Beyond smartphones: 12 crazy places you'd never expect to find Android
What a long, strange trip it's been.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
PC lovers rejoice! Windows 8.1 is here, and it's chock full of refinements and fresh new features that make Microsoft's finger-friendly, Live-Tile-spattered vision of the future more appealing--or at least less annoying--than ever before. But as helpful as those tweaks to Windows 8's modern interface are, they won't matter a lick to devout desktop diehards, who are no doubt muttering something about lipstick and pigs this very second.
Some of the best things in a PC lover's life are indeed free, but they're not always obvious.
Tremors are a-quaking throughout the PC industry, and the violent shake-up is turning former bedfellows into bitter rivals. Over the past year, PC makers have been vocally complaining about Microsoft's recent decisions, and what's more, virtually every manufacturer has put their money where their mouths are, turning to the open arms of Android and Chromebooks in ever-increasing numbers.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such thing as a free app. In fact, there's a veritable avalanche of them: On Thursday, research firm Gartner released a report predicting a whopping 102 billion - yes, with a "b" - apps will be downloaded in 2013, and an even more whopping 91 per cent of those will be of the no-cost variety.
You've bumped your phone, you've bumped your speaker, and you may have even bumped your laptop or printer, but you've never been able to bump your desktop--until now. Asus has announced the M70 PC, a tower the company claims is the first NFC-enabled desktop PC. (We'll give 'em the nod for being the first NFC-enabled tower PC, but HP's Spectre One all-in-one had NFC all the way back in January.)
Today may be all about Apple in the grand scheme of things, but while the world hears all the details about the latest and (presumably) greatest iPhone, Intel has tossed hardcore PC enthusiasts a significant turbo-charged bone: new Ivy Bridge-E Extreme Edition processors, a.k.a. the most blistering CPUs enthusiasts can readily buy.
It looks like you can stimulate demand for the Surface RT--if you give them away for practically nothing.
The pitchfork wielders have won: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is retiring sometime in the next year, after he completes the search for a successor. And you know what? It couldn't have happened at a better time.
We are gathered here today to mourn the death of the Ubuntu Edge. This ambitious project blurred the line between smartphone and PC, and while it burned but only briefly, it burned brightly enough that its legacy will live on in the hearts of future generation of phones.
Mixing modern style with business needs
Few Windows hybrids highlighted the compromises inherent in straddling device genres as thoroughly as the original Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11. Physically designed as a "notebook first" hybrid, yet sporting a tablet-oriented ARM processor and the neutered Windows RT operating system, it was nothing short of an elegant piece of convertible hardware crippled by its slate-friendly software.
Google's unrelenting march into Microsoft's turf continues.
Mere days after Microsoft was forced to slash the price of the Surface RT in an attempt to move more of the moribund tablets, Windows RT has received yet another no-confidence vote: Asus plans to pull back from the mobile-focused platform.
Chalk this up in the "funny, but not really" category: Last week, a company working with Microsoft to combat copyright pirates asked Google to remove multiple Microsoft Web pages from Google searches - for infringing Microsoft copyrights.