Microsoft formally recalls Surface Pro power cords
Microsoft said it would recall Surface Pro power cords to head off potential fire risks, and it’s following through on that promise. The Redmond crew has officially recalled about 2.25 million AC power cables for Surface Pro tablets sold before March 15th, 2015. If you own a Surface Pro 3 or earlier, you’re likely due for a free replacement. There haven’t been many reports of these cables catching fire (56, to be exact), but it’s safe to say that you don’t want to take a chance if you can avoid it.
Via: Reuters
Engadget giveaway: Win an Xbox One Gears of War Ultimate Edition courtesy of GameStop!
GameStop was nice enough to drop off an Xbox One Gears of War Ultimate Edition console to our offices and we’re looking to pass it along to a lucky Engadget reader this week. This bundle includes a free download of the game, plus early access to the upcoming Gears of War 4 beta. There’s also a second wireless controller thrown into the deal, so you can face your opponent head on rather than losing to an anonymous tween with far more time on their hands than you. Just head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning this gaming package courtesy of GameStop.
- Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
- Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
- Winners will be chosen randomly. One (1) winner will receive one (1) Xbox One 500GB Gears of War Ultimate Edition and one (1) additional Xbox One Wireless Controller.
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
- This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. GameStop, Engadget and AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
- The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
- Entries can be submitted until Feb. 3rd at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Detachable tablet sales are taking off
The tablet market might be tanking as a whole, but there’s apparently one major bright spot: tablets with detachable keyboards. While IDC estimates that slate shipments were down almost 14 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter, shipments of detachables more than doubled to 8.1 million. That’s about 12 percent of the entire space, folks. Analysts suspect that many people want to treat tablets as PC replacements, and they’re willing to pay a premium to make that happen.
You won’t win any prizes for guessing who’s at the front, though. Category pioneer Microsoft reportedly shipped 1.6 million Surface tablets (most of them Pros), while Apple shipped over 2 million iPad Pros in the device’s inaugural quarter. Design experience, brand recognition and sheer financial clout clearly went a long way.
This isn’t to say that companies need detachables for success. IDC notes that some of the hottest action came from low-end tablets, like Amazon’s $50 Fire tablet and various models from Huawei or Lenovo. However, it’s no wonder that Samsung and others are getting into the detachable tablet game. It’s not only a booming category, but potentially more lucrative — even if the tablet market shrinks, you could still turn a tidy profit.
Source: IDC
iPad Pro Outsells Microsoft Surface in Launch Quarter
The latest numbers from market research firm IDC‘s Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker show that Apple remains the largest vendor in a declining tablet market, shipping 16.1 million iPads in the fourth calendar quarter of 2015. While the iPad continues to be the best-selling tablet, its worldwide market share remains only 24.5 percent despite the all-new iPad Pro launching in early November.
iPad shipments declined 24.8 percent compared to the year-ago quarter, when they totaled 21.4 million for 28.1 percent market share. The stagnant iPad sales during the holiday shopping season may be more attributable to the lack of an iPad Air refresh in 2015, however, as the iPad Pro outsold Microsoft Surface tablets in its debut quarter in what IDC describes as a “successful” launch.
“Despite lukewarm reviews, the iPad Pro was the clear winner this season as it was the top selling detachable, surpassing notable entries from Microsoft and other PC vendors,” said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst with IDC. “It’s also important to note that the transition towards detachable tablets has presented positive opportunities for both Apple and Microsoft. However, Google’s recent foray into this space has been rather lackluster as the Android platform will require a lot more refinement to achieve any measurable success.
Samsung continued to be the second largest tablet vendor with 9 million tablets shipped in the fourth quarter for 13.7 percent market share, an 18.1 percent year-over-year unit decline. Amazon, Lenovo, and Huawei rounded off the top five, with 5.2 million, 3.2 million, and 2.2 million global tablet shipments in the fourth quarter respectively. All other tablet vendors had a combined 45.8 percent market share.
iPad sales have declined for eight consecutive quarters year-over-year due to, among other reasons, longer tablet refresh cycles compared to smartphones. Apple is rumored to introduce a new iPad Air 3 at a March media event, which could help combat the decline alongside the iPad Pro and iPad mini 4, but most of those sales will fall within the second calendar quarter of 2016.
