Adam Scheinberg Archive

EE Journal reports: National Instruments (NI) recently released a new version of its LabView test automation programming environment for the latest Apple Macintosh computers based on the Arm-based Apple M1 CPU/GPU SoC. At the same time, NI let its customers know that this release would be the last one for Apple Macintosh computers, sending a shock through some portion of the company’s customer base. LabView’s importance to test and measurement cannot be overstated. It was the first graphical programming language designed exclusively for test systems. The language has been continually expanded and improved for nearly 40 years and features more than 7000 software drivers for instruments from many vendors as well as support for custom, FPGA-based instruments. LabView supports many instrument interfaces starting with IEEE-488 and extending to MXI, PXI, USB, Ethernet, and probably a few more interfaces that don’t immediately come to mind. It’s a shock to many and will likely punish higher education students and a chunk of the scientific and research segment which is still Mac dominant.

NetBSD, the highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system known for its platform diversity, has gained hardware-accelerated virtualization support via an improved NetBSD Virtual Machine Monitor (NVMM). A virtualization API is provided in libnvmm, that allows to easily create and manage virtual machines via NVMM. It’s always nice to see the major BSD distributions gain expanded hardware and software support. It will come as no surprise to anyone that we believe that competition is always a good thing when it comes to operating systems.

In June of last year, I finally decided to commit to an Android device. I had carried every flagship iPhone up through that point from the original iPhone to the 5S. To the world around me, I heaped the praise into a life transforming device, but in my tech circles, and on my blog, I frequently posted about my frustration, mostly with shackles and intentional limitations imposed. So last year, why I decided to make the jump to Android. I outlined 10 reasons why I was finally ready to make the jump to Android’s 4.4 release, KitKat. A year has passed. It's time to revisit my original assertions and complaints with some follow up and see where I stand one year later.

At long last, Amazon.com has entered the mobile phone market, as expected. The impressively spec'ed "Fire Phone" stacks up with a 4.7" Gorilla Glass display, a 2.2Ghz CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 13 Megapixel camera with f/2.0 aperture, certainly very competitive with today's Android flagships. Amazon has, quite wisely, included a number of hardware and software features and services that set it apart from the competition. The Fire Phone also boasts unlimited cloud storage of photos.

The Fire Phone has stereo speakers and a hardware camera button that help it stand out from the crowd. Prime customers? You all get the motherlode of content, so you'll be testing those speakers with access to a million songs recently made available via Amazon Prime Music. And if you're not a Prime member? Gotcha covered! You get one year of Prime for free (existing Prime users are extended a year).

Amazon has included their now-trademark Mayday Button, which provides 24/7 support. While this may seem unnecessary, take for example iOS 8, where there are literally dozens of new features to potentially confuse a user, or Android, where major version jumps change the entire UI of the phone. A dedicated support mechanism is a novel and likely welcome addition to the smart phone lineup.

A new service called Firefly that, much like Shazam, can not only listen, but "see." Optical recognition can help you identify (and subsequently purchase) books, TV shows, movies, games, music, and products. And the best part? There's an API for third parties to tie into it. This is going to be a very interesting feature.

Dynamic Perspective is billed by Amazon as "A custom-designed sensor system that responds to how you hold, view, and move your phone." It looks pretty amazing, and appears to give you not only standard gyroscopic control, but also a unique Z-axis subject distance, making for some very interesting effects and system responses to twisting, tilting, and peeking. You can read more about this feature and get the SDK on the Fire Phone developer's page.

The Fire Phone is available today for pre-order and is exclusive to AT&T, where it is free with AT&T Next, $199 on contract, or $649 off-contract.

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With the rise of microblogging services like Twitter and Identi.ca, the length of URLs has been the subject of much discussion. Some research has even suggested that long URLs cost us significant dollars, and that by shortening URLs, one could realize significant cost savings in bandwidth. As such, today, we're unveiling OSNe.ws, our own short URL service. OSNe.ws links are currently peppered throughout the site: you can view them by hovering over any news item, any conversation, or at the end of any story via the "Tweet this!" link. Note that these links are 301 redirected to the appropriate OSAlert.com page, there is no actual content living on OSNe.ws. We hope you enjoy this new service and that it encourages you to share our links more readily. Update by AS: Because everyone seems to be so focused on the "bandwidth savings" of links, let me be very clear: the new URLs are only for your convenience and saving characters in sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Identica where you're limited on characters.

Engadget reports that Apple will be detailing iPhone 0S 3.0 at a March 17 event. Because the event is being billed as an "advance preview," it's unlikely we'll see the new OS for some time, however, across the internet, hopes are high that the new OS will include many of the most commonly requested features, such as cut and paste, MMS, A2DP, Push notifications, and background tasks.

The subject of Apple CEO (and Messiah) Steve Jobs has been in the news quite a bit lately. It's nearly making me sick, the nonstop debate -- not about his health, but rather, about whether or not it's okay to discuss his health in the first place. I'm here to tell you: it's perfectly fine. Long ago, Steve Jobs forfeited his right to any privacy on this matter. Read on and I'll tell you why.

"Apple has shown terrific growth over the past decade after virtually collapsing in the early 90s. However, one segment that it has never really been able to win back is the business sector. Not since the days of Apple IIe's or further back has Apple really enjoyed strong business adoption. And the business sector, consisting of everything from business laptops, to servers and business phones, is a huge revenue source so this was a big loss for Apple. However, Apple's hottest gadget, the iPhone is finally starting to win Apple a following in the business community."

OpenSocial supporters, including Google and MySpace, have celebrated the first anniversary of the project to establish a common set of standard APIs and tools for developing social networking applications.

Despite warnings to businesses about the dangers of skipping Windows Vista, many IT managers and CIOs are standing firm that the risks of migrating to Vista outweigh the benefits.

Seems that both Motorola and Google have interest in seeing the Linux mobile footprint evolve. With a combined contribution of $20,000, they are focusing on major changes for GNOME 3. "It will be more than a tweak," Stormy Peters stated. "It will be the whole user experience, from the look and feel, to how files are managed to how it syncs with your mobile phone -- really the whole package. It will be very much a change for users and how they use their computers."

Developers have proposed an out-of-the-world browsing experience for Mozilla Firefox 4. Here is a user who peeks into those features and gives us insight. Taragana.com looks at Mozilla initiatives that might make it into Firefox 4.

Microsoft today announced Windows Azure, a cloud services platform. According to the website, "Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers."