I recently reported that the cloud gaming service Onlive would be available in the UK. I am glad to announce that it is now LIve. If you are in the UK, go to onlive.co.uk and sign up for your free account. Remember, you only pay when you wish to buy or rent a game.
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Linux on Windows 8 could be a problem
For many years, PCs have been running on something called BIOS. Essentially, this was the chip in your computer that allowed your keyboard, mouse, monitor and other components to work when turning on. However, there is something similar and newer that does the same job called UEFI(Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). It will allow your computer to boot up faster amongst other things.
Of course, Windows 8 will be taking advantage of UEFI, meaning you could have a Windows 8 PC with a decent boot time. However, there is a sting in the tale. When windows 8 is released, manufacturers will be putting Windows 8 on the PCs that they sell. However, the PCs must have UEFI, which also has a secure boot feature(which must be enabled). If the manufacturers follow this rule, then they can put a sticker on their PCs saying that their PC was designed for Windows 8. Essentially, this means that you cannot install Linux on a Windows 8 PC.
With that being said, you can install VIrtualBox(or VMWare Player) on Windows 8. From there, you can create a virtual PC and install Unbuntu Linux on it. For more information on virtualisation, click here . I know that Microsoft wants to make an effort to secure their operating system, but they have to consider people who want to run Linux alongside Windows.
9/11: Ten years on
I know that this is not a technology story, but I thought that it was appropriate that I told you all a story about the day that I will never forget. I wanted to tell you all about where I was For those of you who don’t know, I live in the United Kingdom.
I would like take you all back to ten years ago. About ten years ago, I was still in secondary school(in the USA, you might call it high school or junior high school).
I remember getting home from school and having something to eat whilst watching TV. For a moment, I turned on the TV and I saw that the world trade center had been hit. A few moments after the second tower hit, I was just speechless. I could not believe what had happened. I was shocked and confused about what I had just witnessed. I also felt sad for those who had lost their lives and the people that lost their loved ones. Not only that, but I also felt angry. I was thinking to myself “what kind of mad, idiotic person could do this?”. For a few minutes, I was so shocked that I could not speak for five minutes or do anything for five minutes.
Ten years on, and on this day, I still cannot forget the day that New York was attacked by terrorists. My heart goes out to those who were involved in the events on September 11th 2001.
My review of OSX Lion
Mac OSX Lion has been out for a while now, and I thought I would take this opportunity to give you all my thoughts. I found the installation process to be painless and without any problems. Of course, your mac may have to restart a few times, but the installation of OSX Lion was seamless nonetheless.
You will notice that the log-in screen is completely different to Apple’s previous releases of Mac OSX. It is a dark grey background with an Apple logo. The picture that represents your user account is now circle-shaped.
As soon as you hit the desktop, you will notice that you have two new icons on the dock. These are two of the features of OSX Lion. The first of them is launchpad. If you have an iOS device, then you will notice that Launchpad is basically the home screen on your iOS device, but transferred onto a mac. All of the apps you have installed will be in Launchpad as well as the applications folder(which accessible from the dock at the bottom of the screen). It is good to see another way of quickly viewing the applications that you have installed. The only thing that is missing from launchpad is a search feature that would allow you to search the applications that I have. Of course, Mac OSX Lion already has the spotlight feature to quickly search for and launch applications. It would also be useful to have some way of seeing the all the pages of launchpad at-a-glance.
The next thing I want to cover is Mission Control. As you can see, it allows you to see the different windows for each of the applications that you have open. It also allows you to see the workspaces you have open and what is in the other spaces. You can also see the dashboard. Personally, I don’t like Mission control that much. Before Mission Control, you had two features called Expos and spaces, which would allow you to see your open applications and windows, alongside the different workspaces and the applications that are open in the workspaces.
This next feature that I found useful is something called resume. Let’s say you needed to shut down your computer, but you were in the middle of some work. Essentially, resume allows you to pick up everything exactly how you left it. So, if you had some finder windows open, and you had to shut down, then resume would let you keep them on the screen when you shut down. When you power up your computer again, you would see that your finder windows have not moved. I have found this really useful, especially when I had many tabs open on my web browser.
I also have to commend Apple for giving us the ability to go back to a previous version of a document in the event of making a mistake. Personally, I also like having an app go full screen, so I can just focus on what I am doing.
These are just some of the many new features that are in OSX Lion. Of course OSX Lion has its drawbacks. For example, when I put my mac to sleep, I lose the capability to zoom into a certain portion of the screen using my mouse. The other thing is, some of my old applications would not work under OSX Lion. Some of these applications were written using the Rosetta translation process, and OSX Lion does not support this. I would want Apple to fix this and make some kind of patch so I can run these applications. The final of my problems, is the reverse scrolling. In OSX Lion, Apple has changed the way the scrolling works. Personally, I found this to be quite an annoying thing. However, Apple knows that people like having a choice, and you can change the scrolling direction from System Preferences if you want to.
