A burst of 7 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
How Apple took over the only segment of the PC market that still matters >> ZDNet
Ed Bott:
I estimate that Apple sold roughly 6.4m MacBook Airs in its 2013 fiscal year, compared to about 6m MacBook Pros. (I based that calculation on two variables: First, I estimated that portables made up 76% of all Mac sales in 2013. Second, I estimated an average selling price of $1,050 for MacBook Airs and $1,500 for MacBook Pros.)
If 6.4m MacBook Airs sounds unimpressive for a full year's sales, put it in perspective: Gartner estimates that only 22m premium ultramobiles were sold in all of 2013. That gives Apple nearly 30% of this fast-growing market, which Gartner forecasts to grow by roughly 50% this year and more than 70% in 2015.
It's also a profitable segment, with average selling prices of $1000 or more.
That growth is why you see Windows PC makers falling over themselves to deliver products in this category, with Microsoft's Surface Pro line and Lenovo's Yoga series the best examples.
Blue Bottle Coffee proves developers aren't the only ones who love Slack >> CITEworld
Slack first arrived at Blue Bottle in April of 2014 -- the company had acquired coffee delivery startup Tonx, including co-founder Nik Bauman, who now serves as Blue Bottle's director of digital products. Bauman and his small team were among Slack's earliest users, and they loved the platform so much that they insisted on implementing it within Blue Bottle.
That turned out to be a good thing, Bauman says, because Slack's real strength is in bringing people who work remotely all together on one platform. Blue Bottle hadn't noticed yet, he says, but the company's email foundation was already starting to show its cracks. Nobody had any clue what other people were working on or who was responsible for what in any other office.
Samsung focusing on budget Tizen phones, no release plans for Samsung Z (SM-Z910F) >> Tizen Experts
We were all disappointed when Samsung did not release the Samsung Z (SM-Z910F) as expected last month. The Tizen smartphone has certainly had a rough journey, with repeated cancellations of all expected release dates over the last 18 months.
Now it appears that Samsung are cancelling ANY release plans for the Samsung Z, and are concentrating their efforts on budget low to medium end smartphone's such as the Tizen based Samsung SM-Z130H and SM-130E, this is according to several sources familiar with the situation. Samsung hope that this new strategy will help fend off challenges from Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, who are one of china's largest electronics companies that sells mobile phones and who has shifted over 26m handsets in the first half of this year alone, not bad for a company that was founded a mere four years ago.
Why John McAfee is paranoid about mobile >> Dark Reading
In this talk, McAfee took square aim at mobile. He discussed a recent consulting engagement with an unnamed defense contractor. Apparently, out of nowhere and for no apparent reason, the contractor began losing contracts it would normally win. Eventually, it was discovered that a man-in-the-middle attack had successfully infiltrated the mobile devices belonging to the sales team. Anything they saw wound up in the hands of the competition.
As he explained, thanks to mobile devices, each employee has become a potential weak link in the enterprise security chain. Corporate data shared on mobile devices and tablets has become highly valuable to competitors. Meanwhile, forced permissions within mobile applications are granting access to sensitive data stored on phones.
So much more detail required there, Mr McAfee.
It feels like just yesterday my wife, two kids and I packed all our belongings,… >> Google+
Amit Singhal, Google's head of search:
the heart of Google is still search. And in the decade since our IPO, Google has made big bets on a range of hugely important areas in search that make today's Google so much better than the 2004 version (see our homepage from back then below). Larry has described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want. We've made a lot of progress on delivering you the right answers, faster. But we know that we have a long way to go -- it's just the beginning.
I thought it might be fun to share the 10 biggest Google search milestones since 2004 that really stand out in my mind:
A couple of these don't feel like "search" - Google Actions ("OK Google send an email to Jason..") and his tenth, which sounds like Google Now under another name.
Also of note: 890 changes to search in the past year.
The state of Android updates: who's fast, who's slow, and why >> Ars Technica
Ron Amadeo:
This article is something of a sequel to a previous article, where, almost two years ago, our Culture Editor Casey Johnston took a hard look at Android updates up to that point. The numbers aren't directly comparable, since we're only covering KitKat updates, but the overall impression we get from looking at both reports is that things are improving.
The most impressive is Motorola, for which back in 2012, Casey discovered an 8.4-month update average over all its phones. Today, the company took around 2.7 months to update its devices (from 2012 and up) to KitKat.
In the same time period, HTC moved from a 4.7-month update average to 3.9 months today. Samsung was averaging a 6.9 month lag between updates in 2012, while from 2012 to today the company averages around 5.8 months for KitKat.
LG averaged a pathetic 11.9 months for an update in our previous article, and today its average in 2013 is 5.2 months. The company didn't update anything from 2012 to KitKat, though, and we didn't factor abandoned devices into these averages.
New Big Brother Watch team announced >> Big Brother Watch
Just months before Big Brother Watch's fifth anniversary, we can today announce the new leadership team, following the departure of Nick Pickles, who left the campaign in May to join Twitter as UK Public Policy Manager.
Emma Carr is to take up the role of Director, whilst Renate Samson is to become Chief Executive.
Deserved promotion for Carr.
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