Cloud gaming is the future

Despite my misgivings, though, cloud gaming does have promise. Worldwide roll outs are now so rapid that in five or 10 years, a large percentage of the developed world will have fiber to the home or cabinet. It will take time, but with enough pressure from console makers and publishers, developers will eventually fine-tune their game engines, too.

What then? What will happen when there is no logical reason to keep a console in your living room? With the PS4, Xbox 720, and Wii U all coming down the line, cloud gaming isn’t going to take off in the near term — but what about the nextgeneration of consoles?

It is entirely possible that the Xbox 1080 will simply be a dumb little box, with four gamepad sockets on the front, and HDMI and power on the back; it could even be built into a Microsoft TV. Microsoft already has a huge cloud presence, too — and really, streaming games isn’t all that different from streaming movies.

The appeal of cloud gaming to companies such as Microsoft and Sony is immense. In an instant, short of breaking into the local data center, software piracy goes out the window. With the expensive console out of the way, their pool of prospective gamers (and customers) immediately swells. By default, the Xbox 1080 service might be completely free — but just like today’s free-to-play games, Microsoft could charge you for additional levels and in-game items, as well as the ability to connect multiple gamepads, output at higher resolution, unlock higher framerates, and so on.

Cloud gaming is completely cross-platform, too: There’s no functional difference between a PC monitor, TV, smartphone, or tablet. Imagine being able to pause a game at home, and then continue it on your tablet or office computer. Imagine multiplayer games where you’re in front of the TV, but your friend is on the other side of the world, playing from a Facebook window on his laptop.

The flip side, of course, is that Microsoft (or EA) could charge you for excessive use (“you have exceeded our fair-use policy…”) — and what happens if you get banned? Do you lose access to all of the games you’ve purchased? Will you have the option of storing saved games locally, or will they all be in the cloud?

Ultimately, though, in much the same way that cloud computing and storage has exploded in the last few years, cloud gaming will follow suit. Cloud gaming, like cloud computing, digital downloads, and streaming video, simply has too many benefits to ignore.

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Berkeley scientists turn harmless virus into piezoelectric generator

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have created a harmless, genetically-modified virus that’s piezoelectric — in other words, it generates electricity when pressure is applied. This virus might eventually find its way into piezoelectric generators in the sole of your shoe, which would generate electricity (for your smartphone) while you walk.

The concept of piezoelectric energy harvesting is hardly new, but according to Berkeley Lab the materials used to make piezoelectric devices are toxic, and are thus no good for internal use or for consumer-facing applications (such as the aforementioned shoe-sole power generator). The The M13 bacteriophage (literally “bacteria devourer”) virus, however, is: piezoelectric, harmless to humans, easy to genetically modify, and readily aligns itself into an orderly film — and, being a virus, it readily replicates itself millions of times, so you don’t need to worry about running out of juice at an inopportune moment.

To turn the M13 phage into into a power source, the scientists genetically engineered the virus to create a higher voltage, stacked 20 layers of the virus on top of a gold substrate, attached some wires, and voila: a piezoelectric generator that produces no less than six nanoamperes at 400 millivolts. This might not sound like a lot (OK 6 nA isn’t a lot), but in the video below you can see that it’s enough to power a simple LCD display — or, alternatively, a low-power sensor.

Ultimately, the most exciting aspect about piezoelectricity is that it can be generated from almost any “wasted” movement — this could be as obvious as swinging your legs and feet, but piezoelectric generators could also harvest power from dance floors, the office stairs, or the vibrations from heavy machinery.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that a self-assembling piezoelectric generator is rather desirable — especially in today’s world, where mass production of genetically modified viruses is a lot easier thanrearranging individual atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope. Byung Yang Lee, one of the scientists behind the discovery, says, “We’re now working on ways to improve on this proof-of-principle demonstration… piezoelectric materials based on viruses could offer a simple route to novel microelectronics in the future.”

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Does Ivy Bridge replace discrete video cards for gaming?

Wondering how much lowering the resolution further would help the other tests, I dialed them all down to 1680×1050 and reran the tests at the same settings.HAWX 2 was still the only one to get above 30 fps (61 fps), though Batman: Arkham City and Lost Planet 2 came extremely close (29 fps and 29.1 fps respectively). Things clicked considerably more at 1440×900, with only Heaven and Metro 2033 still holding out — which they also did at even the lowest resolution I tested, 1280×800.

