Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 04 Apr 2013 03:22

Embrace Extend ...

Google going its own way, forking WebKit rendering engine

Claims that new "Blink" engine will allow faster innovation for all WebKit users.

by Peter Bright
Apr 3, 2013 9:00 pm UTC

Google announced today that it is forking the WebKit rendering engine on which its Chrome browser is based. The company is naming its new engine "Blink."

The WebKit project was started by Apple in 2001, itself a fork of a rendering engine called KHTML. The project includes a core rendering engine for handling HTML and CSS (WebCore), a JavaScript engine (JavaScriptCore), and a high-level API for embedding it into browsers (WebKit).

Though known widely as "WebKit," Google Chrome has used only WebCore since its launch in late 2008. Apple's Safari originally used the WebKit wrapper and now uses its successor, WebKit2. Many other browsers use varying amounts of the WebKit project, including the Symbian S60 browser, the BlackBerry browser, the webOS browser, and the Android browser.

Until now, Google has rigorously tracked the WebKit project, both integrating patches made by other WebKit developers and pushing its own changes made during the course of Chrome's development back upstream.

Linus Upson, vice president of Engineering at Google, and Alex Komoroske, product manager on the Open Web Platform team, told us that the costs of sharing code now outweighed the advantages. There is considerable complexity in WebCore that is there to support WebKit2 features that Google does not want or use.

For example, WebKit2 has its own multiprocess model for creating individual processes for each browser tab. For Chrome, Google developed its own multiprocess system. Similarly, WebKit2 has a sandboxing model to isolate each process. Google has a separate system for Chrome.

By forking WebCore to create Blink, Google claims that all WebKit users will be able to innovate more quickly. Google can remove infrastructure that exists only to support WebKit2's features, with the company claiming that in one fell swoop it can discard 7,000 files and 4.5 million of lines of code that exist only to support WebKit2's architecture. In turn, this removes the ongoing cost of supporting this infrastructure.

Conversely, the WebKit project no longer needs to worry about making changes that might break WebCore for the way Chrome uses it.

Google also argues that the decision will introduce greater diversity into the browser ecosystem and might mitigate concerns that the mobile Web in particular was becoming a WebKit monoculture. Although WebKit is not a monolithic entity—different browsers based on WebKit use different options and have different behavior—the different variants are more or less convergent.

With Blink, Google will have greater freedom to diverge and go its own way, concentrating on the features it believes are most important.

For Web users and Web developers, there won't be any immediate differences. As of right now, Blink is essentially identical to WebCore, and the first pieces of work that Google does will be to clean the architecture up to remove extraneous pieces that it doesn't need. The first Canary builds will be built tonight or tomorrow, and these will trickle into developer, beta, and eventually stable releases at six-week intervals.

Longer term, we can expect to see Blink evolve in a different direction from WebKit. Upson and Komoroske told us that there were all manner of ideas that may or may not pan out that Google would like to try. The company says that forking WebKit will give it the flexibility to do so.

Update: Google has now published an FAQ about the project. Of particular interest to Web developers: there won't be any -blink or -chrome CSS prefixes; like Mozilla, all new experimental features will require developers to enable them in the browser's options page. And Opera has announced that it will be tracking and contributing to Blink. Back when it announced that it was switching to WebKit, the company said that it was tracking Chromium, so this makes sense.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Apr 2013 03:49

^^^WebKit is not a single implementation of a browser engine such as Gecko. Basically one uses an Apple implementation of WebKit, a Google implementation of WebKit or a Nokia implementation of WebKit. And none of them are cross compatible. So Google forking it is not that big a deal. Google contributes to open source projects and aligns with them when it makes business sense for them, not for charitable philanthropic do-no-evil purposes. So if it doesn't make business sense, they won't do it.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Apr 2013 05:56

Report: Google to launch faster, cheaper Nexus 7 in July

In an effort to compete with the likes of Amazon and Apple directly on price, Google’s “zero-margin” approach could see the tablet launch at a ridiculously cheap $149.

