Saran999
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Lamborghini has taken the wraps off the Veneno Roadster, a stunning embodiment of speed and audacity limited to a handful of production models in 2014.
As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, Lamborghini has unveiled a raging beast of a prototype. Next year, the luxury supercar company will launch a super-limited run of one of its most exclusive models: the Veneno Roadster, a sports racer with an asking price of more than $4.5 million.
The sleek carbon fiber roadster follows the Veneno, unveiled in March and limited to a production run of just three cars. They're named after a famous Spanish fighting bull -- the fierce beast that adorns Lamborghini's logo -- to signify power, strength, and vigor.
With its cutting lines and brilliant red body, the open-topped Veneno Roadster is a stunning embodiment of speed and audacity.
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The mellifluous sounds of the cello have been delighting ears since the 18th century, but the instrument's form has changed little over the centuries. Adhesives giant Bayer MaterialScience has a suggestion or two about that.
What would Bach say? The Cello 2.0 is designed to be interactive.
The manufacturer recently unveiled a futuristic redesign of the venerable stringed instrument, and has been showing it off at K 2013, a plastics and rubber trade show in Germany.
The Cello 2.0 is made of transparent, lightweight cast resin fashioned in a swirling cutaway shape that's designed to make it much more portable. But it also plays videos.
The concept instrument has some features of a regular electric cello, yet it was tweaked by design firm TEAMS Design, which describes it as"the first musical instrument with the ability to express the user's performance not only through sound, but also through visual effects on its own body. This allows the instrument and its user to interact and communicate with their audience in a completely new manner."The neck and fingerboard incorporate "different LEDs and mini video projectors," according to a Bayer release, while "a tuning device or surfaces for video jockeying (VJing) can also be installed in the instrument. In one alternative solution, LEDS and ultraflat OLED displays could be integrated directly and used to display photos and videos."
The cello's surface can display graphics or videos, as shown in the illustration above. A pattern of light could display the rhythm of a piece the cellist is playing, for instance, or show when the wrong notes are being played.
It could also change color when its tuning or intonation is off.
"This would mean a completely new approach to training and teaching, using the visual context as an additional feedback besides the sound,"TEAMS Design said in a release.
"Professional musicians could benefit from a personal visual reflection of their music and enhance their live sessions.""Many people dream of learning a musical instrument that is not only easy to play but also easy to carry around. Making music is even more fun when it is associated with completely new and special experiences,"Bayer said.
The company's polycarbonate-ABS plastic blend has already been used to make a funky alto saxophone that's one of the lightest in the world, and it wants to create keyboard, plucked, and wind instruments based on the Cello 2.0.
Whatever will they think of next? I, for one, still love my battered old electric bass.
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Have you always wanted to turn an Internet video or animated GIF into a lenticular print? There's a Kickstarter project for that.
Unhappy leaving animated GIFs relegated to the Internet, a duo from Brooklyn, N.Y., wants to turn them into coaster-sized cards that play when you angle them back and forth.
You might have seen something similar on souvenir postcards or movie posters, but designers Rachel Binx and Sha Hwang who launched a new Kickstarter project called Gifpop!, see the70-some-odd-year-old lenticular film technology as a business opportunity.
The project, which has already raised more than twice its minimum goal of $5,000, aims to turn GIFs as well as videos from Vine and Instagram into printed cards that can play back "around" 10 frames of any animation. Binx and Hwang say they're planning to use the money not just to set up the production of said products, but also a site that will let users upload that content and get it printed out to different sizes of cards.
Part of that plan also involves offering up a place for GIF artists to hawk their wares on the Gifpop site, and the pair is giving some early backers copies of some of those designs.
"Gifpop is a product, but it is also a provocation,"the pair says.
"We want to explore and build new avenues for digital artists to make a living, and we want to do this in public."This isn't the first such project to turn GIFs into physical keepsakes. Back in 2007, Motionbox (which was bought up by HP's Snapfish and later shut down) turned user videos into flipbooks for $8.99. An unrelated DIY version of that idea remains through GIFprint, which turns animated GIFs into printable PDFs that can be converted (by hand) into flipbooks. There was also the 2011 "Physical GIF" Kickstarter project that aimed to do the same thing using laser-cut zoetropes. And not to be outdone, there's also the GIF-TY, a concept product that would not only capture 1 to 5 second video clips, but also turn them into a paper flipbook.
