Jailbreak on the way for all iPhones/iPads with IOS 6.1 or below.

The evad3rs dev team has just announced that the untethered jailbreak tool will be called evasi0n.
The evad3rs dev team have made the announcement on their website.

According to the website, the dev team is currently working on finishing the GUI.
We are in the process of finishing the GUI. Come back soon!
They have also revealed that the next step will be beta testing.
As reported earlier, evasi0n jailbreak will work on iOS 6.0, iOS 6.0.1, iOS 6.0.2 and iOS 6.1. It will support all iOS 6.1 compatible devices except for Apple TV 3. So the following iOS devices will be supported:

• iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS

• iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, iPad mini

• iPod touch 5G, iPod Touch 4G

• Apple TV 2

It looks like it is going to be another easy jailbreak. They have mentioned the following requirements on their website:

• 5 minutes of your time!

• A computer, running Windows (XP minimum), Mac OS X (10.5 minimum) or Linux (x86 / x86_64)

• An iPhone, iPad or iPod running iOS 6.0 through 6.1 (you may check in Settings / General / About => Version)

• A USB cable to connect the device to the computer

evad3rs dev team could release the evasi0n jailbreak as early as this Sunday. If you want to give them donations for their hard work, head over to their site and hit the Contribute button.

Ignite Music Software It's New and Interesting

Inspiring Sounds
Ignite includes over 275 instruments, many of which are taken from our renowned instrument collections - including Strike, Structure, and Velvet. All sounds have been optimized to load quickly, and the editing controls are automatically mapped to your connected M-Audio keyboard. These extraordinary sounds include keyboards, drums, percussion, basses, guitars, synths, strings, brass, and woodwinds.
Powerful Creative Tools
Ignite features Smart MIDI technology to help jump-start your ideas and enhance your music-making skills. The Chord Player generates a chord pattern from a single key, while the Phrase Player can provide a single-voice line to add to your composition. Both the Chord and Phrase player include dozens of patterns in modern music genres - these aren't canned, boring MIDI patterns. Tailor the performance of these Players by adjusting feel, speed and intensity. The Flexible arpeggiator plays held notes individually, either as a musical flourish or in a rhythmic pattern.
Designed to Work with M-Audio Keyboards
Simply connect any current M-Audio keyboard controller to your computer, and Ignite provides seamless integration. The keyboard is automatically detected and controls are automatically mapped when connected to your computer. Adding or changing your keyboard? The controls are automatically updated and mapped.
Share Your Passion
Share your latest creation with friends, fans, and family - or collaborate with other musicians - by taking advantage of direct uploads to SoundCloud. Plus, you can export your individual audio (WAV or MP3) and MIDI files, which can then be imported into any computer-based recording software - including Pro Tools.

Never buy a Windows Surface Pro as Windows takes up 36% of your drive space!

The 128GB Microsoft Surface Pro will only offer 83GB of usable storage— the 64GB version will offer up just 23GB of space to the user. Talk about rediculas
It seems the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will consume 41GB of the total storage space, leaving just 23GB—that's 36 percent—of storage for the user. Perhaps it's time manufacturers started quoting available storage space in their ads, too?

Novation Announces the new Launchkey Controllers & iPad App

• Novation Launchkey - integrated instrument with DAW control and 16 launch pads.

Launchkey is a next generation instrument for computer and iPad with 16 velocity-sensitive multi-colour launch pads capable of playing drums and triggering loops in the brand new Launchpad iPad app, as well as launching clips and scenes in Ableton Live. It is a fully featured DAW control surface with over 50 physical controls (34 on the 25 key version). Launchkey also comes with two Novation plug-in soft synths: the V-Station and the Bass Station.  
Launchkey iPad app
Launchkey app is a powerful analogue modelling synthesiser for iPad. It integrates with the Novation Launchkey hardware creating a unique hands-on synth workstation for your iPad – along with  the new Launchpad app. Launchkey app includes 60 brand new synth sounds for performing and producing music with iPad. 
Launchpad iPad app
The Novation Launchpad is a music performance app for iPad that will have you making beats and triggering loops instantly with Launchkey hardware. It's packed full of high quality loops and sounds that can be combined in the multi-colour 8x6 Launchpad grid to make and remix music. The built-in time stretching always keeps you locked in to the beat so your loops don't go out of time.

NAMM 2013: Dave Smith Instruments Prophet 12 Synth.

