My Virtual World: Tech World

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In what’s rapidly becoming a holiday tradition, Google announced Wednesday that it’s extended free calling in Gmail for another year.

First added as a feature to Gmail in 2010, the Call Phone option lets Gmail users place calls to landlines and mobile phones from within the web-based email client.

In a Wednesday blog post, Google said that U.S. and Canadian Gmail users can continue to make free domestic calls through 2013. (Google does charge for international calls).

If Wednesday’s announcement sounds familiar, that’s because it echoes similar extensions offered last year and in 2010. At the time calling features were added to Gmail two years ago, Google had said that it would start charging for domestic calls at some point. But that point appears to be pushed farther into the future once more.

And a Googly year it was...

Google is easily the most prolific of the major technology companies, as it proved in dramatic fashion in 2012. We saw an augmented reality headset, cool new Nexus hardware, clever new Web services, and even a few terrible, terrible ideas. Throughout the year, the company continually surprised us—and reminded us that the modern Google is interested in much, much more than refining its search algorithms.

Can you recall the best and worst of Google’s 2012 output? Click through this slideshow, and let us know if we forgot to include any massive wins or fails.

HIT: Nexus 7

This June, Google became a major player in the tablet market when it unveiled the 7-inch Nexus 7 for a mere $200—a price that should make every potential Kindle Fire buyer think twice about aligning with Team Amazon.

The Nexus 7 was quickly acclaimed as the best Android tablet available, and even impressed iPad fans. Built in partnership with Asus but branded as a full Google product, the Nexus 7 is comfortable to hold, offers a high-quality display, boasts good battery life, and is zippy and responsive to gesture controls. Who said a “real” Android tablet would never be able to compete in a gadget space dominated by Apple and Amazon?

MISS: Nexus Q

Google's biggest flop was announced alongside the Nexus 7 at June’s Google I/O conference. The Nexus Q is a Death Star-like orb designed to stream music from your Android smartphone or tablet. That sounds good on paper, but the hardware costs a whopping $300 and doesn’t include any speakers. What's more, you can’t control it with iOS, Windows Phone, or any desktop software; its Android support is limited to Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean; and it supports only Google Music, Google Video, and YouTube, so forget about using it to stream content from third-party apps.

Google bragged that the Nexus Q was its first fully homegrown hardware product—conceived, engineered, and manufactured with no partner support. But it was also a total fail, and has been pulled entirely from the Google Play store.

HIT: Google Glass

Taking a major leap into the future, Google used a brazen skydiving stunt at Google I/O to publicly unveil an early prototype version of Google Glass, a futuristic augmented reality headset that one day may replace your smartphone. Google ultimately envisions a product that can snap photos, facilitate video chat, provide walking and driving directions, and receive and send instant messages and emails—all via a head-mounted display. In 2013, Google will deliver prototype Google Glass units to a limited number of developers who paid $1500 each to get their hands on Google's sci-fi spectacles.

Is the Glass project somewhat wacky or even borderline insane? Most definitely. But the skydiving stunt does prove that Google has the germ of an idea that just...might...work.

MISS: Google hobbles ActiveSync

In December, Google announced that users of its free Gmail service would lose the ability to use Exchange ActiveSync for syncing Calendar, Gmail, and contacts on new devices. (The service, however, will continue for business, government, and education customers of Google Apps.) Google said it was making the switch because it could use open protocols to achieve similar results, but the decision really appears to be a swipe at Microsoft, the creator of Exchange ActiveSync. In 2012, the companies also battled over Google's revised privacy policy, patent issues, and the current war for Santa Claus.

HIT: Google Now

Introduced with Android Jelly Bean in June, Google Now is the company’s take on a digital personal assistant that collates personal data and delivers it to you unprompted. For example, if you’re due to attend a meeting on the other side of a town, Google Now will, in theory, alert you to traffic problems that might make you late. The tool can also share sports scores, flight-time alerts and weather reports, all unprompted.