Of course none of those held the potential to double as a coaster, an unadvertised (and likely unadvised) feature of this particular project.
Here's the pitch video:-
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For the first time since the launch of Piper Jaffray's semi-annual report on the habits of American teens, Facebook lost its spot as the most important social network among teenagers.
Facebook's popularity among teen users has been on a steady slide, with many complaining that its size, privacy risks and tendency to incite drama has made it a "social burden." Just 23 percent of teens now deem Facebook the most important site, down from 42 percent from a year ago, according to Piper Jaffray's survey. Facebook is tied with Instagram -- a social network a third its age, with a tenth as many users -- as the second most important social media service among teens. Twitter came out as number one.
The survey, which polled 8,650 teens, looks bad for Facebook, but it's not all good news for Twitter: Its popularity among teens has actually dropped 4 percent since the spring. And while Facebook might be less likeable to teens, there's evidence they're still using it more than any other social network. A quarter of teen social media users are on Twitter, 94 percent have Facebook profiles and 11 percent have Instagram accounts, according to Pew's 2013 report. Also, remember, Facebook owns Instagram.
The real winners of the Piper Jaffray survey are a bit harder to tease out. Certainly Instagram can celebrate -- the percentage of teens who consider it the top social site has nearly doubled in a year. The big growth of the "other" category suggests services like Vine and Snapchat, not specifically mentioned by the survey, are also taking off. Facebook, once the dominant social networking service, is facing competition from more niche sites, which seem to have real cachet among younger users. Facebook's attempt to replicate its way to lasting dominance doesn't look to be paying off.
Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly insisted Facebook doesn't have a teen problem. He assured investors in July that Facebook had signed up virtually the entire population of American teens, whom he noted were using the site as actively then as they had in the preceding year-and-a-half. Using and joining Facebook is one thing. Liking it, however, is another. -
Samsung is working on its own head-mounted display to take on Google Glass, a new patent filing reveals. Partly confirming an earlier rumor, the design patent filing shows a pair of spectacles listed as "sports glasses," with its general design and functionality bearing a considerable resemblance to that of Google's own device.
The Korean design spotted by the Wall Street Journal mentions that the glasses have integrated earphones for music and phone calls, rather than using the same bone conduction technology that Glass employs. A small display in front of one eye, built into a transparent or translucent lens, displays notification alerts from the smartphone, but it could in theory offer similar functionality to Google's version. While Glass connects wirelessly, cables from either side of the Samsung device lead back and join together into one single connecting plug.
While the filing at least confirms that Samsung is working on such devices, it is probable that any released device of this kind will go through a few more design iterations to improve some aspects, such as removing the connecting cable. If it does reach the market, it has to take on not only Glass, but also a potential competitor from Microsoft, as well as a whole raft of smart watches, including Samsung's own Galaxy Gear.
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It’s not long now until Microsoft will start shipping out stock of Xbox One consoles to retailers. But even with tight security surrounding the distribution and launch, some leaks are bound to happen. The latest is a leaked copy of the manual, although I’d usually call this a quick start guide.
The guide details how to go about connecting your console to a TV, cable box, and the Kinect, as well as how to insert the batteries on the controller and get the headset working. But by far the most interesting piece of information it contains is the optimal positioning guidance for the Kinect sensor.
Here’s the diagram taken from the manual:
As you can see, the optimal height for the Kinect sensor is a minimum of 0.6 meters from the ground all the way up to 1.8 meters. Players should not stand or sit closer then 1.4 meters from the Kinect.
The height measurements match those of the original Kinect for the Xbox 360, however, the distance players need to stand back from the sensor has been reduced. With the original Kinect you had to be at least 1.8 meters away when playing alone, or 2.4 meters if there were two players. In other words, Xbox One with Kinect is going to work in smaller rooms or without you having to move your furniture back to make sure you have the required minimum distance to the sensor.
The only other details this guide:http://jogos.download.uol.com.br/levelup/manual_xboxone.pdf
reminds us of is the fact the Xbox One has a power brick and that you still need batteries to power the controller. A Play and Charge Kit will be available, but that’s an extra $25 you need to spend.
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Samsung has been ordered to pay 10 million New Taiwan dollars (or $340,000 USD) for organizing an internet campaign that violates fair trade rules, reports Bloomberg.
