But now the Cyprus-headquartered startup has taken things to a whole new level with its Viber 3 version: it’s released a desktop app for OS X and Windows, making it a full-blown alternative for Skype’s core user base. At the same time, Viber has also beefed up its Android and iOS apps, while introducing support for eight new languages (reaching a total of 27).

“Viber for desktop lets you do pretty much everything that Viber lets you do on your mobile phone, with minor exceptions such as stickers,” Viber CEO Talmon Marco explained to me. “What puts it apart from Skype is how tightly integrated it is with the mobile experience. Skype went from the desktop to the phone. Viber went from mobile to desktop — the implication for the user is amazing.”

Hello desktop

“Amazing” might be a tad hyperbolic, but Viber’s cross-platform integration is genuinely impressive.

As someone who has a greater variety of smartphones and tablets than most (hey, it’s my job), I can attest to one of Skype’s most annoying quirks – its inability to recognize on one device that I’ve already read the day’s messages on another device. This isn’t an issue with Viber.

“Another annoying thing is my wife always complained that would leave Skype running on my computer at home and every message I exchanged with somebody [while on another computer] would beep,” Marco said. “Viber doesn’t – when you get a message, it beeps at both places. Depending on where you answer the message, the next messages only beep on that device.”

Small things, but useful. A far more major advantage is the ability to quickly and simply transfer calls between devices and network types. So you want to start a call on your home desktop, then pop it over to your Wi-Fi connected smartphone, then maintain the call as you leave the house and move onto a cellular network? It should work.

Ironically, I find this all a bit reminiscent of Telefonica’s Tu Go play, which extends the functionality of that carrier’s phone number-linked mobile services to the desktop. Marco doesn’t see Viber as being in direct competition with the cellular giant’s “over-the-top” app but, as the lines between traditional and new-style messaging functionality continue to blur, I think the similarities between the two are worth calling out.

After all, both essentially extend the same services across both mobile and desktop platforms while using the mobile phone number as the key to the user’s identity. When Tu Go came out, it struck me that this number was one of the carrier’s most underappreciated weapons in the fight against third-party communications services – now that Viber’s also exploiting it on the desktop, though, I’m not so sure.

The desktop Viber app also allows video calls, in the style of Skype and Google+. This isn’t available for the mobile apps just yet, though – it will be, Marco promised – and it also doesn’t allow group videoconferencing at this point.

Mobile revamp

Viber’s announcements today aren’t all about the desktop. For one thing, we now have the full new version for BlackBerry, which – as we reported last month — finally includes VoIP functionality. This makes Viber the first mass-market VoIP provider to offer such a feature on the platform.

However, as we noted when covering the beta, it’s only available for versions 5 and 7 of the platform. According to Marco, this is because Viber has to implement IP-based voice on BlackBerry in a slightly roundabout way (“pretty much recording and playing back”), which makes latency a serious issue on BlackBerry OS 6, but less so on 5 and 7. Even on the supported versions, “users should manually set the APN settings to do 3G – there’s no way around that,” he warned.

Users on iOS will find their updated app now includes video messaging capabilities: previously, you could send photos and locations, but not videos. “Last online” status has also been introduced, bringing Viber in line with WhatsApp on that front – Marco admitted that he himself wasn’t sure how useful this would be, given Viber’s push notifications, but “it’s there.”

Other tweaks on iOS include the ability to search contacts specifically for groups, rather than having to scroll through individual contacts to find them, and the introduction of a new voice engine “that provides better performance on low bandwidth or in poor network conditions.” The aforementioned ability to roam between Wi-Fi and 3G coverage is also a new feature, and the overall app design has evolved.

The Android version gets the same features as the iOS app, but also a hefty redesign. It previously looked very much like the iOS version but is now all Holo — as Marco put it, “the iOS version looks iOS and the Android version looks Android.”

Next trick

Viber now has 200 million users, Marco said. This is the same number WhatsApp announced less than a month ago, but it’s important to note that WhatsApp’s 200 million users are active on the service at least once a month, while Viber is only talking about the number of its registered users. That said, Marco claimed that the majority of those users did use the service last month.

Given the fact that Viber VoIP calls only sometimes use Skype-esque peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, often going through Viber’s servers instead, this means the company has to spend a lot of money on servers – “We’re probably one of the largest users of Amazon Web Services,” Marco said, while conceding that his firm is still generating zero revenue.

