With Windows 10 on ARM, Microsoft is coming for the Chromebook — and might win

Microsoft is taking on Chromebooks with a new ARM-based version of Windows 10, and everyone wins.

Microsoft is coming for your Chromebooks. No, they’re not going to confiscate them like the TSA steals your water bottles, but more so in the competitive sense.

This week, Microsoft announced that it is launching an ARM-friendly version of Windows 10 in collaboration with Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 835 SoC, which comes out next year. While most Android fans will know Qualcomm’s work from such phones as nearly every product on the market, Snapdragon is increasingly capable, especially at the high-end, of powering tablets, 2-in-1s and traditional laptops.

While Microsoft launched an ARM-based version of Windows in 2012, called Windows RT, it failed because there was no interoperability with traditional x86 apps, and the software, which was based on Windows 8.1, was deprecated with the Surface 2’s end of production in early 2015. Now, with Windows 10 on ARM facilitated by a very powerful-yet-thermally-efficient system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Snapdragon 835, a new opportunity for backwards compatibility has emerged: emulation.

From our friend Daniel Rubino at Windows Central:

Windows 10 on ARM will also run traditional x86 Win32 apps and games through emulation.

Users will be able to install any x86 Win32 app – unmodified – from any source, no repackaging as UWP or delivery via the Windows Store required. The apps are not sandboxed and they will have full access to the OS. Apple made a similar emulation feature when the Mac line switched from PowerPC to Intel processors, but Microsoft’s move to support ARM is a magnitude more impressive.

How is it more impressive? Because despite the overhead involved with emulating applications and their inputs from the keyboard, mouse, camera, and other peripherals, Microsoft is confident that users won’t even notice a difference. The company demoed a version of Photoshop running in emulation on a test version of the Windows 10 on ARM platform and it was fast. It even plays games.

But there is a business angle here: Microsoft wants Windows 10 to run on everything, from high-end Intel desktops to virtual reality headsets to HoloLens to phones — all of which are already available — to inexpensive 2-in-1s and laptops that run cool and last long, a market that ARM-based Chromebooks currently have on lock.

Zac Bowden, again at Windows Central, sums it up nicely:

More and more schools and businesses are opting for Chromebooks over Windows 10 laptops, mainly because of price, but also because Chromebooks do what they need them to do, durably, and at a low cost.

There are many reasons Microsoft would want to compete with Chromebooks, but the strategy at its core is about offering reliable, low-cost, low-power alternatives to Intel-based computers, especially as the Portland-based company has struggled not only to compete in the mobile space but to offer a cost-effective replacement to its now-cancelled Atom line of processors.

Windows 10 itself is a stable, attractive and feature-filled operating system and that bodes well for the future of mobile computing.

There’s also the promise of cellular connectivity: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, being tailor-made for phones, comes with inherent cellular capabilities, and while Microsoft has shied away from releasing new smartphones — and may hold out indefinitely as it cedes the market to Apple and Google — there are plenty of reasons it has maintained its Windows 10 Mobile development, and much of it has to do with the promise of ubiquitous connectivity as the developed world moves headfirst towards 5G.

Laptops and tablets running a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor won’t be as costly to make and sell compared to devices rocking Intel Atom or Intel Core M chips. It’s a huge deal for Microsoft to be able to bring Windows 10 to Snapdragon devices, as it means manufacturers can begin building devices that cost nothing to make and sell.

A low-end device running a Snapdragon processor with a cheap 1366×768 screen, basic keyboard, and passable trackpad, running full Windows 10 with support for all of the Windows app library, all for the same price as a Chromebook — the choice between the two is all but a given for schools and businesses. Do you want a glorified web browser, or do you want a real and fully-capable computer?

Zac takes some liberties with Chromebooks’ capabilities — the platform expanded to be well more than a “glorified web browser” years ago, and with Android app support has catapulted to a full Windows 10 competitor in many ways, but the idea is sound. Microsoft has decided, with its Surface line, to compete in the high-end, and it wants its manufacturing partners like Asus, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, HP and others to be able to make as many lower-cost products as possible, in varied forms and with multitudinous specifications.

ChromeOS is a glorified web browser as Windows is a glorified DOS shell

This is what enabled Windows to proliferate in the 90s and 2000s, and will continue to give Microsoft cache in the mobile space even as it moves away from smartphones themselves.

Microsoft has done a great job overcoming the biggest limitation, namely apps, of Windows 10 on ARM, and considering we’re at a point where Windows 10 itself is a stable, attractive and feature-filled operating system it bodes well for the future of mobile computing. At the same time, Android apps on Chromebooks will launch for most existing customers before Microsoft’s mobile gambit, so the impact, at least at first, may be tempered.

