The next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system puts a much bigger emphasis on tablets, yet by the time it's released Apple could be a whole two versions ahead from where it's at with its current tablet OS.
During Microsoft's public preview of its tablet-friendly next-generation Windows at the D9 confab earlier today, Windows and Windows Live boss Steven Sinofsky said the software would not be released this fall, and that a safer estimation would be that the company releases a new version of the software every "two to three years." As a frame of reference, Microsoft released Windows 7 near the end of October 2009, giving Microsoft nearly a year of wiggle room in 2012 to make good on that promise.
That message comes just days ahead of when Apple plans to take the wraps off iOS 5, the OS that runs on Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Apple's announced a new version of that software every year since 2007 and has said it will do so with the fifth major iteration at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week. Even if Apple doesn't ship iOS 5 within the usual June time frame, it's a good bet it will at least be out this fall, potentially well ahead of Windows 8 and putting iOS 5's successor on a collision course with the next Windows release.

Of course, a better match-up between the two is Lion, the latest version of the Mac OS, which Apple is also demoing next week, and will likely give a price and a release date. That particular release has acquired a few iOS-like features, but the fact remains that it's not a tablet OS.
Microsoft's approach--as seen from the limited demo it offered today--is the same one it's been singing the praises of for years: there doesn't need to be a difference in a tablet OS and Windows as you know it. Applications can be skinned to be touch and tablet friendly, yet can also revert to standard Windows applications you'd use with a mouse and keyboard. In other words, you can can have your tablet, and a computer too.
Microsoft's reasoning there, according to Sinofsky, is that certain applications need that particular interface. That's as opposed to the developer having to completely reformulate an application, and custom-tailor it to whatever platform its on.
Sinofsky said Microsoft will be providing developers with APIs for building touch-centric applications that are able to connect to Windows applications, hopefully bridging the gap between the two.That approach is worlds apart from Apple's, at least with iOS. There the company has long stressed specific user design guidelines for iOS applications that tell developers to make applications that match the operating system's UI aesthetic.
From Apple's iOS Human Interface Guidelines document:

You know what your app does and who its audience is; now you need to make sure that your app looks and feels like it was designed expressly for an iOS-based device. This is crucial because people have high expectations for the apps they choose to install on their devices. If your app feels like it was designed for a different device, or for the web, people are less likely to value it.

Microsoft's rebuttal to that during today's demo was that legacy software is a crucial part of the Windows experience and that everything should be able to run on that platform.
One other area where Microsoft's thinking differently is that its tablet can double as a normal computer, letting users plug their existing peripherals in just like they would with a laptop. While Apple sells a keyboard accessory and is able to work with Bluetooth keyboards, the fact remains that iOS at its very core is all about touch. Adding a keyboard for apps like e-mail, word processors, and Web browsing makes sense--yet for most everything else, a mouse does not.
So will iOS 5 adopt these plug-and-play similarities on the tablet side? It's unlikely. What about Mac OS X getting more tablet friendly? Some of the features that have been brought over to Lion, including the iOS-like Launchpad app launcher, touch-screen-like trackpad inversion, and visual styling, suggest it's headed in that direction. Yet it would be at odds with the iPad if such a device were to run Mac OS X instead.
If anything's clear, it's that Microsoft still has some tricks on its sleeve. The split soft keyboard approach, which was the hallmark of the ill-fated ultra portable PC movement, is back and designed to give tablet users a way to type with their thumbs while holding the device. Microsoft's also on the brink of having an operating system that will run on x86 and ARM architectures, an area where Apple's currently divided with its computing efforts (which may not be the case forever).
We'll know more about where Apple's taking its tablet and mobile phone operating system next Monday, when WWDC kicks off. Expect a jab or two at Windows 8 from Cupertino along the way.

Rumour: Apple tests iPad's A5 chip in MacBook Air

Apple has reportedly tested a MacBook Air chassis that uses the A5 processor inside the Apple iPad, according to a Friday report.

Macotakara, a Japanese Apple blog, reported that Apple tested a MacBook Air with an A5 chip inside. The A5 is used by Apple's iPad 2.

"According to this source who saw live A5 MacBook Air actually, this test machine performed better than expected," Macotakara reported.

That doesn't mean that Apple will release a version of the Air on an A5 processor, an entirely different architecture than the Intel X86-based "Sandy Bridge" processor that currently powers the MacBook Air. In fact, there's no indication that this is anything more than a lab experiment.

