Tag: techeye

Apple claims sales record for iPhone 6

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News, Products

Apple's Tim CookGizmo firm Apple claimed it sold over 10 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones in the three days after it was launched by CEO Tim Cook. (pictured)

The phones are available in the UK, Singapore, Puerto Rico, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Canada, Australia and the USA – and will be sold in 20 more countries on September 26th.

Cook said that while there are supply constraints on the iPhone 6, the launch is Apple’s best ever.

The phones uses Apple’s A8 chip which is a 64 bit microprocessor, touch app Apple Pay and 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch retina HD displays.

The phones also come with an upgrade to the operating system, iOS 8, which offers new features including predictive typing and a Health app.

Apple is using its familiar trick of charging quite a bit extra depending on the memory. In the US, for example the magic figure is a $100 hike between the 16GB, 64GB and 128GB models.

Diamond nanothreads could lift us to space

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

Diamond nanothreads, PennA team of researchers at Penn State University said it has produced ultrathin diamond nanothreads that could just possibly lead to the production of a space elevator between earth and the moon.

John V Badding, a professor of chemistry at Penn, said: “One of our wildest dreams for the nanomaterials we are developing is that they could be used to make the super-strong, lightweight cables that would make possible the construction of a “space elevator”, which so far has existed only as a science-fiction idea.”

The discovery shows that the nanothreads include a long strand of carbon atomswhich resemble the fundamental unit of a diamond.

Badding said: “It is as if an incredible jeweller has strung together the smallest possible diamonds into a long miniature necklace. Because this thread is diamond at heart, we expect it will prove to be extraordinarily stuff, extraordinarily strong, and extraordinarily useful.”

The threads are extremely small and only a few atoms across.

Apart from the wild dream of producing an elevator between earth and the moon, more practical applications include materials in vehicles that are lighter, more fuel efficient and so less polluting.

One obstacle is that high pressure needed to produce the diamond nanothreads limit production to only a few cubic millimetres at a time.

Windows 9 looms into view

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

Microsoft campusWhile very many people haven’t yet upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1, and very many people have stuck with Windows XP, it seems that Microsoft will show off Windows 9 soon.

Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows has delivered some Windows 9 screenshots from sources he is not ready to name in advance of Windows Technical Preview – due out in October.

And guess what, Microsoft is bringing back the Start menu.  There was much gnashing of teeth when it decided not to build it into Windows 8.x Start menu, particularly among corporate users of the operating system.

The preview uses the same Store as Windows 8.1, while mobile apps will run in floating windows on the desktop, according to Paul Thurrott.

Microsoft has a long running record of producing versions of Windows that are dogs followed by versions that are functional and popular.

Windows Vista was a dog, and Windows 8.x is a pooch too.  Perhaps Windows 9 will be better.

4G phones enter price war phase

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

SnapdragonFierce competition in the smartphone chipset and microprocessor market means prices of devices are likely to drop next year.

Smartcom, Qualcomm, Marvell and Broadcom are all competing in offering 32-bit quad core devices all hovering around the $8 to $9 mark.  They are eyeing up Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 210 which costs $9 in bulk, according to suppliers that have talked to Digitimes.

It’s interesting that Intel doesn’t seem to be involved in this price war because it’s usually the first on the block to trigger price wars.  That could indicate its tardiness in joining the smartphone fray.

There is growing demand for 64-bit eight core units which as part of the bill of materials cost around $15-$20.  Four core CPUs cost around $12-$15.

All of this means a scrabble on behalf of the component suppliers which may well lead to cheaper overall bills of materials for smartphones.

Microsoft no longer Trustworthy

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

bad-dogSoftware King of the World, Microsoft thinks that it is Trustworthy Computing Group is surplus to requirements and is shutting the whole lot down.

Its role will be taken over either by the company’s Cloud and Enterprise Division or its Legal & Corporate Affairs group. The move will mean the death of the Microsoft Security Response Centre and the related functions – as well as the cybercrime unit.

