Apple hinted that in quartile 4 of 2013 there could be a new range of products. Speculation has begun to appear about what this could be.
Apple has already been noted for not turning down the rumours of a new Apple TV set (as in not just a set top box, but a proper television with a display) for a long time now and there is still a possibility.
But can Apple conquer the television market from Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Sony who pretty much run the whole market these days? Well they came into the smartphone market with an innovative design - utilising the consumer friendly capacitive touch display all the way back in 2007 whereas Windows Mobile was still in favour of the enterprise users and still used to resistive technology. However, it was the early innovation that got them there in the first place. Apple have been beaten to be the first into the Smart TV market already, so it's hardly appealing that they release some app based TV when most of us have them as it is.
Connectivity to the Mac computers using AirPlay may inspire some of us to buy one, but for others there probably won't be that many benefits. Especially saying as Apple's computers seem to set in line Apple's hate for connectivity. This is what gets me about Apple - they brought out the Lightning connector and there are no docks - they destroyed something good and replaced it with something that could easily have been replaced with a micro USB connector like the rest of the industry (by the way, it's EU law to have some kind of way of charging the iPhone via micro USB). Again, there is no support for HDMI without purchasing adapters for the iPad - there are no physical connectors other than the Dock or Lightning connectors. The same goes for the Mac line of computers; on my 2011 MacBook Pro I have two USB ports, FireWire 800, Thunderbolt, Ethernet and an audio jack - a similar PC would have a lot more. In fact the new Retina line of MacBook Pro computers only have two Thunderbolt ports and two USB 3.0, an HDMI port and an audio jack. Apple seems to like the minimalist design of few connectors and I'm sure we would see the same happen to a television set if it happened.
However, a new television is not all that Apple could announce. The MacBook Air could do with a Retina display and perhaps this is what is meant by a new product from Apple.
So what do you think? Comment below if you have an opinion.
Whilst the fabrication size of features in processors is getting smaller all the time, IBM had time to show off how far we have (or they) have come with it, demonstrating a very short animation of a boy with his atom and putting it on the web so we can all see it.
For anyone who is interested in fabrication or physics or would just like to see atoms dance, this video is sure to please you.
Read the full story over at Wired.
This blog was spammed and sabotaged over the last week which is why I had not posted over the duration. I have since then managed to obtain control of it again and have freshly reinstalled WordPress on to my site, put in three new security measures and totally stopped spam on the blog.
I'm not sure how this happened but it could be related to the recent attack on WordPress blogs. I have also used this opportunity to improve security on the WeBlog WordPress blog.
In iOS 6.0 in October 2012, Apple release one of it's new built-in apps. There was much hype about what it would bring to the iPod, iPad and iPhone. It was a clean new feature that was designed to bring about a new way of organising payments and cards; keeping your loyalty cards and boarding passes in one place. For instance, Starbucks allow you to obtain loyalty points with your Starbucks card and pay with it, or something similar (I am not much of Starbucks guy, but I have been in for an orange juice or apple juice once in a while) and Passbook allows you to keep this loyalty card 'inside' your phone.
The concept sounds great, but with Apple's lack of NFC (Near Field Communication), it means that communicating with the cash machine or whatever must be done using an optical scanner that can read either barcodes or QR codes from a display like the iPhone retina display. Sounds ok though, doesn't it?
Well no. It's below par and it hardly ideal. I use my Subcard (which funnily enough does not have a Passbook option as of just now, and probably never will) on my iPhone 5 which I hand over once I have placed my order and am ready to receive the points. I always worry that they have just been making my sub up for me just before they touch my iPhone. I'm also concerned that if it falls out of his or her hands the responsibility will still lie on my hands. Passbook is a solution that was not well thought through, contrast with Google Wallet. Google Wallet uses NFC in most cases and allows smaller payments to be made by just swiping the phone over the NFC card machine. This seems too easy compared. It's also got loads of safety features such as remote lockout and all the rest. You can read more about Google Wallet here.
Passbook still only has five UK apps just now, namely iHotel, United Airlines, Lufthansa, American Airlines and Starbucks, of which I use just Starbucks. This was six months after the initial release of Passbook. I also do not understand why you cannot access the App Store from Passbook to see more Passbook apps after you have already got one Passbook card.
Passbook seemed so damn perfect, until the lack of apps and the lack of NFC made it become something I now just look at in disappointment.
My rant for today is with littering in the UK. I was on my way home from the local town, and as I was passing a house, I looked at the grass just outside their house and something that really annoys me is that they clearly spend a lot of time and money on their house, but people just do not seem to care and throw litter out in the direction of their grass.
