There comes a time when sometimes things move too fast, and we’re left frustrated over missing something vital. That seems to be the case with Windows 8, especially with SSD based machines, such as ultrabooks, that boot Windows 8 in just 7 seconds.

As such there’s hardly anytime to select boot options during startup. In fact, according to Chris Clark, who’s a program manager at the Windows User Experience team, ”We have SSD-based UEFI systems where the ‘F8 window’ is always less than 200 milliseconds. No matter how fast your fingers are, there is no way to reliably catch a 200 millisecond event.”

In that case you can actually setup you computer to take specific actions, depending on your system and requirements.

As such you can easily select whatever appropriate option you’d like to have once the settings are done, wherein the below screen will allow you to select the appropriate option without any worries.

The latest version of iOS is a minor revision that works on sorting out bugs- something that should be obvious given the very small increment in the version number. As per Apple, this update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

- Improves reliability of using HDR option for photos taken using the Lock Screen shortcut
- Addresses bugs that could prevent the new iPad from switching between 2G and 3G networks
- Fixes bugs that affected AirPlay video playback in some circumstances
- Improved reliability for syncing Safari bookmarks and Reading List
- Fixes an issue where ‘Unable to purchase’ alert could be displayed after successful purchase

For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website

Available for your iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S as well all models of the iPad and the third and fourth generation iPods, the latest build 9B206 can be downloaded directly as an OTA to your device or through iTunes.

Microsoft today made a ground-breaking announcement and confirmed that the next version of its operating system will be called…Windows 8.

Apart from that, the company also confirmed that there will be three final versions of the operating system. The basic Windows 8 version is geared to the everyday user and includes the new Metro interface, an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, and other bells and whistles. The Windows 8 Pro edition includes all of this as well as featured geared towards power users and IT administrators, with featured such as encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity.

Lastly, Windows RT is the version that will come pre-installed on PCs and tablets that run on ARM processors.

For a full table of features in each version of Windows, head here.

We’re already excited about Windows 8 – so much so that we hijacked a tablet-PC in the office and started playing around with the OS. While we’re going to be posting a full article on the Consumer Preview later on, we can’t help but swoon over the OS just a little bit.

But according to windows8beta.com, there’s going to be plenty of Windows 8 love to go around – the OS is supposedly going to ship in nine different flavors. This information comes from keys hidden deep in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview registry – it’s truly fascinating what you can find digging around in there.

The nine editions of Windows 8 will be:

- Windows 8 Enterprise Edition
- Windows 8 Enterprise Eval edition
- Windows 8 Home Basic Edition
- Windows 8 Home Premium edition
- Windows 8 ARM edition
- Windows 8 Professional edition
- Windows 8 Professional Plus edition
- Windows 8 Starter edition
- Windows 8 Ultimate edition

While most of them I can understand, I have no idea what a ‘Plus’ edition is going to be – this instantly reminds me of the ‘Plus!’ pack for Windows 98 which gave you more desktop themes and some games.

This information might change closer to the OS going retail, but nine flavors certainly seems like an overdose to me.

Interested in checking out what Microsoft’s next Operating System looks and feels like? Then head over to here to download it. Keep in mind that this is a consumer preview or beta version so we would highly advise against putting it on your everyday machine. Microsoft has posted a faq if you would like to know more before downloading/installing it but here are some key features:

Windows 8 is reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It’s an all-new touch interface. It’s a new Windows for new devices. And it’s your chance to be one of the first to try it out.

Swipe, slide, and zoom: Touch a full-powered PC. It’s fast and it’s fluid. Take natural, direct, hands-on control.

Apps, front and center: Apps in Windows 8 work together to get things done faster. Get them from the Windows Store.

Your Windows, everywhere: Windows 8 can connect you to your files, photos, people, and settings, wherever you sign in.

Wall-to-wall web: Internet Explorer 10 Consumer Preview brings you immersive web browsing on screens big and small.

The familiar, made better: Still devoted to your mouse and keyboard? Windows 8 makes the tried-and-true feel brand new.

Building Windows 8: Calling all power users: Get the latest news and the inside scoop on the development process from the Windows 8 engineering team blog.

We all know the tremendous success Google has had with its Chrome web browser. But whatever happened to Chrome OS, which was introduced with great fanfare in 2009?

Let’s retrace some of the activities so far.

Google’s Chrome web browser appeared first in 2008, and it has in just a few short years pretty much taken over the world of web browsers. A few months ago it overtook Firefox as the number two web browser worldwide, and it may become number one, passing Internet Explorer, this year.

The year after, in 2009, Google set out to create an operating system centered on the Chrome browser. It was released in November 2009 as the open source Chromium project. Anyone could download it and install the new OS, but it never really caught on. This was despite that Chromium came out right in the heyday of netbooks, these small, often underpowered, and usually very cheap PC notebooks.