So far Vole has not announced the move publically but it has been leaked to several blogs and, given that Microsoft is trying to save cash, is every likely to be true.

The idea is to integrate the Trustworthy Computing work into Microsoft’s engineering teams. Microsoft has confirmed that an unspecified number of jobs from the group will be cut.

Trustworthy Computing will be missed, at least by outsiders. For years, the TwC group at Microsoft played an important role in the security industry.

It was started in 2002, and appeared to make huge improvements to Volish security. It dealt with some hard security topics, and seemed to get security into Microsoft’s thought.

It did those things, however it was more PR and spin for outsiders. Microsoft insiders said that the unit was there to create the perception that Microsoft had a handle on security, while at the same time getting the experience it needed within its own divisions.

Microsoft walking away from it is part of the mind-set where enterprise desktops give way to cloud and mobile and ‘things’.

 

Amazon can’t read Germany

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

german strikeUS online bookseller Amazon is continuing its war against the German unions despite multiple strikes shutting down its business.

American companies generally do not understand trade unions, which they see as a communistic method by which workers get things like decent wages and conditions which prevent the shareholders and management becoming as wealthy as they should. In the US, trade unions are identified as being in the pockets of organised crime.

In the EU, where things are a little more balanced, unions have a little more respect and power.  But not, in Amazon with appears to be going through the sort of battles that Margaret Thatcher had with the coal miners in the 1980s.

Workers at German warehouses of online retailer Amazon.com took strike action again on Monday as labour union Verdi pressed its demands in a long-running dispute over pay and conditions.

Verdi said in a statement it had called out workers to strike at distribution centers in Bad Hersfeld, Leipzig, Graben and Rheinberg. Verdi had in June staged walkouts at three of those sites.

Amazon hires 9,000 warehouse staff at nine distribution centers in Germany, its second-biggest market behind the United States, plus 14,000 seasonal workers.

Verdi wants Amazon to raise pay for workers at its distribution centres in accordance with collective bargaining agreements across the mail order and retail industry in Germany and has organised several stoppages over the past year.

Amazon insists that its warehouse staff are logistics workers and says they receive above-average pay by the standards of that industry.

AMD reads Synopsys

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

AMDlogoAMD has signed a deal with Synopsys, which gives it access to a range of designs and intellectual property on advanced 16nm/14nm and 10nm FinFET process technologies.

According to Kitguru, AMD will give Synopsys IP and engineering resources.

AMD gets interface, memory compiler, logic library and analogue intellectual property from Synopsys and will use it to develop future generations of chips to be made using 14nm/16nm as well as 10nm FinFET manufacturing processes.

Synopsys hires approximately 150 AMD IP R&D engineers and gains access to AMD’s interface and foundation IP. The move clearly saves AMD money although it is not so good in terms of resources, whereas Synopsys becomes stronger.

Synopsys provides chip designers a broad range of high-quality IP for integration into system-on-chips (SoCs) and delivering expert technical support. It makes its cash effectively developing non-critical areas of chips.

AMD has a huge library of various complex IP used in advanced microprocessors and graphics processing units.  AMD gets silicon-proven IP for the chips it will make in the next several years in exchange for interface and foundation IP as well as engineers. AMD claims that it will give it ability to “focus its valuable engineering resources on its ongoing product differentiation and IP reuse strategy.”

Mark Papermaster, AMD senior vice president and chief technology officer said that it will allow AMD to focus internal teams on designing the 64-bit processor, graphics and peripheral IP that makes the difference between AMD and its competition.

Synopsys can deal with AMD’s future SoCs.  The two companies have been working together for more than a decade.

 

Putin wants Obama’s internet kill switch

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

Putin + gunTsar Vladimir Putin of Russia is envious of the fact that President Barak Obama can flick a switch and turn off the internet.

Apparently the Kremlin is to discuss taking control of the .ru domain and measures to disconnect Russians from the web in the event of a serious military confrontation or big anti-government protests at home.