Google has been circulating the concept of Google Now for some time, and it’s great to see it finally reach fruition. Google Now is also an early example of services Google can deliver based on its unified privacy policy, which lets the company merge all your Google data into a single database. Google Now is expected to roll out to desktop PCs as part of the Chrome browser in the coming months. We welcome this new addition.

MISS: Cheap Chromebooks

Google and its manufacturing partners finally nudged down the prices of Chromebooks (laptops running the browser-based Chrome OS) below $200 in 2012. Three budget Chromebooks were released this year, including the $200 Acer C7, the $250 Samsung Series 5 550, and a $300 version of the C7. Still, even with much lower prices, users were more interested in buying a 7-inch tablet for $200 than blowing their cash on a hobbled notebook. The Chromebook initiative isn’t dead, but if public support drops any further, we should expect to see hardware partnerships all but die in 2013.

HIT: Google Fiber

Google became an ISP in July 2012, announcing specifics for Google Fiber, a fiber-to-home service in Kansas City that features 1- gigabit-per-second data bandwidth, cable TV service, and reasonable pricing. In true Google style, there's even a free option (although it has limited availability). So far, Google has only the most modest plans to expand its pilot project, but the company's flirtation with providing killer Internet service along with TV—and maybe one day phone service—may have competitors scrambling very soon.

MISS: Google Wallet woes

People will always be wary of new technologies, especially where their money is concerned. But Google didn’t help the adoption of Google Wallet, its NFC-based mobile payments platform, when several security concerns emerged. In early February, security firm Zvelo found an exploit that could reveal the security PIN for Wallet users with rooted Android phones. Soon after, the blog Smartphone Champ reported a far more serious security flaw that would allow a phone thief to reset a Google Wallet PIN, and access money on a prepaid card, even if the phone wasn't rooted. This flaw prompted Google to temporarily halt Wallet's prepaid credit card functions. Google is also having a tough time convincing wireless carriers to support Wallet in their partner smartphones.

MISS: Search Plus Your World

Google started to take search personalization to the extreme in January with the introduction of Search Plus Your World, a new search interface that’s supposed to elegantly bring up personalized, relevant content by harnessing data from Google+.

New SPYW results might include photos from your contacts and Google+ profiles of notable personalities and businesses. As the service rolled out, however, it really began to feel like one big promotion for Google+. Accessing data from other social networks would certainly mitigate the problem, but that would only steal thunder from Google+, which continues to grasp for relevance in a world dominated by Facebook and Twitter.

MISS: 11 months of Jelly Bean

Google was so excited in November to introduce Android 4.2, an updated version of Jelly Bean, it killed an entire month in the system's People/Contacts app. As the Android team said in a Google+ post, “We discovered a bug in the Android 4.2 update, which makes it impossible to enter December events in optional fields of the People app (this bug did not affect Calendar). Rest assured, this will be fixed soon so that those of you with December birthdays and anniversaries won't be forgotten by your friends and family.”

HIT: Musical doodles

Sometimes Google’s custom home page logos—also known as Google doodles—get a little old, especially for specious non-events, such as the 46th anniversary of Star Trek. But we’re not total curmudgeons, and we have to applaud the Robert Moog-inspired doodle posted in May that lets you create and share your own musical compositions. The Moog doodle even inspired a wide array of inventive musical creations on YouTube and Google+. In November, Google introduced another musical treat with Jam, a Web app for Chrome that lets you play in a virtual band, online with friends.

MISS: Android fragmentation

Google has been so busy rolling out new versions of Android that it hasn't spent enough time with hardware partners to update legacy devices to its latest OS. Indeed, as of December, a little more than 50 percent of users were still running Android 2.3 (also known as Gingerbread), according to Google's developer site. Gingerbread is a 2-year-old system, and has since been eclipsed by two newer Android smartphone OSs. Bringing updates to legacy phones has always been an issue for Google, not to mention for hardware manufacturers, which are complicit in the problem. The issue of OS “fragmentation” was a big deal in 2011, and we didn’t see much relief in 2012.