So when is Viber going to start monetizing its service, then? This year, apparently. According to Marco, the company will start selling stickers to its users, along with other, as-yet-undefined “value adds.”

How about an enterprise play? After all, the addition of the desktop app makes Viber an increasingly credible unified communications service. “We have nothing to announce at this point in time, but we think that the desktop offering gets us closer to this,” Marco said.

Whatever happens, there’s no question that 2013 will be a very exciting year for the rapidly evolving Viber.

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The software first noted by The Next Web providing the hint of upcoming, higher-resolution screens is called Folder Watch and, according to what’s new in the Mac App Store, now supports “Retina graphics.” This is a Mac app, not one for iOS, so it leaves much less doubt that Retina Display Macs will appear next week. However, I’m not expecting this to be a base feature, but an option, which is very different from Apple’s iOS approach.

Apple’s standard operating procedure is to generally keep its hardware prices the same from year to year, but to improve it. Surely a Retina Display screen is an improvement, but not one we’ll see across the entire model line like we do with its mobile products.

Adding such a costly component to every Mac model would eat into Apple’s profit margin. Instead, I suspect the Retina Display will be an add-on option to base models. If so, Apple’s Retina Display Macs are finally arriving, but not everyone will have them, in contrast to the iPhone and iPad where every new purchase includes the high-resolution screen.

It would be nice if I were wrong and all new Mac hardware gained the better screens at no extra cost over last year’s model. I plan to replace my MacBook Air, so I’d really love to be wrong, in fact! We’ll see next week. Assuming I’m right, however, I’m wondering what the boosted pixel count is worth to you. I’m likely in if the cost is $300 or less. Let us know in the poll what you’d be willing to spend for this option!

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In February, we took a look at smaller changes in the pre-release version of OS X Mountain Lion that Mac developers are using. These changes are good indications of what we’ll see when the final version goes live sometime this summer. Apple has released two new previews since then with quite a few updates — some significant, some seriously minor, and some that have even undone changes since we last wrote about it.

Here’s what’s new:

General changes

• The App Store now supports automatic downloads, which is one of the things I’d hoped Apple would add. You can also go backward and forward in the App Store and Game Center with two fingers, the same as Safari. Notably, you still can’t do this in the Finder.
• There’s a new popover for choosing avatars, which is used in Game Center and the Users and Groups pane in System Preferences.
• You can no longer remove apps and stacks from the Dock by simply dragging them off. You have to do it by right-clicking, which I expect is going to draw the ire of many power users.
• Launchpad is no longer arranged alphabetically. The “Utilities” folder has also been renamed to “Others”.
• The linen background in Mission Control is slightly darker than in Lion.
• Font Book now has a full-screen mode and two smart folders in the sidebar for fixed-width fonts and monospaced fonts.
• The battery item in the menu bar has been simplified so that the only option is to show the percentage left or not. Showing time left has been removed.
• You can go from one stack to another in the Dock with one click. In Lion, clicking another stack with one already open just closes the current stack. (Updated: Sorry, this isn’t new to Mountain Lion. Turns out, it doesn’t work in Lion when your Dock is hidden — which mine was — but does when unhidden.)

Safari

• There’s a new button for iCloud tabs, which allows access to tabs on other devices.
• There’s a new page-loading animation, which you can see in this YouTube video.
• Web apps can send native notifications through Safari, as evidenced by the new Notification Center tab in Safari’s preferences.
• Reading List has a new look, with a more neutral background color and paper texture instead of linen. It also supports offline reading.
• When you download a file in Safari in Lion, the file flies into the downloads button. In Mountain Lion, it flies into the downloads stack in the Dock, and a progress indicator appears over the stack.
• Safari has a more “responsive” UI: when you resize a window past a certain point, buttons will be hidden to save space.
• There’s a new tab button next to the bookmarks bar when only one tab is open and the tab bar is hidden.

Notification Center

• There’s a new “do not disturb” mode, which disables notifications when active.
• The menu bar icon has a gray dot in the middle, rather than black. It also changes into a moon when do not disturb mode is on.
• There’s a new button in the lower-righthand corner that’ll take you to Notification Center’s preference pane in System Preferences.

