Two Thousand Techteen

2013 ended.So here's a quick recap!

Wearables:

2013 was dominated by wearable devices.We had Google Glass,Pebble Smartwatch,Oculus Rift,et al!

Starting off with Pebble Smartwatch,which was showcased in CES,right at the beginning of the year,it paved the way for Sony's smartwatch,Samsung's Galaxy Gear.But the problem with the latter ones were the bloatware that came along.

Pebble was neat,minimal and e-ink!

Then Google teased it's Glass,and well,I need not say anything.It's just one of those,"Shut up and take my money" moments.

While Glass was more like HUD,Oculus(yet another Kickstarter porject),was like a freaking display slashed onto your face!Oculus Rift displayed the most immersive experience that is to when it came to Virtual Reality.

With Valve in process of showcasing their own VR goggles,whatever the future holds,whenever wearables become commonplace,2013 will be marked as the year that wearables became mainstream.

Displays:

There was HD,then came 2K.What was to follow?
4K of course.

And this Ultra-HD wasn't just restricted to TVs.No sir,we had tablets offering 4K resolutions.

Just feels like yesterday when I was awestruck by a 720p resolution and here we were witnessing more than 4 times the pixel density!

Ultra-mega-humongous resolutions were the only highlights for displays.We finally witnessed what had been teased a lot 2012,flexible displays.Not only did we get prototypes,there were consumer products,with curved OLED displays on sale.
And as the year drew to an end,we got phones with curved displays from LG and Samung.

Gaming Consoles:

It was like 7 years since Sony had a major refresh for the PS,and almost same time since Microsoft updated their XBox.So,well,come 2013 and both Sony and Microsoft updated their consoles to PS4 and XBox One,respectively.

With on paper specs which made the previous versions look like handheld,8 bit consoles,both the consoles took things online and cloud storage.Both a pro and con.

There was also OUYA's,ultra cheap Android based gaming console,Razer's and NVIDIA's,hand held consoles,Razer's gaming laptops,Android updating its Play Games app,and what not!

All and all,a good year for gamers. :)

Mobile Phones:

Two major headlines of the year,RIM renaming itself to BlackBerry,and BlackBerry with its final ace in the pack,unveiling the BB10,and failing.

Other being Nokia's takeover by Microsoft.

Samsung unveiling tons of mobiles under the Galaxy series,Apple,for the first time unveiling more than one iPhone,LG releasing the next Nexus series.
Amongst these,my picks were Sony giving huge support to the development community with the release of source codes for their flagship devices,and,Motorola.Boy,did Moto make its presence felt in 2013!
Firstly the Moto X,and towards the end of the year,the mid range Moto G.Again,embracing Open Source with open arms,and updating their devices to the latest software on offering.If only Moto,you'd release your phones all over the world!

And just before the year ended,Oppo released the first phone,with out-of-the-box after market ROM,CyanogenMod.

Oh,the usual patent trolls continued through the year.

OSs:

All pc,mobile OS saw their yearly updates.

Biggest of them all,Canonical's preview of Ubuntu for phones.Ubuntu,by far cleanest Linux experience was finally a full fledged OS for the phone.Though just a preview,it got the ball rolling,with the OS ported to major Android devices.

Windows bumped both desktop and phones OS,with desktop version criticized for leaving out the iconic start button.The phone version getting incremental updates,to finally compete with Android and iOS.Also,helped with the merger of Nokia,Windows can finally develop the mobile OS,with control on both software and hardware.

BB moved to a touch-oriented OS with the BB10,betting all its fortune on this one piece of software.While BB10 did have it moments,it couldn't really connect as a whole OS,and failed to revive BB.

Android updated it self from 4.2 to 4.3 Jelly Bean and finally 4.4,Kit-Kat.With 4.4 came major Kit-Kat promotions and on the software front,Google's promise to optimize low end devices.To an extend,I did feel the 4.4 better than 4.3,on my i9000,and no,this isn't placebo!
With 4.4,Google also pushed it's new runtime environment,dubbed ART(Android Runtime).Set to optimize the startup time for applications,and amongst other things,its a step ahead from the Dalvik VM,but the downside being it's still in Beta phase and not many apps as of now.