At this price the N7 is still $49 too expensive.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Apr 2013 06:14

$149.- is fine. They are gonna go with QCOM this time apparently. Nvidia better get its act together fast - it has made massive capital investments in both Android and Windows ecosystems and it is getting outmaneuvered in Android by QCOM and in Windows by Intel.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 04 Apr 2013 06:30

what does this (from the article posted by Mort) Google hopes to ship 8 million units of the ASUS-made slate this year. mean? What is an "ASUS-made slate"? The price point looks very tempting only drawback being expandability.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Apr 2013 06:32

Raja Bose wrote:$149.- is fine. They are gonna go with QCOM this time apparently. Nvidia better get its act together fast - it has made massive capital investments in both Android and Windows ecosystems and it is getting outmaneuvered in Android by QCOM and in Windows by Intel.

Should they not be ok since the latest Tegra along with Exynos (Sammy), Ax (AAPL), Snapdragon (QCOM) and OMAP (TI) use the ARM Cortex A15 architecture? I thought the GPU performance was best with the Tegra. It would be good to see some actual comparisons of these SoCs on similar hardware.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Apr 2013 06:40

matrimc wrote:what does this (from the article posted by Mort) Google hopes to ship 8 million units of the ASUS-made slate this year. mean? What is an "ASUS-made slate"? The price point looks very tempting only drawback being expandability.

N7 is made by ASUS.

Mort Walker wrote:
Raja Bose wrote:$149.- is fine. They are gonna go with QCOM this time apparently. Nvidia better get its act together fast - it has made massive capital investments in both Android and Windows ecosystems and it is getting outmaneuvered in Android by QCOM and in Windows by Intel.
Should they not be ok since the latest Tegra along with Exynos (Sammy), Ax (AAPL), Snapdragon (QCOM) and OMAP (TI) use the ARM Cortex A15 architecture? I thought the GPU performance was best with the Tegra. It would be good to see some actual comparisons of these SoCs on similar hardware.

TI is getting out of the OMAP game. Sammy and Fruit are their own customers which leaves QCOM and NVDA. Tegra GPU performance is great - in fact as mentioned on this dhaaga many moons ago, later Tegra SoCs will have desktop class GPU performance. But NVDA suffers from poor pricing, larger footprint and idiotic bizdev.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Apr 2013 06:48

Several rendering engines are bad because ... ? <insert meaningless conspiracy theory here>

I was surprised that some hack didn't yet mix in self driving cars and Google glass into the webkit fork. In any case chromium is still opensource and opera is moving to blink too from WebKit. On top of that, major WebKit based browsers use their own JavaScript engines and on top of that fruitco uses the threading model of webkit2. So there is no single "WebKit". Everyone uses their bits and pieces anyway.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 04 Apr 2013 06:51

Sammy uses QCOM, mostly in the US products, because of better LTE performance in terms of faster data rates and lower current drain.

What is the package size of the latest Tegra 4? Is it significantly larger? The bizdev is problematic, but they are based out of Santa Clara and should know the bizdev being out of SillyCon Valley.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 04 Apr 2013 07:25

Mort Walker wrote:Sammy uses QCOM, mostly in the US products, because of better LTE performance in terms of faster data rates and lower current drain.

Interesting thing is that the Exynos SoC's seem to always outperform the Snapdragon ones in Sammy's Galaxy line in all benchmarks for the same handset. If Sammy manages to crack the LTE issues, they will have no use for QComm any more. That might be a huge loss for QComm considering the number of Galaxy S* phones Sammy sells around the world.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 04 Apr 2013 08:12

Don't watch pr0n on blackberry

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry ... 10-790056/

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 04 Apr 2013 08:43

Mort Walker wrote:Sammy uses QCOM, mostly in the US products, because of better LTE performance in terms of faster data rates and lower current drain.

What is the package size of the latest Tegra 4? Is it significantly larger? The bizdev is problematic, but they are based out of Santa Clara and should know the bizdev being out of SillyCon Valley.

Package footprint of any of the Tegras is way too big - you don't even need measurements, just eyeball mk1 with a Snapdragon or OMAP. I personally love the Tegra for ease of writing SW for it plus Nvidia's Tegra team is pretty sw-centric for a SoC vendor. Unfortunately the large footprint made me reject them on more than one occasion. One area which is rapidly growing for Tegra is automotive so perhaps that might save part of their bacon given all car manufacturers now want chi-chi graphics not just in their IVI but also in their instrument cluster.

