Computed·Blg

Both Apple and Microsoft's new desktop operating systems borrow elements from mobile devices, in sometimes confusing ways.

Apple is widely expected to unveil a major update this week to OS X Lion, its operating system for desktop and laptop computers. Microsoft, meanwhile, is working on an even bigger overhaul of Windows, with a version called Windows 8.

Both new operating systems reflect a tectonic shift in personal computing. They incorporate elements from mobile operating systems alongside more conventional desktop features. But demos of both operating systems suggest that users could face a confusing mishmash of design ideas and interaction methods.

Windows 8 and OS X Lion include elements such as touch interaction and full-screen apps that will facilitate the kind of "unitasking" (as opposed to multitasking) that users have become accustomed to on mobile devices and tablets.

"The rise of the tablets, or at least the iPad, has suggested that there is a latent, unmet need for a new form of computing," says Peter Merholz, president of the user-experience and design firm Adaptive Path. However, he adds, "moving PCs in a tablet direction isn't necessarily sensible."

Cathy Shive, an independent software developer, would agree. She developed software for Mac desktop applications for six years before she switched and began developing for iOS (Apple's operating system for the iPhone and iPad). "When I first saw Steve Jobs's demo of Lion, I was really surprised—I was appalled, actually," she says.

Shive is surprised by the direction both Apple and Microsoft are taking. One fundamental dictate of usability design is that an interface should be tailored to the specific context—and hardware—in which it lives. A desktop PC is not the same thing as a tablet or a mobile device, yet in that initial demo, "It seemed like what [Jobs] was showing us was a giant iPad," says Shive.

A subsequent demonstration of Windows 8 by Microsoft vice president Julie Larson-Green confirmed that Redmond was also moving toward touch as a dominant interaction mechanism. One of the devices used in that demonstration, a "media tablet" from Taiwan-based ASUS, resembled an LCD monitor with no keyboard.

Not everyone is so skeptical about Apple and Microsoft's plans. Lukas Mathis, a programmer and usability expert, thinks that, on balance, this shift is a good thing. "If you watch casual PC users interact with their computers, you'll quickly notice that the mouse is a lot harder to use than we think," he says. "I'm glad to see finger-friendly, large user interface elements from phones and tablets make their way into desktop operating systems. This change was desperately needed, and I was very happy to see it."

Mathis argues that experienced PC users don't realize how crowded with "small buttons, unclear icons, and tiny text labels" typical desktop operating systems are.

Lion and Windows 8 solve these problems in slightly different ways. In Lion, file management is moving toward an iPhone/iPad-style model, where users launch applications from a "Launchpad," and their files are accessible from within those applications. In Windows 8, files, along with applications, bookmarks, and just about anything else, can be made accessible from a customizable start screen.

Some have criticized Mission Control, Apple's new centralized app and window management interface, saying that it adds complexity rather than introducing the simplicity of a mobile interface. At the other extreme, Lion allows any app to be rendered full-screen, which blocks out distractions but also forces users to switch applications more often than necessary.

"The problem [with a desktop OS] is that it's hard to manage windows," says Mathis. "The solution isn't to just remove windows altogether; the solution is to fix window management so it's easier to use, but still allows you to, say, write an essay in one window, but at the same time look at a source for your essay in a different window."

Windows 8, meanwhile, attempts to solve this problem in a more elegant way, with a "Windows Snap," which allows apps to be viewed side-by-side while eliminating the need to manage their dimensions by dragging them from the corner.

A problem with moving toward a touch-centric interface is that the mouse is absolutely necessary for certain professional applications. "I can't imagine touch in Microsoft Excel," says Shive. "That's going to be terrible," she says.

The most significant difference between Apple's approach and Microsoft's is that Windows 8 will be the same OS no matter what device it's on, from a mobile phone to a desktop PC. To accommodate a range of devices, Microsoft has left intact the original Windows interface, which users can switch to from the full-screen start screen and full-screen apps option.

Merholz believes Microsoft's attempt to make its interface consistent across all devices may be a mistake. "Microsoft has a history of overemphasizing the value of 'Windows everywhere.' There's a fear they haven't learned appropriateness, given the device and its context," he says.

Shive believes the same could be said of Apple. "Apple has been seduced by their own success, and they're jumping to translate that over to the desktop ... They think there's some kind of shortcut, where everyone is loving this interface on the mobile device, so they will love it on their desktop as well," she says.

