Samsung follows in Apple’s footsteps by making a gloss black S7 Edge

The competing rivalry between Samsung and Apple is nothing new, the two have been vying for smartphone supremacy for several years. Where one goes, the other tends to follow, either by improving on a feature or essentially copying and claiming it as an original idea.

• Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review: The new smartphone champion

The latter is what we’re dealing with today, as leaked images of a gloss black Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge have appeared online on Chinese social site Weibo. Apple reintroduced gloss black as a colour option after a four year hiatus between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 7. The colour is back and has proven popular with customers, regardless of the fact it’s a fingerprint and scratch magnet.

It could be entirely coincidental that Samsung has chosen to release a gloss black S7 Edge, as it does already offer a matte black version. Apple also offers a matte black iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

The leaked images are said to be of an international version of the phone, although there’s nothing in the images to confirm this. It’s also claimed to have 128GB of internal storage as standard, positioning itself as a more premium option compared to the 32GB you get with other colour options.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Edge: What’s the story so far?

There’s no mention of any other hardware upgrades, so expect it arrive with the same 5.5-inch Quad HD display and Snapdragon 820 processor. Even though it’s claimed the images are of an international version, there’s no word on an official release date. With the Galaxy S8 expected to be announced at Mobile World Congress next February, we assume the gloss black S7 Edge will be out before then.

ICYMI: The internet-connected chessboard of your dreams

Today on In Case You Missed It: A Kickstarter campaign for a chessboard that uses a robotic arm underneath to magically move magnetic game pieces has surpassed its funding goal — and let’s be real, that’s probably mostly Harry Potter fans. Meanwhile, an Autodesk robotic arm is 3D printing with a stainless steel welder and some great software, that video is here.

If you need some Thanksgiving motivation, the dog chopping veggies video is here and the drone is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

EVs, 5G and fintech: How the Autumn Statement affects UK tech

Another Autumn Statement, another set of promises that may or may not improve the lives of British citizens. Amongst the usual tax and welfare modifications, chancellor Philip Hammond announced some new policies that will affect the technology, science and transport industries. Most of them are bundled in the new National Productivity Investment Fund (NPIF), a long-term project designed to make the public more efficient in the workplace, improving the UK economy and people’s work-life balance in the process. In total, the government says it will spend an extra £23 billion through the fund, starting in 2017/18 and ending in 2021/22.

For starters, an extra £4.7 billion will be spent on science and research. The government says it will equate to an extra £2 billion every year, or an increase of 20 percent to total R&D funding. The additional money will, in part, go towards an “Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund” supporting collaboration between UK researchers and businesses, similar to how DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) operates in the US.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth.

There will also be £1 billion — of which £700 million will come from the new NPIF — dedicated to new fibre broadband and 5G connectivity. According to the treasury, it’ll be broken down into three parts; a £400 million “Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund,” matched by the private sector to improve fibre access over four years; a new, 100 percent business rates relief for new fibre installations over five years (starting in April 2017), and a “co-ordinated programme” of integrated fibre and 5G trials.

“This will bring faster and more reliable broadband to homes and businesses across the UK, boost the next generation of mobile connectivity and keep the UK in the forefront of the development of the Internet of Things,” the treasury said in its Autumn Statement.

As part of the NPIF, the government will also be supporting electric and low-emission vehicles. An extra £390 million will be spent in total, covering £80 million for electric charging points and £100 million to test and develop the infrastructure needed for driverless cars. Around £150 million will be spent on public transport too, namely through 550 electric and hydrogen buses and new efforts to reduce the emissions produced by existing buses and taxis. As an extra incentive to go green, the government is offering “100 percent first-year allowances” to companies investing in electric charging stations, starting today until March 2019.

The final measure is a promised £500,000 per year for financial technology startups. London is known for its “fintech” community and the government wants to build on that reputation by creating fintech “specialists” and envoys. In addition, it’s commissioned an annual ‘State of UK fintech” report which will attempt to summarise key trends and inform would-be investors. As always, much of the Autumn Statement is vague and lacking detail. Today’s speech was a statement of intent and it’ll be some time before we get more detailed plans from the government.

Source: Autumn Statement 2016 (GOV.UK)

Credit card readers were hacked at MSG for nearly a year

Knicks fans have it rough. To watch last year’s third-worst team, fans got to pay the league’s highest ticket prices and drink the priciest beer. To add further insult, Madison Square Garden (MSG) Co. has revealed that their credit card information may have been stolen, too. Thieves tapped the magnetic card readers at merchandise and concession stands at Knicks and Rangers Games, Radio City Music Hall and other MSG locations between November 9th, 2015 and October 24th of this year, the company wrote in a special notice.

That makes almost a year of theft before MSG got wise to it, with hackers spiriting away all the data needed to create a replica card. The company said it was notified of a possible breach and started looking into it along with “leading security firms.” After spotting unauthorized access, “MSG worked with the security firms to stop it and to implement enhanced security measures,” it said. The point-of-sale systems are now safe, but MSG advises customers who visited venues during that period to check their credit card statements for unauthorized purchases.

The company didn’t say how many customers were affected, but the number who went to events at those venues is in the millions. It also didn’t indicate why it took so long to spot the breach, fix it and report it to the public. The theft reportedly didn’t impact online or box office ticket sales, so if you went to the game and didn’t buy anything with a credit card, you probably weren’t ripped off (at least not by the thieves).

Via: Recode

Source: MSG

Donald Trump Tells Tim Cook He’ll Offer Apple Incentives and ‘Very Large Tax Cut’ to Make Products in America

In a recent interview with The New York Times, President-elect Donald Trump said he received phone calls from Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates after winning the presidential election earlier this month.

Donald Trump at The New York Times offices in Manhattan
Trump told Cook it will be a “real achievement” for him when he gets Apple to make its products in the United States, as opposed to countries like China and Vietnam where many of its current manufacturing partners operate.

I got a call from Tim Cook at Apple, and I said, ‘Tim, you know one of the things that will be a real achievement for me is when I get Apple to build a big plant in the United States, or many big plants in the United States, where instead of going to China, and going to Vietnam, and going to the places that you go to, you’re making your product right here.’

Cook acknowledged the proposition by nondescriptly saying “I understand that,” according to Trump.

Trump said he is confident Apple will turn to U.S. manufacturing based on the incentives he plans to offer the iPhone maker, including a “very large tax cut” and “substantial regulation cuts” for corporations.

I said: ‘I think we’ll create the incentives for you, and I think you’re going to do it. We’re going for a very large tax cut for corporations, which you’ll be happy about.’ But we’re going for big tax cuts, we have to get rid of regulations, regulations are making it impossible. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, I mean I could sit down and show you regulations that anybody would agree are ridiculous. It’s gotten to be a free-for-all. And companies can’t, they can’t even start up, they can’t expand, they’re choking.

A recent report said Apple asked its Taiwanese manufacturing partner Foxconn to study the possibility of moving iPhone production to the United States, although Foxconn chairman Terry Gou is said to be less enthusiastic about the idea due to inevitably higher production costs compared to China.

While campaigning at Liberty University in Virginia earlier this year, Trump said “we’re going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” while he has also threatened to introduce a 45% tax on products imported from China.

Cook previously said Apple manufactures iPhones in China because the country has put an “enormous focus on manufacturing,” while noting the U.S. workforce has a smaller number of individuals with the “vocational kind of skills” needed.

China put an enormous focus on manufacturing. In what we would call, you and I would call vocational kind of skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills. I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.

Apple also benefits from lower wages in China, where many of its suppliers are located within close proximity of each other. In Asia, Taiwan’s TSMC makes A-series chips for iPhones, Japan’s Sharp and Japan Display supply iPhone displays, and South Korea’s SK Hynix and Japan’s Toshiba produce memory chips for the device.

Apple does have a Mac Pro manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, operated by Flextronics, but it is a limited effort given the relatively low production volume of its high-end desktop computer.

Cook was personally a Hillary Clinton supporter, hosting a fundraiser for the Democratic presidential nominee in August on behalf of himself. In a company-wide memo issued following Trump’s victory, Cook urged Apple employees to “move forward together” despite “uncertainties ahead.”

Apple as a company showed support for both the Democratic and Republican parties during their respective campaigns, but it reportedly withheld support for the 2016 Republican National Convention due to Trump’s controversial comments about minorities, women, and immigrants, among other subjects.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: Tim Cook, Donald Trump
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YouView unveils new faster, cleaner, TV user interface

YouView has unveiled its next-generation TV platform, leaving Flash in the past and embracing HTML5 moving forward. 

The new interface leverages the cloud, meaning that YouView can quickly and easily update or add features in the background, something that the older Flash-based system wasn’t so well equipped for. 

