Microsoft explains how Windows 8 smokes Windows 7

Microsoft spelled out acceleration improvements in Windows 8, in a blog post Monday. Needless to say, Microsoft says the overall experience is a lot snappier.
The latest Building Windows 8 entry, penned by Rob Copeland, the group program manager at Microsoft's graphics team, is titled Hardware accelerating everything: Windows 8 graphics.
Some context is first provided at the top in order to illustrate how Window 8 "builds on the well-established foundations of DirectX graphics" in Windows 7.

In Windows 7, we expanded the capabilities of DirectX to provide a common hardware-accelerated graphics platform for a broader range of applications. Whereas previously, DirectX mainly provided 3-D graphics, we added functionality for what we call "mainstream" graphics. Mainstream uses [include] web browsers, email, calendars, and productivity applications...With these additions, DirectX became a hardware-accelerated graphics platform for all types of applications.

Some highlights of the blog:

• Internet Explorer 9 as a starting point: Because Internet Explorer 9, Windows Live Mail, and Windows Live Messenger make "excellent" use of DirectX, they're good examples of what other apps might do. "This led to a number of investments to ensure mainstream apps were fast and looked great."
  
• Text acceleration: Text is used a lot in Windows, so accelerating text rendering in Web pages, email programs, and instant messaging is a high priority. Microsoft says it has continued to improve text performance in Windows 8. (See graph and link to video below.)
  
• Geometry rendering: Microsoft also made "dramatic performance improvements for 2D geometry rendering." Geometry rendering is used to create tables, charts, graphs, diagrams, and user interface elements. For Windows 8, improvements "have primarily focused on delivering high-performance implementations of HTML5 Canvas and SVG technologies for use in Metro style apps, and webpages viewed with Internet Explorer 10." (See graph and link to video below.)
  
• Image rendering: "Several improvements" have been made for working with images and photographs using the JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats. Improvements include "Faster image decoding by expanding SIMD usage on all CPU architectures." (See link to video below).
  
• Example of rendering improvement: When video is playing, the browser must update the portion of the window containing the video but not the text. "To improve apps that don't need to redraw the entire screen for each frame, we optimized how DirectX deals with redrawing just portions of the screen and how it scrolls." This "reduces the number of times graphics data needs to be copied in memory, it also reduces power consumption, thus increasing battery life."
  

In a video, Rob Copeland illustrated the performance improvements covered in the blog.

Text frame rate increases over Windows 7.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Geometry frame rate increases over Windows 7.

(Credit: Microsoft)

 

Source: http://news.cnet.com 

Read More

Apple, Google remove Trojan spamming app from stores

Apple and Google removed an app from their app stores after it was revealed to be harvesting users' phone contacts as spam targets. 

The Find and Call app was originally thought to be an SMS worm but later discovered to be a Trojan, according to Kaspersky Lab. The Russian software security firm said it alerted by Apple and Google to the presence of the malware in their stores, leading to the app's removal. 

Apple confirmed it removed the app for violating App Store rules.

"The Find & Call app has been removed from the App Store due to its unauthorized use of users' Address Book data, a violation of App Store guidelines," Apple spokesperson Trudy Muller told CNET.

CNET has also contacted Google for comment and will update this report when we learn more. 

The app required users to register their e-mail address and phone number and then would offer to find friends from users' phone book. The phone book data would then be captured and transmitted to a remote server, Kaspersky said. 

The malware would then spam the user's contacts with text messages that appeared to come from the original user and including links to download the malware. 

"The 'from' field contains the user's cellphone number," the report says. "In other words, people will receive an SMS spam message from a trusted source." 

Both the iOS and Android versions also uploaded users' GPS coordinates to the remote server. The app also allowed users to enter information for social networks, e-mail, and even PayPal. 

The app's author told Russian blog AppleInsider.ru that the app was still in beta and blamed a "failure of one of the components" for the spam. "This bug is in process of fixing," the app author said in a translated e-mail.

While malware is no stranger to Google's app store, Kaspersky points out that this is a first for Apple.

"It is worth mentioning that there have not been any incidents of malware inside the iOS Apple App Store since its launch 5 years ago," Kaspersky Lab said. 

The malware discovery comes as Apple grapples with a binary corruption problem that led to incomplete app downloads and app crashes. After reports of the problem surfaced, Apple acknowledged the issue and said was working on a solution.

Read More