Friday, June 29, 2012

Google unveil 7-inch tablet for USD199


Google announce their first ever tablet, Nexus 7 which came with Android (version 4) Jelly Bean OS. This 7-inch table manufacture by Asus Tek, Taiwan.

Nexus 7 is very similar with Kindle Fire in terms of display size and price. USD200 is an attractive price as for now, but 7-inch? I am not so sure. Nexus will impact current android base tablet as well.

Reference:
Google Unveils Nexus 7 Tablet, Nexus Q, & Project Glass

Monday, June 25, 2012

Playnote weekly: Microsoft announce Surface tablet

Playnote weekly 25: Microsoft announce Surface tablet


This week news flooded with Microsoft surface tablet.

Microsoft announced its own tablet on 19 June, it was named as Surface table. It came with soft rubber keyboard, and it run Windows 8 operating system. Some information is not available to the public yet, like pricing and battery life.

Windows 8 is the new operating system which will runs on desktop, tablet and mobile phones. Windows 8 will not just available on Intel cpu. Windows RT is a light version of Windows 8 which will run on ARM cpu. Most tablet and smartphones available on the market now is using ARM core CPU, including nVidia Tegra, Samsung Exynos, Apple A5 cpu (except Qualcomm Snapdragon) are all ARM core chips.

Playnote: Side track bad news. Microsoft also announced that current Windows smartphones are not upgradable to Windows Phone 8 system. Is a big slap on Nokia face, who has just release a Windows smartphone Lumia 900 not too long ago. We know at some point of time, new software will not support those old hardware, but not at this point of time. What Nokia will do next? Release a Lumia 1000 which use Windows Phone 8? or Go back to Symbian again?



(19 June) Apple extended two years exclusive deal for Liquidmetal meterials technology. 
Liquidmetal is a new type of alloy which Apple use is for the iPhone 3GS SIM eject pin as a testing, before it was used in a bigger and wider range of Apple product.


(23 June) 100th birthday of Alan Turing. 
Alan Turing is a mathematician and computer scientist. He invented the turing machine which is an important factor as the invention of computer. Turning Award name after Alan Turing. Turing Award is the Nobel price of computing. Ken Thomson and Dennis Richie awarded Turing Award for create the UNIX operating system.



Turing Award, named after Alan Turing.