Mountain Lion - Apple's answer to Microsoft's Windows 8

PC era is leaping its last breath ,thanks to converging software and hardware led by Apple’s Mountain Lion and Microsoft’s Windows 8.The pace with which changes are happening in the  OS ( operating systems )are phenomenal .

Both Windows 7 and  OS X 10.6 were released in 2009 with almost nil cloud ,mobile or cross platform features making it as a typical “PC” operating system which means you can’t add extra functionality via third-party software and innovative that were lacking in the standalone PC system.

Both these OS (Operating system)  giants  are expected to release by second half of 2012 ,with enticing features linked to cloud ,mobile or home entertainment revolutionized as the centre of digital ecosystem.

Windows 8 and Mountain Lion,has a single sign-on which lets the users to sync all his/her documents ,images and music between all the devices via Windows Live and iCloud . With AirPlay mirroring and Game Center, Mountain Lion will become  as a complete home entertainment system, allowing Mac, iPhone, and iPad users to stream live  against each other on an Apple TV.On the other side ,Windows 8 apps will automatically sync between five Windows 8 devices (home, office, tablet, and so on).

 Apple is bridging  the gap between the desktop and mobile OSes with new iOS features inserted into the desktop OS ,changes most visible in the Notification Center.A number of apps renamed to mirror the Ios names like iCal renamed as Calendar ,iChat as Messages etc. On the Windows side ,its interface will rely heavily on the Metro Start screen similar to the Windows Phone 7 ( and 8). Also ,rumours are floating that Xbox 720 will be powered by Windows 8.

 It is interesting to note that both these tech giants are shaping up the positioning of these OS ‘s by converging from completely different directions.Microsoft is trying to breakthrough the tablet and phone market by utilizing its huge Windows userbase.While ,Apple is trying to attract its existing loyal iOS users to diversify its experience into a Mac laptop ,Apple TV and eventually an Apple iTV.

Microsoft can’t undermine the massive risks in shifting from highly profitable business on x86 PC’s and servers and the Office suite of software for the last 30 years into brand new architecture of Windows 8 offering Office for free ,taking out the Start button and menu  from the desktop and complicating it  with new  features that will baffling the user accustomed to earlier Windows platforms . It is its long term goal to succeed on tablets and finally ,driving its sales of Windows 8 phone (Microsoft- Nokia product in the making) which can become a risky business proposition .

Common  features of Mountain OS and Windows 8 are :

Messages App:

Mountain Lion:

The developer preview of Mountain Lion features the all new Messages app which replaces iChat and allows you to send unlimited messages, high-quality photos and videos directly from your Mac to another Mac or iOS device. Messages will continue to support AIM, Jabber, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk.

Windows 8:

Microsoft has two highly popular messaging platform called Windows Live Messenger and Skype which allows you to send unlimited messages, high-quality photos and videos directly from your PC to another PC or Mac or any mobile device. Both the services has hundreds of millions of users.

Game Center:

Mountain Lion:

Game Center lets you personalize your Mac gaming experience, find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they’re on a Mac, iPhone®, iPad or iPod touch®.

Windows 8:

Windows 8 will feature Xbox LIVE hub which will allow you to personalize your PC gaming experience, find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they’re on a PC or Windows Phone or a Xbox. Xbox LIVE currently has over 45 million active users.

Notification Center:

Mountain Lion:

Mountain Lion presents notifications in an elegant new way, and Notification Center provides easy access to alerts from Mail, Calendar, Messages, Reminders, system updates and third party apps.

Windows 8:

Microsoft doesn’t believe in providing a dump place for app notifications, instead apps will have their own Live tiles which will provide the latest updates. You can see how a Mountain Lion home screen & Windows 8 Start screen will look like from the images on the top. I prefer live tiles over sea of icons spread over my computer monitor.

Social Sharing:

Mountain Lion:

System-wide Share Sheets make it easy to share links, photos and videos directly from Apple and third party apps. Twitter is integrated throughout Mountain Lion so you can sign on once and tweet directly from Safari®, Quick Look, Photo Booth®, Preview and third party apps.

Windows 8:

Windows 8 will have a new feature called Share contract which allows you to share links, photos and videos directly from Microsoft and third party apps. Now just twitter, any social network can be integrated into Windows 8′s system for sharing.

