Apple Watch Dominated Holiday Season With Estimated 5.2 Million Shipments

Apple shipped a record-breaking 5.2 million Apple Watch units last quarter, making it by far the most popular smartwatch of the holiday shopping season, according to the latest data from research firm Strategy Analytics. Apple captured an estimated 63.4% of the worldwide smartwatch market during the quarter.

Apple’s closest competitor Samsung shipped only 800,000 smartwatches in the quarter, for an estimated 9.8% market share, according to Strategy Analytics. All other smartwatch vendors, such as Garmin, Fitbit, and Huawei, combined for an estimated 2.2 million shipments and 26.8% market share.

“Demand for Apple’s new Watch Series 2 as a holiday-season gift in Western markets was surprisingly strong and it enabled Apple to clear a large backlog of smartwatch inventory during the quarter,” said Strategy Analytics director Cliff Raskind.

It is important to acknowledge that these are estimated figures, and that shipments do not necessarily reflect sales.

Apple does not break out Apple Watch sales like it does with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and instead groups the device under its “Other Products” category. Given the category also includes the Apple TV, Beats products, iPods, AirPods, and other accessories, figuring out Apple Watch revenue is deliberately challenging.

Apple only elected to share that the Apple Watch set all time sales records during the first quarter of its 2017 fiscal year, with CEO Tim Cook noting holiday demand was “so strong” that Apple “couldn’t make enough.”

Strategy Analytics will not disclose its exact methodology for competitive reasons, but executive director Neil Mawston told us the company uses “a blend of channel checks, financial analysis, and other sources” to estimate Apple Watch shipments. “It is the same methodology we have used for phones since the 1990s and for wearables since the modern market first emerged circa 2013.”

Apple saw its “Other Products” revenue drop 8% to $4.02 billion in the quarter compared to $4.35 billion in the year-ago quarter, a sizeable decline that Apple financial chief Luca Maestri attributed to declining Apple TV sales.

Strategy Analytics said the smartwatch industry is showing “tentative signs of recovery” this year, but Raskind noted there remain “several barriers to growth” that must be addressed.

Smartwatch vendors like Samsung need to launch more exciting or cheaper models, Apple must engage closer with mobile operators to stock or subsidize its popular Watch portfolio, while component makers need to develop more accurate sensors for health and fitness tracking that consumers will trust and use more.

Apple Watch shipments totaled 11.6 million units in 2016, or slightly more than half of the estimated 21.1 million smartwatches shipped by all vendors in the year, according to Strategy Analytics. The firm’s data shows a slightly lower 20.8 million smartwatches were shipped globally in 2015 for comparison.

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Tags: Strategy Analytics, Samsung Gear
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Renovated Fifth Avenue Apple Store to Feature Twice as Much Space

Apple is currently working on renovating its iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan, and when finished, the new store will be more than double the size of the original location, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The store will be expanded from 32,000 square feet to 77,000 square feet, giving Apple more space to work with. The company’s plans were shared by Douglas Linde, president of Boston Properties Inc., which owns the General Motors Building where the store is located.

Apple spokesman Nick Leahy said the company anticipates an “incredible” new Fifth Avenue store, “where our customers will enjoy new services and experiences in a much larger space.”

While construction is underway, Apple has relocated the store to a nearby empty storefront that formerly housed the FAO Schwarz toy store. Plans to renovate the Fifth Avenue store were first announced in 2015 and are part of a wider set of Apple Store renovations Apple has undertaken.

It is not clear how long it will take Apple to revamp the store, but while work is underway, the temporary FAO Schwarz location will remain open.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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‘Super Mario Run’ now has an easy mode

Super Mario Run isn’t exactly a difficult game, though it may take some real work to master it and get every special coin scattered through every level. Which makes the new feature Nintendo added to it a little odd: The game now features an “easy mode.” With easy mode turned on, you’ll get unlimited lives. When you die in Super Mario Run, you reappear in a bubble and float back in the level a bit before you regain control. In normal mode, you can only die a few times, but easy mode means you’ll never have to worry about running out of bubbles.

Nintendo also removed the time limit, something that usually isn’t a big problem — but you can run up against it in longer, more complex levels like castles or ghost houses. Killing the clock seems like a move born of necessity, as unlimited lives wouldn’t really help if you die more than a couple times — you’d be right up against the time limit before long.

The option for easy mode only presents itself after you run out of lives in a course, so you can’t turn it on across your entire game experience. And it’s worth noting that in easy mode, you won’t be able to collect special coins, but you’ll at least be able to get past tricky levels if you just want to play through to the end.

Nintendo also tweaked the balance of the competitive “Toad rally” mode. Now, you’ll lose less Toads from your collection if you lose a match. The game also now works in Korean, but there’s no new levels or really any additional content to be found here. For kids (or adults) who might have struggled with some levels, though, easy mode might provided a needed assist.

