iPad Air benchmarks show 80 percent speed bump over iPad 4

 

The iPad Air is 80 percent faster than the fourth-generation iPad, say new benchmark tests.
Running the new iPad through the paces via Geekbench 3 tests, Primate Labs found that the tablet comes close to reaching Apple's promise of doubling the speed of the iPad 4.
The iPad Air is powered by an A7 processor, just like the iPhone 5S. But the new iPad runs at 1.4GHz -- which is 100MHz faster than the 5S, Primate Labs founder John Poole said on Wednesday. He said he's not sure whether the iPad Air's processor is faster due to a larger battery (which offers more power), a larger chassis (which offers better cooling), or a combination of the two. But he does expect the iPad Mini's A7 processor to also clock in at 1.4GHz.
The new Air is also five times faster than the iPad 2, leading Poole to question why Apple is still selling the second-generation model, especially at $399, just $100 less than the starting price for the iPad Air.
He said that, from a performance standpoint, the iPad Air is a great upgrade to the iPad 4.
"With most recent Mac updates showing only modest performance improvements, it's exciting to see iOS devices do the opposite, with substantial improvements between generations," he said. "I wonder how much longer Apple can keep this up?"
The iPad Air is due to hit stores on Friday.

Samsung wants Android apps that stand apart, starting now

SAN FRANCISCO -- Samsung on Monday rolled out five software development kits to make it easier for developers to create apps for its various devices.


"Curtis Sasaki, the Samsung executive in charge of its Media Solutions Center America business, talks about the big opportunity for developers at the company's conference in San Francisco."

The new SDKs include one for multiscreen capabilities and another for multiscreen gaming. Samsung also streamlined its mobile SDK, released a new version of its smart TV SDK, and updated its enterprise SDK.
The SDK releases highlight Samsung's push to offer something different from all the other Android device makers. It's also part of Samsung's effort to work more closely with startups and boost its software and service offerings. The two areas have been a weakness for Samsung versus rival Apple, and the company has said it wants to build its capabilities by partnering with companies who specialize in the areas. It opened its Media Solutions Center a couple years ago to focus on software, while its Open Innovation Center will cultivate relationships with startups
To help the push, the South Korean company is hosting its first developer conference at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco's Union Square neighborhood. The conference, with about 1,300 developers attending, kicked off Sunday and will last through Tuesday. Sessions encompass the various parts of Samsung's business, from mobile to TVs and home appliances. Some specific panel topics include S Pen, wearables, enterprise security, and NFC.
In the case of S Pen, thousands of developers started writing software to take advantage of that capability after Samsung released its first Note phablet, said Curtis Sasaki senior vice president of Samsung Media Solutions Center America. They viewed it as a way to set their apps apart from others in the Google Play app store.
"When we talk to developers, they're trying to find that differentiation," Sasaki told CNET. "When it comes to new SDKs, these, even for Android developers, allow them to look at differentiating their applications."
The multiscreen SDK is based on technology from Samsung acquisition MOVL. It lets developers key into APIs for one-touch discovery and pairing of devices for easy sharing between various gadgets.
That particular SDK is a key part of Samsung's longer term strategy to build an ecosystem. The company controls a wide variety of electronics, but the devices so far don't really talk to each other. Samsung itself has released some features that connect its devices, such as the WatchOn app, but it still has some way to go before its work together seamlessly.
"The question everyone is asking is what is the next big thing for developers," Juan Pablo Gnecco, senior director of Samsung's Media Solution Center America, said during a presentation at the developer conference. "The answer is TV. But TV is not alone. Today the living room is full of devices, it's truly multiscreen."

The Galaxy Note 3 includes a stylus known as S Pen.

(Credit: CNET)

The gaming multiscreen SDK, meanwhile, is built on top of the multiscreen SDK. It allows game developers to create "immersive gaming experiences" that people play on any big screen TV using a Samsung smartphone as a console. The streamlined mobile SDK combines 10 individual packages such as the third-generation S Pen. Other APIs in kit include media control, professional audio, and gestures. In total, there are more than 800 APIs in the mobile SDK, Sasaki said during a keynote at the developer conference.
The enterprise SDK allows developers to build secure apps to boost the "bring your own device" trend in the workplace. Samsung has placed a big emphasis on courting business users for its devices. Over the past couple years, it has released features such as Samsung for Enterprise, or SAFE, which technology to make its devices more business friendly. It also recently launched its Knox security platform to make its devices secure enough for the U.S. Defense Department and other organizations.
Injong Rhee, senior vice president of Samsung's mobile communications business and head of its business user push, said the enterprise mobility market will grow about three to four times faster than the consumer market. That gives it a growth rate of about 35 percent, he said.
"This means a huge opportunity for device manufacturers like us because we're seeing consumer getting to saturation," Rhee said during Samsung's conference. "But we see a big jump in enterprise."