AirPlay:

Mountain Lion:

Mountain Lion also introduces AirPlay Mirroring, an easy way to wirelessly send a secure 720p video stream of what’s on your Mac to an HDTV

using Apple TV®.

Windows 8:

 Windows 8 doesn’t have any direct alternative to Apple’s AirPlay so far. But that doesn’t mean you can’t replicate the same using some other apps. For example DLNA compatible Windows devices can stream to virtually any DLNA compatible HDTV’s. Also Microsoft has not announced any integration with Xbox on Windows 8 so far which I think is highly possible since Microsoft has already released a Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone devices.

iCloud:

Mountain Lion:

More than 100 million users have iCloud accounts, and Mountain Lion makes it easier than ever to set up iCloud and access documents across your devices. Mountain Lion uses your Apple ID to automatically set up Contacts, Mail, Calendar, Messages, FaceTime® and Find My Mac.

Windows 8:

Windows Live network which has over 500 million users worldwide is directly integrated into Windows 8. You can sign-in to Windows 8 PC with your Windows Live ID which will allow you to roam your contacts, messages, personalization settings, language settings, app settings, Windows settings, credentials, etc,. More than that Windows Live ID will give you access to 25GB of Cloud storage called SkyDrive which can be used to store photos, documents, etc and synced with Windows Phones as well.

Security:

Mountain Lion:

Gatekeeper is a revolutionary new security feature that gives you control over which apps can be downloaded and installed on your Mac. You can choose to install apps from any source, just as you do on a Mac today, or you can use the safer default setting to install apps from the Mac App Store, along with apps from developers that have a unique Developer ID from Apple. For maximum security, you can set Gatekeeper to only allow apps from the Mac App Store to be downloaded and installed.

Windows 8:

Windows has a long history of providing built-in security features in the OS. Windows Defender prevents malware from Windows PC’s and Microsoft even provides a free simple tools called Security Essentials which will protect you from malware, viruses, rootkits, etc,. Apple has even decided to rip-off the logo of Windows Defender & Security Essentials for its new Gatekeeper.  

So as to emerge as winner in its new avenues and innovations ,Microsoft has to differentiates its future products from Apple rather than imitating it. It needs to builds a robust business model and an app ecosystem which will drive its sustainability and reputation in the future as an technology innovator. On the other hand ,Apple has to retains its profitability driven by global sales by  not restricting itself to North American and European markets and creating great products in the same way the Ipads and Iphones did wonders for it .

" Too Big to Fail" - Wall Street demystified

This is my book review of  “ Too Big to Fail “ from Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial journalist for the New York Times,  which exposes the cryptic link between Bush Adminstration (US govt in 2008) ,Wall Street Investment Banks & Market Regulators  by  providing  a moment-by-moment account of the worst calamity to ever affect the U.S. financial markets since the Great Depression which finally turns into a Global Economic mess  .It became a tsunami that triggered financial collapse in the world markets as well. It also demystifies  the secret nexus between US federal govt & Wall Street firms which targets to profit and benefit the top-rung elites of the society and making the common man suffer the most arising from their financial miseries at the height of this economic catastrophe.

Sorkin builds a story of how the financial collapse of Wall Street in the fall of 2008 actually started much earlier - in the spring of 2008. Wall Street and Washington were intricately tied together in the collapse and Sorkin details the level and depth of these ties. At the first of the book, he lists his cast of characters. They include the management of all the major investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, along with AIG, Bank of America, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as overseas organizations from countries like China and Korea.

The cast of characters also includes a whole raft of attorneys, individuals from Great Britian, as well as from the U.S. Congress, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and the FDIC. This is not an exhaustive list.

Because of the author's position at the New York Times, he had unprecedented access to this cast of characters and was able to write a book with all the detail supporting the drama of what led up to the collapse of Wall Street and our financial system in 2008. It is meticulously researched, drawing on interviews with more than 200 of those who participated directly in the events it covers, including their handwritten notes and tape-recordings of critical meetings. 

The result is a compelling reconstruction of the drama surrounding the government seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman’s collapse, the rescue of American International Group (AIG), the subsequent market pandemonium and the shoring-up of big banks’ capital with public funds.

The major players on Wall Street knew that the dominoes were going to fall as early as the spring of 2008 as Lehman Brothers started to fail. Sorkin discusses the events leading from that time to the collapse.

