow pace of 1.5% per month, Windows 7 will probably overtake XP in corporate installations by the end of 2011,” he writes. “If that rate picks up even slightly, as it appears to be doing, then there’s a good chance that XP will hold a single-digit share of corporate desktops when it’s officially retired in 2014.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Right after Google got the green light to acquire Admob, the mobile advertising company today released a report analyzing where the majority of Android and iPhone operating systems are in its network around the world.

While the study notes that 75 percent of Android OS devices are in North America, compared to 49 percent of iPhone OS devices, the reality is that the iPhone still outnumbers Android two to one in the U.S. There were 8.7 million Android OS devices and 10.7 iPhone OS devices in the U.S. in April. Globally, the numbers are 11.6 million and 27.4 million, respectively.

While the total number of devices running the iPhone operating system may outnumber Android, a recent report from The NDP Group, an analytics firm, underscored that Android has passed iPhone is sales for the first quarter in 2010. So while there may still be more iPhone OS devices in the U.S., that soon could change as Android continues its sales growth. The NPD Group compiles and analyzes mobile device sales data based on more than 150,000 completed online consumer research surveys each month.

Admob’s last report looked at the newly launched Google phone, the Nexus One. While many thought it would rival the iPhone, the device only landed one in 50 mobile ad requests.

Admob serves mobile advertisements to some 23,000 mobile web sites and applications. Each month, the company analyzes the data from these ads to provide insight into what may be happening in the mobile industry.

A full report can be found here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Only a few days after the launch of the iPad, Apple has announced the next event that will give its loyal followers something to worship. The company will be offering a sneak peek at version 4.0 of the iPhone operating system this Thursday, April 8, at 10 a.m. Pacific time.

Apple has done this in the past for previous versions of the iPhone OS around this time of the year, which should put our expectations in order. We’re likely not going to see any new hardware, for one. But this year things are a bit more exciting since Apple has the iPad in play, which also runs the iPhone OS.

Currently, the iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2, while the iPhone and iPod Touch are running OS 3.1.3. Apple could conceivably keep the iPad on a separate version of the OS from the iPhone, but I think it’s far more likely that it would consolidate all of the devices onto a single version of the OS. Despite the size difference, the iPhone and iPad don’t differ greatly in terms of hardware, and that hardware gap will be further minimized if the next-generation iPhone also runs on the Apple A4 chip (and it most likely will).

In terms of new features, we can expect a demonstration of the rumored multitasking implementation — the ability to run more than one application at once — that we reported on several weeks ago. While multitasking on the iPhone has been rumored for a while, this time around it seems far more certain. The existence of the iPad, in particular, demonstrates the pressing need for multitasking in the operating system. Otherwise, the limitations of the iPhone’s current single-tasking focus will soon become apparent to iPad owners as their honeymoon period ends, and the reality of the device’s capabilities become more clear.

Multitasking was also one of many aspects of the next-gen iPhone that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber hinted at in a recent post. Gruber has historically predicted upcoming Apple hardware accurately, and his certainty in the specifications seems telling. He also mentioned the inclusion of the A4 chip, as well as a front-facing camera for video chatting. I don’t suspect that Apple will demonstrate video chat in OS 4.0 at this event, since such a feature would imply a front-facing camera on the new iPhone, but it’s definitely a feature that would make sense to include in the next version of the iPhone.