Mozilla product director says Firefox on Window RT ‘probably not worth it’
A Mozilla product director yesterday said that unless Microsoft allows other browser makers to call important APIs in Windows RT, it is "probably not worth it to even bother" building a version of Firefox for the new operating system.
In a Wednesday post to his personal blog, Asa Dotzler, product director of Firefox, again slammed Microsoft for not allowing third-party browsers access to Win32 APIs, or application programming interfaces, in the upcoming Windows RT.
Windows RT, once called Windows on ARM, or WOA, is the operating system Microsoft is developing for devices -- tablets primarily, but also lightweight laptops -- that rely on processors designed for the ARM architecture. Read more...
Red Hat preps RHEL 7 for second half of 2013
The next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), version 7, is targeted for release in the second half of 2013, Red Hat said on Tuesday, as it also celebrated the 10th anniversary of its enterprise OS.
Red Hat aims to release a major new version of its OS every three years and updates about every six months, according to Jim Totten, vice president and general manager at Red Hat's Platform business unit.
"While we are not at a place where we are making announcements ... our general target is the second half of 2013 to see RHEL 7 enter the marketplace," Totten said in a webcast.
Red Hat is keeping details of the release close to its chest, but Totten said the OS will have improvements across its more than 2,000 packages and that key focus areas are supporting new hardware, file systems, security and performance, he said. Read more...
Upcoming Microsoft deal: Buy a Windows 7 PC, upgrade to Windows 8 for a mere $15
Microsoft, in a bid to keep Windows 7 PC sales strong through to the end of the operating system’s lifecycle, has a plan: offer people a dead cheap Windows 8 upgrade , thus making the option of waiting for the upcoming operating system to drop a poor decision.
How cheap will the deal be? According to Paul Thurrott, the bump to Windows 8 will cost a mere $15. Of course, this sort of promotion is hardly new – Microsoft does something similar every time it releases a new operating system. It helps people get onto the new code quickly, and ensures that Windows revenue doesn’t take a massive dive in the quarter preceding the new operating system’s release. Read more...
BlackBerry-maker RIM unveils prototype
Research In Motion's new chief executive unveiled a newly-designed BlackBerry smartphone prototype powered by a re-imagined operating system —the very software the company has pinned its future on.
Thorsten Heins, who took the CEO job in January, on Tuesday revealed features of the BlackBerry 10 operating system running on a prototype device at the company's BlackBerry World conference in Orlando. He provided no update on the software's launch date. Read more...
This week at Microsoft: Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Office 15
Welcome to Friday, my friends, it’s a right pleasure to provide you with a bit of entertainment before you ship home from work to plant yourself in front of yet another screen. Modern Man and the Monitor Tan. We’re all guilty of it.
This week at Microsoft was happily varied, and oddly illuminating. As always, this roundup is essentially a list of my favorite things from the week. If you want a comprehensive look at what happened in the realm of Microsoft, head to the archives for all the information.
Now, be sure that you are following TNW Microsoft on Twitter, and Facebook, and let’s get into the news. Read more...
HP cuts 275 jobs as webOS transitions to open-source
Hewlett-Packard has cut 275 jobs in its webOS group, as part of its strategy to turn the operating system over to the open-source community, a source said Tuesday.
HP said last year that it would stop making devices that use the operating system which was developed by Palm for phones and tablets, and later decided to release the software under the Apache License 2.0. HP had acquired Palm in 2010.
As webOS continues the transition to open-source software, HP no longer needs many of the engineering and other related positions that it required before, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. "This creates a smaller and more nimble team that is well-equipped to deliver an open source webOS and sustain HP's commitment to the software over the long term," it added. Read more...
Will Windows 8 sticker shock leave Microsoft unstuck?
"Sticker shock" is a US phrase that denotes a shopper’s surprised and generally disgusted reaction upon discovering the true price of an item they’re buying.
Microsoft experienced a different kind of sticker shock a few years back with Windows Vista: such a memory and CPU hog was Windows Vista that most PCs of that time struggled to run Redmond's latest client operating system.
A lot of software and many peripherals also didn’t work with it. Read more...
IBM puts AIX 5.3 on extended life support
Two of IBM's oldest and most popular operating systems for its Power-based servers are being put out to pasture after years of service.
Last week, IBM said that it would be offering service extension on AIX 5.3, the operating system that was announced way back in July 2007 concurrent with Power5-based System p5 and i5 iron. AIX 5.3 was the first release of IBM's homegrown Unix variant that supported logical partitions (making a virtual machine that spans cores) and micropartitions (the ability to carve one core into as many as ten virtual machines); it also offered symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) shared memory that spanned up to 32 cores. The combination of AIX 5.3, decent Power5 iron, and very aggressive pricing put Big Blue on top in the Unix business.