But I wasn’t satisfied with the video quality at any of these resolutions; lots of things looked just a little too blobby for my tastes. So on every game that passed my first test, I upped the details just a tad to see whether it could hack a slightly more demanding challenge. HAWX 2 again flew at all four resolutions,Lost Planet 2 was fine up through 1440×900, and that was all. Nudging the settings up still further,HAWX 2 hit 33 fps and Lost Planet 2 made it to 35.2 fps at 1280×800, but neither could surpass 30 fps even at 1440×900, so that’s where I stopped.

Even with the minor detail improvements I implemented toward the end of the testing, you still have to forsake a fair amount in terms of video quality just to get these games to play — and then generally at frame rates most legitimate gamers would barely consider good. Don’t get me wrong: As far as I’m concerned, Ivy Bridge marks a significant leap forward for Intel, and definitely suggests some good things to come on the graphics side. But I can’t quite get myself to the point where I feel comfortable pretending that this is a major victory.

The main thing Intel has proven — or, if you prefer, proven again — with Ivy Bridge is that, if you want to play 3D games that both perform well and look good, even at lower (I would argue too low) resolutions, you absolutely need a discrete video card. There’s no way around this. It may not be news to most (okay, any) system builders, but the average consumer who buys an Ivy Bridge system and is attracted by the possibility of not having to shell out another three to five wallet-size portraits of Andrew Jackson just to get the newest titles to play is going to be disappointed.

Ultimately, the conclusion to draw here is exactly the one Loyd did: Intel has functionally obliterated any compelling reason to buy a $60 video card. I’ve been a bit skeptical of the need for them for years, to be honest, as I’ve generally questioned whether the gains you might see in tasks like video transcoding were worth the money if robust gaming remained elusive. But if Intel and AMD chips can handle all the basic stuff themselves and do it well — which they now do — the GPU guys will either need to devise a much better argument for the entry-level models, drop the prices across the board to edge the $100 cards (which I’ve found in most cases to be worth the money) closer to or even onto the lowest pricing tier, or give up on trying to court that segment at all. And once Ivy Bridge gets around, AMD and Nvidia will need to make that decision sooner rather than later.

So Intel definitely deserves to be congratulated on a solid release that will change our outlooks about processing and integrated video for at least the next year or so. Just don’t assume that Ivy Bridge’s strides translate into a revolutionary rethink of the graphics market for everyone. Those for whom gaming is, at most, a sometime thing will unquestionably notice some benefits. But everyone else should stick with at least a $100 standalone card (and preferably at least a $200 one if they can afford it) to ensure the games’ performance and appearance make them worth playing.

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Microsoft bans third-party browsers from Windows on ARM

In a twist that’s very reminiscent of Microsoft’s naughty nineties, Mozilla has revealed that Windows RT — aka Windows 8 on ARM — will only support one web browser: Internet Explorer. While Firefox will technically be able to run in Metro mode on Windows RT, it will be so crippled as to be unusable; in “classic,” Desktop mode, third-party browsers such as Firefox won’t be allowed to run at all.

Updated @ 8:00am: The issue seems to revolve around API access in Windows RT. Third-party developers (and apps) will only have access to the WinRT (Metro) API, while Microsoft’s own software will have access to the low-level (and old school) Win32 API. This means that Mozilla canbuild Firefox for Windows on ARM, but without access to Win32 it will be very hard to compete with Internet Explorer.

At first blush this sounds like a classic ploy to stymy the opposition and regain market share — and for all I know, maybe it is — but there are also a few logical reasons for Microsoft’s decision. From the get-go, Microsoft has been leery of developers porting x86 code to ARM, in case these ported apps don’t have the efficiency and stability that a low-power (and battery-powered) ARM tablet requires. It’s for this reason that Microsoft didn’t offer some kind of OS- or hardware-level x86>ARM translation.

Browsers are also one of the juiciest attack vectors for malware — and also one of the most “visible” aspects of a modern operating system. If a user installs Firefox (or Opera or Chrome) on a Windows RT table, and then it gets bogged down with malware and toolbars, you are likely to walk away with a sour taste for Windows RT; “It’s just like Windows 7 damnit!” By only allowing Internet Explorer, Microsoft should be able to keep Windows RT running smoothly for longer. (This is the same reason that Apple doesn’t allow third-party operating systems on its iOS devices, incidentally.)

