TechEye

Trump says Winsome Carly is too ugly to be a president
Dell steps up Chinese investment
The great security god Pan is alive
Apple releases Surface Pro and last year’s iPhone
Notebook shipments up in August
Samsung works on 12 gigabit DRAM device
Insurance firms eye cyber attacks for growth

Trump says Winsome Carly is too ugly to be a president

Posted: 10 Sep 2015 01:02 AM PDT

Comedy candidate for the US presidential race Donald Trump mocked the looks of former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who is also apparently standing.

“Pretty boy” Trump told Rolling Stone: "Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?”

He was talking about the Winsome Carly who is the only woman in the large field of Republicans vying for their party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Trump, leading in the polls among the Republican contenders, made the remarks while watching Fiorina, the former maker of expensive printer ink, on TV.

“Can you imagine that, the face of our next president. I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”

Fiorina, in an interview on Fox News Channel, said it was probably because she was getting under his skin a little bit because I am climbing in the polls.

Looks are important to the bouffant Trump who apparently favours style over substance. When he was interviewed on Fox News by host Sean Hannity that he had not even looked at a mirror so he hoped he was okay.

"I hope I look fine." Since it was Fox, Hannity reassured him that he looked great even though he looked like Donald Trump.

It was not the first time Trump has taunted Fiorina. A month ago he tweeted: "I just realised that if you listen to Carly Fiorina for more than 10 minutes straight, you develop a massive headache. She has zero chance!"

It is worthwhile pointing out that after Tory comedy candidate for London Boris Johnson was actually elected, it made it just that fraction more possible that Trump could end up as the Republican's candidate.

Dell steps up Chinese investment

Posted: 10 Sep 2015 01:00 AM PDT

Tinbox shifter Michael Dell has said he will invest $125 billion in China over the next five years.

The world’s third-largest maker of personal computers said the investment would contribute about $175 billion to imports and exports, sustaining more than one million jobs in China.

Chief Executive Michael Dell wrote in a statement that the internet was the new engine for China’s future economic growth and has unlimited potential.

“Dell will embrace the principle of ‘In China, for China’ and closely integrate Dell China strategies with national policies,” Dell said, adding that the company would continue to expand its research and development team in China.

Dell announced that in 2010 it would spend $250 billion on procurement and other investments over the next 10 years in China, its second-largest market outside the United States.

Dell has been in China for about two decades and, before it went private in 2013, saw annual sales in the country of roughly $5 billion.

In January, it announced partnerships with state-owned China Electronics Corporation and the municipal government of Guiyang.

The great security god Pan is alive

Posted: 10 Sep 2015 12:58 AM PDT

While the rest of the industry is pretty flat, security outfit Palo Alto Networks (Pan) reported its strongest revenue growth in 10 quarters and forecast better than expected growth.

The Great Pan is apparently doing well as governments and companies spend more to protect themselves from cyber-attacks.

Pan and its rivals such as FireEye and Fortinet provide cloud based advanced threat protection and malware analysis products, which have helped them grab market share from traditional firewall suppliers.

Pan’s Chief Executive Goat Mark McLaughlin said on a conference call with analysts that he was seeing gains everywhere.

McLaughlin said Pan was winning larger deals with larger customers. He said the company had replaced Cisco and Checkpoint as the preferred security provider in some companies in the fourth quarter.

Pan’s customer base grew 35 percent to more than 26,000 with over 2000 new customers in the quarter ended July 31. Billings rose 69 percent to $393.6 million.

Pan’s revenue rose 59.3 percent to $283.9 million in the quarter, beating Wall Street’s estimates of $256.4 million. Revenue growth was higher in the second quarter of fiscal 2013.

Net loss widened to $46 million from $32.1 million. Excluding items, the company’s profit of 28 cents per share was better than analysts’ estimate of 25 cents.

Pan expects revenues to increase 46-48 percent to $280-$284 million in the current quarter ending October.

Apple releases Surface Pro and last year’s iPhone

Posted: 10 Sep 2015 12:57 AM PDT

In a sign that Apple has run out of ideas, the fruity cargo cult it released a swath of gadgets yesterday, which have already been released by its rivals.

The biggest "invocation" was a 12.9-inch iPad, which is hardly a revolutionary idea. What made the gadget new was that it borrowed Microsoft's much-mocked stylus. Apple fanboys everywhere laughed at Vole for using a stylus even when there were indications that no one used it. Of course, now they have to eat their words as Apple has adopted it.

Apple's Pencil is powered and it means you will have to charge it every 12 hours which defeats about 80 percent of the reason you would use a pencil.

Apple has come up with a Smart Keyboard, meanwhile, which attaches to the iPad Pro using a new port on the side of the tablet. Apple is calling it the Smart Connector – it looks like three small, circular buttons and supplies both power and data to the keyboard when you need to do some serious typing. We say "serious" but anyone who types for a living will hate it. However the entire set up is identical to Microsoft's Surface again – only much more expensive.

