Sunday, July 17, 2016

SPACEX FALCON 9

Tonight's SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch: start time, live stream, and what to expect

The company is aiming for its second ground landing afterward

Tonight, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. And as usual, the company will attempt to land the vehicle back on Earth post-takeoff. But this time, the rocket’s target won’t be a drone ship at sea, as it has been for the last six SpaceX launches. This Falcon 9 will be returning to Landing Zone 1, SpaceX's ground-based landing site at the cape.

THE SECOND TIME SPACEX HAS ATTEMPTED A GROUND LANDING

It will be the second time SpaceX has attempted a ground landing with one of its rockets. The first time was in December, after one of the company’s Falcon 9s lofted a satellite for the communications company Orbcomm into lower Earth orbit. That landing, which also occurred at Landing Zone 1, marked the first time SpaceX had ever recovered one of its vehicles after takeoff. The difficulty of tonight’s landing will be about "on par" with the one in December, if not a little easier, according to Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability for SpaceX. "It should have higher chances than that particular land landing, but it’s going to be very similar," said Koenigsmann at a NASA press conference yesterday.

The landing is slated to occur shortly after stage separation, which will happen around two and a half minutes following takeoff. That’s when the first stage — the portion of the rocket that contains most of the fuel and engines — separates from the top of the vehicle. That first stage will reignite its engines in a series of three burns to return it back to Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket landing on ground after launching the Orbcomm-2 satellite. (SpaceX)

SpaceX decides how to land its Falcon 9 rockets based on the types of missions the vehicles need to perform. Rockets that have to accelerate super fast — such as those that go to high orbits or launch heavy payloads — use up a lot of fuel during the initial takeoff. That doesn’t leave as much fuel leftover to perform the landing. Drone ship landings require less fuel to pull off than land landings (we explain why here), making ocean landings the best — if not only — choice for high-speed missions. However, this time the company is confident that the rocket will have enough fuel to land back on solid ground, according to Koenigsmann.

DRAGON WILL SPEND TWO DAYS IN SPACE BEFORE DOCKING WITH THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION

As the first stage lands, the second stage will carry the Dragon cargo capsule further into space and get the vehicle into orbit. Once there, Dragon will spend two days in space before docking with the International Space Station on Wednesday. Its arrival will bring the total number of cargo capsules at the station to two; a Russian Progress cargo spacecraft successfully launched on Saturday and is slated to dock with the ISS Monday evening.

Dragon will bring food, supplies, and science experiments to the station, as well as a critical piece of cargo known as an international docking adapter, or IDA. This metallic ring, which measures 63 inches in diameter, will eventually be attached to the outside of the station, allowing future spacecraft built by SpaceX and Boeing to automatically dock with the ISS. Those vehicles will transport NASA astronauts to and from the space station, but without the IDA, there’s no way for those vehicles to attach to the ISS.

IT’S PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT THAT THE IDA MAKE IT TO THE ISS THIS TRIP

It’s particularly important that the IDA make it to the ISS this trip, as an adapter was supposed to be on the space station already. But that first docking adapter was destroyed last year, when the Falcon 9 rocket that was carrying it disintegrated during launch. That failure happened on another SpaceX cargo resupply mission, just over a year ago, putting extra pressure on the company to ensure this launch goes smoothly.

Tonight's Falcon 9 is scheduled to take off at 12:45AM ET, and SpaceX’s live stream will begin around 20 minutes earlier at 12:25AM ET. So far, everything is looking good. SpaceX tested the engines on the rocket on Saturday and all systems are "go" for launch. There’s also a 90 percent chance that weather conditions will be favorable, according to Patrick Air Force Base. If for some reason the vehicle doesn’t launch tonight, a backup launch date is scheduled for around midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Moto X review

A different kind of smartphone

It’s difficult and perhaps dangerous to make a big deal out of a smartphone these days. Can one phone change an industry? Save a company? Create a market? Perhaps that was true in the days just following the original iPhone, but times have most certainly changed. Smartphones are the norm now. No longer a novelty. Not a luxury. Just what everyone has, in some iterative, similar, necessary form.

The Moto X, a new phone from the Google-owned Motorola is supposed to be a big deal. A new way of thinking about a smartphone. When it becomes available on all four major US carriers at the end of August or early September, for roughly $199 with a two-year contract, this device will be one of the first modern, mass-market consumer electronics to be assembled (though not exactly “made”) in the USA. It’s the first smartphone that you can customize and have hand-built in a variety of configurations and colors. And it’s the first smartphone that is supposed to represent what the new Google-Motorola union is capable of.

