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?

When the iPhone 4 launched in 2010 one thing Apple made a lot of noise about was the so-called Retina Display. As is the case with the iPhone 4S, its predecessor has a 3.5” display with 640×960 pixels. Apple states the resolution as 326 ppi (points per inch), saying it exceeds the ability of the human eye to detect individual pixels from around 10 inches away. The resolution necessary for this is usually states as being around 300 ppi.

Now it seems we’ll see the Retina Display concept spreading to other devices, including coming iPad models as well as MacBook Pro portable computers.

iPad 3

The most obvious choice to get the Retina Display upgrade would be the coming iPad, presumably called iPad 3. It’s supposedly arriving in just a few months, which would be just in time for the annual cycle Apple established for its tablet by introducing iPad 2 a year after the first model.

But will iPad 3 really get enough pixels to reach 326 ppi, like the iPhone? Well, if we believe rumors, iPad 3 will be 2,048×1,536 pixels, which would mean 264 ppi.

So why “just” 2,048×1,536? It’s twice the horizontal and vertical resolution of the current iPads, meaning there will be less work for developers to get their apps to work on the new display. Since everything just doubles, current apps should work just fine, while apps written to take advantage of the increased number of pixels can look even better.

And let’s be honest, that many pixels on a 9.7″ display – assuming Apple won’t change the physical display size – will still be a lot of pixels. If Apple wanted to add the “HD” label to iPad 3, it still could, as it would exceed the usual benchmark for HD, 1,280×720.

If this is one change we can expect iPad 3 – no surprise here – to featured a faster processor, possibly quad-core, and a much faster graphics system as well. To drive these many pixels, Apple would have to beef up the GPU quite considerably.

MacBook Pro

There are also rumors that Apple’s MacBook Pro will get a higher resolution in 2012. Some sources say 2,880×1,800 pixels, which if we’re talking about a 15” display would mean 226 ppi, still far from the iPhone’s Retina Display.

Currently you can get up to 1,680×1,050 pixels on the 15″ MacBook Pro, which equates to just 132 ppi. I think you just imagine the same display at almost three times the pixel density.

For that to really work Mac OS X will have to start supporting resolution independence. Right now, interface elements like menus and buttons are a set number of pixels big. If that continues with a much-higher ppi, things will just look smaller.

With resolution independence, a user interface element can look about the same real-life size but be built from more pixels, thereby giving it a smoother and crisper look. Basically, with resolution independence, the interface doesn’t depend on a particular pixel resolution to display elements in various sizes, it can scale up and down and still look good.

This is certainly the direction that Apple is moving in but a good guess why they haven’t already is that the +300 ppi displays haven’t arrived yet. Already in 2005 John Siracusa wrote that the “race is on” for “the affordable 300dpi display or the resolution-independent version of Mac OS X.”

For Macs that may be what Cupertino is waiting for, displays with Retina Display pixel density. My guess is that we’ll see Retina Display in iPad before we see it on Macs though, probably as soon as in a few months.

Google released the cource code for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich today, just a bit ahead of the official Galaxy Nexus launch. This is exciting news for everyone who has rooted and tried different ROMs on their devices as there will be plenty of ROM developers looking into getting ICS on many Smartphones really soon.

Again, this release is stricly targetted towards people comofrtable with flashing ROMs on their devices. Official upgrades from the likes of Motorola, HTC and Samsung will probably take a bit longer to show up. Google has also released the source code for Honeycomb but not completely as they want developers to focus on ICS instead. Click here if you’re interested in getting the source code.

Research firm ABI‘s Mobile Application Research Service recently released some interesting stats on global app downloads. Of all the apps downloaded in the 2nd quarter of this year, Android owners account for 44% of the market share, with iOS devices accounting 31%. In 2009 Android apps accounted for just 11% of global market share, without the iOS domination continuing into (August) 2010 with a 52% market share. For the first time Android apps have overtaken the iOS platform for app downloads.

“Android’s open source strategy is the main factor for its success,” says Lim Shiyang, research associate. “Being a free platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third party multi-platform and mobile operator app stores. These conditions alone explain why Android is the new leader in the mobile application market.”