The point of Chrome OS was that it was in principle just a web browser. You start up the computer and it starts up the Chrome browser. If you want any apps, you get them from the Chrome App Store. There is a little bit more to Chrome OS than just the browser, but not much at all. This means that a computer running Chrome OS should be faster than if the same computer ran, for example, Windows. It should also mean better battery life, and a less complicated life for the user, as it’s pretty much all online – operating system, apps, data, etc.

In other words, perfect for a netbook.

Google CR-48

Then in late 2010 Google sent out 60,000 free CR-48 notebooks running the Chrome OS. The CR-48 looked very much like Apple’s first generation MacBook, the black model. It was a reference design, meaning it was supposed to give manufacturers and developers ideas about what Chrome OS could be used for.

The CR-48 created a lot of buzz around Google’s Chrome OS, but because it was available in limited quantity and only to those users that Google deemed fit to receive one, it never became something for the masses, nor was it intended as such.

In May 2011, the Chromebooks were announced, notebooks running the Chrome OS from other manufacturers, like Acer and Samsung. The month after some models started shipping in a limited number of countries.

After that, it’s been pretty quiet concerning Chrome OS and Chromebooks.

So what happened to Chrome OS? Personally I suspect that Google’s interest got drawn to Android, by preference or necessity. Android has arguably commanded much more of the headlines compared to Chrome OS. It’s also with Android that Google finds itself in legal battles, directly or as a supporting act to hardware vendors, which must take up much attention and resources. And even though Android and Chrome OS are two very different products, is it viable that Google keeps both going?

We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. Personally I’m excited about the idea of a computer running Chrome OS, as long as it can be fast, affordable, durable, and connect on the go to the Internet. Most of the things I do with a computer, for personal or professional reasons, I do in a web browser anyway. More often than not, that is Chrome.

I sure hope that Google is working on something exciting for Chrome OS. Now that we know that both OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Windows 8 are going to be very much about the cloud, it’s time for Google to step up and show that it wants to be the leader in this area.

Out of nowhere, Apple announced the developer’s preview for their next OS- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. The release of the new OS will be somewhere in Summer of this year.

Like Lion, Mountain Lion tries to borrow features from iOS and integrate them into the desktop OS. This time around, Messages makes an appearance which will basically replace iChat present on the current generation of OS. Although iMessages on an iOS device only works with it’s own messaging system, the desktop version will let you add Jabber and AOL accounts like you currently do to iChat. Besides Messages, Reminders and Notes will also be added to the desktop system. Through iCloud, this will basically keep all your mobile and desktop devices completely in sync.

Two other new features of Mountain Lion borrowed from iOS are the Notification Center and Game Center. Like the mobile counterpart, Notification Center will basically be a central location for all your new notifications. Apple has introduced a new, two-finger swiping motion that opens it up on the side of the screen, as well as a new menu bar item in the top right-hand corner of the screen that does the same thing. To coincide with this, there’s also a new notification banner and alert system that lets application developers choose between banners and pop-ups that notify you in the corner of the screen, as well as an alert option that won’t go away until you click on it. Game Center will let you see all the games on your Mac as well as friends you have along with achievements and leaderboards.

Sadly, Siri has not made it to the desktop yet- at least not in the developer preview, but Apple has mentioned that new features will be added to the OS so you never know. What is new and exclusive to the desktop system is Gatekeeper, a new security feature designed to control malware and rogue applications. Users will be able to chose their security levels between Mac App Store, Mac App Store and identified developers and Anywhere.

While RIM hasn’t had a fantastic past year, things looked pretty upbeat at the BlackBerry Developer’s Conference in Amsterdam last week. With a new CEO and a new 2.0 OS for the PlayBook that is basically setting the fundamentals for BlackBerry’s next Smartphone OS BB10, things just might be on track for a company that has swallowed more that it’s fair share of criticism form the media.

On the show, RIM was showing off PlayBook with the new OS and I managed to play around with it for a few minutes. Of most interest to me was the email functionality and I was pleasantly surprised to find social media integration built within the native PIM clients such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Honestly, if this is what RIM had come out with in the first place when launching the PlayBook, the tablet landscape might have looked very different.

Check out the video below to see what you can expect as far as your email and social accounts are concerned with PlayBook 2.0- hopefully arriving within the next couple of weeks.

]]> http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/02/hands-on-with-the-playbook-os-2-0-email-and-social-features/feed/ 0 http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/01/are-you-excited-about-microsoft-windows-8/ http://tbreak.com/tech/2012/01/are-you-excited-about-microsoft-windows-8/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:11:09 +0000 Magnus Nystedt http://tbreak.com/tech/?p=52977

At Microsoft’s BUILD conference in California in September last year the company showed off Windows 8 and gave us a lot of information about what the next generation of its operating system will be like. Even though Windows 7 has been a big sales success, concerns about slow uptake, especially in businesses, have popped up from time to time.