But that’s all — mostly — unimportant unless the phone is any good. It can match your outfit, sure, but do you actually want it in the pocket of your jeans?

Locally crafted

The Moto X is a good-looking phone; it’s a good-feeling phone too. As far as raw materials and build quality go, it ranks among the best smartphones I’ve tested. The device is a solid — if somewhat anonymous — slab of space-age plastics, soft-touch surfaces, and crystal clear Corning glass. Unlike the iPhone or HTC One, there’s no metal here, but I didn’t exactly miss it, and in some ways the lack of dent-able material makes it seem more rugged. To be fair, I dropped the device on concrete and nicked a small bit of plastic out of one of the corners — but everything else seems fine.

Good-looking, and good-feeling

The Moto X is terrific to hold and use, too. It’s a meaty device, thin enough to compete with its contemporaries, yet dense. Fully packed. The size is just about perfect for my hands, and I was able to reach across the 4.7-inch display to the upper-left corner with little difficulty. The curved back feels right on. The button placement is not only sensible, but the buttons seem built to last: clicky, punctual, tough.

So, surprise — or maybe not. The Moto X is fantastic from a purely hardware-facing perspective. It’s a beautifully made phone, with the unique advantage of being highly cosmetically customizable.

Made in America

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Moto X is that Motorola is taking great pains to see that the devices are hand-assembled at a plant in Fort Worth, Texas, as opposed to in an overseas shop such as Foxconn. (Apple is making a similar move with its yet-to-be-released Mac Pro.) Presumably, that adds cost and difficulty for Motorola, but as company SVP Rick Osterloh tells The Verge, "It’s just the right thing to do." Personally I can’t quite figure out if this is a political move aimed at scoring points with consumers, dinging competitors, or holding some kind of higher ground as a US economy-focused company, but it’s an exciting move nonetheless. Hopefully it’s more than just a novelty.

Hopefully 'Made in America' is more than just a political move

The phones aren’t wholly made in the States, but even an assembly line of smartphones simply being pieced together in America is notable. Motorola seems to have its heart in the right place, and if the phone is any kind of success, it could be incentive for other manufacturers to consider the US workforce. Of course, that’s still a big "if."

Build-a-phone

I would tell you that the device comes in one of two colors — black or white — and that’s true on some carriers. But on AT&T at first and others soon after, it will come in many more thanks to hardware customization options Motorola is offering for the phone. You’re able to select among the many available combinations using an online tool called Moto Maker, and your order is sent to an assembly line in Texas where the phone is hand-built and shipped to you in four days. By allowing you to select the color for several components of the phone, Motorola gives you up to 252 possible combinations: more than enough to please even the most demanding aesthetes.

In that Texas factory, 2,000 or so American workers will be putting together phones based on your exact specifications. You can choose how much storage you want, 16GB or 32GB. You choose a front face, either black or white, then pick one of 18 backs, with colors like red and yellow, but also teal and plum, and about four different shades of white. Next, choose an accent color from seven options — it colors the buttons on the phone, and the ring around the lens of the camera.

The colors look cool. They look fresh — of the moment. By comparison, the white and black (and even more colorful phones like Nokia’s Lumia line) seem drab and predictable. The monochromatic options look especially behind the times now, like a beige PC. Come to think of it, even aluminum computers come off as depressingly retro when you consider Motorola’s proposition. If these devices are our always-there accessories, shouldn’t we have some say over how they look? Don’t answer. The answer is yes.

Customization won't make or break the Moto X's appeal

The Moto Maker tool is simple, clean, and clearly a Google product — it looks vaguely like a Google+ page. Once you pick your phone, you can choose accessories to go with it (including color-matched headphones from Sol Republic), choose a wallpaper, and sign in to your Google account. Then as soon as your phone shows up, it’s already personalized and ready to go. If you don’t like what you picked, send it back within two weeks and try something else.

The success of this phone won’t hinge on a user’s ability to order a made-to-measure version, but it could compel certain buyers to at least consider the Moto X when they might have simply passed over a black model on a shelf. The real question is if Motorola (and by proxy its carrier partners) can message this properly to users. It needs to be out there in big, bold type. If consumers don’t know they can get something special, they simply won’t.

The on-screen experience

I know what you’re thinking: a 720p AMOLED display on a high-end Motorola phone? No thanks!