12-voice polyphonic synthesizer from the man behind Sequencial Circuits


Dave Smith, the man behind Sequencial Circuits, has just announced a brand new synth which shares a name with the '70s classic. Here's the press release: 
Press Release: Dave Smith Instruments today introduced a new polyphonic synthesizer, the Prophet 12, at the 2013 NAMM Show. “After 35 years of creating synths, this is simply my best synth yet,” said Smith. “We sort of started from scratch on this one rather than spinning off another product from our previous designs.”
At twelve voices, the Prophet 12 boasts the greatest polyphony of any instrument designed by Smith. Each voice features four oscillators capable of generating classic and complex waveforms, a sub-oscillator, resonant analog low- and high-pass filters, and analog VCAs. The new Character section adds a variety of wave shaping and sound sculpting options, like Drive, Hack, Decimation, Girth, and Air. Additional features include a tuned feedback path, a four-tap stereo delay per voice, expanded arpeggiator functionality, deep modulation capabilities, and bi-timbral operation. The LFOs, delay, and arpeggiator can all be synced, either to the internal clock or an external MIDI clock. Two programmable position- and pressure-sensitive touch sliders take the performance controls beyond the standard pitch and mod wheels (also included).
“We’re already blown away by the sonic breadth of this synthesizer’s new voice architecture,” Smith continued. “It doesn’t sound like anything else and I’m very excited for people to hear it.”
The Prophet 12 is expected to be available Q2 of 2013 and is projected to cost $2999

Mega Password Reset Not possible As it is the Encryption Key Enabaler.

Right now, Mega, the zombie file sharing service currently only useful for people with infinite patience and/or dial up Internet, doesn't offer any sort of password reset or recovery system. If you forget your Mega password, you're shit out of luck. That's because the password you use is the master key in decrypting the files you uploaded. You cannot lose that password. For now.
Mega has announced that in the future it will allow you to reset your password. But unlike normal password resets, you don't automatically gain full access to all your uploaded files. Mega says:
A password change feature will re-encrypt the master key with your new password and update it on our servers
A password reset mechanism will allow you to log back into your account, with all files being unreadable. Now, if you have any pre-exported file keys, you can import them to regain access to those files. On top of that, you could ask your share peers to send you the share-specific keys, but that's it - the remainder of your data appears as binary garbage until you remember your password.
That means the password reset feature for Mega is going to be super secure and better than a typical reset. If someone tries to tap into your account by reseting your password, they still won't have access to the files you previously uploaded. You can only access those old files if you have the old keys. The annoying thing though? If you really just forgot your Mega password, you're going to be pretty annoyed that you can't access those files. So in the name of security, DON'T FORGET IT!

Kim Dotcom’s Mega Is Up and Running and Open To the Public

Kim Dotcom's Mega site with encryption up the wazoo has finally launched. You can head on over and sign up right now. That is, so long as the site can hold under the crazy traffic. So far, it looks like it's getting crushed. But different people are experiencing different things.

Mega Uses Random Data From Your Mouse and Keyboard To Beef Up Its Already Insane Encryption
Kim Dotcom's newly launched Mega is determined not to get screwed over by the Feds the way MegaUpload did, and the trick is encryption, lots of encryption. Mega's really going that extra mile too; it's using your random mouse and keyboard data to strengthen your crypto keys.
Cryptography relies on having complex keys to encrypt you data, and obviously those keys should be random. But if you know anything about computers, you know they're horrible at generating random numbers. They just can't do it. Instead, they'll take obscure variables like your computer's clock time, and spin those out into something pseudorandom. If somehow you can find out the variable though, it's not random at all.
Mega's taking that a step further by adding you to the equation; the way you twitch your hand on the mouse, or how you type out your username will get wrapped into your cryptokeys as well. And those are variables that are unlikely to be traced and damn near impossible to reproduce. Stuff like this isn't unheard of, but it goes a long way to show how serious Mega is about security. And that should come as no surprise since all that encryption is there to protect Mega more than it is to protect you. And with precautions like this, how could it not?

Samsung Refuses To Launch Windows RT tablets in the US.