In a sense, both Apple and Microsoft are about to embark on a beta test of what the PC should be like in an era when consumers are increasingly accustomed to post-PC modes of interaction. But it could be a bumpy process. "I think we can get there, but we've been using the desktop interface for 30 years now, and it's not going to happen overnight," says Shive.

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Personal Comments:

From my personal point of view and based on my 30 years IT/Dev experience, I do not see the change of desktop Look&Feel as a crisis but more as a simple and efficient aesthetic evolution.

Why? Because what was made for mobile phone first and then for new coming mobile devices like tablets is what some people were trying to do on laptop/desktop computer's GUI for years: trying to make the GUI/desktop experience simple enough in order to make computers accessible to anyone of us, even to the more recusant to technology (see evolution of windows and Linux GUI). That specific goal was successfully reached on mobile phones/devices in a very short time, pushing common people to change of device every two years and making them enjoy new functionality/technology without having to read one single page of an instruction manual (by the way, mobile phones are delivered without any!).

It looks like technological constraints and restrictions were needed in order to invent this kind of interface. Touch screen only mobile phones were available since years prior Apple produces its first iPhone (2007), remember the Sony-Ericsson P800 (2002) and its successor the P900 (2003), technically everything was here (they are close to the "classic" smartphone we are used to have in our pocket nowadays), but an efficient GUI and in a more general way, an efficient OS was dramatically missing. What was done by Apple with iOS, Google with Android and HTC with its UISense GUI on top of Android brings out and demonstrates the obvious potential of these mobile devices.

The adaptation of these GUI/OS on tablet (iOS, Android 3.0), still with the touch-only constraint, rises up new solutions for GUI while extending what can be done through few basic finger gestures. It sounds not surprising that classic desktop/laptop computers are now trying to integrate the good of all this in their own environment as they did not succeed in doing so on their own before. I would even say that this is an obvious step forward as many ideas are adaptable to desktop computer world. For example, making easier the installation of applications by making available App store concept to desktop computers is an obvious step, one does not have to think if the application is compatible with the local hardware etc... the App store just focus on compatible applications, seamlessly.

So more than entering a crisis/revolution, I would say that desktop computer world will just exploit from the mobile devices world what can be adapted in order to make the desktop computer experience for the end-user as seamless as it is on mobile devices... but for some basic tasks only.

You can embed a desktop OS in a very nice and simple box making things looking very similar to mobile device's simplicity, but this is just a kind of gift package which is not valuable for all usages you can face on a desktop computer... making this step forward looking like a set of cosmetic changes, and not more... because it just can not be more!

Today, one is used to glorious declaration each time a new OS is proposed to end-user, many so-called "new" features mentioned are not more than already existing ones that were re-design and pushed on the scene in order to obtain a kind of revolutionary OS impression: who can seriously consider full screen app or automatic save as new key features for a 21th century's new OS?

Let's go through some of the key new features announced by Apple in Mac OS X Lion:

- Multi-touch: this is not a new feature, it "just" adds some new functionality to map to already available multi-touch gestures.

- Full Screen management: it basically attached a virtual desktop to any application running in full screen. Thus, you can switch from/to full screen applications... the same way you were already able to do so by switching from one virtual desktop to another.

- LaunchPad: this is basically a graphical interface/shortcuts for the 'Applications' folder in the Finder. Ok it looks like the Apps grid on a tablet or a mobile phone... but as it was already presented as a list, the other option was... guess what... a grid!

- Mission Control: this is also an evolution of something that was already existing. The ability to see all your windows in addition to all your virtual desktops.

I'm pretty convinced that these new features are going to be really useful and pleasant to use, making the usage of the touchpad on MacBook even more primordial, but I do not see here a real revolution, neither a crisis, in the way we are going to work on desktop/laptop computers.

Via OStatic

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Now that Chromebooks--portable computers based on Google's Chrome OS--are out in the wild and hands-on reviews are appearing about them, it's easier to gauge the prospects for this new breed of operating system. As Jon Buys discussed here on OStatic, these portables are not without their strong points. However, there are criticisms appearing about the devices, and the criticisms echo ones that we made early on. In short, Chromebooks force a cloud-only compute model that leaves people used to working with local files and data in the cold.

In his OStatic post on Chromebooks, Jon Buys noted that the devices are "built to be the fastest way to get to the web." Indeed, Chromebooks boot in seconds--partly thanks to a Linux core--and deposit the user into an environment that looks and works like the Chrome browser.