And finally iOS completed its Android transformation with the release of iOS 7.Moving away from the black-white-grey colour scheme,iOS 7 was all about bold colours,for the software(and,it came with matching hardware).It included an improved notification center and a central command center.

Macs updated themselves to OS X Mavericks,shying away from the tradition of naming the OSes after cats,to places in California.That being the only major change,rest being the usual incremental updates on visual and functional line.

Miscellaneous:

- CyanogenMod went from being an Open Source ROM to a corporate company,Cyanogen Inc.,and finding itself an OEM partner in Oppo,to release the Oppo N1 with out-of-the-box CyanogenMod

- Ballmer stepped as CEO for Microsoft

- JBQ quit. :(
- Hugo Barra left Google to join Xiaomi

- Bitcoin became serious moolah!

- Nokia released its Windows based tablet
- Fingerprint scanner on phones

..And lots more that I missed!

iOS 7

It was known for a fact that Apple was going to completely rebase the existing iOS UI,into a flatter model.Now,this went completely against Jobs and Ive's skeuomorphic,leather-wood laden,grey-white-black based UI.Infact,these were the very points,which they boasted about themselves,and riddled about its competitors.
And so,following the latest trend of drifting away from Jobs' Apple-esque world,iOS too,was sucked into the Tim Cook world!

Being a complete rebase,there is barely anything reminiscent of the old UI,right from the patented icons/slide to unlock to the multi-tasking,every freaking thing,flatter,colourful.

Switch on the screen,and trademark lockscreen,with place holders for time,camera and slide to unlock are no where to be seen.Instead,both blend in with the wallpaper and a simple arrow,which on swiping would take you directly to camera.Seriously speaking,looks so much sexier than the earlier renderings.

Unlocking the phone,takes you directly to the apps,and the first thing you'll notice is the childlike,colourful array of icons.
Sexy? NO!
Classy? NO NO!
Disaster? YES!
I mean come on,its a smart-phone,not a child's plastic replica to have icons like that.Not that flatter icons with colours are always child-like(MIUI),but seriously,theres no co-relation between the icons and the apps they launch.The Photos app for example,how does an overlapping,multi-coloured array of ellipses,againsr a white background represent photos? or Overlapping,multi-coloured spheres anyway resemble a gaming center ?
Only useful change I could see is the clock app is not static and updates itself with the current time,like the calendar app.

Notification panel is still a disaster.Instead merging multiple notification for an app into a single event or a centralized clear-all (or even a larger clear-all button against each app notification),all Apple did was changed the background from a dull grey,a gaussian blurred one!

A "new" feature,the control center,which can be accessed from anywhere,by swiping the screen upwards.As the name suggests,its a control center for all the settings and a few other.This by far is the most messed up update.
While this is pretty much what iOS lacked,Apple has tried to include everything into this.Toggles are good,but a persistent brightness bar,music controls,AirDrop,everything is dumped into this,irrespective of its use.We need some organization,Apple.And again,the background is a plain gaussian one.

Double tap the home button,and we move onto the multi-tasking screen.No longer does the screen slide up to reveal a row of open apps with a small 'x' mark to close them,this time,we get an active screen,revealing the status quo of the app,with a swipe gesture to remove them.Apple just took a leaf out of WebOS's book!

Apart from these,there are certain universal changes,like the font.Also a swipe gesture that takes you back.

Frankly speaking,iOS now looks how WP8,Andorid,WebOS,would look together.Which is not bad,but given Apple's out look towards "inspired designs",seems a bit hypocritic.
The changelog is huge,so much so,that I wished they would have named it iOS 2.0 .

iOS 7 looks promising,but it is still in its diapers at the moment.Its going to take more than just a few quick updates to make this as robust as say iOS 4 or 5 was.But its a start none-the-less and I am happy they finally moved away from the grey-white-black UI!