Samsung's line of Windows Ativ tablets was announced just this past fall, but it doesn't look like the company will be bringing the RT version to the US any time soon. Speaking to CNET, Samsung executive Mike Abary said that the Qualcomm-powered RT tablet will not be sold in the US, citing the high cost of educating the consumer on Windows RT and studies from retail partners that said demand for Windows RT tablets was not enough to warrant the heavy investment in consumer education.
When we did some tests and studies on how we could go to market with a Windows RT device, we determined there was a lot of heavy lifting we still needed to do to educate the customer on what Windows RT was," noted Abary. Consumer education is something that Microsoft has had to struggle with for both Windows 8 and Windows RT, and it looks like this is a direct consequence of that. He added that Samsung was also not willing to bring the Windows RT tablets to market with the compromises it would need to make to hit the lower price point expected from RT tablets. "We didn't necessarily attain the price point that we hoped to attain," Abary said.
Samsung isn't completely abandoning the US market with its Ativ products — it's been selling the Ativ Smart PC with Windows 8 at AT&T retail stores since November, and it just announced availability of the Ativ Odyssey smartphone for Verizon Wireless. But the Samsung's decision to not sell the Windows RT Ativ tablets in the US doesn't bode well for other manufacturers that may plan to launch their own tablets with the platform. Fortunately for Microsoft, Samsung hasn't completely ruled out the US market for Windows RT if it is able to address the issues of customer training and cost. But we aren't getting our hopes up to see one any time soon. "It's still a viable option for us in the future, but now might not be the right time," concluded Abary.

USB 3.0 Next Revision Is Going To Double Speeds

USB data transfer is about to get a lot faster. The USB Promoter Group is rolling out SuperSpeed USB, a supplement to USB 3.0 due out later this year that should surge your speeds two-fold.
SuperSpeed USB is supposed to give you 10 Gbps USB data rate, which is the same theoretically as Thunderbolt but in actuality this is only burst speeds and not sustainable like Thunderbolt and of course is not two way or capable of driving monitors are like Thunderbolt is It's also expected to feature better data encoding for transfers, more efficiency power efficient ports, and best of all, compatibility with existing devices. Later this year when you download a movie or a CD, it could take much less time thanks to the new standard.

To take advantage of the double-speed USB 3.0 interface, devices such as computers, hubs, and digital cameras will need new USB controller hardware. However, the new version of USB 3.0 uses the same connectors, so existing USB devices can be plugged into the higher-speed ports.

USB 3.0 cables may or may not work. "Existing SuperSpeed USB cables are not certified to operate at 10 Gbps; it is possible that some existing SuperSpeed USB cables may be capable of operating at 10 Gbps," the group said.

The New Tegra 4 CPU for Smartphones Is here and it's fast. It packs

The New Tegra 4 CPU for Smartphones Is here and it's fast. It packs 72 GPU cores, 4 A15 CPU cores, and a built-in LTE.
In a (somewhat simulated) head to head test between a Nexus 10 tablet and and a Tegra 4 mystery machine, the latter loaded 25 webpages in only 27 seconds, with the older chip taking 50. Not many of us will be loading up 25 webpages simultaneously, but Nvidia is hammering beefed up browser performance here—as well as topping the iPad 4's A6X processor across the board. Nvidia says it's simply the fastest mobile processor in the world. Nvidia says.

The Tegra 4 will also have supercharged HDR photo rendering, Nvidia says, beating out the iPhone 5's abilities with better capture speeds thanks to all of those aforementioned cores working at once. In actual life terms, Nvidia says it'll be the difference between two seconds of rendering on the iPhone and 0.2 seconds on a Tegra 4-powered mobile camera.

One particularly nifty feature is "live HDR," which actually shows a video preview of the difference between a shot with and without HDR. Very impressive, and nothing we've ever seen before.

Nvidia is banking pretty heavily on the virtue of HDR here! Sometimes it looks nice, sometimes it looks tacky—but at least with a live preview you'll be able to tell beforehand.

A demo of Dead Trigger 2 running on Tegra 4 yielded some highly purty visuals—think early-PS3 era—though there was some slowdown. Still! This is phone and tablet tech. Fancy stuff.
No word on when we'll start seeing these things in our things. Soon!