HIT: Google Trekker

Google Maps already offers Street View, a mapping tool that lets you virtually walk down city streets, and even enter indoor spaces, all from the comfort of your Web browser or maps app. But in 2012, the company revealed a new technology that takes all the photographic equipment that’s loaded into Street View vehicles—namely, 15 cameras, each snapping 5-megapixel images every 2.5 seconds—and puts it into a 40-pound Trekker backpack that you can take to extreme locations. The upshot? Now challenging terrain like the Grand Canyon can be captured in 360-degree panoramic views. Google hasn’t yet made live its Grand Canyon image captures, but the mere concept of Trekker is a hit.

Google's Nexus 7: Less than $50 per processing core.

The Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 weren’t the first Android tablets, of course, but they were the ones that made Android a viable threat to the iPad. (The Kindle Fire is only sorta-kinda Android.) With a gorgeous 1280 x 800 pixel screen and a quad-core 1.3 GHz processor, the Nexus 7 is a compelling product with an even more compelling $200 price tag. Suddenly the iPad’s $500 price tag looks positively luxurious, and even the iPad Mini seems like the less practical choice.

The Nexus 10, on the other hand, delivers an iPad Retina display-beating 2560 x 1600 resolution and similarly beefy internals for just $400. In other words, Google's thrusting tablets forward while driving prices downward across the board.

If any tech company needs a strong hand at the helm, it’s Yahoo. The company still owns one of the most visited sites on the planet, but its future strategy is unclear. That’s what the firm was hoping for when they hired on Scott Thompson shortly into the new year—but it’s not what they got.

Thompson, who took over for an underperforming Carol Bartz, didn’t even last half a year. He was fired in May for faking an entry on his resume, prompting five board members to resign their position early and leading Yahoo to begin its search for its fifth CEO in as many years.

That search ended in July, with the announcement that Marissa Mayer—long a public face at Google—would take the helm. In the months since, she's instituted morale-boosting initiatives such as free lunches, free phones, and all-hands meetings on Fridays. The spirit-lifting seems to be paying off; in December, Yahoo launched a new Flickr app and a streamlined Yahoo Mail refresh, dragging the two formerly stodgy offerings kicking and screaming into modern times.

Twitter had another banner year, repeatedly setting and breaking records for volume of tweets—first during the London Olympics and then during the presidential election, which saw a peak of 327,452 tweets per minute and the most retweeted picture of all time. The service also passed 500 million total users and 200 million active users in 2012, and it introduced the “cards” API that allows companies to automatically add multimedia elements when someone tweets a link to their site—all with barely a Fail Whale to be seen. Even the Pope signed up for a Twitter account in 2012.

Barack Obama's victory tweet broke Twitter records.

Not everything the happened in the Twitter verse was positive, though. The company continued to lock down its API, shutting out the third party Twitter clients that helped it become popular in the first place. Tweetro, the popular Windows 8 client, became the latest victim of the policy when Twitter shut off its API access, even though there’s not currently an official native Windows 8 Twitter app.

The microblogging service was also on the receiving end of heavy-handed corporate policy this year, as Instagram (now owned by Facebook) shut off Twitter integration, making it impossible for users to post Instagram photos directly into their Twitter feeds . The very next day, however, Twitter outed native photo filters of its own, somewhat—somewhat—softening the blow for people who love to take pictures of bicycles leaning against lamp posts in the rain.

The DoJ doesn't play when it comes to price fixing!

2012 was a bad year for e-book publishers, who saw one of their chances to break Amazon’s stranglehold on the market slip away. Afraid that Amazon was driving e-book prices too low, the publishers allegedly collaborated—conspired, you might say—to push wide adoption of an "agency" model, where the publishers set the price of e-books and retailers received a cut of the profits.

