How smartphones and tablets are taking over

Two years from now, something remarkable will happen: there will be more smartphones in the world than PCs. Technology analysis firm Gartner predicts that by 2013, there will be 1.82 billion smartphones compared to 1.78 billion PCs - and that doesn't include tablets.
Apple sold 14.8 million iPads in 2010, and Forrester Research says that in the US, 82 million people will own tablets by 2015. Tablets and smartphones have become incredibly powerful in a very short space of time, with gigahertz-class dual-core processors, decent amounts of RAM and high definition displays appearing in pocket-friendly forms.
As the price of such small but powerful devices continues to fall and hardware firms continue to innovate, it's clear that mobile computing is going to be a very big deal for the foreseeable future.
Mobile devices have been with us for as long as the PC. The first laptop, the Osborne 1, went on sale in 1981. Psion's Organiser came out in 1984, Apple's Newton appeared in 1993, the PalmPilot turned up in 1995, and 1999's Palm VII could connect wirelessly to the internet.
But while the basic shapes of mobile devices haven't changed much over the years, what's inside them has been transformed. Even the humblest smartphones are packing gigahertz processors, touch screens and Wi-Fi radios, and their prices are plummeting. So where is the mobile market heading?
The mobile mindset
Building mobile devices requires a completely different mindset from desktop devices. With desktops, manufacturers can more or less build what they like - installing the latest, fastest multi-core processors and graphics cards, adding gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of storage doesn't have a detrimental effect on anything but the price tag.
With mobile devices, small changes can have a big effect: a bigger, brighter screen can make a smartphone too bulky, or dramatically reduce its battery life. While mobile processor speeds are increasing, the real challenges are in battery life and features. Slightly faster processors don't sell devices; doubling the display's pixel density, offering LTE connectivity or adding a better camera does.
With desktops, the biggest concern is power. With mobile devices, it's portability. Take a smartphone, for example: remove the battery and the screen and you've got a tiny amount of space - space that needs to include not just a processor, storage and RAM, but multiple radios (for 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), a SIM card slot, circuitry for a headphone socket, micro-USB and/or micro HDMI, GPS, accelerometers and anything else customers have come to expect.
In mobile devices, there simply isn't room for anything that isn't absolutely necessary - and that often means there's no room for Intel chips. With very few exceptions, the smartphones and tablets set to dominate 2011 aren't powered by Core processors or Atom ones; they're running Qualcomm's Snapdragon, Nvidia's Tegra 2 or Apple's A4.

Such processors aren't just processors - they're graphics cards and wireless radios too. The industry calls them SOCs - systems on a chip.
SOC it to 'em
A typical SOC contains almost everything you need to build a mobile device. The Snapdragon SOC in the forthcoming Asus Eee Pad Memo has dual 1.2GHz processor cores, 1080p HD video encoding and decoding, integrated GPS, integrated wireless (both Wi-Fi and mobile) and integrated audio. It also supports external displays of up to 1,280 x 800 resolution.
The SOC comes from Qualcomm, but the underlying architecture comes from elsewhere: the SOC is based on ARM's Cortex A8, which also underpins Apple's A4 SOC. Nvidia's Tegra 2 is based on the same firm's newer A9.
Where Intel's model is based on designing, fabricating and selling a range of processors in a kind of catalogue model - "here's what we've made. Which one would you like?" - the SOC model is different: ARM designs the technology and licenses it, and it's then up to the licensees to adapt the technology to suit their own requirements and find a suitable company to manufacture the resulting designs.
That model means that the same core technology can be used to create a range of different SOCs - Snapdragons, Tegras, A4s and so on - designed for very specific mobile applications and built in much smaller quantities than, say, an Intel Atom variant.
For example, to create its A4 SOC, Apple took ARM's Cortex A8 and worked with Samsung to improve its performance. The result, dubbed 'Hummingbird', is exclusive to Apple, and comes in multiple configurations - the version used in the iPad, iPod and Apple TV has 256MB of SDRAM, but the version in the iPhone 4 has 512MB.
No Intel inside?
ARM co-founder Hermann Hauser thinks the SOC model leaves precious little room for Intel. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed:
"Intel has the wrong business model... People in the mobile phone architecture don't buy microprocessors, so if you sell microprocessors, you have the wrong model. They license them... it's not Intel versus ARM, it's Intel versus every single semiconductor company in the world."
As former Nokia manager Horace Dediu wrote on asymco: "In the world of mobile computing, it's the device itself that isn't yet good enough and you can't back off from pushing all the components to conform to your device's purpose. For a device to be competitive, it has to be optimised with a proprietary, interdependent architecture... Intel's integrated business model is obsolete in a device world. No amount of polishing of the Atom will help."
Intel isn't taking such claims lying down. As head of Intel's PC client group Mooly Eden told us, "We're serious about this category. We're designing great low power in microprocessors. It will be much more meaningful in 2012, [and] another category we're dead serious about is smartphones."
Intel has two processor families: Sandy Bridge, the next iteration of the Core processor family, and Oak Trail, the latest Atom processors, and we'll see tablet PCs based on both technologies in 2011: for example, Acer will release twin Sandy Bridge-based tablets later this year.
It's clear, however, that Intel sees the mobile future as a case of business as usual: according to Eden, the tablet hype will die down. "I believe in the future, the hype will be over and it will be just another category complementing [the PC]," he says.
"At the moment, it's the new kid on the block." Microsoft, it seems, doesn't share Intel's confidence: in January, it announced that the next version of Windows would also be available for ARM-based processors.
The rise in apps

Mobile device applications, or apps, have replaced several standalone devices: an iPod Touch or Android mobile phone can be a perfectly good digital camera, satellite navigation system, video recorder, PDA or handheld games system. If it's possible to replicate an existing device in the form of an app, then sooner or later somebody will do it.

There are limits to what a mobile device can do - the small form factor of a mobile phone means its camera will never be as good as a full-frame digital SLR with a decent lens - but the combination of portability and good-enough technology means that for many people, a mobile phone is a perfectly acceptable replacement for a point-and-shoot camera.
So what's next? We're beginning to see mobile ticketing applications - many airlines now accept mobile phone boarding passes, while Tesco has an app that turns a phone into a Clubcard that you can scan at the till.
Near Field Communications (NFC) technology, as featured in forthcoming Nokia and Android phones could make such mobile applications even simpler. The short-range wireless technology could let your phone act like an Oyster card or a credit card, with a quick wave of the phone paying for your newspaper or train ticket.
In the longer term, NFC-enabled devices could become the keys to your house or to your car, or could act as identity cards or passports. The downside is security: it's bad enough losing your phone now, but imagine if it was also your front door key, your car's starter button, your Glastonbury ticket and your wallet.
Today's crop of smartphones often include remote wipe facilities so you can erase your phone should it go missing, but we'll need more robust forms of protection if our phones become even bigger parts of our lives.
Apple has some ideas: in a US patent application, the firm describes features including voice and facial recognition, retina or fingerprint scanning, and even DNA analysis to ensure only you can access your mobile device.
Enter the Atrix
Motorola has a question for us: with mobile processors exceeding 1GHz and smartphone specs looking increasingly like those of netbooks and small laptops, do we really need standalone computers any more?
Its ingenious alternative is the Atrix, a mobile phone that becomes a PC when you dock it. Simply plug your phone into the appallingly named Lapdock and the phone thinks it's a laptop, with a dedicated user interface replacing the phone's UI until you unplug it.
It's not a new idea - Palm's ill-fated Foleo was based on similar thinking, while 2008's Celio REDFLY turned Windows Mobile and BlackBerry phones into netbooks - but what's different about the Atrix is that smartphones are finally powerful enough to appeal to mainstream users.
Motorola isn't the only firm that thinks mobile devices could replace netbooks and notebooks. Asus's Eee Pad tablet computers come in a variety of form factors.

