Microsoft takes a $900 million hit on Surface RT tablets

Microsoft has announced its earnings for Q2 2013, and the results are a mixed bag. One obvious negative, however, is the $900 million writedown officially blamed on “inventory adjustments” related to the Surface RT tablet line.
The $900 million figure comes as a result of unsold Surface RT tablets, with Microsoft rumored to have built between 3 million and 5 million units, and consequently rumored to have sold only around 1 million units. It was only last weekend that Microsoft announced a series of price cuts which saw the 32GB Surface RT tablet drop from $499 to $349 and the 64GB Surface RT drop from $599 to $499.
In real terms this hit caused the company’s earnings for the quarter to drop from 66 cents per share to 59 cents per share. Both figures were lower than the 75 cents per share Wall Street analysts were predicting.
Microsoft Surface with RT, to give it its official billing, was meant to offer an affordable alternative for those who wanted Windows on a tablet but didn’t need the full capabilities Windows 8 has to offer. Unfortunately Windows RT isn’t great, and the Surface RT tablets don’t (or at least didn’t before the recent price cuts) represent good value for money.
Have you purchased a Surface RT tablet yet? I suspect not, as very few people have done. I’m not even sure mainstream consumers know what a Surface RT tablet is, quite frankly. Many may not even be aware you can get Windows 8 in any form on a tablet, as their knowledge of the market begins and ends with the Apple iPad.
This is a huge problem that Microsoft needs to remedy if it hopes to keep the Surface brand going. Which looks likely given the strong rumors that a new line of Surface tablets are to be launched in the very near future. If Microsoft doesn’t breathe life into the Surface brand then they could have another Zune on their hands.
Posted in Microsoft Surface, News, Opinion, Windows 8 | No Comments » Read more from Dave Parrack
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Cops and politicians demand smartphone killswitches

Public officials from around the country have formed a partnership to lobby smartphone firms to introduce anti-theft measures. They’ve kicked off with a summit of the major companies.

The partnership, dubbed the “Secure Our Smartphones Iniative”, brings together the attorneys general of seven states, city prosecutors, police chiefs, local political officials and safety and consumer groups.
The group cites a statistic that 113 cellphones are lost or stolen in the US every minute, with a high proportion involving violent theft. It also says that 1.6 million people were hit by robberies or attempted robberies from criminals demanding they hand over their smartphones.
San Francisco district attorney George Gascon says it’s a simple issue: “The cell phone industry cannot ignore that smartphone theft is a crime that can be fixed with a technological solution.”
Though that might be something of an overstatement, the officials are convinced smartphone theft would drop dramatically if crime victims could take action to stop a thief using the phone or resetting it so it could be sold on. They’ve repeatedly called for some sort of killswitch feature, though gave a cautious welcome to a planned Apple feature that will make resetting a phone impossible without a password.
The group says that as well as working to encourage manufacturers to introduce a kill switch and other measures, it will explore the economics behind the issue from the perspective of the manufacturer and cellphone carriers. Some critics have suggested manufacturers have little interest in reducing theft because somebody who has a phone stolen will need to buy a new one, boosting sales. Security firm Lookout estimated the total costs to US consumers replacing lost or stolen phones could hit $30 billion a year.
Representatives of Apple, Microsoft, Motorola (owned by Google) and Samsung are today meeting at the officer of New York state attorney general Eric Schneidermen, who co-chairs the group with Gascon.
Posted in smartphone | 1 Comment » Read more from John Lister
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Want beta access to Mac OS X Mavericks? Work for Apple retail

Apple is extending a beta program for its next-generation Mac OS X Mavericks to retail employees, creating what appears to be a tradition for new operating systems.
Retail staff employees received an invite from Apple today, reports 9to5 Mac. Apple offered a similar program last year for the release of Mac OS X Mountain Lion. The memo reads:
You are invited to participate in the pre-release OS X Mavericks seed program. Participation, including submitting feedback, is completely voluntary and not an expectation of your job. If you accept, we will provide you with a pre-release version of OS X Mavericks to install and use. You will get to preview all of the exciting new features like iBooks, Maps, Calendar, Safari, iCloud Keychain, Multiple Displays, Notifications, Finder Tabs, Tags, and much more! You should use OS X Mavericks only your personal computer and on your personal time. Apple will provide you with ways to submit feedback on your experiences with OS X Mavericks, should you choose to do so. Apple also asks that you use future builds of OS X Mavericks as they are made available. The responses from prior seed programs have been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you to everyone who participated!
The program, as stated in the invite, is designed to work out the early bugs of the new operating system, which is expected to be released this fall for $19.99 via the Mac App Store.
Of course, that’s not the only way to take advantage of Mac OS X Mavericks. You could also sign up for Apple’s developer’s program, but that’s going to cost you $99-$500. And it’s pretty worthless if you don’t know how to code.
This does raise an interesting questions, from the developer’s point of view: Should the public — even Apple retail employees — get access to the operating system?
Blorge will take a stand here and say: Absolutely. It’s a huge advantage to have testers, especially testers who have a passion for Apple products. They know what makes Apple products so great and how to use them to their fullest potential. Consumers will also be happy when the version comes out more bug-free.
So far, reactions have been positive. One MacRumors forum poster, who appears to be a developer, writes, “Mavericks is very smooth for an initial beta.”
I think it’s a safe bet to say Mavericks could be the best yet.

