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Neptune is calling its new project the Neptune Suite. At its most basic, it's six different pieces of hardware that Neptune promises will work seamlessly with one another. Yet where every major company with a smartwatch (short of Samsung), has put the heavy lifting on people's smartphones for things like network connectivity and apps, Neptune wants to put it on your wrist.hubIn the middle of it all is a wrap-around, water-resistant smartwatch called "the hub," which has a 2.4-inch capacitive touchscreen, a 3G/LTE modem that works with nano-SIM cards, and runs Android 5.0 Lollipop. Joining it are a "pocket screen" and "tab screen," which expand the screen on the hub using super-fast, short-range wireless standard 802.11ad WiGig. Adding to that are three accessories: a keyboard that can turn the tablet into a notebook of sorts; a dongle with HDMI that will let you push what's on your hub to other screens (like Google's Chromecast); and last but not least, a set of wireless headphones.A very interesting idea, but in my view, a misguided one. This idea would work a lot better if the central device wasn't an unwieldy, huge bracelet, but the smartphone. I long for the day my smartphone can replace my PC, connecting to displays and peripherals without ever taking it out of my pocket.

Google Play, Google's marketplace for Android applications which now reaches a billion people in over 190 countries, has historically differentiated itself from rival Apple by allowing developers to immediately publish their mobile applications without a lengthy review process. However, Google has today disclosed that, beginning a couple of months ago, it began having an internal team of reviewers analyze apps for policy violations prior to publication. And going forward, human reviewers will continue to go hands-on with apps before they go live on Google Play.I haven't noticed any slowdowns or complaints from developers so far.

While Microsoft has dropped hints that the Internet Explorer brand is going away, the software maker has now confirmed that it will use a new name for its upcoming browser successor, codenamed Project Spartan. Speaking at Microsoft Convergence yesterday, Microsoft's marketing chief Chris Capossela revealed that the company is currently working on a new name and brand. "We're now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10," said Capossela. "We'll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we'll also have a new browser called Project Spartan, which is codenamed Project Spartan. We have to name the thing."The only sensible move. The Internet Explorer name is tainted far, far beyond repair.

Apple Pay itself should, in theory, cut down on fraud because it makes stealing credit card information almost impossible. Each time a transaction takes place, Apple generates the equivalent of a new credit card number so the merchant never actually sees a customer's information.The vulnerability in Apple Pay is in the way that it - and card issuers - "onboard" new credit cards into the system. Because Apple wanted its system to have the simplicity for which it has become famous and wanted to make the sign-up process "frictionless", the company required little beyond basic credit card information about a user. Nor did it provide much information to the banks, like full phone numbers and addresses, that might help them detect fraud early.The banks, desperate to become their customers' default card on Apple Pay - most add only one to their iPhones - did little to build their own defenses or to push Apple to provide more detailed information about its customers. Some bank executives acknowledged that they were were so scared of Apple that they didn't speak up. The banks didn't press the company for fear that they would not be included among the initial issuers on Apple Pay.It seems the Apple Pay fraud is a bit more complex than it just being the banks' fault. This is what happens when one company becomes so big and dominant that everyone else dances to their tunes. We've seen it before in technology, and it seems we are entirely unwilling to learn.In any case, letting a secretive, closed technology company take care of my payments seems like an incredibly stupid thing to do. I much prefer our banks to handle it - they're shady, too, of course, but at least here in The Netherlands, there are at least a lot of government and media eyes focussed on them, and they have far stricter laws and regulations to adhere to than a random technology company.

Windows devices can be lightweight and highly mobile, yet, when you need it, have the full capabilities of the Windows OS. The Windows Storage and Deployment Teams, the people who bring modern storage APIs, Storage Sense, setup, and servicing to your phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop would like to introduce you to how they are giving Windows 10 a compact footprint.Now that Windows runs on all manners of devices - from cheap phones to expensive gaming rigs - Windows' storage footprint is even more important than it already was. I'm glad Microsoft isn't losing sight of these lower-level things while working on Windows 10's user-facing features.That being said, the measures detailed in the blog post look an awful lot like treating the symptoms instead of the actual cause.

Engadget takes a look at the Recreated Sinclair Spectrum.With no embeddable games, the keyboard relies upon existing iOS and Android apps. Elite bundles a free app that launches with a short soundbite of the Spectrum loading sound and offers a number of free games, including exclusive rights to Chuckie Egg, and access to Sinclair BASIC. Other games can be unlocked via 79p ($1) in-app purchases. During my demo, I led Hen-House Harry through a number of levels and the gameplay was exactly like I remember it, as was the tactile feel of the rubberized keyboard. You don't realize just how much you missed those 8-bit soundtracks and super-simple graphics.I love that we live in an age where incredibly niche devices like this can be made and sold.