Both accessories are launching in November, and you will have to buy them separately from the iPad Pro. The Smart Keyboard costs $169, while the Pencil comes in at $99. That is an extra $268 on top of the iPad Pro’s $799 starting price, tipping the set over the $1,000 mark. This is a lot of dosh for a keyboard-less netbook, which is already in the shops much cheaper.

Another disappointment was Apple's announcement of its iPhone 6S and 6S plus. The Tame Apple Press had claimed that this would save Apple from the perils of the dying smartphone market.

This time the iPhones are made from a 7000 custom aluminium alloy that is used in airspace which might not bend as much as its predecessor. The phone comes with a 3D Touch sensor that will detect if you tap or press, and the level of pressure. It will let you read a glimpse of an email if you press harder, it will show more so long as you keep pressing.

This "so what" feature is the only thing new on the phone, which otherwise is identical to last years’ devices. Phones will have the same 4.7-inch screen for the iPhone 6S and 5.5 inch for the Plus.
Apple’s SVP of hardware Phill Shiller has mentioned that they come with glass with a dual ion technology called voodoo magic. We guess it means that it has been soaked with the blood of a Chinese sweatshop labourer, because we cannot otherwise see what is magical or voodoo about the tech. We advise that you leave it at a crossroads and walk away without turning back.

Apple’s A9 chip is using the brand new transistors, and the Phil Shiller claims that the new chip has incredible graphics, the motion coprocessor M9 is built inside of the chip but then again he is likely to say that even if they were complete pants.

The camera has a few more megapixels, but this is thanks to an iSight camera sensor, coming from Sony rather than anything clever from Apple.

The phone does have 4k video, but given that there is no 4k content available and the fact that it will eat up shedloads of bandwidth, few may want it.

Pre-orders start on September 12 and shipping on September 26 to the top ten countries. iOS 9 will be available on September 16. The pricing remains the same as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S and the storage remains at 16GB, 64GB and 128GB

What should be worrying Apple investors here is that it is clear that innovation has shifted away from Apple to other companies. Those who bought Apple because it was flashy and packed full of gadgets will have to look elsewhere. Copying everyone else is the status quo in the smartphone industry, Apple has made a name for itself by doing things first.

Jobs' Mob also seems even less in touch with the market in terms of price. The market does not need a more expensive Surface Pro. It also does not need a new smartphone which is more or less identical to last year's model.

Notebook shipments up in August

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 08:19 AM PDT

The news for vendors of notebooks hasn't been good for many quarters now but it appears August offers a glimmer of hope for the manufacturers.

Digitimes Research (DR) said that the top five brands showed growth of 17 percent in August, over July's figures.

In more rosy times, August was the month that manufacturers prepared machines for the "back to school" period but that patterns been disrupted for some years now.

DR said that out of the top five vendors, HP, Lenovo and Acer had a healthy August showing growth of 30 percent, 30 percent and 40 percent respectively.

But the shipments were not too good for Asustek and Dell, which showed weak growth, with DR believing the latter suffered from lack of demand in the commercial sector.

Meanwhile, the original design manufacturers – that is to say the companies that actually make the kit that is later branded, also did well, with Quanta, Compal and Wistron all seeing growth for the period.

DR believes it's impossible right now to gauge the effect of Windows 10 on notebook sales.

And while many of the companies showed growth in shipments, those aren't sales.

Samsung works on 12 gigabit DRAM device

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 06:39 AM PDT

South Korean giant Samsung said today it's ready to start fabricating a 12 gigabit mobile DRAM chip.

The 12Gb low power DDR4 device will be built on a 20 nanometre process and according to reports will fly along 30 percent faster than 8Gb devices and use 20 percent less memory.

Production of the DRAM chips will start during this year. By putting four of the 12Gb chips together, Samsung will be able to make and sell a six gigabyte (GB) device for use in tablets and smartphones.

Samsung is ahead of its competitors including SG Hynix, Micron and the smaller memory companies and that's largely because its manufacturing capabilities at its semiconductor fabs are leading edge.

Earlier today, Korean newspapers reported that Samsung is to take the axe to 10 percent of its headcount, as we reported here.

Insurance firms eye cyber attacks for growth

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 06:29 AM PDT

A report from Allianz said that with cyber crime costing as much as $445 billion, the market for cyber insurance is set to grow too.

Allianz said that less than 10 percent of companies buy cyber specific poilicies but cyber assurance premiums will grow from $2 billion a year now to $20 billion over the next 10 years.

Cyber insurance, according to Allianz division CEO Chris Fischer Hirs, "is no replacement for robust IT security, but it creates a second line of defence to mitigate cyber incidents".

Future threats, Allianz said, are likely to be from intellectual property theft, cyber extortion and business interruption.

Insurance cover can include business IT computer system, but also industrial control systems and robotics.

The internet of things will create further risks, Allianz believes and by 2020 it's thought 50 billion machines will exchange data daily.