All-in-all, it is not the best upgrade for an operating system that I have seen. However, it not the worst. Believe me, Windows Vista was possibly the worst upgrade yet. There are a lot of good features that Apple have added with OSX Lion, and some shouldn’t have been there in the first place. It also seems like Apple are trying to make OSX more like iOS. OSX Lion is only available from the Mac App Store and from Apple’s retail stores as a USB install disk(which will cost £55 in the UK or $70 in the USA). This upgrade will cost you only £21($30) from the Mac App Store. This makes Lion the cheapest upgrade for any of Apple’s operating systems yet.
So is it worth upgrading? I would say, that if you are happy enough with what you have then don’t upgrade. Otherwise if you want to upgrade, then do. I am not going to stop you from doing so.
If you are going to upgrade, then I suggest taking the following precautions:
- Use roaringapps.com to make sure that your applications are going to work on OSX Lion before upgrading
- Use Time machine or other methods to back up your data
- Please use my tutorial that I posted earlier to create your own USB install disk for OSX Lion, so that you don’t have to download it again(click here for my tutorial).
Is the PC dead?
So, with HP getting out of the PC business and Apple claiming that we are in a post-PC era, is the PC dead?
In my opinion it is not. I believe that the term PC is defined as a tower that sits under our desk. However, I also believe that this is not the case. Let’s face it, most of the devices that we own are in fact PCs. Macs are PCs, smartphones are PCs, tablets are PCs. Little do we know it, some of us in one way or another own a PC. Why do I say this?
It’s because a lot of the mobile devices(smartphones, tablets, and laptops etc) allow us to carry out tasks that desktop computers do equally as well.
We are able to go on the internet, shop, read the news, customise the desktop background to our desire, run and install the apps we want to. most of the devices that we own can be personalised. I am sorry, but to say that the PC is dead is just wrong. Better yet, to say that we are living in a “post-PC” era is completely wrong.
However, we can say that the PC is not only a tower that sits under a desk, but it is also the phone in your pocket, your laptop, your netbook or your tablet.
Update to Thoughts on OSX Lion
I recently posted an article called “Thoughts on OSX Lion”. Since then, I have had an update that I wanted to make to it.
Recently Apple released Mac OSX Lion. Apple’s latest operating system is currently their cheapest release around. and it’s only available as a download from the Mac App Store. You will be able to install it on all of the authorized macs that you own. When Apple say authorized, they mean computers that have the right to install and run the applications. Essentially, that means that you can install OSX Lion on all of the Apple Macs that you own.
With the new release being priced at £21GBP($30USD) in the UK, I think that this is probably the cheapest operating system release yet. Microsoft charges £100 in the UK(approximately $164 in the USA) for a copy of Windows 7(their current release of Windows). The point is, this is only usable on one machine and one machine only and it’s not transferrable. You cannot deactivate it.
I personally think that Microsoft should be scared. I believe that Microsoft need to offer a similar capability for their customers.
On the other hand Microsoft know that people have been happy with Windows and so they can rest safe in the knowledge that some will never switch from Windows to Mac. Microsoft know that they can continue to make money from this “staunch” Windows user base.
Thoughts on iOS 5
Having had a chance to digest the information that came out of the WWDC 2011 keynote, I thought that I would use this post to give my thoughts on some of the features available in iOS5.
First, I want to start with Wireless syncing. Essentially, this would allow you to wirelessly put music, photos, videos and much more onto your iOS device without the need to use a cable. I must say that, though this is a great idea, I think that it was actually an idea that apple had stolen from someone else. Way before iOS 5 was announced, there was a developer called Greg Hughes. He had developed an application for the iPhone. this application had exactly the same functionality as the Wi-Fi syncing feature Apple had announced at WWDC 2011. Greg had sent this app to the approval team at Apple, but they had rejected it. They have essentially stolen ideas from Hughes.
Next, there is the notifications system. Again, a great implementation. However, the idea of having notifications appear at the top of the screen has come from both the jailbreaking community and the google android operating system. To make matters worse, it seems that Apple have hired the developer behind the notification system available from Cydia.
Finally, there was iCloud. I think that it is about time that Apple gave us all a way to keep the content on all our iOS devices unified, without having to plug into a computer.
Thoughts on iMessages
Welcome to the latest in my “thoughts on” series of articles. On 6th June 2011, Apple held the keynote for their WWDC where they announced new software(see my WWDC 2011 keynote roundup article for more details).
When apple announced iOS 5, there was a feature that caught my attention called iMessages. Essentially, this will allow you to send text messages, pictures and videos to other people for free. It does this over your Wi-Fi internet connection or 3G connection. Essentially, this means that iMessage is Blackberry Messenger for iOS.
However, I think that Apple might have some trouble when getting the 3G side set up with the mobile phone networks. Here is why they might have this trouble. Your mobile phone network will give you an allocation of text messages (SMS messages) a month as well as phone call time. This is a contract that you are signed into for a period of time such as a month or a year or more.
If you are not on one of these contracts, then you are charged for every SMS message you send. When these networks see the iMessaging they are going to be so scared of it. This is because they are going to end up losing so much money because people are going to send text messages over Wi-Fi, instead of using sending SMS messages over their standard GSM network.
On the other hand, the mobile phone networks might not be so scared, because they know that some people will want to use iMessage on 3G, so they may be able to use it as a way to improve the way they advertise their deals.