Windows PC History Repeats Itself

For four years Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has basked in the success of its Galaxy smartphones, making billions of dollars competing with Apple Inc in the premium mobile market.

The coming years are set to be more somber for the South Korean tech giant, as it is forced to slash prices and accept lower margins at its mobile division in order to see off competition from rivals including China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xiaomi Inc in the mid-to-low end of the market.

Behind Samsung’s reality-check is the fact it is stuck with the same Android operating system used by its low-cost competitors, who are producing increasingly-capable phones of their own.

Samsung glamour days over as it fights to save mobile market share, Se Young Lee, Reuters

Having Android running on everything from shitty, bottom-of-the-barrel phones to premium devices is great example of democratizing technology: getting it in everyone’s hands, regardless of income. But how do you differentiate your product if you’re an OEM?

You could argue that if Samsung had always just sold premium hardware they might have avoided having to make their current price cuts. The truth is they (and many other OEMs) have always thrown as many price tiers of Android devices to the wall to see what sticks. This has resulted in Android brand doesn’t conjure up thoughts of amazing, premium devices.

It’s as if Ferrari licensed their body panels and frame to other car makers to put whatever engines and electronics they wanted into them. Sure, you could find better/faster Ferrari versions than others but anyone could get a “Ferrari”.

Categories:

Technology

Giving the Finger to Android

Zack Whittaker on Android’s fingerprint vulnerability:

New research, set to be announced at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, by FireEye researchers Tao Wei and Yulong Zhang outlined new ways to attack Android devices to extract user fingerprints.

The threat is for now confined mostly to Android devices that have fingerprint sensors, such as Samsung, Huawei, and HTC devices, which by volume remains low compared to iPhone shipments. But down the line by 2019, where it’s believed that at least half of all smartphone shipments will have a fingerprint sensor, the threat deepens.

Of the four attacks outlined by the researchers, one in particular — dubbed the “fingerprint sensor spying attack” — can “remotely harvest fingerprints in a large scale,” Zhang told ZDNet by email.

Open always wins, right?

Categories:

Technology

“This equipment is not supported—AT ALL—by the railroad industry. We are fully, self-sufficient.”

Absolutely incredible.

The NYC MTA is upgrading to communications-based train control but the majority of the system still uses electro-mechanical relay switches and other technology from the 1930s to run today’s subway system. And some of the cabling is the original cloth-covered cabling.

Here’s a video on YouTube for a look at this underground system.

Just. Wow.

[As my brother and father were quick to point out both truthfully and comically, there are advantages to this antiquated system: no buggy software upgrades or remote hacking.]

via Laughing Squid

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Travel

“Three of Apple’s four top products being sold today took roughly 3 years before people were willing to consider it worth buying.”

Abdel Ibrahim on the Apple Watch:

The Apple Watch is experiencing its early days, but I think it’s going to go through a timeline similar to the iPod, the iPhone, and the MacBook Air. This is a whole new frontier for both Apple and the consumer. This is not just technology. This is technology you wear. And because this is all so new to us, it’s simply going to take time for us to fully grasp and accept it.

But that’s not the only reason why. Another reason, and I think the bigger reason, will be because in the years to come innovations will happen that will make the Watch far more compelling. The screen, the battery, the speed, the applications, and the sensors will all become noticeably better. Not only that, but the Watch will likely do things we haven’t thought of yet. It’s hard to say what that is today, but it’s bound to happen.

Like I said, you gotta give it some time.

Categories:

Product

Browser Power Consumption

Interesting web browser results on power consumption:

We measured the power consumption of watching videos on YouTube, browsing Reddit, streaming on Netflix vs Putlocker, creeping on Twitter and FaceBook, composing emails on services like Gmail and Hotmail, and searching for stuff on Google, Bing (yup, surprisingly, it’s still used), and DuckDuckGo. We used a factory-restored MacBook Pro Retina 13” to test each website on one internet browser at a time. No programs other than the browser were open.

Averaging data from all websites tested, Safari won first place with 6hours 21min of total usage, Firefox second with 5hours 29min of usage, and Chrome last with 5hours 8min of usage.

Basically, if you simply switch to using Safari instead of Chrome, on average you could get an extra 1 hour of usage from your battery life. It’s actually a pretty good browser, and now has a fair amount of extensions available.

Not a big deal if you work at a desk all day, but if you’re on the road a lot, what browser you use can make a huge difference.

via Daring Fireball

Categories:

Technology