The new system changes a number of pages of the user interface, adding transparency at all levels, so if you’re browsing the EPG or heading in to change the settings, you’ll still be able to see your programme playing in the background. 

Starting at the top, there’s a new home screen for YouView that pulls up the now and next screen, with easy navigation across to YouView’s major areas – players and apps and MyTV recorded content (changing its name from MyView currently).

Pocket-lint

That means can you can access Netflix, for example, by hitting the YouView button and scrolling across in the bottom ribbon, without the full-screen takeover of the current and past system which moves you through several pages.

The new system is more visual than the old: the settings menu is no longer a list spread across pages, instead each area is represented with an icon so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for, be that audio options or parental controls.

The MyTV section, which collates all your recordings, now uses thumbnails, rather than just presenting a list of titles as it currently does, so it’s quicker to scan through and find what you’re looking for, with less reading. 

All this makes things feel lighter and more modern, and much more dynamic than the previous YouView experience.

Things are a lot faster too. We had the chance to explore the new YouView platform at the company’s headquarters and there’s definitely more snap, even running on the old Humax DTR-T2000 box.

Pocket-lint

That’s an important point, as the new YouView experience is designed to replace the current system on the hardware that you already have. YouView has long been saying that YouView is the interface and that still applies: whether you’re a retail customer or a TalkTalk or BT TV user, everyone will get the update.

The only group of people who won’t get the over-the-air upgrade are Sony TV users. We grilled YouView on whether that update was coming and they told us that Sony had seen the performance upgrades it offered, but are yet to confirm or deny and future changes. 

For those who will receive the update, TalkTalk users will be first in line with the update rolling out towards the end of November. BT will follow at some time after that, but the process will be seamless and over the air, giving you a fresh new look. 

Take a look through the gallery to see the new YouView pages in action – we’ll bring you more once we’ve had the chance to explore a little more.

Jony Ive Said to Be ‘As Connected to Product Design as Ever’ Following Speculation About His Role

Over the last few days, speculation has begun brewing over the potential winding down of Jony Ive’s career at Apple, where he works as the company’s chief design officer. During an episode of “The Talk Show” podcast posted last Friday, John Gruber mentioned that he had recently heard Ive has been “checked out or not as directly involved with product design” at Apple, and instead focused on architecture projects for its campuses and retail locations.

Earlier this week, a couple of websites began sharing Gruber’s words in stories angled with Ive’s lessening involvement at Apple, backed up by the recent release of “Designed by Apple in California,” which many look at as the designer’s swan song within the company.

Rumors of Ive being “on his way out” of Apple have existed for a while, however, going back to his promotion to chief design officer last year. The position was described as allowing Ive to focus less on management and more on design, or as Gruber said, “the skeptic’s take is that this new arrangement allows Ive to be less involved, period.”

Following all of this, Gruber yesterday posted a new blog to clear up his original statement. He reiterated on the second and third-hand sources speaking of Ive’s status in the company, stating that no one has directly mentioned Ive has stopped overseeing Apple’s day-to-day product design, but what he’s heard is from sources who “think” he has. After addressing the nuance he meant to convey during his podcast, Gruber admitted that he’s in fact heard from “well-placed sources within Apple” that Ive is as devoted and involved as ever.

Importantly, I’ve also heard from well-placed sources within Apple that there is nothing to this — that while Ive is devoting much of his time and attention to architecture recently (both for the new campus and Apple retail), every aspect of every new product remains as much under his watchful eye as ever. That his chief design officer title isn’t the least bit ceremonial, and instead is an accurate representation of his increased authority.

When I first started seeing these “Gruber thinks Jony Ive is on his way out” stories, I was appalled. It felt like a punch to the gut, because it wasn’t what I meant to convey, and I realize how influential my word is in such regards. But perhaps it was worth it. It shook a few well-placed little birdies out of the tree, all of whom emphasized that Jony Ive is as connected to product design as ever.

Gruber ultimately bet that Ive is “not going anywhere,” because the arguments that state the designer is leaving Apple must also argue that he is giving up being a designer altogether, and “that doesn’t sound right” to him. Addressing the recently released design book — which covers all of Ive’s history with Apple — Gruber also mentioned that while it could be construed as a goodbye to Apple, “it feels to me like Ive’s heartfelt goodbye to his best friend and colleague, five years gone. I don’t think Jony Ive is going anywhere.”

Check out the full blog post on Daring Fireball.

Tag: Jony Ive
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