It was discovered to be hiring writers to post positive comments about its own smartphones, and leave negative comments about HTC’s products. This was done through a third-party marketing campaign, and two marketing firms have also been fined a total of more than $100,000 for their participation.
This isn’t the first time Samsung has been caught doing this – earlier this year it admitted to bribing developers to promote Samsung on the developer community Stack Overflow.
This is a very minor victory for HTC, but it seems that damage has already been done, as the company recently posted its first quarterly loss.
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Amongst the more than 400 species of plants and animals discovered in the Amazonian jungles is a monkey that purrs softly like a cat. In a period of 4 years, scientists discovered 441 new plants and animals species. The total number of plants is in excess of 200 species.
Well over 80 types of fish, 59 amphibians, 22 reptilian members, 18 avian cousins and one mammal have been found to exist in the Amazon canopy forests. It is a vast biome which remains largely unexplored in many of its regions.
Included in the very bizarre and weird species that inhabit this corner of the world is a flame-patterned lizard, a very tiny frog, a vegan piranha, a fluorescent-colored serpent and a lovely pink orchid. The species form a singularly precious resource for biologists not to mention the world’s biodiversity.
“These species form a unique natural heritage that we need to conserve. This means protecting their home – the amazing Amazon rainforest – which is under threat from deforestation and dam development,”said Claudio Maretti, Leader of Living Amazon Initiative, WWF.
The peculiar monkey is called the Caqueta titi and is one among many variants in the list of primates. The young have a very cute and lovable quality. They purr when at ease. It is a great gift of the Amazon that such special species that are unique to its fundamental environment are coming on the scene thanks to efforts by scientists.
Environmentalists are doing all they can for this region. It is a source of oxygen and the rainforest acts like the lungs of the planet. Once the rainforest vanishes, humanity too will be vanquished from the face of the earth. Therefore preservation is of the essence.
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Chrome: Reading a bright screen at night is never a pleasant experience. If you're a fan of the night mode in many ereaders and apps, Hacker Vision is an extension that does the same thing on your computer and turns bright sites a darker color.
When you visit any site with a light background, Hacker Vision inverts the colors to make the background black and the text white. This should make it easier to read at night because it's not as bright. You can set Hacker Vision to pause for a while when you're browsing during the day, or only change on select sites as well. If you're looking for a little eye relief at night, Hacker Vision's a lot easier than changing the accessibility options on your computer.
Go get it at:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-vision/fommidcneendjonelhhhkmoekeicedej
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From Canon's Mixed Reality System to Microsoft's see-through 3D display to Google Glass, the world's biggest technology companies are getting good at tricking our eyes into seeing things that aren't really there. But the missing piece in the feedback puzzle has always been the sense of touch. Videogame controllers can vibrate to simulate gunfire and racing car engines, but they require you to be physically grasping the devices.
Now, however, the folks Disney Research have created a way for those tingly little nerve endings on your skin to receive feedback. And they've done it by sculpting air.
This new haptic technology is called Aireal, and through it the gamers that it's initially aimed at can feel virtual objects, experience the sensation of touching various textures, or get kinetic feedback. All without any need to wear gloves, vests or suits. Puffs of air can be controlled in terms of varying strength and speed. So it will be capable of creating a sensation as gentle as a butterfly's wings or as strong as a baseball caught in a glove.
So how the heck does this work? The technology creates a vortex, which is a tightly held column of moving air that can travel relatively far and keep its shape and speed. (A tornado is a type of vortex.) Vortices can travel much farther than regular jets of air. In fact vortices can travel nearly five feet before accuracy drops below 80 percent. But when this traveling spinning ring of air touches something, like a person's skin, the low-pressure within the vortex collapses and this produces a force the user can feel.
Next question: How can this "force" provide haptic feedback that is perceived by the user as three-dimensional?
Aireal uses a flexible nozzle secured to a gimbal (a gimbal is a structure that allows for something to rotate in all directions on a single axis.) A 3D depth camera tracks the user and using data from various sensors this nozzle can send a vortex of air to precise locations anywhere within a three-dimensional space. Place multiple nozzles in multiple locations, and you've got your dimensional bases covered.
Each module for Aireal is made from 3D printed parts so the costs of production are low. And the modules are scalable, meaning they could fit in something as small as a phone or large enough to cover a commercial theater.
Disney says there are a wide range of applications for interactive spaces: Including gaming, storytelling, but also providing physical feedback from mobile devices or other digital screens or displays.