At the centre of the action stands Mr Paulson,Treasury Secretary of  Bush Adminstration  (he had  beg  before congressional leaders to support his bail-out), flanked by the fresh-faced but hard-nosed Tim Geithner, who in 2009 took over as treasury secretary, and the professorial, unflappable Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was prone to give in when under pressure, and despite being horribly sleep-deprived, Mr Paulson acts decisively, if not always wisely, as he responds to what he calls “an economic 9/11”. 

This untimely improvisation was evident across Wall Street, too. Pushed to think creatively, a desperate AIG uses bundles of dusty stock certificates from its vaults as collateral for a $14 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. With Morgan Stanley desperate for an investment from Mitsubishi, but markets closed for a holiday, the Japanese firm issues a $9 billion cheque to seal its commitment.

Just as remarkable is the combination of  excessive pride and ineptitude of those running the most troubled firms. Lehman’s boss, Dick Fuld, sacked or sidelined those who gave warning about its dizzying debt levels and dangerous exposure to commercial property. He concocted  a life-saving deal with the South Koreans by barging clumsily into negotiations being run by a key lieutenant, which were delicately poised. AIG’s executives did not know how big the insurer’s balance-sheet hole was, and sometimes did not seem to care.

One of the best sections comes after Lehman’s bankruptcy and AIG’s takeover, as other firms struggle for survival. The remaining standalone investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, haemorrhaging cash as clients run for the exit, engage in an increasingly surreal series of  happenings  with various commercial banks, before finding temporary salvation by turning themselves into bank holding companies. The book makes clear how close Goldman came to death: if Morgan Stanley went under, its arch-rival was “30 seconds behind”, reckoned its boss, Lloyd Blankfein.

Faced with extinction, these firms tried to change the very rules under which they had thrived for so long. They lobbied successfully for a ban on short-selling. Morgan Stanley’s John Mack hypocritically branded the practice—which his firm had long financed as a prime broker—“immoral if not illegal”. For all the fear, Mr Mack seems to have been exhilarated by the experience of battling to save his firm.

The $700 billion figure for the Troubled Asset Relief Programme was plucked from the air, the roughest of guesstimates. Regulators would back a merger one minute, only to cool on it the next for reasons that baffled bankers. The level of government intervention was deeply distasteful to the Republican Mr Paulson. But, as Mr Bernanke tells him: “There are no atheists in foxholes and no ideologues in financial crises.”

Too Big To Fail rips along at such a pace that even the reader is hard-pressed to stop and ask the what ifs. While no one can be happy that the tale ends with taxpayers paying hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up failed banks and fallible bankers, there are few signposts to better outcomes.

The book has flaws. It sometimes gets carried away with detail. Do we need to know that AIG’s boss was standing in a hallway in boxer shorts when he received an important e-mail? Mr Ross Sorkin is too quick to redundantly self-serving recollections, such as the sympathy Mr Geithner feels for office workers packed into the Manhattan ferries whom he spots while jogging one morning. The verdict on Mr Fuld, Lehmann Brothers CEO that he was driven not by greed but by “an overpowering desire to preserve the firm he loved”, seems too gentle. 

One of the interesting aspects of the book is the degree to which government officials pushed to “marry” commercial banks and investment banks during the height of the crisis in September. The story closes on the chilling day last October when Paulson ,Treasury Secretary of Bush Adminstration seated the leaders of nine banks -- including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Vikram Pandit of Citigroup Inc. and Richard Kovacevich of Wells Fargo & Co. -- around a 24-foot-long mahogany table and effectively ordered them to take billions of dollars in government cash injections in exchange for preferred shares with a view to restore market confidence by expansion of   private lending and increase liquidity within the banking & financial system .

 It seems like every possible permutation was considered, to the point where Mr. Geithner was referred to mockingly as “E Harmony” in a reference to the online dating site.  At the same time, many in government blame the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited the union of commercial and investment banks, for precipitating the crisis.

While the idea of giving investment banks access to stable deposits through commercial banks had a great deal of merit during the crisis, such mergers also created ever larger institutions, many of which are considered “too big to fail”.  It seems that society must decide which is the lesser of two evils:  Government regulations that seek to keep financial institutions small such that none can become “too big to fail” or heavy handed regulations that properly govern mammoth institutions that are obviously “Too  Big to Fail”.