Cooked Apple

Almost a year back,Jobs stepped down as the CEO of Apple,and put Tim Cook incharge,owing to his ill health.Though the main man,all his moves were under constant scrutiny of Jobs,until a couple of months,when Jobs finally gave in to his bad health.
It was said at that time that Apple would not be Apple,in Jobs' absence.Heck,it was even said that Jobs had prepared a 4 year roadmap for Apple as well,as he didn't trust anyone,but himself to run his brainchild.(And I agree on the second part)

For starters,the leaks about iPhone 5,ear pods,and now iPad mini.
Now we all know what happened to Gray Powell,when the iPhone 4 was leaked.
But this time around,there was no reaction from Apple.The launch event was almost boring,we knew what was going to be displayed,we knew the specs,we knew about the "revolutionary" new headphones.There was barely anything worth watching.
(That said,I am not with Job's decision on firing an employee.)

There was a reason why all the iPhones and iPods,pre-Cook era were 3.5".Jobs believed that 3.5" was the "perfect" size for a phone(irrespective of one's palm size).He always criticized Androids on having different screen sizes,which led to fragmentation.He even made fun of 4" screens on Droids.
Come 2012,Cook's first year,without Jobs,we have iPhone 5,with its 4" screen.And to our surprise,it still is the "perfect" size for a phone(again no consideration of different palm sizes).
And with the rumoured iPad mini,make that 2 different resolutions for phones,and 2 for tablets.

Jobs always wanted perfection in his products.
With the iPhone 4S,came Siri.With all her awesomeness,came a tag,Beta.
Siri-ously?
And,with iOS 6,came Apple Maps,Apple's replacement for Google Maps,and boy was it a failure.Forget Beta,Maps seem to be in their Alpha phase of testing!
Jobs would have never approved half-baked products to be released in the market.But still,here we are,and Cook has a hit ratio of 100% !

Sticking the perfection thing,Jobs was meticulous about every little thing,be it the hardware and software.He'd reject anything and everything that didn't feel right.
The Apple TV's UI,released in the Cook era,was supposedly a design rejected by Jobs,almost 5 years back.But still,it was embraced by Cook.

Hugely criticized for Apple Maps,Cook recently made a public apology,and said they'll work on getting it right.He also suggested on using alternatives for time being.
It takes balls to accept your mistake,especially when you are at such a high position.Take nothing away for Cook.I guess this might be the first time,Apple has issued a public apology for a product.
It is only Jobs who can get away with an antennagate issue by saying,"You are holding the phone wrong!"

Filling into Jobs' shoes was a huge responsibility,let alone maintaining Apple's legacy.Cook might have changed Jobs' vision of Apple,but the growth of Apple,post Cook's takeover is surreal.To have a company's  revenue greater than few country's GDP,is mindboggling.
For all the rumours about Jobs preparing a roadmap for Apple,I highly doubt,considering the route taken by Apple.Even if there was one,I guess there might have been only one point made,sue everyone !

Patent Wars Episode I : The Apple menace

A quick search on the word patent,on wikipedia reveals the following :

A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention.

It also mentions the following,typically, however, a patent application must include one or more claims defining the invention which must meet the relevant patentability requirements such as novelty and non-obviousness.(keywords here being invention and non-obviousness)

Armed with a zillion "patents",right from pressing a button to start the phone,to making square icons,Apple quickly sued every freaking competitor in sight for billions of dollars.

Apple's claim being Samsung "copying their unique design".Well these "unique designs" were actually first visible on LG Prada phone and even Samsung's F700(both of which were released before iPhone).Only difference being,unlike Apple,neither LG nor Sammy claim sole rights on these design,because they weren't inventions,they were sort of industry standards.Neither were any of the previous bar/clamshell designs ever patented,because again,they were industry standards.
Oh and btw,this design was based on Sony's Shin-Nishibori's concept of a whole touch device,as Sony would conceive them to be.Nishibori was asked to share his thought's on a Sony phone,by Apple's design brainchild,Jony Ive.He then used Nishibori's renderings to design what we know the iPhone as.(In one of the early renderings,he even replaced Sony by Jony.Now thats innovation!)