The Eee Pad Transformer is an Android tablet with a split personality: on its own it's a tablet, but if you slide it into the (optional) docking station, it's a netbook with a 10.1-inch display and double the battery life (16 hours compared to eight in tablet mode).
Another Asus tablet, the Eee Pad Slider, takes a different approach: instead of a separate docking station, it has a hidden keyboard that slides out and elevates the screen when you want to type.

Despite the hefty specifications - the Atrix and the Eee Pads boast dual-core Tegra 2 chips and between 512MB and 1GB of RAM - you're not going to use these machines for 3D modelling, music creation or scientific number crunching, but they're perfectly decent alternatives to netbooks and ultra-portable laptops.
Their main drawback is the lack of storage: the Atrix has 16GB of on-board storage plus room for another 32GB via a microSD card, and even the most expensive Eee Pads have 64GB. Even 64GB is tiny compared to a hard disk-based netbook, but the lack of onboard storage might not be a problem. Just store your stuff in the cloud instead.
Stream of consciousness
Most mobile devices are based around solid state storage, not traditional hard disks. Solid state storage is more compact, runs more quickly than and draws less power than a hard disk, but there are two big disadvantages: solid state storage doesn't come in the huge capacities we've come to expect from hard disks, and solid state storage is much, much more expensive.
64GB solid state drives start at around £80, rising to over £2,000 for 1TB drives. By comparison, 1TB SATA hard disks cost around £40.
The price of solid state storage will fall, and storage capacities will increase, but for the foreseeable future mobile devices will be stuck with much less storage than desktops.
Cloud computing offers a solution to that. By storing files on remote servers and streaming media on demand, you negate the need for lots of local storage. Inevitably, the real world is a bit more complicated.
UK phone providers have been quick to impose limits on bandwidth. T-Mobile has just cut its data allowances from 3GB per month on some Android devices to a less exciting 500MB, and 3G coverage remains patchy outside large urban areas. 3G's successor, Long Term Evolution (LTE), is still two to three years away and won't be as widespread as 3G for a while yet.
In the UK, cloud-based tools are fine for simple document editing and music streaming, but they use networks that weren't designed to cope with lots of people streaming large amounts of data. As a result, low bitrate tasks like document editing work well, but high-bitrate applications like streaming video are considerably less impressive.
That's not necessarily a problem, because few of us need to stream HD video on the move. High bitrate, cloud-based services are best left to the home and the office, where bandwidth is plentiful and congestion isn't such an issue. The more we expect our mobile devices to do, the more we'll need different ways of interacting with them. Slide-out keyboards are great when you're sitting down, but not much use when you're walking down the street.
Devices already boast a number of interfaces, with real and virtual keyboards being supplemented by more interesting ideas. Swype's scribbles can be quicker than typing, especially when you're on the move, and we're already used to multi-touch pinches and swipes to interact with photos, navigate web pages or move around maps.
Cameras are used as input devices - Google Goggles uses it to search, Word Lens uses optical character recognition to translate printed text, and augmented reality applications overlay data on camera footage with a little help from phones' GPS and compasses. We could even see Kinect-style gestural interfaces.
The hopelessly named d'strict, Samsung's user experience consultancy, showed off a gesture-sensing hologram last summer, with a 3D image reacting to users' movements. Apple has filed patents describing a holographic system combining an auto-stereoscopic display with facial tracking to deliver what seems to be a 3D hologram from a mobile device, and LG is preparing to unveil a production version of the glasses-free 3D mobile display it showed off at this year's CES.
People power
The most interesting thing about mobile devices isn't the technology, it's the people buying them. 80 per cent of the world's population isn't online yet, and as they come online a significant number of them will do so via mobile devices.
In January, Ericsson predicted that worldwide mobile internet users would reach 1 billion by the end of 2011, rising to 3.8 billion by 2015. Smartphone prices are plummeting, replacing the basic devices available on the cheapest contracts, and operators are building faster, smarter mobile networks.
In the UK, 75 per cent of the phones Carphone Warehouse sells are smartphones; as prices drop, that proportion will increase. Bill Gates once dreamed of a computer in every home; soon, there will be a connected computer in the pocket of every person on the planet. If you thought the PC revolution was impressive, you ain't seen nothing yet.

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Tough times for PCs as sales drop

Sales figures from two research groups show that PC sales have dropped in the first quarter of the year, despite optimistic predictions that they would grow.
According to Gartner, global PC shipments fell by 1.1 per cent in the first three months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.
Meanwhile, IDC calculates a 3.2 per cent dip in worldwide sales – either way, it's not looking too good for the personal computer.
Pesky tablets
Both analysts look to the tablet as a cause for weak sales, with Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, saying, "Low prices for consumer PCs, which had long stimulated growth, no longer attracted buyers. Instead, consumers turned their attention to media tablets and other consumer electronics.
"With the launch of the iPad 2 in February, more consumers either switched to buying an alternative device, or simply held back from buying PCs."
Ahh, the iPad. It never takes long to get back to Apple's illustrious slate and the launch of the iPad 2 in March at a surprisingly affordable price will no doubt add fuel to the fire once Q2's figures are established.
IDC was less convinced about the effects of tablets, with a spokesperson saying, "While it's tempting to blame the decline completely on the growth of media tablets, we believe other factors, including extended PC lifetimes and the lack of compelling new PC experiences, played equally significant roles."
The biggest PC loser in Q1 this year was Acer, which IDC calculated saw a 16 per cent decline in shipments of PCs, notebooks and laptops.

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Commodore 64 rises from the ashes as C64x

Commodore has announced that it is almost finished working on a Windows PC to be housed in the casing of the original Commodore 64.
Computer geeks and hipsters alike are likely to be seduced by the vintage brown box with its '80s styling, but that's not all the new Commodore is packing.
Housed inside the keyboard, there's also a 1.8Ghz dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, Nvidia graphics chip, up to 1TB hard drive, 2 or 4GB RAM and an optional Blu-ray player.

Retro
Commodore isn't the only computing brand getting in on the current appetite for anything vaguely vintage; ZX Spectrum games are currently being re-released on iOS as well.
You can even use the new PC to play 8-bit games by booting up the integrated C64 emulator. Let the reminiscing begin!
The revamped C64 will hit the shops later this year, complete with revamped name: C64x.
Pre-orders have opened now, and pricing starts at around £364 ($595), with shipping set to begin in May and June.

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Llano APU chips are shipping, AMD announces

AMD has announced that it is now shipping production units of its quad-core "Llano" APU chips - promising that it brings the power of discrete graphics alongside a powerful processor, with the first products due by June.
The Llano APUs represent AMD's latest attempts to bring a powerful GPU and CPU together in a single offering - saving on power without sacrificing performance.
Llano toting products are expected to appear in the second quarter, with AMD's Phil Hughes explaining the process.
Definition
"When we say we are shipping production units of any part for the first time, the next question I inevitably get asked is how does AMD define "production"? he blogged.
"Fortunately, much like the title of this blog, the answer is simple. When we talk about production here at AMD, it refers to the units that will ultimately be in the systems that our OEM partners will ship to retailers or end-customers.
"Now of course, I can't speak for exactly when each of our OEM partners will ship systems, that's a question for them, but as our Chief Financial Officer and Interim CEO Thomas Seifert mentioned on his Webcast, "Customers are very excited about Llano coming to market and we will look forward to seeing our "Llano"-based systems in the market this quarter — the second quarter."
We can expect more talk from AMD about exactly what level of performance Llano chips will bring at launch, so watch this space.

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Review: Rega P7 (RB700 tonearm)

In so many respects the P7 turntable is a classic Rega, but it actually shares very few components with the famous old Planar models.
It has an AC motor mounted directly behind the bearing, but it's a low-voltage motor powered from an external generator, which also allows electronic speed switching. It has a short belt drive to the sub-platter, but there is actually a pair of round-section belts and the sub-platter is metal.
There's a hard, rigid platter with a felt mat, but instead of the original glass this one is made of ceramic, complete with Michell-style underslung weights around the periphery.
We have mixed feelings about this platter recipe: sure, it's dimensionally stable second to none, but the hardness is not relevant when there's a felt mat in the way.
The chassis is still particle board, with a metal trim, which serves both visual and functional purposes, helping to damp and disperse resonances in the chassis.
The arm on the P7 is the RB700. Here the inheritance from the classic RB300 is even clearer and many of the parts are identical or, at least, identical in measurements. There are various changes, though perhaps most significantly in the method of mounting: this arm mounts via three screws through holes in the stainless steel base plate, rather than the single large-diameter nut of the older models.

The arm tube is given a special coating. There's a third hole in the headshell for cartridges that take a third bolt (including Rega's, of course). In common with the RB300, the counterweight is made of tungsten and is intended to be adjusted for perfect balance, downforce then being applied by a calibrated spring.
Most arms rely on moving the counterweight to set downforce, but a spring has the advantage of slightly increasing downforce as the arm rides up over a warp, making for more secure tracking of warped discs.
Sound quality
One of the occasionally amusing results of blind listening is that products, apparently from diametrically opposed schools of thought, emerge as sounding quite similar and few would have expected a Rega to receive many similar comments to the Pro-Ject Xperience.
That's what happened, though, with one listener even pointing out the similarity directly. It was felt in general that the P7 had the edge in control and resolution and also integrated the bass better with the mid and treble, but its imaging and general presentation were thought quite a lot like those of the Pro-Ject.
In keeping with the traditions of the brand, a good rocking performance is invariably on offer with any disc of decent merit. In fact it's interesting how Rega has managed to keep that aspect intact from its earliest models, perhaps very slightly lessening the raw impact and at the same time adding more insight and better tonal balance.
Effectively, if you always enjoyed the Rega sound, this could be just the deck for you!
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Sandy Bridge and AMD Fusion: hybrid chips explained

We recently reviewed one of AMD's latest Fusion processors as part of the Asus E35M1-M Pro motherboard. Like Intel's recent Sandy Bridge chips, they combine a programmable graphics engine onto the same piece of silicon as the CPU. It's a modern minor miracle in metal.
Like the first wave of Intel's CPU/GPU hybrids, these initial Fusion chips from AMD cleverly and cautiously avoid underwhelming us by targeting netbooks, where performance expectations are pretty low. For Intel, it was bolting a rudimentary graphics core onto an Atom to create Pinetrail.
AMD's new Bobcat CPU architecture is more forward looking, but by going up against Pinetrail and low-end notebooks, it looks perhaps better than it is.
AMD will follow the trail that has been forged here, though. Over the last 12 months, Intel has moved up the value chain with its CPU-die graphics. Arrandale brought the technology to Core i3 and Core i5 chips, and while the launch of Sandy Bridge at CES may have been spoiled by the swift recall of compatible motherboards, it was still briefly triumphant.
Faster and cheaper than the outgoing Nehalem architecture, Sandy Bridge is eminently suited to heavy lifting tasks that can harness the parallel pipelines of GPUs, such as video and photo-editing. The implications for mobile workstations alone are a little mind numbing, and more than one commentator believes it augurs the death of the discrete graphics card.
The single silicon future isn't quite upon us, however. Without wanting to put a timescale on things, the chances are PC Format readers will still be buying add-in GPUs for a while yet, for one reason and one reason only. Integrated graphics of any sort are and always have been rubbish for gaming.
Fusion and Sandy Bridge may still have that new chip smell about them, but they've been in the public eye for a long time. Fusion was formally announced to the world in 2006, around the same time that AMD purchased graphics firm ATI. Sandy Bridge appeared on Intel's roadmaps a year or so later.
Familiarity should not breed contempt, though. It's hard not to be excited by what is arguably the biggest change to PC architecture for 20-plus years. This new approach to chip design is such a radical rethink of how a computer should be built that AMD has even come up with a new name for it: goodbye CPU, hello Accelerated Processing Unit (APU).
While we wish AMD the best of luck trying to get that new moniker to bed in, it is worth digging around on the company's website for the Fusion launch documents. The marketing has been done very well - the white paper PDF does an excellent job of explaining why putting graphics onto the processor die makes sense, and you can find it in a single click from the front page.
By comparison, Intel's site is more enigmatic and downplays the role of on-die graphics. The assumption seems to be that those who care already know, but most consumers are more interested in the number of cores a chip has.
The next big thing?
That's fair enough: computers are commodities now and a simple 'Intel Inside' has always been the company's best way of building its brand. It also works as a neat way of avoiding hubris.
In the world of PC tech, it's hard to work out what the next big thing will be and what is going to blow.

BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN: Nvidia has some challenging times ahead
The CPU/GPU hybrid seems like a no-brainer, but a lot has changed in graphics since 3dfx first introduced the masses to the 3D video co-processor. It's been 15 years since Voodoo boards began to transform the sprite-based world of PC gaming, and with almost each new generation there's been some new feature that's promised to change the world.
Some of these breakthroughs have been welcome, and rightly gone on to achieve industry standard status. Routines for anti-aliasing, texture filtering and hardware transform and lighting were early candidates for standard adoption, and we now take it for granted that a new GPU will have programmable processors, HD video acceleration and unified shaders.
Other innovations, though, haven't found their way into the canon. At various times we've been promised by graphics vendors that the future lies in technologies that never picked up strong hardware support, such as voxels, tiling, ray tracing and variously outmoded ways of doing shadows.
Then there are those fancy sounding features that seem to have been around forever but still aren't widely used, such as tessellation, ring buses, GPU physics and even multicard graphics.
On a minor - related - note, hands up if you've ever used the digital vibrance slider in your control panel. Thought not.
All of which is not to say that Fusion and Sandy Bridge won't catch on. According to the roadmaps, it's going to be pretty hard to buy a CPU that doesn't have the graphics processor built in by the end of this year.
First-generation Core architecture chips are rapidly vanishing from Intel stockists, while AMD is expected to introduce a mainstream desktop combination chip, codenamed Lano, this summer with a high performance pairing based on the new Bulldozer CPU sometime in 2012.
If you buy a new PC by next spring it'll almost certainly have a hybrid processor at its heart.
There are three big advantages to hybrids. The first is that they're self-evidently very cost effective to manufacture compared to separate chips for the CPU and graphics and all the circuitry between.

CORE I3: The first Sandy Bridge CPUs have an Intel HD 2000 performing the graphical grunt - or lack thereof
For similar reasons, they also require less power - there are fewer components and interconnects that need a steady flow of electrons, and even on the chip die itself Sandy Bridge and Fusion allow more sharing of resources than last year's Pinetrail and Arrandale forebears, which put graphics and CPU on two separate cores in the same package.
Finally, slapping everything on one piece of silicon improves the performance of the whole by an extra order of magnitude. Latency between the GPU and CPU is reduced - a factor very important for video editing - and both AMD and Intel are extending their CPU-based abilities for automatic overclocking to the GPU part of the wafer too.
It goes without saying that these advantages will only be apparent if you actually use the GPU part of the chip. But you can have the best of both worlds: switchable graphics such as Nvidia's Optimus chipsets are well established in notebooks already, including the MacBook Pro. These flick between integrated and discrete chips depending on whether or not you're gaming, in order to save battery life or increase framerates.
That's not really a technology that will find much footing on the desktop, where the power saving would be rather minimal for the effort involved, but that's not to say there are no opportunities there. A 'silent running' mode using the on-die GPU would be invaluable for media centres and all-in-one PCs, for example.
More importantly for us, once every PC has integrated graphics there's every likelihood that some GPU-friendly routines that are common in games - such as physics - could be moved onto there by default. It'd be better than the currently messy approach towards implementation of hardware acceleration for non-graphics gaming threads.
Can't do it all
That scenario, however, depends on an element of standardisation that may yet be lacking. Sandy Bridge contains an HD 3000 graphics core which, by all accounts, is Intel's best video processor to date.
HD 3000 is very good at encoding and decoding HD video, plus it supports DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.0. That means it can use the GPU part of the core to accelerate programs such as Photoshop, Firefox 4 and some video transcoders too.
The problem is that, as has become almost traditional, Intel is a full generation behind everyone else when it comes to graphics. It's still living in a Vista world, while we're all on Windows 7. Don't even ask about Linux, by the way, as there's no support for Sandy Bridge graphics at all there yet (although both Intel and Linus Torvalds have promised it's coming).
Fusion, by comparison, has a well supported DirectX 11-class graphics chip based on its current Radeon HD6000 architecture. That means it supports the general purpose APIs OpenCL and DirectX Compute. Sandy Bridge doesn't - which may delay take up of these technologies for the time being.

THE TIMES ARE A CHANGING: This is arguably the biggest change to PC architecture in two decades
Conversely, Sandy Bridge does feature the new Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) to the SSE part of the x86 instruction set. These are designed to speed up applications such as video processing by batching together groups of data, and won't be in AMD chips until Bulldozer arrives later this year.
You'll need Windows 7 SP1 to actually make use of AVX, mind you. But by the time applications that use them appear, most of us will be running that OS revision or later.
Gaming performance
All this is academic if you're just interested in playing games. A quick look at the benchmarks will show you that while the HD 3000 is better than its predecessors for gaming, it's still not much fun unless you're prepared to sacrifice a lot of image quality.
By comparison, the first desktop Fusion chips - codenamed Llano and based on the current K10 architecture - will have more in the way of graphics firepower. But an 80 pipeline Radeon core is still only half the power of AMD's most basic discrete card, the HD6450. We wouldn't recommend one of those, either.
Feedback from games developers we've spoken to has been mixed so far. On the whole, they have broadly welcomed hybrids, and some have gone as far as saying that Sandy Bridge will meet minimum graphics specifications for a number of quite demanding games. Shogun 2 and Operation Flashpoint: Red River are good examples of this.
Ultimately, though, developers are interested in hitting these system requirements because it opens up a large market for their games among laptop owners. As far as innovation goes, the cool kids still code at the cutting edge.
What of the future?
You might be tempted to point out that it's early days yet, and CP-GPU hybrids - for want of a better phrase - are still in their infancy. Give it a couple more years and the discrete graphics business could be dead.
John Carmack himself recently noted that he didn't see any big leaps for the PC's graphical prowess in the near future. That gives combination processors time to catch up, doesn't it?
Well, here are some numbers to convince you otherwise. Moore's Law says the number of transistors that can be cost effectively incorporated inside a chip will double every two years. A four-core Sandy Bridge processor with integrated HD 3000 graphics packs around 995 million transistors. According to Intel's oft-quoted founder, that means that we could expect CPUs in 2013 to boast 2,000 million transistors on a single die.

SANDY SILICON: Sandy Bridge is eminently suited to heavy-lifting tasks such as video and photo-editing
Sounds like a lot, until you realise that 2009's Radeon HD5850 already has a transistor count of 2,154 million - which would all have to be squashed onto a CPU die to replicate the performance levels.
By applying Moore's Law, then, it'll be at least 2015 to 2016 before you'll be able to play games at the resolution and quality you were used to 18 months ago. What are the odds of seven-year-old technology being considered more than adequate as an entry level system? Not high, are they?
By that reasoning hybrid processors are going to struggle to ever move up into the 'mainstream' performance class. You see, even though graphics engine development has slowed down considerably in recent years, games are still getting more demanding. Even World of Warcraft needs a fairly hefty system to see it presented at its best these days. Just Cause isn't a spectacular looker, but it can strain a respectable system beyond breaking point if you turn all the graphical settings up and the pretty bits on.
We're also finding new ways to challenge our hardware: multi-monitor gaming is now so common it's included in Valve's Steam Survey. That means higher resolutions and more anti-aliasing, neither of which are cheap in processing terms.
And even if Moore's Law were somehow accelerated so that in five years' time integrated GPUs could be cutting edge, a 4,000 million transistor chip is an enormous undertaking that would be expensive to get wrong. Yields would have to be exceptionally good to make it financially viable - it's a much safer bet to produce separate parts for the top performance class.
What's more, high graphics chips are incredibly different to CPUs in terms of manufacture and operating environment. They're almost mutually exclusive, in fact.
A Core i7, for example, consumes less power and runs much colder than a GeForce GTX570. Could you get the same graphics power without the 100ºC-plus heat? Unlikely.
The tolerance for error is also much lower - if a single pixel is corrupted on screen because the GPU is overheating, no-one notices, but if a CPU repeatedly misses a read/write operation you have a billion dollar recall to take care of.
The GPU is dead
It would be lovely to be proved wrong, though. If a scenario arises where we can get the same sort of performance from a single chip - with all the overclocking features - that we currently enjoy from the traditional mix of discrete GPU and dedicated CPU, then we'd be first in the queue to buy one.
Right now, though, both Nvidia and AMD reported growth in their graphics divisions during 2010, despite the appearance of Intel's Arrandale hybrids early in the year. Perhaps this is the more likely outcome: it's easy to envision a world in, say, a decade or so, when the market for PC 'separates' is similar to the hi-fi one.
Because after a century of miniaturisation and integration there, valve amps are still the apeothesis of style and performance. In other words, a CPU/GPU hybrid chip may be good enough one day, but it won't be the best. And that is what we will always demand.