Apple allegedly encouraged the move, wanting to secure higher 30 percent margins on e-book sales rather than being forced to lower prices with competitors like Amazon, who were all too willing to offer e-books at lower prices (and lower margins). Under agency pricing, the cost of best-selling e-books leaped from Amazon's early $9.99 selling price to between $12.99 and $14.99

The Department of Justice was none too fond of this “collective effort to end retail price competition by coordinating their transition to an agency model across all retailers,” which would assuredly result in higher prices for consumers. The DoJ filed suit against 5 major publishers, as well as Apple, who was accused of colluding with the publishers out of a desire to raise profit margins on e-books. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette agreed to settle right away, while Penguin agreed to the DoJ's terms in December. Apple and Macmillian continue to fight the case in court.

The Pebble Watch is Kickstarter's highest-ever earner.

Kickstarter has been around since 2009, but it wasn’t until February of this year that the website became a phenomenon. That was when Time Schafer’s Double Fine Productions used the service to raise $3.3 million to create an old-school adventure game, and kicked off a string of mega-successful Kickstarter campaigns including Project Eternity ($4 million), the Ouya Android-based console ($8.6 million) and the Pebble E-Paper Watch(a whopping $10.3 million).

Seemingly overnight, Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites have become the go-to source of cash for projects too hip for old-fashioned venture capital. Our only question: how many of this year’s funding success stories are going to become next year’s vaporware?

Apple Maps' version of Las Vegas looks an awful lot like the Fallout series.

Apple and Google were once natural allies, united against perennial tech juggernaut Microsoft. As smartphones have become the new tech battlefield and Microsoft has receded from its once-dominant position, the relationship has broken down and Google services have started disappearing from Apple devices. The final straw came with the release of iOS 6 in September, which replaced the popular Google-powered Maps app with Apple’s own internally-developed app. The new Maps app lacked several major features, including transit directions and street view, and had a nasty habit of sending people to the completely wrong location.

Users, it turns out, aren’t fond of having something they’re used to taken away and replaced with a shoddy alternative. The uproar was swift and sustained—enough that Apple CEO Tim Cook released a public statement apologizing for the app’s shortcoming and suggesting that users try downloading a different map app from one of their competitors.

iPhone users finally regained access to the maps they had come to love when Google released an official maps app into the iOS app store in mid-December. That’s got to be a relief to Aussies, who had been warned just days before that Apple Maps’ inaccurate directions could send them on a potentially-fatal trip into the outback.

Of course, Facebook’s been kind of a big deal for a long time now, but 2012 marked the year that the social network became the publically-traded corporation that everyone loves to hate. The company's blockbuster billion-dollar IPO in May was plagued by technical difficulties , and the Facebook's stock value slumped to around half its initial $38 per-share price over the following three months. Facebook’s market worth has recovered since then, but still hasn’t come close to meeting launch day numbers.

The IPO came just a month after Facebook announced its biggest acquisition ever, picking up photo sharing app Instagram for a cool $1 billion. At the time, both companies were insistent that Instagram would remain an independent service, but the photo app has recently had its first Facebook-esque privacy flap.

Speaking of privacy flaps, Facebook capped off a controversial year with the decision earlier this month to eliminate user voting on privacy issues and site governance, provoking a predictable (and predictably unfruitful) public outcry.

In January, Megaupload was wiped off the face of the Internet, its domain names seized, assets confiscated, and founders imprisoned by New Zealand police acting on behalf of the US government. The popular filesharing site’s closure started a firestorm on the internet, spurring the “hacktivist” group Anonymous to launch a successful denial-of-service attack against the Deparment of Justice, the RIAA and others. The site’s closure had a domino effect , causing many other “cyberlocker” sites—including FileSonic, Uploaded.to, UploadBoc, FileJungle and FileServe, amongst scads of others—to either clamp down on file sharing or preemptively shut down their entire service, fearing similar government action.

The debate over SOPA, the much-maligned internet piracy act, was raging at the time, and MegaUpload’s closure led many to question whether the act was even necessary if the US government already had the wide-ranging power necessary to take down a Hong Kong-based company run by New Zealand nationals.

Megaupload.com's current home page was custom made!