"Though it's not clear which Mac OS X or iOS is pre-installed on this A5 MacBook Air, iOS seems to have difficulty to use features of Thunderbolt without Finder," the blog added. "And even if Mac OS X is installed, developer should spend time to support A5 on Universal Binary Applications. As considering these situation, this A5 MacBook Air seems to be made just for experiment."

Earlier this month, rumors of ARM-based MacBooks surfaced, with one site making the wild claim that the switch would come in the A15 generation, a ways away.

However, Steve Jobs himself has said that Apple has no interest in building a netbook, the MacBook Air being the only Apple product that comes close, and it runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip. On top of that, the current MacBooks are some of the first products to use Intel's "Sandy Bridge" architecture, so it's hard to imagine Apple opting for a likely less-powerful CPU on future products.

Other sites have also speculated that new MacBook Airs are due in June, equipped with high-speed Thunderbolt transfer technology and Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors.

As PCMag's lead laptop analyst Cisco Cheng noted in April, the technology inside the existing MacBook Airs, which arrived last October, is incredibly outdated compared to its MacBook Pro brethren.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7.1 to get 500 new features with Mango update [Imahes and Video]

Microsoft announced the Mango update for Windows Phone 7 at a press conference in New York yesterday, an update that brings 500 new features to the platform, and will take the version number to Windows Phone 7.1, rather than 7.5 as previously rumoured.

While the Mango update was detailed a bit further, there was no real information imparted, and even a release date was left nearly as ambiguous as before - sometime in the American Fall. Andy Lees, president of Microsoft’s Mobile Communication Business, headed the webcast.

The biggest change Mango brings to the platform is true multitasking, allowing users to switch between all types apps, including third party apps, which will continue to work in the background. Lees added: “Third-party applications have been freed from their silos…They're [now] part of the total experience."

Live Tiles have been improved, enabling better glance-and-go information and notifications, as well as personalized, as described by Joe Belfiore earlier at MIX11. Other changes include a version of Internet Explorer 9 (left) for the Windows Phone platform – apparently faster than any other mobile browser out there, a new unified linked inbox, a thread-based IM aggregator, and a new Groups-based contact system. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are all natively integrated.

Also new was the native application – Local Scout – providing real-time local search results and recommendations for dining, shopping, and entertainment. Windows Phone 7.1 will also feature App Connect, an improved way to discover apps in web-based searches. There is also a Quick Cards feature, meant to provide brief descriptions of related apps, events, and products in search results. Improved Bing for WP7.1 also brings Visual Search and Music search to the fore.

The announcement also held a few details about a new and improved Xbox Live hub, and, native access to the Skydrive cloud storage service. Also important, is the voice-to-text and text-to-voice support that’s been built-in for handsfree use.

While these changes are numerous and all for the better, and, users will have no real reason to complain, the future of Windows Phone 7 is still a quite uncertain – after all, it’s ecosystem could hardly be compared to those Android and iOS enjoy, with the sheer diversity of apps available on the Android Market and Apple App Store. While Windows Phone Marketplace does have over 18,000 apps, and Microsoft doesn’t miss any opportunity to boast of its record-breaking growth, we can’t help but wonder if it will be enough for Microsoft to carve back a niche in the smartphone market.

News of Nokia using dual-core 1.2GHz processors for its Windows Phone devices is certainly interesting, but clock speed and processing power is no guarantee for success in the smartphone category.

On the developer side of things, Microsoft has released beta Windows Phone Developer tools for the Mango today, with many improvements to take advantage of the new features: Live Agents background processing, new profiler and emulator for testing, use of Silverlight + XNA together, Silverlight 4, IE9 web browser control, Live Tile enhancements, access to additional sensor, fast application switching, networking / sockets for communications, local SQL database for structured storage, as well as access to calendar and contacts for apps. Refer to the developer site for more information.

Check out a video below, of Joe Belfiore detailing some of the biggest improvements in the Window Phone Mango update, as well as some images showing some of the new features.

India's GSM subscriber base crosses 580 million customers in April

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has released some interesting data about the Indian GSM mobile subscriber base, and how various operators are faring. The total GSM subscriber base increased by 1.95 per cent in the month of April with 11.11 million new subscribers – taking the total up to a nice and massive 580.67 million. April’s growth figures are much lower than the first three months of 2011, which saw 13-15 million new subscribers each, and, quite a bit lower than monthly figures over the past year.

