Dennis Ritchie: the other man inside your iPhone

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Dennis Ritchie (standing) with Ken Thompson at work in 1972. Photograph: nushackers.org

It's funny how fickle fame can be. One week Steve Jobs dies and his death tops the news agendas in dozens of countries. Just over a week later, Dennis Ritchie dies and nobody – except for a few geeks – notices. And yet his work touched the lives of far more people than anything Steve Jobs ever did. In fact if you're reading this online then the chances are that the router which connects you to the internet is running a descendant of the software that Ritchie and his colleague Ken Thompson created in 1969.

The software in question is an operating system called Unix and the record of how it achieved its current unacknowledged dominance is one of the great untold stories of our time. It emerged from Bell Labs – the R&D facility of AT&T, the lightly regulated monopoly that ran the US telehone network for generations. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson were two ferociously bright Bell programmers who had been assigned to work with MIT on the design of an impossibly complex multi-user operating system called Multics. In the end, the plug was pulled on the project, with the result that Bell Labs found itself with two pissed-off hackers on its books. Ritchie and Thompson badly needed a new operating system to provide an environment for their own programming, had hoped that Multics would provide it and had greatly enjoyed working on the project. Back in the lab they decided that they would just have to build the operating system themselves. So in a fantastic burst of creativity (and without asking anyone's permission) they wrote Unics (as a counterpart to Multics). Inevitably the 'cs' became 'x' and Unix was born.

Thus did AT&T find itself the astonished proprietor of a uniquely powerful and innovative operating system. The problem was that it couldn't sell it, because under the Consent Decree that gave it the telephone monopoly AT&T was not allowed to be in the computer business. So the researchers in Bell Labs did what geeks do – they gave it away to their peers in university research labs, under a licence that permitted the recipients to modify and improve it. In doing this Ritchie and Thompson unwittingly launched the academic discipline of computer science, because university departments were suddenly able to give their students software that was not only powerful (and malleable) but also free. The result was that virtually every computer science student in the world became a Unix geek in the course of his or her education. Unix was to computer science what the Bible is to divinity students. The difference was that geeks were free to modify and improve their bible – which is what Bill Joy and his fellow students at Berkeley did when they created their own version of Unix, codenamed BSD (for Berkeley Software Distribution) – of which more in a moment.

In due course, AT&T escaped the shackles of the Consent Decree and started to assert proprietary rights over Unix. This spurred an MIT programmer named Richard Stallman to embark on a project to change the world. He founded the free software movement, invented a clever way of using copyright law to preserve the freedom of programmers to modify software, and embarked on the GNU project to create a functional clone of Unix that would be free of proprietary constraints. (GNU stands for "Gnu's not Unix" which is the kind of recursive joke only programmers enjoy.) Stallman, who is one of the great figures of our time, built most of the software tools needed for his great project, but before he could write the kernel of the operating system a Finnish hacker named Linus Torvalds did it – and released it in 1991 as Linux.

The rest, as they say, is history. Linux became one of the greatest collaborative ventures the world has seen (second only to Wikipedia), in which geographically dispersed programmers collaborate over the internet to debug, improve, extend and enhance a complex operating system that is not only remarkably stable and reliable but is also free. Because it's free and malleable, every manufacturer in the world who needs a stable and flexible operating system to run an electronic device tends to use Linux – which is how your TV's set-top box and your broadband router and maybe also your smartphone comes to be a Linux box. The same goes for the millions of PCs that make up Google's server farms. In that sense, we are all now Linux (and, by inference, Unix) users.

The neatest twist of all, however, involves Apple. OS X – the operating system that now powers every Apple product – is actually built on the Berkeley distribution of Unix, so if you hack into your iPhone what you'll find is BSD 4.2. You could say, therefore, that what Apple really did was to give Unix a pretty face. I've often wondered what Dennis Ritchie would have made of that. Now that he's gone, we'll never know. What we do know, though, is that we owe him more than we realised.

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Boot up: hands on Google + games, Apple increases iPhone ' orders ' and more

A quick burst 6 links you to chew over, as picked by the technology team

"Google passes the test so far. It can essentially duplicate Facebook's platform for games and bring over a lot of games that already exist elsewhere. The next test is to see how many games it can get, and how performance works when the games scale to millions of players. Facebook may not be so concerned about Google for now, but it definitely has to watch his back because his platform is not so difficult to clone. "

"Apple has upward adjusted OrderTotal volume for iPhones, consisting of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone (5) for the second half of 2011 at 12-13%, from 50 million units originally estimated at the end of the second quarter of 2011 for more than 56 million units. iPhone 5 will account for 25.5-26 million units, according to the Taiwan-based supply chain decision-makers. "

So-called digilantes ditch their mission ... because tech was not good enough. I would bet there are got so much to do with balaclavas as tech.