BlueStacks Strikes Distribution Deal With Lenovo To Bring 750K Android Apps To Its PCs

The good news keeps rolling in for BlueStacks, the startup best known for making technology that enables one and all to download and use Android applications on their desktop PCs — and more recently, their Macs. In anticipation of CES, the company announced today that it has secured a global distribution deal with Chinese PC maker, Lenovo.
Lenovo, which some say recently surpassed HP as the largest maker of PCs, now hawks ultrabooks, convertibles and desktops and has been aggressively integrating Windows 8 into its product lines and pushing touch technology upgrades into its laptops. With its new distribution agreement with BlueStacks, Lenovo will begin preloading BlueStacks’ software and service in its Idea-branded PCs — Lenovo’s consumer line, which represents about 40 million units.
The deal, which has been slowly formulated over the last six months, is the latest in a series of similar distribution agreements for BlueStacks, which now includes Asus, MSI and AMD. The most recent of which was its partnership with AMD, secured in September, which enabled the chipmaker to optimize Android apps for AMD-powered Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs with the launch of its “AppZone.”
All told, BlueStacks’ agreements with Asus, MSI, AMD and Lenovo means that more than 100 million PCs will be preloaded with its App Player software in 2013. This helps give context to the startup’s recent announcement that it had exceeded five million organic installs from its website, something it was able to do in under eight months.
If it wasn’t clear in AMD, Qualcomm and Citrix’s collective investment in BlueStacks (the company has raised a total of $15 million in outside funding from these companies as well as Andreessen Horowitz and Ignition Ventures), some of the largest OEMs out there are clearly eager to tap into the enormous potential inherent to transforming Windows devices into a platform to run mobile apps.
When it comes to PCs, Windows represents a colossal market, but one that has (as of yet) has failed to offer the same access to native apps compared to Google and Apple. BlueStacks’ technology allows OEMs to offer Android apps to its PC users, while enabling developers to touch a whole new audience (of Windows users) without spending months creating a whole new Windows-facing product.
While the company isn’t disclosing the terms of the deal, it’s likely that OEMs are paying for the ability to put BlueStacks’ tech on their machines, seeing as that will give them access to another revenue stream via pay-per-install.
For Lenovo users, this means that they will be able to enjoy the same apps on the PC that they’re already using on their smartphone, with BlueStacks linking their smartphones to the PC via the cloud, enabling them to sync their apps, data and SMSes between their phones and their PCs. When they boot up an Idea PC for the first time, they’ll see Lenovo App Player first thing, along with other content like music and photos. At CES 2013, BlueStacks will be showcasing the latest version of the App Player designed and optimized for Windows 8 Ultrabooks, laptops and tablets.
BlueStacks will also be running all mobile apps on PCs for Lenovo, and the company is set to to launch a mobile app that Lenovo plans to preload onto its phones. This will connect Lenovo PCs to peoples’ Android devices, presumably incentivizing those who have a Lenovo PC to buy a Lenovo phone and sync their apps — and vice versa.
For BlueStacks, these partnerships are all about expanding its footprint and helping to bring Android apps to an enormous audience of Windows users. Of course, it’s not only about Windows users. The company is also in talks with several large TV and phone manufacturers, as it’s looking to integrate its App Player into these next-gen, connected systems.
“In two years, there will be no ‘mobile’ apps as opposed to ‘PC’ applications,” says BlueStacks CEO, Rosen Sharma. “We expect Apple will gel iOS and OSX this year, and we are working on the same for Google.”
Of course, that being said, BlueStacks isn’t leaving Mac users out of the equation. In late December, the startup launched its App Player for Mac in beta, offering those 750,000 Android apps on the market to Mac users. For BlueStacks, it seems clear that the domino effect is underway. Expect to see the connected TV makers signing on next.

Untethered iOS 6.0.2 Jailbreak For iPhone 5, Yes!

