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It’s your standard all-in-one consumer-oriented desktop computer: The guts of the system are behind a 27-inch touch-screen. Microsoft’s tile-based Windows 8 operating system inhabits that screen.
Except it is anything but standard. Lay it flat, and so…
How often have you searched for a flight, walked away from your computer or put down your smartphone, and seen a few hours later that the airfare has changed?
It can be frustrating to watch the fluctuations, which seem to follow no logical pattern.
N…
What makes Linux Mint so awesome? That, in itself, is quite a question. After all, why do we use Linux? It’s one of those questions that can only be answered from the point of view of an individual’s personal approach to their experiences with the operating system itself.
For many, Linux Mint is the last bastion of non-commercialised Linux; an environment whereby they can still enjoy the pleasures of the desktop, without having to follow the trend of living in a tabletised world.
For others, Mint has become the very best example of what a Linux desktop should be: fast, easy, pleasing to the eye, useful and productive. Others, still, see Mint as the ideal desktop for Windows refugees, or those who are trying out Linux for the first time, and want an operating system that essentially works ‘out of the box’, playing any number of media files from a variety of sources.
Whatever the reason, we can be sure that Linux Mint has evolved into something more than just another Linux distribution, and that its popularity has fuelled its own style and usefulness.
It started with a review…
The surprising thing is that Mint was originally just a sideshow to some reviews its creator had written online. Clem Lefebvre explains:
“I was writing for LinuxForums.org at the time, and eventually decided to try and host my own website, so I created LinuxMint.com. Version 1.0 (of the distribution) was a quick experiment to see how some of the ideas I wrote about in my reviews could be implemented. I was surprised to see people were more interested in it than in my articles.”
After a while, Clem started to get a flavour for what the people wanted, and he started to get the idea of how he would construct, and create, a distribution himself. Clem then went on to post more articles and tutorials. He saw the innovations of the time, and improved on them, adding his own ideas.
“With version 2 onwards, there was an audience on LinuxMint.com which didn’t really care about the articles at all and just wanted to see another release,” says Clem. “Bianca (2.2) was the first release which was released with the ambition to establish a new Linux distribution and to compete with the very best.”
Linux Mint was being developed during a time that marked the end of the standard operating system desktop, and the beginning of a new-look desktop. Windows XP was starting to look its age, even in 2006, after just five years of life. It was riddled with security flaws, and its drain on system resources was starting to show, even after the launch of service pack two.
Windows Vista appeared early in 2007, and with it came the final nail in the coffin for many disgruntled Microsoft users. Having an operating system that would only run perfectly on a very small population of computers was ridiculous. The hardware requirements for the full set of Vista features catered for roughly 5% of the machines, and users abandoned Windows in their droves.
Linux Mint fitted in nicely, attracting Vista mutineers with an already-packaged Compiz 3D environment, along with media codecs and satisfying visual effects. Existing Linux users saw a desktop that combined all they wanted, without the headache of package installations, dependency woes and outdated control centres.
However, the most significant impression that Linux Mint made was the fact that it listened to its community.
The Mint team took into account all that was said, and religiously took heed of the Mint forums and suggestions. They accepted the contributions of the community, and improved their product based on the feedback from those who were using it in the many ways that only the public can. Can you imagine Steve Ballmer, or Tim Cook altering their systems based on user feedback?
The vibrant Linux community knows what it wants, and even the developers of the more popular distributions of the time, Canonical and Novell OpenSUSE for instance, were settled in their ways, and discouraged the adoption of improvements based on feedback from the user base. This is what formed the rock-solid foundation that Linux Mint was built on.
Its ability to listen, learn and develop around the needs and suggestions of the users created an experience that left a positive mark on those who installed Mint. In fact, of the many who parted ways with their previous operating systems at that time, many have remained faithful to Linux Mint, and even now sing the praises of what can only be described as ‘their’ operating system. It’s one thing to encourage a user to install and use a product, but something else entirely to have that user present six years later, still enjoying it.
Common origins but different paths
Clem knew what he was doing when he chose Ubuntu as the basis for Mint. He says:
“Ubuntu was chosen for its package base. It was excellent as a distribution, easy to build upon, it had a frozen cycle… there was no question there, it simply was the best base available, so if I was to base my efforts on an existing package base, it had to be Ubuntu. Other distributions were faster, snappier, or allowed multiple versions of the same software to be installed, but from an overall point of view, Ubuntu was by far the best distribution.”
In the years that followed, however, Ubuntu and Mint’s paths started to diverge. Ubuntu, for all of its ‘Linux for Human Beings’ rhetoric, decided to opt for a radical-at-the-time desktop environment. Of course, we are referring to the much maligned Unity; it’s remarkable how much animosity can be generated toward the visual interpretation of a few lines of code.
In a community that tolerates almost any eccentricity, Unity was hated as much as any release by the likes of Microsoft. The other offerings from and related to Ubuntu: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and so on, have kept their theme, and as a result have managed to retain their fan base, but it was the core Ubuntu direction, and its alleged flagrant disregard for heeding the views and opinions of those using the software that forced a number of stalwarts to jump ship.
Many of the refugees of Ubuntu found solace in Linux Mint, which at the time was still operating with a classic Gnome 2 desktop environment; but the world was changing, and the Gnome development team was taking things in one direction, while Ubuntu was taking another.
Mint, finding itself between a rock and hard place, was loath to adopt either the true form of the newly-released Gnome 3, an environment that caused as much controversy as Unity had, or the Ubuntu-implemented Unity. Instead, it employed an eclectic mix of desktops for the user to choose between during installation.
“Many people switched from Ubuntu to Linux Mint in the last two years. According to the feedback we gathered, the main reasons were related to desktop environments,” says Clem. “Canonical is a great company, they have talented developers, strong leadership and a clear vision of where they want to go. I’m sure they studied the different markets, and their plan to switch audience certainly makes sense. Do we want to follow them towards touch-interfaces, cloud computing and mobile environments? No. Does it makes sense for them to go there? Probably.”
Looking at the previous releases of Mint – from Linux Mint 12: Lisa, based on Ubuntu Oneiric; to Mint number 13: Maya, based on the Precise Pangolin, we see a Linux distribution that offers the advanced and casual user alike an experience that retains the classic look and feel of the desktop, without the commercialisation or look-alike branding that has become the norm.
In particular, we got to enjoy the pleasures of Mate and Cinnamon – considered the true Linux user’s desktop environments. In the end, however, after the desktop comparisons, we are left with the available software and the ease of using the operating system. In both cases, the software is similar, as both Mint and Ubuntu share their basic package parentage.
The obvious difference is the Mint-developed, specific additions and innovations, which when combined within the whole package of the operating system, make for a better experience. “I don’t like comparing Linux Mint to other distributions, especially as competitors, and especially Ubuntu,” says Clem. “They’re not just another distribution, they’re also an upstream component, which is used in about half of our releases.”
“I’ve often heard people describe Linux Mint as ‘Ubuntu done right’, or ‘what Ubuntu should be’. Although I appreciate when people like what we do, our goal was never to ‘improve’ Ubuntu or to produce a ‘better’ Ubuntu. Linux Mint is a different project altogether, with its own goals, its own direction and its own idea of what it should be. Whether you run a Debian-based, an Ubuntu-based, or tomorrow an RPM-based Mint, or a Mint with its own base, it will always feel and run like Mint.”
Is the Mint vs Ubuntu debate really only about the look and feel of the desktop? To many that answer is yes; but to those who have used Linux for many years, the answer isn’t quite so black and white.
Firstly, there’s the political angle: the Linux community has been furrowing its collective brow over Canonical’s and Ubuntu’s choices in recent years.