Via: The Verge

Microsoft’s Project Neon visual design has Windows 10 developers revved up

Why it matters to you

Microsoft is working to make a more visually pleasing experience in Windows 10 with a new design language and this is just a small sample.

A Windows 10 developer has created and released a preview build of an app called Interop Unlock Tools for editing the registry, making tweaks to Windows 10, and more. However, the big news here is that it’s based on Microsoft’s unannounced Project Neon design language for providing better visuals in Windows 10. Project Neon isn’t expected to become a major part of Windows 10 until Microsoft’s Redstone 3 update, which arrives in the fall and after Creators Update (Redstone 2) arrives this spring.

However, bits of Project Neon are already showing up in preview builds of Windows 10 served up in the Windows Insider program. The Interop Unlock Tools app takes advantage of these bits by enabling a semi-transparent background so users get a hint of the desktop wallpaper and other apps floating underneath. There are a few animations regarding the text too, giving the app more visual appeal.

Project Neon made its first appearance in November. It follows the current design language called Microsoft Design Language 2 (MDL2) used throughout Windows 10, which also provides transparency, animations, and other visual effects. However, Project Neon will supposedly lean more toward Microsoft’s previous Metro design that was used on Windows Phone and Windows 8.

That said, Project Neon will build upon the current Windows 10 design of using simplistic, clutter-free interfaces and spruce up the visual aspect to make the user interface less boring to the eyes. That includes adding transitions, even more animation, and so on. Project Neon will supposedly be more lively and more fluid than what we see in Windows 10 today.

From a developer standpoint, Project Neon won’t completely replace MDL2; developers won’t be required to jump from one design language to another as seen with the transition from Windows 8 to Windows 10. Project Neon will be the next step in the evolution of Microsoft’s design language that is improved and more streamlined.

In a previous report, sources said that Project Neon will serve as a visual bridge between holographic/augmented reality and the desktop environment. The user interface will “transport across devices” with an experience that “maps to the physical world” using 3D models, textures, lighting effects, and more.

Participants of the Windows Insider program are expected to see the first builds of Redstone 3 sometime around April or May. Again, Redstone 3 will contain the bulk of Project Neon even though some of the bits are showing up in builds now. Microsoft is expected to continue working on Project Neon throughout Redstone 3 and into Redstone 4, which will reportedly land in the first half of 2018.

If you’re confused about all the Windows 10 codenames and release dates, here is a roadmap to clear the air:

Code Name
Official Name
Version
Release Date
Threshold 1
Windows 10
1507
July 2015
Threshold 2
November Update
1511
November 2015
Redstone 1
Anniversary Update
1607
August 2016
Redstone 2
Creators Update
1704
Spring 2017
Redstone 3
N/A
 N/A
Fall 2017
Redstone 4
N/A
N/A
First half of 2018

After watching thousands of hours of porn, this neural network can identify nearly any adult film star

Why it matters to you

Neural networks have brought us self-driving cars, machine translation tools and now an AI that can recognize performers in the adult entertainment industry.

Brain-inspired artificial neural networks are at the cutting edge of AI, being used to make driverless cars speed down our roads, offer instant translations between dozens of languages, and even help with medical diagnosis.

Oh, and they can be used to help identify porn stars from a single snapshot, too.

Guessing which of these purposes the so-called Pornstar.ID (NSFW) startup falls into probably won’t come as much of a surprise. The facial recognition startup (stop snickering at the back of the class!) is one of the less likely applications of neural networks we’ve heard about, but nonetheless demonstrates that there really is no limit to where AI is popping up in our… err, some other people’s daily lives.

“Pornstar.ID is a face recognition implementation based on a deep neural network,” creator Mike Conrad told Digital Trends. “The broad workflow is as follows: first, we first detect faces with real-time pose estimation and transform the detected faces in order to make the eyes and bottom lip appear in the same location on each image. In the next step we use our deep neural network to represent the face on a 128-dimensional unit hyper sphere.”

More: Ohroma’s ‘smell-o-vision’ VR wants to put your nose in a porn star’s room

The network, Conrad continued, was trained on upwards of 650,000 faces of more than 7,000 female adult performers. “We have an accuracy of 70 percent on 1:N and over 99 percent on 1:1 classification,” he said. At present, users can upload photos to Pornstar.ID’s website or send a tweet and then be told within seconds who that person is. If the individual isn’t known, a number of “similar” performers are listed.

“The people behind Pornstar.ID are adult webmasters from the internet’s first days, and therefore we have always been connected and interested in the adult online business,” he explained. “Together with the huge steps forward with facial recognition technology in the past few years, and the increasing demand for identification of people in adult movies, the launch of this project was a no-brainer.”