Exactly 20 years ago today, one of the best - I would argue, the best - video game(s) of all time was released: Chrono Trigger. This Gamastura article from 2012 gives a lot of fantastic insights into the game's complex, modular story.From Mass Effect to Skyrim, modern RPGs go to great lengths to merge linear, carefully crafted narrative with dynamic, emergent gameplay. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours are poured into these incredibly complex works, all in the effort to create a believable, cohesive story while giving players a sense of freedom in the way they play their game. The results of these efforts have been best-loved play experiences video games have offered.But the goal of marrying linear narrative to dynamic gameplay is not out of reach for developers that don't have the resources to create such complex systems. No game shows this better than the classic RPG Chrono Trigger. Crafted by Square's "Dream Team" of RPG developers, Chrono Trigger balances developer control with player freedom using carefully-designed mechanics and a modular approach to narrative.Chrono Trigger is something special, something one-of-a-kind that cannot be replicated. You see its influence in so many games today, and even on its own, despite its age, it can still hold itself up very well next to all the Quadruple Turbo HD Mega Graphics games of today. While Marle (or Nadia in the Japanese version) is my favourite character, it's hard to deny that as far as storyarcs go, Glenn's story is the most heartbreaking and emotional story ever told in 16 bits - and beyond (well - almost beyond).While originally a SNES game, Chrono Trigger is currently available for both iOS and Android.

Google has unveiled its new Chromebook Pixel, and The Verge has its review up.The new Chromebook Pixel is slightly cheaper than its predecessor, at $999, but it's still wildly more expensive than other Chromebooks. It has almost the exact same design as the original, and thus is a beautiful machine. It still runs Chrome OS, which has advanced significantly in the past two years, but not enough to be a real replacement for what you can do on a Mac or a PC.But the improvements in battery life and speed are both huge. When you use it, the dichotomy between what your heart wants and what your brain says is almost bittersweet. It's an amazing laptop that I want to use all the time, but when I really need to do more intensive "computer" things, it's not quite enough.Core i5, 8GB RAM, 12.85" 2560x1700 touchscreen, 12 hours of battery life (The Verge got 14 hours), $999 - but ChromeOS.

While some things about computers are "virtual," they still must operate in the physical world and cannot ignore the challenges of that world. Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (one of the most important pioneers in our field, whose achievements include creating the first compiler) used to illustrate this point by giving each of her students a piece of wire 11.8 inches long, the maximum distance that electricity can travel in one nanosecond. This physical representation of the relationship between information, time, and distance served as a tool for explaining why signals (like my metaphorical sign above) must always and unavoidably take time to arrive at their destinations. Given these delays, it can be difficult to reason about exactly what "now" means in computer systems.

Researchers working with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple's iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept.The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the "Jamboree," where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security flaws in household and commercial electronics. The conferences have spanned nearly a decade, with the first CIA-sponsored meeting taking place a year before the first iPhone was released.Outrage something something not surprised exclamation point.

Last month my fourth iPhone in six years was, in medical terms, crashing. The screen, which had pulled away from its glue, was behaving strangely. The charging port, no matter how thoroughly I cleaned it, only occasionally took power. Repair would be expensive, especially considering that my contract would be up in about six months. Buying a newer iPhone would mean spending $650 up-front, spending $450 with a new two-year contract or amortizing the price with my carrier's new early upgrade plan. I felt trapped, as every smartphone owner occasionally does, between two much more powerful entities that take me, an effectively captive chain-buying contract iPhone user, for granted. I began to take offense at the malfunctioning iPhone's familiarity. Our relationship was strained and decreasingly rational. I was on a trip and away from home for a few weeks, out of sorts and out of climate, slightly unmoored and very impatient.And so the same stubborn retail-limbic response that prevented me from avoiding this mess in the first placeâ-âby buying an AppleCare insurance planâ-âactivated once more, and I placed an order I had been thinking about for months: One BLU Advance 4.0 Unlocked Dual Sim Phone (White), $89.99 suggested retail (but usually listed lower), $76.14 open-box with overnight shipping. 1,829 customer reviews, 4.3 stars. "This isn't the best phone out there, but it is by far the best phone for only around $80-90," wrote Amazon reviewer Anne.Excellent article about what it's like to move from a top-of-the-line smartphone to the cheapest models.This is eventually going to be a huge problem for companies relying on high-end smartphones. It won't affect Apple as much (in fact, it isn't affecting them at all), but Android OEMs are feeling the heat. While the really cheap ones are probably not that interesting to us, the â¬200-â¬300 models (no contract) certainly are. They deliver similar performance at less than half the price of the latest iPhone or Galaxy.

Watch expert Benjamin Clymer, founder and executive editor of luxury watch site HODINKEE, writing for The Verge:With Apple Watch, the price differentiation between the entry-level Sport at $349, the standard Apple Watch at $549, and the Edition at $10,000 is about perceived value - what materials are used in the case, bracelet, and straps, but also how much people believe they should be paying for the product. In addition to perceived value, mechanical watches are also priced by human value: how much of the work is done by hand (in many cases using 200-year-old methods). For example, a watchmaker named Philippe Dufour makes just 12 watches per year, alone in his one-room atelier in the mountains of Switzerland. A simple, time-only piece can cost $100,000. Whether the case is gold or platinum, the price of a Philippe Dufour watch remains (roughly) static - you are not paying for materials, you are paying for Mr. Dufour's time and touch. The Apple Watch has minimal human value, and that is the biggest difference between it and its mechanical counterparts.Just how much human value can a customer expect from a mechanical watch, relative to a similarly priced Apple Watch? The difference is startling.I'm linking this excellent piece not because I believe the Apple Watch - or any other smartwatch - competes with mechanical watches; I link to it to illustrate why it does not. No matter how much Ive-narrated gold you encase your smatwatch with, at its core, it's still just a machine-produced mass-market gadget that will be obsolete only a few years down the line. This is antithetical to what traditional, high-end horology is all about.As I've detailed before, I love watches. I'm not rich, so I buy watches in the â¬150-200 range. However, I dream of one day owning a watch from my favourite watch brand, Officine Panerai (something like this one). This company doesn't make a lot of watches, and many models are only sold on invitation. It's the kind of brand where if you have to ask about the price, you can't afford it. Luckily, the used market is a bit more forgiving.Buying a watch like this is not something you do with your mind - but with your heart. It's like buying a beautiful painting or a classic car; something that can eventually be passed down onto your children and become part of the family heritage. That's either something that appeals to you, or it doesn't. It will take a long time before smartwatches can achieve that kind of status.This, however, does not mean the gold Apple Watch models will fail - quite the opposite. I'm only trying to illustrate that high-end mechanical watches and the golden Apple Watch do not really compete with each other; they kind of exist on a plane where money doesn't matter. It's a world that us non-rich folk do not understand. A golden Apple Watch will not take the place of a high-end mechanical watch in the same way that someone's BMW 6 series isn't taking the place of her classic Jaguar E-Type.