Finally, moving away from the logical and more towards legal and ideological wrangling, Windows RT isn’t Windows 8. We always wondered why Windows 8 on ARM was suddenly renamed to Windows RT, and this is probably the reason. With one fell swoop, Microsoft may have escaped the the antitrust ruling that forced European versions of Windows to offer alternative browsers, and done an end-run around the DOJ-Microsoft antitrust settlement in 2001.

Irrespective of the reasoning behind the restriction, we should discuss the heinous implications forusers. First up, this means there won’t be any browser add-ons on Windows ARM tablets. There also won’t be any HTML5 web apps (either from the Chrome Web Store, or Mozilla Marketplace, or fancy WebGL-powered websites. If tablet computing turns out to be as big as Microsoft and Apple are anticipating, then this restriction will seriously hamper competition, and thus the continued, rapid advances being made to web browsers and underlying technologies, such as HTML5, JavaScript, and HTTP.

I think it’s unlikely, but if ARM tablets beat out x86 tablets, this could mean a return to the mid-’90s digital dark age, where more than 90% of web surfers used Internet Explorer — a fate worse than death itself.

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How multitasking really works on Android and iOS

Google made some fairly significant changes to the way multitasking is accessed on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. In the new recent apps list, you can swipe apps away like cards to remove them from the list. Just like in the case of iOS, this tends to give users the feeling that they are managing tasks; freeing up memory even. However, that is just as wrong here as it is on Apple’s platform.

The recent apps list is just that, a list of recent apps with thumbnails. There is no guarantee that the apps are actually running any code just because they are in the list. When a user hits the home button, an app does not immediately enter some thing akin to Suspended mode on iOS. The process associated with an Android app remains in the background and is allowed to do any work it needs to. Apps on Android might use multiple processes, and multiple apps can share a single process.

When users want to return to an app they have left, the process is restored as a foreground app almost instantly. In a perfect world, an Android device would never run out of memory, and all these processes could live in RAM forever. This being the real world, your device will probably run short of RAM at some point. When that happens, it’s much the same as iOS. The system kills the process and the kernel reclaims the resources. The next time a user opens that app, it has to completely reloaded. This app could still be in the recent apps list, which has no bearing on whether or not its process is still running in the background.

In more recent iterations of Android, the platform has gotten much smarter about managing tasks for you. There is simply no reason to use a task manager to keep the system running smoothly. In fact, this could interfere with Android’s automatic process monitoring. Developers have two ways to explicitly run code in the background and prevent it from being stopped unexpectedly. A manual task manager would interfere.

The ways Android apps avoid being killed in the background has a parallel on iOS with the limited Background APIs. The BroadcastReceivers component lets apps wake up for a short time to run some task or another, and then shunts it back to a background state. This is useful for location check-ins or file syncing.

The other way to forcibly maintain an app in the background is the Service component. An app that is running as a Service can run indefinitely and should almost never be killed by the system. This is what makes Android multitasking unique. Regular processes will be ended before a service, and a developer can further indicate a Service’s importance by running it as “foreground,” but this requires a notification icon to be persistently visible in the notification bar. You will see this behavior with automation apps like Locale as well as with music playback.

It’s about control, and you don’t have much

Be it iOS or Android, the operating system does most of the task management for you. iOS never really allowed users to monkey around with running tasks, and even now it forces developers to very clearly declare why an app needs to exist as a non-Suspended Background process for more than a few seconds. Suspended processes are killed as needed, and the recent apps bar has nothing to do with that.

Android also closes down processes that are no longer needed, but it gives developers a few more ways to run behind the scenes. The process associated with an app is free to run whatever code it needs in the background, but if memory is constrained, it could be ended at any time. By running a BroadcastReceiver or Service, apps can be assured of a little more functionality, though. Even in Android 4.0 with its slick recent apps interface, removing an app won’t force-kill the underlying process. That’s up to the system.

The bottom line is this: don’t worry about it. The apps running in the background, be they Suspended iOS apps or Android Services, will be handled by the system in the most efficient way. Both platforms know to kill apps that are no longer needed, and removing things from your recent apps list on either platform isn’t going to help.

source : View the original article here

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Windows 8 vs. Mountain Lion: Does Microsoft stand a chance?

Let me clarify: The personal computer, as imagined by IBM and powered by Microsoft DOS and Windows, is raggedly exhaling its final breaths. In its place is a great big shuddering heap of conflated, commingled, converging software and hardware led by Apple’s Mountain Lion and Microsoft’s Windows 8.

The shocking thing is just how quickly his convergence has occurred. Released in 2009, both Windows 7 and OS X 10.6 had almost zero cloud-, mobile-, or cross platform features; they were both very much “PC” operating systems. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t add extra functionality through third-party software, but the out-of-the-box experience, which the vast majority of users experience, was very PC.

In stark contrast, if you take a look at Windows 8 and OS X 10.8, both slated for release in the second half of 2012, almost every feature is somehow linked to the cloud, mobile, or home entertainment; these OSes are no longer PC-oriented, but instead the central, converged hubs for your complete digital existence.

Windows 8 and Mountain Lion, using a single sign-on, will use Windows Live and iCloud to sync all of your documents, images, and music between all of your devices. You will be able to buy a Windows 8 tablet that you can use in the livingroom, and then dock it to a keyboard and mouse when you’re at your desk. With AirPlay mirroring and Game Center, Mountain Lion will double up as a home entertainment system, allowing Mac, iPhone, and iPad users to play against each other on an Apple TV. Windows 8 apps will be very easy to port to Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8 apps will automatically sync between five Windows 8 devices (home, office, tablet, and so on).

Furthermore, the difference — and thus friction — between the desktop and mobile OSes is being reduced. In Mountain Lion, a bunch of iOS features have been lifted straight out and inserted into the desktop OS; most notably the Notification Center. Many apps are being renamed so that they match the iOS equivalents, too: iCal becomes Calendar, iChat becomes Messages, and so on. These changes are in addition to Lion’s introduction of an app launcher and gestures that are virtually identical to iOS.

On the Windows side, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that primary interface — the Metro Start Screen — is very similar to the Windows Phone 7 (and 8). The latest update to the Xbox 360 dashboard is also very Metro-inspired (and there are Xbox Live companion apps for both Windows Phone and Windows 8). Finally, there’s a rumor that the Xbox 720 might even be powered by Windows 8. Microsoft insists that the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 app stores will be separate, but I wouldn’t be surprised if — eventually — phone, console, and tablet/laptop/desktop all share the same Metro app store.

Apple has the upper hand

It’s clear, then, that Microsoft and Apple have both settled on a post-PC reality — but, interestingly both companies are converging from completely different directions. Microsoft is trying to leverage its way into the tablet and phone market by way of its massive Windows user base. Apple, on the flip side, is trying to get iOS users to pony up for a Mac laptop, Apple TV, and eventually an Apple iTV.

The problem, of course, is that Windows 8 is a massive, revolutionary gamble that takes Microsoft way beyond its comfort zone. For 30 years, Microsoft has been making money on x86 PCs and servers, and the Office suite of software. With Windows 8, Microsoft is moving to a brand new architecture, giving away Office for free, doing away with the Start button and menu, and generally making a huge mess of the Desktop/Explorer side of things. Adding to this, Windows Phone 7 is limping along, and there’s no real indication that Windows drives users to the Xbox 360, and vice versa. In short, Microsoft needs Windows 8 to succeed on tablets and drive sales of Windows Phone 8… or it’s screwed.

Apple, on the other hand, has the iPhone and iPad; two of the world’s most desirable mobile devices. On the back of just these two devices, Apple’s fourth quarter revenue was over $46 billion. More than 50 million iPhones and iPads were sold in this period, and it’s really no surprise that the same quarter also saw record breaking sales of Macs. In short, Apple already has a huge head start in The Great Convergence. Apple has already made its revolutionary leaps — way back in 2007 with the iPhone, and again with the iPad in 2010 — and the payoff has been huge. Where Microsoft now has to bet it all on a form factor it has no experience with, Apple has a proven formula that it can tweak and refine.

The only way Microsoft will come out of this alive, and maybe even the winner, is if it differentiates itself from Apple.

Imagine that the path to computing convergence is a thick jungle. Apple is pushing ahead, gradually and sensibly chopping away with a machete and occasionally discovering hidden treasures in (oc)cult temples. The path is only wide enough for one, with no possibility of Microsoft (or Samsung or Google) squeezing past. If Microsoft walks in Apple’s shadow, which so many other companies have done — if it tries to imitate Apple — it will lose. If Microsoft can forge its own path, perhaps with a metaphorical tractor or some good ol’ napalm, it could come out on top.