IBM actually stopped selling AIX 5.3 back on April 29 last year, and offers AIX 6.1, launched in September 2008, and 7.1 – which debuted in August 2010 as the Power7-based systems were being rolled out – for licensing on current and prior Power Systems iron. IBM plans to cut off standard support on AIX 5.3 on April 30 this year. After that you will need to get extended support or move your AIX 5.3 to a workload partition.
Starting with AIX 7.1, IBM allowed the Unix operating system to carve up a virtual private server, called a workload partition, and run AIX 5.2 applications inside of this unchanged. This workload partition support for AIX 5.2 was important since none of the modern Power systems support this vintage operating system. Read more...
Nokia gets another OS
Nokia has gone out and bought itself another operating system. It has snapped up the privately-held Norwegian company Smarterphone, which licenses a touchscreen featurephone OS, for an undisclosed sum. The company describes its eponymous platform (now up to version 3.0) as competing in the market of $25 to $75.
The business has been around since 1993, but operated under the name Kvaleberg until a year ago. It boasts a clutch of Asian licensees including Compal. Industry readers with long memories may remember OpenWave's V7 software; parts of that are included in the Smarterphone stack. Read more...
Users desert Windows XP in near-record numbers
Microsoft's Windows XP shed a large amount of usage share again last month as users continued to desert the decade-old operating system for Windows 7.
Windows XP lost 2.4 percentage points of share to post a December average of 46.5%, a new low for the aged OS in the tracking of Web metrics firm Net Applications. The month's fall nearly matched the record 2.5-point drop of October.
In the four months from September to December, XP jettisoned more than 11% of its share as of Sept. 1, falling by nearly six percentage points during the period.
The four months prior to that -- May through August -- XP lost only 3.4 points, or about 8.5% of the share it owned as of May 1. Read more...
Microsoft mum on leaked Phone OS plans
Microsoft has told The Register that it has no comment on an apparently leaked copy of upgrade plans for its mobile phone operating system.
The presentation, leaked to Wmpoweruser.com, predicts an upgrade to the current Mango platform in the second quarter of 2012 – dubbed Tango. Described as “products with the best prices,” this would suggest a low-level stability upgrade to cover the cheap and dirty end of the market, to try and halt Android’s increasing domination of the sector. Read more...
Windows 8 app store coming soon – enterprise and developer details revealed
Microsoft has given more details on what to expect from its upcoming Windows Store for Windows 8 – the shop window for apps based on Windows 8's Metro interface.
Unlike previous Windows' interfaces, Metro is a tile-based system specifically designed for touchscreens - having already premiered as part of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.
According to Microsoft, enterprise IT managers have been asking about "deployment and management scenarios, such as compliance and security" around Windows 8, Ted Dworkin, partner program manager for the Store wrote in a blog post.
IT managers will be able to control what apps users can access from the Windows Store, or indeed whether they can access the store at all, Dworkin said. Read more...
Microsoft thinks Windows Phone has Siri’s functionality covered
Whether you’re a fan of Siri or not, few of us would claim that any non-Apple platform has anything quite like it. The Android loyal will correctly point out that their OS has had voice commands and dictation for ages, but even the most hardcore fanboy will acknowledge that it lacks the conversational AI element to truly be a Siri rival. Maybe somebody needs to tell this to Microsoft. One of their execs stated in an interview that Windows Phone has had Siri-like functionality from the beginning.
The statement was from Microsoft chief strategy and research officer Craig Mundie. When pressed on Siri, he dismissed the AI assistant as “good marketing,” claiming that telling a Windows Phone to text somebody and dictate your message is just like having Siri. He seemed especially excited about being able to “query anything through Bing just by saying the words.” Read more...
Microsoft reassures Apple, Android users of Skype
As it wrapped up its acquisition of Skype, Microsoft again assured users that it would continue to develop versions for platforms other than Windows.
Earlier today, Microsoft announced that it had closed the $8.5 billion deal for Skype, the Luxembourg-based Internet phone and chat giant. Microsoft and Skype unveiled the planned acquisition in May.
Skype will operate as a new business division within Microsoft, and Tony Bates, formerly the chief executive of Skype, will report directly to Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer.
In May, Ballmer promised that his company would continue to develop and support Skype on rival platforms.
"A, I said it and I meant it," Ballmer said when a reporter asked for assurances that Skype would continue to support operating systems and devices not sold by Microsoft. "B, we're one of the few companies with a track record of doing this," Ballmer added, citing Microsoft's Office edition for the Mac. Read more...