---

Webkit is pretty fragmented - there is no single unified Webkit implementation and HTML5 compliance is all over the place. Opera is getting quite cozy with Chacha in recent months - some good deals/funding must have changed hands. They have always been eclipsed time and again by more glamorous competitors despite having a solid browser with low resource requirements. Even back in the days when my PC couldn't run Netscape Navigator (for use thru Shellsock), Opera would work fine. That being said, the days of browser as a app one needs to specially launch/goto are slowly coming to an end.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 05 Apr 2013 00:04

Facebook Home revamps any Android phone to make it about 'people, not apps'

Anujan sir got this one right.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 01:16

Does it mean I now have the undeniable upper hand in technology strat-e-jee?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 01:50

^^^Joo mean no xerox khan takniki?

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 05 Apr 2013 01:53

Anujan wrote:Several rendering engines are bad because ... ? <insert meaningless conspiracy theory here>

I was surprised that some hack didn't yet mix in self driving cars and Google glass into the webkit fork. In any case chromium is still opensource and opera is moving to blink too from WebKit. On top of that, major WebKit based browsers use their own JavaScript engines and on top of that fruitco uses the threading model of webkit2. So there is no single "WebKit". Everyone uses their bits and pieces anyway.

Exactly, that is because of the way things are done with Webkit.. everyone from RIM to Qt to Apple to Google to Opera could contribute and make use of it. But with Blink, some fear that things will happen Android way where Google(and Opera) pretty much works in secret and dumps a complete version once in a while.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 05 Apr 2013 01:54

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 05 Apr 2013 01:59

Anujan wrote:Does it mean I now have the undeniable upper hand in technology strat-e-jee?

Establish a track record and you can be the resident strat-e-jee egspert

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 02:13

So Karbonn is using WP8 UI on top of Android?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 03:42

hanumadu wrote:
Anujan wrote:Does it mean I now have the undeniable upper hand in technology strat-e-jee?
Establish a track record and you can be the resident strat-e-jee egspert

I was referring to this. You dont need a track record for it. https://sites.google.com/site/brfdictio ... y-strategy

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 05 Apr 2013 06:35

So, is IPS LEDs any better than other types? OLED etc? I am getting phase lag on the latest LED techs.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 07:09

anmol wrote:
Anujan wrote:Several rendering engines are bad because ... ? <insert meaningless conspiracy theory here>

I was surprised that some hack didn't yet mix in self driving cars and Google glass into the webkit fork. In any case chromium is still opensource and opera is moving to blink too from WebKit. On top of that, major WebKit based browsers use their own JavaScript engines and on top of that fruitco uses the threading model of webkit2. So there is no single "WebKit". Everyone uses their bits and pieces anyway.
Exactly, that is because of the way things are done with Webkit.. everyone from RIM to Qt to Apple to Google to Opera could contribute and make use of it. But with Blink, some fear that things will happen Android way where Google(and Opera) pretty much works in secret and dumps a complete version once in a while.

You make no sense! Who are those "some" who fear? Any news articles? Links? And why is dumping a complete version (even if it happens) a bad thing? As opposed to what? M$ not releasing anything at sources all? How many projects now use chacha's fork of Webkit? (Hint: 2. Chacha and opera). Is a browser same thing as a OS, which requires a hardware partner to make hardware and then compete with other hardware folks? Do users really care what rendering engine their browser uses? How many widely used browsers are there anyway? Hint 5: M$ = closed rendering engine. Safari = Webkit2. Mozilla/Firefox = Gecko. Opera/Chrome = Blink (used to be webkit). People who want a rendering engine now have 3 to choose from Gecko, webkit2 and Blink. Why is hitching your wagon to Chacha any less bad/more bad than hitching it on to Mozilla or FruitCo? Either someone like RIM makes their own rendering engine or they have a pick of which big project they want to GUBO to.

This conspiracy theory is not going to catch on.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 07:12

More I think about it. more I feel that takla should have done a launcher like facekitab. With his own app store, content, books ityadi. They could have even had a subsidy deal with hardware partners and sold hardware pre-installed with takla software with discount in Amzn store. Maybe prime free videos/prime free book rental would work only on app built into the launcher or something like that.

The problem about forking Android is that it feels nice to show a finger at chacha, but later becomes a pain in mush to track the project. I used a kindle phyrr, it seems more janky than Nexus 7 or 10 (presumably because improvements in Jellybean wasnt back-ported). On top of that apps like twitter/facekitab etc feels "non-native". They dont follow the full screen content-in-the-center philosophy of amzn, but follow the android design guidelines.

