Reagle's Reading List (blogroll)

The latest data from market research firm comScore shows Apple holding on to a quarter of the US smartphone market, which grew roughly 18 percent over the last six months. That makes the iPhone the number two smartphone in the US, though it still lags well behind number one RIM. Android-based devices are still growing rapidly in popularity.

Over the last few months, comScore data shows RIM and Apple holding pretty much steady, with RIM at 43 percent and Apple at 25.1 percent. Unsurprisingly, Palm (which includes webOS and PalmOS) devices and Microsoft-powered devices continued to decline. Android-based devices, however, continued to rise sharply, enough to eclipse Palm to take fourth place in the US market.

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Intel's announcement last week that the company is planning two versions of its Atom processor specifically for the NAS market was easy to overlook. After all, there are a few Atom-based NAS options on the market already, and the new single-core D410 and dual-core D510 aren't really different from their netbook counterparts in anything other than their target platform. But the roster of vendors that has already signed on to produce Atom-based NAS devices—QNAP, Synology, and LaCie, among others—gives a glimpse at the fact that the home/SOHO NAS market is one place where Intel is definitely poised to take significant marketshare from ARM, and in the near-term. This trend toward x86-based NAS will be great for consumers, because it will hasten NAS's integration into the home network.

First, though, a quick note about the Intel hardware. The main thing that makes the new platform specialized for NAS is the amount of I/O hardware on the southbridge: six PCIe lanes, 12 USB 2.0 ports, a port multiplier function, and eSATA ports. This would be overkill for a netbook (compare Pine Trail's two PCIe lanes), but for a NAS that may host a number of peripherals, it's perfect.

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One complaint commonly leveled against the iPhone is that it can't run multiple apps at the same time. However, sources for AppleInsider say that Apple is finally planning to incorporate a task manager that will integrate with the established iPhone user interface in the next major revision of iPhone OS, expected to be available this summer.

Like Mac OS X on which it is based, iPhone OS is fully capable of running multiple processes at once. In fact, it does run multiple processes—iPod, Mail, voicemail and phone processes continually run in the background. What it doesn't do is run multiple third-party apps at the same time. Want to listen to Pandora while answering e-mails? Run a GPS tracking app while checking your tweets? Sorry, no can do.

Apple has given a number of reasons for enforcing this limitation. The company claims that multiple apps running simultaneously will run down the battery faster, or could lead to more out-of-memory errors as apps contend for resources of the iPhone. Also, since non-Apple apps can't run in the background, there's virtually zero chance that malware could run without a user noticing. Finally, limiting the iPhone to one app at a time keeps things simple enough for even the most tech-adverse users to understand how it works.

However, the latest rumor says that Apple has a "full-on solution" to the problem coming in iPhone OS 4.0. No specifics were revealed, so there are no details about how Apple has implemented managing multiple running apps. Remember, it took three major versions of iPhone OS before there was system-wide cut-copy-paste functionality, and the interface ended up working extremely well. We expect Apple has likewise put extensive work into making running multiple apps as straightforward as possible while still offering reasonable levels of stability, battery life, security, and ease of use.

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Canonical is burying Ubuntu's traditional brown theme and is adopting a new visual style for version 10.04, which is scheduled for release in April. The new theme was revealed last week as part of Canonical's broader effort to overhaul Ubuntu's branding and visual identity.

The new theme includes a richer color palette and a number of stylistic enhancements. The change that has generated the most controversy is the placement of the window management buttons in the left-hand side of the titlebar. In response to some of the concerns that have been raised by users, Canonical designer Ivanka Majic has written a blog entry that describes the reasons behind the change. Majic is also seeking additional feedback from the Ubuntu community.

The designers looked closely at the placement and configuration of the window management buttons on other platforms and considered a number of factors, such as the use cases for maximization, the potential advantages of moving the window management buttons into closer proximity with the menu elements, and the challenges of diverging from the configuration that is currently familiar to users.

When I first started testing the theme, I didn't really have an opinion because I generally don't use the titlebar for window management. I have keyboard shortcuts configured for all the standard window management operations. To move the window, I typically use alt+click dragging, because it lets me click anywhere inside of the window. That's more efficient than having to aim for the titlebar, which is a much smaller target. For similar reasons, I configured Compiz to let me close a window by using alt+right-click anywhere inside the window's boundaries. (When I use other operating systems that don't have alt+click dragging, I'm always amazed by how profoundly the absence of that feature detrimentally impacts my productivity.)

Although I rarely ever touch the titlebar, the new layout consistently confuses me on the rare occasions when I attempt to do so. The resulting disorientation has started to bother me and I'm beginning to sympathize a bit with the critics. It's possible, however, that users who rely more heavily on the titlebar for window management will adapt more quickly.

Our readers have already broadly discussed their preferred titlebar button positioning in the threads of our previous articles about the new theme. Unfortunately, I think that the hyper-focus on the minutiae of widget placement has detracted from the opportunity to take a look at the bigger picture.

I've become really curious about what strategies other users have devised to manage windows. Are there ways that window manager can be modified to accommodate more productive interaction? Do you use features like minimize and maximize? If you favor alternate window management paradigms like tiling, what do you view as its principal advantages? Do conventional window management concepts translate well to emerging form factors like touchscreen devices and netbooks?

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Green Day: Rock Band has a release date, so you can finally exhale. The game is coming to the PlayStation, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii on June 8, for $59.99 on the two high-definition systems and $49.99 on the Nintendo Wii.

The game features 47 Green Day songs, vocal harmonizing for multiple singers, and you'll have the ability to export every song to Rock Band or Rock Band 2 for an additional $10. Joystiq is reporting that if you preorder the game from GameStop, you'll be able to export the songs to your hard drive for free. A $69.99 special edition version of the game will include the ability to export the songs as well, and will include previously released Green Day tracks from the Rock Band Store.

The story mode of the game will take you through Green Day's career, with images to unlock and videos to watch. For the hardcore Green Day fan this should be a day-one purchase. For everyone else? We're just going to have to take a look at how much Green Day we need in our rhythm games.

Harmonix has also announced Rock Band 3 for release this year, but has yet to provide any details.

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