Today we are rolling out Android 5.1 - an update to Lollipop that improves stability and performance and offers a few new features like support for multiple SIM cards, Device Protection and high definition (HD) voice on compatible phones.Not coming any time soon to an Android device near you.

Apple held its Apple Watch event today, but despite all the hype, the two most exciting announcements had nothing to do with the Apple Watch. I want to start the announcement that excited me the most, even though the general public won't care all that much: ResearchKit. ResearchKit combines the iPhone and HealthKit to allow iPhone owners to participate in medical research.This may sound like something trivial, but anyone who has ever done any serious scientific research - medical or otherwise - knows how hard it is to find enough quality participants. ResearchKit will allow users to opt-in into medical research programs, so you can collect data through your iPhone and send it straight to researchers. They can then use this data to aid in research for conditions like diabetes or breast cancer.In addition - and this is hugely important - Apple announced that it will release ResearchKit as open source, so that other platforms can participate in this endeavour too. In other words, Android or Windows Phone users could install applications to aid medical research as well, assuming developers implement support for it. I'm really hoping the big players - Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. - come together to make sure this is a proper open standard, implemented on all the major smartphone platforms.Cancer has had a huge impact on my life - even though I - thank the goddess - have never had cancer, I've had people close to me and my family die all around me ever since I can remember. I've seen families torn apart by it, I've seen people fight through it to live another day (like my mother), and I've seen people suffer horrendous pain. In fact, I'm sure we all have.However, I've also seen what medical research has done for those suffering from cancer. Even a few years can make a huge difference - breast cancer treatment today is better than it was only a few years ago. And of course, while my personal frame of reference is cancer, there are countless other horrible diseases that could benefit greatly from more and easier research participation.So yes, this was, at least for me, as a human being who cares about the people around him, the most significant and most important part of today's event. I'm setting my cynical self aside for a second, and I'm really hoping the industry gets behind this as quickly as possible. Please.That being said, on to new products. Apple announced a new MacBook that's crazy thin, has a fancy new keyboard, and a nice new touchpad. It's only 0.92kg, 13.1mm thick, and has a 12" 2304x1440 display, and comes in silver, blackish-silver and gold. The specifications are a bit disappointing, though: a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M with Intel HD Graphics 5300. It's got 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD (configurable to 512GB). Best thing: it's completely fanless.The keyboard replaces the scissor mechanism with a butterfly one, which sounds like marketing nonsense, but actually makes sense. Whereas scissor hinges causes keys to wobble upon keypress, the butterfly gine has a more uniform keypress. I'll have to try it out to see if it translates into actual benefit, but it sure does look like it. Similarly, the touchpad has been redone as well, and now implements Apple's confusing force touch stuff from the Apple Watch. I think a force touch is a harder press, but I still have no clue.All in all, this looks like a fantastic, if not underpowered laptop - until you hit the price. The price is very hefty - $1549 in the US, and â¬1449 in the EU. No thanks.Lastly, we have the Apple Watch. Apple essentially just redid the demo from late last year, showing very little new information or functionality. Basically, take any Android Wear device, add the ability to answer calls on the device itself, make the software more complicated and the UI uglier and messier, add several hundreds of dollars or euros to the price, and you've got yourself an Apple Watch. In other words, dangerously close to that Tizen Samsung Gear thing nobody wanted.Apple had one job this evening: tell us why we want an Apple Watch. Tell us why we should spend at least $349/â¬399 (the price of the small version of the cheapest model), all the way up to â¬17000 (the most expensive gold model) for a gadget so we have to take our phone out of our pockets slightly less often. The cold and harsh truth is that Apple failed to answer that question - what they showed us was a very complicated, finnicky device with an incredibly hefty price tag (only the garish aluminium/rubber small models are $349/â¬399 - the better-looking models are all around â¬900-â¬1000).You don't have to believe me - take it from The Verge's Nilay Patel, not exactly a vocal Apple critic, who actually tried the device out after the event.That's sort of the defining theme of the Apple Watch so far: it's nicer than I expected and I'm sure the confusing interface settles down into a familiar pattern after you use it for a while, but I'm still not sure why you'd want to put this thing on your wrist all the time. Apple's big task at this event was convincing people that a use case for the Watch exists, and at this moment it still feels like an awful lot of interesting ideas without a unifying theme. We'll have to wait until we get review units in hand and spend way more time with one to really understand the value of the Apple Watch.The device is riddled with unintuitive and arbitrary UI conventions, and just as I predicted when the device was first announced, Patel states it feels disjointed and confusing. This is by no means a surprise to me, but it is a surprise for a first-gen Apple product. The iPod, the first iPhone, the iPad - they were all quite intuitive and easy to grasp, but the Watch, clearly, seems not to be so.This is a matter of taste, of course, but the applications Apple showed didn't look particularly nice, either. Words like garish, information overload, cramped come to mind. Android Wear is already confusing and cumbersome at times due to the small screen, and Apple is cramming a lot more functionality and user interface in that same space. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that's not going to be easy to use. All in all, nor this event, nor the first hands-on reports seem to allay my initial concerns about the confusing and cumbersome UI.Apple promises "all-day" battery life of 18 hours, which is less than what I get out of my Moto 360 (two days easy, three days with effort), and more or less forces daily charging. It'll be available in select countries starting in April.