OS wars 2013: How the latest Mac and Windows upgrades compare

Last year when Mountain Lion and Windows 8 were released, I wrote a piece comparing the Mac and Windows operating systems, and concluded that Apple took the better path by keeping its tablet and desktop operating systems separate. With Windows 8 Microsoft gave its operating system a complete makeover, asking that people change the way they use their computers. Now that the two operating systems have updated with Mac OS X Mavericks and Windows 8.1, I thought I should take another look at both to see if the update did anything to change my mind.
For full disclosure, I primarily cover iOS and Mac software here at CNET including both operating systems, but that doesn't mean I know nothing about Windows. I've covered Windows software extensively here at CNET, including when Windows 8 first launched, and have been the primary reviewer of Microsoft Office since 2010. I also have a Windows 8 gaming rig at home that serves as my main home computer.
In other words, I am no stranger to Windows and use Windows 8 on a daily basis, which is why I haven't changed my perspective much since the last major upgrade. I still think Mavericks expands on an already familiar operating system that makes the overall experience more efficient, whereas Windows 8.1 continues stubbornly on the idea that one system can work on both desktops and tablets. I like that Windows 8.1 brought a few familiar features back, such as the Start button, but it just doesn't go far enough toward making it as useful as it once was in Windows 7. Furthermore, the tiled Metro UI (don't call it Metro!) is pretty, but is still largely a waste of time for people using a desktop, which -- I might add -- is the majority of users.

Moving iBooks onto the Mac was an obvious choice, giving you more places to read books.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jason Parker/CNET)

Mavericks improves on a familiar interface
Let's start with how Apple is doing it right. Mavericks is a free upgrade that makes your laptop battery life better through improved power management; adds useful apps brought over from iOS such as iBooks and Maps; and adds smart interface tweaks to make things easier without completely changing how you use your computer.
Tons of interface tweaks make actions easier than they were before. To give some examples, Top Sites in Safari now lets you rearrange your favorite sites so when you open a new tab you know exactly where to click to get your best sites up fast. New Finder tabs make it easier to transfer files between two locations. Full screen apps have been fixed to work on multiple monitors, finally fixing a problem that plagued users of more than one display.
In other words, what you get with Mavericks are improvements for an already familiar interface, but with additions that let you do more with your Mac. Sure, there are still confusing things like the Launchpad, when you can open apps from the finder, but I think it's pretty clear -- as a free upgrade -- it's easy to recommend because it improves your experience all around.

The Start button is back in Windows 8.1, but it's not as good as Windows 7.

(Credit: Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET)

Windows 8.1 fixes some problems, but still isn't ideal
Windows 8.0 was a jarring upgrade for many users with the loss of the Start button, a whole new way to look at the Start Menu, and confusing gesture-based actions that didn't make sense for desktop users. Frankly, they didn't even make sense for tablet users either until you had some training. I'll never forget having to ask Seth Rosenblatt, who reviewed Windows 8.0, how to close a Metro app because it wasn't in the least bit intuitive. Why not just keep the red "X" at the top right instead of having to pull down from the top (more awkward with a mouse) and pull to the bottom of the screen? But I digress.
I was excited when I learned that Windows 8.1 would fix the major problems from the initial launch and bring back the Start menu. The problem is, the new Start Menu popup added in 8.1 isn't nearly as powerful as the one we had in Windows 7, and the fixes ignore the fact that the Metro interface is still much more suited to touch screens than desktops. Frustratingly, clicking the Start Button just brings up the Metro UI, but at least a right-click on the button brings up some of the features you had in the Windows 7 start button. As Dan Ackerman pointed out in his review, it's exactly the sort of passive-aggressive "compromise" that backs up claims that Microsoft has lost touch with what consumers want.
The way I use Windows 8 at home is just as I would in Windows 7. The second the Metro interface loads up, I immediately hit the desktop tile to use the computer the way I always have. From there I can check e-mail, browse the Web, and do everything I've always done with a Windows computer. And yet, I know there is this entirely other Windows experience that will get me most of the same things if I want to live in the tiled world. I know there are live tiles that show information in the new Start window, but how often am I really just staring at live tiles? The answer is never; When I turn on my computer, I have a mission in mind and I get to it. Though tablet users may disagree, to me it doesn't matter how colorful and pretty the modern UI is, nor does it matter that it's great and makes sense on a Windows phone or tablet; it's simply just another way to do the same things on a desktop with no appreciable advantage other than the look.

Hey, I like the way the Windows Start screen looks, but I just don't have any use for it on my desktop.