planetbeing from the iPhone Dev team has revealed on reddit that he has an untethered iOS 6.0.2 jailbreak running on iPhone 5.
planetbeing had this to say:
Yeah, I’m not really sure what all the doom and gloom is about. The fact is, I have an untethered iOS 6.0.2 JB running on my iPhone 5 right now. The reasons it’s not released are because 1. releasing it would burn an exploit we want to save for ourselves so we can always get in to look at new firmware and help JB in the future, 2. iOS 6.1 is coming very soon and will likely break a small part of it anyway, there’s no point in sacrificing the many bugs it won’t break.
Anyway, where there are 4+ bugs (that it took to get this to work), there’s gotta be one or two more so while jailbreaking is getting harder, reports of its death are highly exaggerated.
This is not stuff I want to say over Twitter with 140 characters because I’m afraid of starting some sort of riot, but I like the smaller /r/jailbreak community more.
planetbeing has also clarified that it is a fully working jailbreak, which allows you to run MobileSubstrate, which is required for jailbreak tweaks. The other good news is that pod2g seems to have returned to jailbreak development after submitting his app to Apple for approval.
He (pod2g) didn’t (say he has returned to jailbreak development), but hey, at least he told me last night he looked into a couple of bugs (without much success) recently, after basically not being around since WWJC, so that’s cool. I doubt he wants to promise he’ll be around working on this full time however. I haven’t worked on any jailbreak stuff for a couple of months as well, not until basically I was flying back from 29C3 in Germany and realized/remembered I actually know about enough bugs to put together an entire untethered jailbreak (still unreleasable due to reasons I stated in my other comment here).
Jay Freeman aka saurik who is the founder of Cydia also confirmed it:
I actually was working with pod2g (albeit with a worse headache than I’ve had in at least a year, so mostly as a “gdb test monkey”), and can thereby personally attest that he didn’t just say it, he actually did it ;P.
Apple has released four beta versions of iOS 6.1 and is expecting to release a final version in the first half of this month.
Jailbreakers should avoid upgrading to iOS 6.1 when it is released.

Samsung 'sudden death' bug affecting Galaxy S III owners

Own a Galaxy S III that appears to be suffered some form of chronic failure suddenly and for no apparent reason? Samsung is aware of the problem, and is working on a fix. The issue, being referred to in the forums as "sudden death," seems to be relatively rare: a Samsung spokeswoman told Tweakers that the problem affects "only a very limited number" of devices. So far, we know the problem applies to users running the stock software, as well as custom ROMs. For whatever reason, too, these defective models are all 16GB variants, according to Samsung. In any case, Sammy says it will push out a firmware update to correct the problem, though the company hasn't said when that patch will be ready.

Google slammed, ordered by FTC to change it's practices.

The FTC has stated that Google is going to have to make a number of changes to its business practices -- especially regarding search.
The FTC ordered Google to stop using patents purchased by Motorola to exclude competitors. These patents cover "standardized technologies" across smartphones, laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles.
During the presentation from FTC headquarters in Washington D.C., FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz described these patents as "the cornerstone of interoperability" that enable mobile phones to talk to each other.
Leibowitz said that Google's settlement with the FTC requires the company to offer a license based on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms to any company that wants to use these technologies.
The FTC's stance on this is that, "if left unchecked," these patents could give way to higher prices "as companies may pay higher royalties for the use of Google’s patents because of the threat of an injunction, and then pass those higher prices on to consumers."
The worst-case scenario, according to the FTC, would be for the technology industry to abandon standards, limiting innovation and investment altogether.
But again, the bigger changes focus on search. The FTC has ordered that Google stop "scraping" the content of its rivals for specialized search results. Businesses should now be able to opt out of Google products such as Shopping and Local without being penalized in how their companies pop up in search results.
Therefore, Leibowitz continued, this will create "organic search," which he asserted will make search engines more "vibrant" and "competitive."
Additionally, the FTC has stipulated that "Google has agreed to remove restrictions on the use of its online search advertising platform, AdWords, that may make it more difficult for advertisers to coordinate online advertising campaigns across multiple platforms."
Google's senior vice president and chief legal officer, David Drummond, published Google's response in a blog post on Thursday, explaining that businesses "will now be able to mix and copy ad campaign data within third-party services that use our AdWords API."
Drummond added:
In addition, we’ve agreed with the FTC (PDF) that we will seek to resolve standard-essential patent disputes through a neutral third party before seeking injunctions. This agreement establishes clear rules of the road for standards essential patents going forward.
Leibowitz asserted that these decisions follow "an exhaustive investigation into Google's business practices." Arguing that many competitors -- including those locked in legal battles with Google around the world -- likely wanted the FTC to go further, Leibowitz said it is "time to move on here" and that the investigation is officially closed.
He added that Google has agreed to comply to all of these changes to its business practices, and that the FTC will "vigorously monitor" the corporation to make sure these adjustments are made.
Drummond outlined the changes in a commitment letter, also published online on Thursday. Here's an overview of some of what we can expect:
• Google will make a web-based notice form for website owners to opt-out of Google's Covered Webpages (i.e. Shopping, Local, Flights, etc.) within 90 days.
• Google will remove AdWords API Terms and Conditions concerning input and copying restrictions for all AdWords API licenses within the United States within 60 days.
• Google will file an update with the FTC's Compliance Division within 60 days.
Trying to put a positive spin on the rulings, Leibowitz said that Google can go back to focusing on innovation and new products -- but that it must do so fairly.
To recall, the government agency designed to protect consumers has been investigating the Internet giant over charges of "alleged anticompetitive conduct."
This is essentially in reference to the core of Google's business -- search -- which is deeply integrated throughout the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation's vast portfolio of products.
Up until now, it has been said that both the FTC and the European Commission have been delaying any formal decision in their respective Google/antitrust investigations.
Back in October, it was reported that the FTC was close, but it was basically the same story through November into December. Bloomberg also reported in November that the FTC was pressing Google with an "ultimatum" that consisted of the following two options: settle with the agency now or wait for the inevitable lawsuit.
So Thursday's abrupt announcement that there would be an announcement at all today might have come as a bit of a surprise to followers of the case.

