Microsoft surprised many with yesterday’s tablet OS announcement at Computex. As previously noted, the new platform, Windows Embedded Compact 7, will provide a “compartmentalized version of Windows 7 that can be embedded at the hardware level.” It will provide multitouch capabilities, as well as a full desktop browser experience. The new OS will also have full support for Silverlight and Flash 10.1.
The yet to be shown off tablet OS has finally been given some face time and Engadget has gone hands on with Microsoft’s latest venture into the world of tablet computing. In the form demoed, an application is shown on top of the OS that looks very similar to Windows Phone 7 and is shown with a social networking focused interface. The demo unit is a NVIDIA Tegra 2 powered slate with an 8.9″ screen. Apparently, the user interface was just an example of the kind of interfaces that can be built over Microsoft’s framework, but is not what the actual UI will, or should, necessarily look like.
According to what Microsoft has explained about the WEC7 platform, hardware manufacturers will be tasked with bringing this new OS to market, as well as developing the actual interface that it will run. Microsoft only seems to be supplying the underlying builds that will go out to manufacturers. You can check out the the Public Community Technology Preview over at Microsoft’s website.
As Apple prepares their stores for the iPad launch at the end of this week, more and more content providers are taking action to adjust for the ever increasing amount of iPhone OS users that won’t have Flash to view their content.
Brightcove announced today that they will be bringing HTML5 video through H.264 for their partners to seamlessly deliver video content to the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. Their largest partners, The New York Times and Time Magazine, are reported to already be on board to deliver video content to the aforementioned devices. Brightcove’s solution will solve the “knowledge gaps, technical limitations, and additional development costs” that organizations will face when trying to deliver video and other rich media to iPhone OS users. Their current platform features automatic device detection, native HTML5 player templates, and optimized H.264 transcoding.
TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, also announced yesterday that a non-Flash version of their site is now live for iPhone OS users. iPhone, iPod Touch, and supposedly iPad users should now be able to watch videos, leave comments, and rate videos in Safari without needing the native TED app in the App store.
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has been reported to be very vocal against the thought of Flash on any iPhone OS device. Reports surfaced earlier this year that Jobs personally attributed the slow and buggy Flash plugin on OS X to “lazy” Adobe developers and proclaimed that HTML5 is the way forward. He also claimed that the iPad’s touted 10 hour battery life would be dwindled to 1.5 hours if they allowed Flash on the device.
Adobe has stated that their upcoming Flash Player 10.1 will improve performance and efficiency greatly on mobile devices and that Mac OS X performance is also being worked on.
Fast Company is reporting that the Director of Marketing for Microsoft’s Entertainment and Device Devision, Craig Belinson, has said that “Windows 7 is by far the fastest selling Operating System in history.” While this news may not come as much of a surprise, it’s always nice to hear how well Microsoft’s latest pride and joy is doing.
Sadly, Belinson didn’t provide any software sales numbers to back up his claim. Instead, he brought PC sales numbers, which directly correspond to Windows 7 sales (since PCs come with the OS installed). He states that during the week of Windows 7′s launch, there was a 50% jump in PC sales when compared to the previous week. In addition, Black Friday saw a 63% bump from a year ago, and the holiday season, as a whole, saw a 50% increase in PC sales. Just as a side note, a poll on Lifehacker, which was done just weeks after Windows 7 was released, showed that 41% of readers had already begun using Windows 7 as their primary OS.
While it’s great to see Windows 7 be the success that Vista, unfortunately, was not, it’s also important to remember that being the fastest selling OS doesn’t mean as much as it once did. Back in the days of Windows XP there were far fewer computers in the world and before XP, there were even less. Of course Windows 7 is the fastest selling OS, there are many more PCs in the world than there were when Vista, or any other Windows OS was released. This fact will continue to dictate the future trend of OS sales. As evident from Belinson’s comments, the more PCs sold in the world, the more copies of Windows sold. Microsoft’s next major OS release will most likely see even better numbers than Windows 7 did (assuming it’s not another Vista, of course).
As reported a few days ago, rumors had circulated that Google was planning to release part of their forthcoming Google Chrome OS sometime this week. Google has now sent out notifications that there is an OS event scheduled for this Thursday morning at their Mountain View, California headquarters.
While a partial launch of the Chrome OS could still be planned, all indications from Google are that this Thursday’s event will show off demos and offer a “complete overview” of the new operating system, which is scheduled to launch sometime in 2010.
Google’s Vice President of Product Management, Sundar Pichai and Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, Matthew Papakipos will be speaking at the event. After the event, a Questions and Answer session will be available for those in attendance to pick Google’s brain about its upcoming operating system.
The Chrome OS event begs the question, if Google is demonstrating a “complete overview” of the Chrome OS, how much longer will it be before it’s released to the public?
