Here is my collection of trends and predictions for year 2014:
It seems that PC market is not recovering in 2014. IDC is forecasting that the technology channel will buy in around 34 million fewer PCs this year than last. It seem that things aren’t going to improve any time soon (down, down, down until 2017?). There will be no let-up on any front, with desktops and portables predicted to decline in both the mature and emerging markets. Perhaps the chief concern for future PC demand is a lack of reasons to replace an older system: PC usage has not moved significantly beyond consumption and productivity tasks to differentiate PCs from other devices. As a result, PC lifespan continue to increase. Death of the Desktop article says that sadly for the traditional desktop, this is only a matter of time before its purpose expires and that it would be inevitable it will happen within this decade. (I expect that it will not completely disappear).
When the PC business is slowly decreasing, smartphone and table business will increase quickly. Some time in the next six months, the number of smartphones on earth will pass the number of PCs. This shouldn’t really surprise anyone: the mobile business is much bigger than the computer industry. There are now perhaps 3.5-4 billion mobile phones, replaced every two years, versus 1.7-1.8 billion PCs replaced every 5 years. Smartphones broke down that wall between those industries few years ago – suddenly tech companies could sell to an industry with $1.2 trillion annual revenue. Now you can sell more phones in a quarter than the PC industry sells in a year.
After some years we will end up with somewhere over 3bn smartphones in use on earth, almost double the number of PCs. There are perhaps 900m consumer PCs on earth, and maybe 800m corporate PCs. The consumer PCs are mostly shared and the corporate PCs locked down, and neither are really mobile. Those 3 billion smartphones will all be personal, and all mobile. Mobile browsing is set to overtake traditional desktop browsing in 2015. The smartphone revolution is changing how consumers use the Internet. This will influence web design.
The only PC sector that seems to have some growth is server side. Microservers & Cloud Computing to Drive Server Growth article says that increased demand for cloud computing and high-density microserver systems has brought the server market back from a state of decline. We’re seeing fairly significant change in the server market. According to the 2014 IC Market Drivers report, server unit shipment growth will increase in the next several years, thanks to purchases of new, cheaper microservers. The total server IC market is projected to rise by 3% in 2014 to $14.4 billion: multicore MPU segment for microservers and NAND flash memories for solid state drives are expected to see better numbers.
Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future’s flash, cache and cloud article tells that the flash is the tier for primary data; the stuff christened tier 0. Data that needs to be written out to a slower response store goes across a local network link to a cloud storage gateway and that holds the tier 1 nearline data in its cache. Never mind software-defined HYPE, 2014 will be the year of storage FRANKENPLIANCES article tells that more hype around Software-Defined-Everything will keep the marketeers and the marchitecture specialists well employed for the next twelve months but don’t expect anything radical. The only innovation is going to be around pricing and consumption models as vendors try to maintain margins. FCoE will continue to be a side-show and FC, like tape, will soldier on happily. NAS will continue to eat away at the block storage market and perhaps 2014 will be the year that object storage finally takes off.
IT managers are increasingly replacing servers with SaaS article says that cloud providers take on a bigger share of the servers as overall market starts declining. An in-house system is no longer the default for many companies. IT managers want to cut the number of servers they manage, or at least slow the growth, and they may be succeeding. IDC expects that anywhere from 25% to 30% of all the servers shipped next year will be delivered to cloud services providers. In three years, 2017, nearly 45% of all the servers leaving manufacturers will be bought by cloud providers. The shift will slow the purchase of server sales to enterprise IT. Big cloud providers are more and more using their own designs instead of servers from big manufacturers. Data center consolidations are eliminating servers as well. For sure, IT managers are going to be managing physical servers for years to come. But, the number will be declining.
I hope that the IT business will start to grow this year as predicted. Information technology spends to increase next financial year according to N Chandrasekaran, chief executive and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest information technology (IT) services company. IDC predicts that IT consumption will increase next year to 5 per cent worldwide to $ 2.14 trillion. It is expected that the biggest opportunity will lie in the digital space: social, mobility, cloud and analytics. The gradual recovery of the economy in Europe will restore faith in business. Companies are re-imaging their business, keeping in mind changing digital trends.
The death of Windows XP will be on the new many times on the spring. There will be companies try to cash in with death of Windows XP: Microsoft’s plan for Windows XP support to end next spring, has received IT services providers as well as competitors to invest in their own services marketing. HP is peddling their customers Connected Backup 8.8 service to prevent data loss during migration. VMware is selling cloud desktop service. Google is wooing users to switch to ChromeOS system by making Chrome’s user interface familiar to wider audiences. The most effective way XP exploiting is the European defense giant EADS subsidiary of Arkoon, which promises support for XP users who do not want to or can not upgrade their systems.
There will be talk on what will be coming from Microsoft next year. Microsoft is reportedly planning to launch a series of updates in 2015 that could see major revisions for the Windows, Xbox, and Windows RT platforms. Microsoft’s wave of spring 2015 updates to its various Windows-based platforms has a codename: Threshold. If all goes according to early plans, Threshold will include updates to all three OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone).
Amateur programmers are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the IT landscape. A new IDC study has found that of the 18.5 million software developers in the world, about 7.5 million (roughly 40 percent) are “hobbyist developers,” which is what IDC calls people who write code even though it is not their primary occupation. The boom in hobbyist programmers should cheer computer literacy advocates.IDC estimates there are almost 29 million ICT-skilled workers in the world as we enter 2014, including 11 million professional developers.