I was thinking the same thing when I got this device in my hands. And no, it’s not the best display on a smartphone that I’ve used. But it is far — far — from the worst. In fact, it’s slightly above average (certainly compared to Motorola’s past efforts in this area), though not a best-in-class performer like the HTC One’s Super LCD display. Even next to a Galaxy S4 — a phone with a truly improved AMOLED display — the Moto X screen seems acceptable. I did notice some slight color banding across the screen when solid colors (particularly grays) were visible in large areas, and as with most displays using this technology, colors are over-saturated, especially reds and oranges.

Not the best screen, but far from the worst

As far as resolution is concerned, text and graphics look plenty smooth on a 4.7-inch 720p display, but if you look closely, there’s a hint of pixelation compared with 1080p devices. I had to study them side by side to make out the difference, as it’s incredibly slight (keep in mind, the PPI of this phone is nearly the same as the iPhone 5’s Retina display). I expected to be bothered by the step backward in pixel density, but it wasn’t an issue.

I was more annoyed by the fact that, like the Google Play Edition Galaxy S4 and One, I needed to install a brightness control app called Lux to moderate dimming on this display. In an attempt to conserve every possible drop of battery life in these new phones, the system-software brightness control seems to be over-attenuated to the point of making the screen unreadable at times.

As with most Motorola phones, the speakers on the Moto X are excellent. They’re loud enough to use in the car hands-free (that’s sans Bluetooth), and generally clear for speakerphone use and even a little YouTube or music playback. I did notice some mild distortion at higher levels, but overall their performance puts them in a favorable light, especially compared to the speakers on Samsung’s latest flagship phone.

Always watching, always listening

The first thing that you should know about the software on this phone is that it is thankfully, mercifully, for all intents and purposes "stock" Android. The current version on the phone is 4.2.2, and it doesn't differ in any major way from the Galaxy S4 or One Google Play Edition. That's a big deal when you consider there's never really been a clean Android offering like this for all of the major US carriers.

But Motorola has added something to the mix here. The company is intensely focused on how we interact with our phone when it’s not right in front of us. The company has come up with a new paradigm called "Touchless Controls," which allows you to operate the phone in a fashion not wildly dissimilar from Google Glass.

Essentially, there’s a way to put your Moto X into an "always listening" mode, which responds to you speaking the phrase "Okay Google Now." After a short setup where you train the phone to understand your voice (and your voice alone), you can spark it to life with that phrase whether it’s awake or asleep. Setup went very smoothly, though the phone did have issues understanding me unless I spoke in a very similar tone and cadence all three times, and remembered how I’d said it going forward. Once I figured that out, it was off to the races.

Don't forget the exact way you said 'Okay Google Now'

It worked quite well for nearly every task I could think of — making a note, sending a text, making a phone call, or simply searching Google. As with most voice recognition, it’s prone to mishearing you (especially in a noisy environment), but when at home or work in a quiet setting, it did fine.

But there’s a catch. The touchless controls are rendered nearly useless if you have any kind of security lock on your phone. You can still use it to make calls, but everything else requires that you unlock your phone, which requires that you pick it up and interact with it… meaning you just defeated the whole idea of "touchless controls." If the voice recognition was as good and as personalized as Motorola would like it to be, this wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s an issue right now, and a bit of a bummer if you care at all about your phone’s security (and let’s face it, you should).

Active Notifications

Another major addition to Android with the Moto X is a set of features Motorola calls "Active Notifications." It’s essentially a lockscreen replacement that alerts you to incoming messages, emails, or just about anything else with an icon and clock flashing in the center of the screen. Because the display of the Moto X is AMOLED, it can light only the portion of the screen it needs for these notifications, which make them low power (and low annoyance in darker rooms).

Tap on a notification to see a preview of its contents, and swipe upward to unlock the phone directly into that application. If several notifications come in, it will collect them as icons and let you preview the most recent one.

Active Notifications are exactly what notifications should be

It took a little while to get used to how this concept works, but once I "got" the expected behavior, it was wildly useful. I like to know when I get an email so I have a notification sound every time one comes in — but they’re not all of equal value. Being able to preview the information before unlocking the phone has definitely saved me time.

Still, Motorola can take this further. Right now, there’s no way to cycle through your notifications, so you can only take action on the most recent one. Having some gestural way to flip through your separate notifications — or at least types of notifications — would be really handy. But even in its present state it’s a welcome change from having to unlock the device and pull down the notification shade just to see who’s pinging.

Motorola Assist / Driving

The Moto X’s most intriguing and maybe revelatory features reside in an application simply labeled "Assist." WIthin the app a suite of settings allow you to customize your phone for various scenarios — sort of like Apple’s "Do Not Disturb" on steroids. In a car.