Netbook's Are Dead and Apple's To Blame.

Finally Netbooks are dead and Apples getting the blame
These small, underpowered, ultracheap laptops were considered the future of the computer industry. In 2008 and 2009, recession-strapped consumers around the world began snapping up netbooks in droves. They became the fastest-growing segment of the PC market, and some wild-eyed analysts were suggesting that netbook sales would soon eclipse those of desktops and regular laptops combined. That didn’t happen. Over the past couple years the netbook market crashed. Now, as Charles Arthur reports in the Guardian, most major PC manufacturers have stopped making these tiny machines. The last holdouts were the Taiwanese firms Acer and Asus. Both say they won’t build any netbooks in 2013.
What killed the netbook? Arthur’s smart piece offers three plausible suspects: First, PC makers began making better, cheaper laptops, which made for stronger competition against netbooks. Second, PC makers discovered that netbooks were a terrible business—after paying Microsoft a licensing fee for Windows, manufacturers weren’t making any money on very cheap computers. And finally, there was the rise of tablets; once machines like the iPad came along, people lost interest in $400 netbooks.
These are all plausible theories, but I think Arthur is a bit too reluctant to tie the whole story together and issue a blistering indictment against the netbook’s assassin. If you study the PC industry over the past five years, you find only one company that had the means, motive, and opportunity. Apple killed the netbook, more or less single-handedly, and we should all be grateful for it.

Netbooks were terrible machines, a technological blight that threatened to become the future of computing. They had awful, nearly unusable keyboards, very slow processors, and they ran versions of Windows or Linux that were a trudge to use on tiny screens. Yet despite their awfulness, they were embraced by the world’s largest tech firms—Intel, Microsoft, HP, Dell, and Lenovo were all gaga for them.
Apple alone stood against the tide of netbooks. Apple’s brilliant insight was that despite netbooks’ popularity, nobody really wanted a netbook per se. Instead, Apple realized that people who were buying netbooks were looking for one of two things—they wanted full-fledged laptops that were very portable, or they wanted cheap machines that allowed them to easily surf the Web, use email and do other light computing tasks. Rather than building a single netbook that fit both these audiences poorly, Apple built two machines that were, each in its own way, much better than any netbook ever sold.
In 2008, Apple launched the expensive but very portable MacBook Air, and then in 2010, it put out the cheap but capable iPad. Neither was a direct substitute for the netbook. But consumers immediately recognized their utility—and quickly abandoned netbooks. The iPad and the Air became the blueprints for the rest of the industry, with every other PC manufacturer now making similarly thin laptops and touchscreen tablets. Thus, thanks to Apple—and Apple alone—we were all saved from the rise of terrible tiny machines.
It’s difficult, now, to appreciate how courageous Apple’s refusal to join the netbook parade once was. In 2008, its cheapest laptop sold for more than $1,000. This was crazy expensive in the midst of a global recession, and investors and analysts were hounding the company to lower its prices. Apple’s stock price sank to less than $100.
But Apple had two reasons for holding steady against netbooks. One was noble: Shrinking a laptop to the size of netbooks—which typically had 7- or 9-inch screens and very slow Intel Atom processors—made for an inherently inferior computing experience. At that size, pointing devices and keyboards became very annoying to use, and operating systems designed for systems with more power worked like molasses. In other words, netbooks sucked, and Apple didn’t want to make computers that sucked. As Steve Jobs told investors in 2008, “We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk. Our DNA will not let us do that.”
The second reason Apple didn’t make a netbook was that it couldn’t make a netbook. The principal difference between Apple and most other tech manufacturers is that Apple prizes profits over market share. Sure, Apple, like all companies, wants to sell a lot of widgets—but given a choice between making $10 billion by capturing 10 percent of the market or $1 billion by capturing 90 percent of the market, Apple will always choose money over sales. (You’d think this was obvious; don’t all companies want to make money? Nope: Apple sells fewer PCs than most other companies, but makes much more money doing so than all of its rivals.)