The Raspberry Pi 2 offers a striking resemblance to its precedessors, retains its price point of £30, but with design issues ironed out and a stonking increase in performance. It's a must buy. No, buy two or more; they are that good value.Well, that's a clear endorsement.

They're at it again.For years consumers have lifted up iOS as the safe mobile operating system. Comparatively, it does see much less malware than Android likely due to its rigorous manual testing of App Store apps and technological limitations that only allow approved apps on iOS devices. But to believe youâre 100 percent in the clear if youâre using an iOS device is a mistake.This comes straight from an antivirus peddler - the people who spread lies and FUD non-stop to scare unsuspecting users into buying their useless, crappy, resource-hogging bloated software. For every person here on OSNews who see through these companies' lies, there's a dozen regular users falling for their scams.Now, it's iOS' turn apparently. I will continue to hammer on this issue until the cows come home. Whether you're using iOS or Android, you do not need antivirus software.

After years of rapid growth, HiSilicon is now the number one IC design company in China, and in 2013 generated $1.4 billion USD. The company was formed in Shenzhen in 2004 and has since set up offices in: Beijing, Shanghai, Silicon Valley (USA) and Sweden. They predominantly produce the Kirin series of processors for Huawei which is known for appearing in the Honor and Huawei Ascend series of phones. It is possible we may even see a Kirin Processor in the upcoming Nexus which is rumored to be manufactured by the Chinese company. While nothing has been officially confirmed, a Kirin chip in the upcoming nexus would make an interesting advancement for the brand. This would be a large blow for competitor Qualcomm who has made the possessors for the previous models. Much like we saw with the Xiaomi in our article, Huawei's approach with HiSilicon appears to be growing the brand internally and locally until it is big enough and ready to branch out in to the larger world. Despite recent rumors, both Huawei and HiSilicon companies have confirmed that there are no current plans to separate.Interesting. I never realised Huawei had its own chip maker.

Microsoft hasn't released a new build of Windows 10 in several weeks but that doesn't mean we can't get a look at the upcoming Spartan browser. Thanks to a new leak from a build that has not been released, we can get a closer view of what this new feature will look like.A whole bunch of screenshots of Microsoft's new browser.

Ever since my Moto 360 and Android Wear review, I've been hammering on my disappointment in Wear's unfinished, unpolished state, and the many issues that plague the platform. Since I've been using my Moto 360 again over the past few weeks, I think it's time to give a few short updates, because a seemingly minor release - from Wear 5.0.1 to 5.0.2 - has changed a few things for the better.One of the biggest issues I encountered with Wear on the Moto 360 was laggy performance, stuttering, choppiness, that sort of stuff. After using 5.0.2 for a week or so, I've noted that this problem now seems resolved - at least for me. Touches are registered instantly, responsiveness is perfect again, and animations no longer lag and stutter. It's a world of difference.A short note on battery life: after a full day of use, my Moto 360 usually sites at around 65%-70% battery left. In other words, with some careful planning, I could squeeze a full weekend out of my Moto 360, without needing to carry my charger with me. Quite nice.None of this changes my overall perception of current smartwatches, though: they are too much computer, and too little watch. Still, these few improvements do lessen the blow somewhat, and that's always welcome.

Sometimes a few inches is all it takes to make a difference. Back when Jolla first started, a team of former Nokians taking MeeGo and spinning it into their own Sailfish OS, it became a smartphone curio. The simple UI and gesture-based navigation had promise, but compared to an iPhone, Android, or even Windows Phone device, it felt underwhelmingly simple. Now, the Finns are back with not only Sailfish 2.0, but a tablet for it to run on, and it turns out that makes for a great pairing.I can't wait for my Jolla tablet to arrive and for Sailfish 2.0 to become available for my Jolla phone. Quite exciting times.

I'm a programmer. I write games. Games programmers get a lot of respect, but none of them, not me, not Carmak, and not Abrash. None of them deserve the honour which I want to bestow on David Horne. This is because David Horne wrote the greatest program ever written: 1k chess on the ZX81.David Horne is not an urban myth. David Horne achieved what many would even now consider impossible. He wrote a chess game, with AI, that ran on a poorly documented, buggy machine that contained only 1k of memory.Sometimes I feel like these kinds of programmers are a dying breed.