While the system currently only deals with stills, Conrad was keen to stress that the service is being expanded this year.

“We are still in beta mode and in February will launch a version with much improved version of the classifier and improved front-end,” he said. “In addition, our current private API will be opened to third parties such as tube websites, with video support, for automatic tagging of the adult performers.”

Automatic identification of individuals simply by watching videos of them? Regardless of how the technology is used, that would be a pretty exciting development!

LibreOffice 5.3 introduces collaborative editing and user interface tweaks

Why it matters to you

The addition of collaborative editing functionality and a ribbon-like interface will help LibreOffice compete with Microsoft’s Office suite.

Thanks to services like Office 365 and Google Drive, there are more ways than ever to work on documents in collaboration with other users, whether they’re sitting in the same room or situated halfway across the country. Now, the latest version of the LibreOffice suite introduces support for collaborative editing to the popular open-source software package.

Unfortunately, there’s a bit of a catch. Unlike the hassle-free collaborative editing functionality offered elsewhere, users will need to set up LibreOffice Online on a server in order to allow multiple users to edit the same document, according to a report from Liliputing.

This isn’t an ideal situation for most, and will perhaps put off users who are simply looking for a straightforward collaborative environment along the lines of the services offered by Microsoft and Google. However, this particular feature set isn’t aimed at the average individual user.

More: LibreOffice’s free Microsoft Office competitor is getting its own “ribbon” interface

Instead, the collaborative editing tools included in LibreOffice 5.3 are intended for organizations that have the resources to set up the necessary environment, and reason to fine-tune its implementation for their own usage. The developers expect large companies and enterprise users to benefit from the functionality.

However, that doesn’t mean that LibreOffice 5.3 is devoid of new features aimed at individual users. It also introduces a new user interface known as My User Friendly & Flexible Interface — or MUFFIN for short — which is optional for now, but could be the standard going forward.

The update also brings a number of other tweaks and improvements, including the ability to apply table styles in Writer, a new set of default cell styles in Calc, and a simplified method of managing the color palette. A full list of changes can be found in the blog post announcing version 5.3 published by The Document Foundation.

Not happy with your Wi-Fi speeds in New York? Neither is the attorney general

Why it matters to you

Time Warner was long accused of under delivering on its Wi-Fi speeds and its new parent company has inherited many of the same problems.

You can change names, but apparently, you can’t change problems. If you’re a New Yorker unhappy with the internet service provided by Charter Communications (which bought Time Warner Cable, rebranding the company as Spectrum), know that you’re not alone. Far from it, in fact. On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit accusing Spectrum of under-delivering when it comes to internet speeds for its customers.

According to a Reuters report, the lawsuit claims that Spectrum “systematically defrauding and misleading internet service subscribers by promising service it knew it could not deliver.” The case, which has been filed in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, has been quite a long time coming — Schneiderman first began its probe into the slow speeds back in October.

More: U.S. travel ban causes disruption for internet nonprofit ICANN

Considering that services affected by the slow speeds were crowd pleasers like Netflix, Facebook, and gaming platforms, it’s no wonder that consumers and officials alike are none too pleased about Spectrum’s services. In fact, Schneiderman noted at a news conference that Spectrum’s Wi-Fi speeds were a full 80 percent slower than advertised. Speed test results suggested that 300Mbps plans were only delivering speeds of 85Mbps.

 “Reliable internet service is not a luxury, it is a necessity,” said Schneiderman. The attorney also drew attention to an internal email in which Spectrum engineers noted that their modems were incapable of supporting speeds as advertised, but made no changes to their practices.

For its part, Charter has said that it is “disappointed” by the lawsuit because many of the accusations took place before the company acquired Time Warner. “Charter has already made substantial investments in the interest of upgrading the Time Warner Cable systems and delivering the best possible experience to customers,” the company said. It looks like the company is inheriting some problems it hadn’t bargained for.

Not happy with your Wi-Fi speeds in New York? Neither is the attorney general

Why it matters to you

Time Warner was long accused of under delivering on its Wi-Fi speeds and its new parent company has inherited many of the same problems.

You can change names, but apparently, you can’t change problems. If you’re a New Yorker unhappy with the internet service provided by Charter Communications (which bought Time Warner Cable, rebranding the company as Spectrum), know that you’re not alone. Far from it, in fact. On Wednesday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a lawsuit accusing Spectrum of under-delivering when it comes to internet speeds for its customers.

According to a Reuters report, the lawsuit claims that Spectrum “systematically defrauding and misleading internet service subscribers by promising service it knew it could not deliver.” The case, which has been filed in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, has been quite a long time coming — Schneiderman first began its probe into the slow speeds back in October.