Assist does add a feature almost identical to "Do Not Disturb," which silences your phone for all but the most important callers at certain hours. It’s not unlike Motorola’s old Smart Actions app, which also let you set up macros to open Rdio when you plugged in your headphones, or turn on Bluetooth when you got home. Assist does fewer things better. It lets you quiet your phone when you have meetings scheduled (using your calendar as a guide), and one other option which took me by surprise — and kind of took my breath away.

Motorola Assist is enough by itself to make me want a Moto X

Assist senses when you’ve begun driving in your car, and immediately switches into an almost conversational, hands-free experience. I took a trip and forgot all about the feature, only to be shocked and pleasantly surprised when my phone told me I had an incoming message from my wife. Then the phone read me the message, as if I was having a conversation with an assistant — or, you know, Siri. More impressively, a moment later a call came through, and the phone asked if I’d like to answer. Of course I would, you beautiful machine. All of this would have been incredibly distracting and dangerous if I had to look at my phone, but here it was, painless.

That was the moment with the Moto X when I started to seriously consider the phone. I’m not sure what impressed me more: the ease of this function, or the fact that I didn’t have to think about where I was and what mode I was in.

Point, and shoot

I don’t understand the Moto X camera. It’s great, but it’s also terrible. The 10-megapixel rear camera is capable of snapping gorgeous pictures with fantastic bokeh. Thanks to a "clear pixel" that Motorola says lets in 75 percent more light, it’s good in dark situations too. Very good. Yet somehow the Moto X’s post-processing is so aggressive and so ubiquitous that it ruins as many shots as it saves. There’s terrible artifacting and noise even in well-lit photos — like you cranked the JPEG settings way down. I’ll take a noisy photo over a blurry photo any day, which is basically the same decision Motorola made here, but sometimes the phone goes overboard trying to improve your photos. Way overboard.

Motorola keeps getting the user interface right, though. Apparently the company found that most people never dig into the camera settings, so the app basically removes all of them. Just tap anywhere on the screen, and it automatically exposes, focuses, and shoots. It’s a bit annoying sometimes, because there’s no way to focus before you actually take the picture. I got a lot of bad shots this way, especially when I took a picture of someone with a bright background. But I got a lot of good, fast shots this way too. Shots I would have missed otherwise.

TOO OFTEN, THE CAMERA IS HIT, THEN MISS

Getting to the camera app is fast, too. The company has added a gesture to pop open your camera, which actually proved to be faster and more useful than just about any other "quick" camera option I’ve tested. Just twist the phone three times — right, right, right, sort of like shaking a drink — and no matter what you’re doing, or even if the screen is off, it jumps straight to the camera. It’s not a perfect gesture, and it’s not always easy to do right, but even when I had to do it a couple of times it was faster than turning the phone on, unlocking it, and finding the camera app icon.

Redefining mid-range

Motorola made the Moto X with mid-range specs, and isn’t at all ashamed of it. It shouldn’t be: the phone is fast and smooth. It’s more than sufficient for everyday use. I played games, watched movies, made calls; everything worked better than fine. The Epic Citadel demo ran at a near-constant 60 FPS with the highest graphics settings on. It’s not as fast as the GS4, but I only noticed the difference when I looked at them side by side. For now, our phone hardware is clearly more capable than it needs to be; mid-range seems to be just fine in this case.

Mid-range is also supposed to help with battery life. Motorola could have built a monster of longevity like the RAZR Maxx — and it should have — but it didn’t. It definitely gets a full day of use: I used it heavily for 15 hours before it died, and if you use it like most people use their phones, you won’t need to charge it during the day. It lasted for 7 hours, 14 minutes on the Verge Battery Test, which loads popular websites and high-res images with brightness at 65 percent; that’s a very good score, far better than the HTC One and the GS4, but well below class leaders like the Maxx or the Galaxy Note II.

Wrap-up

Compare It

Motorola Moto X

8.0 Verge Score

Good Stuff

Attractive, customizable design
Assist, Touchless Control, and Notifications are great additions to Android
Essentially a pure Android device for all four carriers
Solid battery life

Bad Stuff

AMOLED display has some problems
Camera processing can produce excessive artifacting
Some carrier bloatware

It's not a perfect phone, but it's pretty damn good

I’m going to level with you: I was pretty underwhelmed by the Moto X based on what I heard and saw at the company’s product announcement. Even my first few hours with the phone left me scratching my head, wondering why I would want this device when wonderful, higher-end, stock devices like the One and S4 Google Play Editions were available. And frankly, I was wondering why anyone would want the device considering the relatively strong options out there if you’re in the market for a $199 Android phone right now.