Putin will discuss what steps Moscow might take to disconnect Russian citizens from the web “in an emergency”, the Vedomosti newspaper reported.

It means that it would strengthen Russia’s sovereignty in cyberspace, but also bring the domain .ru under state control.

Putin controls the TV and the country’s newspapers, but has left the internet as an open place for discussion. At the moment it is policed by state-sponsored bloggers and Putin fans.

The move seems to come as Putin is squaring off against Western media which it thinks is unfair in  its coverage of the invasion of the Ukraine.  Apparently Putin is furious that the Western media does not agree with his decision to arm Russian nationalists so that they can shoot down passenger jets or refuse to print his claim that the Ukraine government are really Nazis.

Of course the fact that the Russians beat up a BBC team that went to investigate reports of Russian servicemen killed in Ukraine does not really endear him to the Western hacks.

According to Vedomosti, Russia plans to introduce the new measures early next year.  Russia has mooted building a “national internet”, which would in effect be a domestic intranet. These proposals go further, expanding the government’s control over ordinary Russian internet users and their digital habits.

It would be technically possible for Moscow to shut off the internet because Russia has “surprisingly few” international exchange points. All of them are under the control of national long-distance operations, like Rostelecom, which is onside with Putin.

Putin is popular but the economy, which is already teetering on the verge of recession, is reeling from ever more stringent Western sanctions over Moscow’s alleged support for separatists in eastern-Ukraine.

AMD ready to bang bang Maxwell’s silver hammer

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

maxwellMystery surrounds the launch of a new AMD product this week, with pundits suggesting that it might be a new GPU.

AMD released a GPU related teaser comes a day after NVIDIA showed off its new  Maxwell graphics card which include the GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970. The launch was important because it is supposed to be a new era of powerful and highly efficient graphics cards. AMD might have an answer to that.

It released a tweet connected to its matrix pills campaign to market the new GPUs — one is blue and one is red. A similar marketing campaign was used during the launch of the HD 7770 GHz graphics card.

The Verdetrol pills were used as a teaser for the launch of the first GHz edition graphic card from AMD but they did another teaser with the Radeon R9 295X2 where they used two packs of chips and a water bottle to indicate their water-cooled dual GPU solution.

Since the marketing is similar there’s a blue pill which might indicate a water cooling solution such as the one that was leaked a while ago and the red pill may indicate the Radeon chip which will be used to power the graphics card based on the GCN architecture.

Smart money is that it is the launch of the new Radeon R9 285X sometime in late September.

AMD is not just messing around with the pills either. AMD has a teaser for a FirePro product where they ask “Can you name our first product that processed graphics independently of the CPU”.

This could be related to either a Radeon or a FirePro product.  It will be a year since AMD has introduced most of their lineup next month and will probably be the best time for AMD to offer new replacements.

Nevertheless, AMD has to do something to tackle Nvidia’s Maxwell and if has new high-end chips ready then it will need to play them fast.

Tesco finds huge black hole in accounts

Posted on September 22, 2014 by - News

tescoMajor British grocer Tesco unexpectedly announced that it had overstated its profits to the tune of £250 million.

It has launched an inquiry into the accounting mess and in the meantime has suspended four senior executives until the inquiry is complete.

Those four executives are believed to include Tesco UK’s MD, Chris Bush.

Deloitte will head up the inquiry and as a result of the mess Tesco will deliver its next financial results in late rather than early October.

Dave Lewis, who took over the helm of chief executive officer earlier this month said that the company had uncovered a serious problem and acted to address it.

Shares in the giant grocer fell on the unexpected news by as much as 10 percent.

It is the third profit warning Tesco has made this year and it is believed the overstatement is caused to accounting anomalies in the food division.

Multiferroics could revolutionise memory devices

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

memoryfutureA team of researchers at the City College of New York (CCNY) claims to have discovered new complex oxides that have both magnetic and ferroelectric properties.

That opens the possibility of producing advanced memory devices that can use both properties.