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How your mains power supply affects your home cinema

Every component in your home cinema is a delicate electrical device. Yet people are often willing to pay for a monstrous flat panel, beefy receiver or state-of-the-art 3D Blu-ray player and connect them to the mains via a cheap, multi-plug power strip.
This will do the job, but may affect reliability or even performance, which is where we get to the controversial subject of mains power conditioning.
In the golden-eared world of hi-fi, mains conditioning is a topic of hot debate. Indeed, a long-running spat between specialist Russ Andrews Accessories and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has brought the arguments into sharper focus than ever before (you can read about it at www.asa.org.uk).
But are the arguments for mains power conditioning equally applicable to home cinema?
Every component in a UK home cinema is designed to use a standard mains voltage of 240V at 50Hz. The problem is that your household electricity doesn't usually reflect this ideal power supply; in most cases it is 'dirty' and prone to over- and under-voltage issues.
Getting down and dirty
To fully understand what is going on, we must first look at the power foundation. Electricity is generated in a plant that's typically dozens of miles away from your home.
To get to your living room it has to navigate substations, high voltage lines, transformers and, finally, the power lines that connect to your home. Along the way, a lot could have happened to that electricity; it could have picked up radio frequency interference (RFI) or electromagnetic interference (EMI).
As more wireless devices are used, we are seeing increased issues with both. Power lines can act like aerials, picking up signals from mobile phones, radio and television broadcasts, and even wi-fi signals can have a negative effect on the quality of your power by contaminating it with noise.
But your house is the single biggest culprit of electrical contamination. Refrigerators; washer/dryers; light dimmers; hair dryers; computers and other AV components create noise by pulling power from the mains. Fridges and washer/dryers consume enormous amounts of electricity and have noisy power supplies.
This noise and power consumption affects other products on the same power line. Just about all of your AV gear is full of microprocessors and other delicate technology, and dirty electricity and over/under voltages can put stress on these sensitive components, causing them to underperform.
Measuring the existence of mains noise and voltage fluctuation is easy; proving it has a visible or audible effect on home cinema equipment is more difficult, and this is part of the ASA's beef. But it's incontrovertible that your home's electricity supply isn't perfect, so it's common sense to install a power conditioner.
There are two main types of power conditioner: traditional passive types and complete AC regenerators. The former are cheaper and use various types of electrical filters to tackle RFI and EMI. This can be pretty effective.
The more extreme method of cleaning your electricity is the AC regeneration route. This tends to be more costly, but is certainly the most effective.
Cleanliness next to Godliness
Some cinema enthusiasts have gone as far as running dedicated lines directly from their fuse box to their home cinema gear, with no other sockets attached to the lines. This is the ideal option, which should of course only be tackled by a qualified electrician.
So a power conditioner is the practical option in most cases, and there are plenty on the market from companies such as ISOL-8, IsoTek, PS Audio, and Monster Power.
We talked to ISOL-8's Nic Poulson about the philosophy of mains power conditioning and the Powerline 1080 specifically, and asked him what mains conditioners are designed to tackle.
"Taking a closer look at a mains supply reveals it's not a simple issue, and often not what we may expect," said Poulson. "Zooming in on an AC mains cycle reveals there is a lot going on; pollution and distortion of our energy supply is an inevitable consequence of its use, and it is everywhere.
"Electrical appliances in homes each turn some of the energy used into noise, either as radio interference or distortion of the mains itself. All are connected to, and share, the same physical conduit: the power grid.
"Most AV equipment is surprisingly vulnerable to this pollution, and limitations in the component parts commonly used means the interference is passed through to the sensitive circuits beyond, compromising performance.
"High energy spikes from switch contact arcing can cause clicks; broadband noise from rectifier diodes can create a haze veiling detail, and industrial inductive loads can cause significant local distortion of the mains waveform. These effects are often the reason why your system sounds better at night, when there is less local electrical activity."
So, what's the solution? Poulson opines: "Removing mains-borne noise can dramatically improve your system. A carefully designed filter or regenerator, isolating each individual component in your system, will provide superior, more predictable performance. The benefits are often not subtle. Other solutions such as specialist mains cables, which often provide improvements due to a limited degree of filtering, as a consequence of their physical geometry, are usually unpredictable, so tackling the source of the problem is a more powerful tool than just coping with its effects."
The PowerLine 1080 is a 2.3kg lump featuring a powder-coated steel chassis and an anodized 6mm thick CNC'd aluminum top plate designed to be non-magnetic and non-resonant. It has an IEC input connector, but you'll have to supply your own mains lead (the ISOLink shielded mains cable for instance).
Each of the four power outlets has a hinged cover designed to IEC standard IP54, protecting unused outlets from dirt, dust and little fingers. Internal wiring is silver-plated copper with PTFE insulation. One outlet has a dedicated filter to eliminate noise generated by video displays, while another has a filtered high current direct connection for amplifiers. The remaining two outlets are for source components.
It's all about the current
"It's specifically designed for plasmas, LCDs, and projectors," explains Poulson. "Basically, it's all about current. Displays don't need enormous amount of current; they don't normally need high peak current either. When that's the case, it allows us to put a far steeper curve in than I ordinarily I would for an audio component.
"The PowerLine 1080's output is very different to all of the others. It can only deliver around four or five amps maximum. It really has got a very very steep curve, plus we also built in a Notch Filter, which is designed to tackle a lot of the addition noise coming out of the plasma. The notch syncs specifically to that plasma noise, it's hyper-tailored specifically for the plasma display. The other two line sockets have moderate filtering just for source components, while the one for the amplifier is only parallel filtered because we don't want to limit current."
So how can the impact of your power conditioners be measured? "We use three things; one we look and listen, which is one of the finest arbiters. Then we have a Voltech power analyzer (more about these at www.voltech.com), plus we use new generation Picoscope (PC-based oscilloscope, from www.picotech.com) capturing devices, so we can freeze moments in time and look at them."
On our in-house reference system, our subjctive impression was of a touch more clarity overall on our installed LED TV when we used the Powerline 1080. Display noise was reduced, and colours appeared a little more vibrant.
Attached to our receiver, we heard a slight reduction in noise - a subtle effect, but sound effects appeared to emerge from a quieter background. Improvements were more pronounced at home, supporting the argument that the perceived effect of a power conditioner will be dependent on the state of your mains in the first place.
So, if you want to get the best out of your system, think of what you're putting into it - even if it adds only a level of surge protection, a power conditioner can still be a wise investment.

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Review: Monitor Audio BX5

Monitor Audio has been producing the Bronze series, its entry-level full-size speaker range, for some years now. And the latest update takes the line-up from BR to BX status and features a full choice of standmounts, floorstanders and supporting multichannel equipment.
Design refinements include single-bolt driver fixings and HiVE reflex ports borrowed from the more expensive ranges.
The £500 BX5 tested here, however, is the smaller of two floorstanding models. It's a relatively compact 870mm tall with plinth and can be shortened by simply screwing the floor spikes into the bottom of the speaker. Doing this has an effect on the stability, but no real effect on sonic performance.
Finished in the relatively light Natural Oak finish, this is a handsome and well-proportioned loudspeaker. The fit and finish is excellent with smart touches like magnetic grill tabs that give the speaker a flush front. The only slightly discordant note is the plastic Monitor Audio logo on the top, but the overall effect is still excellent for the asking price.
Easy driver
The BX5 has a claimed sensitivity of 90dB/w and an impedance of eight ohms, making it a very easy load for an amp to drive. We obtained excellent results with a 70-watt Electrocompaniet ECI3 and the considerably less powerful Peachtree Audio iDecco. Both amps can drive the BX5 to very high levels, which would suggest that the speaker can be used with pretty much any amp from 25 watts and up.
The speaker is also relatively easy to position. The cabinet is both front and rear ported, but Monitor Audio supply a pair of foam bungs that can be used to reduce flow from the rear port and allow a relatively close placement to a rear wall.
Thrill a minute
Set a little over two metres apart with a slight toe-in and 20 centimetres or so from the wall, the BX5 presents a believable and full soundstage. This presentation is filled with a lively and open feel.
Given an upbeat piece of music, the Monitor Audio's are a thrill a minute to listen to and their timing and pace are extremely enjoyable. Given the relatively small cabinets, the bass response is impressive in both depth and presence and this low end underpins performances and imparts considerable authority. This is aided by the lack of "honking" or colouration from the bass ports.
Given more relaxed music, the BX5 never truly loses its slightly boisterous side, but equally could never be called dull or uninteresting and the assured timing means that even complex pieces stay very cohesive and easy to follow.
Live performances
Tonality with voices and instruments is good, although they can become slightly hard-edged if the BX5 is really pushed. At more usual domestic listening levels, however, the performance is always assured and confident.
Live performances, in particular, give the BX5 the chance to place musicians and the audience accurately in relation to one another and give a real sense of the original performance space.
Poor recordings can push the harshness levels, but well-recorded and high-resolution material allows them to demonstrate remarkable insight – considering the price point.
Sound choice
A combination of talents makes the BX5 a sound choice at the asking price. Partnered with a relatively neutral amp of almost any normal output, it is an engaging and entertaining performer – especially if your listening tastes lean towards more up tempo music.
Its performance, coupled with its compact size and attractive appearance, mean that this is a very talented and likeable speaker that should be able to slot happily into many different modestly priced hi-fi systems and deliver the goods.