The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability will be more and more talked. Interfacing between languages will be increasingly important. You can no longer expect a nontrivial application to be written in a single language. With software becoming ever more complex and hardware less homogeneous, the likelihood of a single language being the correct tool for an entire program is lower than ever. The trend toward increased complexity in software shows no sign of abating, and modern hardware creates new challenges. Now, mobile phones are starting to appear with eight cores with the same ISA (instruction set architecture) but different speeds, some other streaming processors optimized for different workloads (DSPs, GPUs), and other specialized cores.
Just another new USB connector type will be pushed to market. Lightning strikes USB bosses: Next-gen ‘type C’ jacks will be reversible article tells that USB is to get a new, smaller connector that, like Apple’s proprietary Lightning jack, will be reversible. Designed to support both USB 3.1 and USB 2.0, the new connector, dubbed “Type C”, will be the same size as an existing micro USB 2.0 plug.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
China reveals COS: a government-approved operating system designed to break the monopoly of foreign software
http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/16/cos-china-operating-system/
China’s tried to create its very own mobile OS ecosystem in the past, but let’s face it: The attempt with OPhone was hardly something that would make the nation proud. This time round, though, a company by the name of Shanghai Liantong has joined forces with the ISCAS (Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and the government to launch COS, which simply stands for China Operating System. While there’s no official mention of this, it appears that HTC is a big supporter behind this project, which would match what we heard from a Wall Street Journal report from August.
Apart from the open-source code, this Linux-based OS is said to be developed “entirely independently,” in the hopes of breaking the foreign software monopoly, as well as providing better localization for the likes of language input, cloud services and monetization.
Ironically, all the COS variants — in the form of phones, tablets, PCs and set-top boxes — shown in the promo video after the break are very Android-like
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nintendo warns of loss after slashing Wii U sales forecast by 69 percent
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/17/5318198/nintendo-cuts-estimates-after-slow-sales
Nintendo also now expects to sell just 2.8 million Wii U consoles this financial year, down from an estimated total of 9 million — a drop of 69 percent.
Nintendo admits that it failed to sell as much software as it had hoped for over the holiday season due to the fact that “hardware sales did not reach their expected level.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Designing for exponential trends of 2014
http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2013/12/17/designing-for-exponential-trends-of-2014/
Low-cost/high-function devices. The seemingly endless march of the exponential Moore’s law will continue but include more than compute. Devices will put transistors to work for sensors, rich graphics, and discrete processors. These devices will continue to drop precipitously in price to what seem today like ridiculous levels
Cloud productivity. Cloud (SaaS) productivity tools will routinely see exponential growth in active users.
Cloud first becomes cloud-only. Enterprise software in 2013 was a dialog about on-premises or cloud. In 2014, the call for on-premises will rapidly shift to a footnote in the evolution of cloud.
WWAN communication tools. WWAN/4G messaging will come to dominate in usage by direct or integrated tools (WhatsApp, WeChat, iMessage, and more) relative to email and SMS. Email will increasingly be viewed as “fax” and SMS will be used for “official” communications and “form letters” as person to person begins to use much richer and more expressive (fun) tools.
Cross-platform challenge. This is the year that cross-platform development for the major modern platforms will become increasingly challenging and products will need to be developed with this in mind.
Small screen/big screen divergence. With increasing use of cloud productivity, more products will arrive that are designed exclusively for larger screen devices.
Urban living is digital living.
Sharing becomes normal. With the resources available for sharing exceeding those available in traditional ways, 2014 will be the year in which sharing becomes normal and preferred for assets that are infrequently used and/or expensive.
Phablets are normal.
Storage quotas go away. While for most any uses today this is true in practice, 2014 will be a year in which any individual will see alternatives for unlimited cloud storage. Email, files, photos, applications, mobile backup and more will be embedded in the price of devices or services with additional capabilities beyond gigabytes. Design: Design for disk space usage in the cloud as you do on a mobile client, which is to say worry much more about battery life and user experience than saving a megabyte.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Releases Dart 1.1
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/01/16/2018239/google-releases-dart-11
“Google released version 1.1 of its Dart open-source web programming language today, with new features and improved tools. The Dart Editor is updated with improved debugging, code implementation and more descriptive toolkits, and new UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and documentation support command-line and server-side Dart applications”
Tomi Engdahl says:
UK leads the way in predictive analytics, claims SaaS player
http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/saas/analytics/3707/uk-leads-the-way-in-predictive-analytics-claims-saas-player
New insights from AgilOne suggest UK companies are making better use of analytics tools than their US counterparts
European retailers are showing their US counterparts the way when it comes to the use of predictive analytics.
That’s according to the CEO of SaaS-based analytics company AgilOne, Omer Artun, following a recent survey of retailers on both sides of the pond.
Although US companies were heavier users of predictive software, European firms were making the best use of analytics, Artun revealed.
This is despite the US’s reputation for being more enthusiastic about adopting newer technologies.
“European companies do less predictive analysis, but they do it better,”
All the European companies surveyed use the ‘likelihood to buy’ model compared with just 74 per cent of US ones.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China is building its own operating system – Android is not secure enough
China to develop its own operating system, which would be safer for the State than Android and Windows.
According to China, alone security concerns are the reason to develop its own operating system: a number of open-source platforms, including Android and Ubuntu have security holes. In addition, in the Western world developed in the substrates is not taken into account in the Chinese usage patterns.
Currently, the most common platforms are Windows and Android.
China has appointed its own platform COS (China Operating System).
COS is designed to run on traditional computers, smart phones, tablet computers than TVs. Platform supports HTML5 applications. China plans to attract the mobile phone manufacturers to use COS .