But once I used the phone heavily, I started to come around to the Moto X in a way I hadn’t expected. The additions to the software that Motorola has made are legitimately useful and really quite impressive. They add to the experience of Android without removing what is most vital in Google’s software, unlike the competition, which seems intent on obscuring what’s already a sophisticated and beautiful operating system. If Motorola ends up producing a Google Play Edition of this phone that retains the customizable hardware and software additions like Assist and Active Notifications — this could be as good an option as the S4 or One.

And the phone is nice. I mean, really nice to use. It’s a reminder that the way something is built can be as important as what it’s made of.

Combined with the ability to get a truly unique, customized device that’s as compelling as anything I’ve recently tested — one assembled in America — it begins to look like an awfully good option.

The Moto X is not a perfect phone, but neither is any other phone on the market right now. What it is, however, is a pretty damn good phone — and one I can recommend.

But good luck trying to pick a color.

The Breakdown

More times than not, the Verge score is based on the average of the subscores below. However, since this is a non-weighted average, we reserve the right to tweak the overall score if we feel it doesn't reflect our overall assessment and price of the product. Read more about how we test and rate products.

Design 9
Display 6
Camera(s) 6
Reception / call quality 9
Performance 8
Software 9
Battery life 8
Ecosystem 8

Friday, May 31, 2013

Windows 8.1 preview: many small tweaks make for a significant update The Start button returns with new Snap Views, improved apps, and more

Microsoft launched Windows 8 on October 26th, with a volley of new hardware designed for the touch-based interface. Just 12 months after an early Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft is now keen to talk about some upcoming changes in an update named Windows 8.1. Originally codenamed Blue, Windows 8.1 sets the pace for changes to Microsoft's software that will continue in the future for both the RT and x86 versions of the OS.
We've seen hints thanks to some leaks, but there are a whole host of additions and improvements that make some fundamental changes to Windows 8. The Start button makes its rumored return, as Microsoft has responded to clear feedback. Is it enough? Are things moving quickly over in Redmond? Let's find out.

UI and personalization

One of the first things you'll notice with Windows 8.1 is an improved lock screen. You can now accept Skype calls while the PC is locked, or trigger the camera and take photos. There is also an option to use a Photo Frame mode that takes pictures from your computer, SkyDrive, and Windows Phone to display a collage of images.
Microsoft is also borrowing some more ideas from Windows Phone 8, introducing new large and small Live Tiles — the animated app icons that appear on the Start Screen — in Windows 8.1. On the Weather Tile you can now see the weather in three different cities and three days of forecasts displayed at the same time. For apps like Calendar, it will display your entire calendar for the day, and third-party apps like Twitter will be able to display additional information. "You still get notifications, you still get posts, you still get counts on them, but they take up one-quarter of the space of the tiles we had with Windows 8," explains Jensen Harris, a director of the Windows User Experience Team at Microsoft. Desktop apps will also use colorful tiles by default, and developers will have the option to create richer versions.
These improvements extend elsewhere on the Start Screen. Apps in Windows 8 automatically pin to the Start Screen and Harris admits "it wasn't what we imagined," as a place for the apps and things you care about. In 8.1 Microsoft doesn't pin apps to the Start Screen by default; instead it puts them in the All Apps view. This view includes filters to sort apps by how frequently they're used or by designated group, and the option to find applications by name.
Microsoft is also changing how the Start Screen looks somewhat, with new personalization options with additional colors and shades, as well as the ability to have Start Screen backgrounds that include motion. This personalization extends to allowing a desktop background to be used behind the Start Screen, easing the jarring transition between the two modes. Rearranging apps on the Start Screen is also easier in Windows 8.1: Users will now be able to select and arrange multiple apps at the same time.

