TechEye

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• Chinese tablets are the tiny elephants in the room
• ARM will make chips
• AMD launches desktop Richland APUs
• Porn app banned from Google Glass
• China shuts down internet for maintenance
• Big Content recruits serious crime cops
• ITC bans early iPhone shipments
• Microsoft: Return of the Start button
• Lenovo smartphones to go global
• HTC exec exodus continues

Chinese tablets are the tiny elephants in the room Posted: 05 Jun 2013 05:42 AM PDT OK, I am going to give this a go. Anything Walt Mossberg can do, I can give it a bash. I am writing this on an iPad 3 because i amtiredoflugging 'round my crap Asus with rubbish power performance. Word processor? Nah, the freebie notes app that comes with the iPad for nowt. Just wandering round the Nangang conference centre it is quite clear to me that with the vast number of tablets around at really inexpensive prices, it cannot be long before people will shrug their shoulders and say why the heck should I pay hundreds of bucks for a Windows or an Apple tablet when I can have a well built one for £50 or so? For example, at the Gajah stand here, there are really well built seven inch tablets using quad core processors and made of real metal and that. The question is, how can you, dear reader, get hold of one of these gizmos? One vendor, who I will not name to protect the innocent, told me that its rather attractive range of tabs can only be sold in mainland China, otherwise his "company's ass would get sued by Acer and the like".

ARM will make chips Posted: 05 Jun 2013 05:37 AM PDT At ARM's press conference on Monday we were struck by how the company was talking about itself. Almost like a manufacturer. Well guess what? A very reliable source tells me that pretty soon now the company will start making chips and is already in advanced talks with a number of Chinese partners. The thing is, the expertise now exists on the mainland to make SoCs, and at very low cost too. Who would ever have thought that the plucky little British company ARM would ever find itself in the position of challenging the might of Intel. It is true, as senior VP Tom Kilroy told us yesterday, that Intel is a clear generation ahead of any of the foundries such as GloFo (Global Foundries) and TSMC, but at what cost? Well, at a very high cost indeed, numbered in the billions of dollars.

AMD launches desktop Richland APUs Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:43 AM PDT AMD has officially introduced its 2013 desktop APU line-up, officially known as Elite A-Series Desktop APUs, but most geeks still call it Richland.  Richland looks a bit like Trinity done right, with a few tweaks and higher clocks. It has more powerful graphics, higher clocks and (slightly) revised Piledriver cores. The process is still the same, 32nm, but more worryingly so is the performance. The first reviews came up with unimpressive figures, showing only a slight increase in GPU performance with a negligible boost on the CPU side.  In AMD’s defence, reviews of Intel’s new fourth generation Core architecture, or Haswell, come up with similar conclusions – it also offers only marginally better performance than Ivy Bridge chips, at least as far as desktop chips are concerned. However, Haswell is in a league of its own. Richland caters to entry level and mainstream consumers, it is a cheap all-rounder and it offers exceptional value for money. In fact, the range starts with the A4-4000, a £29 dual-core clocked at 3.2GHz.  The top of the range A10 parts aren’t too pricey, either. The A10-6700, a 3.7GHz quad core with 2x2MB of cache and a 65W TDP costs £115. It features HD 8670D graphics with 384 shaders, clocked at up to 844MHz. The A10-6800K Black Edition is a bit beefier. It’s a 100W part clocked at 4.1GHz, but it retains the same GPU, although it ships with an unlocked multiplier. Oddly enough, it costs a bit less than the 6700, and it goes for £109. Quad-core A8 and A10 parts should meet the needs of most mainstream consumers, provided they are not into serious gaming or compute-intensive applications. They are cheap, yet they pack relatively powerful integrated graphics. However, making the case for a high-end APU coupled with high-end discrete graphics is a bit harder. On the face of it, Richland should be a good choice for businesses, but here’s AMD’s problem – office boxes don’t need speedy graphics, they need CPU performance, and Intel is simply better at that.

