Latest News - Page 3036

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were two completely different people, and it really shows with Wozniak's latest comments on Apple. Wozniak recently did an Ask me Anything (AmA) on Reddit, where he responded to a question regarding Apple's current practices, and he had some colorful words for the company:

He continued, where he pointed out that years ago Apple released software on competing platforms such as Windows, where they released iTunes onto Microsoft's popular OS. But, they're not so happy to play well with others now, as we don't see iTunes on Android, he continued:

Give me one, now. Sharp have begun the production of 5-inch 1920x1080 displays at their factories - the joy! At 5-inch and 1080p, we're looking at 443 pixels per inch (ppi).

Considering the iPhone 5 only sports 326ppi - this is going to be a huge thing for new smartphones sporting the seriously packed 5-inch displays. We could also be staring down the barrel of 5-inch tablets with 443ppi displays, such as a smaller Nexus tablet to compete with the impending release of Apple's iPad mini.

Then we'll have the worry of "will people be able to see the quality in these screens" at this size, and resolution? If you've ever looked at an iPhone 5 and a third-gen iPad, you'll know that quality trumps. I think we'll begin to see some very beautiful looking smart devices with these 426ppi displays.

A victim of a hacker has written up a long piece regarding Twitter's security processes and how he believes he became a victim. Twitter's password recovery system is reportedly to blame, as it allowed a hacker to use a brute-force style attack on his handle. A brute-force attack tries common passwords as quickly as it can until it finds a match or exhausts a word list.

The issue seems to stem from the fact that Twitter doesn't limit login attempts per account, rather they limit them per IP. What this means is a hacker just needs to use a proxy network or some other way of IP switching and they would be able to brute-force an account indefinitely, or at least until the password was found.

However, why the victim, Daniel Dennis Jones, had chosen to use a simple, common password that could be brute-forced is beyond me. His story makes sense, though, and is why most password recovery systems limit login attempts on a per account basis, or at minimum throw up a CAPTCHA after a few failed attempts at logging into an account.

If you work at Apple, you will be happy to find out that Tim Cook does appreciate you. And to show appreciation for all of your hard work this year, Mr. Cook is offering you three additional paid days off. Most people will be getting these days off the week of Thanksgiving, though retail and some others will have to take them at another time.

In addition to giving these extra days of paid vacation, Cook issued an e-mail thanking employees for their hard work and everything they do. This break is similar to the one that was announced by Cook during last year. Just how much this will boost spirits and affect productivity has yet to be seen, but it must have worked well last year for the company to be doing it again.

The full letter Tim Cook sent out is below:

Maingear has just unleashed their Nomad 17 customizable gaming notebook, which offers a choice of six sleek "custom automotice paint jobs", a Full HD 1080p matte display, multi-touch trackpad with gesture support, and dual speakers with a built-in subwoofer.

Getting to the good stuff, we'll find a third-generationg Intel Core i7 processor running at up to 3.8GHz, options for NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 675M or 680M, Blu-ray drive, up to two 512GB SSDs or dual 750GB 7200RPM drives, and up to 32GB of RAM.

Connectivity isn't left out either, with HDMI, DVI-I, Firewire, Ethernet, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. Maingear's Nomad 17 starts at $1,700 on the base configuration and will begin shipping on October 14.

Quite the juicy rumor for the weekend, where SemiAccurate are reporting that they've heard that ASUS have made an offer to acquire ASRock's motherboard division. If this were to happen, we're looking at ASUS becoming bigger than they already are, and making a bigger threat for the number two in the market, Gigabyte.

ASRock sit at number three, so a combination of number one and three's forces would be quite significant for the market. If it were to happen, we're be looking at ASUS and Gigabyte, followed by the smaller players like MSI, ECS which don't see anywhere near the same numbers as ASUS, Gigabyte or ASRock, and then there's a few much smaller players, too.

If the deal does go through, there will be downstream effects to many of the other companies and suppliers to these companies - so it would cause quite the stir. But, with Intel talking about making motherboards pretty much redundant, could we see this as a preemptive move from ASUS to take more control of the already tight market?

The Thailand floods were a tragic event, hitting hard drive manufacturers Seagate and Western Digital pretty hard. At the time, hard drive prices went up quite significantly, and are only returning close to pre-flood levels now. How are things business-wise for HDD manufacturers? Well, in a word - great.

Some new numbers from IHS iSuppli have said that the HDD market for PCs has fully recovered, and is set to hit an all-time high. IHS iSuppli expect internal hard drives to smash through 524 million units shipped this year, beating the previous record by 4.3%.

Where is this increased demand coming from? The firm thinks that the boost in shipment numbers is thanks to the impending release of Windows 8, as well as Ultrabooks. While we're close to pre-flood HDD prices, we're still not there yet but IHS iSuppli have said that HDD prices aren't expected to drop below pre-flood levels until, wait for it, 2014. By 2016, if IHS iSuppli's predictions become reality, we're looking at HDD shipments reaching 575.1 million by 2016.

Just over 24 hours ago, I reported that we wouldn't be seeing BlackBerry 10 smartphones until next year - well, next year has come early, thanks to some internal marketing leaks from Research in Motion.

The leaked videos popped up onto Vimeo last night, showing off two BlackBerry 10-based smartphones, but the video was pulled pretty quickly. CrackBerry.com were quick off the mark, where they were able to snap some screenshots of what we will most likely see next year.

RIM's L Series phone, codenamed 'London', has popped up before and looks pretty much the same as Dev Alpha phones that BB10 developers are currently working with. We should expect to see this phone sport a 4-inch display, with a 1280x768 resolution. RIM's N Series phone, codenamed Nevada, sports a smaller touch screen, but includes a physical QWERTY keyboard. This is the first time this smartphone has been shown off, and is just what RIM is capable of.

Google gives and Google takes. Today sees a rarer event of the latter as Google does it's annual fall "spring cleaning." Many of the features that are being discontinued today are ones that I hadn't even heard of, so likely you haven't heard of them either. In the rare chance that you have, we'll give you the information you need.

The majority of today's discontinuations will likely only affect a small portion of the population at large. One of the main "spring cleaning" changes that will affect the most people is the change to storage. Google is combining Picasa and Drive storage into one single pool AND the free 5GB of storage will count towards your paid storage limit.

The rest of the changes are detailed in Google's blog post, which we have replicated here for your convenience:

I'm sure all of our readers know of the patent wars going on between Samsung and Apple. In case you don't, a brief history: Apple sued Samsung saying their patents were being infringed upon by Samsung products. Judge Koh granted a sales ban of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the start of the trial. A jury found Samsung guilty to the tune of just over $1 billion. However, they found that the Tab 10.1 didn't infringe on a single patent.

Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is still banned from being sold in the United States. Judge Koh had previously felt that overturning the ban fell out of her jurisdiction as Samsung had appealed to a higher federal court. That court has now ruled that Judge Koh can rule on the sales ban, either reversing it or keeping it in place.

Theoretically, the device should no longer have been banned, or even banned in the first place as the jury found it to not infringe. The sales ban is expected to be lifted as soon as Judge Koh rules on the matter. Samsung was quick to jump onto the court, filing a request to have the ban dissolved:

Google, almost as if to take a shot at Apple, has released more new imagery for their mapping service so that users can "virtually visit more places in high-resolution." Maps now features more high resolution aerial and satellite imagery, as well as a bunch of new 45 degree imagery for places around the world.

As you can see, some of the new 45 degree imagery includes famous places such as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, located in Pisa, Italy. The following are all of the cities with new imagery:

Tim Cook has taken a moment to step down from his high horse and issue a letter to Apple customers saying, "We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better." What??? Apple is apologizing for something they did? I thought everything they did was always perfect.

As Cook suggests, the Maps app will get better as more customers use the app as it will help to crowdsource bugs, locations, and some of the other issues that people have experienced with the new mapping app. In his letter, Cook details an interesting statistic: "In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations."

No doubt half of those searches were people looking for mistakes! If you're interested in reading the full-text of the letter, it is below for your enjoyment:

Gigabyte has been doing a bit of tweaking with their new FM2 boards designed for use with the second-generation AMD APUs. Gigabyte is bragging about the new board's overclocking capabilities, as the board features dual clock generators and many other cool overclocking tools.

They're also pushing the ease of use that is Gigabyte Easy Tune 6, the software overclocking produced by Gigabyte for use with their motherboards. The entire system was overclocked to an impressive 5.2GHz on LN2, while running with a Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 motherboard, 2x2GB DDR 2662 MHz RAM.

The FSB was set to 124.8MHz and the GPU was overclocked to 1591 MHz. Let's all take a moment and give some congratulations to Gigabyte, as this overclock is a pretty impressive feat. It looks like the new AM2 APUs will be quite overclockable when they get their final release sometime in October.

With everything that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has gone through, you'd think there'd be an apology thrown at him before now. But, better late than never, right? New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, has apologized to the Megaupload founder over an "unacceptable" stuff up by the NZ government spies leading up to the arrest of Dotcom.

The PM also ordered Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) agents to review their cases going back three years, where they'll have to check whether there were other instances of communications being intercepted unlawfully. Dotcom's apology arrived as a report into the illegal monitoring on the Megaupload founder, which blamed the GCSB agents for not knowing New Zealand immigration laws, and relying on incorrect information from the police. Mr Key told reporters:

It looks like Research in Motion (RIM) won't be fighting the new iPhone 5, or the Galaxy S III this year - with the company confirming that the BlackBerry 10 smartphones won't be shown off by the company until next year. Chief Marketing Officer, Frank Boulben, told CNET the news in an interview.