(Credit: Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET)

Surprise! The news isn't all bad -- Windows 8.1 is an improvement
If I ignore the live tiles entirely, Windows 8.1 is the best Windows operating system yet. It boots incredibly fast, has a vastly improved task manager, better security, and I find I spend much less time force quitting programs than I ever have in previous Windows versions. It's more stable, it's faster, and works better than ever. That's why I have such a hard time talking about Windows 8 with friends and colleagues; I can go on a rant about all the things I think are wrong with Windows 8, but in the end I'll still recommend you upgrade.
Change is good, but you have to do it the right way
If I've learned anything over my long time here reviewing software at both CNET Download.com and Reviews, it's that -- as a rule -- you should always update your software. It's fine to wait for a couple of weeks to make sure a developer has ironed out the bugs, but in the end you're probably going to get better stability, better security, and probably more useful features if you move on to the next version. Certainly there are cases where you upgrade to a program that makes it worse (such as putting iOS 7 on an iPhone 4), but by and large, staying up-to-date with your software is the best practice in my experience.
Mavericks is exactly the good kind of update I'm talking about. It comes with new apps and new time-saving features that make common actions easier and more efficient.
But with Windows 8.1, you get a mixed bag. It does indeed make using your Windows computer more efficient, adds security, and brings back the useful Start button, even if it's not as good as what you had before. But until Microsoft finds a way to make the "Modern UI" useful to desktop users, you're going to see people bypassing the tiles for a way of computing that makes sense with a mouse.

William Lowe, the 'father of the IBM PC,' dies at 72

  "After his proposal for a quick market entry via Atari was rejected, Lowe was given one year to design and produce a personal computer that would be market ready."
William C. Lowe, the IBM executive who supervised the creation of the company's first personal computer, has died. He was 72.
Lowe died of a heart attack on October 19 in Lake Forest, Ill., his daughter, Michelle Marshall, told The New York Times.


Long a dominant force in mainframe computing for government and corporate customers, IBM became interested in the personal computer market in the late 1970s, well after brands such as Apple Computer, Commodore, and Atari had established a beachhead. Lowe, who joined IBM as a product test engineer in 1962, was director of IBM's Boca Raton Labs in 1980 when Atari approached IBM about marketing one of the game maker's computers under the IBM brand.
Knowing the company was seeking a quick entry into the market, Lowe took the Atari proposal -- along with an alternative suggestion to acquire Atari outright -- to an IBM management committee, which reportedly pronounced his suggestion "the dumbest thing we've ever heard of."
IBM CEO Frank Cary then tasked Lowe with creating a plan for bringing an IBM product to market within a year, along with assembling a team that could accomplish that goal. Under the codename "Project Chess," Lowe recruited "The Dirty Dozen" -- 12 engineers who would design and build a prototype personal computer dubbed Acorn within one month.

The fruit of their labor was released on August 12, 1981, when IBM launched its new computer, which had been renamed the IBM PC. Because "PC" stood for "personal computer," IBM was given credit for popularizing the term "PC."
The 5150 PC was powered by a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor and came with 16 kilobytes of RAM, expandable to 256k. Bundled with a handful of applications, the IBM PC had a retail price of $1,565.
A year later, in a move highlighting the growing personal computer revolution, Time magazine eschewed naming a traditional Man of the Year, opting instead to bestow the honor of "Machine of the Year" on the PC.
"The enduring American love affairs with the automobile and the television set are now being transformed into a giddy passion for the personal computer," the magazine wrote in its January 3, 1983, issue. "It is the end result of a technological revolution that has been in the making for four decades and is now, quite literally, hitting home."
Lowe later said his team at the time was more focused on the product than changing history.
"We didn't have any expectation that we were going to change the world," Lowe told CNET in 2001 for a report marking the PC's 20th anniversary. "We could see that the world was changing; Apple was attracting a lot of attention from IBM developers, and we wanted IBM developers to work on IBM products."
Lowe, whose role included forecasting demand for the new PC, reported to the company's senior management that he expected IBM would sell 220,000 units in a three-year period.
"People now come up and ask, 'Why such a small number?'" he said. "But you have to realize that this was larger than the installed base of all of IBM's computers at the time."
After serving as the PC division's president for three years, Lowe left IBM in 1988 during a management shakeup to become an executive president overseeing Xerox's office equipment product lines. Lowe went on become chief operating officer at Gulfstream Aerospace in 1991.
Lowe, who the Times reported was born in Easton, Penn., on January 15, 1941, held a bachelors degree in physics from Lafayette College, which is located in Easton.