With the release of Ubuntu 12.10, the community has finally rolled up its shirt sleeves and prepared to do battle over a number of issues relating to features such as the Amazon shopping lens, which allegedly transmits data to unsecure servers; the ever increasing tablet-centric environment; the lack of ability to customise the operating system; the increasing need for a more powerful computer just to run the basic OS layer; the sudden appearance of a ‘how much would you pay for Ubuntu’ voluntary (at the moment) donation page; and the overbearing feeling that Valve’s interest in Linux, in the form of the closed-source Steam for Linux client, is going to consume the freedom Linux and open source was built on.
“I think [Ubuntu's Amazon advertising tie-up] is clumsy and lacks elegance,” says Clem. “That said, we don’t ship Google by default, so they’re not the only ones creating income sources and trying to make their distribution viable in the long term. I have no idea how much their development costs and how much these Amazon ads generate. Developers cost money and users hate to be taken hostage, so it’s important to gather funds but equally as important to do so without hurting the user experience.”
Yes, advertising, sponsorship and community donations have fuelled the finances of Linux Mint projects, but it has never been shoved down the throat of the users. And the commercial aspect of any advertising has never appeared in the functioning of the operating system itself.
Mint has also managed to avoid the tablet-esque desktops that its brethren have so readily adopted. We imagine that Mint will offer such elements when the time comes, but on the whole it is a desktop operating system that has, pleasantly surprisingly, catered for the desktop user.
To finalise the argument, the latest version of Linux Mint can run just as effectively on a vintage dual core laptop, with a mere helping of RAM, as it does on an eye-watering Core i7 with gigabytes going spare.
The birth of Cinnamon and Mate
Linux Mint 13 was the first Mint release that didn’t have Gnome as a standard environment; it gave users the choice of versions based on Mate and Cinnamon.
Mate has rapidly become the users’ favoured choice, and is perceived as being the true successor to Gnome 2; the fact that it is a direct fork of Gnome 2 helps, but in the eyes of users who consider Gnome 2 as the last great desktop environment, Mate offers a sensible return to function and order.
Introduced in Mint 12, Mate was fast and responsive, and combined with Mint’s serene colour schemes, themes, fonts and window decorations, the user got a working desktop that didn’t require the re-learning of how to search for simple applications. Mate may not be that popular at the moment, but given time we could see the pendulum swing in favour of functionality.
As Clem says: “Mate ‘is’ the new Gnome 2. Whichever way you look at it, Gnome 2 was ‘renamed’ and its new name is Mate. There is no other project as active as Mate, which continues where Gnome 2 left off. With version 1.4, Mate goes beyond Gnome 2; it fixes bugs which were in Gnome for years and adds new features.”
The other Mint desktop, Cinnamon, is the replacement for Gnome 3, and the spiritual successor to MGSE (Mint Gnome Shell Extensions). With Gnome Shell going in a direction that offended the majority of the community, a compromise was needed. Consequently, the direction of Gnome was something that weighed heavily on the development of Mint, therefore the forking and creation of the Cinnamon project brought about a better-developed and more acceptable desktop environment.
“Cinnamon is primarily developed by and for Linux Mint,” says Clem. “We make sure that it works with all distributions, but it is the implementation of our own vision of the desktop. In Cinnamon 1.6, this vision extends to file management and desktop handling with the addition of Nemo.”
Cinnamon started with a fork of the Gnome 3.2.1 shell, and included the previously designed features from MGSE. It was designed to be innovative and fresh, and to appeal to most Linux users. Cinnamon held its arms open to those who weren’t convinced with the new, and still believed that the traditional desktop had considerable life left in it.
As the Cinnamon slogan states: “Love your Linux, feel at home, get things done!”. Clearly a slogan that reflects the radical changes that have taken place over the last few years, with many users stating that it feels more like using Gnome 2.x, but with a more modern approach. Users could now shut down and restart their computers without the headache-inducing shenanigans of Gnome 3; and they could benefit from the latest goodies that Gnome 3 included.
Cinnamon also included a return to customising the desktop, something which is possible with the likes of Gnome 3, but isn’t quite as forthcoming as one would have liked. Being able to move the menu bar around the screen, fiddling with the desktop effects, adding themes, applets and extensions was a breeze; customisation was back on the menu, and the users savoured it.