So far, the platform is still in progress.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/kiina+rakentaa+omaa+kayttojarjestelmaa++android+ei+ole+tarpeeksi+turvallinen/a960458
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD Kaveri Docs Reference Quad-Channel Memory Interface, GDDR5 Option
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 16, 2014 10:51 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7702/amd-kaveri-docs-reference-quadchannel-memory-interface-gddr5-option
Let me be very clear here: there’s no chance that the recently launched Kaveri will be capable of GDDR5 or 4 x 64-bit memory operation (Socket-FM2+ pin-out alone would be an obvious limitation), but it’s very possible that there were plans for one (or both) of those things in an AMD APU.
There were rumors a while back of Kaveri using GDDR5 on a stick but it looks like nothing ever came of that. The options for a higher end Kaveri APU would have to be:
1) 256-bit wide DDR3 interface with standard DIMM slots, or
2) 256-bit wide GDDR5 interface with memory soldered down on the motherboard
I do wonder if AMD would consider the first option and tossing some high-speed memory on-die (similar to the Xbox One SoC).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Averting a data center legal crisis
Engineers involved in data center design can limit their potential exposure by taking a few simple steps.
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/averting-a-data-center-legal-crisis/844cfee5cba1f07d90e4ca7d0e3b29bf.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
December 2013 NPD: While both supply constrained, Xbox One outsells PlayStation 4
http://venturebeat.com/2014/01/16/december-2013-npd-xbox-one-outsells-a-supply-constrained-playstation-4/
The Xbox One and and PlayStation 4 both sold well, but Microsoft’s latest console bested its Sony counterpart … although both are behind Nintendo’s 3DS.
Gamers spent $3.28 billion on new physical games and hardware in December, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. That’s up 2 percent from $3.21 billion in 2012. As in November, hardware was where consumers were putting their money as they swooped up another $1.37 billion in new consoles. That’s up 28 percent from $1.07 billion in 2012.
Gamers and holiday shoppers were obviously drawn to retail outlets to pick up the new Xbox One and PlayStation 4 systems from Microsoft and Sony. While those new boxes sold well, the Xbox One’s $500 price and PlayStation 4′s $400 price left little for consumers to spend on games.
Tomi Engdahl says:
CIOs Must Balance Cloud Security and Customer Service
http://www.cio.com/article/745638/CIOs_Must_Balance_Cloud_Security_and_Customer_Service
Cloud era brings government IT new challenge of keeping data secure while broadening user access. This will require federal CIOs to take a more granular approach to access and encryption.
Tomi Engdahl says:
When Apple reached parity with Windows
http://www.asymco.com/2014/01/13/when-apple-reached-parity-with-windows/
Gartner estimates that about 309 million Windows PCs were shipped,[1] down from 337 million in 2012 (which was down from 344 million in 2011, the year PCs peaked.)
When comparing these platforms, the contribution of the Apple mobile platform becomes striking.
The total number of platform products Apple sold in 2013 was about 260 million The total number of users Apple has is above 550 million.
But the bigger story is how Apple’s mobile platform has nearly reached the sales volume of Windows. In 2013 there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices sold. Odds are that in 2014 they will be at parity.
Today, with mobile products there are billions of decision makers.
Ultimately, it was the removal of the intermediary between buyer and beneficiary which dissolved Microsoft’s power over the purchase decision.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Devices To Reach Parity With Windows PCs In 2014
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/14/01/15/2342216/apple-devices-to-reach-parity-with-windows-pcs-in-2014
“Horace Dediu writes at Aymco that in 2013 there were 18.8 times more Windows PCs sold than Macs, a reduction in the Windows advantage from about 19.8x in 2012. But the bigger story is how Apple’s mobile platform including iOS devices has nearly reached the sales volume of Windows. In 2013 there were only 1.18 more Windows PCs than Apple devices sold. Odds are that in 2014 Apple and Windows will be at parity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tech Performance Issues Plague IT and Businesses
http://www.cio.com/article/745780/Tech_Performance_Issues_Plague_IT_and_Businesses
While CIOs and other senior IT leaders focus on being transformational, half of global businesses say they experience tech performance issues daily. What’s the problem and how can IT improve things?
CIO — Outlook connection problems? Salesforce.com system crashing repeatedly? Trouble connecting to internal human resources systems? You’re not alone.
According to a recent study from Compuware, of the more than 300 business executives surveyed, 48 percent reported they experience tech performance issues daily, and three out of four of those executives say the frequency and severity of these issues isn’t improving.
It’s not that executives and IT leaders don’t want to fix these problems, says Bharath Gowda, director of technology performance, Compuware. It’s that they’re pressured to focus on what are seen as larger, more pressing issues instead of these day-to-day headaches, he says.
“When you look at the role of executives and senior IT leaders, they’re being told to focus on being transformational and to direct their efforts to larger, strategic objectives: cost-cutting, consolidation, outsourcing, researching and implementing new technology for competitive advantage,” Gowda says.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel expands “Intel Inside” cloud branding beyond Amazon
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/15/intel-expands-intel-inside-cloud-branding-beyond-amazon/
Summary:
As some cloud giants consider custom processors, Intel is banking that users do (or will) care about what sort of chip is running their clouds — and so a logo program is born.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft extends updates for Windows XP security products until July 14, 2015
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/01/15/microsoft-extends-updates-windows-xp-security-products-july-14-2015/#!slFNh
Microsoft today announced it will continue to provide updates to its security products (antimalware engine and signatures) for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015. Previously, the company said it would halt all updates on the same day as the end of support date for Windows XP: April 8, 2014.
For consumers, this means Microsoft Security Essentials will continue to get updates after support ends for Windows XP. For enterprise customers, the same goes for System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune running on Windows XP.