More: U.S. travel ban causes disruption for internet nonprofit ICANN

Considering that services affected by the slow speeds were crowd pleasers like Netflix, Facebook, and gaming platforms, it’s no wonder that consumers and officials alike are none too pleased about Spectrum’s services. In fact, Schneiderman noted at a news conference that Spectrum’s Wi-Fi speeds were a full 80 percent slower than advertised. Speed test results suggested that 300Mbps plans were only delivering speeds of 85Mbps.

 “Reliable internet service is not a luxury, it is a necessity,” said Schneiderman. The attorney also drew attention to an internal email in which Spectrum engineers noted that their modems were incapable of supporting speeds as advertised, but made no changes to their practices.

For its part, Charter has said that it is “disappointed” by the lawsuit because many of the accusations took place before the company acquired Time Warner. “Charter has already made substantial investments in the interest of upgrading the Time Warner Cable systems and delivering the best possible experience to customers,” the company said. It looks like the company is inheriting some problems it hadn’t bargained for.

Leaked Boston Dynamics video shows ‘nightmare inducing’ new robot in action

Why it matters to you

Robots are the future, and Boston Dynamics is at the cutting edge with its mind-blowing wheeled robot

When you think of Boston Dynamics, you probably think about the company’s freakish four-legged robots that walk and crawl their way over obstacles. But if you thought it couldn’t get any crazier than that, just check out the company’s latest creation: an experimental wheeled robot that one team member described as being “potentially nightmare-inducing.”

In a recent presentation, Boston Dynamics showcased its first-ever wheeled robot along with a preview of its new and improved SpotMini robot. While the SpotMini wowed the crowd with its skills in doing the dishes and delivering drinks, it was the wheeled robot named “Handle” that left everyone in awe. Why was it given the name Handle? Because someday it will be given the ability to handle objects, a feature set that makes the robot even cooler and more terrifying to consider.

More: Boston Dynamics’ freakish SpotMini is the robodog we secretly want

Combining wheels with legs and a stabilization system, the Handle looks like the monstrous offspring of a robot and a Segway. According to Boston Dynamics, it’s actually much more efficient than its legged counterparts. The robot is capable of carrying a heavier load on a small footprint, and is expected to be less expensive to build than the company’s humanoid or legged robots. Not only can the Handle maneuver smoothly across the floor, but it also can roll down hills and can even jump over hurdles without missing a beat.

Besides the Handle, Boston Dynamics also showcased a variety legged robots that improve upon its current designs. The new SpotMini, for example, is equipped with a head stabilization feature that allows it to hold its head still while the rest of its body moves. It’s so smooth that the robot can hold a glass of wine and move around without spilling it. On the humanoid side, Boston Dynamics also improved its bipedal humanoid robots, showing off a second-generation Atlas robot that uses its whole body to complete common warehouse tasks like lifting boxes.

Researchers build flu detector that can diagnose at a breath, no doctor required

Why it matters to you

A breathalyzer-style device capable of detecting flu in its early stages will no doubt help keep people from infecting others.

The influenza virus is a sneaky little bugger. In most cases, you have no idea you’re infected with it until you start to show symptoms — and by that point, it’s too late. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some sort of early-detection device that could tell us who is secretly harboring a virus before it spreads around the entire office?

Good news: That is precisely what researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington have created with a prototype breathalyzer-style device capable of detecting flu in its early stages.

More: Social networking examined in tracking infectious disease outbreaks in China

“What I have created — together with my research team and research collaborators working on this project — is a single exhale, portable, handheld, potentially wireless, battery-operated, inexpensive, breathalyzer that relies on gas-selective sensing elements, and which detects the presence and monitors the concentration of biomarkers in breath that signal a disease,” Perena Gouma, a professor in the university’s Materials Science and Engineering Department, told Digital Trends.

The specific biomarkers the breathalyzer looks for include traces of nitric oxide and ammonia, both of which can be measured using smart sensors.

University of Texas Arlington

“This particular breathalyzer detects flu virus infection,” she continued. “This is expected to be a personalized diagnostics tool available over the counter and it will allow the individuals to monitor their health, with the option of sharing the data obtained with their physician in real time.”

Gouma has previously developed other breathalyzers, for everything from asthma detection and diabetes monitoring to determining an endpoint for hemodialysis, the process of filtering waste products from the blood. The neat thing about breathalyzers, Gouma said, is that the technology involved can be easily modified to detect different diseases simply by changing the sensors.

In this example, for instance, it could be upgraded to instead test for Ebola.

“Use of the breathalyzer can make a significant different to catch an epidemic early and treat the sufferers, especially children and the elderly, in a timely manner,” Gouma explained. “It will also reduce the cost of healthcare.” Sadly nothing about providing germaphobe tech bloggers with a means to scrutinize sneezing colleagues, though.

As for when this technology may be available, Gouma said the team needs to carry out clinical trials, “but we are already exploring our options for commercializing this tool.”