Expanded Snap Views make Metro more appealing

Perhaps the biggest change, at least visually, is the new way to organize Windows 8-style apps in snapped views. By default, if you click a link from an app, like Mail, in Windows 8.1 you'll be thrown into a 50 / 50 view that snaps Internet Explorer next to Mail. If you open a picture from an email or elsewhere, the view will open as 40 / 60 with more space dedicated to the photo application. Any app can also have multiple windows, letting you open two websites side-by-side, for example, and extend them across multiple monitors.
These new views, which let Windows 8.1 users select how much of an app takes up a snapped part of the entire view, include a change to let more applications snap alongside each other. On high-resolution screens, the number of apps you can snap alongside one another increases with the monitor's resolution — we saw four apps snapped on a 27-inch screen. On the low resolution side of things, Microsoft has removed a limit it had in place for Windows 8 to use Snap View, letting devices with 1024 x 768 pixels utilize the 50 / 50 view. This is partly in preparation for upcoming 7- and 8-inch form factors.
Any applications that are installed or pinned to the Start Screen, along with any arrangement settings, are automatically synced to all other Windows 8.1 PCs under a single Microsoft account. Individual PCs can opt out of this process, or across the whole system, but it's designed to make the Start Screen remain the same everywhere you use it with the same applications. These applications will all be automatically updated in Windows 8.1, complete with a new Store interface that makes it a lot easier to discover the top paid and free applications.
Microsoft is also bringing back the Start button in Windows 8.1, which should please many desktop users. We've broken down the new functionality in a separate report on the Windows 8.1 Start button.

Search

"The boldest totally new feature that we've done in 8.1 is the Search feature," says Harris. Microsoft claims that Search is the most-used "charm," with over 90 percent of Windows 8 users activating it. "We've taken the Search feature and made Search to be the one box you can use for your PC, files, settings, and also for the web and information within apps on your PC." Put simply, Microsoft is making Search a lot more powerful in Windows 8.1. A standard web query, like Marilyn Monroe, will produce a "Search Hero" of information and data from across the web and local to the PC. Information will be surfaced from Wikipedia for example, but clicking on that data will push users into the Wikipedia Windows 8.1 app instead of a web page.

Bing gets deeply integrated into Windows 8.1

If it's a search that involves a movie then you'll be able to watch the trailer or find that particular content within applications like Netflix or Hulu. It works the same way with music and images, surfacing songs from Xbox Music with a play button or data from Bing images. Like the existing search option, you can trigger it by simply typing on the Start Screen. New to Windows 8.1 is a Windows key + S combination that will trigger the search panel across the OS regardless of whether you're in an app or desktop mode.
By default the list in the side bar starts with apps, then music, settings, files, pictures, and web suggestions all collated from content local to your PC or in SkyDrive. "You end up with this single way to command, find, and do across the entire PC," says Harris. In concept it's fairly powerful, letting you simply search for "Space Needle" and find photos you may have shot at that location and other data that's related to it. A lot of the search functionality is powered by Bing, and Microsoft isn't letting users change this particular search option over to Google. "We don't support changing the providers for that search experience," explains Harris, noting it uses Microsoft services for Windows search.
The new search experience is a key example of Microsoft's approach to using Bing across its products. Speaking to The Verge, Microsoft's director of search, Stefan Weitz, explains that Bing is helping power the 8.1 interface, but that it's just the beginning. "8.1 is in no way the end point for all of this, it really is providing us a canvas on which we can figure out how to actually pull all those things in." This new canvas only exists in Windows at the moment, and not elsewhere in Windows Phone or other Microsoft products, but it's going to extend to additional areas. "Windows is now going to scale across more devices, so you'll see this kind of experience in more form factors," explains Weitz. If it works as well as Microsoft promises, then it could be the starting point of a central location for search that's similar to Google Now.

SkyDrive built-in, Internet Explorer and Windows Phone sync

"The entire OS is now powered by the Cloud and powered by SkyDrive," explains Harris. The sync engine of SkyDrive is now built directly into Windows 8.1. By default it doesn't bring down your entire SkyDrive storage to the local PC. Instead it intelligently loads little stubs that look like the file and include the information required to identify it. As you start to open files it will download them as required. You can set folders and files to download fully so they're available offline, or just set an entire SkyDrive instance to remain offline on the PC.
SkyDrive storage will now show up in File Explorer or Windows 8 apps as another method to save and retrieve files alongside This PC (the new name for My Computer). Developers won't need to do any work to integrate with SkyDrive: it's all automatic. The end result is that all your settings, apps, and the history of your apps are stored in SkyDrive. "If you get a new PC and you log in with your Microsoft Account you're going to get your entire experience re-hydrated," says Harris.
On the Internet Explorer side, Microsoft is introducing Internet Explorer 11 with Windows 8.1. Changes include tabs being moved to the bottom with unlimited tabs and subfolders for favorites. Website owners will be able to create their own Live Tiles with IE11 that can be pinned to the Start Screen with access to an RSS stream.
Microsoft will also sync tabs now across Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone, meaning you'll be able to access and load up the tabs that were last used on other devices. It's very similar to Google's Chrome sync option. It will require a "future version of Windows Phone," says Harris, but Microsoft isn't commenting any further.