Facekitab has done the right thing in making a launcher rather than a phone or the OS. One should admire facekitab folks for realizing their strengths and weaknesses and making sensible decisions.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 07:20

SaiK wrote:So, is IPS LEDs any better than other types? OLED etc? I am getting phase lag on the latest LED techs.

Try the GB IPS used in Lumia 920.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 07:31

Anujan wrote:More I think about it. more I feel that takla should have done a launcher like facekitab. With his own app store, content, books ityadi. They could have even had a subsidy deal with hardware partners and sold hardware pre-installed with takla software with discount in Amzn store. Maybe prime free videos/prime free book rental would work only on app built into the launcher or something like that.

The problem about forking Android is that it feels nice to show a finger at chacha, but later becomes a pain in mush to track the project. I used a kindle phyrr, it seems more janky than Nexus 7 or 10 (presumably because improvements in Jellybean wasnt back-ported). On top of that apps like twitter/facekitab etc feels "non-native". They dont follow the full screen content-in-the-center philosophy of amzn, but follow the android design guidelines.

Facekitab has done the right thing in making a launcher rather than a phone or the OS. One should admire facekitab folks for realizing their strengths and weaknesses and making sensible decisions.

Takla is more ambitious and brazen than FB in this context plus he seems to be in a greater hurry. His is a "Take no prisoners" approach whereas in case of FB it is a "walk softly but decisively" approach. FB's mobile offerings and assets are much less diversified than Takla at the moment so it doesn't make sense for FB to jump into the devices game but for Takla it does. Their 1st Kindle Fire was horrible, but they have been improving quite well at every iteration, much like Sammy. With enough volume Takla might stop tracking Android main branch and just make it their own custom OS - basically the big advantage Android currently provides for Takla is the wide availability of ODM support. Apps will follow Takla's guidelines if enough volume is there. Right now Android tablets as a whole have dismal volume compared to iPad/iPad Mini so developers will not be too keen to make tweaks to just target one fraction (even if dominant) of that volume.

I like the FB strat-e-jee better as it shows more finesse whereas Takla is just blunt. But when it comes to world domination I would put my money on Takla and not FB. Chacha was in Takla mode when it was younger.

Opportunity, meet problem: Facebook Home's uneasy relationship with Google

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 07:47

I mean the biggest place to innovate on a phunwa is the UX and apps. Why fork the kernel? Imagine that takla or whoever truly produced a UX on top of Android that is miles better than the stock UX (I am not talking about the barf worthy "skins" OEMs dish out). People would actually go and download them. Imagine that it is now tied with Takla content/services etc. I think that in the long run it is a bigger win. They could have used their strengths (cloud services, content) and instead of hiring kernel developers, hired UX people. Anyway.

BTW I am not so sure about Android tablets being far behind. 7 inchers are overtaking bigger tablets in shipments even for fruitco. And android is not far behind in 7 inchers. Lets wait for some numbers.

Well, takla will do world domination, they actually sell physical things and have infrastructure for selling virtual things. With facekitab though, if they execute well, they can become the internet.

hanumadu · Post by **hanumadu** » 05 Apr 2013 08:01

Anujan wrote: I was referring to this. You dont need a track record for it. https://sites.google.com/site/brfdictio ... y-strategy

By that definition, you are already a strategy egspert

.

Gagan · Post by **Gagan** » 05 Apr 2013 08:27

Who's Takla?

Sriman · Post by **Sriman** » 05 Apr 2013 08:35

Gagan wrote:Who's Takla?

Jeff Bezos.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Apr 2013 09:24

took me a long time to realize that. I used to think it was ballmer...as the more anger management and bigger takla.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Apr 2013 09:42

comment in gizmodo:

Zuckerberg is nuts. He's making a pretty delusional assumption that the people who own any of these four handsets (plus the HTC First) are so Facebook addicted that they feel the need to run a Facebook Launcher to be entirely immersed in Facebook with the inability to see or do anything but Facebook. Who do you know who only chats with people that have Facebook and don't chat with anyone on any other program. Who uses Facebook as their only e-mail address or even their primary e-mail address? Who checks their Facebook timeline often enough to feel the need to have the Facebook Timeline be the UI of their phone? It would've been better to clean up and improve existing Facebook mobile apps rather than do this ONLY for Android and only have it work with a total of 5 phones. Who's going to jump to AT&T to get the HTC First? Bad idea Zuckerberg. Fail.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 11:14

Singha wrote:took me a long time to realize that. I used to think it was ballmer...as the more anger management and bigger takla.

