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Posts Tagged ‘Ahead’

Week in Apple: iPad day looms, Mac gamers rejoice, and more

As St. Patrick’s Day draws near, Apple fans are counting themselves among the lucky. After all, Steam is finally coming to the Mac, the iPad finally has a ship date, and the iPad developer program now has a much lower barrier to entry. Read on for the top Apple news from the last week:

HTC lawsuit came after warning by Apple to handset makers: Apple supposedly contacted executives at “tier-1″ handset makers in January saying it was ready to go to the mat over its iPhone-related IP. Those warnings, coupled with Apple’s complaints against HTC, may have a chilling effect on smartphone makers for the indefinite future.

Valve: full “Steam” ahead on Mac OS X with free syncing: Valve is bringing its online service to the Mac in April and plans to make its Source engine cross-platform. Along with the new cross-platform strategy, Portal 2 will be the first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows.

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Palm offering discounted contract-free phones to developers — too bad they’re carrier locked

Usually when we hear the phrase “contract-free developer phone” the words “unlocked” and “GSM” follow shortly thereafter, but apparently Palm didn’t get the memo — it just announced discounted hardware prices for its devices, but they’re carrier-locked to Verizon and Sprint. Yeah, that’s a big sad face out of us — it’s not like Verizon’s going to give you a cheaper plan if you show up with a contract-free device. In fact, you might be better off picking up a $79 Pre on a Sprint contract from Amazon and just canceling after a year or so — the ETF will have been prorated to $120 by then, putting you way ahead of Palm’s $439 price tag. So much for that dream — at least we still have our fantasy of driving to Mexico for an illicit Telcel Pre smuggling run.

Palm offering discounted contract-free phones to developers — too bad they’re carrier locked originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI announces GT660 gaming laptop ahead of CeBIT

MSI announces GT660 gaming laptop ahead of CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ModisTech to commercialize cheap, flexible OLED lighting this year

ModisTech to commercialize cheap, flexible OLED lighting this year originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 20 Feb 2010 06:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Liquid e, beTouch E110 / E400, and neoTouch P300 / P400 hands-on

Acer took MWC rather seriously this year with no fewer than five phone intros to its name spanning the range from Android to Windows Mobile 6.5.3, so we went ahead and put our hands on all of them today. Starting at the bottom of the range, the lowly beTouch E110 is obviously designed to compete head-to-head with the likes of the HTC Tattoo — in fact, it apes the Tattoo’s design pretty closely in some respects. Unlike Acer’s higher-end Android phones, the E110 uses a custom skin that seems pretty well-suited for its QVGA resolution, and it’s still managing 3.6Mbps HSDPA in your choice of 900 / 2100 and 850 / 1900 flavors for different areas of the world. It feels as cheap as it looks, but as long as it’s priced appropriately, we still think it’s a reasonable way to get new audiences on the smartphone bandwagon.

Follow the break for more impressions, shots, and video!

Continue reading Acer Liquid e, beTouch E110 / E400, and neoTouch P300 / P400 hands-on

Acer Liquid e, beTouch E110 / E400, and neoTouch P300 / P400 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Late Last Year, Google Overtook Apple In WebKit Code Commits

Today, the blog Chromium Notes, which is written by a developer who works on the open source project (that Google Chrome is built on top of), posted a very interesting graph: one that shows the number of code commits to WebKit. Notably, it appears that Google has overtaken Apple as the organization that contributes the most commits to the open source project.

Now, the author is quick to point out the caveats of the graph (and does so for four paragraphs), and notes that he was hesitant to even publish it because of how easy it is to misinterpret. The graph, while it shows commits, doesn’t weigh more important ones versus less important ones. Nor does it in any way measure the ways in which companies or individuals contribute to WebKit in other meaningful ways. That said, it does clearly show that in late 2009, Google surpassed Apple as the company that now contributes the most (again, in terms of commits) to the project.

WebKit is the open source web browser engine that both Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers (among others) are built on top of. As such, it should be obvious why both are so heavily involved in the project (others on the graph include Nokia and BlackBerry maker RIM).

The graph ranges from 2007 to the present. According to it, on November 15, 2009 Google surpassed Apple in number of commits for the first time. Google has been ahead ever since, and the gap between the two appears to be growing. That said, the two big spikes for Apple came during major releases of Safari, so when Apple releases another version, it could spike up ahead of Google once again.

I’ve included a picture of the graph below (Apple is the blue line, Google is green, “Other” is purple, Nokia is gold, and RIM is light blue). But be sure to check it out on Chromium Notes’ site as you can drill-down to see more detail there. The author has also posted the code for the graph on github.

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Google mum on Chrome OS touch support, Chromium devs show us how it might look anyway (video)

While those initial leaked specs for a Chrome OS-based netbook unabashedly specified a multitouch panel, Google is remaining shy on confirming just what it’s up to in the fingerprint department. When Google’s Senior Product Manager of Search was asked pointedly about touch support in the OS, according to TechRadar he looked nervously at a PR manager before failing to provide a concrete answer. Read that how you will, but the open source wing of the OS, Chromium, has gone ahead and created its own vision of what touching chrome might look like, including a very compelling video we’ve included for you after the break. This includes popup context menus, a selection of finger- and thumb-friendly keyboards, and of course some delicious multitouch support. Interestingly, if the scale of the hands in the video below is anything to go by, the Chromium group expects an eventual Chrome OS tablet to be between three and five feet wide, which might be a little cumbersome for those with diminutive laps.

Continue reading Google mum on Chrome OS touch support, Chromium devs show us how it might look anyway (video)

Google mum on Chrome OS touch support, Chromium devs show us how it might look anyway (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Talkcast 10 pm tonight: Looking ahead to Macworld Expo

Filed under: TUAW Business, Podcasts

Talkcast time again! We’ll review the week’s news, consider the latest tablet tidbits, and then look back at CES and ahead to Macworld Expo.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantange of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/macinate/ / CC BY 2.0

TUAWTalkcast 10 pm tonight: Looking ahead to Macworld Expo originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 10 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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