Operating systems

Ice Cream Sandwich with quad-core chips ready for Mobile World Congress

Over the last month, CNET has written a lot about an upcoming trade show called Mobile World Congress. And over the next week, we'll be writing even more about it.

If you've never heard of the event before, I don't blame you. Indeed, Mobile World Congress doesn't have the same name recognition that CES commands in the United States, but for the wireless world, it's almost as big and just as significant. Each February, folks from all corners of the industry and around the world meet in Barcelona, Spain, to make deals, demonstrate the latest technologies, and show off the latest and greatest phones and tablets.

This will be my fifth year at the show, which begins Monday in Catalonia's Gaudi-obsessed capital city. Though a possible transit strike threatens to make getting around a little difficult, there's guaranteed to be a (metric) ton of new devices, from the very fancy to the strictly functional. It will be a massive amount to cover, but CNET will have a large team on the ground, including editors Jessica Dolcourt, Roger Cheng, Maggie Reardon, and Stephen Shankland. And thanks to CNET TV producers Jamie Yee and Mark Licea, the new handsets will get their star turns on video.

Android avalanche So what exactly will we see?… Read more

Mozilla ready to reveal app store

Mozilla changed the Internet once. Will lightning strike twice for the Firefox developer?

That's what the company hopes will happen at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona next week when it unveils the Mozilla Web Apps platform, a tripartite approach to app building that will level the playing field for building apps, the company said in a statement today.

The key leg of the Mozilla Web Apps platform is the Mozilla Marketplace. The major part of the statement was devoted to revealing that the Marketplace will throw open its doors to developers for the first time in Barcelona. The … Read more

Mountain Lion features you might have missed

The Mountain Lion Developer Preview was released last week and Apple was particularly excited to show off 10 of the bigger new features in OS X. Check out our First Take of the Mountain Lion Developer Preview here. But what else is under the hood in Apple's latest OS?

Poking around in Mountain Lion, I came across a lot of smaller changes to the UI and some feature fixes that users of earlier Mac operating systems will appreciate.

UI and System tweaks The Dashboard is home to your widgets, and in Mountain Lion Apple has made a slight UI … Read more

How to use the Chromebook photo editor

The Chromebook photo editor is not a Chrome app, as you might think. It's integrated into the file manager. To use it, launch the file manager by hitting Ctrl+M, then navigate to where your photo is located.

Once you click on the photo you want to edit, two options will appear in the lower right-hand corner--View and Edit and Delete. Click on View and Edit to launch the photo editor.

You can allow Chrome OS to autofix the image or crop it.

You can also change the brightness and contrast, or change the orientation of the image.

That'… Read more

Ready or not, here comes mobile on the desktop

The wild, nearly out of control growth of smartphones and tablets has computer makers rethinking what goes into their desktop operating systems.

Notably, Microsoft and Apple are taking significant measures to address the success of mobile on their next desktop operating systems by making them closer to their smaller counterparts.

So how do these early "fusion" OSes hold up?

Let's start with Apple's new version of OS X, which made its debut earlier today in the form of a preview to developers. Apple's calling it Mountain Lion, and as the name would suggest, it's … Read more

Windows 8 bundled Metro apps revealed

The next beta of Windows 8 will apparently give us a healthy dose of Metro apps, whether we want them or not.

Microsoft plans to release the Windows 8 Consumer Preview--basically, a pre-release version of the new OS available to anyone who wants to download it--on February 29. Microsoft is reportedly finalizing the Metro apps that will be bundled with the new OS. Citing "sources familiar with Microsoft's plans," the Verge revealed the current list as:

Calendar Camera Mail Messaging Music People Photos SkyDrive Video

These are just the apps known so far, so there could … Read more

Plenty of new phones could land in Barcelona

Though last month's CES offered plenty of mobile news, committed wireless watchers know that the annual Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona is the smartphone and tablet jackpot.

This year, the fun begins on February 27 with a full afternoon of press conferences coming the day before. And though a possible transit strike is threatening to muck up the logistics of an already logistically challenged event, we're already reveling in a flood of rumors as to what devices might make their debut. Yes, some of this gossip may not pan out, but you can bet that the four … Read more

Microsoft to host Windows 8 Consumer Preview on Feb. 29

Microsoft will take the wraps off the consumer preview of Windows 8 on February 29 in Barcelona, a key milestone on the path toward launching the new operating system.

The consumer preview is the name Microsoft has given the beta version of the operating system. The company said in December it would launch the beta by late February.

Microsoft sent out invitations this morning to press to attend the "Windows 8 Consumer Preview." And while the invitation doesn't say anything about the debut of the preview itself, it stands to reason that it will coincide with the … Read more

Mac OS X 10.7.3 supports new crop of compact cameras

If there's any doubt about the accelerating shift from traditional SLRs to more compact interchangeable-lens cameras, let the newly released Mac OS X 10.7.3 update put them to rest.

Of the eleven cameras whose raw image formats Lion now supports, six of them are compact mirrorless models. They are the Nikon 1 J1 and V1, the Olympus Pen E-PL1s, E-PM1, and E-PM1; and the Sony Alpha NEX-5N. All these models forsake SLR's flip-up mirror and optical viewfinder, enabling a more compact design.

Raw photo formats, available on SLRs and high-end compact cameras, leave the processing to … Read more

Windows XP still hanging on as dominant OS

Windows XP refuses to give up its top spot without a fight.

The decade-old OS has slowly been losing more users to Windows 7, but January marked a small resurgence in its grip on the market, according to stats out today from NetApplications.

For the month, Windows XP grabbed 47.19 percent of all OS users, inching up from 46.5 percent in December. At the same time, Windows 7 saw its market share dip to 36.4 percent from almost 37 percent the previous month.

Obviously, a fraction of a percentage point is nothing for XP to crow about, … Read more