As with Mate, though, there were niggles that cropped up from one user to another; but it’s still very young, and rather than creating a Frankenstein environment, cobbled from the body parts of Gnome 3 or Unity, Cinnamon represented a brave new world.
“I don’t think either desktop will rule supreme”, says Clem. “Cinnamon certainly has a lot of fans, but so does Mate. We love both. Mate is the continuation of what Mint was built on. It’s the desktop we used to enhance the user experience year after year, it’s what mintMenu, mintDesktop were designed for. There’s nothing more mature than Mate, and it’s extremely important to us. Cinnamon, on the other hand, is our own implementation of the desktop, so any idea, any concept can be implemented there and on top of brand new and exciting technology.”
“We forked parts of Gnome 3 because we couldn’t use them as they were (they didn’t do what we wanted) and because the Gnome developers had no interest in implementing what we needed. As an example, the Linux Mint desktop has had a bottom panel since 2006. Gnome 3 has a top panel. Not only is the location of that panel non-configurable, it is on top ‘by design’. Gnome 3 was ‘adjusted’ and ‘hacked’ with a collection of ‘extensions’ for a while, and when the time came to build something solid and functional, the Gnome 3 extensions weren’t a valid solution. So the Shell was forked into Cinnamon, and then the window manager was forked into Muffin.”
Meet the MintBox
As well as the abundant following that Linux Mint has accumulated over the last few years, we’re beginning to see a rise in the number of PCs being sold with Mint as their primary operating system. For starters, if you go to the Linux Mint home page, then browse to the Project section, followed by Store, you will be greeted with Live DVDs and USB sticks, T-shirts, stickers, badges and, more importantly, computers, laptops and the MintBox.
Looking first at the Computers and Laptops section, we see a number of computers with Mint pre-installed from the ThinkPenguin catalogue, including an all-in-one setup, a standard desktop, a couple of mini-PCs and a home theatre setup. The Laptop area forwards us again to ThinkPenguin, with a number of laptops pre-installed with our favourite operating system.
Although these offerings are all fine and well, almost any reasonably priced PC can be manipulated into becoming a Linux Mint machine. The real star of the show, in this particular case, is the MintBox.
Working in partnership with CompuLab over the last year or so, the Mint team are now the proud parents of a very versatile, and reasonably powerful little unit that comes in two distinct flavours: a standard unit that comprises of 4GB RAM, an APU G-T405N 1GHz dual core CPU with a Radeon HD6290 and a flat, black metal case; and a Pro unit that houses 8GB RAM, an APU G-T56N 1.65GHz CPU with a Radeon HD 6320 and sports a fetching black metal ribbed case.
Both these units are fanless, with standard features shared between the two that include a 250GB HDD, dual-head HDMI 1.3/DisplayPort, gigabit Ethernet, S/PDIF 7.1 channel audio, 2X USB 3.0 ports and 2X USB 2.0 ports; 2X eSATA ports, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n (with dual antennae), a bay to house a 2.5-inch SATA HDD, 2 mini PCIe sockets with a single mSATA and a Serial RS232 port.
Amazingly, CompuLab has managed to squeeze all of this into a unit that’s 6.3×6.3×1 inches for the standard, and 7.5×6.3×1.6 for the pro; with an emphasis on the units being easy to open up and upgrade.
The applications for such a tiny unit are wide and varied; everything from an industrial, or shop-based work unit, to educational and the home lounge-based media centre can be catered for, especially since these Mint-powered boxes are also VESA mountable and come with an incredibly low power consumption (9W for the standard and 18W for the pro).
Clem and the team are proud of the MintBox, and rightly so, although it does run to $476 plus VAT and shipping (roughly £297) for the standard, and $549 (£343) for the professional model. They aren’t the cheapest units to grace the market, but they are terrifically well built, CompuLab being a world leader when it comes to designing and manufacturing industrial hardware.