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Lifelike Wobble Thanks to ETH Zurich Software

The cartoon characters so loved by young and old audiences alike are becoming increasingly lifelike. In order for them to look realistic, animators invest a lot of time in making a fat belly wobble as naturally as possible while walking, for instance. A project by ETH Zurich and Disney Research should make life easier for the filmmakers in future. Thanks to a new computer software, Professor Peanuts totters and wobbles while walking. (Picture: Fabian Hahn, ETH Zurich) (large view) ETH Zurich doctoral student Fabian Hahn shows how Professor Peanuts, a cartoon elephant, totters across the screen. The animal looks stiff and not particularly lifelike. “In real life, the trunk and ears would also sway and the fat belly wobble along,” stresses Hahn. If animators move a virtual character, they have to mind which body parts would move along indirectly in real life by observing reality closely and transferring it to the virtual realm. Such indirect movements include for instance the wobble of a belly or the bulging of a muscle during an arm movement. Until now, filmmakers have had the choice of either painstakingly creating these additional movements by hand or relinquishing the control: There are already computer programmes that add such effects to an existing animation. However, the automation makes subsequent changes tricky. In the course of his doctoral thesis under Markus Gross, professor of visual computing, Hahn teamed up with Bob Sumner of Disney Research to develop a new software programme that makes life easier for the artists by proposing additional movements, which the artists can easily adapt afterwards. Existing programmes that automatically add effects like the wobbling of a stomach do not use the typical animator’s toolbox, the so-called rig space – the sum of the levers the artists use to move for instance the character’s whole stomach, which consists of many individual dots. Instead, these programmes calculate the movement for every individual point instead of the levers, which makes subsequent improvements difficult. In order to adjust the animation, the artist has to painstakingly shift every single dot – for twenty-four frames per second of film! Unlike previous software, however, Hahn’s programme uses the levers in the rig space to mimic physical effects and make the wobbling look as realistic as possible (video). As the programme uses the levers, the artists can easily make changes at a later stage using the rig space levers as usual to move entire body parts instead of shifting individual dots. Last year, Hahn published a prototype of the programme that still took a long time to test the movement of all levers until a physical effect was simulated optimally. Now he is showcasing a new version of programme at the SCA, one of the most important conferences in the world for computer animation. The new programme calculates how it has to move the levers correctly much more quickly. To achieve this, Hahn incorporated the option of anticipating the movements for the next images in the animation sequences into the software. Consequently, the programme no longer tests all the degrees of freedom of all levers for each of the twenty-four frames per second. Instead, it assumes that the movements calculated for one frame – ascertained by automatically trying out all levers in all degrees of freedom – are also suitable for the next couple of frames. At the same time, it calculates how far the estimation strays from reality. If the anticipation deviates too much, the programme tests all the degrees of freedom of the levers again. Using this technique, the programme conjures up images on the screen much more quickly that are as close to reality as ever before. Thus Professor Peanuts wobbles and totters across the screen, a movement the programme now only needs minutes, not hours, to calculate. Another advantage is that the software also prevents volume from being lost on the animated characters, as Hahn explains, pointing to the ring of fat belonging to a sumo wrestler that grows noticeably flatter in the “hand-animated” movement (video). His programme, on the other hand, ensures that it bulges while moving and the mass remains intact. Although there are no official plans to use the software as yet, Hahn hopes that his programme developed in collaboration with Disney Research will be used in animated films in the near future. Perhaps a pot-bellied Professor Peanuts will be wobbling across the big screen in the next few years – with an air of ETH Zurich. F. Hahn, S. Martin, B. Thomaszewski, R. Sumner, S. Coros, M. Gross. Rig-Space Physics; Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles, USA, August 5-9, 2012), ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 72:1-72:8
F. Hahn, B. Thomaszewski, S. Coros, S. Martin, R. Sumner, M. Gross. Efficient simulation of secondary motion in rig-space; Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (Anaheim, USA, July 19-21, 2013)

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The Online Service That Lets You Rent Bikes ‘Round the World

 Spinlister will let you rent bikes from friendly strangers
There’s no better way to see a city — or the countryside — than on a bicycle. It’s the reason bike rental services exist in so many big cities. There’s just one problem: most rental bikes suck. Well, there are two problems, actually: It’s also pretty hard to find a bike rental place outside of a big city. Which explains why Spinlister, a service that lets people rent out their personal bikes to (hopefully) friendly strangers, is so exciting for weekend getaways.
Essentially, it’s like an AirBnB for bikes. You enter the city or zip code where you need a rental, and it kicks back a big old list of two-wheeled wonders. Well, a big old list in some places, at least. There were all sorts of rides in San Francisco and Portland, a handful in Austin and Cincinnati, and one lonely bicycle in Birmingham, Alabama.
But, for a new service, the offerings are surprisingly robust. (We weren’t really expecting to see any in Birmingham, to be honest.) And while these aren’t demo-quality bikes, they do tend to be much nicer than the rustbuckets you’ll pick up from most bike rental shops. And some are just completely awesome. Ride on!

Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired's Gadget Lab and the co-founder of the Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine.
Read more by Mat Honan
Follow @mat on Twitter.

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The iPad Mini 2 is the tablet to beat all tablets, possibly

If the rumors about the iPad Mini 2, due to be released before the end of 2013, are true, then the latest Apple tablet could be the tablet to beat all tablets. No, I’m serious.
I have been writing about the iPad since before it was even announced. Months prior to the day when Steve Jobs stood on stage and presented the iPad to the world there were rumors galore that Apple’s next big product was going to be a tablet. And so it came to pass.
However, in all the time that has passed since then I haven’t purchased an iPad. The reasons are many and varied, but the iPad Mini 2 may just be good enough to make them all inconsequential. At least if the current (and fairly persistent) rumors are to be believed.
The leak suggests that the iPad Mini 2 will feature a Retina Display boasting 2048 X 1536 pixels. This is the same number the full-sized iPad boasts, but crammed into a 7.9-inch screen. The iPad Mini 2 may also feature a dual-core A6X processor, which would be a big improvement on the current model.
Furthermore, the iPad Mini 2 may have slimmer bezels, an 8-megapixel iSight camera on the rear and a 2-megapixel FaceTime camera on the front. Last but not least will be an improved battery and a slightly larger body to comfortably house it.
I’ve always argued that the 7- to 8-inch tablets are the most versatile and useful, and this would fit that bill. And with all the small annoyances and disappointments from the original iPad Mini corrected this could be a very easy tablet to sell to the masses.
The only sticking point may be the price. Apple is struggling to innovate in the way it was a decade ago, with incremental upgrades to its existing product line becoming standard procedure. But it has one trick remaining up its sleeve… a healthy price cut.
If the iPad Mini 2 is cheaper than the original then it could be the essential tablet to own. On paper it looks the business, but will Apple and Tim Cook deliver the goods?
Posted in iPad, News, Opinion, Rumor | No Comments » Read more from Dave Parrack
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Nokia Lumia 1020: You Will See Things You Have Never Seen Before

The Nokia Lumia 1020 marks the beginning of the end of Nokia’s transition period. After almost two years of launching the Lumia range of smartphones, Nokia finally has something that would make buyers notice its product while they are deciding whether they should go for the latest iPhone or Galaxy smartphone. Despite the weakness of Windows Phone as a platform when compared to iOS and Android, over the past two years Nokia has managed to come up with a decent package of hardware, software and services to make up for the missing bits.
If the Nokia Lumia 1020's camera does perform as claimed (it did during my brief experience with the smartphone), it would be a pretty compelling offering.

Think about it, the Lumia 1020 would have the best camera performance combined with a music store that offers unlimited tracks to download for free and it also has one of the best offline navigation software on any smartphone. While Nokia’s Lumia smartphones were already doing well in the entry and mid-level segments, the Nokia Lumia 1020 could be the key to success in the high-end segment, which was missing so far.
Having said that, it is too early to root for Nokia’s future success. The company still has a few obstacles to overcome. The first and foremost being its partnership with Microsoft and Windows Phone as a platform. Nokia has consistently got the hardware right but has always been let down by Windows Phone, which lacks apps and is not as polished or evolved as Android and iOS. Major app developers prefer to make apps for Android and iOS, while developing them for Windows Phone seems like an afterthought and often after being paid to developed for the platform. Heavy smartphone users prefer using the other two platforms as Microsoft has failed repeatedly to catch up with them in a quest to be perceived as being different. The lack of a proper centralized notification system, for instance, is hard to explain.
Secondly, Nokia is still struggling to roll out its smartphones at a faster pace. With limited marketing budgets and production capacity, it has to stagger its launches that take a couple of quarters to reach major markets while Samsung rolled its Galaxy S4 smartphone in over 110 countries in a fortnight. Even if Nokia has a great product like the Lumia 1020, people would consider to buy it only if it is available in their country. Think about it, the Lumia 925 is not available in most markets yet and Nokia had to announce the Lumia 1020. Even hardcore Nokia fans would now be compelled to not buy the Lumia 925 and instead wait for the Lumia 1020. And who knows, by the time the Lumia 1020 is available across markets, Nokia might have something else to offer.
During my interactions with senior Nokia executives it became clear that they are aware of the situation but it remains a challenge and they are making the best of what they have. Despite these challenges, it is refreshing to see how Nokia continues to innovate with the resources it has and is playing to its strengths. Rather than buying off the shelf image sensors for the 41-megapixel PureView camera, Nokia has designed the entire assembly including the optical image stabilization bit internally, which means its rivals won’t be able to easily replicate the main USP of the Nokia Lumia 1020.
Having its own music store, navigation software and acquiring Scalado, which makes the UI for most smart camera apps that you currently see on rival smartphones, will buy Nokia some time. But what Nokia needs the most at this time is a major hit at the top-end segment and it is hoping the Nokia Lumia 1020 will be that smartphone.

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