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom became a minor New Zealand celebrity after the raid, and has won a series of court victories since. New Zealand judges have given Dotcom the right to press charges against the government for illegally spying on him prior to the raid—creating a political firestorm that resulted in NZ Prime Minister John Key apologizing to Dotcom— and found that the warrants used to raid Megaupload manor were invalid, rendering the whole search and seizure illegal. Though the ultimate question of his extradition to the US is still unanswered, Dotcom is moving ahead with plans to launch Mega —an encrypted file sharing successor to Megaupload.

The iPad design patent illustration

The Great Patent War between Apple and Samsung entered its second year in 2012, with a number of legal bombshells falling on either side. The biggest by far was the landmark ruling in September, which found largely in Apple’s favor and fined Samsung an enormous $1.05 billion . Though Samsung alleged jury misconduct, its appeal was denied, and Judge Lucy Koh refused to grant the company a new trial.

Samsung won back a minor victory when the court denied Apple’s request for a permanent injunction forbidding the sale of several Samsung devices. Apple took another major blow as the US Patent Office tentatively declared the “Steve Jobs patent,” which covers—broadly—gesture control on a touch screen, invalid.

The Apple-Samsung lawsuits are ongoing in countries all across the globe, and we’re sure there will be more bombshells to talk about at the end of 2013.

The biggest news this year was, of course, the release of Windows 8, which brought renewed energy to the PC ecosystem, along with more than its fair share of controversy—not the least of which was Microsoft's matter to take hardware matters into its own hands with the launch of its self-made Surface tablet.

The move represented a new willingness on the part of the software giant to compete directly with the OEMs that have traditionally been Microsoft’s closest allies. Fears from Microsoft's OEM partners seem to be playing out, with the Surface RT snagging the lion's share of the (lackluster) early Windows RT tablet market. The Surface doesn’t look to be a one-off excursion for Microsoft, either. The company's latest shareholder letter makes explicit that hardware is going to be a part of Microsoft’s future, for better or for worse.

Windows 8's pretty tiles aren't without controversy.

About the Start screen: First, let’s deal with the divisive Start screen. I’ll admit that I had some misgivings on this score initially. But once I realized that the Windows 8 Start screen simply replaces the old Start menu, my reluctance about moving to Windows 8 vanished. The Start screen is flat, rather than hierarchical, as earlier Windows OSs are; however, that simplification in design makes it much easier to navigate. Whether you use a touch-enabled screen, a laptop touchpad, or the scrollwheel on a mouse, practically everything you need for launching and managing applications is right there, within easy reach. And if you’re a Start menu diehard, you can right-click the lower left portion of the Start screen to bring up a simplified Start menu.

Numerous small improvements to the desktop user interface make many computing tasks easier to perform. Pull down the File menu in File Manager to see the system’s list of frequent places. Click the Home menu to get a pop-down ribbon of commonly used commands. Need the control panel? Move the mouse cursor to the lower left and right-click, or press Windows-X, and the simplified Start menu appears with commonly needed desktop commands.

If you can’t find an application by pointing and clicking, start typing its name; you’ll likely find it via search.

Under the hood: The biggest improvements to Windows 8 are under the hood. The new graphics subsystem, which uses DirectX to render all text and windows, makes the OS more responsive as you move windows or scroll through the Start screen. Internet Explorer 10 and Microsoft Office 2013 feel faster, too. The graphics subsystem also provides a framework for 3D acceleration on tablets and on Windows 8 Phones.

Both printing and printer handling work significantly better, thanks to Windows 8’s use of what Microsoft calls an extensible print-class driver framework. Instead of having to keep track of thousands of individual printer drivers, Windows 8 can use a single class driver to support multiple similar printers. In addition, the user interface for managing print jobs and printer features is simpler and more visual than in Windows 7.

The new Storage Spaces feature allows users to create redundant storage from drives of diverse sizes that may be attached to different interfaces, and the resulting storage pools protect their data from drive failures. File History, another storage-related feature, makes backups simpler and easier to perform.