Apple claimed Sammy even copied Apple's patented icon styling,a square with rounded edges.Seriously?Thats an invention? I can remember having icons on every electronic device ever made,since the start of GUI.

Anyhow,Apple claimed Samsung,HTC,Motorola,among others have violated their zillion "patents" in one way or other,like using square icons,sliding to unlock device,etc.At the same time,they shamelessly copied stuff like drop down notifications,or a camera shortcut,right on the homescreen !
Frankly,I detest the patent offices even more,for granting Apple these patents in the first place.

Henry Ford was the biggest loser in that case.He should've patented the use of wheels,steering wheel,engine,etc to make a car.Because thats an invention too,right? Then he would've sued the asses of Mercedes and Ferrari.The world be such a happier place!

What Apple has done by winning the patent wars,is actually gradually killed off competition,and to an extent the whole concept of innovation.Instead of wasting so much time,effort and money on these stupid patent wars,there is so much that can be done in terms of innovation,like using the energy generated while walking down the road to charge the ever discharging smartphones.That is something worth getting a patent for.

Think about it,at this rate,the day ain't far when someone is granted a patent for dialing digits and pressing a button to make call.

Monopolizing the market with these stupid patents,is plain dumb.The love and respect I once had for an Apple device is somehow lost now.

Apples,berries,mangoes and desserts

No,I am not talking about food,albeit,this is what every geek thrives on.

The 4 main categories of the smartphone eco-system : Apple,BlackBerry,Windows and Android.

Smartphone market,at one time,dominated by BlackBerry, were soon replaced by Apple and Android,with Windows Phone hot on their trail.The main reason being the change in the user base of the smartphone market.

Smartphones were earlier used by people who needed access to their mails/internet on the go.But now,every tom-dick and harry owns one.The basic purpose of the smartphone was soon killed and looks/form-factor/camera,et al have now become the criteria for smartphones.Checking in to places,tweeting about the traffic/movie is why you need internet on your devices,these days.

Apple(iOS) :
The most beautiful hardware,atop one of the slickest mobile OS.Navigating through it is a breeze.Responsiveness of the touch is next to none.And Apple only creates one version of each of its device in each iteration,maintaining its vital stats.
Screen with sharpness and pixel densities,that can easily put high-end screens to shame,and still,battery life is one of the best in the competition,brilliant.And an ever flooded App Market.
Probably what Apple manages to pull off the best,is their software and hardware integration.

But,the OS built on a UNIX core,lacks of the key features of its parent,openness.
For a normal,it might not seem much of a problem,but for a power user,it sometimes pisses off,the fact that there are so many things which they do not have control upon,because Apple Inc has decided that you shouldn't.
Also,a tablet with a 9.7" screen has so much to offer.Don't use the inflated version off the 3.5" screen.Please !

But,one the most douchiest things they do is patent wars.Seriously,just get over with it.Just because a rectangular phone has a full touch screen and one button,doesn't mean they copied it from you.And the last time I checked,the LG Prada had adopted that design before you.
Also,the pull down notification was a direct rip-off.But you didn't see infringements being filed.
Let your devices proves their worthiness,themselves.

Android :
The most open and free OS available in the market.Hence,the abundance of devices.Android doesn't discriminate,be it the chip architecture or OEMs,you'll find Droids everywhere!
The openness is what drives everyone towards the Android eco-system.The degree of customization is unparallel,be it the software or the hardware.

But this very fact,is one of the biggest drawbacks of all Androids.Android just has control over the software.OEMs are responsible for integrating them into their devices.This creates a considerable delay in the updates.Also,most older devices are not given support to by the manufacturers,even though they are more than capable of running the latest version.
Hopefully,this thing gets resolved,post Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

Its support for multi-core processor has made it possible for devices to have configurations,that could put full-fledged desktops to shame.Support for 1080p content,high screen resolutions,the works !
Also,a separate OS iteration for the tablets,makes it all the more possible to utilize the device's true capabilities(in terms of UI & UX).
The app market over here is also flooded,though still not as much as that of Apple.

And their alphabetical naming convention is another thing to look out for. :)

BlackBerry :
They were built for a purpose,and they served it.
BBs always held a special place for business people,who wanted mails on the go.Dedicated servers,provided both secure and efficient means of mailing.Till date,there is nothing that can be compared to a BB keypad,and that trackball,bliss.

But,with changing times,BB decided to drop its trademark qwerty to adopt the touchscreen,and it was a disaster.So was their decision to enter into the tablet world with the Playbook,with loses that couldn't even be looked at.Whats the point of having a tablet,if you just HAD to pair it with your phone,everytime ?
They did manage to improve the half-baked OS with v2.0 and BB 10 looks extremely promising.Hopefully,it will set RIM,in motion,again !

And please,don't ever drop your qwerty,for full touch devices.Its what defies you from the others.

Windows Phone :
From a replica of a desktop in the palm of your hand to a tile display,the Windows Phone has come a long way,since the dawn of WP7.Still in its nascent stage,but still can be described as the most beautiful UI.The tile layout,is probably the best UX on a touch-screen,which is further accentuated on a tablet display.
Learning quickly from its flaws and backed by hardware giants of yesteryear's,WP is catching up real quickly.
Like the OS,the app market is still in its nascent phase as well,something which needs to be looked upon.

No support on multi-core processors/support for expandable memory or more importantly,bluetooth file transfers,still remains one of its fallouts.

With a slew of tablets in pipeline,Windows 8 platform surely looks promising.


Already spoilt for choices,and likes of Mozilla jumping in with their own Boot2Gecko,Tizen being developed in collaboration,the future for Mobile OS looks all but promising.
The more,the merrier !

End of Desktops ?

A long time ago,in a galaxy far far away .. 

It was a period of files and folders.The OS developed were file oriented.Data were neatly organized in folders or just lying around in a hierarchy of folders.Either way,the file manager was used to manage them. 

Now .. 

It is a period of applications.There is an application developed for everything,right from managing your meetings,to driving your hot wheels.The app-centric OS were restricted to mobile devices,but slowly,the same is being adopted for desktop OSes as well. 

A few months back Windows previewed its next iteration of OS,Windows 8.The look and feel was more like the Windows Phone 7 OS,the Metro UI.Sure,its awesome,but that thing on a desktop ? Navigating through screen meant for swipes through a mouse click,err ! 

Apple announced its transition of Mac OS towards iOS,with Mac OS X Lion,with the App Store and the works.And yesterday,with the developer preview release of Mountain Lion OS X,we see how close they are to replacing the Mac with iOS.Infact,they even dropped the Mac from its name.Notification Center,iMessage,Notes,all the latest additions of the iOS 5 have made its way onto the Mac. 

        

With the increasing use of mobile devices,the cloud storage is gaining a lot of popularity.A central storage makes more sense than individual physical storage,as people are mostly on the go.Also one of its advantages is the synchronization of data across the devices.Redundancy also decreases drastically.All your device needs is the minimal storage to install the OS,an voila,you are done.The rest of your data is sitting somewhere on the cloud,which you can access right away.Streaming will be the way to access the data.(Samsung even dropped their 32 gig Galaxy Nexus with this assumption).And this will lead to an app-centric OS. 

Eyeing the trend,the day ain't too far away when SSDs will completely replace Hard Drives,owing to its size. 

So,where do the desktops fit in this picture? 

No where.The key to the future will be mobility and with desktops,you have nada. 

Atleast on personal computing segment,mobile devices are bound to replace desktops.If that is the scenario,will that mean the end of computer gaming industry as well ?