Obviously, this endeavour has opened the gates to a more lucrative option for Linux Mint as a company; however, it’s worth noting that Mint will receive a 10% cut from the sale of each device. And although the MintBox is far from being the first Linux distro, or even the first Ubuntu-based distro, to be sold pre-installed on a PC, it’s certainly unique in its design, connectivity and appeal.
We have already seen many PCs sold with a Linux distro on board, specifically Dell’s contribution with Ubuntu pre-installed. However, they aren’t Linux Mint. Here, we have a unit that can be plugged in and played. As well we know, and have already mentioned, with Mint’s inclusion of media specific codecs and libraries, you could quite easily order a brace of MintBoxes, hook them up to a reasonably-sized TV and start streaming media from around the network. In terms of ease of use, therefore, they require very little effort to set up.
But what of the future of the MintBox, or the next generation of Mint-installed units? As Clem stated in his recent blog regarding the MintBox: “The partnership with CompuLab is likely to extend to the IntensePC in the future (which features the Intel i7)”.
Certainly the added power behind Intel’s flagship processors would be an incredible asset to the end user, particularly if the user’s needs extend to video editing or the playing of games. But the future of the Linux-based PC seems to be heading down the path of the ARM CPU, at least for the moment. Could we possibly see a future where ARM and Mint, excuse the pun, go hand-in-hand?
It’s certainly food for thought, and makes an interesting topic of conversation; after all, we’ve seen how popular the Raspberry Pi has been since its launch; could Mint partner with the Pi Foundation, perhaps?
Lies, damn lies and statistics
If you browse on over to the Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report for Operating Systems, you will find an “overview of page requests by operating system, based on the user agent information that accompanies the server requests,” as the site so eloquently explains. The numbers shown there are not to be considered as the final word in who is more popular than whom; but in the grand scale of things, we can see some indications of how popular Linux Mint is becoming.
The breakdown from a snapshot from 19 October to 31 October 2011 shows us that 17.3 million requests were sent from Linux Mint PCs, which comes to just 0.01% of the total, below Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Fedora and OpenSUSE. In addition to these numbers, the results for this year are 11.2 million for Linux Mint, and 1,100 million for Ubuntu; with Debian, SUSE and Fedora now above Mint in the rank.
For an enlightening contrast, visit Distrowatch.com. Scroll down the page and, as most of you will no doubt be aware, you will come across a Page Hit Ranking. At the very top of this list, leading by quite a margin, you will see Mint; but what does this mean?
The Distrowatch page rankings are, as Distrowatch itself states: “a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality, and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.”
So, while Linux Mint is storming ahead of the competition, as it were (although as we know, there is no competition in Linux, right?), this is purely the number of times that the Mint link has been hit – be that by accident or just casual browsing.
Whatever metric you choose to measure the rise of Mint, it’s clear that it’s doing a grand job, and we can expect to see even more of it in the near future. Cheers Clem: keep up the good work.
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The days when history was considered a lifeless, irrelevant subject are long gone. Today, people understand the importance of history, both from a global perspective and in terms of our everyday lives. History is about who we are and where we came from, and when it comes to bringing the past alive, your iPhone and iPad are the perfect tools for the job.
History apps allow you to combine the best of all worlds, giving you access to all the key details of a past period while allowing you to explore it through photos, video and even interactive 3D. If television made history popular again, your iPad allows it to express itself fully.
Despite the fact that apps were made for showcasing history, there aren’t that many historical apps out there. Thankfully, the emphasis has been on quality rather than quantity, as the ten apps in this roundup demonstrate.
Some allow you to explore the period with the aid of text, photos and videos, neatly arranged in a logical, temporal order. There are also apps that invite you to re-visit the past and explore historic locations, whether it’s the Giza Plateau in Egypt with its collection of tombs, pyramids and the Sphinx, or the city of Rome, all in breathtaking, interactive 3D.
Throw in some useful reference apps covering everything from the British monarchy to a list of museum and archaeological sites worth visiting, and you have a collection that will appear to every type of historian, from academics to hobbyists.