However, Cade Metz, writing for The Register, notes this in a review of the Samsung Chromebook, which is available for under $500:

"Running Google's Chrome OS operating system, Chromebooks seek to move everything you do onto the interwebs. Chrome OS is essentially a modified Linux kernel that runs only one native application: Google's Chrome browser….This also means that most of your data sits on the web, inside services like Google Docs…The rub is that the world isn't quite ready for a machine that doesn't give you access to local files."

That's exactly what I felt woud be the shortcoming of devices based on Chrome OS, as seen in this post:

"With Chrome OS, Google is betting heavily on the idea that consumers and business users will have no problem storing data and using applications in the cloud, without working on the locally stored data/applications model that they're used to. Here at OStatic, we always questioned the aggressively cloud-centric stance that Chrome OS is designed to take. Don't users want local applications too? Why don't I just run Ubuntu and have my optimized mix of cloud and local apps? After all, the team at Canonical, which has a few years more experience than Google does in the operating system business, helped create Chrome OS. "

The interesting thing is, though, that Google may have an opportunity to easily address this perceived shortcoming. For example, Chrome OS now has a file manager, and it's not much of a leap to get from a file manager to a reasonable set of ways to store local data and manage it. Odds are that Google will change the way Chrome OS works going forward, making it less cloud-centric. That would seem to be a practical course of action.

Via Outside Innovation

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Over the past few months, there have been a number of notable service quality incidents and security breaches of online services, including Sony’s PlayStation network, Amazon’s cloud service, Dropbox’s storage in the cloud, and countless others. The bar talk around “cloud” computing and online services would have you think that businesses and consumers are shying away from using hosted services, using Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, from storing their data “in the cloud,” or from migrating some or all of their computing infrastructure to virtual machines hosted by cloud service providers. However, there’s actually an uptick in the uptake of cloud computing in all of its various incarnations.

We (consumers and businesses) are using “cloud” services for all of the following kinds of activities:

1. Accessing and downloading media.

2. Accessing and downloading mobile apps.

3. Accessing and running business applications (CRM, hiring, ecommerce, logistics, provisioning, etc.).

4. Collaborating with colleagues, clients, and customers (project management, online communities, email, meeting scheduling).

5. Analyzing large amounts of data.

6. Storing large amounts of data (much of it unstructured, like video, images, text files, etc.).

7. Developing and testing new applications and online services.

8. Running distributed applications that need high performance around the globe. (All of the social media apps we use are essentially “cloud” applications—they run on virtual machines hosted in mostly 3rd-party data centers all over the world.)

9. Scaling our operations to handle seasonal and other peaking requirements—where we can take advantage of buying computing capabilities by the hour, rather than pre-paying for capacity we rarely need.

10. Back up and Disaster Recovery—keeping copies of our systems and data in remote locations, ready to run if a natural disaster impacts our normal operations.

In short, “cloud computing” in all of its instantiations—Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Cloud Storage, Cloud Computing, etc.—is here to stay. Taking advantage of the cloud (virtual computers running software in data centers distributed around the globe) is the most scalable and the most cost-effective way to provide computing resources and services to anyone who has reliable access to high bandwidth networking via the Internet.

What About Security and Back Up?
Most of us now realize that we’re responsible for the security and integrity of our information no matter where it sits on the planet. And we are better off if we have more than one copy of anything that’s really important.

SaaS and cloud providers have had a lot of experience helping IT organizations migrate some or all of their computing and/or storage to the cloud. And most of them report that most IT organizations’ data security practices leave quite a bit to be desired before they migrate to the cloud. Their customers’ data security and integrity typically improves dramatically as a result of re-thinking their requirements and implementing better policies and practices as they migrated some or all of their computing. (Just because data is in your own physical data center doesn’t mean it’s safe!)

It’s Time to Run Around in Front of the Cloud Parade
We’re now committed to living in the mobile Internet era. We treasure our mobility and our unfettered access to information, applications, media, and services. Cloud computing, in all its forms, is here to stay. Small businesses and innovative service providers have embraced cloud computing and services wholeheartedly and are already reaping the benefits of “pay as you consume” for software and computing and storage services. Medium-sized businesses are the next to embrace cloud computing, because they typically don’t have the inertia and overhead that comes with a huge centralized IT organization. Large enterprises’ IT organizations are the last to officially accept cloud computing as a safe and compliant alternative for corporate IT. Yet many departments in those same large enterprise organizations have been the early adopters of cloud computing for the development and testing of new software products and for the departmental (or even corporate) adoption of SaaS for many of their companies’ most critical applications.