System Preferences

• The General perefence pane has been simplified. The options for smooth scrolling and double-click to minimize are gone, with the latter being moved to the Dock preference pane. The three dropdowns for the number of recent items has been consolidated into one. The dropdown for choosing the sidebar icon size has been moved to the top section. Finally, there’s a new checkbox for “Ask to keep changes when closing documents.”
• The preferences for “tap to click” have been moved into the Trackpad pane and are enabled by default.
• The Mission Control pane now has the option to disable grouping windows by application, so all windows will be shown the same way.
• Time Machine’s pane has been updated slightly, with flatter buttons and a simpler explanation of what Time Machine does.

What do you think of the new changes? Tell us in the comments.

Header image via Flicker user sigsegv.

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Exploiting the chaos

The top of the PC industry is in disarray right now. Tablets — OK, the iPad– have created chaos in the world of PCs. The economy isn’t great right now, and more people are realizing that for the most basic computing needs, a tablet can cover much of them, and for a cheaper price in some cases. That means PC sales are chugging along even slower than normal for a down economy.

To add even more craziness, Hewlett-Packard, the king of PCs, decided to get out of the PC-making business this summer. It eventually changed its mind — and CEOs — but not without doing some real damage to its credibility among its partners, customers and retail channel network. There were 92 million PCs shipped worldwide in the third quarter of this year, according to IDC, and HP accounted for the largest chunk: 18 percent. In the U.S., HP’s share is even higher, at 29 percent. That HP thought about sacrificing that gives a window of opportunity to other brands to nudge Best Buy, Costco and other retailers for more and better shelf space in exchange for true commitment to the industry.

But what of those other established Windows PC brands? In the U.S., HP is followed closely by Dell in popularity, which ships 22 percent of all PCs, but is sinking. That’s 7 percent less than what Dell shipped the year before. The current quarter isn’t expected to see much improvement when updated statistics are released. That’s because Dell has struggled for a while: looking for the right brand identity, style and price point, to look past HP and try to be seen on the level of Apple in terms of quality and cachet, all in the face of flagging demand for its PCs.

Lenovo is surging in the U.S. right now, thanks to established brand recognition and reputation for quality, especially among workers. Toshiba, too, is doing well. But the opening left by the current weakness of HP and Dell is probably the best time a relative newcomer like Vizio could pick to try to squeeze its way into the Windows PC business and hope to get some customers’ attention.

A known quantity

The other thing Vizio has going for it as it enters a new space is decent name recognition (it has been a sponsor of ESPN’s HD broadcasts for years, and now sponsors the Rose Bowl) and an association with decent quality at an affordable price. The company made its name when it pulled off in TVs basically what it’s trying to do now in computers: coming from nowhere and taking share from the big guys (Sony, Samsung). It did that by being the cheapest TV in the mid- to high-range of TV brands, a calculated strategy that allowed it move from virtual nobody in 2005 to the biggest seller of LCD TVs less than two years later.

Today, Vizio has since expanded to home theater products, Blu-ray players and even Android tablets, all based on its demonstrated good quality and prices customers are responding to.

Meeting the channel challenge

Perhaps most importantly for a Windows PC maker looking to sell large quantities of mid-range desktops and laptops, Vizio has already hurdled one of the biggest barriers: retail relationships. Electronics retailers have specific amounts of shelf space and place orders based on which products they know will sell. If Vizio was a true nobody, getting space next to HP, Dell, Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, Acer and other Windows PCs would be a challenge. But thanks to years of selling millions of TVs, not to mention its home theater products through these same retailers, it will be much easier for Vizio to strike deals for TVs and laptops, or TVs and an all-in-one desktop, thanks to a bit of leverage and great name recognition among customers.

A subplot to all this is the slow death of big-box electronics retailers in favor of buying on the web from Amazon and others, and the general big-box retailers — Costco, Walmart, Target. Vizio is a reliable brand name for selling huge volumes through outlets that prioritize volume over offering all the top-tier brand names.

Again, we don’t know what Vizio will be selling its desktop or laptops for, nor specific product details, but Vizio has been here before. With a company practiced at making decent quality products and successfully challenging the giants of its industry, it’s hard to bet against Vizio in PCs. Especially at a time like this.

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“The next disruption will come with big advances in UI because that’s all you have,” he said. Behind the scenes, computers and networks are still abstract machines that essentially flip switches, but people don’t think in the abstract. So the user interface is a way to turn the abstract into concrete efforts that humans understand. How does one “de-abstract” the machine?

The biggest clue, Underkoffler says, is space, and pointing is the simplest human gesture that applies to space. We point for the benefit of others, who can determine what space we’re trying to reference. Applying that idea to computers is what Oblong does, and the key is giving tangible space coordinates to every pixel on any screen in a room. Essentially, an entire room around you can be a desktop.