We’ve got slices of history for every one of you to enjoy!
A complete and detailed multimedia guide to the tragic world conflict
Price: £6.99 / $9.99
Works: with iPad
Dan Snow’s TV series covering all of World War II was a ratings smash, and this app, although developed in conjunction with it, is far more than a simple companion app. The app might not yield the same amount of detail as a history book would, but it’s certainly more engaging, and easier to dip in and out of. And despite the lack of depth compared to an academic book, Timeline World War II does more than simply provide an overview of the subject.
As its name implies, all of the events are organised by date, accessible through a timeline view that can be enlarged for more daily detail, or shrunk for more of an overview. You can also switch to a map view, which makes it easy to see how the war first spread and then developed at any point during the conflict. And thanks to a handy – and surprisingly comprehensive – set of filters, you can focus on specific places or aspects of the war, too.
The actual facts aren’t too heavy on detail – short, telegram-like missives in some cases, longer typewritten notes in others – and many come accompanied with both photos and video clips (over 100 of the latter). Some video clips even offer you the choice of listening to the original soundtrack or choosing to hear Dan Snow’s analysis instead.
Like many of the apps in this roundup, the app requires an awful lot of space on your iPad – 750MB in fact – but this helps demonstrates its sheer depth and breadth. An iPhone version is in development, as is Timeline Battle Castles.
An interactive tour of ancient the Roman Empire’s ancient capital city
Price: £5.99 / $8.99
Works with: iPad
This takes you on an tour of ancient Rome through the medium of an interactive magazine. Rather than present its wealth of information about Rome as a series of dry facts, static images and the odd bit of video, Virtual History – Roma throws in some groundbreaking interactive tools such as the bubble viewer, which lets you explore the ancient city in 3D by moving around and tilting your iPad. You’ll also find 3D objects to manipulate and overlays allowing you to see how parts of Rome changed over time.
The app is split into sections, from major public works and the army to globalisation and the fall of the empire; tap one, and then move between pages by swiping your finger. Each page is self-contained, packed with text and imagery giving you plenty of history to work your way through, with the interactive elements dotted around. It’s beautifully presented and laid out, although it would be nice to be able to magnify the text on certain pages.
However, if you’re looking for an immersive way to re-examine the history of this powerful civilisation, then Virtual History – Roma is a must-have. Other Virtual History guides have also been released, covering Leonardo’s Last Supper painting and the Italian city of Florence.
Avoid that sinking feeling with this incredible look back at RMS Titanic’s construction
Price: Free
Works with: iPad
Building Titanic concentrates on the ship’s construction, and what the engineering feats involved represented at the time. Backed by the National Geographic Channel and James Cameron, the app’s success comes as no surprise, superbly capturing the detail of Titanic’s genesis from plans to completion.
There’s a timeline covering key points during Titanic’s construction, from approval of the ship’s design and laying of the keel to the completion of the building and fitting-out process. A representative model of the ship as it takes shape appears at each point, and moving backwards and forwards through the timeline sees it rising up or disappearing back depending on the direction of travel.
As you move between each key event, you’ll see + symbols appear over various parts of the screen – tap one to learn more about specific parts of the ship’s construction, including design choices that would ultimately cost lives. The text doesn’t go into any great depth, but provides a good summary of that part of the ship-building process, and is accompanied by images, or in some cases, video footage.
Compressing 600 millions years of natural history into one app
Price: £9.99 / $13.99
Works with: iPad
It seems like a daunting task, but when you’ve got the Natural History Museum behind you, you’ve every chance of success. This app gives you everything you could want to know about the earth’s history, and provides you with a number of different ways of accessing it.
Timeline gives you an overview of the major periods covered – including eons and eras, while Timeglobe lets you view the changing face of the Earth’s mass using a 3D globe.