It's slowly approaching five years since Microsoft first released Office for Mac 2011 in October 2010. While a final version of Office 2016 for Mac isn't ready just yet, Microsoft is announcing a preview program today for Mac users to get an early look at the company's work. Microsoft has been doing some great work with Office, bringing it to the iPad, extending it to Dropbox, and even acquiring impressive apps like Acompli to power Office on iOS and Android. Office 2016 for Mac is the latest result of Microsoft's focus on cross-platform apps, and it finally matches its Windows equivalent.Considering Office is the primary tool for my work - and thus, my livelihood depends on it - I recently jumped from Office 2011 to Office 2013. However, I decided to not buy the traditional software package, opting for an Office 365 subscription instead. For â¬99 a year, you get the full Office 2013 suite, and you can install it on 5 PCs and 5 tablets/phones. So, as a heavy user, I'm very glad Office for Mac is finally getting a new version. For us Office 365 subscribers - we get this new version "for free".Now that I've made the jump to Office as a subscription, I wonder how I ever did without.

Google's Sundar Pichai has essentially confirmed reports that the company will become a wireless provider of sorts in "the coming months." During his appearance at Mobile World Congress today, Pichai acknowledged that Google is working with "existing partners" to create its own MVNO, but stopped short of confirming that Sprint and T-Mobile are those partnering networks, as has been rumored. But he did reveal that Google has been in contact with Verizon Wireless and AT&T about its plans - likely to head off any potential ugly conflict between Mountain View and the largest, most powerful providers in the United States. "Carriers in the US are what powers most of our Android phones, and that model works really well for us," he said.Additionally, The Verge has an interesting article about just how far along Google's Project Loon is.

As of the release of Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet Beta 1, Ubuntu MATE is now officially a Canonical project, alongside the likes of Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and friends. MATE is the continuation of GNOME 2.

Jolla has "introduced" Sailfish OS 2.0. It didn't really introduce it though as it's not available to anyone right now - it's only potentially available to OEMs.The independent Sailfish OS is soon reaching a major milestone as it is scaling from smartphones to tablets with the introduction of the Jolla Tablet. The first shipments of Jollaâs second Sailfish OS product are expected to start in Q2/2015. At this point, Sailfish OS is maturing to the next generation, 'Sailfish OS 2.0', and is introducing e.g. a new enhanced user interface, support for Intel architecture, and previously unseen software integration capabilities for partners.The new interface is interesting - it greatly simplifies all the gestures and seems to function much more like Harmattan on the N9. As awesome as all this sounds, this still doesn't address the biggest concern: applications. Some may be content running Android applications (poorly) on Sailfish, but I want the real deal. However, without - still - any word on paid applications, it doesn't seem like this issue will be addressed any time soon.That being said - I'm an early backer for the tablet, and can't wait for it to arrive this May. I hope Sailfish OS 2.0 will find its way to my Jolla phone at around the same time.

Big news a few months ago: Google announced that all new devices which ship with Lollipop would have encryption enabled by default. Fast forward to today, and aside from Google's own Nexus devices, none of the new Lollipop devices actually seem to have encryption enabled by default. It turns out that Google has quietly relaxed this requirement in the Android Compatibility Definition, from 'MUST' to 'very strongly RECOMMENDED'.Why? Performance, supposedly.Our best guess at this point is that the encrypted-by-default requirement was relaxed to give OEMs more time to prepare their hardware for the transition. The performance problems can be offset by using faster flash memory, faster file systems like F2FS, and chips that are better at encrypting and decrypting data quickly, but phones and tablets take long enough to design that OEMs will need time to make these changes. Whether the change in policy was prompted by external pressure or an internal decision isn't clear, but the performance explanation makes the most logical sense.Ouch. It's pretty clear Google wanted to quickly gain some positive press, especially after Apple announced it would turn encryption on by default in iOS, but failed to look at any possible performance repercussions. Sleazy move.

NXP Semiconductors said on Sunday that it would buy a smaller peer, Freescale Semiconductor, in an $11.8 billion deal that would create a big maker of chips for industries as varied as automobiles and mobile payments.The merger will also offer some relief to the private equity firms that bought Freescale at the height of the leveraged buyout boom, only to see the financial crisis bring the company low.NXP is Dutch, and I have to admit, seeing a Dutch chip maker acquire Freescale makes me feel a little bit proud. Together with ASML, my little swamp does contribute at least something to the world of computing.

Samsung, naturally, is hoping to put the Galaxy S series back on people's radar as a top device, and it's doing so by starting afresh with the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge. Though it numerically follows the GS5, the Galaxy S6 bears little resemblance to the previous model, and marks a pretty significant change in the way Samsung designs phones. At the same time, the S6 edge picks up the fun parts of the Galaxy Note Edge and leaves behind the poor software experience.There's a brand new design philosophy in play with the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, starting with the radical hardware change and flowing into a more considered software experience. These are the phones that Samsung's hoping will change the perception of its devices in 2015 - let us show you what they're all about.After HTC, Samsung was up. Most of the information regarding the new Galasy S6 and Galasy S6 Edge were leaked before their official unveiling, so we already knew what to expect. I'm particularly pleased with Samsung greatly simplifying TouchWiz, and the simplified camera interface and performance are very welcome too. The all-metal construction is nice, and I personally really like the Edge's curved display - not because of any software functionality, but because it just looks really nice and ergonomic.During the unveiling event, one thing really stood out: confidence. Rarely have I seen Samsung personnel being this genuinely enthousiastic and confident about their new phones. They didn't resort to crazy antics or heavy buzzword dropping - they showed the device, its strengths, and that was it. For the first time, it felt as if Samsung truly believes the S6 and S6 Edge can stand on their own merit, instead of being held up by marketing and similar tricks.My contract renewal is up later this year, and the S6 looks quite intriguing, and I haven't found any Samsung phone even remotely intriguing since the SII.