That’s why Apple couldn’t make a netbook. Netbooks were a market-share play—at $300 to $400 each, PC manufacturers were making very little on each one sold, so the only way to succeed was to get a huge slice of the market. Apple had no interest in playing that game; why spend time and effort selling something you wouldn’t make any money on?
It’s worth noting that Apple wasn’t the only PC maker that was worried about netbooks’ low margins. Many other PC manufacturers recognized that netbooks would ruin them, too. In 2008, the New York Times published a piece citing computer makers’ rising anxiety about netbooks. One industry analyst told the paper, “When I talk to PC vendors, the No. 1 question I get is, how do I compete with these netbooks when what we really want to do is sell PCs that cost a lot more money?”
An executive at Fujitsu, one of the world’s largest PC companies, told the Times that the firm wouldn’t be making a netbook because it couldn’t see a way to make money from them: “We’re sitting on the sidelines not because we’re lazy. We’re sitting on the sidelines because even if this category takes off, and we get our piece of the pie, it doesn’t add up,” Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management for Fujitsu, told the Times. “It’s a product that essentially has no margin.”
But even though there was no money in them, most PC makers joined the netbook parade. That Times article was published in July 2008; in October, Fujitsu launched its first netbook. Soon everyone else except Apple had one.
I’m sure I’ll hear from a number of readers who’ll claim to have loved their netbooks. You’ll say that while there may have been terrible netbooks on the market, your particular one was just right for you. And you’ll further argue that however terrible netbooks were, they were certainly better than the iPad and other tablets, on which you can’t do any “real work.” (I know you!)
But I don’t believe you. Most research suggests that while people were entranced with the idea of netbooks, they hated them in reality. A 2009 survey by the market research firm NPD showed that most people bought netbooks thinking they would work as a substitute to a standard laptop—and they became very disappointed when they realized that netbooks weren’t powerful enough to be used that way. In other words, netbooks were marketed as being for “real work,” but they turned out to be unsuited for most computing tasks.
The iPad, meanwhile, never had any pretensions of functioning as a replacement for a laptop. It was always sold as something different: a truly mobile gadget meant for non-office computing. Everything about it, from its processor to its battery to its operating system, was designed specifically for delivering a better mobile experience. Unlike a netbook, the iPad turns on instantly, it has a 10-hour battery life, and it can find your location on a map. Unlike a netbook, it has an App Store that overflows with software designed for its screen.
True, the iPad, unlike the netbook, doesn’t come with a keyboard or a pointing device. But you can buy a keyboard for it—and if you want a pointing device and Windows, you buy Microsoft’s Surface or one of the many “hybrid” laptop/tablet Windows 8 machines now hitting the market. Or, if you want a “real” computer, you can buy a MacBook Air (which now goes for $1,000) or any of its Windows “ultrabook” clones.
See what I’m saying? Even if you don’t use the iPad or the Air and have no interest in ever buying an Apple product, pretty much every mobile computer you can buy today was inspired by the two devices that Apple ginned up to fight netbooks. In netbooks’ demise, Apple emerged victorious—but so did the rest of the PC industry, and so did we users.

Ubuntu Phone System looks extremely cool.

What the video from around 5:30 and you'll be treated to a walk thru a very unique and innovative new smartphone system. We all know Android and Windows phone and IOS or iPhone, and they are good systems but I have to say this is the first phone system I have seen recently that looks innovative and really does things a little different. It really uses every once of the screens space and swipes have been really well thought out. You can swipe from all 4 edges, right from one side to the other or touch your normal tinny icons on the status bar across the top to access things. This is logical and very fast at accessing things in a logical manor.
So watch the video and skip to 5:30 to see just the Ubuntu smartphone section. I'm not a Ubuntu user but this sort of innovation certainly makes me very interested.