Clash of the Titans : Apple Ipad3 Vs Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

The  Apple Ipad3  isn’t  officially  released  yet  but  markets  are  rife  with   leaked Tech specifications  of  it  touted  as  the  most  anticipated  Apple  product this  year.But ,  its  archrival  Samsung has a   reliable  & competitive product Galaxy Tab 10.1 which  might  give a tough  fight  to  Apple  despite  its  attempt to  ban  it  in  most  of  the  world – succeeded in only Germany now.

Lets closely compare the product specifications & features of these gadgets to check their competitiveness it would stand in the markets .

Processor –

 Apple will have  iPad 3 with a quad-core A6 chip, which will likely be clocked to around 1GHz if the rumours are to be believed ,

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 from Samsung runs on the dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 chip with nVidia’s Tegra 2 T20 chipset, which also offers a ULP GeForce GPU.


Winner – Apple iPad 3

Display

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 features a very impressive 10.1-inch PLS TFT display with a resolution of 800x1280 pixels and offers up a pixel density of 149ppi.

The display is responsive, offers decent viewing angles and can deal with the odd scratches with a layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass.

Apple’s iPad 3 is rumoured to feature a 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS TFT with a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels(Improved version of Retina Display ), twice that of the iPad 2 & might add a scratch proof coating on this gadget.

Winner – Apple iPad 3

 
Form Factor

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 - 256.7x175.3x8.6 mm, 560g
Apple iPad 3 - ?

Samsung’s tablet is a sleek device which is very comfortable to use, even for extended periods.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is very thin at just 8.6mm.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is crafted mainly of plastics, giving it a light feel and the device’s aesthetic is minimalist and symmetrical.

While Apple's iPad 3 is rumoured to be  bit thicker than the 8.6mm of its predecessor, this is apparently to allow for a larger battery.

Winner – Draw

Software

 
The iPad 3 will come with the latest iOS 5, which will host the multi-touch gesture technology. However, analyst and tech enthusiasts predict that Apple would introduce OS X Lion for the tablet, since it will be powered by a quad-core processor.
This will also include multitasking features, such as notifications, task-finishing, app-switching, location and background sound.

The device will benefit from the 400,00+ apps on offer in the Apple App Store and will enjoy support for plenty of tablet-specific apps too, something which Google’s Android platform is struggling to keep up with.

iOS isn’t as open as Google’s OS though, and you can expect to be forced to use iTunes to manage your media, which is a big downside to some users, not least of which those that use Linux based platforms on their home systems.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs on version 3.0 of Google’s Android OS, otherwise known as Honeycomb, and the firm foundation found on previous iterations of the platform are present, along with an overhauled user interface and improved, tablet friendly core applications

There are plenty of third-party apps available for Android, many of which are excellent and 100% free! The downside, as we mentioned, is that Android powered tablets lack specific applications, though Google are doing what they can to rectify this.

Unlike iOS Android can be customised, and Samsung’s TouchWiz 4.0 overlay adds a nice visual touch to the platform. The UI also adds social networking integration and support for other functionality, such as gaming and reading, that is also present in Apple’s software.

Winner – Apple iPad 3

Camera

Apple Ipad 3 may have  much improved camera over its predecessor with its 8 megapixel camera

Expect an LED flash, autofocus, geo-tagging and 1080P video capture, as well as an upgraded secondary snapper for high definition FaceTime use.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 doesn’t offer much in the way of photographic prowess, with a fairly measly 3.15-megapixel primary camera (with LED flash, autofocus, geo-tagging and 720P video capture) which, in ideal light, takes a decent picture, but struggles with noise and shutter lag.

The device’s secondary 2-megapixel camera is much more pleasing though, and the device is able to offer high quality video calling as a result.

Winner – Apple iPad 3

Apple’s iPad 3, with its speculated/leaked specs, has trashed  Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in my comparison  and may get a formidable advantage if neo-technology like NFC(Near Field Communication) , Cloud Computing ,3D interfaces and improved version of  Siri gets embedded in its revolutionary product design & features.

Expect Samsung to release a competively priced viable Tablet within  few weeks to challenge Apple  Ipad3 tablets dominance in market reported to release by April this year.But ,this perpetual Tech & Marketing  blitz  to woo Consumers will weigh heavily on the innovation & sustainability of products  released by these Technology Giants in times to come.