While textual descriptions of this technology can only go so far, the folks at Engadget do a fairly good job of describing what they found at SIGGRAPH, where an Aireal demo was held. They describe the experience of feeling a virtual butterfly here:Once it landed, that small bit of air offered up the physical sensation that it was actually touching us. As we moved closer to a virtual open window, wings went a flutter and the whole sensation increased a bit. Sure, what we saw was a fairly simple use scenario, but there are aspirations for this to enhance gaming experiences and other augmented environments (likely within the confines of a Disney park, of course) with the addition of haptic feedback.
Of course a video may be the best (and fastest) way to understand and visualize the whole thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xaFBjUJj00M
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A Taiwan-based nonprofit R&D organization announced Wednesday a virtual display that allows users to control virtual keyboards and touchscreens that float out in front of users.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) said its new technology uses special glasses and DDDR (defined distance with defined range) camera technology to allow users to see and interact with virtual data, images and devices with finger strokes.
The heads-up display technology resembles the sci-fi technology displayed in the movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise.
The new i-Air Touch technology is being developed for an array of devices, including PCs and laptops, wearable computers and mobile devices, that allows a user's hand to be free of any physical device such as a touchpad or keyboard for touch input.
i-Air Touch glasses allow virtual interaction with computer screensi-Air Touch's see-through capability enables a user wearing a pair of special eyeglasses to see and interact with a virtual input device, such as a touchscreen or mouse that appears to be floating in the air, while still being able to see and interact with the real world.
"i-Air Touch creates new possibilities for wearable and mobile computing by freeing users from the distraction of locating and touching keys on a physical input device for hands-free computing and improving security over voice commands,"Golden Tiao, deputy general director of ITRI's Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories, said in a statement.
ITRI plans to license the patented technology to manufacturers. The company sees the heads-up display technology being used in not only consumer arenas, but also for medical applications such as endoscopic surgery and any industrial applications that benefit from hands-free input.
The DDDR camera is the key functional component of i-Air Touch, ITRI said. The camera discerns the virtual images for interaction, but it conserves battery power, which is a major issue facing manufacturers of many wearable computers, the company stated.How it works
The camera uses a phase- and color-coded lens to discern an object at a predetermined distance of 11 inches to 12.5 inches away from the eyeglasses. The camera detects and activates only in the presence of a fingertip within that input range. The virtual images shut off if a user's fingertip isn't present, allowing a clear field of view.
The DDDR camera essentially captures the image of a user's fingertip out in front of it and splits the image into green and red color codes to provide segmentation in image processing, while phase coding provides distance and depth perception of the fingertip.
i-Air Touch allows multiple screen/keyboard interaction.The DDDR camera lens focuses the green light component at 11 inches and the red at 12.5-inches. The combined green and red components resolve to the strongest image signal at the midpoint between the two light components (about 11 13/16-in). The camera then captures the image signal at that midpoint as "input."
Because the camera does not register signals outside of the 11-in.-to-12.5-in. virtual target plane, it consumes no power other than when a fingertip is present.https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=UUFT7NKSwWDHDecfIjnqRQjA&v=CWZUJoutGoM
Additionally, by detecting when a user's fingertip is in input range, the camera ensures that the user is intentionally trying to air-touch the virtual input device and that the camera does not mistake other user movements for input.
"A successful virtual touch triggers i-Air Touch to send a signal to the host device (a computer, laptop, smartphone, etc.) signifying that a key has been pressed or a touchscreen function has been touched,"ITRI stated in a news release.
While the glasses cannot take photos, like Google Glass, they can be used with cameras in others kinds of wearable computers, the company said. -
Dozens of screws and a 'tar pit' of glue spell 'keep out'
Teardown We knew that Microsoft's Surface Pro 2 tablets wouldn't stray too far from the original Surface Pro design - but according to the tool-and-part masters at iFixit, the new tablets are virtually identical to the old ones – meaning they're just as difficult to repair.
Surface Pro 2 with docking station
The Surface Pro 2 looks a lot like the original Surface Pro, and it's built the same, too
iFixit's teardown of the new slate reveals that its guts are full of thick, tacky glue and more than 90 screws, just like its predecessor. And just like the first Surface Pro, it earns a Reparability Score of 1 out of 10 – which, as iFixit observed last time around, is the lowest score ever received by any fondleslab.