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Review: Scheu Analog Cello (Jelco SA-250 tonearm)

although a relative newcomer to the UK, Scheu Analog has been in business since the late 1980s. This makes it one of a number of turntable manufacturers who started up their business just as the LP was allegedly in its death throes.
Perhaps, for that reason, the company's range is not vast, (there are only four turntables and three arms available), but distinctly exotic-looking in design. The Cello (including a Jelco SA-250 arm) is a rectangular slab of acrylic with three feet, an arm mount and a bearing.
The most obvious difference from other designs is that the motor is housed, very ingeniously, in the front left foot. It's a small DC motor with electronic speed control and a small toggle switch that selects the speed.

Instead of a drive belt there's a drive string. In fact, a thin thread can be a highly satisfactory trick and Scheu simply provides a small bobbin of fine nylon thread, just over a tenth of a millimetre in diameter! However, as it's up to the happy owner to cut a length of this and tie a knot in the right place, you may end up exhausting your supply of expletives.
Eventually, one gets a good tight loop the right length which gives good drive to the frosted-finish acrylic platter.
Sound quality
Once again, there was some disagreement among our listeners about the Scheu's bass: is it powerful and propulsive or a little shy? A little investigative work suggests the probable cause.
Playing a variety of familiar discs suggested that the bass is rather better in lively, dynamic moments (a rock drum kit being a perfect example) than in sustained tuned notes (church organ, bass tuba and so forth). The latter tends to sound a little underwhelming, although taken in isolation it's not at all bad.
But the transient energy conveyed by the deck goes a long way towards making the sound very attractive. A closely related area of performance, 'pace', was also singled out for praise.
This is a little more subtle than rhythm, involving as it does not just excitement but also, at suitable moments, restraint. That's necessary to keep the sound from being too frantic, something that we've all come across now and then.
Higher frequencies are well served by the Cello, with good detail across the board and very good life and vibrancy. The treble is always very clean, but prepared to scream and shout when the music demands it – no shrinking violet here!
This can be deceptive, though, the treble occasionally seeming restrained in recordings that are only moderately busy in the top octaves. There was a little puzzlement expressed at the Cello's handling of dynamics. Just occasionally, detail seems a little muted, though as mentioned above it is generally good and surface noise seems slightly more prominent than via some of the decks.
Imaging is good, instruments occupying a consistent and stable position in space and there is some decent depth in the image, too.

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In Depth: Apps: the future of tech or a passing fad?

App - seldom has such a small word had such a big impact. It's always on the lips of tech's biggest and brightest firms: Apple, Microsoft, Google and BlackBerry. Smartphones, tablets, TVs, fridges, cars: if your devices don't already sport the ability to run small, slick, one-trick programs, then the option is only an upgrade away.
The term has become so ubiquitous that the American Dialect Society - a learned group dedicated to the study of the English Language in America - dubbed 'app' its 2010 Word of the Year.
In case you're interested, it fended off stiff competition from the Cookie Monster's 'nom'. Praise indeed.
But what exactly is an app? Is 'app' really nothing more than a slightly irritating, cutesy term for 'application', or are apps indeed distinct from the software we PC users have enjoyed since the days of DOS? How will they affect the future of computing?
If you're interested in the etymological origins of the word 'app', you can probably thank Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple began propelling the word in the popular consciousness in 2008, but Jobs' love of the term dates back to the 1980s and NeXT.
Back then it was one of his favourite terms, presumably due to its friendliness compared to the Microsoft-endorsed 'software program' and the middle-ground 'application'.
A state of mind
Colin Walsh, owner of Celsius Game Studios, thinks apps aren't so much about a shift in software as about how people think about it:
"We've always had apps in the sense of focused programs that do one thing well. But because of the nature of portable devices, which by their design force a single-app/single-purpose user model, more people and more developers now think about specialised applications."
Walsh thinks this is good, because it's forcing the market away from "bloated monstrosities that do a whole bunch of things poorly," resulting in better software. This in turn engages people who wouldn't otherwise interact with many products, often encouraging them to source their own.
Mat Gadd, a software engineer at Advance IT Group says people in his office have long referred to 'applications', but now his mother - who is in her 50s - has an iPhone 4 and knows what an app is.
"For her Windows PC I had to install software for her, but now she calls me to chat about the latest and greatest app she's discovered and started using on her iPhone," he says.
For developers, this rapid shift in climate is quite a lot to take in, and it points to an unfamiliar future. "As Apple has embraced the mainstream consumer, apps are seen as the same as any other piece of media you can buy through iTunes - a true commodity rather than some artisan creation," explains James Thomson, founder of Mac (and now also iOS) developer TLA Systems.
"Some people will appreciate the craftsmanship involved, and truly excellent software will always find an audience, but we're no longer selling to the same technical hobbyist market we might have sold shareware to a decade or two ago."
Thomson's comment, with its overt consumerist angle, happens to echo the thoughts of Ian Bogost. In his blog post 'What is an app?', Bogost expands on the American Dialect Society's definition of 'app' as "the shortened slang term for a computer or smartphone application" by suggesting that it's also the applications themselves that are shortened and colloquialised.

