Operating systems

It may seem odd that Microsoft executives are traveling all the way to Barcelona, Spain, to debut the beta version of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system at a mobile device show.

But Microsoft, which has launched tablets and mobile phones long before rivals only to see others dominate those businesses, is hoping that the next version of its desktop operating system will reverse years of stumbling.

"It's an acknowledgement that mobile is what Microsoft needs to address," said Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Securities.

Tomorrow, the software giant will debut the Windows 8 beta, something … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Telefonica today showed off B2G, the Mozilla browser-based operating system for mobile phones, saying it's good enough to sell to today's feature-phone customers later this year.

You may or may not agree. To help you judge, here's a video of Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital's director of product development and innovation, demonstrating a prototype phone at a press conference today at the Mobile World Congress show here. At the event, Telefonica announced its mobile OS pact with Mozilla.

Having watched the demo myself, the phone looked workable but awfully pokey. And touch input-- specially the keyboard--was … Read more

BARCELONA--Half of Telefonica's customers are in Latin America, where smartphones are scarcer than in wealthier parts of the world. But the mobile network operator hopes Mozilla's new browser-based operating system, B2G, will change that.

"What we're selling the most in these countries is feature phones, which is ridiculous, said Carlos Domingo, Telefonica Digital's director of product development and innovation, in an interview at the Mobile World Congress show here in Barcelona, Spain. "We think we can bring smartphones to the masses in developing countries with this approach."

How affordable, exactly? The B2G phone … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--Mozilla took a big first step in making something real out of B2G, its browser-based mobile operating system, by signing on mobile network operator Telefonica as a partner.

In addition, the Firefox maker discussed another step, a close relationship with mobile processor maker Qualcomm to create the hardware for the first phones, expected to launch later in 2012.

Those are two very important steps. But they're only one of dozens that it must take to create an operating system competitive with Apple's iOS and Google's Android, much less one that fulfills Mozilla's grander ambition. The … Read more

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 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

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

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

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