Specifically with bug fixes, the updates resolves a WiFi connection issue that has been occurring when Macs with Lion awake from sleep. Compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing and printing Microsoft Word documents have also been addressed.

The new languages now supported include Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian. RAW image file support now extends to several new cameras, including the latest Olympus PEN cameras, the Nikon J1 and V1, and the latest Sony Alpha and NEX cameras.

The update is over 700MB in size and is available for download now. For more details on what improvements the update brings, visit the release notes.

[via TUAW]

The Update Alliance is a sham, there should never have been an announcement by Google or anyone else that they’d be pushing for manufacturers and carriers to update to the newest version of Android because while it’s not impossible, it’s foolish to think of it as a reality. There’s this mindset out there right this moment in the developer and early-adopter community that says the newest operating system version is the one you should ideally have on your mobile device. This is absurd.

Apple has a product called the iPhone, and with this single product comes the promise that you’ll always have the most recent iOS experience. Google has a product called the Nexus (Nexus One, Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus) which, to a point, also always promises to have the most recent Android experience. Google’s Android operating system is open source for anyone on earth to use with any device they choose, and everyone from high-end manufacturers to undeniably terrible budget-tablet-making OEMs have taken advantage of this fact.

The myth that the newest operating system should be expected to fit and instantly installed in any legacy device running an older version of it is just as absurd as thinking a brand new car engine should be able to fit inside any car previously made by the same factory. When you purchase a device, it should be clearly stated that the user interface you purchased it with will be all that’s guaranteed until it is old and dead. The only other solution is virtualization, this being a subject for another day.

This update to the small set of handsets that’ll be getting it, namely the Wave I, Wave II, Wave 723, Wave 578, and Wave 575, will bring about not only a better UX and UI framework for your everyday working experience, but big enhancements like multi-application execution and background launching of apps. This update will also be appreciated by carriers galore as it’ll bring possible Ad gateways and Operator billing (which will, for example, allow you to put an app payment on your monthly data bill.)

It’s Sammy Hub that brings this update straight from Samsung’s Turkey Facebook page — this means that although the official nature of the announcement is not as solid as we’d normally hope that it’d be, it can still pretty much be counted upon. Also 2012 in general is long enough a period of time that this announcement is basically true mathematically: chances are there’s no way Bada 2.0 WONT be released inside next year.

[via Samsung Turkey]

These classes are set to start by informing beginners on what Android is all about and how they can start in on the world of app developing. From there they’ll go into the things like battery life, audio playbook, and designing effective navigation systems. You’ll find that the classes (which end up being not much more than well-constructed blog posts when it comes down to it), are right on the edge of excellence, with a lot of potential for future creation on the horizon. As Tim Bray of Google notes, they’ll be starting here and working in additional classes through the coming months.

Starting with Ice Cream Sandwich, the entire platform is brought into one single operating system, not just one for tablets and one for handsets – this makes it much easier to teach and to learn how to use the OS as there is now only one set of codes to know. The Android Developer Relations team is aiming for the moon on this one, with much more development coming inside 2012. Those of you who currently develop for iOS: this might be the best time for you to start in on big green!

Head down to Android Training Orientation to get your design on now!

Versions that will be coming include Windows Embedded Enterprise for things like ATMs and kiosks. This version is set to land a quarter after the desktop version of Win 8. Embedded Standard will be offered in Community Technology Preview form in Q1 2012 and is designed for various devices. General availability is said to be coming three quarters after the PC version.

Windows Embedded Compact is for small footprint devices and will come in H2 2012. It will support ARM and x86 processors. There is no detail offered on Windows Embedded Server right now. Windows Embedded Handheld 7 was killed earlier this year.

[via ZDNet]

RIM has officially confirmed that the update to version 2.0 for the Playbook will not be offered until February 2012. RIM says that it would like to get the OS into the hands of users today, but that it won’t launch the OS until it’s confident it has met the expectations of the developer community and end users. As much as PlayBook owners will hate to hear this, it’s a good thing. If RIM launches the new OS for the tablet and it doesn’t work the PlayBook is dead.