MAC APP STORE: In making apps simple to buy, Apple has reinvigorated the software market
Instead of software suites - equivalent to a massive CD boxset aiming to cover everything and everyone - apps are more akin to singles. They're bite-sized, one-purpose applications, built for a specific function.
And mirroring what Apple did to the music industry, breaking the market into pieces and giving people somewhere to shop for the bits, Apple broke software into its component parts too, creating an App Store to provide users with a quick-fix solution to almost any problem.
An Apple a day
You might think that, with apps individually being more focused than traditional applications, you'd end up with a more coherent system, but the reality is more complicated.
Due to the typically isolated nature of an app, the notion of system-wide coherence is becoming deprecated in the app age. Logic Colony software developer Krishna Kotecha reckons this distinction between applications and more tightly focused apps will become "increasingly pronounced", although the focus and simple interfaces of apps will let typical users "get the most out of their software".
Certainly, usability has been key from the start with Apple's app model. Walsh argues that Apple "saved the mobile software ecosystem from itself", and says that before the App Store, it was incredibly difficult to sell apps.
The App Store deals with payment and distribution, along with making apps more discoverable. As iOS developer Jedrzej Jakubowski enthuses, "Customers are trained and encouraged to buy apps on a regular basis, which they can do in a very simple fashion."
Kotecha adds that even the much-criticised review process and 'walled garden' aren't a problem. "Unless you want to play fast and loose with platform development rules, private APIs, or user privacy. Apple has done a good job protecting the value of the iOS app ecosystem for both users and developers, because users don't experience the problems that break their PCs, such as malware and spyware. Users aren't afraid of buying and installing apps, and that's a really powerful thing."
Despite coming from the more open Mac development environment, Thomson agrees, and adds that the walled-garden criticism is overplayed: "Apple has found a good middle ground between the PC and games console approaches to software distribution. We can put apps in front of a broad consumer audience, and while there are restrictions, there aren't as many as if you wanted to write for, say, a Nintendo handheld."
A bad Apple
Aside from the well-publicised review process, the App Store has some shortcomings that impact on existing products, but these also point to how Apple may improve its offering in the future.
Thomson would like to see more flexibility in pricing, with the ability to offer upgrades - a common source of friction with users - although he concedes that this this is "perhaps a sign of old-school thinking, given that Apple now rarely offers upgrade pricing on its own products".
Elsewhere, although the app-buying process is discoverable, apps themselves are trickier to unearth due to the sheer number available and Apple's relatively limited search functionality; Thomson notes that many people rely heavily on the charts to 'discover' apps, often keeping a very limited number of products selling well and condemning the remainder.
There's also a tendency for app prices - especially for games - to 'race to the bottom', which has trained users to expect apps to cost 99 cents, or 59p. These needn't be considered entirely bad things.
As developer Neil Inglis points out, "from a consumer standpoint, the two big things are cheap apps and an almost endless supply of apps - I can't remember the last time I looked for an app to perform a task and couldn't find something".
However, because of the difficulty in recouping development costs, there's a tendency for many apps to be very simple, hastening the atomisation of software. This direction means things are going to be tough for any app that's not marketable to a widely understood niche, relegating general or experimental apps to relative obscurity.

FACEBOOK: Well-designed apps can simplify and improve the user experience of more complex web services
But atomisation can be a benefit to developers and users alike, assuming an app has a real use. As Kotecha explains, "It keeps apps focused tightly on one thing, and focused apps aren't a bad thing at all, because most non-technical users barely use a fraction of the functionality available on their desktop applications."
Perhaps as a result of this shift, cross-pollination is increasing between Apple systems, mostly with concepts from iOS infiltrating Mac OS X. This, along with the massive success of the App Store, meant it was inevitable that Apple would bring the 'app' model to the desktop.
Announced in 2010, the Mac App Store arrived in January 2011, and although only available to a minority of Mac users (those running Snow Leopard who have updated the operating system to version 10.6.6), the store had over a million downloads within its first day.
As on iOS, the Mac-based store distils the process of purchase and installation down to a couple of clicks and a password, and it also potentially increases exposure for apps, along with dealing with the supply chain, freeing developers to concentrate on other things. (Because of this, several long-time Mac developers took only a few days to go Mac App Store-only with their products.)
It's clear that this is where Apple sees the future of apps on the desktop. Unlike the iOS App Store, the Mac App Store isn't the only way to install third-party applications, but Thomson argues that "it will soon be the default way most Mac users find and buy software".
Gadd agrees, pointing to a potentially rosy future for developers as users realise they can click on a Dock icon, then, without much effort, "find an app to do a specific task more easily". He adds: "Since users can search, browse and buy securely within one application, that'll make them feel more at ease. You'll be less likely to find people worrying they'll 'break' the computer if they download something."
Dumbing down
Although a success, big names like Microsoft and Adobe were notably absent from the Mac App Store's launch; elsewhere, popular utilities like Default Folder X are barred for not adhering to Apple's relatively strict rules regarding the type of application allowed for sale in its store.
It was also notable that most launch products were casual games or simple utilities, often ported from iOS. Plenty disregard or break Mac conventions, threatening a cornerstone of usability on a windowed system: consistency - knowing what's likely to happen when you perform a certain action.
Those worries have been compounded by demos of Mac OS X Lion, which champions an iOS-like full-screen app view, devoid of dock, windows and taskbars, leading to what some call the 'appisation' of the Mac - a dumbing-down that could spell the end of traditional computing if Microsoft subsequently follows suit.
Some developers shudder at this prospect. "A desktop computer isn't a tablet or a phone - the interaction model is different and only certain apps benefit from the full-screen approach," argues Walsh, who hopes the windowing model remains.
Others aren't so sure, suggesting that Apple's app model could soon become commonplace throughout the computing world. "The atomisation is a good thing," says Jakubowski. "Prices go down, apps are more focused and are better at what they do. Competition increases, leading to more well-designed apps."
Kotecha also isn't against Apple's plans: "Full-screen apps are the way to go on smaller devices, where window management is frustrating." As computing becomes more mobile and portable, Jakubowski expects the app model to take hold, relegating the application window to a niche "desktop computer world" where the "hassles of window management and filesystems will stay in an environment where they still matter".
Store wars
Of course, Apple is hardly alone in the battle of the apps. Although arguably the leader in the field - a surprising turn of events in itself, given Apple's relatively niche position on the desktop-other companies are fighting back.

OPEN BOOK?: The Chrome Web Store may be online, with a selection of web apps, but it's not nearly as open as what Mozilla's planning to launch in 2012
Google in particular has risen to the challenge, although it's clear that the search giant's vision for the future of apps is wildly different from Apple's own. Where Apple seeks to control and enhance user experience by way of curation, emphasis on quality and a single place to purchase apps, Google's primary motivation remains ad revenue.
Therefore, in Google's mobile offering, Android Market is almost the polar opposite of Apple's App Store: there's barely any curation, open (albeit often minor) intellectual property breaches are rife, and, crucially, it's not the only place Android users can download third-party software for their devices.
Various carriers offer storefronts, and even Amazon is prepping an Android store. But as much as Apple's stance regarding apps is propelling the concept forwards, there's some consensus that Google's efforts do the opposite.
Android users typically remain apathetic towards apps, not caring about them or citing usability and quality issues. "Part of the problem is [that] it's tough for developers to test apps across the different device and OS combinations on the market," explains W3i cofounder Robert Weber. "This leads to crap getting out into the market - Google should focus on providing better tools to Android developers for testing."
There's also been the thorny issue of payment mechanisms; in stark contrast to the App Store, with its millions of credit cards linked to iTunes, Android Market initially only enabled US and UK developers to offer paid apps.
Value for money
The payment situation has slowly improved, but user experience is now such that 'free' is the expected price for mist apps.
While advocates of open software laud this notion, Kotecha thinks it's detrimental to the platform as a whole. "Quality apps take time to build," he says. "There must be a clear monetisation mechanism for app development if a platform wants quality apps."
Without this, the perception of Android apps - indeed, apps as a whole, given that Android is gaining traction and now leading the way in smartphone market share - could become one of low quality and poor usability.
Zattikka producer Robin Clarke thinks this kind of lowbrow, anything-goes ecosystem leads to "a situation where nobody is willing to stick their neck out and invest in making their offering good enough to be the de-facto standard," and hopes Google will "lead by example and make Android Market competitive with the iOS App Store."
It's possible that Amazon could take up that particular challenge, since its vision of an Android app store appears closer to Apple's store than Google's, with app-screening and an emphasis on quality. And while Amazon will discount apps as and when it sees fit, quickfire discounts are common on Apple's stores, too.
If this is indeed what transpires in 2011, it will likely revolutionise Android apps and perhaps dismiss the belief that apps should be free. Weber reckons Android developers will finally start making some decent money, prompting more developers to take an interest in the platform, increasing competition and raising the quality of apps.
And Weber adds that the scenario also provides a major advantage over Apple, in that by offering competing but 'fragmented' distribution points, a "higher quantity of developers can get a piece of each of those distribution points," rather than on iOS where there's only one store with one set of charts.
Heading online
With fragmentation affecting monetisation, usability and the public perception of apps as useful, you'd think a trend towards a locked-down Apple-style approach would be inevitable. But some in the industry would prefer to obliterate the concept of locking down apps for good.