In the latest worldwide figures from StatCounter about desktop operating systems, Windows 7 has the lead over Windows XP, a situation that it has just recently acquired (in October 2011). That means an OS released in October 2009 has just passed an OS released in 2001. Surely that can’t be a very comforting situation for Redmond.

Add to that, that Windows XP is still the number one OS in large markets around the world, including China, and we suspect that this is a headache that Steve Ballmer is making his teams work hard at – how to get users to switch to Windows 8 faster than they did to Windows 7. It certainly doesn’t help that research company Gartner has said it expects the uptake of Windows 8 will be slower than that of Windows 7.

The developer preview version of Windows 8 that was introduced at BUILD last year has, by all accounts, been well received. Undoubtedly we still have lots to find out about Microsoft’s plans for the OS, even after CES last week.

So how will Windows 8 be received once it is officially introduced?

Obviously we don’t know, but one key issue, I think, will be how well Windows 8 runs on existing hardware. Microsoft’s Vice President of Windows, Steven Sinofsky, said last year, “everything that runs on Windows 7 runs on Windows 8.” For Microsoft’s sake, I hope that’s true even though I fully expect the latest 2012 hardware will run the new OS better than computers from 2011 or earlier.

One other thing I think will be important is the integration between touch and traditional interface. Windows 8 will just be “one operating system,” for both tablets and computers; that much has Microsoft said. For example, on a computer with a touchscreen, you can use the Metro interface for touch, and what looks like Windows 7 with keyboard and mouse. How well apps, information and other types of integration works between the two modes will be important for usability.

I am actually very excited about seeing what Microsoft comes up with for Windows 8 and how it develops over the coming months. Hopefully, after the public beta has been in circulation a while, Redmond will announce a launch date. Then we can start preparing for what is set to be another big Microsoft Windows launch.

Photo by BUILDWindows.

2012 has the potential to become one of the best years for Apple fans. With the amount of products refreshes as well as one possible new device, there are plenty of reason for iFans to work hard and save up some cash for these devices this year:

iPad 3

Apple usually refreshes the iPad in the first quarter of the year and hopefully, this year should be no different. From what the rumor-mill is suggesting, the new iPad should have a retina display giving it the same gorgeous screen that the iPhone 4 sports. To power that high of a resolution, you also need some serious hardware so a quad-core equipped iPad doesn’t sound too out of place. Cameras should also be hopefully updated considering the number of people that actually take pictures from their iPad and how bad they currently are. Other than these visible changes, Apple will probably add Bluetooth 4.0 for low power connectivity with other expected devices.

MacBook Air & MacBook Pro

Intel is launching their Ivy bridge CPU in April so it’s a given that Apple will update their notebooks. However, the question is whether we will see a 15″ version of the Air or the MacBook Pro line slimmed down. With this new generation of CPUs, the graphics horsepower would have improved enough for the Air to start competing with the Pro so Apple will need to decide which direction to take. Remember, Steve Jobs stated that the Air is the future design direction for Apple laptops and the army of wanna-bes in the form of Ultrabooks certainly suggests that Apple will make its move.

iOS 6

Towards the summer, Apple will hold it’s annual event detailing the future of their new mobile OS. I honestly don’t know what they will show but with iOS breaking away the requirement for a computer to activate it, my guess is that Apple will try and make their new devices more computer-like. At the top of my wish list sits an accessible file system that could hopefully allow us to add attachments of any kind to email without jail breaking the device. Also, the UI of iOS is getting a bit old and now that Google has hired the WebOS design guru Matias Duarte, it might be time for Apple to show what they have been working on.

iPhone 5

Wth no change in the form factor, The iPhone 4S didn’t create much of a stir on the Internet on the design front. However, this year should be different and Apple is expected to change the design of the iPhone. Will it sport a bigger screen or do away with the home button is anybody’s guess, but do expect to see a new iPhone that also looks new this time around.

iTV

If introduced, the iTV will be the product that the tech industry will talk most about this year. My guess is that Apple will heavily involve Siri- you will probaly be able to tell your iTV to bring up an episode of Lost when Locke opens the hatch instead of remembering episode number. Or telling it to get details of the comedian/politician that is on your screen at that time. There is plenty of potential with what Apple can possibly do with iTV.

New iPods

Last and certainly not the least, we should be expecting new iPods especially since we didn’t see any new models in 2011. While the iPod touch will probably be something between an iPhone 4s and iPhone 5, what I am really interested in is the new Nano. Using the low powered Bluetooth 4.0 the Nano could easily beome the Siri enabled device on your wrist that communicates with your iPhone or iPad and get things done. It could become the window to your other, more powerful iDevice.

So there you have it- a list of potential devices that Apple might be releasing this year. What do you think? Is there one that you don’t agree with or one that you think I might have missed out on?