Another big piece of bad news is that RIM announced that it has decided to not include the BBM application with version 2.0 and will push that feature until a later version of the OS. The rumors had pointed to RIM having difficulty integrating multiple user devices into a single BBM account. The bright spot in the announcement is that RIM is ready to provide developers with the gold release of the native SDK for the tablet and a beta of the OS 2.0. This will allow the devs to port their apps to the PlayBook in native form.

Metrics firm StatCounter has announced that Windows 7 has now for the first time overtaken XP in global usage statistics. Right now Windows 7 accounts for 40.21% of the global desktop operating system usage around the globe. Windows XP has slipped to 38.64%. Those metrics are from the month of October. This is the first time since the Windows 7 launch that it has pulled ahead of XP.

Windows 7 sold over 240 million licenses in its first year of sales. According to Gartner 42% of all the computers in the world are going to be running Windows 7 by the end of the year. Microsoft is looking to keep the growth momentum moving and is working on Windows 8 already. The new OS is expected in the middle of 2012 on ARM and Intel machines.

[via WinRumors]

You can see the images hint that the next version will have some new native apps like email, calendar, and contacts. However, one thing that is very interesting and of note on the leaked screens that support for Exchange Active Sync with IMAP, POP, CalDav, and CardDav accounts. What is notable missing in these screen shots is support for Blackberry’s own stuff.

There is no support for Blackberry Exchange Server or Blackberry Internet Server accounts listed. Previously there had been rumors that other RIM smartphones like the Colt would not get BES support because it was too hard to implement. One of the screens does show the icon for the Android App player. I bet that feature will offset the loss of Blackberry services for many.

[via Thisismynext]

The OS leans heavily on cloud services that Alibaba offers and comes from the AliCloud branch of the company. The core functions of the smartphone, called the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone W700, will use the cloud. Those functions include email, storage backup, and a lot more.

The smartphone will be made by Tianyu in China and will have a 3.8-inch screen and use a dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor like most modern Android devices do. The OS will run Android apps and supports HTML 5 and web apps too. There is no word on pricing at this time.

[via Android Community]

The data on most common OS spans the last two weeks ending on March 15. The most common version of Android on the market according to the stats is 2.2 with 61.3% of all devices on that version of the OS. The least common is Android 3.0 that is only on tablets right now with 0.2% of the market. The rest of the list includes Android 2.2 at 29%, 1.6 at 4.8%, and 1.5 at 3%.

Android 2.3 has 0.7% of the market and Android 2.3.3 has 1% o the Android market at this time. Android Developers also gives some historical data on OS installations with the data in the second chart spanning September 2010 to March 2011.

[via Android Community]

Windows 7 is still really new on the market having only celebrated its first birthday recently. According to the blog post over the weekend the follow up to Windows 7, being called Windows 8 for now, is under construction.

The OS is about two years away according to the post. We all know that new OS’ from Microsoft have a tendency to be delayed, sometimes for years so don’t hold your breath on that two-year launch window. There have been leaks that suggest the next version of Windows will have an app store like Lion will bring to Mac users.

Google’s Chromoting process is a way for Chrome to provide access to legacy PC applications. Unfortunately the only details we know come in the form of an email sent to a third party, and technical specifications are sparse about the process.

The sender of the email, Google worker Gary Kacmarcik, describes the whole process as being similar to a Remote Desktop Connection in Windows. Presumably, that means that you would be able to load these programs on a Chrome OS netbook by remotely accessing another PC on which they’re already running. However, Kacmarcik didn’t elaborate on specifics of how Chromoting operates, so there’s no way to tell if users will have to access their own machines or, more impressively, a copy of a legacy app running on a virtual machine online in the cloud.

This is in no way official yet, as neither of the company’s have come forward to say anything regarding the situation, but this wouldn’t be the first time an employee’s upkeep of his online resume lead to some pretty interesting things. But, the big question is: what’s Azingo? Well, the company creates their own mobile Operating System, which they’ve called Azingo Mobile. Interestingly enough, it features things like a Webkit-based browser, and even Flash runtime, so it seems that the OS itself may be pretty decent. And, it doesn’t look half bad, either.

