Microsoft is certainly best known for its Windows family of operating systems, but the company’s research and development group has been steadily working on a non-Windows operating system written from scratch with an eye towards dependability and lack of dependencies on other technologies. Dubbed Singularity, Microsoft has released a research development kit for the OS which is free for academic, non-commercial use under Microsoft’s Research License (not an open source license).
Under development for several years, the idea behind Singularity is to take the heavy lifting out of isolating applications processes, data objects, and runtime environments to create more reliable systems and applications. Built using manages code, Singularity aims to guarantee the isolation and security of software processes and (in theory) offer a greater degree of reliability without dependencies on the various subsystems that underly a typical operating system like Windows. It can also creates these isolated processes with very little overhead cost to the operating system, unlike many of today’s solutions which rely on hardware constraints (like memory segmentation) to isolate processes from one another.
“Singularity is not the next Windows,” Microsoft research VP Rich Rashid said in a statement. “Think of it like a concept car. It is a prototype operating system designed from the ground up to test-drive a new paradigm for how operating systems and applications interact with one another.”
Right now, Singular consists of a working kernel developed as managed code using Microsoft’s C# programming language and a new derivative version called Sing#, using a compiler and runtime environment called Bartok.
Microsoft currently has no plans to offer a commercial version of Singularity, but concepts from Singularity may well migrate to other Microsoft technologies, including embedded systems or distributed computing architectures.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.