Part of this could be due to the low shipments in the 2nd quarter for iPhone, which fell to 9%, down from 15% in the previous quarter. In the same period Android smartphone shipments increased to 36%. However, much of this could be down to the fact that people around th eworld were waiting for the iPhone 4S, which after release has already broken sales records. I guess the year end figures may well reverse for which platform has the highest app downloads.

Despite the market share increase, Apple owners still download more apps per Android users by a factor of 2 to 1. “Apple’s superior monetization policies attracted good developers within its ranks, thus creating a better catalog of apps and customer experience,” said Dan Shey, practice director, mobile services. By the year end, the total smartphones install base is expected to increase to 46%, while the number of apps downloaded is expected to be as much as 29 billion worldwide.

Google showcased their latest update to their Android Operating System- affectionately known as Ice Cream Sandwich at an event in Hong Kong earlier today. It’s a big update for the Android community but we pick our five favorite features:

1) Support for 1280×720 pixels on Smartphones

The HD resolution of 1280×720 brings Smartphones on par with HDTVs of 32″ but on a screen size of less than 5″, these highly packed pixels will make everything on screen appear extremely crisp. This is the highest resolution that any phone sports today and is a peak at what to expect from the Superphones of tomorrow, like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus

2) Android Beam

Although NFC has been present on Android devices since the launch of Nexus S by Google, it will finally become mainstream with Ice Cream Sandwich’s Beam feature. You will be able to share images, contacts, links and maps with not just other Ice Cream Sandwich devices by a simple tap but hopefully other devices like the Nokia N9 and BlackBerry 9900

3) Face Unlock

Tired on inputting codes or swiping your Smartphone to unlock it? Ice Cream Sandwich has a Face Unlock feature that, using the front facing camera, will automatically unlock when the owner pops in front of the device. Not sure what will happen if you pop a picture of the owner in front of the device though-

4) Voice Typing

Although not marketed as a Siri killer, Voice typing in Ice Cream Sandwich should certainly help dictating a message to friends or an article to our CMS. Like Siri, we’ll have to wait and see how it works in real life.

5) Interface Tweaks

Ice Cream Sandwich will bring the button-less design of tablets to Smartphones with gestures taking priority over tap-and-hold actions. Google has also reworked on multi-tasking, again, bringing in a honeycomb kind of menu to switch between tasks. Tons of other improvements will also be seen on everything from widgets and notifications to GMail and Contacts app.

I’ve been playing around with the HP TouchPad for a few days now and would like to share my thoughts on it. This is the same tablet that went through the fire-sale in the US, selling for as low as US$99 (around AED 370.) At that price, it’s a sin to not buy the technology that powers the TouchPad. While we never got to experience the fire-sale, mainly because the tablet was never officially launched in the region, there were some good deals floating around- for e.g. jadopado.com was selling a 32GB unit for AED 750 during GITEX. However, that is not the focus of this blog- lets talk about the TouchPad and WebOS instead.

My out of the box experience with the TouchPad wasn’t really great. The unit felt incredibly slow- certainly a lot slower than either the iPad, the PlayBook or the many Honeycomb based tablets I have tested. It was so bad that at times, I would touch the screen and not know for a few seconds whether the tap had registered or not. I was pretty much ready to pack it and send it back.

But there was something about it that made be come back to it- maybe it was the beautiful interface or the way apps were always working in the background. So I started reading about tweaking it- talk about opening a Pandora’s box! If you are an enthusiast, you will get a kick out of the TouchPad. Other than the official HP App Store, you have something called Preware which lets you access a different kind of app store. If you know about Cydia for the iPhone, then you’ll feel right at home with the Preware.

There are many many patches available for the TouchPad that significantly improve your user experience. From disabling logging to overclocking the device, the community has managed to keep the TouchPad very much alive and kicking and has transformed it from the disappointing out-of-the-box experience that HP provides to something a lot more pleasant. While the OS is still not as fast as the others, it is at least responsive enough to not cause frustration.

