One of the most promising tools of the last view years – the platform independent DAW Bitwig Studio has eventually been released yesterday. It is available for MacOS, Windows and Linux. Bitwig is a Berlin based company, originally founded by former Ableton developers. The relation to Ableton is something that put the expectations of Bitwig to a comparative high level in the field of DAWs.
We’re gonna check out Bitwig in depth during the next few days and let you know what we think. In the meantime: get yourself a demo run for free. Since the save and export feature is disabled in the normal demo version, we recommend to go for a trial license, which requires registration. Head over to https://www.bitwig.com/en/account/register.html and give the next generation of platform independent DAWs a serious go.
Checking the site’s current access statistics shows a kinda interesting result: many unique visitors come from California (as half as much as are coming from whole Germany). We wanna take the time to say thanks from Berlin, guys ;-)
According to AllThingsDigital Facebook blocked Apple from using the Facebook API to access user data. Using Facebook’s API is normally free, but not for large scale access and not if it’s getting used a lot. iTunes got a user base of 160million, so that would be quiet a lot.
Kara Swisher writes:
Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.
Although Steve Ballmer presented an HP Slate at CES 2010 in january, HP now abandons their Windows 7 slate project. TechnCrunch reports they got an HP inside source telling HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a slate operating system.
This news does not come really unexpected, as HP last week acquired Palm and they indicated in a presentation a slate with Palm’s WebOS.
Notorious hacker Marc Maiffre said in an interview with CNet.com that OS X is less secure than Windows. The reason why Windows is more attacked anyway is Windows’ market penetration.
According to Microsoft’s WindowsTeamBlog, they have already sold NINETY million licensed copies of Windows 7, thus making it the fastest selling operating system in history. Paul Thurott of WindowsITPro expects Microsoft to sell all in all 300 million copies in 2010.
Microsoft seems to be putting lots of money into their geo mapping services. They are not only integrating 3D views, that can be zoomed fluently into, they are integrating real time recordings and historical pictures as long as they contain geo data. If that is not enuff for you: they also integrated the view on the stars that of course changes when you move or adjust the time.
A little too much information? Check this presentation by Microsoft Live Labs’ architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas – also known as the creator of Photosynth, the technology that is now being integrated into Bing Maps.
Well, do you still think there is need for Linden’s Second Life?
Obviously notorious George Hotz has managed to get all 7 SPUs of the Playstation 3’s CPU under his control. This means although he cannot access the CPU’s root key, he now can decrypt everything that’s going thru these SPUs like datastreams of (encrypted) commercial games.
The PPU is higher on the control chain then the SPUs. Even if checks were to be added to, for example, verify the hypervisor before decrypting the kernel, with clever memory mappings you can hide your modified hypervisor.
In the meantime another hacker going under the nick XorLoser has released a more detailed manual of how to use GeoHot’s exploitation files and how to do the glitching.
Besides that XorLoser maintains a plugin for reverser’s beloved Interactive Disassembler (IDA) that contains special PPC instructions for Xbox360 and PS3.
Congratulations to GeoHot. Kudos fly out to XorLoser.
Tablet PCs seem to be the next big thing. After Apple’s smartphone revolution with their iPhone, it seems the next big market revolution might be the Tablet PCs.
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft introduced one of the Tablet PCs – a prototype of the HP Slate – last week on the CES 2010. In his presentation the HP Slate is of course running Windows 7, what else, but there are rumors it might also be shipped with Google’s Android. We suppose Amazon’s Steve Bezos will not really like it, because Steve Ballmer showed the HP Slate running the PC Kindle application.
Dell seems also be ready to enter the Touch PCs’ market with the Dell Slate. Gizmodo.de got photos of a prototype of Dell’s Slate. Dell’s Slate has a 5-inch screen, most likely an OLED, a SIM slot and a 5 megapixel camera.
If Apple was a typical tech company they would also have showed something to the public on the CES, but Apple isn’t. Anyway there are enuff rumors floating around about Apple’s Touch-Mac – rumored to be named Apple iSlate. According to Reuters Apple might be launching the iSlate in Q2/2010. It is expected to have a 10 or 11-inch display and a aluminium case. TheStreet.com reports that Apple’s Slate will be shipped with a P A Semi CPU, instead of Intel based Atom CPUs. This could be also the reason, why Atom CPU has been removed from Mac OS X Snow Leopard’s latest update 10.6.2. It is widely expected that Apple will announce the iSlate on Januar 27th, 2010.
Kara Swisher of AllThingsD interviewed Mr. Podfather Prefather Jon Rubinstein of Palm at the CES. Although he seems to have been highly involved in the development of Apple’s iPhone back in the days when he was Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, he said he never used an iPhone. Well… All in all he wasn’t telling too much, but when Kara asked him, if Palm will do a Tablet aswell, Rubinstein answered: “(..) we designed webOS to scale and it could be used in different form factors.”
So the cat is out of the bag. Although Microsoft seemed to be planning to release Windows 7 eventually in January 2010, the computer manufacturer Acer now confirmed to Pocket-lint that they will pre-load Windows 7 on their machines from October 23, 2009.
Moreover Acer said customers who bought a computer 30 days prior October 23, 2009 will be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7.
“23rd October is the date the Windows 7 will be available. There is a 30 day upgrade time so that customers don’t wait to buy a new computer, so if you buy during that 30 day period, you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7”, Bobby Watkins, Acer’s UK MD told Pocket-lint.
One of the most promising tools of the last view years – the platform independent DAW Bitwig Studio has eventually been released yesterday. It is available for MacOS, Windows and Linux. Bitwig is a Berlin based company, originally founded by former Ableton developers. The relation to Ableton is something that put the expectations of Bitwig to a comparative high level in the field of DAWs.
