The application store model is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing since it made it very easy for developers to get their code to users, but that ease also caused the supply side of applications to grow exponentially. The end result is something we are all aware of - application stores are littered with garbage, prices of software have plummeted to unsustainable levels, which in turn has all but killed off the independent application developer. The top application lists are now dominated by either high-profile applications such as Facebook or Twitter, or predatory pay-to-win gambling "games". Doing any search in a modern application store reveals piles of useless junk.

The next step is obvious: Apple (and perhaps Google) will attempt an almost Netflix-like app subscription service, where you pay Apple a monthly fee for unlimited use of applications available in the store. It's the next step in milking the last possible drop out of third party developers, and while it will surely allow application store proponents to continue to claim the model is working, it's just a stay of execution.

Developing quality software is a time-consuming and expensive task, and the current application store model - with or without subscriptions - is simply incompatible with it. Either software delivery on modern computing devices gets rethought completely, or even the last remaining bits of quality software will simply disappear from application stores.

On September 10, Qualcomm is hosting an event in San Francisco where they will announce a new wearable chipset that will more than likely be in all future Wear OS watches. This new chipset is said to be built from the ground up, will allow watches to look pretty when you aren’t using them (like a normal watch sitting idly by your side), and extend battery life.” More importantly, Qualcomm is betting that this Snapdragon Wear chip will “significantly change the Wear OS ecosystem, what you expect from a smartwatch.”

If you buy a smartwatch today, before Qualcomm announces this chip, you will be stuck with a 2+ year old Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip. All of the new Wear OS watches that have been announced recently, use that chip. It’s old. It’s never been great. And it’s about to be replaced by something potentially game-changing for smartwatches...

While there is no sure bet when it comes to a Wear OS revival, this is the most exciting watch-related happening we’ve had on Android in years. Do not buy a smartwatch today or next week or the following week. Wait until we see what Qualcomm has in store.

General Magic spun out of Apple to make, essentially, what was the first smartphone, and John Sculley famously said, “It’s the most famous company or the most important company in Silicon Valley that nobody’s ever heard of.” It was this incredible team of people that went on to build that thing that we use every day, that everyone has in their pockets...

In 1978 Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings. However, after the JIS standard was released people noticed something strange - several of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters

But Popular Electronics readers were introduced to something in the January 1975 issue that they had never encountered before. Below a heading that read “PROJECT BREAKTHROUGH,” the magazine’s cover showed a large gray and black box whose front panel bore a complicated array of lights and toggles. This was the Altair 8800, the “world’s first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models,” available for under $400. Though advertised as a “minicomputer,” the Altair would actually be the first commercially successful member of a new class of computers, first known as “microcomputers” and then eventually as PCs. The Altair was small enough and cheap enough that the average family could have one at home. Its appearance in Popular Electronics magazine meant that, as Salsberg wrote in that issue, “the home computer age is here—finally.”

Gizmo's Freeware is one of the few remaining websites that is doesn't charge for reviews, doesn't offer pay-for-app listing services or accept reviews written by developers and advertisers. That’s the reason our reviews have always been honest and independent and that's the way we want to keep it.

However, we are currently under a lot of financial pressure and its coming from an unexpected source: our users. That’s because 46% of our users now use ad blockers and as a result, our general Google ad revenue has fallen sharply. Don’t get me wrong: we support the right of our users to employ ad-blockers. Hey, we have even recommended to you the best ad-blocking products!

But our fall in ad revenue is now limiting our ability to update our freeware reviews and expand our coverage. That affects everybody. We are looking at long term financial solutions but in the short term we need to survive.

We could easily raise more money by being more blatantly commercial, but we don't want to go there. Instead, we are running a fund-raiser campaign asking our loyal and understanding users to contribute a small amount as a donation to the site.

So please help Gizmo's remain independent and fearless by donating just a few dollars now. In our 16 years of operation I’ve only ever asked twice before for support and hopefully will not need to do so again for a long time. So please guys and gals, stand up and be counted at this time of need.