But, that’s not really the interesting part. It gets really interesting when you look at the talk that’s been going on for a couple months now. During Motorola’s first quarter earnings call, Sanjay Jha, the company’s co-CEO, said that he has always felt that a proprietary OS would be the right move, and that if his company were in the right place to make that happen, he would look into it. Could this be the start of something very interesting coming down the line for Motorola? Or, will they continue to focus their efforts on Android?

[via Android and Me]

First and foremost, the new OS promises that the system is noticeably quicker on any machine it runs on, especially those that feature SSDs. What’s better though, are the wide range of features that they’ve thrown in: a social networking “Me Menu,” and Ubuntu’s Software Centre 2.0, which provides you an easy access portal for acquiring new software. There’s cloud-based services like Ubuntu One music store, thrown in for good measure.

There’s also Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition, which promotes faster boot speeds (even faster than what you’re already getting), along with a few other optimizations for the smaller form factor. The “Lucid Lynx” is available right now for your downloading pleasure, and one look at the screenshot above, and we can understand why you’d want it, if the features don’t speak for themselves. If you do download it, let us know what you think!

[via Slashdot]

The latest version of Symbian packs in some nice new features that will make it much more popular in the mobile phone arena. Symbian says S^3 will be feature complete by the end of Q1 2010 and offers lots of significant improvements over the previous OS version. Among the new features is support for HDMI out.

The OS also has music store integration in the radio with a buy it now button for easy purchases. Memory management in the new OS is improved with Writable Data Paging and the OS has a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture supporting OpenGL ES. Other features include 4G network support, one-click WLAN connectivity, various usability enhancements, and a new home screen with support for gestures and multiple pages of widgets.

The Symbian OS has been developed for more than ten years and has shipped on more than 330 million dives. The entire source code for the OS is now open source and available to anyone who wants to download it at no charge.

The code can now be used and modified by anyone for any purpose from mobile phones to other types of gear. The move was made to put Symbian in a position for growth and faster time to market. I wonder if we will see the Symbian OS start to pop up on consumer electronic devices like tablets like Android is doing. The use of the software is governed by the Eclipse Public License and other open source licenses.

A new roadmap has tipped up that shows Windows 8 is set to hit in 2012. That would put the OS at a launch date of about three years from the debut of Windows 7. Also, it is interesting to note that according to the slide from the roadmap both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are considered release updates not major releases.

Windows 8 on the other hand is listed as a major release. I wonder if we can assume then that Windows 8 will be all new code wise. The 2012 release date is certainly far from set in store, Microsoft is known to delay software for long periods to get things right. Sometimes things never get right as many saw with Vista.

go4craig was forced to apply the webOS Doctor, which is basically the last-ditch move to return the Pre back to its factory settings. When he rebooted the phone, he found that the device had been automatically updated to webOS 1.2. He quickly began to look for changes, first of which is the ability to add your account (payment information) into the App Catalog, which means that when paid apps debut some time later this month, you’ll be able to have a more streamlined presence within the App Catalog.

Secondly, he found a “select all” feature, within the browser. This leads us to believe that a better copy & paste feature set is on the way, which would be fantastic. There is also a fix for that location situation that had everyone up in a huff, allowing for finer controls regarding how the data is collected, and a way to turn off data usage altogether. There isn’t any official word on when 1.2 will be launched, but considering this leak, it could be any day now.

[via PreCentral]

Microsoft Corporation announced today that starting on October 6th, retail stores across the globe will have Windows Mobile phones on their shelves, all of which will be showcasing the brand new Operating System. Windows is promoting better customer experience as a whole, by delivering an improved, easy-to-use interface, better browsing capabilities, and the ability to access Windows Marketplace for Mobile and Microsoft My Phone.

“A Windows phone gives people a single phone that works for their whole life, keeping them connected to the people and information they care most about by harnessing the power of the PC, phone and Web,” said Todd Peters, corporate vice president of the Mobile Communications Marketing Group at Microsoft.