Overall tablet shipments in 2015 totaled 206.8 million, down 10.1 percent from 230.1 million in 2014.
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Microsoft wants to put data centers at the bottom of the sea
Microsoft is on a mission to put its server farms at the bottom of the ocean. That might sound self-destructive, but there’s method in the madness — such an approach, the company believes, could make data centers faster, greener and easier to set up. In August last year, engineers placed an enormous steel capsule 30 feet underwater in the Pacific Ocean. Inside was a single data center rack, enveloped in pressurised nitrogen to keep it cool. The crew couldn’t reach it, at least not physically, but it didn’t matter — the setup worked, going so far as to run commercial tasks for Azure.
The prototype submersible is called Leona Philpot, another nod to the Halo universe (after Cortana and Spartan). As the New York Times reports, the pod was kitted out with 100 sensors to measure every aspect of the underwater conditions — pressure, humidity and, perhaps most importantly, motion. The idea is that similar capsules could exist beneath the surface, linked to one another in a chain, and continually generate energy from the moving seawater. Looking ahead, there’s also hope that the aquatic environment could be used to naturally cool the racks.
These aren’t the only advantages though. Server farms usually exist inland, far away from metropolitan areas. From a performance standpoint, their locations are inefficient for people living near the coastline — placing data centers offshore could, in theory, reduce latency for these places. Microsoft also believes that a smaller design could reduce installation times, from two years down to a staggering 90 days, making its operations cheaper and more flexible. The capsules themselves could also adopt new, innovative rack designs that don’t need to consider human interaction.
There are environmental concerns, but Microsoft appears to be tackling them. It wants the data centers to be fully recyclable, and says its current prototype emits an “extremely” small amount of heat into the surrounding waters. Still, for people that love the ocean, this could be seen as yet another encroachment on mother nature. In the meantime, Microsoft has pulled Leona Philpot ashore — covered in barnacles, unsurprisingly — while it designs a new prototype that’s reportedly three times larger.
Via: New York Times
Source: Project Natick
President pledges $4 billion toward computer science in schools
The White House isn’t just relying on legislation to make computer science education a priority in the US. President Obama has launched a Computer Science for All initiative that gives states $4 billion in funding to expand computer science in K-12 schools through a mix of better course materials, partnerships and teacher training. The move also sends another $100 million directly to school districts, unlocks $135 million in funding from government organizations and gets further cooperation from both local governments as well as tech leaders.
Some of those leaders include companies that have already promised support for the President’s educational initiatives. Apple, Cartoon Network, Code.org, Facebook, Microsoft, Salesforce and Qualcomm are all widening their education efforts, investing in programs or both to help improve computer science in the country.
Throwing cash at a problem won’t make it go away, of course, and there aren’t any guarantees that the money will make a difference. However, the effort at least tackles one of the core issues head-on: getting computer science into schools in the first place. Roughly three quarters of schools go without any CS programs, and 22 states don’t accept these classes as credit toward a high school diploma. If the extra funding works as planned, it’ll get CS courses into more schools and help create a generation of kids that know how to code before they reach college.
Source: White House Blog
Recommended Reading: Michael Jackson’s music in ‘Sonic 3’
The Michael Jackson Video Game Conspiracy
Todd Van Luling,
Huffington Post
If you paid attention to the music in Sonic 3, you likely noticed some of the audio resembles Michael Jackson’s tunes. While Sega admitted the King of Pop was involved with the soundtrack, it claimed to have nixed all of his work from the final version despite obvious nods to the singer. As it turns out, that’s not exactly the case and Huffington Post details the a decade-spanning search for the truth from some of Sonic’s biggest fans.
