Reviewing 2011
The year has come and gone in the blink of an eye, and it has undeniably been a year filled with surprises and innovation that have created an impact in our lives. Consumers have begun to 'adopt' 3D as more 3D TVs are lining the store front, while we saw more compact interchangeable lens cameras (commonly referred asmirrorless cameras) from Sony, Panasonic, Nikon and many more landing on retail shelves. Also notable are the rising variety of advanced compact cameras closing the gap between the casual and enthusiast groups. Elsewhere, Apple's MacBook Air is no longer the king of slim notebooks with Ultrabooks paving the way for companies such as ASUS, Lenovo, Toshiba and many others to join in the limelight for the new standard of consumer notebooks.
2011 is also the year of the tablets, when Apple's iPad 2 was challenged by the likes of Google and its hardware partners with the launch of Android 3.2 Honeycomb. Unfortunately, the competition still paled in comparison, and Apple is still leading the race. While the yearly mobile OS update from Apple's iOS 5 and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 highlighted the importance of cloud services with iCloud and Windows Live, Google is also stepping up with services such as Google Music and the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. The latter aims to unify the fragmented tablet and smartphone experience.
Smartphones, however, turned out quite differently. With dual-core processors making its way into devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S II, and added features such as Beats Audio on the HTC Sensation XE, the choices were aplenty for consumers. Mobile processors aren't the only ones making an impact, as Intel's Sandy Bridgelineup goes mainstream to makes its way onto a wide range of notebooks, as well as to the workstation and enthusiasts segment with the ubber expensive Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E processor. Even in connectivity standards, Intel, in collaboration with Apple, managed to debut its new serial data interface, Thunderbolt.
Phew, what a busy year! As we gear ourselves up for even more exciting times in 2012, let us honor the products (in no order of merit) that made all the above (and more) possible with the Top 100 Products of 2011...Full news at HWZ
No comments:
Post a Comment