Via ars technica

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Flash memory is the dominant nonvolatile (retaining information when unpowered) memory thanks to its appearance in solid-state drives (SSDs) and USB flash drives. Despite its popularity, it has issues when feature sizes are scaled down to 30nm and below. In addition, flash has a finite number of write-erase cycles and slow write speeds (on the order of ms). Because of these shortcomings, researchers have been searching for a successor even as consumers snap up flash-based SSDs.

There are currently a variety of alternative technologies competing to replace silicon-based flash memory, such as phase-change RAM (PRAM), ferroelectric RAM (FERAM), magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM), and resistance-change RAM (RRAM). So far, though, these approaches fail to scale down to current process technologies well—either the switching mechanism or switching current perform poorly at the nanoscale. All of them, at least in their current state of development, also lack some commercially-important properties such as write-cycle endurance, long-term data retention, and fast switching speed. Fixing these issues will be a basic requirement for next-gen non-volatile memory. 

Or, as an alternative, we might end up replacing this tech entirely. Researchers from Samsung and Sejong University in Korea have published a paper in Nature Materials that describes tanatalum oxide-based (TaO_x) resistance-RAM (RRAM), which shows large improvements over current technology in nearly every respect.

RRAM devices work by applying a large enough voltage to switch material that normally acts as an insulator (high-resistance state) into a low-resistance state. In this case, the device is a sandwich structure with a TaO_2-x base layer and a thinner Ta₂O_5-x insulating layer, surrounded by platinum (Pt) electrodes. This configuration, known as metal-insulator-base-metal (MIMB), starts as an insulator, but it can be switched to a low resistance, metal-metal (filament)-base-metal (MMBM) state.

The nature of the switching process is not well understood in this case, but the authors describe it as relying on the creation of conducting filaments that extend through the Ta₂O_5-x layer. These paths are created by applying sufficiently large voltages, which drive the movement of oxygen ions through a redox (reduction-oxidaton) process.

When in the MIMB state, the interface between the Pt electrode and the Ta₂O_5-x forms a metal-semiconductor junction known as a Schottky barrier, while the MMBM state forms an ohmic contact. The main difference between these two is that the current-voltage profile is linear and symmetric for ohmic but nonlinear and asymmetric for Schottky. The presence of Schottky barriers is a benefit, as it prevents stray current leakage through an array of multiple devices (important for high-density storage).

The results presented by the authors appear to blow other memory technologies out of the water, in pretty much every way we care about. The devices presented here are 30nm thick, and the switching current is 50 ?A—an order of magnitude smaller than that of PRAM. They also demonstrated an endurance of greater than 10¹² switching cycles (higher than the previous best of 10¹⁰ and six orders of magnitude higher than that of flash memory at 10⁴-10⁶). The device has a switching time of 10ns, and a data retention time that's estimated to be 10 years operating at 85°C. This type of RRAM also appears to work without problems in a vacuum, unlike previously-demonstrated devices.

This may all seem too good to be true—it should be emphasized that this was only a laboratory-scale demonstration, with 64 devices in an array (therefore capable of storing only 64 bits). There will still be a few years of development needed before we see gigabyte-size drives based on this RRAM memory.

Like all semiconductor device fabrication, advances will be needed to improve nanoscale lithography techniques for large-scale manufacturing and, in this particular case, a better understanding of the basic switching mechanism is also needed. However, based on the results shown here, this new memory technology shows promise for use as a universal memory storage: the same type could be used for storage and working memory.

Via Businessweek

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The Real Veterans of Technology To survive for more than 100 years, tech companies such as Siemens, Nintendo, and IBM have had to innovate

By Antoine Gara

When IBM turned 100 on June 16, it joined a surprising number of tech companies that have been evolving in order to survive since long before there was a Silicon Valley. Here’s a sampling of tech centenerians, and some of the breakthroughs that helped fuel their longevity.

Siemens: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images; Western Union: Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Diebold: Diebold Inc; Ericsson: SSPL/Getty Images; Nintendo: Tim Whitby/Alamy; Kodak: George Eastman House