The most impressive section is, however, the Timeband, which stitches together 100 artworks depicting the earth’s evolution through species and landscapes. Tap on any part of the screen to reveal pop-up details and access to great swathes of information and illustrations. Throw in an interactive 3D fossil exhibition, tutorial videos and library containing potted biographies of evolutionary pioneers, and you could easily lose yourself in this app for an epoch or two.
Take a virtual 3D tour of famous Egyptian pyramids and tombs
Price: £9.99 / $13.99
Works with: iPad
If you’re a fan of Egyptian history then this is a must-have, providing an interactive 3D tour of the world-famous Giza Plateau, home to the Great Pyramid, Great Sphinx and numerous tombs. The app allows you to view many of these in interactive 3D, providing an expert’s audio introduction to each landmark before allowing you to explore.
You can manually move between chambers, but a number of shortcuts exist to help you quickly jump to the areas of most interest. The app also comes with two additional sections: a gallery of virtual objects you can tilt, rotate and zoom into as you read their descriptions, plus a traditional book outlining a brief history of Egypt before focussing on Giza.
It’s an atmospheric, comprehensive guide to this renowned landmark, but there’s a price to be paid: the app weighs in at a gargantuan 1.4GB, making it the largest app here.
Take a trek around London and discover its Roman origins
Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
This is the second ‘Streetmuseum’ app from the Museum of London, designed to act as an interactive guide to accompany a walking tour around central London. As its names implies, this app focuses on the city’s Roman origins.
Londinium’s fate was tied in with Rome’s occupation of Britain – it flourished during the occupation before fading into obscurity when the Romans left – and an introductory series of slides provides an overview of its entire timeline. Then it’s off to an interactive map where ancient landmarks, including the border of the old city walls, are overlaid on London’s modernday streets.
Tap on points of interest – represented by purple and red pins – to uncover artefacts or check out landmarks with the help of photos, sounds and even video clips courtesy of the History Channel. Overall, it’s a well-presented app, simple to navigate and, of course, a great advert for the Museum of London.
Find out key historic events, births and deaths on any day
Price: Free
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
The problem with many ‘today in history’ apps on the store is that they tend to be Anglo-centric, so of little use to those of with a wider interest. There’s no danger of that with this app, which spreads around 100,000 historic events worldwide across the year, plus has room for notable births, deaths and holidays for good measure.
The presentation is basic, but easy to read and follow. By default the current day is selected, but you can easily switch to any day of the year, with the selected date’s events listed in chronological order, most recent first. Births, deaths and holidays are accessible from their own buttons, where you’ll also find a search tool, allowing you to tie specific events to the day they occurred.
The events aren’t covered in much depth – a sentence or two typically – but tap one and you’ll be given a list of related search terms. Tap one to view its corresponding Wikipedia entry. The app also has options for commenting on events and adding your own events. There is a separate iPhone version.
Your one-stop guide to the Kings and Queens of England and Scotland
Price: 69p / 99¢
Works with: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
This app provides a comprehensive guide to each of the monarchs who’ve reigned over England and Scotland since the 8th Century. You can browse (or search) by name or view a chronological list, and tapping a monarch reveals key details and a lengthy biography taken from Wikipedia.
From here you can add the monarch to a list of favourites for easy access later, plus attach your own notes. Tap the thumbnail image in the top right-hand corner to view more images and web links through Google searches. It’s a handy reference guide to anyone who loves their political history – the biographies are detailed, and will keep you occupied for hours, although it’s a shame they don’t include all the citations found in the original Wikipedia articles. Hopefully the lack of Welsh representation here might be rectified in a future update.
A guide to the major archaeological sites and museums in Britain
Price: £2.99 / $4.99
Works with: iPad
Even the best apps can’t be a substitute for the real thing, which is where Armchair Archaeologist comes in. This – inspired by Channel 4′s Time Team – lists major sites of historical and archaeological significance stretching back from modern times to the Palaeolithic era, using Google Maps to help you locate them ahead of a visit.
The app allows you to browse by place – TV sites, monuments or museums – or eras. Choosing an era lists all places from that period – tap one to see it on the map. Each era also comes with Info and Timeline tabs to give you a more rounded view.