Among the operators, Airtel captured a large fraction of the new subscribers, with 2.41 million new customers, bringing its total up to 164.61 million, or roughly 28% of the total subscriber base. Idea Cellular was the leader in April, with 2.45 new subscribers, bringing its user base up to 91.95 million.

Vodafone gained nearly as many new subscribers as Airtel – 2.4 million - totalling to 136.98 million. Uninor 1.45 million subscribers, bringing its total subscriber base to 24.24 million. BSNL and MTNL added 689,361 and 14,633 customers respectively, making 87.14 million and 5.21 million customers in total.

Some experts are attributing the reduced growth to more stringent verification norms, and, some, to it being a seasonal trend – 11.18 million GSM subscribers were added in April 2010, compared to nearly 14 million in March.

Zuckerberg: "Facebook should allow kids under 13"

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week said that younger children should be allowed on the site—for education purposes.

"In the future, software and technology will enable people to learn a lot from their fellow students," Zuckerberg said at the NewSchools Summit in California, according to Fortune.

Currently, Facebook only allows people 13 and older to sign up for the site. It's easy to get around that, however, and Consumer Reports recently reported that there are approximately 7.5 million underage kids on Facebook.

"That will be a fight we take on at some point," Zuckerberg said in regards to allowing younger kids on the site. "My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age."

Hampering that effort is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which bans Web sites from collecting information from users under 13. As a result, "we haven't even begun this learning process," Zuckerberg said. "If they're lifted then we'd start to learn what works. We'd take a lot of precautions to make sure that they [younger kids] are safe."

It could be an uphill battle. Facebook chief technology officer Bret Taylor appeared on Capitol Hill Thursday, where Sen. John Rockefeller grilled him about underage kids on the site.

"I want you to defend your company here because I don't know how you can," Rockefeller said.

Taylor insisted that "whenever we find out that someone has misrepresented their age on Facebook, we shut down that account. We don't allow people to misrepresent their age."

 In March, Facebook said that it removes about 20,000 profiles from the site per day for various infractions, including users who are underage.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the site is currently designed for two age groups: 13 to 18 and 18 and up.

"However, recent reports have highlighted just how difficult it is to implement age restrictions on the Internet and that there is no single solution to ensuring younger children don't circumvent a system or lie about their age," the spokesperson continued. "As Mark noted, education is critical to ensuring that people of all ages use the Internet safely and responsibly. We agree with safety experts that communication between parents or guardians and kids about their use of the Internet is vital. We believe that services such as Facebook have a role to play in encouraging this."

Nokia X7 scheduled to arrive in India by June, with Symbian Anna onboard

Nokia has announced it will be launching the Nokia X7 sometime next month in India, within the second quarter of 2011. A 4-inch Symbian device similar to the Nokia N8 and E7, the X7 has the same 4-inch Nokia ClearBlack AMOLED display (16M colours and 640x360 pixels), but a more sharply angled look than its Symbian^3 predecessors. The Nokia X7 will be priced at around 380 Euros, roughly equal to Rs. 25,000.

The X7 as expected features the latest version of Symbian – Symbian Anna, which comes with numerous interface updates, a brand new browser, and many other performance improvements. Read more about the changes here. Powered by the same 680MHz ARM 11 processor and Broadcom BCM2727 GPU combination as the N8, the device has 256MB of RAM, 1GB of ROM, and will come with a 8GB microSD card pre-installed. It weighs a little more than the N8, at 146 grams, but is a little thinner, at 11.9 millimetres. It has the same 8MP camera as the E7. For detailed specs, refer to our previous coverage.

It has a 1200mAh battery that is rated to deliver up to 450 hours of standby time, up to 6.5 hours of talk time, and up to 50 hours of music play – not too shabby for an entertainment device. What do you think? Does it stand a chance in the market?

Microsoft Office 365: Free-Free-all public beta

Microsoft has annonced that its online productivity suite, Office 365 is now available for any one to try out, as a public beta. The suite will be accessible in 38 countries across the world, and over 17 languages.

Apart from the usual Microsoft Office programs, such as Word and Powerpoint, users also have access to Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint and Microsoft Lync for realime collaboration. Protection comes via the ForFront security client, and Microsoft promises 99.9 per cent upime for the service. The launch of Office 365's beta is accompanied with a beta of Office 365 Marketplace, which helps users of Office 365 find a variety of apps and services from Microsof and its partners. Log on to Office 365 at - http://bit.ly/fb70XJ