With every new iPhone, most of the discussion centers around its look and not what comes inside. But, according to multiple reports , Apple has designed a new 64-bit dual-core A7 system on a chip for the iPhone 5S . It is supposedly 31 percent faster, representing a serious slowdown in spec improvement. It proves that the smartphone market may have matured and that existing smartphone owners won’t feel the urge to upgrade to a new model anymore. When it comes to smartphone chips, Apple is a lone ranger. It has been designing its own ARM-based chips for a couple of years. It outsources production to Samsung and other manufacturers. But the important part is that only Apple devices use Apple chips. So far, this strategy has proven to be successful. The iPhone 4S was twice as powerful as the iPhone 4, and had nine times the graphics processing capabilities. The iPhone 5 was once again twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, with twice the graphics performance. That’s why this year’s 31 percent performance boost is lackluster. If the new iPhone is indeed called the iPhone 5S, the ‘S’ will certainly not stand for ‘speed’. A 31% CPU speed increase sounds like a huge failure to me, specially considering previous generations showed ~100% improvements.— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) August 26, 2013 On paper, Android phones are more powerful. Right now, the Snapdragon 800 and Tegra 4 both come with at least 4 cores and more raw power . It seems that Apple doesn’t want to compete in the spec game anymore, without giving any explanation. The main advantage is that Apple can optimize the A7 for its own set of APIs, making it feel faster than it actually is. Even though Snapdragons have more GHz, iPhone apps are still fast because Apple takes advantage of its chip architecture like no one else. The gap isn’t as wide as expected. Moreover, Apple’s custom design strategy improves battery performance. Apple needs to reduce both component costs and R&D costs Yet, why were the A6 and the A5 much faster than their predecessors? Because smartphones were not as fast as Apple wanted them to be. If you want to use Siri or play nice games, you need the iPhone 4S. If you want to use the upcoming AirDrop feature, you need the iPhone 5. Now it’s not the same story. Apple probably thinks that the iPhone 5 can run everything perfectly fine, and there is no need to put more raw power. In other words, smartphones have matured. As smartphones get more widespread, Apple needs to reduce both component costs and R&D costs. The company can’t invest as much money in developing its new chips if smartphones become more and more commoditized products . The company wants to avoid hurting its margin more than it needs. The A7 needs to be future-proof. While the iPhone 5C will not receive the A7 at first, entry-level iPhones will eventually get those chips. It needs to be powerful enough and cheap enough so that Apple doesn’t have to develop yet another chip next year for its cheap iPhones. If Apple judges that current chips are becoming fast enough to power iOS for years, iPhone users shouldn’t expect speed increases. Instead, the company will bet on new features and software updates. With market maturation coming soon, Apple faces a nearly overwhelming challenge as well. How do you convince your customers to upgrade their phones? The same thing happened for the iPod — they got lighter and lighter. In 2001, the original 5GB iPod was 6.5 ounces (184 grams). In 2004, the iPod mini was 3.6 ounces (102 grams). In 2005, the iPod nano was only 1.5 oz (42 grams). At this point, if you already had an iPod and used it as a portable music player, there was no real incentive to upgrade to a new one, except more gigabytes. The same thing is true for your microwave — you only buy a new one if your old one breaks. Yet, there is one last thing that can be improved again and again on the iPhone — the camera. Everybody uses their phone as their primary camera. It’s the camera that you always have in your pocket. While it has greatly improved over the years, there’s still room for improvement — especially now that HiDPI displays are getting more popular. This single spec upgrade will make people upgrade. That’s why the most interesting news of the day isn’t the A7, but the new dedicated chip for video capturing. In addition to helping for image stabilization, it could allow you to take 120 fps videos. If the iPhone 5S can shoot smooth slow-motion videos, it could be the feature that stands out and steals the show at Apple’s event. In fact, the ‘S’ could stand for ‘slow motion’. (Image credits: Ascii.jp , Wikimedia Commons )
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The New iPhone’s A7 Chip Proves That Smartphone Innovation Is Slowing Down
Today in an SEC filing , Microsoft revealed a very interesting fact: Its Surface tablet hybrid line brought in revenue of $853 million in the company’s fiscal 2013. However, the Surface line didn’t become available for sale until October 26, giving it 247 days in the market during the financial period. That places Surface revenue on a per-day basis at $3.45 million . Extrapolated for a one-year period, that financial rate puts the Surface line on a $1.26 billion per-year run rate. However, I would wager that revenues for Surface were highest at launch of the Surface RT and Pro, and lower in between, so the per-day and per-year estimates could vary. Reviews of the figure have been decidedly negative. The Next Web’s Josh Ong flatly stated that the revenue figure confirmed that the tablet line is a “financial failure.” Tom Warren over at The Verge noted that the total revenue for the devices is less than the $900 million writedown that Microsoft took during its last quarter. And Todd Bishop of GeekWire underlined that the $853 million in revenue is again less than the $898 million in new costs that Microsoft called “primarily with Windows 8 and Surface.” If Surface were a standalone business, it would be dead. However, as a Microsoft division, it is anything but. Microsoft as a company has tectonic financial wealth in the form of past profits stored as cash. It has decided to enter the OEM world, and has, to my knowledge, continued with the Surface project, slow initial sales be damned. There is a firm, recent precedent for the company to continue to invest in this way: Windows Phone. It took two full years of hard scrabble work to get Windows Phone to a point in which it was healthy enough to walk a bit on its own. Put another way, until Windows Phone 8 and the recent Nokia handsets, the smartphone line was sucking air. Perhaps not as much as Surface, given that the line of tablets has caused material damage to Microsoft’s short-term profits — the $900 million charge was $0.07 in lost EPS for the company in the last quarter. However, Microsoft has the money, and if it wants to can continue to pour it into Surface, as it did with Windows Phone, and Bing, and other properties that it finds to be strategically important. Does Microsoft want to cede complete hardware primacy to its OEM partners that have failed for so long to demonstrate innovation and forward-looking thought? I don’t think so, no. Naturally, Microsoft would prefer if Surface lost less money, but I don’t think that Microsoft is done with this project yet. A decent test: If the rollout of the next-generation Surface line is muted, we could be watching the door close. Top Image Credit: Vernon Chan 
Plug just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its $69 adapter. It will transform your USB drives into a personal Dropbox for all your devices. Thanks to a deep integration in your filesystem, you won’t have to move your files to a special folder or a virtual hard drive. After launching Plug’s app, everything is transparent and you won’t have to change your workflow. Except that all your devices will now have the same files. Very much like TechCrunch Disrupt alumni Bitcasa , you can cache some folders and files on your local hard drive or stream them from Plug. The only limit in Plug’s case is the amount of storage space you have on your USB drives. Behind the scene, Plug is a small Linux-based machine that creates a VPN network. Then, if you want to access your files from your iPhone, Plug’s client will silently connect to the network and show you all your files. It looks a lot like Dropbox’s app, except that your files are stored at home and you don’t pay a subscription fee. You could say that it’s pretty similar to a network-attached storage device, but with a software trick to replace your entire filesystem. “Our innovation with Plug is a software innovation more than a hardware innovation, ” co-founder and CEO Séverin Marcombes told me. “We could have designed this system in the cloud if it weren’t so expensive and so slow, ” he continued. After launching the app, all your files will go through Plug. With a USB 2.0 connector and an Ethernet 100 port, it could be a bit slow to stream movies, especially if you have multiple drives plugged into the adapter. That’s why you can cache your files. Even though Plug claims that you can use your files just the way you used to do, this new paradigm will probably take some time before getting used to it. Marcombes compared the caching feature with Spotify’s offline playlist feature, a button that Spotify users already know well. The Kickstarter campaign just started but its goal is pretty low. At $69, 000, the Paris-based team will certainly attract a thousand backers to reach its goal. You’ll just have to wait until December before getting your hands on the device. 
In the world of self-driving cars and autonomous vehicle technology, Google gets most of the attention, but it’s far from being the only player in the field. Earlier this month, Mobileye , the Israeli and Dutch maker of advanced driver assistance technologies, claimed that self-driving cars “could be on the road by 2016.” Rather than Google cars’ array of radar, cameras, sensors and laser-based range finders, Mobileye wants to offer autonomous driving capability at a more affordable price point by using mainstream cameras that cost only a few hundred dollars. While cars using Mobileye’s systems, like the Audi A7 , aren’t quite as “autonomous” as Google vehicles, they could help advanced driver assistance technology make it onto the road long before 2025 — the date industry experts expect driverless cars to go mainstream. With its intelligent, camera-based “traffic assist” technology expected to begin arriving this summer thanks to partnerships with five major automakers, the automotive A.I. company is looking to take advantage while its stock is still high, so to speak. Mobileye announced today that it is selling $400 million in equity to “five unaffiliated” financial investors, which include “some of the largest U.S.-based global institutional asset managers and a leading Chinese government-affiliated financial investor, ” according to a statement released this morning . The transaction, which values the company at $1.5 billion (pre-money) and was overseen by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, is expected to close in August. The company attributes the timing, in part, to the current regulatory support and progression of global safety standards, which have helped encourage automakers to accelerate integration of intelligent driver assistance technologies. Mobileye has been around since the 1990s, and like Google, is more interested in being an artificial intelligence company and, specifically, improving the intelligence of cameras to assist with autonomous driving, than being an automaker itself. The company’s technology has been tested in a number of capacities, but mostly it’s focused on helping drivers avoid collisions. According to The New York Times , in the past, its tech has been used by companies like Volvo to detect pedestrians or vehicles up ahead or crossing in your blind-spots, alerting drivers when they get too close to those objects, for example. The newer version of Mobileye’s system that arrives this summer aims to help steer the car in stop-start situations, though drivers are still required to keep their hands on the wheel. Coming up next, and expected to be street-ready by 2013, is a more advanced system that will allow for hands-free driving. The company plans to begin experimenting with and adding to the number of onboard cameras in vehicles to improve the efficacy of its technology in autonomous driving cases and presumably push it closer to the kind of hands-free, full autonomy promised by Sergey Brin and Google in the years to come. 
theodp writes “Big Bloomberg is watching you. CNN reports that was the unsettling realization Goldman Sachs execs came to a few weeks ago when a Bloomberg reporter inadvertently revealed that reporters from the news and financial data provider had surveillance capabilities over users of Bloomberg terminals. ‘Limited customer relationship data has long been available to our journalists,’ acknowledged a Bloomberg spokesman. ‘In light of [Goldman’s] concern as well as a general heightened sensitivity to data access, we decided to disable journalist access to this customer relationship information for all clients.’ Business Insider is now reporting on allegations that Bloomberg reporters used terminals to spy on JPMorgan during the ‘London Whale’ disaster; Bloomberg bragged about its leadership on this story.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Microsoft’s next Xbox, which could get an initial unveiling as early as next month , will use an AMD system-on-a-chip according to a new Bloomberg report . The new AMD SoC will mean that Microsoft is moving to an x86-based system architecture, which Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 is also adopting. The change is great news for AMD, and for gamers, and bad news for AMD’s chief rival Intel. The new Microsoft console will be running a “Jaguar” CPU, which is also what’s going into Sony’s PS4, alongside a Radeon graphics processor from ATI, an AMD subsidiary. The similarity between the two SoCs employed in each next-gen console should go a long way toward silencing complaints from developers that it’s too difficult and resource-intensive to develop for each type of console. A shared x86 architecture means that it’ll be much easier to port titles, both between consoles and from the PC. For AMD, it means gaining access to a much bigger chunk of the console gaming industry, at a crucial juncture: the desktop and notebook PC market is shrinking, facing increasing encroachment from devices like the iPad, meaning there’s less room to vie with Intel for market share in a space where Intel already clearly dominates. The console industry hasn’t exactly been a shining beacon of growth itself, but with a hardware refresh imminent, AMD is in the best position to capitalize should consumer interest once again be caught by fancy new console devices. The problem with Microsoft’s decision to reportedly change over to AMD is that it will likely render games made for the 360 incompatible with the next-generation platform. But long-term, the decision means it’s much easier for developers to work with, which should translate to an alleviation of financial pressures on game studios that are already facing revenue crunches which are forcing cost-cutting measures. The console exclusive might be more of a rarity, but gamers benefit, and we could also see shorter development cycles leading to more frequent game releases. Another party left out of the fun might be the Wii U, which uses a PowerPC based processor under the hood. But overall this is very good news for gamers, since it could both free up resources for developers to spend on innovation and R&D, and suggests both consoles will behave much more like home entertainment PCs based around the TV. 
Apple’s iWatch is the new primary focus of speculation for the company’s unannounced products, and a new article at Bloomberg today detailing its market potential also let slip that the wrist-mounted computer could arrive by the end of this year. Bloomberg’s source, which is one of the same that leaked details about the team within Apple working on the iWatch , said Apple hopes to have the device out to market “as soon as this year.” Bloomberg’s report today adds a bit more color about what we might expect to see from an Apple iWatch, too. The still-unconfirmed device would be able to make calls, check caller ID, relay map coordinates and carry a built-in pedometer and health monitoring sensors, according to the news publication’s source. That might mean another partnership with Nike for built-in fitness tracking, as we’ve seen in iPods and iPhones from the company to date. The news comes after reports from Apple supply partners and Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning said that products based on its flexible Willow Glass product wouldn’t come to market for another three years, prompting many to assume that meant an iWatch was also at least three years out . Apple had patented a wrist-mounted computer based on flexible display tech, but that’s far from the company’s only option for producing an iWatch – it could easily take a more traditional form, like the Pebble smart watch . Bloomberg also notes that Apple’s chief product designer Jony Ive has also long had an interest in watches, and previously paid a visit with his Apple design team to Nike’s own watchmaking operations. Previously, Bloomberg reported that Apple has an internal team of as many as 100 individuals working on the iWatch project. Of course, despite the growing number of reports around the iWatch, Apple keeps its release timelines purposefully close to the chest for a reason: even if it was targeting a 2013 launch for the iWatch, missing that date wouldn’t actually constitute a delay since nothing has been officially announced. Accordingly, it’s always a good idea to treat rumors at this stage in the game with a healthy dose of skepticism, even when sourced from reputable publications. Still, Google wants to launch its own wearable computing product by year’s end , so there’s at least one reason for Apple to target the same time frame. 
February 22, 2013, marks the 20th anniversary of the premiere of Babylon 5: The Gathering , the pilot film for what would eventually become the Babylon 5 television series. The show arguably changed the way narrative television works, and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski also changed the rules for TV creators by actively engaging his fanbase online during the show’s production. More »