Porn app banned from Google Glass Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:41 AM PDT For the last 20 years much new technology has come on the back of the porn industry's support, however, it turns out that Google has rejected that indecent proposal. According to Technews Daily, Google seems to think that its Glass project, an expensive concept involving Joe 90 glasses, will get worldwide support if you cannot run porn applications on them. The first porn app for Google Glass was announced but was instantly pulled because the app violated the most recent additions to Google's developer policies for the futuristic eyewear, which ban sexually explicit material. The app was released by MiKandi, an adult app store that has a successful Android app for adult content. It would have allowed Google Glass wearers to look at photos and watch videos filmed using Google Glass. The app let users have one-on-one interactions from a first-person point of view, acting as a sort of visual sexting. A spokesperson from Google's Puritan Inquisition Department huffed that its policies make it clear Glass does not allow Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. They had to sit down afterwards and have a cold bath while the reporter cleaned the spit off their non glass glasses. Any Glassware that violates this policy will be blocked from appearing on Glass. This is the same section which promises harsh penalties for any app featuring child pornography because in the puritan mind, the two are forever linked. The porn uses of Glass were a fairly obvious application. The headset has a tiny screen above the right eye that can display web content. But what had been lacking for Glass is a killer app that would make people want to buy it. In the normal case for technology evolution, it would be adopted by the porn industry and then others would come up with slightly more salubrious uses. It seems that Glass could have gone the same way. More than 10,000 people have visited the landing page for the porn app, and a dozen Glass owners have signed up to it, MiKandi CEO Jesse Adams wrote in his blog. Adams insisted that his company was following the Google Glass developer terms when it started creating the app two weeks ago, but those rules were changed by Google just before the app's launch. Adams said the company will comply with the new rules, and plans on rolling out a new app that somehow doesn't include any of the forbidden content.

China shuts down internet for maintenance Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:31 AM PDT One of the advantages of having a centrally controlled internet is that you can switch it off if life gets a bit tricky. It is looking like that is exactly what the Chinese government did yesterday when it became concerned that some citizens might remember the importance of the date - the 24th anniversary of the massacre of protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. China has decided that the best way to commemorate the massacre is by declaring 4 June "internet maintenance day" when all loyal communists spend the day updating their servers while remaining unconnected to the net. To help the loyal network managers, the government switched off the internet so that they were not bothered by too much net traffic. Of course, you can't shut off the entire internet, so some extra special sites were told to commemorate internet maintenance day while others had to bite the bullet and update their servers in the normal manner. Those sites under maintenance include blogs and websites that might want to remember 4 June for reasons other than being a patch Tuesday. The Twitter-like Sina Weibo was working, as were the Chinese operations for MSN and Yahoo. For some reason the dictionary website WordKu.com offered just one page: a definition for the word "encore". According to the Washington Post, a picture which edited the iconic image of a man standing in front of a column of tanks by replacing them with rubber ducks was also censored.

Big Content recruits serious crime cops Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:23 AM PDT It appears that the taxpayer will be funding Big Content's latest purge on file sharing sites. While cash strapped police forces have their work cut out reducing violent crime in recession-hit Britain, they apparently have the money to enforce Big Content's flagging business model. According to Torrent Freak, the City of London has started targeting sites that provide access to unauthorised content for "criminal gain". Since the information given to the police about criminal gain comes from a "collaboration with Hollywood Studios" you can be sure that Big Content has provided the coppers with a list of websites they want shut down. The studios could, of course, mount private actions against these sites and attempt to get them shut down using court orders. However, that has proven too slow and expensive. It's faster to pull police off the streets and have them act as a free security force. In letters being sent out now, police accuse site operators of committing offenses under the Serious Crime Act. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau further warns that the crimes carry a jail sentence of 10 years. No indication of evidence was provided to the major torrent site operator who received a letter from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). However, it should be noted that this unit was set up to deal with serial offenders and organised crime gangs. How this particular unit came to be sending out letters to filesharers when it should be shutting down protection rackets is anyone's guess. TorrentFreak is aware that at least two torrent sites have already received letters from the NFIB. Oddly, neither site is located in the UK. The letter tells the site owners that they have until 14 June to get in touch or face further police action. To show how closely the police are working with the studios, the BPI says that an NFIB officer was embedded with their anti-piracy unit. This is to make sure the message that all filesharing piracy is being organised by crime gangs is heard loud and clear by the police, and it seems to have worked.