Amongst the upgrades lined up for end-users, Microsoft is also proud of the backing they are getting from phone manufacturers and carriers from around the world. On the North American continent, we’ve got AT&T, Bell Mobility, TELUS, Sprint, and Verizon wireless listed as carriers; and HTC Corporation, LG Electronics, HP, Samsung, and Toshiba Corporation pointed for manufacturers. Considering that we’ve been seeing some early builds of the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform via leaked ROM videos, it’s pretty exciting to know that we’ve finally got a date to mark on our calendars. So what about you? Are you going to be an early adopter?

[via Microsoft]

It’s debatable if Apple (and Steve Jobs, incidentally) is admitting or suggesting that Apple is just as capable of receiving malicious content as Microsoft’s Windows, and one that we’re sure will be going on for quite some time. Either way, Apple’s erected the first wall in defending against it, but as it turns out, that wall might be made of sticks, rather than stone. The included scanner can only detect two Trojan horses apparently, and both of them are quite old. “RSPlug.a” was first seen back in October 2007, and “lservice” which first came about in January. The shocking part is that the Snow Leopard anti-virus checker identifies these two Trojans as being brand new. In 2007, “RSPlug.a” made it to the news because it changed a machine’s DSN (Domain Name System) settings, and redirected users to false sites. And lservice made its appearance on pirated copies of iWork ’09, Apple’s suite of productivity software. The first Trojan is old enough that it is hardly ever seen in the wild anymore.

Of course, due to software updates, Apple will be able to update the virus checker whenever they see fit, through their Software Update Service. Apple hasn’t confirmed this to be a possibility, or an option, and there isn’t any word on what this could cost. If it costs something at all, it would be quite the slap in the face to the consumer. Keeping your users safe, especially by a company that strives for usability and user experience, would be paramount to keeping Apple’s squeaky-clean image amongst computer users.

[via TG Daily]

Andy Rubin decidedly disagreed with the <em>USA Today</em> article, and he decided to lay out out for everyone over at Google’s Public Policy Blog. Firstly, he wanted to mention that the “lite” title was only included due to the limitations of the Android Operating System at the time. He went on to say that while the first iterations of Android were not robust enough to take on VoIP applications, it certainly is now, and future upgrades of the OS will only provide wider development tools for the services. Developers are currently able to develop and upload VoIP services. Rubin drilled in the fact that Google did not deny Skype, or any other VoIP services from the Android OS, or the Android Market, and at this point no developer has created a full-featured VoIP product, including Skype. Rubin is actually looking forwar to the day when VoIP can be accessed on any handset on any carrier.

So, while Apple is notorious for denying applications (do they have an app for denying apps?), it looks like Google is trying to do everything they can to make sure every application makes it to their Android Market. So, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do you prefer closed walls and strict rules? Or would you rather have the possibility to have everything and anything?

[via Engadget]

Video demo after the cut; Update: Plus new live gallery – thanks dt0306!

As you can see in the video, the Click is roughly the same thickness as the Magic, but a little shorter and a little broader.  It also has a smaller LCD touchscreen display, something that wasn’t clear from the standalone leaked images we saw last time, and a 3.5mm headphones socket.

In terms of software, the Click reports that it’s running Android OS Donut, though it’s unclear what changes that implies.  Something conspicuous by its absence is HTC Sense, indicating that the Click is likely to be a “with Google” branded device; it also looks set to hit GSM rather than CDMA carriers, as it flashes up an obvious “no SIM” warning on startup.

Update: New images from Tinh Te forums below.

The figures have been compiled by Net Applications, who highlighted that Linux is still a few points away from taking just 1-percent of the market (at 0.88-percent) together with the fact that this is Apple’s first market-share loss in over a year.  Interest in Windows 7 had climbed through the second half of January, only to slump a little through the following month to end February at around 0.16-percent (though weekend tinkerers push that up to 0.18-percent on Saturdays and Sundays).

Windows Vista climbed from 22.48 to 22.79-percent, while XP and Windows 2000 dropped 0.09 points and 0.04 points respectively to 63.67-percent and 1.33-percent of the market.  Apple, meanwhile, saw their US sales drop by 6-percent in January, a shift that could have pre-empted their falling OS market share.