Latest News - Page 2815

Seagate's Twitter account just blasted something both truly exciting, and incredibly terrifying: the first real tease of the zettabyte. Seagate posted XO Communications' infographic on the Zettabyte, or ZB.

To put things into perspective, 1ZB is around 1.1 trillion GB - yes, 1.1 trillion gigabytes. The infographic, above, says that according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index, the "world will cross the Zettabyte threshold of data transferred annually via the Internet by the end of 2016". To put things into an even scarier perspective, 1PB (Petabyte) is 1024TB (Terabyte), and 1EX (Exabyte) is 1024PB, so 1ZB is an insane 1024EB, which is just scary.

What is driving this Zettabyte amount of data? Internet video, with around 55% of Internet video expected to chew up 99% of all Internet traffic in 2016. The remaining 44% is split between web/data with 23%, and file sharing with 21%.

The tubes of the Internet have been filled the new two new iPhones, #BendGate, the Galaxy Note 4 coming soon, and so much more in the mobile world, so BlackBerry doesn't get the headlines that its biggest competitors do.

Well, the company has just posted better-than-expected Q2 results, but still managed to lose $207 million for the three-month period. Even with the huge loss, it's still an improvement from the previous quarter, where the company posted a loss of $965 million. After one-time items, such as charges for laying off employees and other restructuring efforts, the company said the loss was around $11 million, or $0.02 per share, beating Wall Street's forecast of $0.16 per share.

Revenue for Q2 sat at $916 million, which is represented as 46% hardware, 46% services and 8% in software and other revenue. During the three-month period, BlackBerry said it sold approximately 2.4 million smartphones to end users, which included shipments made, and recognized before Q2. BlackBerry's Executive Chairman and CEO, John Chen, said: "Our workforce restructuring is now complete, and we are focusing on revenue growth with judicious investments to further our leadership position in enterprise mobility and security".

Apple is being sued by two parties, Ireland's Longitude Licensing Ltd and Luxembourg's Longitude Flash Memory Systems S.a.r.l., with their joint patent infringement lawsuit against Apple alleging the company is in violation of 13 counts of patent infringement that cover virtually all of Apple's iDevices.

The plaintiffs are using former Sandisk patents that they now hold, partnering up with Conversant Intellectual Property Management Inc., to help them increase the value of their IP. The following Apple devices are included in the lawsuit: Apple iPad, Apple iPad 2, Apple iPad (3rd Generation), Apple iPad (4th Generation), Apple iPad Air, Apple iPad mini, Apple iPad mini with Retina display, Apple iPhone, Apple iPhone 3G, Apple iPhone 3GS, Apple iPhone 4, Apple iPhone 4S, Apple iPhone 5, Apple iPhone 5C, Apple iPhone 5S, iPod Touch 2G, iPod Touch 3G, iPod Touch 4G, and iPod Touch 5G".

The lawsuit itself involves the flash technology and memory on the massive list of iDevices, which could land Apple in some hot water. For the full legal mumbo-jumbo, Patently Apple has you covered.

We've been all over the #BendGate issue with the bending, or warping iPhone 6 Plus smartphone from Apple, which is bending from sitting in consumers' pockets. But don't worry, Apple has now finally replied, saying that only nine people have contacted them with problematic iPhone 6 Plus'.

The Cupertino-based iGiant has said that their iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful, and sturdy. Both of the next-gen iPhones feature a precision engineered unibody enclosure that is constructed from machining a custom grade of 6000 series anodized aluminum, which is tempered for extra strength.

Apple continues its PR campaign against #BendGate, adding that its phones feature stainless steel and titanium inserts to reinforce high stress locations, as well as using the strongest glass in the smartphone industry - yet, it's not enough to stop bending iPhones. Apple adds that it chooses these high quality materials and construction methods very carefully for both their strengh, and durability. Apple also performs rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle, which includes 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion and user studies.

Samsung is soon to launch its Gear VR device, alongside the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, but what about the software and games that will float onto Samsung's first VR device? That will be controlled by Oculus.

First, you'll need the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, followed by (of course) the Gear VR headset itself, and finally, in order to get it all working, the software will be coming from Oculus. Oculus' vice president for Mobile told Polygon: "On Gear VR, there will be an Oculus store and that's how you'll get Gear VR applications". This means that there is no way for developers to release games through the Google Play, or other Android stores for Gear VR. Cohen added: "No. You'll need to go through Oculus storefront for mobile VR".

