Paragon, allowing users to mount the world

Paragon Software makes software that allows users to mount disks from other operating systems. So say you're a Mac user, then you could mount a Windows disk that's formatted with NTFS and access it normally just as you would a disk that's formatted in a native macOS system. Once installed, the system should be rebooted, then external drives should appear as native drives through the file system.

On macOS Paragon support Windows NTFS and also extFS (used by Linux and supporting Ext2, Ext3 and Ext4 disks). There's also a 'value' pack which contains both and support for older Apple formats such as HFS+.

Windows users are also supported so there's support for HFS+ and Linux ExtFS.

Paragon have just announced Windows support for the new Apple File System, APFS and it's a FREE download. Again it will install so that drives are available through the Windows Explorer (and available to any Windows program). Drives will auto mount on start-up. Currently only read-access to the drive is supported.

The Mac version does work nicely and accessing an old hard disk from a Linux system was painless and fast. An added bonus is that it makes access RaspberryPi SD cards a breeze, use any of the SD card utilities to get Raspbian or other operating system on to the SD card, then access it as an attached disk and modify any of the configuration files before installing it into the Pi itself. Can save a lot of time rather than having to boot up the Pi, log into the Pi and then configure everything locally, reboot, etc.

Though not relevant to home users, Paragon also specialise in making drivers for iOS, Android and other embedded operating systems such as QNX and embedded Linux. There's also drivers for UEFI (i.e. the replacement for the BIOS on systems), so that a system, even before the operating system is loaded, can access various drives.

Embedded Linux is used in a lot of systems like Network Attached Storage (NAS) and the drivers allow the NAS to access content on external disks or SD cards in not native formats. QNX is used in a lot of system that use a Real-time OS and again the drivers allow access to non-native disks.

Pricing varies, ExtFS for Mac is £29.00, NTFS for Mac is £15.95 or the UFSD value pack (allowing NTFS and ExtFS on Mac and HFS+ and ExtFS on Windows) is $49.95 (oddly only seems available in dollars).

Apple announces Carplay, but what's underneath the hood?

Apple wants to own the entertainment space, it first created the iPod with its companion iTunes which soon completely disrupted the music industry. With the advent of iPods and iPhones which could play video, Apple then went into the film distribution and rental business too.

Now it's the car industry that is getting the Apple makeover with a play (Carplay to be exact) to integrate your iPhone into your car experience which when you plug your iPhone in, will now support Apple services such as Maps (maybe you'll get to where you want, though Apple is improving Maps all the time), iTunes, messaging and other services. Everything can be voice controlled through Siri or the car's own voice recognition system.

Though Apple is meant to be announcing embedded iOS 7 for exactly these types of applications, it seems that Carplay actually uses Blackberry's QNX (Blackberry purchased QNX a while back and it's now the basis of BB10). QNX is a "micro" kernel realtime operating system and has been around for a long time and powers many ATMs and devices such as that. QNX also pushes their OS to auto manufacture to power their "infotainment" systems (formally known as ICE or In Car Entertainment) and it's exactly this use that powers Carplay.

The first cars to support Carplay will be Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo, followed by BMW, Ford, General Motors, Honda and Jaguar Land Rover.

If Carplay gets widely deployed, it could be Blackberry's saving grace, though maybe Apple will just buy them.

Nokia dumps Qt

Nokia has sold the Qt business to Digia including 125 staff mainly from Oslo and Berlin. Digia had already purchased the Qt licensing business from Nokia in March 2011.

Qt is a cross platform set of libraries allowing developers to use the same front-end code for MacOS X, Windows and Linux (as well as other embedded system like Symbian, INFINITY, VxWORKS and QNX). Qt was originally developed by Trolltech which Nokia bought in 2008.

Nokia has lost its way in recent years having dropped its lead in the mobile phone markets (though it still has a large base in 3rd world countries) as is now concentrating on a smartphone market using Microsoft Windows Phone.

Digia is hoping to further develop Qt which has been used by over 450,000 developers and Digia is hoping to rapidly support MS Windows 8, Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

The commercial version of Qt will be maintained at Digia and the open-source variant at Qt-Project.

Blackberry Tablet expected soon

RIM's Blackberry Tablet or "blackpad" is due for imminent release. Surprisingly it's based on a version of QNX operating system not the Blackberry OS (RIM purchased QNX a while ago). QNX has produced embedded POSIX operating systems such as Neutrino for a while and now it's rumoured that that in the future RIM will utilise Neutrino (or another OS from QNX) as the basis for all the Blackberry products, bye bye Blackberry OS.

RIM's Blackberry OS though optimised for their handsets, is proprietary and must take a huge amount of resource to keep going. QNX on the other hand has been making real-time embedded operating systems for many years (well before RIM came on the scene), it's been ported to many CPU architectures and 'just works'. As a POSIX OS it's also relatively easy to port from other more common operating systems such as Linux.

As long as all the Blackberry functionality is maintained (i.e. Push Email, BIS/BES support) which are really just applications, they should also work on a QNX OS. This will also allow RIM to support modern processors and rapidly deploy new smartphones as the hardware becomes available.

It might just give them the edge again and RIM can put the Blackberry back into the enterprise market while still keeping the youth market by making their phones sexy too.