As Apple pursues perfection, new campus frustrates builders and officials

Why it matters to you

Apple’s extravagant monument of a main campus is further proof of the company’s continued growth — and its eye for flawless design.

Apple has long been lauded for its attention to detail and emphasis on build quality and it seems that ambition extends to the construction of its facilities. According to Reuters, the company made numerous demands as it prepares Apple Campus 2, more colloquially referred to as the “spaceship campus,” to ensure a level of craftsmanship more befitting of a phone or watch than a building meant to employ 14,000 workers.

For starters, Apple’s new Cupertino, California, headquarters supposedly boasts the largest panel of curved glass ever made — though that was probably evident from the exterior shots. Inside, Apple has stipulated a lengthy list of requirements.

More: Apple is looking to double the size of its famous flagship retail store in NYC

The ceiling tiles, made of polished concrete, were each examined twice by company representatives to ensure perfection. The door handles, free of imperfections down to the nanometer, according to the construction team, were rejected by Apple in favor of a redesign. All pipes and beams in the ceiling had to be concealed from view, so they would not appear in reflections off the glass.

Even the signage was a source of frustration. The Santa Clara County Fire Department reportedly clashed with the company over designs that emphasized minimalism over function in the event of an emergency. Retired Deputy Fire Chief Dirk Mattern told Reuters the issue came up in 15 different meetings, and that he had “never spent so much time on signage.”

These considerations might be commonplace for a handheld device but for a facility of Campus 2’s scale, they are unheard of. In most buildings, the tolerance that materials are allowed to differ from specific measurements is about 1/8 of an inch. Channeling the iPhone’s seamless panel gaps, Apple mandated far tighter tolerances, even for inconspicuous surfaces.

“You would never design to that level of tolerance on a building,” one architect said. “The doors would jam.”

Speaking of which, Apple was reportedly adamant that the doorways throughout the entire building be perfectly flat, with no thickness around the threshold. If an engineer had to adjust his form to move differently through a doorway, he might become distracted from his work, the company reasoned. One former construction manager said he spent months pushing back on the request, “because that’s time money and stuff that’s never been done before.”

The spaceship campus has been said to evoke many design cues from famous Apple products. Lead architect German de la Torre likened the building’s curves to the rounded rectangle motif the company employs in much of its hardware and software. Other employees compared the elevator controls to the iPhone’s home button.

It may come as little surprise that Skanska USA and DPR Construction, the contractors on the project when it broke ground in 2011, eventually bailed. Experts estimate the facility has cost Apple $5 billion and those close to the project said difficulties with the approval process have nudged completion to the spring.

MacBook Pro line could get Kaby Lake refresh in 2017

Why it matters to you

If you’ve been holding off on buying a MacBook Pro because of last-gen processors, your wait should end sometime in 2017.

Some recent notebooks releases, such as Microsoft’s Surface Book with Performance Base and Apple’s 2016 MacBook Pro refresh, skipped Intel’s seventh-generation, or Kaby Lake, processors. That was disappointing to some users who would have benefited from the efficiency and performance enhancements provided by the new CPUs.

Apple is expected to perform a minimal refresh of the MacBook Pro line sometime in 2017, to upgrade to just those seventh-generation Intel parts, and people are tearing through MacOS Sierra data looking for any hints of what might be coming. Some industrious folks did just that and found some indications of new MacBook Pro machines, as MacRumors reports.

More:

As always, this information is highly suspect and open to interpretation. For what it’s worth, though, Pike’s Universum, a blog dedicated to Apple products, located some information in the MacOS Sierra 10.12.4 beta “plist” data that suggests new MacBook Pros could be released after that version of MacOS Sierra becomes official.

According to the data, the new machines would utilize the latest equivalent seventh-generation parts to replace the older CPUs released with the 2016 MacBook Pro refresh. The updates could look something like this:

13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar

• Core i5-6360U -> Core i5-7260U
  Core i7-6660U -> Core i7-7660U

13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

• Core i5-6267U -> Core i5-7267U
  Core i5-6287U -> Core i5-7287U
  Core i7-6567U -> Core i7-7567U

15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

• Core i7-6700HQ -> Core i7-7700HQ
  Core i7-6820HQ -> Core i7-7820HQ
  Core i7-6920HQ -> Core i7-7920HQ

According to a previous report, these new MacBook Pros could enter production in July 2017, with a 15-inch MacBook Pro version offering 32GB of RAM. The current machine’s 16GB maximum was another sore spot for some power users and so that would be welcome news as well. However, all of this is just speculation, and we won’t know for certain what Apple will release until Apple’s WWDC 2017 event in June.

A new study uses cancer-seeking fluorescents to light the way for surgeons

Why it matters to you

Florescent nanoprobes are another way to help doctors seek and destroy cancerous tissues.

Scientists have developed a new method for helping surgeons recognize and remove even the smallest cancerous tumors — by quite literally lighting the way with tiny fluorescent particles.

As described in a new study published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Omega, the technique involves loading microscopic expansile nanoprobes with the fluorescent particles. When cancerous cells are detected, these nanoprobes release their contents, resulting in the problematic areas lighting up when viewed at a certain wavelength.

“The probe’s relatively rapid visualization of cancerous tissue renders it potentially compatible with operating room workflow for assessing tumor margin status via frozen section analysis,” Robert Strongin, professor of organic chemistry at Portland State University, told Digital Trends, describing the method as “relatively user-friendly.”

More: Graphene’s latest miracle? The ability to detect cancer cells

In the study, the fluorescent probes were used to detect pancreatic cancer, one of the nastier cancers around, in which survival rates are frequently less than a year. Some experts suggest that pancreatic cancer is set to become the second-leading cause of cancer-related death over the next 15 years.

It is particularly relevant to this work because sufferers of pancreatic cancer often require surgery to remove the tissue since neither chemotherapy or radiotherapy prove particularly effective against it. Unfortunately, surgery to remove cancerous tissues can be inaccurate, with the result being that only a section of the cancerous material is successfully removed from patients.

“The current probe is quite selective for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC),” Strongin continued. “However, the probe design derives from traditional principles of drug design. The library of probes we have synthesized is thus affording us knowledge of structure-activity relationships via biodistribution data. This is enhancing our understanding of what is required for rationally addressing other disease targets using simple organic fluorophores.”

So far, the fluorescent probes have only been tested on mice, although human clinical trials could take place in the near future.

“We are initially planning to have the dyes tested in real time on frozen tissue sections analyzed during tumor resection in the operating room,” Strongin said. “A longer term goal is to aid in the understanding of the high recurrence rate of PDAC after surgery.”

The Stlyish Fossil Q Founder Gen 2 smartwatch is 25 percent off on Amazon

Smartwatches tend to turn out differently depending on who manufactures the product. Tech and electronic companies integrate advanced technology into their watches but they can miss the mark when it comes to creating something stylish enough that you want to wear it all day. On the other end of the spectrum, traditional watch companies jump into the smartwatch game and create beautiful pieces, yet they can fall short when it comes to functionality — which is a major reason to buy a smartwatch in the first place.

Fossil, however, tends to balance both sides of the equation pairing stylish looks with all the of technology you expect in a smartwatch, as can be seen in the Fossil Q Founder Gen 2 Touchscreen Two-Tone Gunmetal Stainless Steel Smartwatch, currently discounted 25 percent on Amazon, lowering the price to $236.

More: The Best Smartwatch You Can Buy

We reviewed the Gen 1 Fossil Q Founder in 2016, concluding the watch has high-class style, strong build quality, and an affordable price point, earning it an 8.0 editor’s review. As is to be expected, Fossil placed style above smarts in this watch, but overall we found it, “Performs the basic functions of an Android Wear smartwatch without issue, and looks fantastic on the right wrist.”

This Fossil Q Founder Gen 2 deal features the latest version of the product line, which was first available on Amazon on November 11. It displays notifications for texts, calls, emails, and app updates and allows you to control your music on your app of choice, like Spotify or iTunes. The smartwatch has a built-in activity tracker, which tracks the basics including steps, distance, and calories burned. Other tech specs include a built-in microphone and speaker that let you do a variety of tasks using just your voice, is both wireless and Bluetooth Smart Enabled. Finally, its magnetic wireless charger keeps the device charged for up to 24 hours based on usage.

On the style end, the smartwatch surpasses most basic smartwatches. It features refined steel and sleek silicone accents, and a bright, easy-to-read face that shows just the right amount of information without making you squint. What makes the style so unique in this Fossil Q is the level of customization it provides, letting you personalize both the watch face and strap to match your look each day.

The Fossil Q Founder Gen 2 Touchscreen Two-Tone Gunmetal Stainless Steel Smartwatch normally retails for $315 but is currently available on Amazon for only $236, giving you a 25 percent or $79 discount.

$236 on Amazon

Alexa Voice Service goes overseas, now available in the U.K. and Germany

Why it matters to you

After opening itself up to U.S.-based developers last year, AVS is now accessible to developers from Germany and the U.K. as well.

Alexa is getting multilingual. On Tuesday, the online retail giant responsible for the popular AI assistant announced that the Alexa Voice Service (AVS) has now become available for developers in both the United Kingdom and Germany. That means that any device that supports AVS (think the Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, for starters), will be compatible with all Alexa services in both the British and German markets, and will understand British English and German.

“AVS localization provides you with language and region-specific services to expand your audience and delight new customers,” Amazon explained in its announcement. “With a few lines of code, you can upgrade any product with Alexa to access localized languages and skills in the U.K., Germany, and U.S. Now your end customers can speak with Alexa and receive responses and content in their preferred language and region.”

More: The best Amazon Kindle and Fire Tablet deals

This latest update builds upon previous improvements to AVS — just last year, Amazon opened up the service to all U.S. developers, which allowed them to integrate Alexa with any connected device featuring a microphone and speaker. Since then, AVS integrations have abounded — everything from smart home products to in-car experiences have emerged as a result of this new open platform.

Of course, we should point out that despite Alexa’s availability in these new markets, not all of its associated services will work internationally. As TechCrunch noted, iHeartRadio is only available in the United States, which means that it won’t work in Germany or the U.K. regardless of AVS. The same goes for Kindle book reading and traffic reports.

However, as the world grows ever more connected, it seems safe to assume that even these services will soon be readily available overseas.

So if you’re a German or British developer looking to stretch your development muscles, you can start today with AVS.

Dropbox snags former Googler to lead design team

Nicholas Jitkoff joins Dropbox team as VP of Design.

Dropbox has expanding its pool of design talent, announcing Nicholas Jitkoff has joined the company as the new VP of Design. Jitkoff previously led Google’s Material Design team, where he worked on top-level projects across Google’s product groups to create “a coherent design language for Google’s suite of products”. Also on Jitkoff’s resume is his notable work developing the first versions of Quicksilver, a popular productivity application for macOS.

From the blog:

Design has always been at the heart of Dropbox, tying our products together and solving fundamental problems that impact the lives of millions of people around the world. Working closely with our Engineering and Product teams, Nicholas will lead our Design team in defining their vision for Dropbox. He’ll also help us continue to grow our diverse and talented teams across Design Research, Product Design, Brand Design, and UX Writing.

This is a big get for Dropbox, considering how they’ve been positioning themselves to directly compete with Google not only for both cloud-based storage dominance, but more recently in the collaborative document-editing space with Dropbox Paper.

Sony’s new camera sensor can shoot 1080p video at 1000fps

Everything is cooler in slow motion.

While Sony’s smartphone division isn’t doing so hot on the sales front, Japanese company is continuing to innovate behind the scenes. Today, Sony they’ve developed the industry’s first 3-Layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones, which is capable of capturing images of faster moving object as well as shooting 1080p video at up to 1000 frames per second.

Currently, the best specs for slow motion video available on smartphones is 720p at 240fps, which you’ll find on the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S7. Sony has more than quadrupled those figures — shooting at 1080p no less — which is quite frankly amazing.

Check out this sample footage of what this new sensor is capable of:

While the video capabilities are amazing, the new tech will also vastly improve the ability to shoot fast-moving objects with your smartphone while minimizing focal plane distortion. From the blog post:

With the stacked high-speed, low power consumption, high-capacity DRAM, the new sensor can read one still image of 19.3 million pixels in only 1/120 second (approximately 4x faster than conventional products), reducing the time lapse for reading each pixel line. This technology minimizes the focal plane distortion in still images that tends to occur when shooting fast-moving subjects on smartphones, which lack a mechanical shutter for controlling exposure time.

While Sony didn’t offer any timelines or info as to when we’ll see this new sensor implemented in a new phone, you can read the full nitty-gritty details behind the tech here and then start dreaming about the super cool footage you’ll be able to record when this, eventually, comes to future smartphones.

ZTE is making its first Android Wear watch called ZTE Quartz, reveals leak

ZTE is getting into the Android Wear game.

According to VentureBeat’s Evan Blass, ZTE is the latest smartphone maker to develop an Android Wear device. The company is reportedly working on something called ZTE Quartz, and while many manufacturers are already on their third-generation Android Wear watch, this will be ZTE’s first. However, it has worked on activity trackers in the past, such as the Venus 1 and Venus 2, both of which debuted at Mobile World Congress 2016.

Also, ZTE Quartz is different from the 5.5-inch, Android 4.3 Jelly Bean-powered smartphone ZTE launched in the past. As for the round-faced ZTE Quartz itself (pictured above), it was recently seen with the Bluetooth certification model number ZW10. The Bluetooth SIG revealed the smartwatch features UMTS 3G cellular connectivity and a Wi-Fi radio, both of which may allow it to make and receive calls on the wrist.

ZTE Quartz will be able to pair with Android versions 4.3 and up (or iOS 8.2 for iPhones). We may learn more tomorrow, 8 February, when Google unveils Android Wear 2.0, the next major update to the platform. Along with announcing its own smartwatches, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities to see Google mention other manufacturers coming out with their own Android Wear 2.0 hardware.

See Pocket-lint’s Android Wear 2.0 guide for more about the software.

Alexa comes to your car with Logitech ZeroTouch, but this might not be the experience you’re looking for

Alexa is marching across the world of tech, appearing in all sorts of devices looking to bring connectivity from all angles.

The latest announcement, appearing on the day that Amazon announced that Alexa Voice Service’s availability in the UK and Germany, comes from Logitech.

ZeroTouch is an in-car system designed to unlock many of the skills of your smartphone, wrapped into Logitech’s own interface paired with a car dock. It will offer music, navigation and messaging, but as the name suggests, it does so without using touch.

Looking to free drivers from the danger of fiddling with their phone while driving, you waken the phone with a wave or high five gesture in front of your mounted phone. You then speak your commands and the phone responds.

Pocket-lint

Generally, it’s a reasonable system. It’s simple in many regards in that it uses an app that’s free, but you need to be connected to one of the company’s docks to get it working. That’s a Bluetooth connection, meaning ZeroTouch only works when docked in the car.

We’ve used it, but the need to use a hand gesture to activate the phone sets it at a disadvantage compared to something like Android Auto’s app, which comes to life with a hotword – Ok Google. 

(There’s juncture for an admission here: we still use the ZeroTouch mount, but have been using it with the Android Auto app, because it’s a better overall experience.)

• Android Auto app: Bringing connectivity to all cars

Alexa’s simplicity comes from the fact that your Amazon Echo is always listening. You are shuffling around the kitchen with your hands full and you can tell Alexa to turn off the heating, set a timer for 10 minutes, play some experimental jazz and add flax seeds to your shopping list. 

Transport this friendly AI to your car and you’ve got much of that Alexa experience in the car. You can ask your weight from Fitbit, you can turn your home lights off and you can ask all manner of questions, but you still have to use the wake gesture.

The sort of takes the shine off one of the things that Alexa is good at: responding to a voice command.

So here’s ZeroTouch working with Alexa…. pic.twitter.com/YWL17aGjUD

— Chris Hall (@christhall) February 7, 2017

Alexa also doesn’t offer all the services you’ll get at home, for example, ask it to play music and you’ll be told it’s not supported on this device. Alexa doesn’t offer all your driving services – ask it to navigate you and it’ll say it doesn’t know how to do that. 

So you can be driving home and tell your Neato Botvac to clean the house, you can turn the Philips Hue lights on and set the heating to a comfortable temperature. (Anecdotally, we found that Alexa on ZeroTouch flipped to setting the temperature in Fahrenheit, like the 1950s.) You can check your weight with Fitbit and add something to your shopping list, windscreen washer perhaps, but you have to mix and match these services as you’re driving and you have do so with that wake gesture. 

Is this the Alexa experience we were looking for? Not really. It’s a useful range of skills that extends out of the Logitech ZeroTouch. Between them they do just about everything, but for motoring, we still find the (free) offering of Android Auto to be better suited, especially without the need for a wake gesture.

If you’re desperate for Alexa in the car then this will do it for you. If you’d like to give it a try, you can buy the ZeroTouch Air Vent Mount for £31.99 on Amazon.co.uk or for $58 Amazon.com.

Or, if you’re quick, it’s currently on a deal for £24.99 at Carphone Warehouse.

Google uses AI to sharpen low-res images

Deckard’s photo-enhancing gear in Blade Runner is still the stuff of fantasy. However, Google might just have a close-enough approximation before long. The Google Brain team has developed a system that uses neural networks to fill in the details on very low-resolution images. One of the networks is a “conditioning” element that maps the lower-res shot to similar higher-res examples to get a basic idea of what the image should look like. The other, the “prior” network, models sharper details to make the final result more plausible.

The results are far from perfect, but can frequently come close to the real deal. A virtually unusuable 8-pixel by 8-pixel portrait suddenly has recognizable facial features, for instance. And even in those moments where the AI system gets many details wrong, it’s frequently close enough that you’ll at least have an inkling of what’s there. An indistinguishable blob might become clear enough to tell that it’s a bedroom.

As for potential uses? Police wouldn’t want to use Google’s technology to definitively identify a suspect (not in its current state, at least), but it could help validate hunches that their suspect was present in the background of a shot. This might also be useful for cleaning up tiny details in photos when they’re blown up to larger sizes. It might not be strictly accurate, but it would be more presentable.

Via: The Verge, Ars Technica

Source: ArXiv.org (PDF)