Apple unafraid of, helping Facebook's Project Spartan

Techcrunch had announced last week the Spartan project, an ambitious project that could allow Apple to compete with Facebook and iOS leaving its own App Store in HTML 5. The site is back on this project, without giving details, but added interesting information about Apple.

According to the site, Apple is not afraid Spartan project, on the contrary. The company would provide technical assistance to the social network to help set up his shop dedicated to applications in HTML 5. Two reasons cited by TechCrunch: Apple is not afraid of Web applications offered by Facebook. According to MG Siegler, native applications are much better, and users will no doubt continue to choose them, at least in the majority. Otherwise, this platform encourages developers to abandon the Flash to create applications for Facebook, in favor of HTML 5. Technological change that is not displeasing to a company that puts itself before the HTML 5.

Remains that Apple underestimated the impact of a boutique Facebook beyond the control of the App Store, however, says TechCrunch, adding that the project Spartan is causing the delay of the application iPad. If its development has taken so long, it is precisely because the social network wants to make it compatible with Spartan.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.IV

As for the management of the autonomy of the iPad and responsiveness, precisely because they are unmatched IOS "cut the fat" over "real" multitasking, and a start in record time. What happens when the hard drive goes into tablet mode on Windows 8? What happens to excel, always in the background when you go on reading a magazine? Better yet, what happens if the file open in Excel was stored on the external drive when passing in tablet mode? So many questions that need answers, and we do not know for the time actually little more on this new version of Windows. Microsoft still has time to perfecting his copy and gives all the answers by the system output. However, it seems to introduce here a long transition during which it has perhaps more ways: you cannot take the train when it left the station.

Although the two modes do not live in total isolation: thus it is possible to live a touch application and pre-Windows application 8 to the screen by the method of sharing discussed above. One imagines, too, although Microsoft has not demonstrated that the keyboard can be used with older applications. As such, the touch-sensitive layers of Windows 8 is not a simple overlay, and wait to see the other features that Microsoft will unveil in the future to measure the interpenetration of two worlds. Nevertheless the two approaches, as presented, go together. While it is easy to see that this approach may provide to Microsoft, it is much more difficult to see the benefit to its users. And ultimately, it's still good to them that are: no one will do the update for the sheer joy of giving pleasure to the editor.

As John Gruber points out, this has been the undeniable success of the Apple iPad is well made clean slate. Pages, Numbers and Keynote have been totally redesigned for the touch interface, and this is what works. The simplicity of the iPad also reflects the disappearance of the management of files and their backup. The impossibility of making a direct port of an application for Mac OS X to iOS ensures that third party developers think their application specifically for IOS, which contributes to the strength and consistency of the platform. Microsoft has not had the fortitude to abandon what made his fortune so far, this may well be a shot in the future too heavy to drag.

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.III

After all, the software giant is on familiar ground: Windows itself has not he started his career as a simple wrapper for MS-DOS before finally, after many years, for committing patricide in engulfing its venerable ancestor? The method has already worked once, why would it not therefore possible to repeat the process?

There are still major differences between the transition, and paradigms MS-DOS/Windows windows / touch: in the first case, there were not two very different types of machines that have been associated with each interface. This is the biggest problem for Microsoft: Do we imagine that users of Windows 8 on desktop applications will support the new touch less powerful than those on shelves and x86 bothering with old menus and windows, do if only for the honor and advantage of using Excel to the old one? He should still see the thing for measuring the ineptitude: tap on the title menu, tap on the menu item, draw a line on the screen with your fingertip to move or resize a window, and that 'happens to the "rollover", actions that are initiated by the hovering, when there is no pointing device? The very notion of having an anti-virus running on a shelf today may raise eyebrows more than one user iPad.

However, we can consider Microsoft's proposal as a "best of both worlds," and the idea as such may seem attractive: the same machine could be adapted to your consumption patterns, and move from one mode to other seamlessly. In this case, Microsoft is going even further than what Apple provides with Mac OS X Leo, compared to merely take a few visual and behavioral IOS surface. The Tablet PC would become media when you need it and vice versa. But summarize the experience of a tablet media such as iPad Touch the only interface would be very simplistic. The iPad made changes much more profound in the user interface and operating system: more file management, even more backup while Windows 8 is always the good old records and other DLLs.

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Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.II

But precisely on x86, what about the substantial repository of Windows, the very one on which Microsoft built its empire? The answer is given 3 minutes in the video presentation: they have changed nothing. There are the "good old" windows and interface of Windows 7 when it launches a program of the old world.

What promised to be a radical change is a trivial cosmetic addition. In short, Windows 8 is just a wrapper graphic-touch Windows 7. It must be said that Microsoft has tried to square the circle with this process:

- Provide a usable interface on touch pads
- Maintain compatibility with its software library
- Providing an outlet to Windows 7 Phone on the Smartphone market

The first and second point are contradictory, and the third it only makes it harder still. Indeed, by delivering the touch interface with all future PC, Microsoft intends to educate its customers using Windows 7 Phone: being on familiar ground on their PC, they may be more inclined to choose a Smartphone that So they will already be using, and who can share part of the repository of their PCs (the famous touch applications in HTML5 + JavaScript. Incidentally, the next version of Windows Phone, Mango, you can create applications in HTML, and SilverLight). The approach clearly shows how much Microsoft has realized the strategic importance of mobile devices.

For transform its flagship product, the one on which it draws the vast majority of its income, single Trojan for the Smartphone battle is far from trivial. In short, Microsoft has to agree with Steve Jobs noisily about the "post-PC": here tomorrow Nearly Everything will be played.

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Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Part.I

After months of "teasing" unsustainable, Microsoft has finally lifted the veil on Windows 8. The Redmond Company promised a revolution at the interface. And the least we can say is that Microsoft's proposal is not timid: some concepts incorporating Phone Windows 7, Windows 8 offers everything for the first touch, with a presentation by "tiles" in place and place as icons on Windows Phone 7. We also note the presence of a "store" on the home screen, but we had plenty to expect.

A virtual keyboard on the screen, which can veer from each side of the monitor for more comfort on the large slabs, a system of sharing the screen between two applications that come together, all of which Microsoft no bold We were not used so far.


The trend was started with Windows 7 Phone, which inherits many in Windows 8: sweeping away the demons of the past, Microsoft is managed to stand out and offer an interface not only consistent but also original and full of discoveries.

The applications in this mode are based on HTML5, JavaScript, and can therefore run on any hardware platform. However note that Microsoft has changed its tune over Windows 7 Phone, which focuses on the development with Silver Light. Anyway, this choice is important given that Microsoft has promised a version of Windows 8 dedicated to ARM processors. This family of processors with different machine language than x86 processors, there necessarily arise a problem of compatibility for existing software compiled. In such situations, we usually use emulation (this was the choice made by Apple to the passage of 68,040 to PowerPC and the PowerPC to x86), but Microsoft has a problem: the significant difference in capacity between the processor ARM and a tablet core Intel desktop PCs. Emulation has never been possible, when the new processor is more powerful than the old. And indeed, Microsoft said it would not propose emulation for x86 applications on Windows for ARM, thus limiting Repository shelves ARM applications made solely in HTML5 and JavaScript, which they can be shared between two processors without difficulty.

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