Here is the previous guidance from a page Microsoft had set up specifically to discuss Windows XP end of support:
As a result, after April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC. Microsoft will also stop providing Microsoft Security Essentials for download on Windows XP on this date.
The company is thus providing updates to its security products for an additional 15 months. In other words, while Windows XP will no longer be a supported operating system come April, companies will be at least partially protected (the actual OS still won’t get security updates) until next July.
Microsoft is in a tricky situation.
The company thus says its research shows “that the effectiveness of antimalware solutions on out-of-support operating systems is limited”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Flash storage will be fast and furious in 2014
We look in the rear view mirror before racing down the road ahead
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/15/flash_in_2013/
Flash had a fantastic year in 2013 with an enormous number of developments.
It was a year of generally positive flash transitions, with cell geometry shrinking, all-flash arrays springing up, flash companies being bought, flash companies crashing back to earth after inflated IPOs or just crashing, and happiness spraying out like sunshine from three hybrid flash/disk array suppliers.
We didn’t see triple layer cell (TLC) NAND push into enterprise applications in 2013, TLC flash being slow and having a ridiculously short write endurance level.
flash foundries prefer to make single and multi-layer cell (SLC and MLC) on their foundry production lines because these command higher volumes and deliver a better return on manufacturing investment.
There was the beginning of a transition towards 1X (19nm-10nm) flash cell geometries from the 2X (29nm – 20nm) technology
One thing that didn’t happen was the emergence of any non-volatile technology to take over from flash. It’s generally agreed that flash technology may be unable to develop usable enterprise flash storage with acceptable endurance down at 15nm and below. Phase Change Memory and varieties of Resistive RAM, such as HP’s Memristor, are still future tech, with 3D NAND taking up the capacity slack
Micron expects to commence 3D NAND production sample shipments before mid-2014,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions, But Still Inches From Disaster
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/dropbox-uber/
Dropbox went dark over the weekend.
According to the company, the widespread outage was the result of a bug it introduced while updating the hundreds of computer servers that drive its massively popular file-sharing service. But the problem was bigger than that. The San Francisco-based startup not only faced countless complaints from users across the net, it was forced to deflect rumors that the service was hacked, something that turned out to be a hoax.
On one level, a dust-up like this is just part of life as a startup. Things go wrong, people get upset, problems are solved, lessons are learned. But the stakes are higher when you’re Dropbox — or any other tech startup that has ascended to the misty heights of the billion-dollar club.
The most successful tech giants — think Google and Facebook — have been able to insulate themselves from the big SNAFU by performing well for long enough that we become inescapably dependent on them.
For many of us, Gmail would have to delete our entire accounts before switching became even plausible anymore. But even for billion-dollar companies still in a period of massive growth, such cushions aren’t always there to catch them. If they fall, the landing could still be hard.
Do One Thing, Do It Best
In an interview with WIRED this past fall, Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston acknowledged that his company has almost no margin for error. If Dropbox accidentally destroyed just one person’s file, he said, it could erode the trust of all its users. “This is like the same sort of genre of problem as the code that you use to fly an airplane. Even if it’s a little bug, it’s a big problem.”
The risk for Dropbox is that at its core, it essentially does only one thing: It syncs your files across all your devices. On the one hand, this single-mindedness has brought Dropbox its tremendous success.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Explained: How LSI and Oracle cooked up magical flash-embiggening sauce
It’s all about compression, baby
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/15/lsi_oracles_magic_flash_card_sauce_explained/
Oracle and LSI have magicked up a way for LSI’s Nytro server flash cards to hold more data than they’re seemingly physically capable of holding and called it Dynamic Logical Capacity (DLC). How does it work?
We thought it might be a paging mechanism – but we were dead wrong. The card compresses the data it is sent and can reach a 2:1 compression ratio, depending on the data. With 50 per cent compression of the data, a 1TB Nytro card can hold 2TB of raw data.
This increases cache-hit rates and thereby increases server application performance. It reduces the cost/GB of the Nytro PCIe flash card storage and also the GB/watt measure.
The Nytro card reports its free space via an API, enabling the host system to send data up to the point its free capacity is used up.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD says its next PC chip trumps Intel with 12 ‘compute cores’ and smoother gaming
http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/14/amd-kaveri-pc-processor/
A decade ago, AMD brought us the first dual-core x86 processor. Then, starting in 2008, the company came out with tri-core and quad-core designs in quick succession, leading up to octa-core chips in 2011’s FX range as well as in the latest AMD-powered game consoles.
Today, we’re looking at a fresh leap forward, albeit one that will take a bit of explaining: a desktop and laptop chip called Kaveri, which brings together up to four CPU cores and eight GPU cores and gives them unheard-of levels of computing independence, such that AMD feels justified in describing them collectively as a dozen “compute cores.”
Marketing nonsense? Not necessarily.
The reason AMD calls the GPU cores inside Kaveri “compute cores” is that they’re said to be fundamentally different to the GPU cores in other PC processors. This difference lies in the fact that they’re able to function as equal citizens: Instead of relying on the CPU to orchestrate their workload, they can access system memory directly and take on tasks independently — almost like a CPU core does. The only difference is that they can’t take on the same types of tasks as a CPU, as they’re better suited to simple parallel chores rather than complicated serial processing.
As things stand, software developers are already able to exploit the GPU for general computing using tools like OpenCL, which can be used to accelerate anything from Photoshop to big spreadsheets. But OpenCL requires reams of code and a lot of inefficient to-ing and fro-ing between the GPU and CPU — all of which, AMD says, will be drastically reduced if developers latch onto HSA. That’s a big “if,” of course, but now that AMD has recruited a bunch of partners into its HSA Foundation, and now that it has managed push its silicon into millions of households via next-gen games consoles, developer interest looks more likely, and Kaveri’s compute cores at least bring it some future-proofing as a result.
