2012 in tech: Apple up the Cook without a paddle, ARM, slab wars... and MORE

Great Britain reminded the world who invented the web at London 2012 Olympics, Apple cocked up its maps, Microsoft returned to hardware with Surface, we saw a rise of the machines on Wall Street and many of us rubbed our hands with glee as Facebook IPO's deflated. This was the last 12 months in technology. So put the in-laws on …

[qwarty]

My three tablets for 2012

iPad 4. Demonstrates that a good quality HD screen makes a difference for larger tablets and can work well given adequate GPU/CPU.

Surface RT. Shows that convertibles are an effective way to go and it is possible to offer a different take on UI/UX for mobile devices.

Nexus 7. Illustrates that a pocket sized tablet can be very effective when well thought out.

None of these tablets are perfect,a negatively minded person can find flaws with each. However in 2013 we can look forward to further competition among these different types of devices and form factors with fewer compromises in the next generation. A very positive prospect for the New Year.

My personal favourite of these for 2012 is the Nexus 7. It has raised Android on tablet from second rate to a genuine alternative to iOS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My three tablets for 2012

I have a Surface RT. I didn't buy one (I did buy a Nexus 7), I received one as my Christmas bonus this year, being in IT I get to support the things too. Some of the people in sales who also got one sold it unopened (listed it online the second they got back to their desks).

The UI is a Frankenstein mess. It didn't take long before I had to plug in a mouse because the advanced stuff is all desktop UI and the tiny buttons and drop down menus are not usable with touch, lucky they included a standard USB port, that must by why. I had to add an entry to the HOSTS file to get it to print to my home printer (had to take ownership of the file, then give myself permission to edit it).

I turned off Live Tile on everything but weather and news. It was driving me nuts, as bad as a screen full of flash banner ads.

Speaking of the weather app, why is there a F***ing shampoo add in the middle of the weather app? If you download the MS solitaire app (you don't get any built in) you get full screen full video ads.

The app store is a joke, there is not much there, and a lot of the stuff that is there will not even work. MS must have VERY low standards when OKing apps.

No SSLVPN and Cisco say MS will not give them enough access to allow them to make one. I can access our work network from my Nexus 7, but not the surface.

No USB charging. If you don't have the MS Brick you are SOL (brick costs $40 for a spare, your not going to find one at the mall). I can charge my Nexus from any computer with a standard cable, or buy a USB charger (might be slow) just about anyplace. I've seen USB chargers in drug stores.

Speaking of $40 bricks/£34.99, they tell you that you need to buy their HD video adaptor (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msuk/en_GB/pdp/ThemeID.30273200/productID.258665000) but all you really need is a $5 micro HDMI to HDMI cable. At least the dual monitor support is ok.

I would not buy a Surface, even at half the price. Maybe the next version (if there is one) will be less shit.

Well it was worth what I paid for it :P

[John Hawkins]

SSDD 2012

Guess we can look forward to more of the same in 2013. Should be fun to follow though, with El Reg topping the list of web rags I follow it on.

Guess also that the young 'uns of today are more likely to think of Peter Jackson and New Zealand when it comes to LOTR than JRR Tolkien and England.

[dajames]

Oh, Really?

By 2011, even Microsoft was putting Windows on ARM, breaking decades of x86 fidelity.

You may have missed the fact that Windows (NT4) ran on MIPS and PowerPC, Windows 200 ran on Alpha until about a dozen years ago, and Windows 7 runs on Itanic -- excuse me, I mean Itanium.

Windows CE/Pocket PC/Mobile/Phone versions have supported a variety of ARM, MIPS, Hitachi SH3, and other CPUs in the same timescale, though most devices are ARM these days.

So, actually, it looks as though Microsoft are concentrating on x86 and ARM, where previously they have also supported a variety of other architectures, notably Itanium which has now been dropped from Server 2012.

That's hardly "decades of x86 fidelity"

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Oh, Really?

> Windows 200[0] ran on Alpha until about a dozen years ago

Yep, for all of five minutes and never made it to release either.

http://alasir.com/articles/alpha_history/compaq_epoch.html

On the 23rd of August 1999, a notorious event took place: Compaq announced to discontinue participation in development of Windows NT and stopped to supply this OS with Alpha systems of its own. In fact, it also laid off almost all people (about 120 programmers) from former DEC's Western Research Laboratory (DECwest) who worked on this project. Accordingly to Compaq's statistics, among all preinstalled OSes on newly shipped Alpha machines Tru64 UNIX held a share of 65%, OpenVMS — of 35%, and Windows NT — just about of 5%. So, there was no reason to keep flogging a dead horse. A week later, Microsoft announced in return that there would be no Windows 2000 for Alpha released, even though the RC1 (Release Candidate 1) was ready by that moment. Considering a fact that Microsoft together with Motorola and SGI discontinued any support for the PowerPC and MIPS architectures respectively in 1997, the future of "the universal OS" appeared to rely on a single computer architecture. Of course, if to discount IA-64 which failed on the workstation market soon and never got to desktops or notebooks.

[Wibble]

Facebook's billion users?

Oh do pull the other one; it's got bells on it.

Facebook may have a billion accounts, but that's got sod all to do with the number of *active* users. Most, and I mean most, of these billion accounts will be test/fictitious/defunct accounts.