Other improvements and additional apps

Microsoft is also improving its onscreen keyboard. "If the next Gangnam style or the next political leader becomes popular, we will know that and be able to suggest it and be able to make it easier to type that," explains Harris. You can also swipe across the space bar to select suggested words and then tap again on the space bar to insert them. Swiping up on the QWERTY keys will automatically insert numbers, and swiping up on the question mark will insert an exclamation mark. It's a minor change, but it makes text entry a lot easier on touch-based devices.
Other improvements include a focus on revamping the touch-friendly control panel. In Windows 8 Microsoft had around 10 percent of the settings converted to this mode, with 8.1 that extends a lot further with access to even more settings. "We have gone to great lengths to make PC settings complete in 8.1," says Harris, noting that it should be considered the central place to alter settings now. "We actually think this is the best way to configure your PC."

Additional built-in apps in Windows 8.1 include new touch-friendly calculator and alarm apps. Microsoft has also done some work to improve photo and music experiences on 8.1, with new options to use tools like crop and rotate to edit and touch up photos. Xbox Music is greatly improved with a focus on playing music quickly. "You can play things in two clicks, instead of six clicks," explains Harris. You can also create radio stations out of the artists you're interested in. The updated Xbox Music app will come with Windows 8.1 and it speeds up the often slow and clunky experience with music in Windows 8.

Microsoft is borrowing a page from Instapaper

Microsoft is also building in a Reading List function into the Share charm for Windows 8.1. "Think of it as a place to save rich bookmarks that I want to get back to, for the entire PC," explains Harris. It's basically an extended clipboard for Windows, but it will let 8.1 users save sections within applications across all PCs. This will also eventually be available on Windows Phone.
There are substantial updates to the News, Weather, Sports, Travel, and Maps apps in Windows 8.1, but the company is also introducing some new ones: Health & Fitness and Food & Drink. Health & Fitness provides access to exercises and does weight and calorie tracking in the cloud. Food & Drink includes access to recipes and shopping lists, but it also has a secret feature that's great for tablet users who use their device as a cookbook. "One thing we found … is how much cooking people do with PCs in the kitchen," says Harris. Microsoft has added a "hands-free mode" to its Food & Drink app that lets 8.1 users swipe between recipes by waving their hands in front of a standard webcam.
The Camera app in 8.1 also includes full panoramic support with Photosynth directly built-in, and Microsoft has created a Help & Tips app to help acclimatize users to the new Windows environment. "One thing that we realized was that although Windows 8 was very easy to use, there were a couple of things … you needed to learn and that we didn't do a good job of showing you what those things were," admits Harris.

Microsoft rights its Windows 8 wrongs

This approach of recognizing where Windows 8 needs improvement really underlines Windows 8.1. It's not so much an update with some stand out features and big name changes, but more of a refinement of the existing operating system. All of these minor changes add up to big improvements in the way you can use Windows 8.1 across touch and keyboard / mouse. Microsoft has had time to sit back and witness the reaction to Windows 8 and see exactly how people are using the product. With Windows 8.1 we're seeing very real changes based on that.
"We really have a great sense of where we got the details of these bets right and where we actually maybe missed a little bit," admits Microsoft's Antoine Leblond, who oversees Windows Web Services. The good thing is that Microsoft is correcting some misses after just months on the market, and it's coming as a free update for existing Windows 8 users. If Microsoft can keep this rapid pace of improvement for Windows then it has a real chance of challenging others in the tablet market, providing even more touch-friendly apps are made available. The PC is in decline and tablets are taking over consumer spending, so Microsoft and its OEMs have to ensure tablet offerings are solid.
It's still unclear exactly when Microsoft will ship Windows 8.1, but the company plans to release a preview version on June 26th at its Build developer conference. With Computex on the Horizon and Build approaching soon, this is only the first taste of Windows 8.1, but we expect to see a lot more in the coming weeks with the new types of 7- and 8-inch devices that will ship later this year.

Images and layout by Aaron Souppouris

Saturday, May 4, 2013

0 inShare XFON and new Chromebook spotted in Google Play store?

http://i.imgur.com

In 2013, the keys to Android are still held by the carriers

This year's flagships, the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4, are locked down

Just under two years ago, HTC's CEO responded to public pressure by making an equally public promise: "We will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices." Today, that promise is only half-kept by HTC, while other manufacturers have an even spottier record when it comes to keeping the Android ecosystem as "open" as its intended reputation. The bootloaders are locked, and the carriers are holding the keys.