Ballmer is Uncle Fester.

Anujan wrote:I mean the biggest place to innovate on a phunwa is the UX and apps. Why fork the kernel? Imagine that takla or whoever truly produced a UX on top of Android that is miles better than the stock UX (I am not talking about the barf worthy "skins" OEMs dish out). People would actually go and download them. Imagine that it is now tied with Takla content/services etc. I think that in the long run it is a bigger win. They could have used their strengths (cloud services, content) and instead of hiring kernel developers, hired UX people.

I think the reason is that historically nobody has gone vertical without owning the entire stack. For companies like Takla (unlike smaller outfits like HTC), the risk of dependency on a rival is much higher than having to pay a few dozen engineers 200k to do dog's work. This is the same risk which led Chacha to invest in operating systems not just in mobile but also in desktop/laptop. It is about owning the last mile to the user - just building a UI on top of Android would not provide Takla that security.

Right now despite all the spotlight on Mickey vs Chacha rivalry, the real rivalry is actually Takla vs Chacha. Mickey and Chacha are essentially in different businesses, Takla and Chacha are not. And we can now see concentrated effort from Chacha in moving into Takla's turf such as the recent delivery box business.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 11:16

There is a delivery box business?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Apr 2013 11:19

some kind of same-day delivery in bay area per reports...merely a scratch on amazon's thick hide though...time will tell if that scratch contains a potent virus.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 11:28

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/28/41563 ... -francisco

The BufferBox acquisition: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles- ... on-2012-12

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 11:33

Mahdi from beyond the grave: Specifications for Fruitco's new building

http://www.sfgate.com/technology/busine ... 409878.php

Here's a sample of Jobs' specifications:

* Burrows says, "Jobs wanted no seam, gap, or paintbrush stroke showing."

* He wanted everything "polished to a supernatural smoothness."
* Wood used inside the building is to come from a specific type of maple tree, and it can only be "heartwood," which is the wood from the center of the tree.

* The building will have six-square kilometers of bent glass, which will be bent at a factory in Germany, then shipped to California. The company doing the glass had to develop new machines for making it.

* Apple will pre-build bathrooms and cubicle banks then have them driven to the office and installed. This saves time and allows the construction to be more exact.

* Jobs didn't want concrete floors, he wanted "a stone-infused alternative such as terrazzo, buffed to a sheen normally reserved for museums and high-end residences," says Burrows.

* Jobs also wanted the seams where walls met to be 1/32 of an inch across, whereas the standard for construction is 1/8 of inch.

* He wanted the ceiling to be polished concrete instead of sound absorbing material.

* Apple also has a very specific plan for the concrete ceiling. It wants to pour ceiling molds on the ground, then lift it to the ceiling, an approach that is far more expensive.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 11:35

Well no wonder its over budget and delayed. It will probably get canned pronto if Fruit Co fortunes dip.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 05 Apr 2013 11:52

Why? They have like what 140 Billion $ in the bank? at 3.5% treasury interest rates, it is ~5 Billion $ in one year.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Apr 2013 12:03

seems to be surrounded by residential areas though. should make a good night time panoramic photo...in forefround , warmly lit guy and girl having a drink on balcony.....similar houses in midground and in the back this giant white HALO style ring glowing with a mysterious white light...periodically the red flickering lights of space ships that take people to orbiting mahdi battlestations and scientific ships at various bases in the galaxy.
and in the nearby expway the soundless passage of cars with huge amt of glass and very little metal....smooth, driven by anti gravity engines or atleast new fuel sipping honda eco-diesels driving electric motors of 300 kms/liter

I like that vision.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Apr 2013 12:09

Anujan wrote:Why? They have like what 140 Billion $ in the bank? at 3.5% treasury interest rates, it is ~5 Billion $ in one year.

I thought they reduced those holdings - the dividend was part of that. Stockholders will be baying for some of that hoarded cash.