In fact, a lot of the Surface Pro 2 internals looks familiar. The new motherboard is virtually the same as the old one, except that it's now a shade of bluish-green and some of the components have been sourced from new suppliers.
If you can pry it open without destroying it, you'll find familiar components inside
The biggest change, naturally, is that the new Surface Pro is powered by a fourth-generation Intel Core i5 processor based on the Haswell microarchitecture, instead of the original Surface Pro's Ivy Bridge chip. But it's a 1.7GHz quad-core processor, just like the old one, so you're not likely to see much performance improvement.
The Intel Core i5-4200U CPU (boxed in red) is one of the few significant upgradesAny gains in battery life are going to be mostly down to the Haswell design, because the Surface Pro 2 uses the exact same LG "Escalade" 42 watt-hour battery as the original Surface Pro, rated for 7.4 volts and 5676mAh.
It's a nice battery, as iFixit noted in its teardown of the first Surface Pro. But it didn't exactly give that slab what you'd call a stellar battery life, and early reports suggest the Surface Pro 2 performs only marginally better.
Microsoft is clearly still expecting a fair amount of heat from the new processor, too, because the Surface Pro 2 includes what iFixit describes as a "notebook-worthy" copper heat sink and the same twin miniature fans as the earlier-generation Surface Pro, although the fans are designed to run less frequently in this model to save power.
The Surface Pro 2's SSD by SK Hynix is rated for much faster write speeds than the earlier generationOther components are slightly different from those used in the original Surface Pro, but only slightly. Microsoft has swapped out the Surface Pro's Micron SSD for a 128GB SK Hynix HFS128G3AMNB. Like the earlier drive, it's a 6Gbps SATA number, but while its rated read performance is similar to the Micron drive's at 505MB/sec, its write performance is much better at 470MB/sec, rather than the Micron drive's 95MB/sec.
Redmond has also gone with SK Hynix as its RAM supplier this time around, where the first-generation Surface Pro used Micron for that, too. The Surface Pro 2 uses four H9CCNNN8JTML 1GB DDR2 chips to get its 4GB total memory, as opposed to the eight chips that went into the Surface Pro.
Still, other pieces are unchanged. The Surface Pro 2 uses the same three Atmel MXT154E touchscreen controllers as the Surface Pro, for example, plus the same Realtek ALC3230 audio chip and the same Marvell Avastar 88W8797 integrated Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM radio controller.
Compare the motherboard to the Surface Pro's and you'll see there's not much changeBut the biggest similarity between the Surface Pro 2 and the original Surface Pro is a disappointing one, in that all of these components are still painfully difficult to get to. The display is, as iFixit put it, "trapped like a baby diplodocus in a treacherous tar pit of black adhesive," and the battery is also glued to the case, not to mention all of those pesky screws.
This means that while it's technically possible to swap out the SSD and the battery, as was the case with the Surface Pro, you can't even get at these components without an arduous opening procedure that involves a heat gun and a very steady hand.
"One slip-up," iFixit's repair gurus explain, "and you'll likely shear one of the four ribbon cables in the edge of the display."
You've made it this far – now get out your glue gun and put it back togetherIt was for this reason that the original Surface Pro received an even lower Reparability Score than the 2 that iFixit gave to Apple's fourth-generation iPad, and while we have yet to see how the new iPad Air fares on the same scale, the Surface Pro 2 scores just as low as its predecessor.
The result is a tablet that is practically unrepairable and is therefore, in essence, disposable. The Reg has criticized Microsoft before for adding to the pile of discarded tech in the world's landfills, and we're disappointed to report that the Surface Pro 2 does nothing to slow this trend. -
Did you hear? Apple unveiled its latest iPad – the iPad Air – yesterday. The company boasted that it was the lightest full-sized tablet in the world at just 1 pound, and even tossed in free iLife and iWork apps to sweeten the deal for those buying the new 64-bit tablet.
Now, new Apple products are always a source of joy for the ardent Apple devotee, but it’s also a source of humor for everyone else. Enter NMA – it’s latest parody revives the ghost of Steve Jobs for one more sketch as it makes fun of everything from the iPad’s dwindling marketshare to Apple’s developer policies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1QgiaJqlVQU
Google’s latest smartphone – the Nexus 5 – and tablet – the Nexus 10 – are expected to be unveiled next week. Here’s hoping NMA has more fun with that next week.
