Platforms

Surprisingly, earlier today Microsoft showed us at Computex 2013 some of the features of the upcoming Windows 8.1 OS.  It’s surprising because we’re just few weeks before Build Conference, where Microsoft will surely announce some interesting things(both hardware and software).

We all know that there have been more than a few complaints about Windows 8, which failed to impress to the extent that Windows 7 did. Some longtime users of the operating system are used to this, with versions usually alternating in quality, and every other release being a bust. Microsoft might have broken that pattern with the updated Windows 8.1, a new version of their latest release that is already getting much higher praise than the original.

Usually, no later than September, Apple should announce a new iPhone and also iOS 7. One of the first true mobile operating systems, iOS, will celebrate this year its 6th birthday.

In 2007 when iPhone OS(which later changed into iOS) was released everybody was excited. It was the mobile operating system that we all wanted to use, but now, 6 years later we couldn’t say the same thing loud. And that’s mainly because the interface is actually the same, with improvements and new features here and there.

For the regular user that only take advantage of the iTunes apps that’s not a problem but for some gadget lovers it is a big one. As technlogy progressed, users started to want to do more and more things with their phones.

Last Friday in an interview with Bloomberg, Samsung gave us more details about their upcoming Tizen smartphone. Surprisingly or not Samsung said that “the Tizen phone will be out in August or September, and this will be in the high-end category”. For those who don’t know, Tizen is an open source project formed from Nokia and Intel’s MeeGo and Samsung’s Bada.

Now there are three things that ring a bell and happened last week: at first it was Andy Rubin departure, then Galaxy S4 event and the last one was this interview with the executive vice president of Samsung’s mobile business Lee Young Hee.

Before getting more into this discussion I should also mention that some analysts think that Samsung is planning a “great OS escape” in 1-2 years. It could be true, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon. But in the event this would happen, what would Android do ?

After 750 million devices activated and more than 25 billion apps downloaded from Google Play, the head of Android – Andy Rubin decided to start a new chapter at Google. His current position will be taken by Sundar Pichai, the senior VP of Chrome and Apps.

The announcement was made by Larry Page on Google’s blog today and it appears that Andy Rubin will continue his great work at Google in a new position, a position that would hopefully bring “more moonshots”, said Google’s CEO.

Short time after this news hit the web, speculations started to arise.

Facebook announced today that the News Feed will be redesigned and changed into a “personalized newspaper”. It’s one of the biggest redesigns ever made since the official introduction of the News Feed from 2006.

Those who used Google+ or the recent Facebook mobile app should be familiarized with this redesigned News Feed as it borrows a lot of elements.

The most important thing is that now the Feed is more clean and you can see more photos, news articles, maps and other things better because Facebook expanded the allocated space of every single News Feed stories.

In a world where acquisitions and investments are being made non-stop, there are some companies that have what it takes to make a step back. About.Me had announced today that it’s once again independent, after buying itself back from AOL. That’s the best happy end an unfortunate start-up would ever get. After being acquired in 2010 by AOL for tens of millions dollars, two years later the company bought itself back for a fraction of AOL’s price.

AOL purchased about.me in 2010 thinking they might compete with Facebook, Google, MySpace and other social platforms. Unfortunately, they didn’t have what it takes to do this so about.me remained just an online identity Web site where people could create a profile and link to their Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.

As you probably know BlackBerry officially released two new phones this week along their new operating system, called BlackBerry 10 OS. It’s a major step forward for RIM, but it comes 6 years later after the first important event that lead to the smartphone revolution – iPhone launch.

Right now BlackBerry wants to somehow wipe the past and focus to the future. The company will no longer be known as Research in Motion(RIM) and as of this week it will be re-branded into BlackBerry. So, this marks a fresh new start.

I’ve followed closely what analysts said about BlackBerry this week and as usual some were skeptics about their future, while others were happy. One thing is for sure, users won’t have to listen to what analysts predict, because almost every time at least one of them are wrong.