Kaveri apparently took four years to develop, due to all the extra gubbins AMD has squeezed onto it, including HSA, Mantle and TrueAudio. This also explains why Kaveri chips are priced significantly higher than their predecessor, Richland: The lower-specced A8-7600 will start at $119, rising to $152 for the A10-7700K and, as we’ve mentioned, $173 for the flagship A10.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ntel shelves cutting-edge Arizona chip factory
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/14/us-intel-arizona-idUSBREA0D1F920140114
Intel Corp (INTC.O), hit by slumping personal computer sales, has put off opening a major chip factory that President Barack Obama once held up as an example of U.S. manufacturing potential.
The “Fab 42″ facility built in Chandler, Arizona, originally slated as a $5 billion project that in late 2013 would start producing Intel’s most advanced chips, will remain closed for the foreseeable future while other factories at the same site are upgraded, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
Intel is the world’s top chipmaker but it was caught off guard by smartphones and tablets, a computing revolution that has cut into demand for PCs, the company’s core business.
Global PC shipments fell 10 percent in 2013
Tomi Engdahl says:
Silicon Valley workers may pursue collusion case as group- court
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/15/siliconvalley-collusion-lawsuit-idUSL2N0KP02P20140115
Roughly 60,000 Silicon Valley workers won clearance to pursue a lawsuit accusing Apple Inc, Google Inc and other companies of conspiring to drive down pay by not poaching each other’s staff, after a federal appeals court refused to let the defendants appeal a class certification order.
Tomi Engdahl says:
N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?pagewanted=all
The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/01/14/2335240/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap
“Over the past six months, we’ve all grown a bit more skeptical about who controls our data, and what they do with it. An article at The Guardian says it’s time for people to start migrating en masse away from proprietary map providers to OpenStreetMap in order to both protect our collective location data and decide how it is displayed.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Computer programs should communicate better with each other. Software interfaces too strong protection to prevent the current technological advances, it turns out the University of Turku Ulla-Maija Mylly study.
Changes should be done to the patent and copyright law.
Purpose of the legislation is to create exclusive rights, which are believed to contribute to the technological and cultural development.
But the situation is more complicated in the software industry. Driving the development of that new programs and their components can be incorporated in existing. If the legislation prevents developing new software connection to the old, it slows down the development.
Mylly proposes a more appropriate level of interoperability information should be available to all developers.
In addition, she proposes to study patent law change. It would enable the interoperability of the element the use of other computer software without the patent holder’s consent. One option is that after the change of interoperability element user would pay compensation to the patent holder.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/rajapintojen+pihtailusta+tuli+kehityksen+jarru/a959531
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tablets remain in second place – a hit product in trouser pockets to bottle early in the year
This year’s hit products are phablet of 5 to 6.9-inch devices that are a mix of smart phone and tablet PC.
At the same time, the traditional older tablet computers sales growth is waning, the consulting firm Deloitte predicts, published its report on Tuesday.
The compact tablet computers override the larger tablets in the first quarter of 165 million unit sales.
Some of the phablet success is due to the fact that people acquire different sized devices for different purposes. Among the major tablets will be a replacement for home computers, evaluates the CEO of Deloitte Finland Teppo Rantanen.
According to Rantanen, phablet wave does not, however, we go to Finland as great as, for example, in Asia.
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/tabletit+jaavat+kakkoseksi++hittituote+pullottaa+housuntaskuissa+alkuvuonna/a959445
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Acer CEO Apologizes for Failures
http://www.dailytech.com/New+Acer+CEO+Apologizes+for+Failures/article34123.htm
Former CEO Gianfranco Lanci has capitalized on vision at Lenovo, while Acer has fallen to record losses
Investors appeared to have little faith that chaos is not continuing to reign at Taiwan’s Acer, Inc. (TPE:2353), the world’s fourth largest computer maker.
Acer Rejects Visionary Path
Acer cashed in on the netbook craze and increasing sales of mass market notebook computers, but largely missed the trend toward handheld computers (smartphones, tablets) and faced declining profitibility. Acer made a bold move in 2007 buying Gateway in the U.S. and Packard Bell in Europe. The move greatly expanded Acer’s sales revenue, but shrunk its cash pile and failed to significantly improve profits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fedora 21 Linux Will Be Nameless
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/13/2114204/fedora-21-linux-will-be-nameless
http://www.eweek.com/enterprise-apps/nameless-fedora-21-linux-is-an-opportunity-for-growth.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Chrome 32 Is Out: Noisy Tabs Indicators, Supervised Users
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/14/231226/google-chrome-32-is-out-noisy-tabs-indicators-supervised-users
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMD’s Kaveri APU Debuts With GCN-based Radeon Graphics
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/01/14/1954238/amds-kaveri-apu-debuts-with-gcn-based-radeon-graphics
“AMD’s next-generation Kaveri APU is now available, and the first reviews have hit the web. The chip combines updated Steamroller CPU cores with integrated graphics based on the latest Radeon graphics cards. It’s also infused with a dedicated TrueAudio DSP, a faster memory interface, and several features that fall under AMD’s Heterogeneous System Architecture for mixed-mode computing.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome Is the New C Runtime
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/01/18/0251214/chrome-is-the-new-c-runtime
“Cross-platform app development is more important than ever. But what about when you need the features and performance of native code, across platforms?”
