News

6 Features iOS 7 Took from Android and Other Operating Systems

Chris Zele — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:00:12 +0000

There's a reason iOS 7 looks so familiar

Last week Apple announced its highly-anticipated iOS 7 update would come with a flurry of "new" features. From the look of things, however, we've seen a lot of these supposedly fresh designs in Android, WebOS, and Windows before.

Is Apple stealing ideas from other user interface (UI) developers in a bid to stay relevant? Take a look at our UI comparisons in the slides below and let us know what you think!

John McAfee Posts Quirky Video in Response to Uninstall Requests

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:16:20 +0000

Warning: NSFW (vulgar language)

Um, yeah. John McAfee, British-American programmer and founder of McAfee (now owned by Intel), is an eccentric individual, to say the least. He also remains a person of interest in a murder investigation in Belize where he used to live. That's before he fled to Guatemala, played the crazy card and faked a heart attack to avoid being deported, and was ultimately shuttled back to the United States. If you thought his bizarre escapades were over, however, think again.

In a video posted to YouTube, McAfee claims he often receives requests for information on how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus. He notes that he hasn't had anything to do with the software in 15 years, though he gives it a shot (literally) anyway.

The video is definitely NOT SAFE FOR WORK, so take note before you hit the play button. It's filled with vulgar language as he reads supposed letters from McAfee users complaining about the software, it degrades women, and at one point John is shown snorting bath salts, perhaps poking fun at previous reports of his alleged drug use (or maybe it's an admission?).

In any event, this is one weird video that provides a glimpse into John's psyche. It does not, however, tell you how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus, not unless shooting your laptop is an acceptable solution.

Have a look at the NSFW video:

It definitely appears John is a few marbles short of a full sack, but is he crazy? Maybe not. John claimed all along that the Belize government was out to get him, and while his romp through the jungle and into the States has been strange, you can't help but wonder if some of his allegations were true after his island home burned to the ground last month. He lost two structures, each one valued at $250,000. The supposed bush fire that caused the buildings to burn down occured just days before an investment group was to close a deal to purchase the property.

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Cooler Master's CM Storm Havoc Gaming Mouse Features Ultra-Sensitive Laser

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:16:51 +0000

Get ready to wreak Havoc on the battlefield.

Cooler Master's CM Storm division just unveiled a new mouse for gamers. It's called "Havoc" and it will help you wreak havoc on virtual battlegrounds with an Avago 9,800 laser sensor that's adjustable from 100 DPI all the way to 8,200 DPI, suitable for both sniping and quick movements. It also features on-the-fly tuning (switch between different DPI levels in the middle of a firefight) and a bit of customizable bling.

Havoc is equipped with multi-color LED zones, including the scroll wheel, CM Storm logo, and DPI buttons. You can adjust the brightness and color of each zone, or disable them altogether.

Other features include 8 programmable buttons, a rubber side grip for stability, built in memory so you can store you settings in the mouse, up to 4 profile settings, and a 1.8 meter cord.

The CM Storm Havoc is available now for $55 MSRP.

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Nvidia Following in ARM's Footsteps, Plans to License Graphics Technology

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:59:58 +0000

A potentially big move for Nvidia.

It's hard to argue against the success ARM has had in the mobile space. Arguably no other company has a larger footprint in the smartphone and tablet market, and it's all done through licensing its technology to third parties. Nvidia, whose own Tegra line is based on ARM's architecture, has been paying attention to ARM's business savvy and will soon begin licensing its Kepler GPU technology to other companies.

So says Reuters based on a conversation it had with Nvidia chief Jen-Hsun Huang. As the landscape changes and trends toward mobile, Huang wants to be sure his company remains flexible and is willing to adapt.

"The bottom line is the world has changed and we're expanding our business model to serve markets that we historically could not serve by selling chips alone," Huang told Reuters.

It's an interesting proposition and one that would inevitably pit Nvidia against ARM. As to whether Nvidia has any plans of licensing its GPU technology to Apple and Samsung, Huang played it coy saying it's early and his company has only begun interacting with the marketplace.

"We will target customers where their capacity and desire to build their own application processors is great," Huang said.

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Fuel Entertainment to Go Digging for Buried Atari Games and Prototype Systems in Landfill

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:39:07 +0000

Go ahead and leave the E.T. cartridges in the landfill.

A landfill in New Mexico may be a goldmine of Atari nostalgia, filled with old game cartridges, prototypes of systems that never saw the light of day, and other hardware from 30 years ago. As the story goes, Atari was sitting on millions of games and other goods that it couldn't sell, so one day the company decided to load them all onto a fleet of trucks and bury them in the desert.

That was three decades ago. The landfill in question sits next to a railroad behind a McDonald's and has since been packed with dirt and concrete. It's largely regarded as a legend, though don't tell that to Mark Esquero, a 69-year-old who sat for a spell with The New York Times.

"It's not a myth," Esquero insists as he holds up an E.T. cartridge he claims he plucked from the burial ground. Esquero has more than a dozen games he supposedly dug up from a hole in the landfill right after Atari unloaded its goods.

According to NYT, Fuel Entertainment managed to get a permit to excavate the Alamogordo landfill over the course of the next six months. Mike Burns, the company's chief, said he definitely plans to go digging, though concedes "there might be nothing."

Or it could be a treasure trove. Some stories suggest there were around 20 truckloads of games and prototypes dumped in the landfill. Is it true? It looks like we'll soon find out.

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Adobe Officially Launches Subscription-Only Creative Cloud Desktop App

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:06:41 +0000

Despite opposition, company abandons pay-once, use-forever Creative Suite

The Creative Cloud desktops apps Adobe announced at Adobe MAX back in May are now here. With the company halting the development of its Creative Suite applications, the subscription-based Creative Cloud desktop apps will now be the only way for people to access the company’s latest flagship creativity apps.

Only available to paying Creative Cloud members, the CC desktop apps, which include Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC, Adobe Muse CC, Dreamweaver CC, Edge Animate CC, Adobe Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC and many more, pack hundreds of new features not found in the CS6 versions and allow you to keep everything “synced and organized across your desktop, website, and mobile device.”

Despite Adobe offering a wide range of subscription plans that cater to everyone from individuals interested in single apps to businesses and creative teams with much larger appetites, not everyone is enthused at having a subscription-based model shoved down their throat. While the company is unlikely to go back to the pay-once, use-forever model, it remains open to the idea of making Creative Cloud membership plans a lot more affordable in order to assuage those unhappy with current pricing.

For individuals, subscription costs $19.99 per month for a single app and $49.99 per month for the entire suite ($74.99 without annual commitment), with existing Creative Suite (CS3 or later) customers eligible for discounts on both as long as they are willing to make an annual commitment. Likewise, for a limited period only, Adobe is offering the “Complete” plan to student and teachers at discounted prices: $19.99 per month for individual users and $39.99 per month per user for teams. Where teams and businesses are concerned, the Complete plan costs $69.99 per month per user ($39.99/month per user for existing CS users).

“We’ve added a ton of new innovation to all our CC desktop apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. These apps include new features that increase productivity, streamline the effort to build mobile content and showcase some stunning new imaging and video science. And in addition to the traditional areas of innovation these apps are now connected to the powerful publishing and community features integral to the Creative Cloud experience,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “And with even more great updates coming to Creative Cloud throughout the year, we can’t wait to see the incredible work our customers are going to deliver.”

Those who can do without all the latest features can stick to Creative Suite 6, which the company currently intends to continue selling “indefinitely.”

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The Humble Bundle Returns with 7 DRM-Free Games

Chris Zele — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:35:22 +0000

Six of the seven titles are cross-platform games

This week’s Humble Bundle features games that are compatible with Android, Windows, Linux, and OSX. If you're unfamiliar with Humble Bundles, they essentially ask you what you'd like to pay for the package. Games included in the Humble Bundle this week are Aquaria, Fractal, Organ Trail: Director’s Cut, Stealth Bastard Deluxe, and Pulse* (Android Exclusive) which you can all get for as little as one dollar, though you can of course donate more.

If you donate above the current average ($4.75 at the time of this writing) then you’ll receive Frozen Synapse and Broken Sword Director’s Cut.

You can select where your donation to the Humble Bundle goes to, be it to the developers who put their games on the service or to charity (Child’s Play Charity and the Electronic Frontier Foundation).

AMD Lays Out Server Strategy and Processor Roadmap

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:25:16 +0000

AMD is intent on recapturing the enterprise market.

Roadmaps have a way of leaking onto the web, so rather than fight the inevitable, AMD this week decided to publicly disclose its server strategy and related processor roadmap as it attempts to gain back market share in enterprise and data center server markets. The chip designer also disclosed details of its 2014 server portfolio, including "Warsaw," "Berlin," and "Seattle" parts due out next year.

"Our strategy is to differentiate ourselves by using our unique IP to build server processors that are particularly well matched to a target workload and thereby drive down the total cost of owning servers. This strategy unfolds across both the enterprise and data centers and includes leveraging our graphics processing capabilities and embracing both x86 and ARM instruction sets," said Andrew Feldman, general manager of the Server Business Unit, AMD. "AMD led the world in the transition to multicore processors and 64-bit computing, and we intend to do it again with our next-generation AMD Opteron families."

AMD's Seattle architecture will rank as the industry's only 64-bit ARM-based server System-on-Chip (SoC) "from a proven server processor supplier," the Sunnyvale chip designer said. It's an 8- and then 16-core CPU based on the ARM Cortex-A57 architecture and is expected to run faster than 2GHz. AMD plans to sample Seattle in the first quarter of 2014 with production to follow in the second half of the year.

Berlin is an x86 part that will be available both as a CPU and APU. It has four next-generation Steamroller cores and will offer nearly 8X the gigaflops per watt of AMD's current Opteron 6386SE processors. The chip will be available in the first half of 2014.

Finally, AMD talked a little about Warsaw, an enterprise server CPU designed to reduce the total cost of ownership for two-and four-socket servers. Like Berlin, Warsaw is expected to be available in the first half of 2014.

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EVGA Announces Supernova 1300 G2 Power Supply with 10 Year Warranty

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:05:54 +0000

EVGA goes for the gold.

Could you take full advantage of a 1,300 watt power supply (PSU)? Talk about making others totally envious! Assuming you need a herculean PSU, EVGA aims to deliver with its new Supernova 1300 G2, a monster unit that's 80 Plus Gold certified to deliver up to 90 efficiency under "typical loads" and backed by a generous 10 year warranty to boot. This could be the last PSU you buy for a long, long time.

Most of the available power is piped through a single +12V rail capable of carrying up to 108.3 amps. This is in contrast to some power supply makers who choose to break up the +12V rail into multiple lines.

It's a fully modular unit with a vertical double layer main transformer (increases power output), "highest quality" Japanese solid state capacitors, and a quiet 14cm double ball bearing fan.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Next Generation Consoles Needed to Save Slumping Game Sales

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:49:12 +0000

Decline In game sales just par for course.

Another month is in the books, and yet again, NPD Group noted a drop in overall game sales compared to the same period a year ago. No minor decline, total game related sales dropped 25 percent to $386.3 million from May of last year when hardwre, software, and accessories totaled $517 million, according to NPD Group's data. Breaking it down by category, software sales fell 31 percent to $175.1 million and system sales declined by the same percentage, raking in just $96 million.

"Softness in new physical entertainment software sales stemmed from a decline in the number of new launches, with over 30 percent fewer new SKUs, as well as poor performance of the new SKUs that were released," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan, according to USA Today.

The numbers were somehwat bolstered by consumer spending on digital sales, micro-transactions, and used game sales and rentals, all of which combined to drive total spending to around $787 million, but as impressive as that sounds, it too was the lowest of 2013.

Both Microsoft (Xbox One) and Sony (PlayStation 4) plan to launch new consoles in time for the holiday shopping season, and it's likely the new hardware, along with developer and consumer excitement, will reverse the recent trend in consumer game spending.

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Acer's Upgraded C7 Chromebook Revs Into Retail, Available at Walmart for $199

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:30:03 +0000

Faster and more widely available.

Acer clearly got the memo indicating that the best way to sell a Chromebook is to undercut the competition with the lowest price, and then hammer out a deal with Walmart to carry the cloud-based laptop. Enter Acer's C710-2856, the latest version of the company's C7 Chromebook line that's available at 2,800 Walmart stores for just $199. Not only is it cheaper than other Chromebooks and widely available, it's also faster than Acer's previous SKU.

That's because Acer dumped the 320GB mechanical hard drive in favor of a 16GB solid state drive (SSD). Obviously there's a huge storage discrepancy there, but since Google's Chrome OS -- the heart and soul of any Chromebook -- is largely based on cloud computing, Acer figured users would prefer to have faster boot times and quick access to apps versus more local storage.

"The expansion of our Acer C7 Chromebook line to Walmart is a clear indication of its growing popularity for anyone who wants a new or second mobile PC for web-based computing," said Sumit Agnihotry, vice president of product marketing, Acer America. "The new configuration with a speedy and responsive SSD at only $199 is an especially notable value."

According to Acer, the upgraded C7 boots in just 8 seconds and resumes from sleep almost instantly. Other features include an 11.6-inch HD display, Intel Celeron 847 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, and a 1.3MP webcam.

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Google Expanding Retail Availability of Chromebooks

Pulkit Chandna — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:05:28 +0000

Walmart, Staples and many other retailers jump on the Chromebook bandwagon

In a major shot in the arm for Google’s cloud OS ambitions, Walmart and Staples have agreed to carry laptops running Chrome OS. What’s more, they aren’t the only ones, as several other retailers around the U.S. and 10 other countries where Chromebooks are already available will also be part of this massive retail push.

Beginning with Walmart on Monday and Staples over the coming weekend, Chromebooks will now be available in “over 3 times more stores than before, or more than 6,600 stores around the world,” the search engine giant has announced. For good measure, select Office Depot, OfficeMax, Fry’s and TigerDirect outlets will also be jumping on the Chromebook bandwagon over the next few months.

Retail availability is also set to expand in the 10 other international markets where Chromebooks are currently sold. “In addition to Dixons in the UK, now 116 Tesco stores are selling Chromebooks, as well as all Mediamarket and Saturn stores in the Netherlands, FNAC stores in France and Elgiganten stores in Sweden,” David Shapiro, director of Chromebook marketing, wrote in a blog post Monday “In Australia, all JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman stores will be carrying Chromebooks for their customers as well. We’re working hard to bring Chromebooks to even more countries later this year.”

While the increase in retail availability is definitely great news for Chrome OS, the platform has a long way to go before its market share statistics are respectable enough to warrant a mention.

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60 E3 2013 Pictures

Jimmy Thang — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:40:01 +0000

E3 booth babes, booth tours, and more!

We had the chance to check out E3 2013 in Los Angeles, California last week. As expected, the gaming/tech event was a big one with Microsoft and Sony showing off their new Xbox One and PS4 consoles. But it wasn't all about the next-generation consoles. PC vendors such as Nvidia, AMD, Alienware, and Razer were at the expo showing off their latest gaming toys and there were a bunch of PC-exclusive titles at the event.

In our E3 2013 picture gallery below, we'll provide a look at some of this hottest tech, booth babes, and much more. What did you think was the coolest thing at the show this year? Let us know in the comments!

It's Official: China Owns the Supercomputing Crown

Paul Lilly — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:24:03 +0000

We saw this coming.

Earlier this month we said that China was poised to sit atop the supercomputing summit with its Tianhe-2, a system built by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). Armed with over 3 million physical processing cores and 1 petabyte of memory, there was no way this thing wouldn't shoot right to the top, and so it did, taking pole position on the TOP500 chart.

Tianhe-2 became the world's fastest supercomputer with a performance metric of 33.86 petaflop per second on the Linkpack benchmark, according to the 41st edition of the twice-yearly TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. What's more, Tianhe-2's ascent to the top came far earlier than expected.

"The surprise appearance of Tianhe-2, two years ahead of the expected deployment, marks China’s first return to the No. 1 position since November 2010, when Tianhe-1A was the top system," TOP500 said. "Tianhe-2 has 16,000 nodes, each with two Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors for a combined total of 3,120,000 computing cores."

It's an incredible machine equipped with 32,000 Xeon processors and 48,000 Xeon Phi accelerator processors. The machine also has 12.4 petabytes of storage and consumes 17.8MW of power. It's cooled by a closed air cooling system.

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Were Xbox One E3 Demos Powered by Windows 7 and Nvidia Graphics?

Paul Lilly — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:36:08 +0000

Things that make you go hmmm.

Microsoft made a splash at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) last week by showing off a number of fantastic looking games for its upcoming Xbox One console. It was hard not to get excited by some of the titles, including Dead Rising 3 and Forza Motorsport 5, but as it turns out, the game demos we saw might have actually been running on Hewlett-Packard PCs running Windows 7.

Before we go any further, let's be clear that it's not all that unusual for game developers to use PC hardware to show off future titles, so that in and of itself isn't reason to rake Microsoft over the coals. However, it's at least a little bit interesting that these tech demos were being run on Windows 7 rather than Windows 8, which the Xbox One's OS is partly based on.

Secondly, it was discovered that the HP PCs were equipped with Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 Series graphics cards. Given the risk of exposure, it would have made more sense to use machines running AMD graphics cards since the GPU in the Xbox One is an AMD part that's comparable to a mid-range Radeon HD 7790.

All of this came to light when Julian Rignail from U.S. Gamers posted to Twitter a message saying, "I just played an Xbox One game using an Xbox One controller that crashed... to a Windows 7, Hewlett Packard-branded desktop. Magic!" The Internet demanded pics, and lo and behold, there are a couple shots of Windows 7 PCs tucked inside Xbox One cabinets.

Again, using PCs to show off console games isn't unusual, but the choice of OS and GPU certainly raise an inquisitive eyebrow. And according to Cinema Blend, which first broke the story, developers have confirmed that PlayStation 4 game demos shown off at E3 were running on PS4 Dev kits, not PC hardware.

File this under "T" for "Things that make you go hmmm."

Update 12:30 PM

Or maybe not. A developer for Twisted Pixel's LocoCycle claims that his game was the only one of the bunch running on a PC, and that the choice of hardware was "solely [Twisted Pixel's] decision," not Microsoft's. That would certainly explain a few things, and hopefully blunt those pitchforks and douse the torches.

Kudos to "dracx619" for the update in our comments section.

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