The CCNY team have made a mineral that isn’t found in nature and is based on barium, titanium and manganese, according to lead researcher Professor Stephen O’Brien.

In combination with other teams from other universities they observed magnetic and ferroelectric properties in a crystal group that’s called “multiferroic”.

O’Brien thinks: “The Holy Grail in this field is the combination of both magnetic and ferroelectric elements at room temperature with a sufficient magnitude of interaction.”

He said using these properties could displace flash memory or lead to small memory devices that have “massive” storage capacities.

The quest is for the ultimate memory device, it seems.

LTE to boost broadband access for homes

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

wirelessmastThe widespread  adoption of LTE for fast internet access on smartphones and tablets will have a knock on effect on the broadband wireless market.

That’s according to ABI Research, which foresees the widespread adoption of LTE making it easier for people without DSL, cable or fibre optic broadband to have fast internet connections in their home.

And a number of chipset and other vendors will accelerate that push, according to Jake Saunders, 4G director at the market research company.

Those include vendors including Huawei, ZTE, and Netgear, which are all readying routers based on LTE that will let people have 4G connections at home. Chipsets from Intel, Sequans, Qualcomm and GTE are all competing in this space.

Shipment numbers for residential and commercal LTE gateways is set to grow to 44 million units by 2019.  Many people living in rural areas who have been excluded from fast net access are likely to have an answer to their problems sooner rather than later.

Bug slows Apple’s health push

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

gala_appleApple said a problem with its iOS8 means that apps for fitness and health are likely to be delayed.

The problem comes from Apple’s HealthKit – a developer tool that lets third party developers like their own applications and devices communicate with Apple’s own features.

But Apple is downplaying the problem and claims it will fix the bug by the end of a month.  HealthKit is a back end set of functions and is different from its own Health app released in iOS8.

Meanwhile, people that have upgraded their Apple kit to iOS8 continue to grumble over minor glitches.

Some people have complained that they’ve had to delete content to give enough space for iOS8, while others have complained about problems with Dropbox.

Teething problems aren’t unusual for upgrades to operating systems. Experts generally advise people to wait a little while before installing the upgrades while minor glitches are ironed out.

Thin clients have their day

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

Dell logoAs many as 97 percent of enterprise client device are now thin clients and share continues to grow.

That’s according to market research firm IDC, reporting on sales in the second calendar quarter of this year.

Growth in these type of devices is epected to be 5.8 million units, that’s growth, year on year, of 6.2 percent.

And there’s a trend for enterprises to buy thin clients without operating systems – so called zero clients.  Those types of devices held a 27.9 percent share in Q2 2014, and up 22.8 percent from the first quarter this year.

Windows Embedded OS thin clients hold the lead with 41.6 percent share.

As far as vendors go, Dell (DellWyse) is top of the pile, with a 28.8 percent share. HP has fallen to number two, with 26.5 percent share.  Ncomputing is third at 11.6 percent share, followed by Centerm which has a large share in Chinese markets, and Igel which is strong in western Europe.

Amazon introduces more tablets

Posted on September 19, 2014 by - News

Fire HD6 from AmazonInternet giant Amazon announced the Fire HD6 tablet, at a price of £79 for the base model. It also introduced the Fire HDX8.9 at £329, and two Kindles.

The cheap and cheerful Fire HD6 comes in two configurations, an 8GB and a 16GB version – the latter costs £99.

The device comes in a range of five colours, uses a 1.5GHz quad core processor, a six inch HD display, and front and rear cameras.

It also includes unlimited cloud storage for photos taken with all of its Fire devices. It gives access to Android apps and is compatible with most of the digital content on the interweb.

The device weighs 290 grams and has a claimed battery life of eight hours.  Full charge via a micro USB port – supplied in the box – takes six hours.

It also has a Slimport USB 2.0 microB connector that lets you plug it into HDTV or VGA monitors or to PCs and Macs.

The Fire HD6 has a limited guarantee of a year.

The Kindle comes with touch now and costs £59, while the Kindle Voyage costs from £169.