"...These movies include titles like The Hills Have thighs and Bikini Jones and the Temple of Eros. "

Buddy Media, Facebook advertising affiliate, now worth about $ 500 m, according to its latest funding round.

"The idea came during a" what if "conversation with my wife Brigitte, while walking along University Avenue in Palo Alto. What makes Apple with its almost beyond comprehension $ 76B cash? COO of Gassée family is creative and practical, an abstract painter turned "timber variance"-she builds or rebuilds houses in Palo Alto. She is not enchanted by technology and is a utilitarian conception of computers, phones, navigation systems, tablets ... a position that provides a useful counterpoint to my sometimes overly enthusiastic embrace of something that computes. "

You can follow the guardian technology's linkbucket on delicious

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Hipstamatic: app that adds instant nostalgia to your iPhone snaps

Snap happy: with Hipstamatic, now also can you your vacation pics look like Beach House press shots.

As technology speeds past us, it is perhaps not surprising that we retain an affection for analog clunkiness. Hipsters have shown a taste to take everything from vinyl crackle to laset Barbour jackets and drag them back in fashion. It is this tendency to thrift-store artiness, responsible for one of last year's biggest selling iPhone apps, Hipstamatic. For just £ 1.19 lets Iphone's digital camera produces images that look something like your parents 1972 holiday Snaps.

App itself recreates the look of an old square-frame camera and take Polaroid-style pictures. With a swipe of a finger, you can change its virtual lenses and film formats to create a series of over-tangerine or discolored effects. See the results, check any number of Twitter profiles or press shots for bands such as summer camp and vaccines.

After Hipstamatics success is a new exhibition based on Hipstamatics, a blog of the app's best shots in Orange Dot Gallery. Started last summer by photography enthusiast Jack Thomas hosts his own shot, grew it to accommodate other he found online. It was not long before people started submitting their own images.

"I realized, I had this ever-growing online photo reel," Thomas says, "and natural progression was to showcase best prints.

Like pictures of your own is Hipstamatic history a little blurry. The official "story" is that developers Ryan Dorshorst and Lucas Buick found a website dedicated to Wisconsin brothers Bruce and Winston Dorbowski, who in 1982 had the idea to make a cheap, plastic camera. The brothers spent months in a hut makes 157 cameras, before they were both killed in a freak drink-driving incident. Fast Forward to 2009 and Dorshorst and Buick approach Dorbowskis ' brother, Richard, to create the Hipstamatic app.

Just a little digging online reveals that narrative does not check in. But cute piece of viral marketing or not, the imaginative tale adds yet another layer of vintage taste to the camera.

Hipstamatic won greater legitimacy in November, however, when the New York Times snapper Damon Winter used his iPhone to a shoot in Afghanistan. Winters unobtrusive photographs of us soldiers subsequently made the paper cover.

For exhibition selected Thomas 157 best pictures (magic number of original Hipstamatics) submitted to the blog. "I love the idea of taking something banal or unclear and makes it beautiful," he said, summing up Hipstamatics popularity – it manages to make every moment captured, however, boring, like perfect sunny memories of your childhood.

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iPhone 4s sold on as owners feel the pinch

iPhone 4s are resold for £ 430 on eBay. Photo: Kin Cheung/AP

Mobile phone recycling companies have seen a steep increase in the number of phones will be redeemed in, with the iPhone 4 among the most popular traded.

SellMyMobile.com, a site that compares prices from mobile recycling sites, have seen a 70% increase in inquiries about mobile phone recycling in the last week of last year, while site traffic continued to increase in January.

Smartphones have covered tables with the Nokia 5800 Xpress music, BlackBerry 8520 Curve and iPhone 3GS 8 Gb commonly recycled. These models are all between 18 months and two years old, but can still fetch around £ 150, and the owners are likely to have come to the end of their contracts and are able to upgrade.

More surprising is 844 iPhone 4s and 113 HTC Windows 7 that owners have recovered since 26 December. These are relatively new models with HTC phone launched just three months ago. Nine iPads have been sold.

