Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 12th Jan 2013 22:53 UTC
Well, this can't be a good sign. Samsung has told CNET that the company will not be launching its Windows RT tablet in the United States, citing a lack of demand and consumer confusion. After I spent an afternoon in my country's largest electronics retailer, it's hard not to agree with Samsung.
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Member since:2007-04-18
On the other hand, ARM-vendors do not sell their SoCs to individual people and there are no motherboards to slap them on to, so I wonder how much of the asking price for the Intel-processors come from all the logistics and packaging needed to sell to end-users -- I doubt it's an entirely negligible amount.
ARM doesn't have a machine architecture standard such as x86 has (IBM PC), so no wonder there is little to no homebrew when compared to x86. At a fundamental level, from a software perspective, every PC looks the same. There's a BIOS mapped at a certain address which has certain standard functions you can invoke, every PC has a standard ISA and (later) PCI bus interface that is largely probed in the same way, etc. ARM lacks that. Even a single ARM CPU model can be implemented and firmware-coded to wildly different behavior (which is why bootloaders and firmware blobs are often times highly vendor-specific).
IBM's (and their clone maker's) contribution is easily taken for granted, but it was by no means a small thing in the industry.
RE[5]: Comment by Nelson
by WereCatf on Sun 13th Jan 2013 14:59
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by Nelson"
Member since:2006-02-15
Indeed. Standardization is one thing ARM really, really needs in order to become a more attractive a choice in general, and only once standardization is achieved will it really be viable for proper enthusiast-use.
I could certainly imagine a future where e.g. the SoC and its RAM are just soldered-on to a motherboard and enthusiasts buy the bundle as-is as that would certainly ease things for the manufacturers and vendors, but for that to happen there must be a proper spec for booting the devices in a standard way and for accessing their resources. Also, it would require the manufacturers to actually start providing up-to-date drivers for their systems.
Alas, given the almost complete lack of interest from the SoC-manufacturers towards enthusiast-/desktop-markets and even actually-working software such a future is likely FAR away.
RE[4]: Comment by Nelson
by ze_jerkface on Sun 13th Jan 2013 19:07
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by Nelson"
Member since:2012-06-22
Well, that nets you a low-end Celeron processor
A $50 dual-core Sandy Bridge Celeron will beat a $1000 Core 2 Duo from 5 years ago. What bastards they are selling for me that much power for the price of dinner at Applebee's.
For less than $50 you could in theory buy a quad-core ARM-processor with a more powerful GPU
In theory I could buy it but I couldn't run my software on it so there really is no savings for me, now is there?
Bashing Intel over prices is just freaking silly. If you want to see market without competition then have a look at the US cable market. Intel not only competes with AMD and Intel but also with their existing cpus. It's not like cable TV where you have to pay for it every month and when you stop paying your hands are empty.
RE[5]: Comment by Nelson
by WereCatf on Sun 13th Jan 2013 21:27
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by Nelson"
Member since:2006-02-15
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
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2006-02-15
Well, that nets you a low-end Celeron processor with very, very poor GPU and no extras. For less than $50 you could in theory buy a quad-core ARM-processor with a more powerful GPU, integrated DSP capable of hardware encoding and decoding a handful of different codecs, usually there's WIFI/bluetooth/SATA/etc. integrated -- think of lower cost for the motherboard thanks to fewer needed components -- and lower thermal output.
Of course, they're not directly comparable, but generally ARM SoCs net you a lot more features and speed than a similarly-priced Intel-processor. On the other hand, ARM-vendors do not sell their SoCs to individual people and there are no motherboards to slap them on to, so I wonder how much of the asking price for the Intel-processors come from all the logistics and packaging needed to sell to end-users -- I doubt it's an entirely negligible amount.