The WebOS is quite a looker as well- all the way from the icons to the fonts that are used for just about everything. It’s all laid out very neatly. Animations for transitions are also simple and beautiful and the way all your accounts integrate into the system is awesome. You can simply input your Facebook, GMail, Skype accounts etc. and they show up at relevant places such as gallery, chats or calls. Sadly, twitter is not built-in, but this is not a review of WebOS so let me get to the point- WebOS is awesome as far as the ideas are concerned. Where it really fails is the way it’s implemented. It’s just not optimized.

I think if this product was given to a company that really cared, it could take off in a big way. HP not only did a disservice for it’s share holders by purchasing and then discarding WebOS in nine months, it also let the WebOS fans down. Had a company like Amazon or HTC bought Palm instead of HP,I honestly think that we would have see results that were quite different.

Apple’s latest iOS 5 makes it debut today on all devices as updates roll out today. For those who closely follow Apple’s developments will already be drooling with anticipation to get their hands on the new features. The update will start rolling out via iTunes. So, check updates on iTunes to find out when the update is available in your region.

The new version comes with some major updates as well as many minor features. The total list of these will be more than 200 in fact. So, we tell you the major new things you can expect to see once you update your device to iOS5:

• Notifications replace the annoying pop-ups. Much like Android slide down menu on top with notifications.
• iMessage brings cross-device but not cross-platform chatting to apple device users.
• Camera comes with new image editing tools and sharing options.
• Over the air iOS software updates.
• Wi-Fi sync to update media and playlists.
• AirPlay (exclusive to iPad 2 and iPhone 4S) allows to transmit the display of your device to Apple TV i.e. you can play your iPad 2 / 4S games on TV’s big screen now; or even multiple iPhone users can play split screen multiplayer on single TV screen.
• New version of Safari with AD blocker, visible tabs and options to save websites.
• Integral twitter integration.
• iCloud service with 5GB free storage exclusively for your files backup (apps and media files remain stored in iTunes)

One of the strong powers of Android remains its semi-open platform as compared to iOS. It is not 100% open source to protect some developers from tinkering low level functions but there are lot of aspiring modders and hackers providing hacks to unlock devices, modify android market restrictions as well as provide full custom mods for changing the base operating system. But these custom mods have been limited to HTC and Samsung till now as Sony Ericsson’s Androids have been some what more complicated to customize. But that is about to change now as Sony Ericsson are actually helping such modders to bring the same custom stuff to their Xperia range too.

The popular team behind CyanogenMod is getting all the help they need from Sony Ericsson developers for their initiative called “FreeXperia”. Under this initiative many SE library binaries will be released to developers to customize and use in their mods. These will be officially made public on their Developer world under special license. Do note that modding still voids your warranty, so if it bricks your phone, don’t expect a refund from Sony Ericsson.

Signing in with your Windows Live ID on Windows 8 will allow you to carry over your settings to multiple PCs. Think of it like Firefox Sync, but implemented throughout the OS.

The syncing of these settings is limited to how your Metro UI looks, and login credentials of various apps and programs that you have on different PCs. To give you a better idea, here’s what Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky wrote:

- Associate the most commonly used Windows settings with your user account. Saved settings are available when you sign in to your account on any Windows 8 PC. Your PC will be set up just the way you are used to!
- Easily reacquire your Metro style apps on multiple Windows 8 PCs. The app’s settings and last-used state persist across all your Windows 8 PCs.
- Save sign-in credentials for the different apps and websites you use and easily get back into them without having to enter credentials every time.
- Automatically sign in to apps and services that use Windows Live ID for authentication.

Obviously people will be concerned about security issues for having this syncing feature across multiple computers, including work and home. Well,  there are multilayered security measures which will be taken to ensure your data is protected. For instance you will first need to authorize the new computers you use by providing “proof of your identity”. There will obviously be multiple secret answers and other detailed info like your phone numbers, etc. to verify your identity. Sort of like how you’d verify your answers to  a bank when getting assistance on the phone.

Obviously these security measures are taken in instances of new computer usage, and if you ever lose your password. Despite all of these safeguards if your account is still hacked, your Windows Live ID will go into a “compromised” state. However, you can always access your PC after logging in with Windows Live using your old password, just that you’ll have to go through the “recover my password” procedure online.