Yet another noteworthy improvement is Microsoft’s upgraded system refresh capability, which enables you to restore a system to its clean-install or almost-clean-install state after a poorly written application has damaged it—and to do so while retaining all of your files and settings. Furthermore, if you’re willing to work from the command prompt, you can customize what the refresh system keeps and what it discards.

Windows 8's updated system refresh allows you to customize your image-restore settings to meet your needs.

Touch: Windows 8 offers true ten-point multitouch that works well. Skeptical PC users may remember past Microsoft Tablet PC efforts that were clunky and cumbersome to work with, but Windows 8 is a different animal altogether. Touch is an integral part of the experience, not a bolted-on afterthought.

A common ecosystem: Having a common app ecosystem that will run on PCs, tablets, and even phones brings Microsoft into the second decade of the 21st century. Though old-school PC users may lament the changes that their desktop system has undergone, the ability to navigate through a phone or tablet similarly to the way you would through a laptop or desktop PC promises to make your computing life easier.

Microsoft to launch Windows 8, Surface tablet today

Microsoft is gambling by changing a familiar UI to make Windows 8 compatible with internet "cloud" and relying on mobile gadgets at work and at home.

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft will release a new version of its flagship Windows operating system, tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to smartphones and tablets, today at 9pm (IST).
The software giant gambled by changing long familiar user interface features to makeWindows 8 compatible with trends toward keeping programmes and data in the internet cloud and relying on mobile gadgets at work and at home.
"Microsoft has this vision where they want to go; and it is Windows in the cloud," said analyst Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm that tracks the Redmond, Washington-based company.
"The chasm is very big and Windows 8 is a good first step," he continued. "But, all of these transitions come with a little pain."
The arrival of Windows 8 will coincide with the availability of Microsoft Surface tablet computers to challenge Apple's market-ruling iPads and rivals built on Google's Android software.
Surface tablets will be among Windows 8-powered devices sold in real-world Microsoft stores that will "pop up" on Friday in the United States and Canada.
Microsoft promised that the temporary, holiday-season shops will feature a "curated collection of Microsoft's coolest products."
Windows 8 and an accompanying version of Microsoft's free Internet Explorer web browsing program, were designed to optimise touchscreen capabilities.
"This is an absolutely critical product," Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates said in a video interview posted on the company's website.
"It takes Windows into the world of touch, low-powered devices, really giving people the best of what we think of as a tablet-type experience and the PC experience," he continued. "It is a big step."
Windows 8 will support a wide range of devices, including touch- and stylus-based smartphones and tablet PCs as well as desktop and laptop machines.
Versions of the operating system have been tailored for chips used to power various mobile devices.
The fate of Surface and other Windows 8 tablets will likely hinge on the availability and pricing of applications, since fun or functional "apps" are what people tend to love about gadgets, according to Cherry.
"Frankly, even an iPad out of the box isn't really exciting; it is a platform things can run on," the analyst said.
"The real question is how many apps really exploit the Windows 8 platform, and right now the number of apps you can truly get excited about is quite low."
Microsoft would "get software developers behind this," Gates added.
Apple on Tuesday introduced a fourth-generation iPad and a "mini" version of its hot-selling tablet computer while touting the fact there are more than 275,000 apps tailored for the tablets.
Apple also pointed out anew that iPads have been gaining popularity in businesses, long considered Microsoft technology strongholds.
Approximately 90 percent of the world's computers run on Windows software but sales of Apple Macintosh machines have outpaced the overall personal computer market for six consecutive years.
If mobile device operating systems such as those powering Android and Apple gadgets are factored into the equation, Microsoft's share drops considerably.
Windows 8 allows users to store and share personal data among various devices under the "SkyDrive" cloud computing service.
Rivals Apple and Google offer such services, which let people store digital data on servers in the internet cloud and access files from devices of their choosing.
Windows 8 will be available in 109 languages across 231 markets worldwide.
It "is simply the biggest deal for this company in at least 17 years," Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer said at Windows 8 preview event, referring to the time since the launch of the game-changing Windows 95 operating system.
"It's the glue; it's the foundation of everything Microsoft is built on."
Cherry dismissed worries that Windows 8 changes, such as replacing the Start menu with Tiles on an opening page, will alienate long-time users.
"User interfaces should grow, adapt and change," Cherry said. "Let's give people some credit that they will get it."
Forrester analyst Frank Gillett considered Windows 8 the most radical change for the operating system since the original Windows replaced Dos software in the early 1990s.
It remained to be seen how quickly Windows 8 would be adopted by businesses, which remain cautious after problems with the Vista version of the operating system generations earlier and that follow their own timelines for updating technology.
Microsoft reported that pre-sales of Windows 8 have outstripped those of its predecessor by 40 percent.
Microsoft will hold a gala party in New York City on Thursday for the midnight launch of Windows 8 and devote a massive marketing budget to promoting the operating system.

