Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS is often criticized for lagging far behind iOS and Android. But on Thursday, a leaked description of Microsoft’s next big mobile OS, Windows Phone 8, came to light, revealing how the operating system will improve. But can it really compete? We handicap Apollo against iOS 5 and Android 4.
After augmenting Windows 8 with some mobile-friendly features, it looks like file management is next to go under the knife. Not the sexiest part of an OS, granted, but one you’ll use almost every day — a fact not lost on Redmond. Based on newsgroup feedback, Windows 8 will sport a stack of tweaks hoping to make some of the more mundane tasks, well, less mundane. For example, if you copy duplicate files to a directory, it’ll make decisions based on size, name and modified date to determine if it’s the same file or not. For long copy jobs, error messages will be mercifully left until the end, allowing the rest to complete. Other simple touches include EXIF orientation data, which will be reflected in Explorer’s preview, updates to the slightly contentious Ribbon, plus a bunch more user-driven goodies. We’re reserving judgement until we get hands-on of course, but if you want to know more, there’s a full rundown in the source after the break.
Windows 8 file management: You ask, Microsoft listens originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While I most often use an iPhone as my primary mobile device, I’m not an Android-hater by any means. And resisting the lure of Google’s Android reference device is nearly impossible for an early adopter like me. This year, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is that device, and it’s the first phone to ship with Android 4, otherwise known as “Ice Cream Sandwich.” Here’s what I think of the Nexus, and the latest iteration of Android, and how both stack up to the iPhone 4S and iOS 5.
The Galaxy Nexus feels like a very different device compared to the iPhone; almost enough that it seems like it could belong to a different device category. Of course, it’s to be expected that a smartphone with a plastic back and much larger 4.65-inch screen would feel different than one made of metal and glass, sporting a 3.5-inch display. And the screen plays a big part in the different feel, making the Nexus appear to have more in common with something like the 7-inch Kindle Fire than it does with the iPhone, in a lot of ways, including its suitability for consuming media like feature-length movies.
But not everything about the Nexus impressed me off the bat. I actually managed to nick the plastic back within about 15 minutes of opening the box, for instance. Maybe I should have a cleaner desk, but maybe Samsung should use stronger materials.
Also, the display, while stunning for blacks and whites on high brightness, shows some faint criss-crossing lines when brightness is turned down on whites, or when brightness is turned up on grays. This is something users of other Samsung Android devices have complained about before, and might be easily resolved by a software update. Plus, I’ve had iPhone screen issues on new devices as well, which were fixed in time, so it’s not something I’m counting against the Nexus too much. Likewise, the volume bug some customers are experiencing, which Samsung has said it will soon fix.
The Galaxy Nexus has one immediately striking difference from the iPhone 4S in terms of hardware: A screen of epic proportions. It isn’t quite as large as that found on the Galaxy Note, but at 4.65-inches, it beats the 4S by more than an inch measured diagonally. Some of that extra screen comes from a lack of hardware buttons, but the Nexus is still much larger than the iPhone, as you can tell from this image of the two stacked atop one another.
Surprisingly, however, the larger footprint doesn’t actually add up to a much bigger-feeling device, overall. Thanks perhaps to the curved screen and back, or just to smart distribution of the extra surface area, the Nexus feels comfortable both in my hand and in my pocket. It actually feels better than the 4S when you’re using it to make a call, as the curved surface wraps your face in something like a light embrace. Sound silly, but it feels good.
The Galaxy Nexus might be too large for some smaller hands, however (mine are larger than average), so be sure to get to a store and try one out before you make a purchase if you’re concerned about that.
Both the Galaxy Nexus and the iPhone 4S have beautiful displays. The 4S’s Retina Display, despite being a year old, still renders text more crisply than the Samsung phone, at least to my eyes. But the Nexus does blacks very, very well. So well, in fact, that I use a basic black background as my wallpaper; icons appear to float out of nowhere on an otherwise completely powered down display as a result. Both devices boast very high pixel densities, with the Nexus managing 316ppi and the 4S managing 330ppi, so any differences are down to the use of LED backlit IPS panels for the iPhone, vs. Samsung’s Super AMOLED technology, and preference for either is going to be a matter of taste.