The good news is that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are shaping up to being very different beasts to OS X and iOS. Microsoft won’t have the chance to prove that its path to convergence is better than Apple’s until they launch, though — and a lot can happen between now and fall. The iPad 3 and iOS 5.1 are due to be announced any day now, and the Apple iTV should appear before Windows 8, too.

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Apple’s new iPad uses SHA to boost resolution. What the heck does that mean?

The iPad 3′s QXGA resolution and quad-graphics-core A5X SoC have had the tech industry buzzing for the past week. One of the most common questions everyone is asking has been how Apple managed to pack a 2048×1536 display into a 9.7-inch form factor without killing battery life or jacking up the price. Research indicates that Apple is using displays built with a technology known as Super High Aperture (SHA). So what’s that mean in English?

Ultra-high resolution displays like the iPad 3′s are challenging to manufacture for two reasons. First — and this is the problem SHA addresses — is the issue of parasitic capacitive coupling. When conventionally manufactured pixels are packed as tightly as the iPad 3′s, electrons tend to jump from transistor to transistor, which does wonders for display quality. SHA solves this by depositing a thin resin layer between the indium tin oxide pixel electrodes and their signal lines.

The other challenge — the one SHA doesn’t directly address — is the need for more backlighting. Conventional LCDs rely on a backlight to display an image, which in turn requires that a portion of each pixel be transparent. Higher display resolutions mean smaller pixels, and smaller pixels means a smaller aperture for light to pass through. Display manufacturers typically compensate for this by boosting the strength of the backlight. That’s fine for any device that plugs into a wall, but it’s more problematic for any handheld device.

Original image by DisplaySearch

The iPad 3 reportedly uses at least twice as many LEDs as the iPad 2 and its screen is believed to draw more power as a result. This likely explains why the device is heavier than its predecessor; the iPad 3 probably has a larger battery. As for its display quality, some have claimed that the iPad’s 2048×1536 resolution isn’t really a Retina display because its PPI is “just” 264 as opposed to the iPad’s 330. This isn’t accurate. The term Retina display broadly means “the point at which a person with 20/20 vision can no longer distinguish individual pixels.” That figure changes considerably depending on your distance from the display. At 12 inches, 287 PPI is good enough to be classed a retina display. At 15 inches, the figure is 229 PPI. People tend to hold tablets farther away from themselves than they do a mobile phone, which explains why Apple can justifiably claim to offer a Retina display with a lower pixel density.

These reports raise the question of how Apple managed to pull off the iPhone 4′s 640×960 screen, with its 334 DPI two years ago without utilizing a technology like SHA. Information there is limited, but a teardown done by Tech-On shows that the iPhone 4′s aperture ratio was significantly less than the iPad 3′s. According to that article, Apple’s decision to bond the screen, touch panel, and case front was made to eliminate light reflections that could degrade image quality. The iPhone’s lower resolution and relatively small display mean that per wafer yields are likely higher, even using conventional amorphous silicon.

In the past, Apple has purchased displays from Sharp, Samsung, and LG Display, but iSuppli has stated that of the three, only Samsung is currently able to manufacture the panels in sufficient quantity to meet Apple’s needs. According to analyst Vinita Jakhanwal, yields still aren’t that great. “The display specifications on the new iPad are very demanding in terms of the very high resolution,” Jakhanwal said in an email. “Achieving this high resolution without compromising on the power consumption and brightness and maintaining Apple’s quality standards are supposedly proving to be a challenge for LG Display and Sharp.”

Image by Gizmodo

Apple’s continued reliance on Samsung is more than a little ironic given the lawsuits between the two manufacturers. Apple has clearly been the aggressor — Samsung refrained from filing counter suits for months — but the international patent lawsuits are enough to make the Hattfield-McCoy rivalry look like an aggressive episode of Family Feud. The new iPad’s shipping date has steadily slipped backwards since the devices went on sale; an iPad 3 ordered today is shown as shipping in 2-3 weeks. With LG and Sharp reportedly mired in manufacturing difficulties, Apple’s reliance on Samsung will be even greater. At some point the two companies will presumably kiss and make up, with Samsung offering preferential manufacturing terms in exchange for Apple dropping all its lawsuits. For now, the two companies remain simultaneously at odds and joined at the hip.

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