The Jelly Bean roll-out meant for 2012 Sony Xperia devices is on its way for all those waiting to get a taste of Google’s latest Android OS. Owners of the Xperia T and TX have some good news headed their way too. These handsets will begin receiving the Android 4.1 upgrade from mid-first quarter, next year.

The aforementioned smartphones will not be the only ones to acquire the update, as the soon to be launched Xperia V is also slated to receive the upgrade during the same time. The Jelly Bean update list even includes a few other handsets that were out not so long ago, like the Xperia ion, go, S, P and acro S. But the company hasn’t specified any particulars as to the exact availability and update timings for these devices. So users will just have to wait a little while longer to have these details confirmed.

Contradictory to what the company stated earlier, the handsets belonging to last year’s Xperia lineup, will not be upgraded to the Jelly Bean platform. Instead, the IceCream Sandwich update will be sent out across most markets and to a majority of its variants. As a post on the official Sony Xperia Product blog points out, these smartphones will not be upgraded to the Google OS versions following Android 4.0.4, though they will receive firmware maintenance releases.

To cut it short, the Jelly Bean update for the 2012 Sony Xperia devices will be rolled out soon. Its availability and timings of the upgrade will vary depending upon themarket and customer variants.

Apple chief Tim Cook on Thursday branded the new Microsoft tablet "compromised" as his company's coffers swelled due to soaring sales of iPads and iPhones.

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple chief Tim Cook on Thursday branded the new Microsoft tablet "compromised" as his company's coffers swelled due to soaring sales of iPads and iPhones.

Cook gave his early impression of Microsoft's Surface during a conference call to discuss Apple's earnings report -- profit of $8.2 billion last quarter on revenue of $36 billion.

"I haven't personally played with the Surface yet but what we are reading about it is that it is a fairly compromised, confusing product," Cook said.

"I suppose you could design a car that flies and floats but I don't think it would do all of those things very well."

He expressed confidence that buyers will prefer iPads.

The California-based company said that it sold 26.9 million iPhones and 14 million iPads in the recently ended quarter, topping sales in the same period last year by 58 percent and 26 percent, respectively.

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Apple iPad Mini in Pics

Apple iPad Mini Features

Apple unveils new MacBook Pro at $1699

MacBook Pro in Pics

The earnings however fell short of Wall Street expectations, and Apple shares were down slightly to $609.25 in after-market trades.

China remained a hot spot for Apple, with revenue there up 26 percent in the quarter and the iPhone 5 to be released there in December, according to Cook.

"We're very proud to end a fantastic fiscal year with record September quarter results," said Cook.

"We're entering this holiday season with the best iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod products ever, and we remain very confident in our new product pipeline."

Apple on Friday will begin taking orders for its iPad mini models unveiled this week at a media event in Silicon Valley.

The same day, Microsoft will launch Surface tablets along with a new-generation Windows operating system crafted to bring together smartphones, desktop computers, laptops and tablets in multi-screen lifestyles.

The iPad mini's touchscreen measures 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) diagonally compared to 9.7 inches on the original iPad.

A 16-gigabyte version of the iPad mini with Wi-Fi connectivity costs $329, while a 16GB model with both Wi-Fi and cellular capability costs $459.

Windows 8: Different versions explained and Indian pricing

The new OS is significantly different from Windows 7 or Windows XP.

NEW DELHI: Windows 8 has been launched. The new OS is significantly different fromWindows 7 or Windows XP. It has a number of new features that will -- for good or bad -- change the way you work with computers. We highlighted some of the changes in a feature here as well as talked about how Windows 8 fares in day-to-day usage.

If you are planning to get Windows 8, you should read them and then decide whether you want or not. But just to recap, here are a few points that may help you reach a decision:
1-Windows 8 has some learning curve associated with it, but once you get hang of how it works (it will take around a week or two), you will find that Windows 8 is overall much simpler to use and is much better looking compared to earlier Windows.

2-Windows 8 works best if you have computer or laptop with a touchscreen.

3-If you like the simplicity and user interface of tablets, you will likely love Windows 8.

4-Overall, Windows 8 is faster and smoother compared to Windows 7.

5-Microsoft has tried to simplify the OS. In some cases this means lots of options used by power users are buried deep inside the system. For example, even Start button has been removed. You may not like Windows 8 if you are a power users.

6-Currently, the Windows Store doesn't have many apps that you may use on daily basis. But whatever apps it has are beautiful and simple to use. Though some users may find the apps too simple.

So, after carefully weighing everything you decided to get Windows 8? Ok. But before we talk about availability, let's take a look at different versions of Windows 8. Windows RT: Pay special attention to this version. A consumer won't be able to buy it in the open market but it is important that you know about it. Windows RT is the most basic version of Windows 8. It is meant ONLY for computers or tablets that run on ARM processors. This means, if a tablet or computer runs on AMD or Intel processor it can't be powered by Windows RT. At least, not at the moment. The difference between Windows RT and other versions of

Windows 8 is that on the device powered by Windows RT, you will not be able to run legacy apps. If you are a geek, here is a better explanation: Windows RT can't run X86 programs. Only compatible programs sold or distributed through Windows Store will run on devices powered by Windows RT. This means if you buy Microsoft Surface, a tablet which is powered by Windows RT, you can't download and run VLC Player or Picasa or Firefox on it.

To be specific, Windows RT is meant for tablets. It will offer probably better battery life and will be much simpler to use, but in terms of functionality, it is likely to be limited compared to a proper computer. Windows 8 Enterprise: This version is for customers who want volume licencing. The enterprise version has several specific features that are important for system administrators in large companies.

Windows 8: This is the vanilla version of the new OS. And it lacks features like Encryption and Windows-To-Go. Currently, Microsoft has not announced any pricing for it.

Windows 8 Pro: This is the version of Windows that Microsoft is pushing in the market at the moment. It has almost all the features of Windows 8. The only bits missing are the ones used by enterprise customers. If you are buying a computer with Windows 8 or want to update the OS on your existing machine, this is the version you should buy. Hardware requirements: Microsoft has said that any computer that is running Windows 7 can run Windows 8 with ease. If you want to be specific, the company says that a machine should have:

1 GHz or faster processor 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit) 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit) DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver For Modern UI apps a screen with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels is mandatory.

Now, let's talk about how you can get Windows 8.

Microsoft believes that most people will get the new OS when they buy a new computer. So, it is focussing a lot on making sure that Windows 8 runs on all new computers sold in the market. According to the company, from today onwards over 250 models of Windows 8-powered computers and tablets will be available in Indian market.

But if you are someone who wants to buy Windows 8 for your existing computer, you have three options at the moment. If you bought your computer after June 2, 2012 you can pay Rs 699 to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro. This offer will last until January 31, 2013. If you use Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can upgrade to Windows 8 Pro after paying Rs 1,999. This offer will last until January 31, 2013. One important thing to note here is that this offer is applicable only if you download the installation disk of Windows 8 from Microsoft website. If for some reason you cannot download the OS and need the retail box, you can buy Windows 8 Pro at a price of around Rs 4,000. This offer too is valid until January 31, 2013. After that the OS is likely to cost above Rs 11,000.