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Trent Reznor Recalls How David Bowie Helped Him Get Sober Rolling Stone’s Bowie tribute issue is out this week and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor discusses the loss of a mentor. |
How Microsoft Plans to Beat Google and Facebook to the Next Tech Breakthrough Microsoft is refocusing its research division to make it a much bigger part of the company. |
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A Different Creed: The Legacy of ‘Prince of Persia: Sands of Time’ Assassin’s Creed traces its roots back to a cancelled Prince of Persia title, and this piece provides some of that backstory. |
EA might have revealed secret Xbox One sales figures
We know that Sony has sold 35 million PlayStation 4s, but Microsoft won’t talk about how well its rival device is doing. A dignified silence is the stance you normally take when things aren’t going too well, but a third party might just have let the key details slip. Eurogamer was listening to Electronic Arts’ most recent conference call when CFO Blake Jorgensen revealed the firm’s internal sales estimate for the current console generation. According to him, there are 55 million units out in the wild, and simple subtraction tells us that less than 20 million of those are Xbox Ones. We asked Microsoft about the figure, and it came back with a “no comment,” as expected.
What does this tell us about the current state of console gaming? Probably not that much, since it was something of an open secret that Sony was “winning” at this point in the console wars. Microsoft’s console was described as a “fast and powerful work in progress” when it launched, while the PlayStation 4 was much more polished. In addition, Microsoft was forced to pull plenty of features at the last-minute after fans balked at its higher price (Kinect) and policies on second hand games. Then again, 15 million consoles is hardly an impossible figure to claw back, and the Xbox One has been improving with every release.
Source: Eurogamer
Bernie Sanders shuns Microsoft’s vote-counting app
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is taking matters into his own hands. Rather than use the Microsoft-provided tools to tabulate the results of the upcoming Iowa caucus, the Vermont senator’s campaign has (rather impressively) built its own measurement tools, according to MSNBC. Why is the campaign so leery? It’s concerned about impartiality seeing as how Microsoft employees have donated more than $200,000 toward his party rival Hillary Clinton’s career over the years. Pete D’Alessandro is running the Iowa campaign for Sanders and told MSNBC, “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.”
For its part, Redmond says that there aren’t any nefarious activities afoot. It simply wants to make sure the caucus results are accurate on both sides of the political aisle with easy-to-use Azure-based tools. “Microsoft is providing technology and services solely to administer and facilitate a neutral, accurate, efficient reporting system for the caucuses,” it said in a statement to MSNBC.
One of the Sanders’ camp’s questions is why the Democratic committee didn’t go with an Iowa-based company for the measurement software (there’s been previous concerns over corporate involvement in voting results). “Microsoft and their app partner, InterKnowlogy, are global leaders in the technology industry, and we completely trust the integrity of their staff and the app,” the Iowa Democratic Party said in a prepared response.
Clinton’s campaign has apparently built its own measurement tools as well, and they mirror Sanders’ with a telephone hotline system and an independent app. Lets step this back a second though: rather than use the Microsoft-provided tools for measurement, each campaign has built its own set and they’re up and running already. Impressive, yeah? Regardless, the response from Sanders could be seen as being a bit paranoid, but considering how previously contested elections have gone it might be hard to blame each team for its respective caution.
[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Via: CNBC
Source: MSNBC
Microsoft’s Surface sales up 29 percent, phones down 49 percent
Sales of the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book led to a 29 percent increase in overall Surface family revenue ($1.35 billion compared to $1.1 billion), Microsoft announced in its Q2 2016 earnings report. Its overall phone revenue, however, fell 49 percent. Given our disappointment with the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, Microsoft’s mobile performance wasn’t too surprising. Its new devices weren’t really flagship models meant to compete with the iPhone 6S and the best of Android. Microsoft’s overall revenue for its More Personal Computing division (which includes Surface and phone sales) fell 5 percent.
On the whole, it wasn’t a great holiday quarter for Microsoft. Its revenues fell around 10 percent from last year (from $26.5 billion to $23.8 billion), while its net income fell around 15 percent (from $5.8 billion to $5 billion). Still, the company saw strong cloud growth, with Azure revenue up by 140 percent. Its overall Intelligent Cloud division revenue was up five percent.
There were some pretty big gains in other categories, as well. Office 365 revenue jumped 70 percent compared to last year, for example, and it also reached 20.6 million customers. On the gaming front, Microsoft says it now has 48 million monthly active users (people who sign on at least once a month), an increase of 30 percent.
Developing…
Source: Microsoft
AIVAnet 