Considering that RIM have virtually every egg in the BB10 basket, leaving the smartphone from the eyes of consumers until next year will probably push consumers to grab the new iPhone 5, or an offering from Samsung or others. RIM are pegging hopes on BlackBerry 10 to fix the current issues they have - market share losses, revenue slips, and huge losses in profits. RIM won't be able to do any of this without creating a buzz for BB10.

RIM are hoping to show off more on BB10 and its features and capabilities, but closer to the launch of the smartphone, says Boulben. Boulben did note that RIM will launch a large, global campaign backed by carriers. RIM have been on a roadshow, showing off the BB10 smartphones to carriers, with Boulben stating that "they've seen BB10 and they love it. We'll have strong backing from the carriers".

You may have already read our view on Google and ASUS' Nexus 7 tablet, where you'll read that we were utterly impressed with such a cheap tablet. It was fast, gorgeous, and features Google's latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS. But when you read rumors from DigiTimes that Google are looking to release not one, but two new Nexus-branded tablets - it makes you look twice.

Not only that, but these two new tablets would hit a price point, that until now, has only been hit with cheap tablets - $99. Yes, $99. But, to get down to this price, what would Google have to sacrifice? At the $199 price point, the Nexus 7 sports an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 7-inch screen - but reducing that cost in half, would we see a reduction in specs of the same magnitude?

Could we see the Nexus stripped down to a dual-core processor - possibly of a Qualcomm design? A reduction in RAM? Could we see it feature 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of on-board memory, but throw in an SD card slot to give you the option of increasing storage, all the while keeping the initial, up-front cost at just a paltry $99?

Samsung have been busy dodging Apple shaped bullets for a while now, but it looks like LG are now joining in on the fight. LG Display, who are the second largest maker of LCD panels in the world, have filed a lawsuit against Samsung over patent violations.

LG announced the lawsuit during a press conference in Seoul, where they've claimed that Samsung are infringing on no less than seven patents in relation to organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology. LG said that they've filed a damage suit in order to protect technologies that took a very long time/man power to develop, as well as to promote fair competition.

LG's lawsuit orders Samsung Electronics and Samsung Mobile Display to halt the use of the patents in question, and on top, pay damages for products already on the market that use the infringed patents. We don't know how much LG is asking for in terms of damages, but the company have named five products in the suit including the Galaxy S line of smartphones, and the Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet.

Facebook have just unveiled something very new: Facebook Gifts. The idea behind Gifts is to let you purchase, and send real-life gifts to friends and family. Facebook have said that members would be able to buy gifts as part of a birthday reminder, or by visiting their friends' Timeline.

RIght now, Facebook Gift options are limited to a few items such as Starbucks gift cards, cupcakes, chocolate and the usual stuffed animals - the social networking site have said that there will be new gifts added every day. When giving a gift, you can post the present straight onto the recipient's Timeline, or through a private message.

The receiver can then "unwrap" the gift with the option to keep it, exchange it for something in another color, size or choose something else entirely - as long as its of equal value. Facebook Gift payments can be done at the time of the purchase itself, or the gift-giver can be billed at a later time. Gift notifications, once received, will have the recipient needing to supply their mailing address - so that the physical item can be delivered.

We're here again, with another exploit to watch out - this time with security researcher Adam Gowdiak discovering a new zero-day vulnerability in Java. This new bug is said to be in currently-supported versions of Java, such as Java 5, Java 6, and Java 7 and has the ability to allow attackers to install malware on close to 1 billion systems (based on the installation numbers from Oracle themselves).

This exploit affects both Macs and PCs, meaning that any Java-powered PC is at risk. Right now, the exploit doesn't pose much threat to the general public, but Gowdiak who is known for finding similar issues within Java, has said that he isn't currently aware of any active attacks that exploit this particular vulnerability.

Gowdiak found the exploit last week and has spent the last few days testing a proof-of-concept before he revealed the exploit to Oracle. Oracle has since confirmed that the vulnerability with Gowdisk, and have said that it will be fixed in a future security update. Oracle haven't given a date on when this update will be pushed out, but the next scheduled update is a while way - October 16.

AMD love to push out their beta versions of Catalyst drivers, with the release of the Catalyst 12.9 beta drivers now available. This release is a bit different to the usual beta releases, as it includes support for AMD's Enduro technology.

Enduro is AMD's version of NVIDIA Optimus, which will allow dynamic switching between a system's integrated, and discrete graphics which will in turn provide better battery life. AMD have also added an Optimus-like application profile set within the Catalyst Control Center, where users can select which applications run on either integrated, or discrete graphics.

The Catalyst 12.9 beta drivers also offer improved performance in Lost Planet 2 - with an up to 10% increase in performance on single-GPU setups. There are also some Catalyst application profiles included: