Live from Amazon’s Kindle event; the company just unveiled a refreshed Kindle Fire lineup dubbed the “Kindle Fire HD”. A few of the highlights: the device now comes in an 8.9-inch 1,920-by-1,200-pixel variant (in addition to a new 7-inch 1,280-by-800-pixel HD model) with 254 ppi, double the RAM of previous models, longer battery life, and a laminated touch sensor that reduces screen glare by up to 25 percent. The 8.9-inch Fire HD is set to ship Nov. 20 for $299, while a 7-inch Fire HD will cost you $199 when it ships Sept. 14.
Two of the big names in slick, Mac-compatible audio interfaces have announced new products that OS X gearheads will want to take note of. While these two interfaces from Apogee and Focusrite include different feature sets and price points, both feature a polished, Apple design aesthetic and introduce features not currently available in the companies’ current audio interface lineups.
Starting with the Quartet desktop interface by Apogee (which is widely considered to be the industry leader in digital audio interface technology), this new interface and control center for Mac is the company’s first to feature a USB MIDI connection. Coming in at $1,295 when it ships later this month, the Quartet lands somewhere between the company’s popular $595 Duet 2 and $1,995 Ensemble interfaces. Included is six touchpads for your inputs and outputs, three assignable touchpads, monitor control for up to three sets of monitors, four analog inputs with Apogee’s reference standard mic preamps and eight analog outputs. We look forward to bringing you a full review of the Apogee Quartet ASAP.
A full list of specs is below:
Features and specifications:
4 Analog Inputs: Combination line (balanced +20dBu max), Mic/Instrument (+20dBu/+14dBu max)
4 Microphone preamps with up to 75dB of gain
8 Digital Inputs: ADAT/SMUX Input, 2 Toslink connectors, 44.1kHz to 96kHz
8 Analog Outputs: 6 Balanced line outputs, +20 dBu maximum output level, 1 Independent 1/4” stereo headphone output
MIDI I/O (USB-A type connector)
Word clock output
USB 2.0 High-speed Mac audio interface
A/D and D/A conversion: 24 bit/192kHz
2 top panel high resolution OLED displays
Controller knob
6 touchpads for direct selection of inputs and outputs
3 assignable touchpads to control:
Mute Outputs
Dim Outputs
Sum to Mono
Clear Meters
Engage Speaker Set (allows monitoring of up to 3 pairs of speakers)
Also just announced is a new audio interface from Focusrite that comes closer to the price point of Apogee’s $600 Duet 2. Focusrite’s new “Forte” interface is a 2 in, 4 out, USB 2.0, which features two remote-controlled mic preamps, touch sensitive buttons, a large control knob, and an included breakout cable for XLR connections. The Forte can handle A-D and D-A conversion at up to 24-bit/192kHz resolution, and it will hit stores in October for roughly $600.
As part the International keynote presentations at IFA this year, AMD exec and president of the HSA foundation, Phil Rogers, took the stage to give an update on the current state of the not-for-profit alliance. For those of you unfamiliar with the foundation, HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture), is described as “a heterogeneous compute ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, for combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption.”
While the addition of Samsung, among other partners Texas Instruments, ARM, AMD, and Imagination Technologies, was the big news of the day for most, a short demo by partner Apical was what really caught our attention.
Apical’s “Assertive Display” technology is already present in a few devices, such as Sharp’s AQUOS PHONE SH-01D, but during its demo for the HSA keynote, Apical showed off the tech working on an iPad…
We had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Sharp today at its IGZO display booth. While they would not say which Apple products would incorporate their new displays, they did seem to insinuate these were the best displays on the market, and Apple is the type of company that uses the best displays.
The fast keep getting faster. Western Digital announced two new speedy new platter drives aimed at Mac users today. The Thunderbolt “My Book VelociRaptor Duo” is a speed improvement on WD’s previous Thunderbolt Drives coming from the addition of two 10,000RPM internal HDDs (the speed of the drives is actually still the bottleneck here —Thunderbolt is very fast).
Extreme speed of WD VelociRaptor drives inside.
With the extreme speed of two 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor drives inside united with the revolutionary speed of Thunderbolt technology your creative inspirations have never moved so fast.
Enhanced workflow efficiency.
The dual Thunderbolt ports make it easy to daisy chain more drives for even greater speeds and higher capacity. Add peripherals to further enhance your productivity.
User-configurable for speed or double-safe data protection.
Customize this dual-drive storage system to your needs – RAID 0 for speed, RAID 1 for data protection, JBOD to use the drives individually.
Did you know…
My Book VelociRaptor Duo is a bootable external device supported by Mac OS X. For additional information, please click here.
