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Aug 2, 2012 4:34 PM   Well this is going to be weird. After calling Microsoft's radically wonderful UI design "Metro" for a couple of years now, The Verge says Microsoft is ditching the name for legal reasons. So now what the hell do we say? According to a source "who wishes to remain anonymous," Microsoft is telling Metro developers to stop calling Metro things Metro, because Metro is already taken by some cranky German company called Metro. Metro? Metro! So do we need a new term for the common DNA between Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox, Outlook, and Office? Subway? Or, as is extremely likely, we'll all just go on calling it Metro, because German Metro can't sue us all at once. I am Spartacus. [The Verge] Update: A statement on the matter from a Microsoft spokesperson: "We have used Metro style as a code name during the product development cycle across many of our product lines. As we get closer to launch and transition from industry dialog to a...

Aug 1, 2012 10:22 AM   Microsoft Surface is one of the most exciting products we've heard about in a long time, but for everything the company did to whet our appetite, it left us with plenty of questions about the tablet's guts, too. Tech In 5 has obtained what appear to be leaked slides detailing the forthcoming Lenovo "Windows 8 ThinkPad Tabet 2." Could this be our first look at what Surface and its competition will look like inside? Even though Lenovo goes to pains to compare the Windows 8 ThinkPad Tablet to an iPad, its real competition will be Microsoft Surface. In particular, it's interesting to hear about the tablet's chipset. It packs an Intel Cloverview Dual Core Atom processor. Atom processors are notorious battery killers, but Lenovo seems to think that it can get 10 hours out of the tablet. What else? The 10.1-inch tablet is 9.8mm thick (slightly more than the 9.3mm Surface) and weighs 24 ounces (the same). The screen has 1366 x 768 resolution, ...

Jul 23, 2012 4:39 AM   The idea of Apple ditching the current 30-pin iPhone connection in favor of something smaller has been floating around for some time. Now, Reuters is reporting that the next iPhone will feature a new, 19-pin connection. Citing those infamous sources familiar with the matter, Reuters suggests that the next iPhone will come with a 19-pin connector at the bottom of the phone, rather than the long-standing 30-pin port. The reason is, according to the sources, "to make room for the earphone moving to the bottom". That tallies with what we've seen in leaked shots of the phone, which have—controversially—shown the 3.5mm headphone socket moved to the bottom of the device. We don't even need to begin to describe how a shift in connection type would upset some iPhone users, though it would likely make a lot of accessory makers really very happy. One interesting theory has already suggested that a new dock connector might be directly compatible with Micr...