Jun Dong-soo, president of Samsung’s memory chip division:
“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”
And, as if that wasn’t enough:
“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”
I, personally, wouldn’t buy anything refurbished from Apple or from their Ebay store. I’ve seen refurbished stuff. So called “blemishes” and “normal wear” can mean scarred screens and body cracks. No thanks.
Not on refurbed gear sold by Apple. I’ve worked very happily for the last two years on a refurbed MacBook Air I bought from Apple and I’ve been delighted with it. It was as good as new when it arrived, has worked flawlessly, and eligible for AppleCare (and covered by Apple’s standard factory warranty). Only difference is that I didn’t pay even close to the regular retail price.
I’ve gone with the refurb section on the Apple Store, but if Apple’s moved to eBay too, I say go for it.
Unless you need to configure a machine to order and have very specific requirements or need to buy a machine when it first comes out, buying new is for suckers.
Here is a brilliant piece written by Daniel Eran Dilger in February 2013 that shows how pathetic the mainstream media is when reporting on Apple. Bloomberg even goes so far as to contradict its own reporting.
That revelation appears in an article entitled “Toilet Hygiene in the Classical Era,” by French anthropologist and forensic medicine researcher Philippe Charlier and his colleagues. Their report examines tidying techniques used way back—and the resultant medical issues.
Almost three years after Google released its WebM video encoding technology as a “free” and open alternative to the existing H.264 backed by Apple and others, it has admitted its position was wrong and that it would pay to license the patents WebM infringes.
Google got away with stealing Java code, so I guess it thought why not steal some video codecs too.
Motorola staffers were informed by the company via email this week that “while we’re very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges.” The company email added that “our costs are too high, we’re operating in markets where we’re not competitive and we’re losing money.” The layoffs will affect workers in the U.S., China and India.
Ouch. That means about 1,200 employees are getting laid off.
Producer and engineer Bobby Owsinski gives his list of the 10 most significant amps. Like he said, we all have our favorites that might not be on the list.
The freemium or free to play (F2P) business model is still new and in an immature state. There are some early adopters that have used exploits or tricks to squeeze money from their players, while others created what we call a “pay-to-win” experience where you’re almost guaranteed to win if you pay money. While these tactics may have generated a lot of revenue for these developers, as the market, business model and player expectations mature, these tactics will become less and less accepted by players. They probably won’t go away all together, but it’s better to get ahead of the curve and start designing and executing smarter games today. Here are examples of 5 of these tactics:
There are a lot more than five ways to screw up the free to play model, but these are five big ones. The one that particularly galls me is “Design a free to play Player vs Player (PvP) game to be pay-to-win.” That drives me absolutely bonkers.
Apple devices are still reigning above the clouds, following the tablet trend with the iPad being the device of choice. Among all mobile devices being used to connect through Gogo, 84 percent carry Apple’s iOS operating system while 16 percent carry the Android operating system. If you look only at the smartphones our customers are using, the iPhone makes up 73 percent and all Android devices make up 26 percent, with Blackberry and Windows based devices each making up less than 1 percent of devices being used in air.
“We said, ‘oh the OEMs, that’s their design, they deal with it.’ We got huge diversity out of that at all possible price points, but it became hard to guarantee a uniform quality of experience that the end user had,” he explained. Pointing to the initial touchscreens in Microsoft’s first-generation phones, there were clearly devices with better hardware than others. “If you were in front of a bad one then people said that was a piece of crap; it didn’t work a damn.”
So let me get this straight. The way Apple does it, controlling hardware and software is the best way to do things. Got it.
And OEMs are to blame for everything that went wrong at Microsoft.
Perfect. Carry on Microsoft, you’re doing just fine.
Elop, hired in 2010 from Microsoft Corp to turn around the Finnish mobile phone maker, earned 4.33 million euros ($5.63 million) in 2012, down from 7.94 million euros in 2011.
While his base salary rose by 59,500 euros to 1.08 million euros, his stock and option awards fell slightly and he earned no bonus, according to the Thursday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
I felt bad for him until I saw the numbers. How much money do you deserve for running a company into the ground?
To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.
The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost – Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.
Every once in a while we hear statistics about how technology like the iPad is helping kids learn and how the device is moving education forward, but those are just numbers. It’s not until you see and hear students and teachers talking about using the iPad do you get an understanding of how much it’s really doing.
Apple has a profile on its education page that offers an article and a video talking the faculty and students of Burlington High School, just outside Boston, Mass. The article is great, but the video is amazing. The teachers want the best tools they can get and they recognize that text books are not the best way to go.
They even recognize that computer labs aren’t the best way to go anymore. This is a forward thinking group of teachers. The principal believes in access of all kinds, including giving the kids access to technology and even to him — he moved his desk into the lobby so he could always be available.
“Rather than simply parrot back the same things, students can engage in a discussion about why sites present information differently, and come to their own understanding,” said Todd Whitten, history teacher, Burlington High School. “In my view, that’s actual learning, and iPad makes that more possible.”
Technology can help our kids expand their thinking. Educators, like the group at Burlington High School, are going to be a big help moving that forward.
Android malware has been strengthening its position in the mobile threat scene. Every quarter, malware authors bring forth new threat families and variants to lure more victims and to update on the existing ones. In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter.
Android accounts for 79 percent of the security threats for mobile platforms. iOS barely registers in the results, despite the fact there are hundreds of millions of users. F-Secure published a PDF with all of the results.
Do consumers even want an iWatch? We don’t know what we want yet; Apple hasn’t told us.
What an utterly crap article, from the headline straight through to the last sentence. Don’t click on the link. Just know it’s there, and that a Web site called “Android Authority” and a writer named Nate Swanner are responsible for the stupidest thing on the Internet right now.
Since 2004, Korg’s Legacy Collection plugins have helped thousands of users to incorporate the unique sounds of some of Korg’s most coveted synths into their productions and performances. Korg’s proprietary CMT (Component Modeling Technology) method literally models each component of the signal chain within the original synth for unparalleled realism.
So, yeah, the economics of our business are terrible in some ways. And like everything else, the worst of it falls on the workers, the people making the widgets, doing the journalism, making the beds. The money gets sucked upwards and the work gets pushed down.
Earlier today we brought you the story of Nate Thayer, a freelance journalist who took umbrage with The Atlantic for asking him to rewrite a blog post for them, for no money.
In the interest of fairness, it’s time to direct you to this piece, written by The Atlantic’s Technology channel senior editor, Alexis Madrigal, who tries to shine a light on what he and his colleagues do. It’s a bit tl;dr, but it’s worth reading to understand the modern economics and logistics of digital publishing for many people in the business.