Western Digitial also upped the speed of its Mac Portable Drives (which we’ve reviewed favorably) with USB 3.0 and sizes up to 2TB:
Ultra-fast USB 3.0 connectivity.
With the blazing-fast connectivity of USB 3.0, this drive lets you access and save files in record time. Reduce transfer time by up to 3 times when compared to USB 2.0 transfer rates.**Performance may vary based on user’s hardware and system configuration.
Massive capacity in a small design.
This compact enclosure offers up to a massive 2 TB of storage. It’s the ideal companion for anyone with lots of photos, movies, videos and files that they want to take with them.
Password protection secures
your drive.
Use WD Security utility to set password protection and hardware encryption and protect your files from unauthorized use or access.
AT&T has announced the upcoming opening of its new flagship retail store in Chicago. The store, located in the Magnificent Mile district, features 10,000 square feet of store place and lots of advanced new technologies. The store has an 18 foot high “Connect Wall” that showcases AT&T’s latest news and product details to both people inside and outside of the store.
As you can see in the image above, the store has displays throughout: over 100, according to AT&T. This new flagship store is spread into a few sections, including an apps lounge and lifestyle boutiques. Here’s AT&T’s video guided tour of the store:
President Barack Obama just began a Reddit “AMA” (ask me anything) that invites Internet folk to ask questions and hopefully get answers. He is notably using a MacBook Pro and Magic Mouse to work his magic. We previously noted his fondness of Apple, as he has been caught several times with a MacBook at his side. Someone go ask about the next-generation iPhone. [Reddit]
By the way, is he rocking the same tie from when he tweeted?
A report surfaced this morning about T-Mobile sending a memo to its sales staff that encourages them to sell against Apple’s iPhone beginning Sept. 21. Unsurprisingly, the memo confirmed T-Mobile would not be a carrier for the next-generation iPhone due out next month. Adding a bit to this morning’s story, TmoNews followed up with a new flyer that T-Mobile aims to show customers. The flyer boasts just how much iPhone users will save if they ditch AT&T and bring their unlocked iPhone to T-Mobile. Magenta is promising customers can save up to $1,500 over two years if they switch. T-Mobile’s single line offering actually sounds fabulous, as it offers customers truly unlimited data, text and minutes for only $75. That seems like a plan you can’t beat…unless you want 3G speeds. T-Mobile made a recent push to iPhone-compatible 1900MHz 3G network (and 4G at WWDC), but we are not sure how well it is doing on that front. Until then, EDGE 2.5G is as fast as you will get.
T-Mobile has not been able to sign up as an official iPhone carrier, so it has always made strides to welcome unlocked iPhone users. We previously reported there are roughly 1 million iPhone users on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile offers a MicroSIM kit to make the switch on your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S a little easier. An updated version of the kit will hit stores beginning Aug. 29.
J.D. Power and Associates is out with the second half of its 2012 “U.S. Wireless Network Quality Performance Study”, and Verizon once again come out on top for network performance in five of the six regions included in the report. Only second to U.S. Cellular in the North Central region, Verizon posted the best overall network performance among the other carriers in the remaining regions based on 10 key problem areas that could impact the customer experience.
For a 16th consecutive reporting period, Verizon Wireless ranks highest in the Northeast region. Verizon Wireless achieves fewer customer-reported problems with dropped calls, initial connections, transmission failures and late text messages, compared with the regional average. Verizon Wireless also ranks highest in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest and West regions… U.S. Cellular ranks highest in the North Central region for a 14th consecutive reporting period. Compared with the regional average, U.S. Cellular has fewer customer-reported problems with dropped calls, failed initial connections, audio problems, failed voice mails and lost calls.
The study also covered the customer experience specifically for data-related problems. Not surprisingly, LTE device users experienced significantly less issues than older 3G devices like the iPhone:
The study finds that the number of data-related problems, especially those related to slow connection speeds, is significantly lower among customers using 4G LTE-enabled devices than among those using devices with older 3G/4G technology standards, such as WiMAX and HSPA+… For example, among customers with 4G LTE-enabled devices, the problem incidence for excessively slow mobile Web loading is 15 PP100, compared with the industry average of 20 PP100. Furthermore, the overall problem incidence for excessively slow mobile Web loading is even higher among customers with WiMAX and HSPA+ technology
Based on responses from over 26,000 U.S. wireless customers, the report explained how network performance was calculated: Expand Expanding Close
For those of you who enjoy a little Chrome in your iOS experience, Google updated Chrome today with some nice social-sharing features. Posting to Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are all included with the ability to push pages to the email application. The additions start to bring Chrome up to par with Apple’s Mobile Safari, which still benefits from speed due to an optimized Nitro engine that sandboxed apps do not have access to.
It would not be a Chrome update without a few “stability and security improvements” and “bug fixes addressing user feedback” either.