“Out of necessity, the Chrome team has created cross-platform abstractions for many low-level platform features.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chrome Is The New C Runtime
https://www.mobilespan.com/content/chrome-is-the-new-c-runtime
Cross-platform app development is more important than ever. 10 years ago, you just whipped out your Visual Studio when you needed a client application, but not anymore. With “app-ification” going mainstream on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac, what is a developer to do?
Web apps are a good solution some of the time (except for that little detail called IE!).
But what about when you need the features and performance of native code, across platforms? And you’re a startup with a small team and impossible deadlines?
We chose to build our application by integrating with the source code of Chromium.
Chromium is the open-source base of Google Chrome.
So, why would Chrome source be useful to me for cross-platform app development? I’m not building a browser…
In reality, Chrome is much more than just a browser. Chrome code is highly tuned for performance, reliability, and cross-platform compatibility across PCs and iOS + Android devices.
Out of necessity, the Chrome team has created cross-platform abstractions for many low-level platform features. We use this source as the core API on which we build our business logic, and it’s made the bulk of our app cross-platform with little effort.
Most importantly — Chrome code has been battle-tested like almost nothing else, with an installed base in the hundreds of millions.
First Things First: The right tools to generate your project
The first step in starting your project is to create the appropriate project file for your platform (Visual Studio, XCode etc). Chromium uses GYP to declaratively specify files and project settings in a platform independent manner. I strongly recommend starting your project as a GYP file.
The base library in the Chromium sources (found in src/base) provides a vast array of cross-platform tools that cover all the areas mentioned above and a lot more. There are also helpers for platform-specific areas such as the Windows registry or the iOS keychain.
Network stack, anyone?
Unless you are building your app for Windows 3.1, chances are that you want to talk to a server of some kind. This might involve simple HTTP or HTTPS API calls or low-level socket calls or anything in between.
The net library in Chromium (src/net) is your friend here. You’ll find a full cross-platform HTTP and HTTPS stack, code for cookie handling, caching, TCP and UDP sockets and socket pools, SSL certificate handling, DNS resolution, proxy server resolution …, well, you get the idea, pretty much anything network related.
Need to handle public/private keys, encrypt data store secrets? The crypto library (src/crypto) is another excellent cross-platform library
If I am sounding like a Chrome fan-boy, that’s because I am one. Since we embraced Chromium more than 2 years ago, we have found it to work really well for us as a dev platform, saving countless person-hours. It has allowed us to reuse some really well-written and, more importantly, well-tested code across several client platforms
Tomi Engdahl says:
Valve Working on GNU/Linux Native Open Source OpenGL Debugger
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/01/18/052203/valve-working-on-gnulinux-native-open-source-opengl-debugger
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dart 1.1 bullseyes JavaScript performance in latest benchmarks
Compiled apps now match or beat handwritten JavaScript
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/17/dart_1_1_matches_javascript/
Just two months after shipping the first production-ready version of Dart, its JavaScript competitor, Google has offered up a new version that it claims can output code that runs as fast or faster than the equivalent routines written in JavaScript.
Dart has always been fast when running in a native VM. In fact, Dart benchmarks running in Dart VM have consistently outperformed the equivalent JavaScript running in Google’s own V8 JavaScript engine. But almost nobody runs client-side Dart applications this way in the real world, because no mainstream browser currently ships with Dart VM. Instead, production Dart web apps are typically “compiled” into JavaScript using dart2js, the Dart SDK’s code translator.
Improving client-side performance wasn’t the only focus of the new release, either. Ladd said there is growing interest in using Dart for server-side applications – presumably, because it’s easy to run Dart VM on a server, among other reasons – and Dart 1.1 includes a number of new features designed to accommodate this.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toshiba’s 4K Laptops and Updated KIRAbook – CES 2014
by Jarred Walton on January 17, 2014 4:00 PM EST
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7705/toshibas-4k-laptops-and-updated-kirabook-ces-2014
The visit to Toshiba’s booth at CES was interesting for a number of reasons, and their upcoming lineup is a good indication of how polarized the PC and tablet industry has become in terms of price targets and the resulting quality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Revives Effort to Sell Low-End Server Business
Revives An Effort That Came Close To Yielding A Deal Last Year
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304757004579331232169084684-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwNTExNDUyWj
International Business Machines Corp. IBM +0.70% is exploring a sale of its low-end server business, according to people familiar with the matter, reviving an effort that came close to yielding a deal last year.
Dell Inc. is one party looking at the IBM business, the people said, though it is unclear how seriously.
Dell is the world’s third-largest server vendor by revenue after IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co., according to research firm Gartner.
Last spring, IBM was in advanced discussions to sell all or part of the so-called x86 server business to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd.,
IBM doesn’t break out revenue for its x86 server unit.
The x86 servers were once a fast-growing and lucrative technology that lifted sales at IBM, HP and Dell.
the rise of cloud computing has led companies to buy fewer servers.
Moreover, some companies like Google Inc., which in the past purchased large numbers of x86 servers to power websites, now make their own devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Microsoft CEO Rumors Continue to Churn, One Thing Is Clear: Gates Will Be More Visible at Microsoft
http://recode.net/2014/01/19/as-microsoft-ceo-rumors-continue-to-churn-one-thing-is-clear-gates-will-be-more-visible-at-microsoft/
On Friday, the latest chatter in the ongoing rumor mill that has become the Microsoft CEO search began again, with sudden noise that the new leader would be announced sometime in the next few days.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Red Hat: We CAN be IaaSed about OpenStack cloud
Reorg shows it’s not just a Linux company. Again
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/20/red_hat_openstack_infrastructure_cloud_reorg/
10 years after Red Hat got serious on enterprise Linux, the company is re-organised for enterprise cloud.