If you’re looking for detailed information about each site you’ll be disappointed – a sentence or two summary is as good as it gets, but Armchair Archaeologist works without an internet connection, so can be used on the road, and acts as a handy launching pad.
View ancient coins in exquisite detail on your iPad
Price: Free
Works with: iPad
Coins are a valuable historic resource, particularly with older civilisations when other evidence is thin on the ground. Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has an impressive collection of ancient coins and this app does a first-class job of displaying them, providing a template for other virtual exhibitions to follow.
The collection contains hundreds of coins, divided into two categories. Grecian covers all pre-Roman civilisations, so organises its coins geographically; Roman coins are displayed chronologically. Tap one to view it up close – both sides of each coin have been photographed in high resolution, allowing you to zoom in to appreciate their beauty and fine detail. You can also view an information panel providing key details and some historical context. There’s also a timeline view available for reading up a quick history of coins.
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Apple is reportedly planning big changes in the way it handles warranties and repairs through AppleCare, according to details leaked from an employee briefing last week.
AppleInsider brings word Apple will soon be moving to a single subscription model, which would cover all of the customer’s Apple devices, replacing or sitting alongside the current one-warranty-per-device system.
Under the proposed system, Apple would offer exclusive 24/7 support for customers, while extending the option for One to One in-store training, to other devices beyond the purchase of Mac computers.
The changes, which may arrive this autumn in the US, before a worldwide roll-out, would also extend free after-purchase phone support, which currently stands at 90 days after purchase, for at least a year.
Another intriguing item to leak from the Town Hall-style were purported plans for the company to fix more iPhones in Apple Store locations rather than replace them.
Currently iPhone users can return their busted handsets to the Apple Store and usually receive a straight swap for a device in similar condition.
Currently, technicians at Apple Stores can replace speakers, receivers, home buttons, the vibrator motor and the iPhone’s battery. From this summer cameras, sleep/wake buttons and logic boards will also be replaced in-store.
The Apple employee who leaked the info to AppleInsider said: “The biggest announcement, was the way repairs for iPhones will be handled soon.
“The way it is now, if almost anything is wrong with an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, the entire device is exchanged for a like-new re manufactured (sic) device, whether brought into an apple store or sent in for mail in repair. Now we are starting to actually repair the products and return the same device to the customer.”
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Microsoft has defended the forthcoming changes to its Windows 8, following scathing criticism that the company would be admitting failure if it brought back features the fabled Start button.
In the past week articles in the news media, suggested that bowing to pressure to reinstate features axed from Windows 7 would be backtracking on its bold new experiment, after just six months.
The FT even suggested the rethink would mark “one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.”
However, Microsoft’s chief PR guy Frank X. Shaw called for reason, stating any changes will seek to improve upon its Windows 8 vision and listening to user feedback should be considered a good thing.
In a post on the official Microsoft blog Shaw, the company’s Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications accused the media of sensationalism and hyperbole in name of page views and called for a more ‘centred’ viewpoint.
He wrote: “Let’s pause for a moment and consider the center. In the center, selling 100 million copies of a product is a good thing. In the center, listening to feedback and improving a product is a good thing. Heck, there was even a time when acknowledging that you were listening to feedback and acting on it was considered a good thing.”
“Windows 8 is a good product, and it’s getting better every day. Unlike a can of soda, a computer operating system offers different experiences to different customers to meet different needs, while still moving the entire industry toward an exciting future of touch, mobility, and seamless, cross-device experiences.”
Microsoft is scheduled to launch Windows 8.1 (or Windows Blue as it named internally) at its Build developers’ conference next month.
Among the expected chances, or enhancements as Microsoft would call them, are the aforementioned return for the Start button, a new version of Internet Explorer, greater SkyDrive intergation and a new SnapView that allows your screen to be shared 50/50 between apps.
For all the latest check out our Windows 8.1 Blue release date, news and rumours round up.
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