SellMyMobile.com relates to the recycling of these models to the high prices they command: £ 360 for iPhone 4 32 Gb.

Keir McConomy, CEO of SellMyMobile.com, said: "to sell consumers on iPhone 4s can mean only one thing: they need cash, and fast. There are simply not a more desirable phone on the market, so the only possible explanation for their sudden resale popularity is that people really need a extra £ 360 in their pockets as VAT hike pieces. "

Mazumamobile.com has bought between 60 and 100 iPhone 4s each day. Charlo Carabott, Executive Director of the company, says: "we were intrigued when we saw people offers iPhone 4s to us, so asked them why they want to reuse. Some of them have received cash problems, while others have been offered upgrades to the iPhone 4s, but decided they were satisfied with their existing phone and decide to sell the iPhone to fund their monthly mobile costs.

Many people use the online phone recycling collection, because they are quick and easy, but they could get better prices by selling on eBay. 16 Gb iPhone 4 would have retrieved approximately £ 315 from mazumamobile.com and Envirofone.com on Friday, but the same model downloaded £ 430 on eBay.

A spokesman for the consumer credit counselling service said, selling an expensive phone may facilitate cash flow problems in the short term (especially if the phone is "pay as you go"). But he said: "who are suffering from the ongoing liquidity problems would do better to come into contact with a free debt advice service as CCCS for help in working out of a long-term solution."

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The iPhone is about to lose its mojo?

A Tokyo shopper brandishes his iPhone 4 after product launch in June 2010. Photo: Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images

A growing number of tech experts predicting iPhone is in danger of losing its "smart phone wars" for an upstart operating system from Google, in a dramatic reversal of fortune for one of the world's coolest high-tech products.

For many people is the iPhone still the last word in digital chic. Its sleek style and touch-screen changed the way many used their mobile phones.

Next month, Apple's device will be launched on a different network, phone in the United States, make it available to millions more customers. The news has created a huge buzz, and some have whispered that Apple may one day become the first billion-dollar company in the world. This should be a great time for angry Apple chief executive Steve Jobs. Or it would be if not for the growing commercial clout of Google's Android.

"Too late for the iPhone," read a headline last week in a daily Beast column of tech author Dan Lyons. Many experts agreed. "Android has taken over from what I can see," said Joe Sullivan, founder of site Journerdism who studies mobile technology industry. Some commercial statistics bear. Android mobiles now outselling iPhones in the United States. Latest figures from the United States shows the Android and iPhone neck and neck in market share – but with 40.8% of the new smart phone sales in six months to November will Android and 26.9% to iPhones.

Critics say that the iPhone launch on Verizon network is too late, and that it too long relied on AT&T patchy service. That has allowed Android to take off with such speed that it has left a time cutting-edge iPhone in its wake. "It was almost comical how much people said they hated AT&T," said Rob Jackson, editor of Phandroid, a tech site that tracks Android market.

But the greater problem lies with the real differences between iPhones and Android. While the iPhone is the whole package of network technology and phone, Android is an operating system, many different phone models can use. It allows users of an enormous number of choices Androids about how complex (or not) they want their phone be. IPhone users are in the meantime, mainly bound to what Apple only allows them to do and buy.

"Personally, I prefer Android. I would like to change things around my need. But if I recommend my mother had a phone, I would recommend an iPhone, "says Sullivan. Lyon was in his article for the daily beast even more concise about the limitations of the iPhone. ' [It] is a bit like the situation you had with Henry Ford Model T, where you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black, ' wrote Lyon.

The IPhone has always had critics. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, took last year to its own Facebook page to slamming the unit in order to have a bad battery and release the phone call. "I got four Chargers so I can keep it charged everywhere I go and a landline, so I can actually make phone calls," he posted.

But not all depreciate Apple. Verizon will open iPhone to 100 million new customers in the United States. There is also no doubt the excitement, that many people get from products, created by Apple. "It arguably has the strongest brand in tech. it is cool. It stands for more than just a phone. It is a fashion statement. It is a lifestyle, "said Jackson.

It is important. The market is for one of the great success of the development of smart phone, phone call on the devices have been supplanted by email, instant messaging and chat. A huge business ecology "apps" are also grown up allows smart phones do anything from checking the weather to pick out a local restaurant. In this new world of mobile communications believe many, it would be foolish to make solid predictions. "So much can change again in five years, that I not only know what will happen," said Jackson.

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