But you can’t drive three dozen screens with a single piece of hardware, so Oblong is focused on the operating environment to create a user interface that works across networked computers in a way that multiple workers can collaborate. This “removes the tyranny of meeting rooms and conference rooms where one person owns the experience,” according to Underkoffler. Screens for input and output — such as an iPad – can be used as a two-way screen to control main and add data.

We might be using one or two screens today in a desktop environment, but in the near future, every available screen in a room could extend our workplace beyond the constraints of an old user interface.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Sales

First, there are the reasons Apple executives themselves gave for considering shelving the Pro. Reportedly, the sales of these expensive computers have dwindled to the point where making them isn’t nearly as profitable for Apple as it once was. Apple has never been particularly sentimental about keeping a computer around when it isn’t profitable; consider the fate of the G4 Cube, for example, which was introduced to the world in July 2000, and then discontinued just a year later after failing to impress the buying public. Desktop sales in general have been flagging, with notebooks and tablets picking up the slack.

Apple has been cited as bucking the downward trend in desktop sales, but the Mac Pro isn’t the computer whose sales we hear broken out during conference calls or at Apple special events. That honor is reserved for the iMac, Apple’s all-in-one that’s proving there’s still a market for affordable, sleek desktop computers.

The reason the Mac Pro doesn’t get a shout-out during Apple’s events is probably because Apple has nothing to crow about, because if there’s good reason to talk about how well a product is selling, Apple usually isn’t shy about doing so.

Thunderbolt

Apple may also be able to shore up the demand for added expandability using Thunderbolt technology, which is another point reportedly raised in discussion among Apple execs. Thunderbolt expansion devices will soon allow video capture cards and other devices that use PCI Express expansion connectors to be plugged in outside of the case to an iMac, MacBook or Mac mini. Thunderbolt also allows the direct connection of much faster RAID storage devices, and multiple displays, something the internal PCI Express slots in the Pro once provided exclusive access to.

Anticipating the mass market curve

The Mac Pro could still be a very useful piece of tech for a demanding set of niche customers, but those buyers are less and less Apple’s target market. Apple showed it wants to keep focus on the consumer end of its business when it discontinued the Xserve back in Nov. 2010, and it redesigned Final Cut Pro with non-professional end users in mind. In both cases, it eventually made concessions to try to ease the blow for professional users (Mac mini server model and promised updates to Final Cut Pro X).

Apple succeeds mainly because it keeps its product lines tight, so that it can focus on doing a few things very well, instead of many things adequately. This past fall, it even skipped a substantial iPod touch update, which is the biggest seller of its media player line, which indicates it could already be anticipating a future where the iPhone completely scratches that itch. The Mac Pro, which is much farther away from its core business, could hardly merit more attention.

Closing a door, but opening many windows

Shuttering the Mac Pro could understandably disappoint some users, since it would effectively represent the end of significant, Apple-sanctioned internal tinkering by end users, but as I wrote about before, Thunderbolt could introduce many external expandability options where once there for few.

In the long run, it’s better for Apple’s core business (and where its future customers will mostly be) to focus on making products with wide appeal that can also serve the professional needs of the few with somewhat pricey add-ons, than to sell a prohibitively expensive machine that only a select few can justify buying to begin with.

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LaCie’s desktop RAID drives feature either two 500 GB 7200 RPM or two 1 TB 5400 RPM hard disk drives mounted in a single case, and each features two Thunderbolt connectors for attaching to your computer and for daisy-chaining with other Thunderbolt-equipped accessories. Mini DisplayPort monitors can also connect to the LaCie Big Disk Thunderbolt series, but one of those must cap the daisy chain if you plan to use it with other Thunderbolt devices.

The drives are light, at 1.4 lbs each, and can achieve transfer rates of 251 MB/s. If you daisy chain four together, LaCie says you can hit even higher speeds, up to a maximum of 782 MB/s. Note that this would also require four Thunderbolt cables, which Apple sells for $49 each. And the LaCie drives don’t ship with a Thunderbolt cable .

LaCie’s target market with these drives is creative professionals who needs need the speed of Thunderbolt and also a conveniently portable form factor. The Little Big Disk is a much cheaper option than the Promise Pegasus RAID System, which debuted in June and starts at $999 for a 4 TB version. Still, it probably won’t appeal to the average consumer for whom an equivalent 1 TB drive at around $70 or a little more with USB or FireWire connectivity is more than adequate.