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The main driving force behind this model is Mozilla, which wants to leverage open web standards with its Open Web Applications concept, and create an app ecosystem that isn't reliant on any one device or locked down to any one store. This would remove Apple-style censorship and carrier lock-ins (Android itself may be touted as 'open', but carriers regularly block stores and services from Android devices or force their own products to act as the main entry point to apps).
Pascal Finette, Director of Mozilla Labs, claims that web apps also offer additional benefits: "From a developer perspective, they dramatically lower development costs and often complexity, especially when a developer wants to target multiple platforms - there's no porting an Objective C iPhone app to Java in Android. For users, web apps provide similar functionality to native apps, but allow for portability - you can take an app from desktop to mobile and vice versa."
In the cloud
Finette optimistically believes that, in the mid-to-long-term, the vast majority of apps will be written on top of the Open Web stack, but this isn't yet a popular viewpoint.
Despite being a month older than the Mac App Store, the Chrome Web Store is already seemingly floundering: unable to drive traffic to developers, sales have been described rather generously as 'lacklustre' in the technology press - and monetisation isn't the only problem it's facing.
"Apple's app model destroyed the advantage of pure web apps compared to native code," argues Kotecha. "The biggest problems native apps had were discoverability and reliability in terms of impact on the system," he explains.
"But iOS dealt with those problems, and you can now have an app running on a mobile device that talks to a server and stores data locally, but that also provides a rich user experience. Comparatively, web apps seem like a very weak proposition. Native code will always allow a developer the freedom to be more creative in their software development."
Similarly, developers seem dismissive of those who advocate 'open' and cloud storage as the only future for apps. "'Open' is the most meaningless word in the tech industry today," grumbles Kotecha. "Where it's being used, you don't need to look very far to see someone's business agenda at play - when Mozilla says 'install anywhere', it means 'install anywhere Mozilla technology can be installed'."
And while Gadd says that he'd "love for there to be some form of reliable, always-on connectivity," such things aren't, and may never be, entirely viable: "Between ISP failures, power failures and lack of mobile coverage alone, relying on being able to reach a remote service to do any work is asking for trouble."
On storage, Kotecha says pitching 'cloud' versus 'local' is a red herring: "Users and apps will use both the cloud and local storage. Even if cloud-based technology becomes widespread, the need for local storage isn't going anywhere -after all, you still carry a wallet with you, even though you have a bank account."
And a similar hybrid approach is likely to be how apps evolve, thinks Weber: "Especially on mobile, native clients with web functionality will dominate, despite all the hype about HTML5 apps stealing the limelight away from existing native mobile apps."
Looking at the app market to date, iterative changes are predictable: the best iOS apps will continue to evolve, remaining focused and usable, but increasing in sophistication, enabling users to perform increasingly complex tasks.
Android will follow suit to some extent, perhaps driven by Amazon at the high end, and Google flooding the market with free, ad-supported apps.
Mobile stores on other platforms will see rapid growth as hardware improves and lessons are learned from market leaders, and while browsers won't take over, they will expose new features to apps and offer richer experiences for those choosing to favour web apps.
App to the future
It remains to be seen whether Android's market-lead will result in a shift in emphasis regarding target platforms, leading to more demand for tight-budget, cross-platform development, resulting in compromises on iOS; Kotecha thinks it's feasible the app approach will simply raise everyone's game, "driving mainstream users to be more demanding of user experiences in all areas they encounter software".

FOCUSSED FUNCTION: Apps often force focus on one task, rather than being everything to all
Windows is perhaps the platform that could benefit most from such thinking, and rumours of an app store for Windows 8 abound. Walsh wonders whether Microsoft could use an app store to distance itself from past accusations of vendor lock-in and monopoly abuse by directing users to third-party software from day one.
"Couple that with the potential for keeping people on Windows and the money they could make in the process, it's pretty much a no-brainer for the company," he thinks. "That being said, I've little faith in Microsoft getting it quite right first time, but they'll keep at it until it's decent."
Gadd adds such a store could also reduce viruses and malware on Windows PCs, if Microsoft adopted an approvals process akin to Apple's and pushed its app store as the default.
TV or not TV?
The other major platform being touted as perfect for apps is television. "But TV is a difficult fit for apps, apart from games and passive media," says Walsh. "The use-case just isn't there - no one wants to browse the web or edit documents on their TV, and I think that has to do with how TVs are situated in many homes as an entertainment device and not a 'work' device. Maybe that will change, but I'm not holding my breath."
Kotecha quips that the same platform that has successfully dominated TV will continue to do so: TV programmes, rather scuppering the long-held belief that convergence would inevitably lead to the emergence of a dominant platform, and that platform would be the television. It's the app economy that's destroyed this idea.
The smartphone boom has made people realise once again that they want different devices for different tasks: social networking, music and gaming on smartphones; reading and light work on tablets; more complex tasks on desktop PCs.
No one device can do all these things satisfactorily. However the app economy has also driven a thirst for single-purpose, focused apps, services can more easily thrive across multiple platforms.
"I don't think that any one device or system will dominate the market," concludes Jakubowski. "Rather we'll see a multitude of devices with certain services available on all of them, delivered through apps."

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Review: Audio-Technica AT120E/T

Audio-Technica is one of the two leading cartridge brands from Japan (the other of course being Denon). It maintains a good range of models, both moving-magnet and moving-coil, the AT120E/T being one of the former.
Its appearance looks quite budget and the packaging is nothing fancy, but there's some clever technology inside including AT's 'Paratoroidal Signal Generator' assembly.
This is the company's implementation of a moving-magnet generator: it's not fundamentally different from other types, but it is ingenious and is claimed to involve less electrical and mechanical connections than other MM versions.
An aluminium cantilever couples it to the stylus, which has a simple elliptical profile. The stylus is removable and needs to be removed to fit the cartridge, although we were surprised by how hard a pull is needed to separate the stylus assembly from the rest of the unit.
Mounting is via to semi-circular holes in the plastic top plate – not the strongest assembly ever and we would advise against over-zealous bolt-tightening.
AT quotes an unusually wide range of tracking weights for this cartridge – 1 to 1.8g: we settled on 1.5g, which gave secure tracking on all normal discs.
A couple of audiophile test discs gave it slight problems at any setting, but that's common to many cartridges. It seems fairly insensitive to Vertical Tracking Angle (VTA) and we found it to sound sweet and well detailed across a range of discs.
Its bass is a little unpredictable, generally strong but sometimes slightly underwhelming with sustained bass notes. Tonal balance is good, extended in the treble but not over-bright.

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