Intel: ARM is Fat, Ugly, Responsible for All of iPhone's Problems

At the Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan, an Intel chief took an opportunity to piss all over one of the company's biggest mobile competitors. "The shortcomings of the iPhone are not because of Apple," he said, "The shortcomings of the iPhone have come from ARM." What shortcomings are those, exactly? "Even if they do have full [Internet] capability, the performance will be so poor." So in other words, by "the shortcomings of the iPhone," Intel means "slowish javascript rendering." For a solution to these problems, Intel makes an unexpected and revolutionary recommendation: "If you want to run full internet, you're going to have to run an Intel-based architecture." Oh! More »

Question of the Day: Would You Ever Consider Using a Palmtop MID?

At the Intel Developer Forum last week, a lot of the buzz on the demo floor was around new Atom hardware. There were the requisite netbooks and EeeClones floating around, but it seemed like peculiar little quasi-computers, or palmtop Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) stole the show. Sure, it's impressive to see a full, net-connected Vista or Ubuntu desktop running on something the size of a Sega Game Gear, but who exactly is supposed to use these? More »

Hands On With the UrbanMax, Intel's Concept Tablet Notebook... Thing

This year's Intel Developer Forum is all about different form-factors, with walls of nearly identical MIDs, way too many netbooks and this strange creature, the Intel UrbanMax concept. The prototype is running a Core 2 Duo (at least for now) crammed into a thin, quasi-tablet case, with an 11 inch N-trig DuoSense capacative multitouch screen and provisions for a WiMax connection built in. The UrbanMax form-factor is a novel take on the old tablet concept, and possibly a superior one. More »

Hands On With OpenPeak's Atom-Powered Home Media Phone

Slotting an Atom into a home phone just sounds plain ridiculous, but the Home Media Phone is more than just a VoIP handset and base station. The base station (which doubles as a speaker phone) has its own software platform, developed in flash and furnished with a full API, and serves many purposes of a PC in a picture frame-sized package. The current set of apps is adequate, but after using it for a few minutes it became very clear that the Home Media Phone could actually be a fantastic net appliance. More »

Hands On With Intel Classmate Tablet: So Far Just a Touchy, Double-Jointed Netbook

When news of the Classmate tablet broke yesterday, it was hard to know what to think. In terms of specs, the device is a far sight better that the Classmate 2.0, but aside from the new tablet form factor, the diminutive netbook didn't seem to include any truly innovative new features. During the Intel Developer Forum today I got to fold around with the new Classmate, and my suspicions were confirmed: barring a late-stage killer feature, this iteration of Intel's OLPC killer will be sort of lame. More »