The Linux distro last week scraped up its Linux, virtualisation, OpenStack and cloud management businesses into a new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) unit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s mini PC gets less mini, but will hold more storage
New version of the NUC will fit a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD alongside everything else.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/intels-mini-pc-gets-less-mini-but-will-hold-more-storage/
When we reviewed the latest version of Intel’s “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC), one of our biggest complaints about the mini PC is that it didn’t leave much room for expandability. The NUC has an extremely small footprint, but it limits your component selection, which in turn limits just what you can do with it.
We’ve known that a slightly larger version of the NUC with support for standard 2.5-inch hard drives has been coming, and it looks like those computers are beginning to make their way out into retail channels. These new NUCs are about half an inch taller than the standard versions (1.9 inches, up from 1.4), but they’ll fit a standard 2.5-inch laptop drive that’s up to 9.5mm in height. The vast majority of hard drives and solid-state drives being sold currently are either 9.5mm or 7.5mm high, though larger 1.5 or 2TB drives 15mm in height won’t fit without modifying the case
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The bubble is a dirty word” – IT firms are grabbing money again
Venture capitalists poured web companies in the United States last year, more money than ever before, then the Millennium IT boom. Case survives on Friday published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association survey.
Internet companies are grabbing the United States in 2013, a total of 7.1 billion dollars. Investments were made in copies in 1059.
The year 2012 was also good.
At the moment, the risk of investors are interested in particular according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ big data, mobile applications, security, digital marketing, and healthcare companies developing applications.
Mark McCaffrey, Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the prevailing optimism mean that it would be the equivalent bubble as the turn of the millennium.
“The bubble is a four-letter word that people do not want to talk about,” McCaffrey says. “There’s always a risk that macro-economic conditions will result in something.”
Source: Tietoviikko
http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/quotkupla+on+ruma+sanaquot++itfirmat+kahmivat+taas+rahaa/a960996
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is Nintendo Doomed?
http://slashdot.org/topic/cloud/is-nintendo-doomed/
In the wake of anemic Wii U sales and lowered revenue, Nintendo is reportedly considering a move to “smart devices.”
Nintendo’s revenue and profits are tumbling faster than Mario into a bottomless pit.
The iconic Japanese game-maker’s stock price took a major hit Jan. 20 (plunging several percentage points) after company executives suggested the next-generation Wii U console would sell 2.8 million units between April 2013 and March 2014 —significantly below the 9 million units predicted in previous estimates. Contrast that with Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One, which sold 4.2 million and 3 million units, respectively, in their first six weeks of release.
In lowering its hardware and software estimates, Nintendo also expects to take a loss by the end of its fiscal year in March. It’s a thorny quandary for a company that once dominated the video-gaming segment, only to fall behind as Sony and Microsoft poured billions into their own console efforts. Nintendo’s attempt to carve a niche for itself as an ecosystem for casual gamers also ran into a massive obstacle in the form of smartphones and tablets, which quickly developed into popular gaming platforms: why spend hundreds of dollars on Nintendo products when, for a few bucks, you can download a fun puzzle game or platform shooter to your iOS or Android device?
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobility will rise to CIOs top coat instead of analytics . Norway and Sweden, this has already happened, Finland and Denmark following a little behind.
Management Event made by a joint Nordic survey, nearly half of IT managers expect the mobility of the betting improving the quality of service.
Sweden is expected to mobiliteettipanostusten addition to improving employee satisfaction and facilitate the recruitment of new talent.
Mobile Policies vary. The Danish-Norwegian, and about two-thirds of the leaders allow employees to choose a mobile device – either all the options available in the market or the company specifically designs approved by the crowd.
In Sweden, the device policy is the most stringent in the Nordic countries
Finland is in the middle ground – although Finnish IT managers as much as a quarter reported that their companies have no policy on the mobile device when the Danes, by contrast, 93 per cent that they had very clear rules of the game for mobile devices.
No sector has clearly risen above the rest in mobile investments. The forerunners were in different lines of the individual companies that are clearly recognize the business benefits of mobility.
Source: Tietokone
http://www.tietokone.fi/artikkeli/uutiset/mobiiliteetin_edut_eivat_kaikille_kirkkaita
Tomi Engdahl says:
Linus Torvalds: Any CLA is fundamentally broken
http://www.muktware.com/2014/01/linus-torvalds-cla-fundamentally-broken/19811
Canonical is often criticized for its CLAs – Contributor License Agreements – by the larger Open Source community. Ironically Canonical is not the only company which requires CLAs, even communities like FSF or ASF require CLAs.
First of all why do companies or communities need CLA? Communities and companies require CLAs to get explicit permission from the code author so that they can defend the product or project as a distributor.
“Under US copyright law, which is the law under which most free software programs have historically been first published, there are very substantial procedural advantages to registration of copyright. And despite the broad right of distribution conveyed by the GPL, enforcement of copyright is generally not possible for distributors: only the copyright holder or someone having assignment of the copyright can enforce the license. If there are multiple authors of a copyrighted work, successful enforcement depends on having the cooperation of all authors.”
What it means in ‘layman’s’ term is that if I am distributing software which has code from various developers I don’t really have any right to defend the project in case of any conflict. The code authors own the copyright thus only he/she can engage. What CLAs do is grant me, the distributor, rights of that code so I can defend it without having each code writer to intervene.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 ‘back by popular demand’, says HP as it targets wary consumers
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/21/windows-7-back-by-popular-demand-says-hp-as-it-targets-wary-consumers
The American PC giant is aiming for consumers familiar with the operating system from 2009 as newer Windows 8 sees slow acceptance
Windows 7 is “back by popular demand”, according to HP, the world’s second-largest maker of PCs, which has begun offering the previous generation of Microsoft’s operating system to US customers via email flyers.