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The Galaxy Nexus is a much better device for watching movies and video on, as I mentioned above, partly because of the deep blacks, and partly because of the huge screen size. If you use your device to watch a lot of video, go for the Nexus. If you spend more time reading than watching on your smartphone, the iPhone is the better choice.
Switching between Android and iOS devices, I’m always reminded of just how weak most Android-powered handsets are when it comes to battery life. Even the Galaxy S II, which was strong in most respects, faltered in this one. But the Galaxy Nexus, maybe because of Android 4.0.1 power optimization, has managed to make this a much tighter race. In my use, I managed to get a whopping three days of usage out of a single charge on the Nexus, admittedly with very little movie watching, but using apps and the browser with fair frequency. Given normal use, about two days looks to be very possible, putting it on nearly even footing with the iPhone.
I’m still a little wary, since I often find that battery life on Android devices can be highly erratic depending on which apps you happen to be using at any given time, but the Galaxy Nexus definitely improves in this regard.
The iPhone 4S takes better pictures than the Galaxy Nexus. The 4S feels like an adequate replacement for most point-and-shoot cameras, while the Nexus feels like what the Nexus S was; a decent shooter for a smartphone. Discerning mobile photogs should stick with Apple, even though the Galaxy Nexus might have a very slight edge when it comes to shooting speed, but if you’re upgrading from an iPhone 4 you’ll probably appreciate the speed advantages of the Android device more, since photos are otherwise of similar quality.
Of course, the Android vs. iOS debate will rage endlessly, and Ice Cream Sandwich likely won’t do much to sway either side that much one way or another. But it is a solid update for Android, bringing a level of polish to Google’s platform that it hasn’t really seen thus far.
Android 4.0.1 on the Galaxy Nexus feels like it actually borrows more from Windows Phone 7.5 than iOS, at least in terms of aesthetics, and everything in general seems to work better and smoother. That also might be the result of the dual-core processor powering the Nexus than its software. The new software buttons work well, too, and though I miss the context-sensitive Settings button among them, and don’t quite use the new multitasking tray that replaces it enough to appreciate the change, I don’t find myself missing hardware controls.
I prefer iOS 5′s notification systems to Android’s, as the lock screen still tells me very little about what’s happened while I’ve been away. But the Galaxy Nexus does get one thing I love: A notification light. Practically, it’s really not all that useful; I’m going to check my notifications on either device with about the same amount of frequency, light or no light. But it’s good-looking and provides one more avenue of feedback for users who want one.
In the end, though, Android still has the same problems it always did: it’s harder for new and inexperienced users to get into and navigate, and apps either may or may not work with the device depending on what version of Android they’re coded for and/or what devices they support.
The Samsung Galaxy Nexus is a great smartphone that gets a lot of things right, and is more forward-looking than the iPhone 4S in a number of ways. It’s better at consuming mobile video, for one, and it features a lot of on-board connectivity options the iPhone doesn’t, including NFC and Wi-Fi Direct.
But in terms of the average smartphone user’s priorities right now, I still believe the iPhone 4S is the superior device. The iOS web browsing experience is still better (text rendering is better, the interface is more usable, and double-tap zooming is a necessity for one-hand browsing), text looks better all around, it has a much better camera for capturing mobile memories, and with iOS 5, notifications provide exactly the right kind of information exactly where you want it.
The Galaxy Nexus is the best Android device yet, and ICS is the best version of Android to date, and they do a lot to narrow the gap between Google and Apple’s mobile efforts, but they don’t close it, at least not completely.
