Don’t Go to CES, Apple’s Earnings Warning, Amazon’s Great Holiday, and More!
— Apple tanks on Tim Cook’s earnings warning – is the golden age of iPhone over?
— Are Facebook and Google too big to Fail? No. Here’s why.
— China and the US duel over security, AI, and quantum computing.
— Qualcomm vs Apple legal battles heat up.
— Fortnite and Pokemon Go rake in the dough in 2018.
— Amazon wins big over the holiday season.
— Microsoft wants to give you control over your digital data.
— For the 1st time in 20 years, an entire year’s worth of books, movies, and art enter’s the public domain.
— The 10-second toothbrush, the Kurigization of Things (KoT) and more reasons why you shouldn’t go to CES 2019.
Host: Leo Laporte
Guests: Iain Thomson, Mike Elgan, Alex Wilhelm
Florence Ion, Jason Hiner, and Larry Magid join Leo talk about CES and much more. Voice assistants are everywhere and IoT devices are getting smarter. Innovations in Sleep Tech that will improve your health. Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is moving forward. Facebook is changing the Newsfeed feature and you might be shocked how. Some new brands might be popping up on Instagram feed and Stephen Colbert’s app, Scripto, is being used by nearly everyone in late night new comedy.
The best explanation for the Meltdown and Spectre computer flaws comes from a comic strip. Apple eats crow over slowing iPhones. Magic Leap might not be vaporware after all – will this lead to the death of smartphones? CES 2018 predictions. Prediction #1: no Ajit Pai. SWATting death: who is to blame? Border agents phone searches are way up just as new rules limiting searches are drafted. Please stop giving this man money: Juicero founder now hawking bacteria-filled “raw water.”
Intel: Many PC makers plan to skip desktop Broadwell PCs and wait for Skylake CPUs
LAS VEGAS—The more powerful the PC, the less important Intel’s Broadwell chip appears to be.
On Monday, Intel launched the Broadwell-U microprocessors for all-in-ones and traditional notebooks, representing the traditional Core i3, i5, and i7 parts that distinguish low, midrange, and high-end PCs.
The problem for Intel and PC makers, however, is that Intel’s next-generation chip architecture, Skylake, is due to launch in the second half of 2015, according to Kirk Skaugen, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group, at a dinner meeting at the Consumer Electronics Show here Sunday night.
That pinches PC makers, who will have to decide which chip architecture to focus their resources on. And where higher-end desktop and gaming PCs are concerned, hardware makers appear to be placing their bets on Skylake.
“It depends on… we have a multi-faceted roadmap, as you know. For traditional desktop towers, there’s not a lot of fifth-generation Cores,” Skaugen said. “So it’s Skylake.”
Why this matters: Gaming PCs have had to wait for the new Broadwell chips. And with Skylake looming on the horizon, it makes sense for vendors to try and sell Broadwell as quickly as possible. If PC gamers must wait for a quarter or two for a high-end part, why won’t they wait a quarter longer for a Skylake chip? It might not be the best argument, but it’s one that’s apparently resonating with pinchpenny PC makers.
The Broadwell delay makes Skylake more appealing
Intel’s fifth-generation Broadwell chips take the same microprocessor design as the Intel fourth-generation “Haswell” Core chips and shrink it into a new 14-nm process. While the finer process is expected to boost performance by 22 percent in integrated graphics alone, manufacturing glitches during the process delayed production by several months. Intel’s follow-on chip, Skylake, will use the same 14-nm process as Broadwell but feature a redesign that will bring new improvements.
That means for now, “desktop” PCs may use mobile Broadwell chips inside them, indicative of the blurring between the two platforms.
“For these all in ones you see over here, they’re taking a mobile processor and putting it in an all in one,” Skaugen said, referring to a table of all-in-one PCs from various manufacturers. “For most of the OEMs, my guess is that 80 percent of their resources for the last six months have been on Skylake anyway. Because the fifth-generation [Broadwell] Core is a pin-compatible upgrade to the existing Haswell systems.”
Skylake, however, is not. And if PC makers are going to perform chassis redesigns to include Wireless Display (WiDi) and 3D RealSense cameras, they’re probably going to invest in Skylake, too, Skaugen said.
As for WiDi, Skaugen promised that it finally works now.
Also on the agenda: wireless charging
Intel’s chief executive Brian Krzanich is scheduled to speak Monday night at a keynote address at CES. Intel executives said the topics of his speech will be wearables, the user experience, and wireless charging. Without confirming specific names, Skaugen said that new wireless charging partners would be named, with 20-watt adapters—enough to recharge a Core M-powered tablet—going into production in the first quarter for between $150 to $200 apiece. Intel is part of the A4WP (Alliance for Wireless Power) consortium.
Microsoft could find itself in a precarious position at the Consumer Electronics Show early next month in Las Vegas. That’s because a number of computer manufacturers are expected to unveil systems that can simultaneously run Windows and Google’s Android mobile platform according to two different analysts as reported by Computerworld.
Tentatively known as PC Plus, these machines will run Windows 8.1 as well as Android apps. Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies said the initiative would take place through software emulation and was being backed by Intel. He wasn’t sure what kind of performance could be expected but it is their way to try and bring more touch-based apps to the Windows ecosystem.
Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, independently said there were three possible implementations that could be used including dual-boot, software emulation or some type of virtualization-based solution. Either way, it would certainly make buzz at CES as OEMs will be trumpeting it.
It’s a desperate move by OEMs but as the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. Manufacturers have seen the PC business shrink in size over the last couple of years as sales of smartphones and tablets have cannibalized the once-thriving industry.
If true, it’ll certainly be interesting to see how the initiative plays out. One scenario could see manufacturers move away from Windows for mobile devices like notebooks, instead opting for a true mobile OS. It’s no secret that Microsoft is working to further optimize Windows 8 to better meet the demands of all users but there’s still a lot of work left to be done.