Against a backdrop where consumers, who buy about half of all PCs, have been equivocal about Windows 8′s tiled interface since its launch in October 2012, HP has begun trying to boost sales by offering people what they are more familiar with: the desktop interface of Windows 7.
In the email flyers, it offers a handful of both desktop and laptop PCs which run the older OS, which was first released in October 2009 and which Microsoft’s claimed was its most successful version of Windows – with only Windows XP, released in autumn 2001, competing with it.
Like other PC vendors, HP can offer Windows 7 for new PCs, but would almost certainly have to pay the same licensing price to Microsoft as it does for Windows 8.
About half of Windows licences are sold to businesses, which can buy the right to “downgrade” them to an earlier version such as Windows 7.
With PC sales slumping by 10% in 2013, and Intel suggesting in its recent quarterly results that the slowdown could last into the third quarter of 2014, HP is looking to push sales of PCs.
IDC said that HP suffered most in the US with the contraction of PC sales
That seems to have triggered a decision to focus on Windows 7.
PC manufacturers have seen their profit margins squeezed as sales of PCs have fallen. For HP, which has been pushed out of the top spot in making PCs by Lenovo, boosting sales has become important.
in December Windows 7 had a 54.8% share of browsing worldwide, while XP had a 19.8% share and Windows 8 had an 8.1% share
Tomi Engdahl says:
January 21, 2014, 4:33 a.m. ET
Verizon to Buy Intel Media Assets
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20140121-701665.html
Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) has agreed to buy from Intel Corp. (INTC) the assets of Intel Media, a business division that develops Cloud TV products and services.
The transaction will accelerate the availability of next-generation video services, the companies said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
Verizon will purchase intellectual-property rights and other assets that enable Intel’s OnCue Cloud TV platform.
After the deal closes, Verizon expects to integrate the IP-based TV services with FiOS video.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Corning touts Thunderbolt optical cabling at CES 2014
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2014/01/corning-optical-thunderbolt-ces.html
At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Corning’s (NYSE: GLW) Optical Cables division is showcasing video and data transfers enabled by its all-optical fiber cables for use with Intel’s Thunderbolt technology.
The CES exhibit showcases a Thunderbolt 2/4K workflow transmitting at speeds up to 20 Gb/s and spanning more than 200 feet over optical cabling.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Players, insert coin: PlayStation 4, Xbox One top up AMD’s coffers
Chipzilla’s lone x86 competitor struggles back onto its feet in Q4 2013
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/21/playstation_xbox_help_amd_squeak_above_quarterly_revenue_expectations/
AMD’s provision of processors for Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 consoles appear to have worked its magic on the chip maker’s bottom line.
The company’s revenue for its fourth quarter of 2013 came in just above analysts’ estimates, and significantly above its earnings for the same quarter in its previous fiscal year.
“Strong execution of our strategic transformation plan drove significant revenue growth and improved profitability in the fourth quarter,” said AMD president and CEO Rory Read, citing the “continued ramp of our semi-custom SoCs and leadership graphics products.”
Diving a bit deeper into the numbers shows that AMD’s Computing Solutions revenue slipped both sequentially and year-over-year, largely due to lower chipset sales.
On the positive side, the company’s Graphics and Visual Solutions revenue increased both sequentially and year-on-year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Code is not literature
http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Web Junkie’: Harrowing Documentary On China’s Internet Addiction Rehab Clinics
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/01/21/2016243/web-junkie-harrowing-documentary-on-chinas-internet-addiction-rehab-clinics
“The Daily Beast reports on Web Junkie, a documentary showing the unsettling efforts undertaken by the Internet Addiction Treatment Center in China to break teenagers of their internet habits. Quoting: ‘China was one of the first countries to brand “Internet addiction” as a clinical disorder, and to claim it’s the number one threat to its teenagers today.”
“Some kids are so hooked on these games they think going to the bathroom will affect their performance. So they wear a diaper. These are the same as heroin addicts. … That’s why we call it electronic heroin.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM’s x86 server business back on the market
Lenovo reportedly back in the bidding for the server business, but it’s not alone.
http://www.itworld.com/hardware/401179/ibms-x86-server-business-back-market
It was widely reported last year that IBM attempted to sell off its x86 server business to Lenovo, which seemed logical as Lenovo had bought out the IBM’s PC business a decade ago. However, the two firms could not come to financial terms and the deal was never struck.
Well, the rumors have started up again, only this time Lenovo has come competition, as Dell and Fujitsu are now being throw into the mix as possible suitors.
It’s not hard to see why IBM wants out. x86 servers aren’t a great business these days. They are squeezed on the low-end as small- to mid-sized businesses ditch their own data centers and move to a cloud environment. Last year I spoke to several CIOs of mid-sized companies who said their goal was to move everything to the cloud and turn the lights out on their data center.
Then there’s a high end, with hyperscale cloud customers like Google, Amazon, and Facebook building their own systems rather than buying them. After that, there’s just not a lot of hyperscale or high-end data center construction going on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How a Math Genius Hacked OkCupid to Find True Love
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/
OkCupid was founded by Harvard math majors in 2004, and it first caught daters’ attention because of its computational approach to matchmaking. Members answer droves of multiple-choice survey questions on everything from politics, religion, and family to love, sex, and smartphones.
But mathematically, McKinlay’s compatibility with women in Los Angeles was abysmal. OkCupid’s algorithms use only the questions that both potential matches decide to answer, and the match questions McKinlay had chosen—more or less at random—had proven unpopular.
He realized he’d have to boost that number.