Here's the other part of the story. When I was out shopping at a supermarket, people who had clearly been to McDonalds had just finished their food and they just opened the door and put it on the ground, now I don't get so annoyed when they do this in the McDonalds car parks (I don't like it but McDonalds put the Drive Thru and car park there), but when they do it in a car park for a supermarket, that's just plain lazy. Especially saying as the bin was about 3 cars away. It's also just disrespectful.
Do you upload images to a blog or website?
When you upload to a blog or website, compression is absolute key.
Firstly, always save as JPEG or JPG. JPG is the ideal photo standard for the web; as it is designed for fast transfer to the client PC and for a lower footprint on the web server. It works by taking out information that the human eye does not notice.
All images should be the minimum size that they can be before there is a noticeable difference or problem. For instance on our community shared blog, images for the top slider must be 662 pixels wide by 362 in height. If all images are uploaded this way, image file sizes become much smaller and therefore the web space (limited currently to 5GB) is cut down for this.
Another method of compression that I use is featured in my own software, Painter Pro. It allows you to select how much compression is applied to the image before it is saved. An alternative to Painter Pro that allows this is Paint.NET (another favourite) where when you save the image as a JPG it asks you if you want to compress.
Compression should almost always be applied to images, particularly now that mobile websites are a key part of any site.
WordPress built sites are under major attack from more than a denial of service attacks (DOS).
As a precaution, I have limited the number of login attempts on this blog to prevent people running malicious programs to crack the logins.
You can read more at Ars Technica:
Or from a WordPress founder:
Finally, a WordPress We Blog. The old blog has been scrapped and replaced with a new one. Anyone can now join and write with me and other bloggers! Here's why you may consider it:
- My personal blog brings in about 30+ views a day which can easily transfer over to this blog as I recommend and write for it
- The blog is run by me, and I know how to run the blog to make it successful
- It may encourage others to view your own blog
- It is created with WordPress
So if you want to be an author or editor, please get in touch.
Along with many others, I am eagerly anticipating the release of Haswell, Intel's next step on their roadmap. It will replace the current 'third generation' of the Core series known as Ivy Bridge and will bring new power optimisations among many other features.
Some of the new features that we can expect are the new LGA (Land Grid Array) socket 1150 for desktops, rPGA (Pin Grid Array) socket 947 and BGA (Ball Grid Array) socket 1364 for mobile versions, DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 4.0 support for the built-in graphics chip featured with all Haswell chips. The merged southbridge and northbridge design known by Intel as the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) will receive a die shrink from 65nm to 32nm.
The chip will continue to be manufactured at 22nm and will continue to use Intel's Tri-Gate transistor platform, but it will be incompatible with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge motherboards. If you are like me and hoping to get your hands on Haswell, wait until after the initial launch as with Sandy Bridge and later Ivy Bridge, I can no longer trust that it will be flawless from the release and will wait a bit longer before considering the upgrade on my slightly faulty Sandy Bridge.
What else would you like to see with Haswell? Comment below.
It was only last week I was talking to my brother about how Google was apparently dropping the WebKit browsing engine that they had used in Chrome since the beginning. Of course there had to be a reason behind this. The answer is Blink.
Blink is a new browsing engine which forks from WebKit (for those who do not talk tech this is when a piece of software is adapted to make a new piece of software and they go off in two paths, similar to Libre Office and OpenOffice).
So whilst Safari will continue to use the WebKit engine, Chrome and Opera will move to Blink. Firefox continues to use the Gecko Engine (which I despise) and Internet Explorer will continue using Trident. Have I missed any?
What does this mean for the Chrome user?
It does not mean much for you right now as a fork takes from the latest version of the software, so the first version of Blink will be the same as the last version of WebKit and therefore it will render similarly. However, in the future Google's development on the Blink engine may push WebKit down as Google may innovate more and more. On the other hand, it could go the other way and WebKit could bring a better browsing experience before Blink.
Will Blink come to mobile devices?
Yes! Blink will come to Android as well as desktop versions of Chrome. Part of the Chromium Project's latest browsing engine is that it will be featured on all devices in the same manner. So don't worry about your mobile not being the same as your desktop, it will look exactly the same.
Why is this happening?
Apparently, according to the Guardian:
The move follows long-simmering disagreement between engineers at Apple and Google over the best way to develop the rendering engine underlying the browser - with one senior Apple engineer saying that Google refused to incorporate key technologies into the main branch of WebKit, keeping them instead for Chrome.
Unfortunately, Google and Apple do not get on for the better of the open source project which as of March 2013 Apple now owns the trademark to.
In my opinion, this is just another problem between Apple and Google, showcasing the fact that the two of them should never be involved in projects together.