The path to a Surface phone is clearer than ever with Windows 10 on ARM

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Cortana for Android takes on Google Assistant with redesign, UK expansion

Spruce up your Android device with Cortana’s digital assistant features.

Cortana for Android is coming and it features all the same helpful functionality as the Windows 10 desktop app. This includes cross-platform reminders, missed call alerts, and daily summaries. You can even ask Cortana for help on various matters the same way you would with Google Now. Cortana also lets you manage notifications on your Windows PC and across various Android phones.

If you’re in the United Kingdom, Cortana will be available to you over the coming week. And if you’re wondering what the heck Cortana is, this is a good place to start.

Download: Cortana (free)

The NSA has been listening to in-flight cell phone calls for years

By now, we’re all well aware of how good the NSA is at spying on people’s communications. But it’s still a little surprising to learn that the NSA and the British Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) were able to listen in on people’s in-flight phone calls as far back as 2005. Le Monde and The Intercept, which has previously broke many stories from Edward Snowden’s info on the NSA, say that a secret program called “Southwinds” could gather all cellular communication from commercial air flights, including “voice communication, data, metadata and content of calls.”

While cell phone conversations are generally prohibited on many commercial flights, an NSA document says that it recorded data from about 100,000 people who used their phones while flying in February 2009. But the agencies were targeting in-flight calls on Air France as early as 2005. When the program was up and running, it could collect data in “near real-time” and airplanes could be tracked every two minutes using the cell connections. The only real requirement was that a plane be cruising at over 10,000 feet.

Once cruising altitude was reached, ground-based stations could intercept the call as it was passed through a satellite. From there, the agencies could cross-reference the call with the list of passengers on board and find who was making the call. And judging by this report, this practice continues through today — the report shows calls tracked as recently as 2012, and with in-flight calling expected to be far more common in the coming years, the NSA and GCHQ will have many more opportunities to listen in to calls.

The forthcoming boom in in-flight mobile phone usage will “further extend the scope of espionage by providing a pool of potential targets comprising several hundreds of thousands of people, a level of popularity anticipated by the NSA seven years ago,” writes Jacques Follorou of Le Monde. “This implies a population that goes far beyond terrorist targets. The political or economic surveillance of passengers in business or in first class on long-haul flights could be put to many other uses.”

Naturally, both the GCHQ and NSA told Le Monde and The Intercept that their actions comply with European Convention on Human Rights and US law and policy, respectively.

Via: MIT Technology Review

Source: The Intercept

NYC will stop collecting info Trump could use for deportations

The NYC mayor’s office has announced that it will no longer store personal records for immigrants who apply for the city’s free IDNYC identification card. While the card allows users to secure accounts for utilities, banking and more, officials fear President-elect Trump could use the database for his proposed deportation plans. Mayor Bill de Blasio said in the weeks following the election that he would keep cardholders’ personal records from the federal government and other authorities.

“The IDNYC program will be transitioning to a policy that does not involve the retention of cardholders’ personal background documents,” a statement from the mayor’s office explained this week. The program will continue the pre-application process that is available by calling 311. The statement said that the office expects to resume processing full applications under the new policy next month.

Republican State Assembly members have already filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that the move to destroy collected immigration info violates New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Assmemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis and assemblyman Ron Castorina argue that the new policy would make it impossible to track people who use fraudulent information when applying for an IDNYC card. A court injunction has temporarily stopped the city from deleting any existing records pending a hearing later this month.

Via: BoingBoing, The Verge

Source: City of New York

John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, dies at 95

John Glenn, the legendary war veteran, astronaut and United States Senator, died this afternoon at the age of 95 after being hospitalized in his home state of Ohio. After serving as a combat pilot in World War II and the Korean War, Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962. This feat came in the middle of the Cold War — Russia had just achieved orbit itself and Glenn’s trip evened out the space race between the two countries.

Glenn set the transcontinental speed record as a test pilot in 1957 and he soon after joined Mercury 7, the US’ first class of astronauts. On February 20th, 1962, Glenn boarded NASA’s Friendship 7 spacecraft and blasted off into orbit.

He famously commented, “Oh, that view is tremendous!”

Glenn was the last living member of the original Mercury 7 team. And in 1998, he broke another record: He blasted off again at the age of 77, making him the oldest person to reach space.

On the 50th anniversary of Glenn’s initial trip around the Earth, we called him a “real American hero,” a moniker he carried proudly until the end.

Source: NPR