[Armando 123]

Bob Costas

Considering he used the phrase b___ j__ on his second professional broadcast to describe a team blowing a lead(*), Bob Costas should never be taken seriously. Plus he's a pompous little twerpy windbag.

(*) - _Loose Balls_, Terry Pluto, in the chapter about the Spirits of St. Louis (in a section called "Bob Costas Blows In")

[Maliciously Crafted Packet]

Android... everywhere and nowhere baby.

Well at least nowhere as far as app and web usage stats are concerned.

Android has done very well selling way way more devices than Apple. But the alarming elephant in the Android room is that no one is using it, except as a dumb phone.

Aside from the very small subset of developers and commentards found on publications like the Reg most Android users would be just as happy with an old Nokia 6230i. Most people don't seem to use their Android devices for much more than phone calls, texting and taking the odd photo. The bloke in the phone shop recommended it at upgrade time, so thats what they got. Nice big screen cept this time the battery doesn't last as long.

Like the old VCR's of the 80's? Always flashing 00:00:00 because people found programming the clock/setting recording times to be too much effort. Same seems to be happening with Android. Apps and web are available but not being used.

On the tablet side, things are even worse. In the US iPad creates roughly 7 times as many page impressions as all other tablets put together.

Who are you going to optimise your website for?

http://insights.chitika.com/2012/december-tablet-update/

[djstardust]

Re: Android... everywhere and nowhere baby.

I'd say it's more the opposite way.

Three people in my office paid over £500 for an iphone ..... don't have any apps installed, no music ...... NOTHING

Now, that's dumb. But then it's also OK as they look good. Ha ha!

[MicroNix]

Re: Android... everywhere and nowhere baby.

I think you demonstrated perfectly what a commentard is. Thanks for enlightening us all!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Android... everywhere and nowhere baby.

Get thee behind me fanboi.

[gquipster]

Apple/Samsung Advert

Is it me or has the Samsung Legal stuff been removed from Apple's website after less than 6-months?

I couldn't see it anywhere.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Apple/Samsung Advert

It is there - but the runes can only be seen by moonlight on the first day of spring by a virgin holding a magic ring.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Apple/Samsung Advert

Interesting...

Where???

http://www.apple.com/uk/legal-judgement/ redirects to their homepage, and even disabling javascript I couldn't find it anywhere.

[Malcolm Weir]

Re: Apple/Samsung Advert

The appeals court (that spanked Apple) modified the duration to, I think, 3 months instead of 6.

[Jon Green]

Ubuntu "commercial-grade"??

"Canonical delivered a commercial-grade operating system, too, with the release of an ARM variant of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in 2012."

Doesn't explain why former Ubuntu fans (like me) were running away from Unity so fast you could measure the red shift - and that's before they started handing search results to Amazon without so much as a by-your-leave.

As the icon suggests, Canonical seems to be determined to write its own obituary. First, it imposed a default* GUI that's unusable for serious work except possibly on a tablet. (And how many tablets have been launched to market running Ubuntu? Answer: there are rumours - http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/01/01/ubuntu-surprise/ - one might appear tomorrow. Possibly.) Then, it stunned and alienated its remaining advocates, and caused widespread condemnation by installing spyware as standard.

Now, if you'd said "An operating system designed to deliver commercials," you might have been closer to the mark.

(* Yes, I know there are other semi- or non-official Ubuntu variants without Unity)

[silent_count]

A tale of two leaders.

Tim Cook is a good CEO but he's not the messiah of iLand that Steve Jobs was. Steve Balmer is a messiah-type but, unfortunately for both him and MS, not the sort that anyone wants to follow.

I've had the pleasure of having a brief chat with Steve Sinofsky. He came across as the rare kind of guy who can firmly grasp both the "big picture" stuff and the "fine detail", and foresee how the two levels interact. Whatever the reasons were, his departure is a substantial loss for Microsoft.

[HemRoid]

Um, and?

You mean companies profited from the sale of tech to an enemy state?

Well, if HSBC is any indicator, as long as the Federal Government gets their cut, they'll chalk it up to the companies being too big to fail and sweep it under the rug without hesitation, while the media ignores the story entirely.

Sad, but it's what the sheeple of this nation wanted, and have earned.

Blinders on fully, and into oblivion we head.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Um, and?

> enemy state

Who?

[ducatindia]

JAVA Training Institute

i think it's a good news for apple customer. i like this.

[Anonymous Coward]

One tends to wonder...

Oh yes, the Apple critics had a jolly good chuckle at the maps screw-up, the not so critical had a good yell at the perceived haters, and for a while the situation garnered a lot of interweb traffic.

But was it really worth more than a footnote in the 2012 Tech overview ? Really ?

I would suggest it was no more than a stumble, and it has very little bearing on the evolution of technologie and how it impacts our work and lives.

So let it go. It was just a shrimp fart in the tech ocean.

[blcollier]

NBC Commentary on Tim Berners-Lee

That had to be the most eye-opening part of the entire article for me; I hadn't heard about the complete and utter botched job that NBC did with the opening ceremony...

Even with Win8, Facebook's inevitable share nose-dive , iOS Maps, Surface and Apple v Samsung all taking place, telling viewers to google for Tim Berners-Lee has to be the most spectacular episode of idiocy from last year.

[Nicholas EGF Berry]

"ram amuck", really?

nt