29th October 2008 by Giles Smith
BMW is looking pioneer a move away from proprietary systems used for in-car entertainment systems, allowing developers to build plug and play applications especially for their cars. This could be extremely good news for the open source community and another ‘notch in the bed post’ in the fight against closed source systems.
When a manufacturer or software provider uses closed source systems those systems are then not open to modification and customisation by it’s user. A user is essentially restricted by what that manufacturer or provider allows you to do, which is often not a lot. Closed source systems don’t allow interaction with other company’s products and whilst this may be preferable to that company, as it ties the user to their products it doesn’t really benefit the consumer leaving them frustrated and annoyed.
Apple’s iPod is a great example of this problem. Originally Apple didn’t allow interaction between their product and 3rd party products. This meant that a Linux user couldn’t use an iPod as they had no method of song management because iTunes is not compatible with Linux Operating Systems. Similarly if you had an iPod dock to play your music out loud, you couldn’t use that dock to play music from a 3rd party MP3 player. This has since changed as many developers and hardware providers have found ways of ‘hacking’ into the iPod and forcing it to be compatible with their systems.
“We were convinced we had to develop an open platform that would allow for open software since the speed in the infotainment and entertainment industry requires us to be on a much faster track,”
said Gunter Reichart, BMW vice president of driver assistance, body electronics and electrical networks.
“We invite other OEMs to join with us, to exchange with us. We are open to exchange with others.”
A great example of the power of Open Source systems that most of us can relate to has to be the Mozilla Firefox Internet Browser software. Thousands of add ons have been developed by a thriving community of developers to enhance the functionality of the browser and talking from personal experience, I simply cannot use other web browsers as they just don’t provide what I need.
Well done BMW, lets hope you can convince the other manufaturers to follow your example.
Tags: apple, bmw, car, developer, entertainment, ipod, open source, proprietary, software
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
No Comments »
28th March 2008 by Giles Smith
Quote
In using Apple Software Update to slip his Safari browser onto millions of Windows PCs, Steve Jobs didn’t just undermine “the security of the whole Web”. He’s made a mockery of end user licensing agreements.
As spotted by our Italian friends at setteB.IT, Apple’s Safari license says that users are permitted to install the browser on no more than “a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.” This means that if you install Safari for Windows on a Windows PC, you’re violating the license.
Yeah I noticed this little Apple update poping up every time I turn my machine on asking me to install Safari. I don’t want Safari and I wish the popup would leave me alone, but no matter how many times I say no it keeps coming back to bother me…
Nice one Apple!
Tags: apple, licence agreement, safari
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
2 Comments »
14th March 2008 by Giles Smith
Quote
The method of dual booting OS’s has been around for a while now, most noticeably/recently with OS X and Windows using Bootcamp on Intel Mac’s. Well looks like this marvelous tool/ability is making its way onto the iPhone thanks to the Dev Team and the recently published instructions form MuscleNerd.
Dual Boot an iPhone! The nerd in me just punched the air!
Tags: apple, dual boot, Intel, iphone, windows
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
No Comments »
5th February 2008 by Giles Smith
Tags: apple, iphone
Categories: Mistfits & Humour •
No Comments »
4th January 2008 by Giles Smith
The new TV+ from Archos is being launched to make sure that Apple don’t get a hold of another digital media market. This new box from the French media player maker does everything the Apple TV does, except for one thing. It does it all better!
It comes with a 250Gb HDD, can record direct from your digital signal, and can play pretty much every media file on your network. Which it can connect to via wired or wireless.
The remote sports a full QWERTY keyboard allowing you to surf the Internet easily on your TV. THe Archos also comes with a whole array of connectivity features, s-video, composite, HDMI, and digital or analogue audio connections.
The 250Gb Archos TV+ can be yours for £176, or £126 for the 80Gb version and as an added bonus you don’t have to connect it to iTunes!
Find out more
Tags: apple, apple tv, archos, tv+
Categories: IT, Tech & Internet •
No Comments »