Spotify made a huge stride when it launched in the United States in July 2011, which opened a partnership with Facebook that has paid off. The music streaming company looks to be expanding even further, as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Spotify is expected to launch in Canada soon. Furthermore, Spotify may also expand into Asia and South America. Spotify’s latest annual accounts tipped WSJ off on the news:
Last year, Spotify established subsidiaries in Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong, all places where its service isn’t yet available. Spotify is currently available in 15 countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and Germany, and recently launched in Australia and New Zealand. Company spokeswoman Sofie Grant declined to elaborate on the details of the company’s expansion plans, but said Spotify “of course plans to launch in new countries.”
Many ditched Apple’s iTunes and services like Pandora for Spotify, including me, because the ease of building playlists and finding new music on Spotify is certainly impressive. The only downfall is that the premium plan costs $10 a month, which offers unlimited music without ads, but I find the money to be worth it. Spotify recently introduced a free unlimited radio — launched on its Android — in July.
John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at advocacy group Public Knowledge has this to say:
“By blocking FaceTime for many of its customers, AT&T is violating the FCC’s Open Internet rules. These rules state that mobile providers shall not ‘block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services.’ Although carriers are permitted to engage in ‘reasonable network management,’ there is no technical reason why one data plan should be able to access FaceTime, and another not.
“‘Over-the-top’ communications services like FaceTime are a threat to carriers’ revenue, but they should respond by competing with these services and not by engaging in discriminatory behavior.”
Sure, FaceTime over cellular is a “new feature” of iOS 6, but so is Apple’s new Maps Turn-by-turn navigation. So is the PassBook Application and Photo Streams. They all will use more data. What is stopping AT&T from blocking those too?
What justification can AT&T give for such a move when it allows competing video chat apps to be available over its network? The most popular video chatting app, Microsoft’s Skype, has been available on the iPhone over 3G since AT&T allowed it –with some significant coaxing – from the FCC in 2009.
But with the FCC not only investigating AT&T and Apple’s Google Voice ban — but wireless industry competition overall — AT&T has miraculously had a change of heart and will now allow iPhone Skype traffic over 3G:
Previously, VoIP applications on iPhone were enabled for Wi-Fi connectivity…AT&T this afternoon informed Apple Inc. and the FCC of its decision. In late summer, AT&T said it was taking a fresh look at VoIP capabilities on iPhone for use on AT&T’s 3G network, consistent with its regular review of device features and capabilities to ensure attractive options for consumers.
AT&T can’t claim network usage penalties for a couple of reasons:
1. As mentioned above, Skype and other Video chatting applications aren’t blocked by AT&T and they use just as much data.
2. AT&T has moved just about all of its customers over to tiered data plans and even those who are left on “Unlimited Plans” are still subject to throttling that would eliminate the ability to use video chatting applications. Users are paying for data that they use.
3. FaceTime over Wifi uses about 3 Megabytes per minute of talk. For someone to use up a 3GB monthly allotment of data, they would need to FaceTime video chat for almost 17 hours (and the data usage over 3G would likely be less taxing). Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Amazon Video all use roughly this amount of data without regulation from AT&T.
As for the competition, Sprint already announced that it will not hinder FaceTime over cellular, and Verizon is being forced not to mess with it because of a Net Neutrality agreement.
Update: While OnLive provided the same statement (below) to Kotaku as they did to Joystiq, a new report from Kotaku, citing a source inside OnLive, claimed the company is about to file for bankruptcy and layoff most of its employees:
The source says that everyone at the company knew things were tight. This morning, an all-hands meeting was called at 10 a.m. this morning where CEO Steve Perlman said that OnLive would be filing for ABC bankruptcy in the state of California—a status that affords them a level of protection from creditors. Perlman also said that the company as it stands now would cease to exist and that no one would be employed by OnLive. A subset of employees would be brought on to the company created from the remains of OnLive.
OnLive’s Director of Corporate Communications Brian Jaquet has shot down rumors that the game streaming service is closing its doors after several media outlets reported the story earlier today. A report from The Verge, citing video game developer Brian Fargo and emails from former OnLive staff members, claimed the game-streaming service would shut its doors and lay off staff immediately. Emails obtained by The Verge’s sister site, Polygon, claimed a new company would be formed. However, current OnLive employees would be let go for the time being:
“I wanted to send a note that by the end of the day today, OnLive as an entity will no longer exist,” reads an email forwarded to Polygon. “Unfortunately, my job and everyone else’s was included. A new company will be formed and the management of the company will be in contact with you about the current initiatives in place, including the titles that will remain on the service.”