It's hard not to have high hopes for the HTC One M9. Its immediate predecessor and the first phone in this rebirth of the HTC's flagship line - that'd be 2014's HTC One M8 and 2013's M7 - were fan favorites, and highly regarded by those of us who critique phones for a living.But those phones were not without their flaws. And as we've seen HTC slowly address its devices' shortcomings (while growing and innovating in other areas), it's been difficult to not expect it to finally get things - all the things - right.At least that's what we've been hoping, especially when it comes to its one tragic feature: The inconsistent performance of its UltraPixel camera.And that brings us to this. The HTC One M9. We've spent a little time with HTC's latest, and this is what we've found thus far.The HTC One M9 - the new one, announced today - looks very similar to the M8, but of course with better specifications and updated software. As much as I think the One series might be the best Android phones out there in terms of build quality, I just can't get myself to like its overall design. I do hope, though, that the M9 sells in large enough numbers, because HTC is going to need it.

Today, after 2 years and 10 months of work, we are pleased to announce the release of the Xfce desktop 4.12, a new stable version that supersedes Xfce 4.10.This long period can only be explained by how awesome Xfce 4.10 was. But as all things, it needed some refreshing - and for that we saw lots of new contributors providing valuable feedback, features and bugfixes. As always, Xfce follows its steady pace of evolution without revolution that seems to match our users' needs.In this 4.12 cycle, we mainly focused on polishing our user experience on the desktop and window manager, and on updating some components to take advantage of newly available technologies.

Huawei is about to make its presence felt at MWC with the announcement of the Huawei Watch. The watch itself was first spotted yesterday on a billboard, but we now have full promo videos for this Android Wear-powered beauty that will be made official in a few hours. Posted to the Huawei YouTube channel, two videos walk through the design process for the watch and also show how cheesy Euros are when they take vacations with their brosephs. Aside from the cheese, the videos do show one of the prettiest (this actually might be the prettiest) smartwatches we have seen to date. It features sapphire glass, a heart rate sensor, interchangeable leather or metal straps, crown, a bunch of classy watch faces, and a perfectly round watch face.This thing is just gorgeous - full stop. Of course, it still has Android Wear which needs a lot of work, but it's clear that round is the way to go. Square just looks bulky, computery, and geeky.

A Lenovo press release today:The events of last week reinforce the principle that customer experience, security and privacy must be our top priorities. With this in mind, we will significantly reduce preloaded applications. Our goal is clear: To become the leader in providing cleaner, safer PCs. We are starting immediately, and by the time we launch our Windows 10 products, our standard image will only include the operating system and related software, software required to make hardware work well (for example, when we include unique hardware in our devices, like a 3D camera), security software and Lenovo applications. This should eliminate what our industry calls "adware" and "bloatware." For some countries, certain applications customarily expected by users will also be included.A step in the right direction, but still way too much wiggle room. Why, for instance, do they insist on shipping third party antivirus crap when Windows has its own, faster security software built right in? And what are "Lenovo applications"?

Although long talked about, the Ubuntu Edge campaign exemplified the concept best with its "super phone" boast: your phone would hook up to a monitor, mouse and keyboard and become a fully functioning Ubuntu desktop PC. Phone apps would run on the desktop in an appropriate guise like responsive websites do on phones.Today, ahead of Mobile World Congress next month, Ubuntu Desktop Manager Will Cooke has posted a three-minute video that shows how Canonical's engineering team is progressing.My dream smartphone would be a phone that automatically turns into a PC the moment I get home. It knows I'm home, wirelessly and automatically hooks up to my display, mouse, and keyboard in my office, and done. Of course, it'd also automatically detect other displays and input devices in my house - say, a remote control and my TV.Ubuntu is working on it.

With version 15.02, the Genode OS project complements its existing virtualization support for the x86 architecture with virtualization on ARM by turning their base-hw kernel into a microhypervisor. Besides virtualization, the most prominent underlying theme of the current release is the project's increasing focus on test automation and optimization.Virtualization has a long history within the Genode project. After originally focusing on paravirtualized Linux kernels (L4Linux and OKLinux), the added support for the NOVA kernel and the Vancouver VMM in 2011 cleared the way towards hardware-based virtualization on the x86 architecture. In 2012, the project started exploring ARM TrustZone as another flavour of virtualization. With the Noux runtime, Genode introduced their take on OS-level virtualization. Finally, the transplantation of VirtualBox to NOVA last year marked the project's most ambitioned virtualization-related work. It enables VirtualBox to run as unprivileged user-level program on top of the NOVA microhypervisor.During 2014, the Genode developers used those accumulated experiences to conquer another ground, namely the ARM virtualization extensions. The current release extends their custom kernel (called base-hw) with support for hosting virtual machines and adds a user-level virtual machine monitor that is capable of running an unmodified Linux-based system as guest OS. At a high level, it mirrors NOVA's virtualization architecture but for ARM-based systems. The microkernel/hypervisor implements merely the VM world switch and the virtualization of memory but leaves all the complex work to untrusted user-level virtual machine monitors. In fact, the added kernel complexity on account of virtualization support is less than 1,000 lines of code.Besides the virtualization-related work, the base-hw kernel gained a further improved scheduler that takes IPC relationships into account, which is inspired by the pioneering work of NOVA. Furthermore, the project is happy to announce the principal ability to run Genode as secure-world OS on the upcoming USB Armory hardware platform.Most of the other topics of the current release are concerned with improving the performance and stability of Genode-based system scenarios. The centerpiece of these efforts is a new tool kit for automating tests on a large variety of kernels and hardware platforms. In line with this overall theme, the new version vastly improves the user experience of VirtualBox on NOVA, comes with updated rump-kernel-based file-system support, and lifts long-standing scalability limitations on PC platforms.More background information about all the improvements of version 15.02 are available in the extensive release documentation.

Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced actor who won a worshipful global following as Mr. Spock, the resolutely logical human-alien first officer of the Starship Enterprise in the television and movie juggernaut "Star Trek," died on Friday morning at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He was 83."Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... Human."

Fascinating inside scoop by WPCentral. According to them, there were very advanced talks between Microsoft and Pebble to come to a close partnership between the two companies. Microsoft built a fully functional Pebble application for Windows Phone with complete integration, offered to bundle Pebble devices with Windows Phone sales through Microsoft stores and carriers, and a whole lot more. All this was set to be announced at BUILD 2014.However, it did not come to pass.There is just one problem: Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky.Despite Microsoft's attempts to win over Pebble, Migicovsky is reportedly not a fan of the company nor their mobile operating system. The young entrepreneur reportedly nixed any partnership.Growing up in a world where Google and Apple have dominated the mobile scene, this perception that Microsoft is old and out of touch is seemingly more frequent these days. Particularly with those under 30 (see Snapchat's Evan Spiegel for a similar attitude). Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was unable to persuade him personally.If I were to take an uneducated stab at why Pebble didn't go through with this, I think we need to look no further than Apple. Apple has its watch coming, and that alone would be incentive enough for Apple to start making the life of other smartwatch makers who want to be compatible with iOS very difficult. Now imagine if Pebble, to boot, had a close partnership with Microsoft, including preferential treatment for Windows Phone? Apple is not exactly know for not being incredibly petty.I think Pebble made the wise choice here.

Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) is on the wishlist of AmigaOS users for quite some time now, and while progress has been made, we're still not there yet.To explain the progress, let us first look at the concept, and then point to where we are in the whole.AmigaOS developer Thomas Frieden goes in-depth in the work currently under way to bring SMP to AmigaOS.

Now, more than a year into the SteamOS era (measuring from that beta launch), the nascent Linux gaming community is cautiously optimistic about the promise of a viable PC gaming market that doesn't rely on a Microsoft OS. Despite technical and business problems that continue to get in the way, Valve has already transformed gaming on Linux from "practically nothing" to "definitely something" and could be on the verge of making it much more than that.Progress has been amazing, and once Valve gets its SteamOS and Steam Machines, things should pick up even more.

Google is bringing one familiar feature of Web search to its Google Play store: Paid search results.The company said it will begin testing what it calls "sponsored" search results within its app store in the coming weeks. The move is intended to help developers better promote their apps in a store that boasts more than a million choices. Of course, it will also generate more revenue for Google.Application stores are already completely and utterly useless and broken for application discovery, so I couldn't care less about this.

Pebble has unveiled its new smartwatch - the Pebble Time. From an article The Verge published about the company and this new watch:But this watch has a few tricks up its sleeve. For the first time, Pebble's smartwatch has a color e-paper LCD screen, replacing the black-and-white panels used on the Pebble and Pebble Steel. Itâs not the same kind of display you'll find on an Android Wear watch or the Apple Watch; only 64 colors are available, and it has much less contrast, saturation, and resolution than other screens. It's more like a Game Boy Color screen than a modern smartphone display. But it uses very little power and is visible in bright daylight, letting Pebble keep the display on all the time without using a lot of battery life. That helps preserve one of Pebble's strengths over the competition: the company says the Pebble Time can last up to seven days between charges, far longer than other smartwatches.Be sure to watch the video atop the article to get an idea of the awesome interface they have devised. The timeline concept, the distinctive animations - it's got some real personality and character. If you want a utilitarian smartwatch and don't care too much about looks, the Pebble seems to run circles around the charge-everyday, platform-locked competition.

Did you ever wish you could sync up your iPad's drawing or painting app directly with your Mac? Now you can with Astropad, a brand new app that literally mirrors your Mac desktop via Wi-Fi or USB.Created by two ex-Apple engineers - Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli - Astropad works with several popular brands of pressure-sensitive pens to create a pro-level drawing tablet that pairs with your Mac for illustration, sketching, painting and photo editing.This always seemed like such a no-brainer to me. In fact, I'm surprised this kind of 'tethering' functionality isn't built into iOS+OS X themselves by Apple.

A U.S. federal judge has dismissed an antitrust lawsuit that charges Google harmed consumers by forcing Android handset makers to use its apps by default, but gave the plaintiffs three weeks to amend their complaint.The two consumers who filed the suit failed to show that Google's allegedly illegal restrictive contracts on manufacturers of Android devices resulted in higher prices on phones, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman said in a Feb. 20 ruling.Handset makers are free to release Android handsets without Google's applications, however, if you want one Google Android application, you got to have them all. I don't know if the latter is harmful in any way for consumers, but the plethora of insanely cheap - and sometimes, cheap and still really good - Android devices seems to contradict the complaint from the plaintiffs that it drives up prices.