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Hadoop gets plenty of attention from investors and the IT press, but it’s very possible we haven’t seen anything yet. All the action of the last year has just set the stage for what should be a big year full of new companies, new users and new techniques for analyzing big data. That’s not to say there isn’t room for alternative platforms, but with even Microsoft abandoning its competitive effort and pinning its big data hopes on Hadoop, it’s difficult to see the project’s growth slowing down.
Here are six big things Hadoop has going for it as 2012 approaches.
1. Investors love it
Cloudera has raised million since 2009. Newcomers MapR and Hortonworks have raised million and million (according to multiple sources), respectively. And that’s just at the distribution layer, which is the foundation of any Hadoop deployment. Up the stack, Datameer, Karmasphere and Hadapt have each raised around million, and then are newer funded companies such as Zettaset, Odiago and Platfora. Accel Partners has started a 0 million big data fund to feed applications utilizing Hadoop and other core big data technologies. If anything, funding around Hadoop should increase in 2012, or at least cover a lot more startups.
2. Competition breeds success
Whatever reasons companies had to not use Hadoop should be fading fast, especially when it comes to operational concerns such as performance and cluster management. This is because MapR, Cloudera and Hortonworks are in a heated competition to win customers’ business. Whereas the former two utilize open-source Apache Hadoop code for their distributions, MapR is pushing them on the performance front with its semi-proprietary version of Hadoop. This means an increased pace of innovation within Apache, and a major focus on management tools and support to make Hadoop easier to deploy and monitor. These three companies have lots of money, and it’s all going toward honing their offerings, which makes customers the real winners.
3. What learning curve?
Aside from the improved management and support capabilities at the distribution layer, those aforementioned up-the-stack companies are already starting to make Hadoop easier to use. Already, Karmasphere and Concurrent are helping customers write Hadoop workflows and applications, while Datameer and IBM are among the companies trying to make Hadoop usable by business users rather than just data scientists. As more Hadoop startups begin emerging from stealth mode, or at least releasing products, we should see even more innovative approaches to making analytics child’s play, so to speak.
4. Users are talking
It might not sound like a big deal, but the shared experiences of early Hadoop adopters could go a long way toward spreading Hadoop’s utility across the corporate landscape. It’s often said that knowing how to manage Hadoop clusters and write Hadoop applications is one thing, but knowing what questions to ask is something else altogether. At conferences such as Hadoop World, and on blogs across the web, companies including Walt Disney, Orbitz, LinkedIn, Etsy and others are telling their stories about what they have been able to discover since they began analyzing their data with Hadoop. With all these use cases abound, future adopters should have an easier time knowing where to get started and what types of insights they might want to go after.
5. It’s becoming less noteworthy
This point is critical, actually, to the long-term success of any core technology: at some point, it has to become so ubiquitous that using it’s no longer noteworthy. Think about relational databases in legacy applications — everyone knows Oracle, MySQL or SQL Server are lurking beneath the covers, but no one really cares anymore. We’re hardly there yet with Hadoop, but we’re getting there. Now, when you come across applications that involve capturing and processing lots of unstructured data, there’s a good chance they’re using Hadoop to do it. I’ve come across a couple of companies, however, that don’t bring up Hadoop unless they’re prodded because they’re not interested in talking about how their applications work, just the end result of better security, targeted ads or whatever it is they’re doing.
6. It’s not just Hadoop
If Hadoop were just Hadoop — that is, Apache MapReduce and the Hadoop Distributed File System — it still would be popular. But the reality is that it’s a collection of Apache projects that include everything from the SQL-like Hive query language to the NoSQL HBase database to machine-learning library Mahout. HBase, in particular, has proven particularly popular on its own, including at Facebook. Cloudera, Hortonworks and MapR all incorporate the gamut of Hadoop projects within their distributions, and Cloudera recently formed the Bigtop project within Apache, which is a central location for integrating all Hadoop-related projects within the foundation. The more use cases Hadoop as a whole addresses, the better it looks.
Disclosure: Concurrent is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, the founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.
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