“We don’t respond to rumors, but of course not… The exciting news is that the first VIZIO Co-Stars (Google TV stream players) with the OnLive app built-in have just arrived in customer homes,” he continued, “and our second of three ‘Indie Giveaway Weekends’ is going on now. OnLive users can get a free copy of the award-winning games Space Pirates and Zombies and SpaceChem.” So it sounds like OnLive is still open for business.
When asked about possible layoffs, Jaquet confirmed: “The OnLive service is not shutting down.”
Another day, more witnesses, accusations of crack smoking. Day 10 of the Apple vs. Samsung case is on the way in sunny San Jose, Calif., this afternoon, where Samsung continues to bring key witnesses to the stand to rest its case. First off—Samsung called financial expert Michael Wagner to the stand this morning to discuss financials. Apple called its own similar witness to the stand earlier, who said Samsung’s margin of United States sales was roughly 35.5-percent (or $8.16 billion). According to Reuters, Wagner stated to the court today that Apple overstated the amount of profit Samsung earns for its mobile products in the U.S. Instead of the 35.5-percent Apple alleged, according to Wagner, Samsung’s U.S. margin is only 12 percent (or $519 million). Apple finished its case last week by asserting Samsung owes $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion in damages for alleged “slavish” copying.
With Apple’s explanation on the table, and the amount it is requesting in damages, along with the barring of some products, Samsung had its turn to state its case. Samsung claimed Apple copied its patents that cover emailing pictures from photo albums, the act of playing music from the device, and more. Apple made similar claims to Samsung.
Two more witnesses who took the stand today calculated the amount of royalties Apple would owe Samsung if the company were found to be infringing patents, Bloomberg noted. Vincent O’Brien, a damages expert, told the court that for two of Samsung’s patents, Apple should owe $22.8 million to Samsung. Another witness, David Teece, further asserted Apple should owe another $290 million to $399 million for two Samsung patents. That is a grand total of $422 million, which Apple could eventually be ordered to pay out if found guilty. Samsung rested its case. In further courtroom news, Judge Lucy Koh was once again fired up:
The Loop pointed us to this iOS support matrix (Autumn 2012 edition) posted by app developer Empirical Magic. Definitely a useful resource for developers, the chart shows the number of devices running certain versions of iOS, and makes recommendations for dropping support in future updates.
After 25 hours to make its case in the Apple vs. Samsung trial in San Jose, Calif., Apple wrapped up 14 hours this afternoon by calling CPA Terry Musika to the stand. The Verge reported that, while on the stand, Musika broke down just how much money Apple lost due to Samsung’s patent infringement, which is the highlight of the entire case. According to Musika and Apple’s calculations, the company lost 2 million iPhone and iPad sales or $488.8 million in total. The amount was calculated by the products that Samsung was accused of copying, as well as royalty fees Apple believes Samsung should have paid for its products in question, and profits that Apple may have lost.
The CPA then brought up the $8.16 billion in revenue and $2.241 billion in profit Samsung garnered from the sale of its devices. After taking Samsung’s taxes, profit, and the market conditions at the time into consideration, Musika believes Samsung should pay $2.5 billion to $2.75 billion in damages. That figure is on key with what Apple has already presented. Read on:
Apple’s first store in the heart of Hong Kong’s IFC opened to the public last fall. The store is massive, sporting a gigantic glass display that spans across six lanes of the street below and includes a giant staircase in the center of the store. Around the same time as the IFC launch, a second Apple Store located in Hong Kong was rumored to be in the works. We learned much more about the new flagship store today…
Texas-based game retailer GameStop has taken a hit over the past year as users move game downloads to mobile devices and online platforms. While the company still maintains a two-thirds share of the retail market, its stock has taken a sharp 26 percent dive, leaving the company in need of a serious turn-around. We first reported last September that GameStop had begun taking in trade-ins of Apple’s devices, and we now have learned that was a part of the company’s master plan to bounce back.
In an effort to avoid the fate of Blockbuster, Circuit City and others in the remainder bin of failed retailers, GameStop has embarked on a daring, if inglorious, strategy: refashioning itself from a console-game purveyor into a repairer and reseller of Apple gadgets, betting that its retail visibility will prove an advantage.
Minnesota-based retail chain Best Buy is looking to make some major changes to its business as sales of electronics are moving online. Best Buy founder Richard Schulze toldThe Wall Street Journal that his company is going to cut prices to better compete with online markets like Amazon and eBay. Furthermore, the founder, who owns one-fifth of the company, wants to enact changes to its customer service that are more in-line with Apple. Apple’s customer service has been called one of the best out of any major corporation, so it would definitely be a smart move. The Apple Care customer service line, coupled with great in-store support, make for a great experience for customers. Best Buy is also looking to make other changes like cutting up to 50 of its larger stores and cut up to $800 million in costs by 2015. Best Buy’s board will meet at the end of August to discuss the proposed changes. [WSJ]