ITC bans early iPhone shipments Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:15 AM PDT Early models of the iPhone have been banned from sale in the US because they use technology which belonged to Samsung. The US International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple had infringed on a patent owned by Samsung that involves the ability of devices to transmit multiple services simultaneously and correctly through 3G. This means that the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G will not be allowed to be sold. Now Apple has 60 days to convince its chums in the White House to get Barack Obama to overturn the order. According to Reuters, the decision remains subject to a long appeals process. The iPhone 4 is now given away with a contract offered by carriers including Verizon Wireless, which is not affected by the ruling which only Applies to AT&T. The iPhone 4 could be phased out within a year should Apple stick to schedule and release a new model, so it is expected that Apple will try to appeal until the hardware is out of date. There is a danger that US customs agencies enforcing the ban could delay other Apple products as it will have to stop and search every shipment to make sure they do not contain Samsung clones. Yesterday's ruling overturned a decision by ITC Judge James Gildea, who ruled in September that Apple did not violate the patents. Samsung, making the most of it, said the ITC decision "confirmed Apple's history of free-riding on Samsung's technological innovations" .

Microsoft: Return of the Start button Posted: 05 Jun 2013 03:11 AM PDT A trio of Microsoft executives demonstrated Windows 8.1 at Computex today and sure enough, enterprises can have their start button back. Nick Parker, corporate VP in charge of OEM sales; Tami Reller, CFO of Windows 8.1; and Antoine Leblond, corporate VP of Windows strutted their stuff in Old Taipei. The company said it had made over 900 improvements to Windows 8.1 following "feedback" from its customers. You can still have the tiles, optimised for touch, but you can create a large screen complete with start button and make it sticky if you want to. "Enterprises can deploy Windows 8 more broadly," said Parker. "With 8.1 [our] focus is on business features." Although the free preview version becomes available at the end of this month, the update will ship towards the end of this year. "We've listened and we've responded based on customer feedback," Parker said. Microsoft has changed the tile interface in Windows so you can have different sizes of tiles, small and large. It's now easier to add applications to the start screen, Leblond said. Redmond has also drawn together different search functions into one search system, which its marchitecture department dubs the "Search Hero". You've got to search for the hero inside yourself. Cloud service Skydrive is now built into the platform. Settings have been brought over to 8.1. On big screens, serveral more windows are available so you can see what you're up to. And, to get back to that pesky start button, you can fix the system so the desktop background can persist at boot up. Microsoft claims it has made the predictive facilities on the soft keyboard for tablet systems better, with a claimed accuracy of 93 percent or so. It has also added a reading list which gives you a timeline of bookmarked web pages so you can go back and read all those pages you've noticed during the day. And if you're a cook, Microsoft has introduced a hands free mode, using the front facing camera so you don't get paella all over your tablet. There's also a recipe function and a shopping function for ingredients. Microsoft will overhaul its app store and support for the app store within Windows 8.1.

Lenovo smartphones to go global Posted: 05 Jun 2013 02:59 AM PDT Lenovo is the world’s second biggest PC maker, but it is also one of the biggest smartphone players in Asia. However, most consumers in the West don’t even know Lenovo makes smartphones. This might be about to change - fast. Lenovo is in talks with NEC about plans to create a global smartphone joint venture. As a result, the first big wave of Lenovo smartphones threaten to arrive on American and European shores as early as next year.  According to Reuters, the deal has yet to be finalised, but everyone is already taking it very seriously. NEC’s phone business has faced its fair share of troubles in recent years and a deal with Lenovo could practically save it in one fell swoop. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire. Lenovo exec Gianfranco Lanci has told DPA that the company plans to enter the phone market in Africa and West Asia later this year, while the big push into Europe will happen in 2014.  “In Western Europe, you have to sign contracts with every telecom company and make sure your devices are compatible,” said Lanci. Lanci also said Lenovo plans to become the world’s number one PC maker next year.

HTC exec exodus continues Posted: 05 Jun 2013 02:53 AM PDT HTC has fallen on hard times and the organisation itself has been shaken up by a spate of high-profile defections and departures.  Chief operating officer Matthew Costello is the last big name to throw in the towel. He was appointed less than three years ago, just in time to witness HTC’s biggest slump ever. HTC’s president of engineering and operations Fred Liu will take over in the interim. Unlike many execs who have already fled the company, spreading bile on social media on their way out, Costello seems to be fading away on friendly terms. He will stay on as an executive advisor after moving to Europe, Bloomberg reports. The HTC One is a success and the company is gearing up to introduce more new devices, including the M4, which is basically an HTC One mini.

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