If I did just a bit more video and photo editing than I do now, I can see the LaCie being a good option for an external project scratch disk. LaCie also supposedly has an SSD option on the way, but that will likely be even more expensive. Anyone else thinking about grabbing one of these?

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The visuals related to how information might be streamed from your iPhone to your Mac is like something out of my dreams made real. Connected devices would be represented by an icon in your OS X menu bar, and everything from calls, to text message, to FaceTime requests would appear as they arrived in a Growl-notification type window in the corner of your Mac screen. Icons let you know at a glance what type of call or message you’re receiving, and you can take and make calls, plus read and respond to messages right from OS X, over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB, according to the teehan+lax concept design.

iMessage is presented by the design firm basically as built-in feature of OS X mail, and it appears pretty much as it does in iOS 5 on the iPad. Putting it right in the OS X Mail.app is a stroke of genius, but I’d also love an option to break it out and use it more like a separate IM client, while we’re all imagining things.

The post at teehan+lax goes into more detail about each feature, so be sure to check it out in full when you get a chance. Any additional features you’d recommend for greater iPhone/OS X integration?

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First, let me clarify that the machine I’m coming from is a 2008 20-inch iMac, built before the last time Apple changed the external looks of the machine. It closely resembles current models, but has a black plastic back and the bezel around the screen doesn’t fully extend to the edges of the computer’s front surface. That iMac served me well, but this one serves me much better.

Performance Improvements

The new 27-inch iMac is a huge improvement over my old machine. With a quad-core 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, it handily beats my old machine’s 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo on all measures. But it’s also a big step up even from the previous iMac, released in mid-2010, which boasted only a 2-core 3.2 GHz Core i3 processor on the entry-level model. In my usage, it’s even been better (generally faster and more responsive) than my father’s 2010 27-inch iMac, which he outfitted with all optional bells and whistles.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to use one of the 27-inch iMacs for any length of time, you’ll probably initially be most impressed by the screen real estate available to you. Jumping from a 20-inch screen to a 27-inch one makes a world of difference, and I find that I can accomplish many tasks that used to occupy two screens on only one. This includes watching a video while working (I had opportunity to do this when covering the recent Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on mobile privacy), and even editing photos or videos while browsing the web or managing Steam downloads.

Screens Upon Screens

But if you are a glutton for extra screen space, the 27-inch iMac delivers much more than just its own monitor. Thanks to two Thunderbolt ports with DisplayPort support, you can plug in two extra monitors with no additional equipment or drivers needed (beyond Mini DisplayPort adapters). After years of odd quirks and frequent updates with DisplayLink USB drivers, this is a very welcome addition.

And the iMac has the power to make multi-display workflows very smooth, even in cases where you might require a lot of muscle. For instance, just today I was running Civilization V, while also preparing this post, running about 20 tabs in Chrome, editing a few documents in Photoshop, and controlling my HTPC Mac Mini via Apple’s Screen Sharing app. Not to mention iTunes, Twitter, Mail and the Mac App Store were all open as well, and all of the above were spread across three monitors (the iMac’s own monitor and two Dells, a 20-inch and a 23-inch). Animation in the windowed Civ V remained smooth, and I experienced nary a stutter in my interaction with other open apps.

Thunderbolt and FaceTime HD

I haven’t yet tested out any actual Thunderbolt devices (they’re hard to get hold of currently), but eventually, it’ll be a great thing to have, especially for anyone who works with video and audio. And though the FaceTime HD camera has been nice to use with Skype, and on the one occasion I actually got to try it out with a FaceTime HD-enabled MacBook Pro, it alone isn’t worth an upgrade if you’re happy with your machine in other regards. It does come in handy if you’re recording video along with a screencast using a tool like ScreenFlow, however, so if that’s something you do regularly, it could sway your decision.

Bottom Line

This iMac may look the same as the last one, but the aesthetic similarities hide a major change under the hood. Even my stock entry-level 27-inch model at $1,699 seems to be able to handle whatever I can throw at it, and hasn’t yet choked up the way my old iMac had a tendency to do under the heavy crush of tabs and apps left open for days that makes up my usual workflow. If you’re looking for a machine that eliminates the technical hurdles of your daily grind, while delivering more than enough power to make your leisure-time activities much smoother, too, this is it.

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