The world is flat - iOS to join Windows in the race to smooth

We're in high spirits this week thanks to at least five minutes of warm sunshine - and that means using headlines with the word "Yippee!" in them. "Yippee!" says Matt Swider, reporting the news that Microsoft's Surface has cracked the tablet top five. "Microsoft is in it. In it to Win8," he puns, painfully: analysts at IDC reckon that Microsoft moved some 900,000 tablets in the first quarter of the year, many of them the Surface Pro.

Amazon's still miles ahead - and Samsung and Apple are miles ahead of Amazon - but it's good news for Microsoft as it prepares to show of - yes! - the Surface 2, which we might see next month. Yippee! Again!

Do you know what would be funny? If Apple copied Microsoft, maybe by putting Windows 8's famously divisive Modern/Metro interface into iOS. And do you know what? That's exactly what Apple's doing, and by "exactly" we mean "not really". Apple's iOS is under the new management of design boss Sir Jony Ive, and he is apparently overseeing a significant redesign. As Michelle Fitzsimmons reports, that redesign is going to be "flat". Not just "flat" but "very, very flat," apparently, "sans gloss, shine and skeuomorphism." It has a level of "flatness", apparently, and the learning curve for users also looks "flat". In a word? "Flat".

Looking through Glass

The response to Google Glass has been curiously flat too: the would-be world-changing device may be the most interesting thing in tech right now, but early reviews suggest that if you'd paid $1,500 for it, you'd be a bit disappointed. Our Google Glass review round-up found consensus among the early Glass Explorers: battery life is closer to five hours than the full day Google promised, the screen's hard to see in bright sunshine - something that UK users will have to worry about for, ooh, minutes per year - and the basic features are still, well, basic. Factor in some confusion, frantic head movements and the design of Glass itself and you're going to look and feel a bit daft using it, but it's a fascinating bit of kit with enormous potential.

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24gYWJzb2x1dGVseSBibGltbWluJyBldmVyeXRoaW5nIG5vdyEgSWYgdGhhdCBkb2Vzbid0IGRlc2VydmUgYSB5aXBwZWUsIG5vdGhpbmcgZG9lcy48L3A+