While this might sound strange, it gives Oculus the control to keep the quality of the content at a much higher grade. Second, it provides Oculus, and Facebook, with profits from the sales, in the same way Valve takes a cut of profits from each game sold on Steam. Cohen added: "We'll have a lot more details about this later, but it's going to be something that's very developer friendly. Our goal is to be the platform, to provide the tools that developers need, and to bring the users in," he stated. "And that it will be as painless as we can make it".

Samsung has withdrawn from the European laptop market, pulling its Ativ notebooks and Google Chrome-powered Chromebooks. Overall, the PC market has struggled as smartphones, tablets, and phablets take over - and the laptop market has also suffered. For Samsung, the company continues to have great success utilizing Google Android on its smartphones and tablets, which is where future focus will remain high.

"We quickly adapt to market needs and demands," Samsung said in a statement. "In Europe, we will be discontinuing sales of laptops including Chromebooks for now. This is specific to the region - and is not necessarily reflective of conditions in other markets. We will continue to thoroughly evaluate market conditions and will make further adjustments to maintain our competitiveness in emerging PC categories."

Sony spun off its VAIO laptop business to completely separate itself from the declining sector.

Microsoft is expected to announce Windows 9 during a September 30 press event, which was unexpectedly confirmed by Microsoft France President Alain Crozier during a recent speech to employees. A "Windows Technical Preview" should become available shortly after the event, with numerous leaked images and details about the not-so-secret OS already available.

During the recent chat with employees, Crozier used the phrase "Windows 9" instead of the code word "Threshold" when discussing the upcoming OS.

Microsoft has an accelerated operating system roadmap, especially as users were unimpressed with Windows 8/8.1 - an operating system that was supposed to highlight touch capability - but instead left many users frustrated.

Much of the attention related to car technology is focused on in-car features to woo potential buyers - but not the technology that could prevent a vehicle from starting. A harsh lesson for those people late on car payments, as lenders are using technology to prevent vehicles from moving until payments are made.

Subprime auto loans have increased over the past five years - 25 percent of car loans in 2013 were made to people with credit scores at or below 640 - so vehicle lease holders want to try to protect themselves if payments aren't made. The starter interrupt device provides lenders the ability to remotely disable locks, along with track vehicles via GPS.

However, customers have complained that their vehicles have been shut down for payments just a few days late - or randomly shut down while waiting in traffic - further igniting a car technology debate.

Old-school camera company Polaroid has fought for relevance over the years, and has invested in research and development of modern technologies. The company hopes its Cube, a 1080p action sports video recording device with a $99 price tag available next month, will help spur interest in its porftfolio.

"GoPro has done an incredible job building a new category in the digital imaging space," said Scott Hardy, Polaroid CEO, in a statement. "But when we look at that market, we think it can be much bigger by not just targeting the professional and amateur and aspirational thrill-seekers but going after more of the lifestyle."

For action sports participants, having something like a Polaroid Cube instead of a GoPro might not be the worst idea - and could help force GoPro to continue to innovate. The low price, half the price of the entry-level Hero3 device currently priced at $199.99 MSRP, should prove to be helpful.

If you're rocking an NVIDIA GeForce GTX SLI setup, what better way to make it stand out from the crowd than with the new SLI LED bridges that the company unveiled during its GAME24 event.

The new SLI bridges come in three flavors: 2-way SLI, 2-way spaced SLI, and 3-way SLI. The 2-way SLI LED bridges are priced at $29.99, while the 3-way SLI bridge will set you back $39.99. The SLI bridges are designed to work with all modern GeForce GTX cards that support SLI. NVIDIA specifically mentions the following cards: GeForce GTX 770, GTX 780, GTX 780 Ti, GTX TITAN, GTX TITAN Black, GTX 970 and GTX 980.

There's one big caveat though, NVIDIA has built these beautiful SLI bridges for reference GPUs, so they might not work on the crazy third-party cards. You'll need to make sure that your custom-cooled GeForce GTX card will work with these new bridges before jumping on-board.

NVIDIA has impressed the world with the launch of its second generation Maxwell-based GPUs, the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980. The cards sip power compared to their already power conservative predecessors, but introduce a slew of new technologies, features and best of all: a great price point. Where to from here? GM200, that's where.