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A sponge is a sponge because its porous material is able to absorb liquid of any kind. But what about liquid metal? Can a sponge actually absorb the heavy quicksilver material known as mercury? Not at all. At best, a little bit of mercury goop gets caught on top of the sponge and slides away like its T-1000 shaping itself back together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PWCx3faQSfQ
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Yesterday, Apple not only released its OS X Mavericks operating system, it also announced that it would be free. That's great! For you, for Apple, and for the future of computing.
Releasing Mavericks for free seems like a simple idea. And in theory, it is. But in practice, the logistics are a bit more complex. Not only have previous versions of OS X actually made Apple money, which Apple is now passing up, but offering up big files for download costs Apple money. Especially when everyone and their brother (or in this case, millions of existing Mac owners) is pulling down an update. Mavericks isn't just free for you, it's expensive for Apple.
But don't you worry about Cupertino. They're still coming out ahead.
Why it's good for you
For starters it's free. Duh? But that helps more than just your wallet. The real benefit is that it's way more likely now that everyone else will have Mavericks too.
To see the benefit of getting all devices in an ecosystem on the same page, you don't need to look much further than Apple itself. Unless you really go out of your way to run away from updates, your iPhone is running the same OS as everyone else. Ditto the iPad. And unity is a large part of what makes the iOS App Store second to none.
Likewise, the Mavericks update should make developing for Macs a whole lot easier. Devs will now be able to reasonably assume that everyone is running the same operating system. Granted there's different hardware, but not much of it. So instead of retooling and optimizing for different versions of OS X, developers can just develop for OS X, period. That means more, better apps for you, and more websites and services taking advantage of new features like smart notifications. You couldn't ask for a better situation.
Along with the flurry of hardware updates, Apple announced substantial upgrades to iLife and iWork. Features run the gamut from seamless integration… Read…
Speaking of apps, there are the new (also free!) versions of iLife and iWork to look forward to, complete with features like new interfaces and cloud syncing. And again, it's great for you to have them, but doubly great to know everyone else does as well. It makes collaboration in iWork almost as natural of a go-to as Google Docs. Just like iMessage benefits from more of your friends being on iOS, iWork and iLife will by more people being on Mavericks.
And that little detail can suddenly make a MacBook so much more useful, even if it's (up to) five years old. Suddenly there's an even playing field that everyone gets to be on, for free. Your Mac will play nice with your iPhone will play nice with your iPad and you don't even have to think about it. That's a fantastic reason to buy into Apple right there. And if you already had, what you've got is now even better.
Why it's good for Apple
Yeah Mavericks is great for you, but it's even greater for Apple. Yes, they're losing a little of revenue up front. But this is about the long game.
Apple has always been a devoted soldier in the holy war against fragmentation. And with this one move, it can easily suck up the (Snow Leopard and up) world of Mac users, drop them in the future, and deal with them as a unified block. You've got your iOS users and your OS X users. Simple as that.
And with OSX users cordoned off into one space, it's extra easy for Apple to try to get you in for life. iLife. The new, compelling cloud features in iLife and iWork (which all OSX users who are picking up new hardware will have!) are a great way to get you really wrapped up in MacWorld and stay there for ever and ever and ever. And every person who winds up storing just a little more of their iLife in the iCloud just because Mavericks is free is another customer who's more faithful than ever.
Besides, there are few things that can generate marketing good will like "free."
That's not sinister or anything, it's just Apple's latest push on a core ideal: a great, consistent world for its users to live in. A world that's Apples to Apples. And inside that world, everybody wins.
Why it was inevitable
The end of Mac is coming, and this update is a heavy nod to that near-future. Mavericks in and of itself doesn't mean that iOS and OS X are definitely on a path to converge or that the merge is imminent. But it will happen eventually, and when it does, OS X updates (or whatever it's called at that point) will have to go free. You can't just start charging to upgrade an iPad.
So did Apple just kill the paid OS update forever, for real? It's a coup de grâce if anything; the paid OS update has been dying for years. Even now, when the hard evidence to suggest that a OSX/iOS convergence is in the works, we're already seeing this move towards mobile, where the baseline price there is already "free." And with the cross-platform hooks in iLife and iWork, the cables that will contract to pull the two operating systems closer together until the eventually merge are already in place.