For Windows to be a truly global product, anyone in the world should be able to type in their language. The first step to unlocking text input for the world is to be able to display any of the world's languages. This is a challenging task, one which most people don't need to worry about because their language is already supported, but for millions of people around the world getting basic text support has been a problem. The stumbling block in most such cases is a little-known component called a "shaping engine". A shaping engine is used for so-called complex text layout, which is needed for about half of the world's writing systems. For many years, Windows customers have been able to install their own fonts and keyboards but before Windows 10, if there was no shaping engine for your script things wouldn't look right.Windows 10 contains a brand new shaping engine which covers many more complex writing systems than the ones that came before. As someone who's into languages (I earn my living with them), this stuff makes me giddy - even if these complex writing systems are beyond my comfort zone. Props to Microsoft for investing in this.

Hollywood 6.0 has been released. Since I'm not so sure most of you know what it is, here's the official description.Hollywood is a multimedia-oriented programming language that can be used to create graphical applications very easily. It was designed with the paradigm to make software creation as easy as possible in mind. Thus, Hollywood is suited for beginners and advanced users alike. Hollywood comes with an extensive function library (encompassing almost 700 different commands) that simplifies the creation of 2D games, presentations, and applications, to a great extent. It has been in development since 2002 and hence is today a very mature and stable software package.

As mentioned earlier, I bought an iBook G3 so I could play around with Mac OS 9 some more - one of my favourite operating systems. This time around, I'm also taking a look at HyperCard, something I never experienced but am quite interested in. Since I know many of you grew up with Apple machines and possibly HyperCard, I was wondering if any of you have any recommendations for fun, interesting, or otherwise fascinating HyperCard stacks.I can see the potential all over HyperCard from the mere demos alone - and now I want to see what smart people could do with it.

When Teddy Roosevelt declared the Grand Canyon a national monument, in 1908, he famously said: "Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it." In that sense, the Escalade is a thumb in TR's eye. Covering hundreds of acres on Navajo Reservation land, it is arguably the most intrusive development ever proposed for the Grand Canyon - a $500 million to $1.1 billion recreation and transport facility featuring a 1.4-mile tramway equipped with eight-passenger gondolas that would carry as many as 10,000 people a day down to the river confluence, with new roads, hotels, gift shops, restaurants and other attractions. The developer - Confluence Partners LLC, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based investment group whose members' ventures include real estate, resorts and theme parks - says construction of the Escalade could begin as early as this year.I've been to the Grand Canyon. It is one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring, unforgettable, and, well, grand pieces of nature our planet has to offer. My friends and I stood on one of the edges, at six in the morning, off-season in late October, without any other people around, and we slowly watched the sun rise over the Canyon, slowly lighting afire the reddish rocks as the shadows of night made way for the Arizona sun.It's not something you can describe in words or capture in a photograph. It's something you have to experience. Something emotional, and, I'm sure, for some people, something spiritual.This project should not continue. Ever. The Grand Canyon must not turn into the horrid Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

The Dell XPS 13 ends up being responsive, small, light, and well built. Dell has crafted what I am sure most people were hoping for when the original Ultrabook specification was announced. On top of that, they have designed a laptop with class-leading battery life, and plenty of choice to let people buy as little or as much as they need. Considering the competition, this is clearly the Ultrabook of the Broadwell-U generation to beat, and from what we saw at CES it may very well go unchallenged for the remainder of the year.This is the kind of stuff Dell should restrict itself to. Looks like a winner - that battery life is exceptionally amazing.

In the last few months, Cloanto started distributing Amiga System Software - the publisher traditionally refers to it as "Workbench" instead of "AmigaOS" - on CF cards, Floppy Disks and as a downloadable Workbench Disk Image Pack. Approached by Amiga-News, Cloanto's Michael Battilana confirmed that the company owns the copyrights for all works created by the Commodore/Amiga companies up to 1993.That seems like Cloanto now owns everything - but nothing could be farther from the truth, as the article details. Pieces of Amiga-related intellectual property are currently owned by three different companies, and there are also a few things with an unclear status.Cynically, you could rephrase the headline as 'Amiga IP ownership situation gets little less messy'.

As promised with the new early access program, Jolla has released the latest Sailfish update for, well, early adopters. Assuming no major issues are found, this release will be pushed to all Sailfish users soon. The highlights (some screenshots):New weather application with events feed integration available through storeBrowser received a new interfaceColours in ambiences can be adjustedEmail authentication capabilities can be autodetectedImproved low memory handling, now swap is properly taken into accountThe new browser interface is very welcome - the old one was quite cumbersome at times - so that alone makes it a worthwhile update.

In an effort to eliminate bugs from upcoming iOS versions ahead of their general releases, Apple plans to launch the first-ever public beta program for the iOS operating system, according to multiple people briefed on the plans. Following the successful launch of the OS X Public Beta program with OS X Yosemite last year, Apple intends to release the upcoming iOS 8.3 as a public beta via the companyâs existing AppleSeed program in mid-March, according to the sources. This release will match the third iOS 8.3 beta for developers, which is planned for release the same week. Apple then expects to debut iOS 9 at its June Worldwide Developer Conference, with a public beta release during the summer, and final release in the fall.Hopefully this will help address the many iOS bugs people are currently complaining about endlessly.