GM200 is now being teased, which is going to be the big new GPU from NVIDIA. NVIDIA's GM200 will feature a die size of 551mm^2, 20-22 SMMs, 2560-2816 CUDA cores, a 384-bit memory bus, a performance boost of around 50% over the GTX Titan Black Edition, with it launching sometime before the end of the year. What it'll arrive as, in terms of naming, is a mystery. With the power efficiency of the GM204 core, which powers the GTX 970 and GTX 980, we should expect a dual-GPU card offered as the GeForce GTX 990, so that's one name it won't use.

Moving on, we could expect it to be the GTX 980 Ti, but if it's offering a huge performance increase over the GTX Titan Black Edition, we might see something like the GTX 985 Ti, or GTX Titan X, something I like the sound of better. Then we have the shift to 20nm, which is expected next year, so if the new GM200 is built on the current 28nm node, the shift to 20nm is going to be an entire new world for NVIDIA. The company has positioned themselves incredibly well after the mess that was Fermi, so much so, that AMD really has no firepower right now - so it'll be interesting to see if NVIDIA holds back, waiting for AMD to release something, to quickly smack it down to reality with its new GM200-based card.

Apple publicly apologized to its customers for releasing and quickly pulling the iOS 8.0.1 update on Wednesday, and promised a new download "in the next few days."

"We apologize for the great inconvenience experienced by users, and are working around the clock to prepare iOS 8.0.2 with a fix for the issue," Apple said in a statement.

Despite software problems - and a bendy phone - the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models have sold well. More than 10 million units were sold in the first weekend of its release, while Apple enthusiasts seemed eager to pick up one of the two models. Overall, financial analysts believe the company will persevere, but need to further efforts to innovate.

I'm sure you've heard by now that Apple's new iPhone 6 Plus is bending in some pockets, so what better time to tease the world of the upcoming next generation Nexus handset? Gogole is preparing to launch the new Nexus mid next month, alongside the launch of its 9-inch, NVIDIA Tegra K1-powered Nexus 9 tablet made by HTC.

According to sources of Android Authority, Google is planning to launch 'new phone hardware' and an unveiling of 'a new software initiative'. The first, should be the new Nexus, possibly named Nexus 6, while the software initiative is most likely Android L, or Android 5.0. The final version of Android L won't be official until November 1 according to these same sources. We should hear more about both the new smartphone and mobile OS in the coming weeks.

Shortly after releasing the iOS 8.0.1 update, Apple has decided to pull it and users will have to wait for a new update. Some people reported they installed the update and lost the ability to make phone calls, use the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, and other problems related to the update. It only took about an hour before Apple decided to pull 8.0.1 as further improvements are made.

"We are actively investigating these reports and will provide information as quickly as we can," Apple said in a statement. "In the meantime, we have pulled back the iOS 8.0.1 update."

Apple has been frantic to improve faults of iOS, as many iPhone owners were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to upgrade to iOS 8.

Over the weekend we reported, as many others did, that Microsoft had delayed the launch of its Xbox One console in China, but the company has just announced that this is wrong. Microsoft has said that it is launching the Xbox One in China on September 29, just six days from now.

General Manager of Xbox China, Enwei Xie, said in an official release: "After receiving government approval for the first wave of games, we will launch with the first 10 games now and continue our work to bring more blockbuster games and a broad offering of entertainment and app experiences to the platform in the weeks and months to come. With extraordinary effort and seamless cooperation across parties, we are incredibly excited to deliver Xbox One to fans in China and we welcome them to the Xbox family".

Which ten games will be on offer for the Chinese launch of the Xbox One? We will see Forza Motorsport 5, Kinect Sports Rivals, Powerstar Golf, Zoo Tycoon, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, Dance Central Spotlight, Neverwinter Online, Rayman Legends Trials Fusion, and Naughty Kitties from Chinese developer Coconut Island released on September 29. Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said: "This milestone is significant for both our partnership with China and our global expansion plan. Every new market launch is unique and we're grateful to our fans for their patience and enthusiasm throughout the process".

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shut down Butterfly Labs, a bitcoin-mining company that tricked users into purchasing machines that would produce bitcoins. The supposed "bitcoin-mining" devices cost from $149 to $29,899, along with a cloud-based service that tricked customers into paying for server farm computing time.

"We often see that when a new and little-understood opportunity like bitcoin presents itself, scammers will find ways to capitalize on the public's excitement and interest," said Jessica Rich, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director, in a press statement. "We're pleased the court granted our request to halt this operation, and we look forward to putting the company's ill-gotten gains back in the hands of consumers."

The opportunity to mine, own, and use bitcoins as a digital currency - with no federal or central bank support - has paved the way for cybercriminals to trick and steal from regular users. The current value of bitcoin is slightly under $500 per bitcoin, but peaked at more than $1,000 each last November, and continues to prove to be rather volatile.

Steam gamers will enjoy the new Steam Discovery Update that Valve is pushing out right now, which adds "functionality and features designed to optimize the Steam shopping experience as the number of new titles on Steam increases".

Valve has softly announced that there are now over 100 million active Steam accounts, with an additional 1300 new titles being added to Steam in the last nine months alone. Valve, with the Steam Discovery Update, is offering a smarter Home page, which will be "offering recommendations based on past purchases, recent playtime, and recommendations by friends".

Valve has also improved Steam Search, with a new feature called Curators, which allows anyone to become a Curator, recommending games and allowing people to follow them, and their recommendation on titles. Alden Kroll of Valve said: "We have made great efforts to increase the number of titles we can publish on Steam, which means more choices for customers. This update introduces multiple features and functionality to help customers explore Steam's growing catalog and find the games they are most interested in playing".

While Oculus VR is on its fourth headset before it even goes retail: DK1, Crystal Cove, DK2, Crescent Bay, Sony is still tinkering away with its Project Morpheus headset. Sony Worldwide Studios' President, Shuhei Yoshida, spoke with The Wall Street Journal recently, about the company's adventures in VR.

Yoshida said that Sony "finished 85 percent of the work needed to make the product available" but didn't elaborate on when Project Morpheus would launch, or what type of price to expect. Yoshida did say that most of Project Morpheus' components are found in smartphones, which would help keep the price from floating up.

From what we can expect, Sony's Project Morpheus headset offers a 1920x1080 display with a 90-degree field of view (FOV) and full 360 degrees of head tracking. Considering Oculus just announced, and showed off, Crescent Bay, with an improved display, less latency and full 360-degree head tracking, Sony has its work cut out for it, big time.

According to a new report from Jack March, the upcoming 12-inch Retina MacBook Air will offer a slew of improvements. It seems like it's close to being reworked in every department, from its display, processor, speakers, charging technology, and more.

First off, the report states that the upcoming Retina MBA will offer a "noticeably thinner design", where it will be completely fanless. Fanless, you say? This is thanks to Apple adopting to Intel's new Core M processor, which offers performance improvements, as well as lowered thermals and power requirement. OEMs can bake these into their devices, offering up fanless tablets and laptops.

Next up, the source said that "the display bezels are noticeably thinner, quite similar to the current MacBook Pro Retina lineup" with next to no space between the keyboard and the edge of the upcoming 12-inch MBA. Additionally, the speaker has been moved above the keyboard, and is still "visible". The source continues with a juicy rumor, stating that Apple will get rid of the already impressive MagSafe connector, replacing it with a new charging technology that has never been used on any Mac to date. I'm hoping we see wireless charging, but I won't be holding my breath. Lastly, Apple will reportedly replace the standard USB ports on the new 2015 Retina MacBook Air with the new reversible USB Type C ports. The company should offer the new MBA in various color options, sometime in mid 2015.

BIOSTAR has announced that it has launched its new Hi-Fi Z97Z7 motherboard, which features "cutting-edge features and innovative durability enhancements". As you can probably tell, the new motherboard is based on Intel's new Z97 chipset, which provides the usual PCI-Express 3.0, PCIe M.2 support, and more. What makes this board stand out from the rest, though, is BIOSTAR's exclusive Super Hi-Fi Audio technology.

The motherboard itself is an ATX board, with four DDR3 slots, HDMI out, SATA Express, and of course: the Super Hi-Fi Audio which provides power regulation upgrades like Hi-Fi Power and Hi-Fi AMP. The HDMI output offers HDCP, paving the way for full video and Hi-Fi 7.1-channel Blu-ray audio support, even through the standard DVI port.

BIOSTAR has driven its durability and stability even higher, offering Super Durable Solid Caps, which the company explains "are the best quality solid state capacitors with ultra low ESR design, which doubles the lifespan. Another feature is 8-phase power design which gives unparalleled overclocking ability and the lowest temperature to reach maximum performance levels". The new BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97Z7 also features the new Super Durable Ferrite Choke, which provides higher current capacity, lower energy loss, and better power stability to the electric current across the board.