The bootloader, if you're unfamiliar, is basically the low-level bit of software on a computer that allows the rest of the operating system to start up — a nerdy little piece of code that turns out to be important if you want to tinker with the phone to make it do what you want. If the bootloader is locked, you can't put your own operating system on the phone; if it's unlocked, you're free to delve into the life-extending and carrier-free world of custom ROMs.

The carriers are holding the keys

Now that the biggest flagship Android phones of 2013 are out and available, we thought we'd check in on the state of their bootloaders. As you've probably guessed by now, it's not a pretty picture — so far as we know, the major carriers in the US by-and-large continue to force manufacturers to lock the bootloaders on their phones.

However, the situation is not quite as dire as it sounds. Samsung has occasionally created "developer editions" of its flagship phones with unlocked bootloaders, though it generally offers them at a later date. HTC and Sony both have done the same. Developer editions are not ideal solutions — they are full-priced, unsubsidized phones and not always available on your carrier — but they're at least an option. Android hackers are also adept at finding ways to unlock bootloaders despite the carrier’s best efforts. Even Motorola’s famously locked-down handsets have recently been opened up and there's hints that the Galaxy S4's locked bootloader is also hackable.

HTC has also created a system wherein you can register your phone's unique identifier and then receive an unlock key. That system still applies today to the HTC One — most customers can visit HTC's site and get the code to unlock their bootloaders. HTC keeps a record of which phones have been unlocked just in case it comes up in a warranty situation, the company says, though it hasn't shared that data with the carriers.

When we asked Samsung which of its phones were locked, the company simply wouldn't say — we were directed to ask each carrier individually. HTC tells The Verge that two carriers out of the over 185 that are carrying the One have blocked unlocking. HTC would not say which two carriers have blacklisted the One from being unlocked, though.

The two most likely candidates are also the two most obvious ones

So we asked around and discovered that the two most likely candidates are also the two most obvious ones: AT&T and Verizon. The bootloader is locked on both the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One on both carriers. Verizon has yet to actually announce that it will carry the One, but rumors strongly suggest that it will. We asked Verizon why it continued to lock the bootloader on Android phones and the answer we received is the same we heard back in November: to ensure an "outstanding user experience." Here's what Verizon has to say about bootloaders:

Our position on open bootloaders doesn't change with the phone. Customers expect a certain level of service from us. Any time a device is modified which can happen with an open bootloader, we cannot guarantee device performance, security, or the outstanding user experience our customers have come to expect. Additionally, Verizon takes device security very seriously and an open bootloader can compromise the security of the device. A secure bootloader does not deny, limit, or restrict a customer from accessing or downloading applications using the device capabilities.

	HTC One	Samsung Galaxy S4
Verizon	Locked, unlock blacklisted (rumored)	Locked
AT&T	Locked, unlock blacklisted	Locked
Sprint	Unlockable	Unlocked
T-Mobile	Unlockable	Locked

Bootloader plans as told by each US carrier

As is often the case, the underdogs are more willing to tout openness amongst the big four US carriers. Sprint and T-Mobile are more supportive of HTC's program to unlock the bootloader. Sprint says that the bootloader can be unlocked on the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 comes unlocked. T-Mobile says that the bootloaders on both the HTC One and the Galaxy S4 are locked, but that it won’t prevent customers from unlocking them. It also gave us a rather un-un-carrier statement about bootloaders that mirrored Verizon’s:

T-Mobile does not prevent customers from unlocking the bootloader; however, we are committed to delivering an optimal experience on our devices for T-Mobile customers, and the installation of unauthorized firmware can negatively impact that experience. Additionally, this will help prevent device fraud, as well as security threats that may result from third-party firmware that has not been tested by T-Mobile and its OEM partners.

Open for business, not users

So the current state of openness on Android, at least for the two big-name manufacturers, is a mixed bag. The largest carriers continue to keep their devices locked down as much as possible, while the smaller carriers are slightly more willing to let tinkerers and hackers dig in.

The most surprising thing of all — or perhaps it's not really all that surprising — is that neither HTC nor Samsung are even willing to go on the record about exactly what the software controls are on the devices they make. The classic complaint about Android's so-called "openness" is that it's open to the carriers, not to the consumers. Though we've made some progress, we're not there yet: the flagship Android phones of 2013 are still being locked down by the flagship carriers.

Related Items android hacking custom rom bootloader locked bootloader Galaxy S4 One (AT&T 2013) One (2013) Samsung HTC Cellphones

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