You can actually see Microsoft running into the implications of this already. Windows 8.1 already sort of walks a line between incremental OS update and Service Pack, and it's free for (Windows 8 users). But if you think ahead a little further, Windows 9 will be a weird thing to price. Asking folks for money to upgrade their desktops is fair, sure. But can you imagine Microsoft having the gall to charge for upgrading to Windows 9 RT (if it even ever exists) on a Surface 2? It seems absurd.
And it looks like Apple is headed down a similar road, except it's making its changes ahead of time. By the time iOS and OSX come together, upgrade cycles and payment schemes aren't going to be something you have to think about any more. There will just be a suite of devices, some big, some small, some with keyboards, some without, and they'll all work together, play together, and upgrade together. For free.
It's a small sacrifice to make; Apple makes its money off of beautiful, high-margin hardware, end of story. That's why the iPhone 5S is (probably) outselling the iPhone 5C. It's why an underspec'd, over-priced, but still beautiful little tablet managed to make it into millions of hands. It's why the new retina iPad mini is $400 versus its $230 (and mostly comparable) contemporaries. And why it will sell like hotcakes regardless.-
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We didn't get a new verision of Android at Google I/O, but it's not like there weren't enough already. As Apple pushes on into the beautiful iOS 7 future and brings the lion's share of its user-base along, there's still a lot of Android users stuck in a multiple OS-ghettos.
Apple's walking into the launch of its new iOS7 with a whopping 93 percent of users on the current operating system, with virtually everyone else just one version behind. Android on the other hand is almost an even split between current versions and the past two.
It's this kind of unified user base that really gives Apple an edge especially when it's diving into a brave new design world like iOS 7. Meanwhile, kids in the Android slums weep silent tears onto Gingerbread screens.
What's wrong with fragmentation? DeGusta does a fine job of explaining how fragmentation screws over Android owners in terms of security and app development.
"If a security or privacy problem popped up in old versions of Android or its associated apps (i.e. the browser), it's hard to imagine that all of these no-longer-supported phones would be updated,"he says as one example.
On the flipside, he notes that Apple iPhones are updated on day one of a major iOS release, simply because Apple enjoys a direct relationship with its phone owners. On the other hand, Android has to dig through unmotivated cell phone manufacturers and conservative carriers send an update.
"In other words, Apple's way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one,"DeGusta concludes.
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I've copied it in my notebook! thanks for this, bro, it's really nice! Cheers
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Hello @Extreme100, nice to have you here in our family! You already have looked through our rules
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum-21/announcement-2-rules-of-the-cyberphoenix-community-a-must-read
and that's great! Now, please peruse our newbies section below to better know about our interface and image posting, as an example.
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum/111-newbie-zone/
Have a look at the ways to find what you need
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/topic/211201-how-to-search-cyberphoenix-forums-for-content/
and enjoy your stay! Cheers
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It's a real pleasure to have you! Welcome on board, please have a look at our rules
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum-21/announcement-2-rules-of-the-cyberphoenix-community-a-must-read
peruse our newbies section below
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum/111-newbie-zone/
have a look at the ways to find what you need
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/topic/211201-how-to-search-cyberphoenix-forums-for-content/
and enjoy your stay! Cheers
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Truth is, I've stolen this gif from an admin signature in a french forum... and that's really amused me!
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That's a really great news! I'll go and put my email to get the app for iOS as soon as I can. Thanks for sharing this, Cheers
Update: seems that I can just download the version 1.0.1.108 from iTunes right now, no need to leave my email and then waiting in line. Installing....
New Update: you got it right HM! I've installed the application, but then I'm in line waiting for the needed activation for my email address.
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No chance to beat a running car, but at least nothing seems to hurt him!
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After many year of training and experience, finally the French policeman may start to fight the crime!
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Hey @alexanderlecard, nice to meet you too!
Welcome on board, please have a look at our rules
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum-21/announcement-2-rules-of-the-cyberphoenix-community-a-must-read
peruse our newbies section below
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/forum/111-newbie-zone/
have a look at the ways to find what you need
http://www.cyberphoenix.org/forum/topic/211201-how-to-search-cyberphoenix-forums-for-content/
...and as @Saa212 already said....
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Beautiful bridges around the world
in Photography
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Thanks @vanacharla to push me to discover this thread. I love engineering and those are the best examples I've ever seen. And off course, thanks to @GemMan. I've added my likes accordingly... Cheers