If Google Glass could do this, it would start a revolution

The world portrayed by Tom Cruise and his slick, glove-manipulated holographic operating system in "Minority Report" has been inching closer to reality for some time now, and as the video below shows, it could come way ahead of schedule and be even cooler than Hollywood's original vision of the future.
Taiwan's nonprofit Industrial Technology Research Institute pointed me to the below demo of its new i-Air Touch (iAT) Technology, which is essentially an augmented-reality system that falls somewhere between the compact specs of Google Glass and the original, bulkier virtual-reality systems of the 1990s. Unlike Google Glass however, it doesn't rely primarily on voice commands. Instead, it projects a virtual touch-based interface in the user's field of vision that appears to float in the air and responds to being "touched." Watch the video below for a better explanation -- a picture is definitely worth a thousand words in this case.


The potential here is not just the realization of that "Minority Report" system, which Leap Motion has already commercialized for the most part, but the marriage of such a system with wearable technology.
"In addition to consumer applications, i-Air Touch is suitable for medical applications such as endoscopic surgery and any industrial applications that benefit from hands-free input," said Golden Tiao, deputy general director of ITRI's Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories in an e-mail.
According to ITRI, the secret sauce in iAT is the camera, which only activates when it detects a user's fingertip within a predetermined input distance range (roughly a foot away). In other words, it conserves battery power by only turning on when it detects that someone is trying to "air touch" the virtual input. Air touches are then sent to a host device like a laptop or smartphone that the headset is tethered to.
iAT was officially introduced last week and will receive a 2013 R&D 100 Award in November. ITRI says the technology is available now for licensing by mobile companies and anyone else. That means you, Google.

The Zuckerberg Files: Getting schooled on Facebook's CEO

When Mark Zuckerberg speaks, everyone listens. Not just because he happens to run the world's largest social network, but also because he has a tendency to let slip some of his personal philosophy on privacy, connection, and sharing at an ever-increasing pace.
That's why scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are listening to and recording everything he says and archiving it in The Zuckerberg Files, an online repository of the Facebook CEO's every public utterance.

The site has an academic purpose, but it's also concerned with playing the watchdog. "By gaining a better understanding of how Facebook's founder and CEO conceives of his own company's role in the policy and ethical debates surrounding social networking, we will be better suited to critically engage in a dialogue on privacy and Facebook, inform design and policy recommendations, and increase user awareness and literacy," the site reads.
It's an important initiative, too. Zuckerberg's thoughts on social networking have always had an air of controversy -- for instance, when he said, "Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity."
But more importantly, his vision for the world dictates what kinds of policies Facebook mandates for its billion plus user base and the way the site maneuvers privacy in its mission to connect every human on the planet. Tracking Zuckerberg as he and his company mature into corporate staples will prove insightful in a number of key battlegrounds, from the next inevitable public outcry over a Facebook update to legal battles on US soil and beyond.
The Zuckerberg Files, which launched last Friday, already contain more than 100 full-text transcripts and nearly 50 videos of the 29-year-old billionaire's public appearances, media interviews, earnings calls, and more. But it's not for everyone. Though it's an open-access public archive, it's hosted on the university's digital commons and administered by Michael Zimmer of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's School of Information Studies. That means those interested need a reasonable enough reason to look into Zuckerberg's oral history. To gain full access, the site instructs people to submit their contact information along with a description of their research or purpose.
Zimmer, as a scholar studying social media, ethics, and privacy, has a history with the social network as one of its principal researchers. With The Zuckerberg Files, that research and the work of many others will now have a treasure trove of material to help peer inside the brain of social networking's biggest advocate.
So while Mark Zuckerberg has gotten over his ambivalence towards public speaking, you can be sure he will be treading lightly when it comes to opening up about touchy subjects like privacy from here on out.

Apple's Q4 racks up $37.5B in sales, 33.8M iPhones, 14.1M iPads

Apple's iPhone once again led the company to earnings that were higher than what Wall Street expected.
On Monday, Apple reported fourth-quarter earnings of $8.26 per share on sales of $37.5 billion. Analysts, on average, forecast the company to post earnings of $7.92 per share on sales of $36.8 billion.
Apple said it sold 33.8 million iPhones, 14.1 million iPads, 4.6 million Macs, and 3.5 million iPods during the quarter. Wall Street was expecting sales of around 32 million iPhones, 15 million iPads, 4.26 million Macs, and 4.2 million iPods.
"We're excited to go into the holidays with our new iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, iOS 7, the new iPad Mini with Retina Display, and the incredibly thin and light iPad Air, new MacBook Pros, the radical new Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks, and the next-generation iWork and iLife apps for OS X and iOS," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.
Several of those products, including the new iPads and Mac Pro, were introduced at an event last week, and are not included in this report.
For its next quarter, which runs through December, Apple expects to bring in $55 billion to $58 billion in sales, with a margin between 36.5 percent and 37.5 percent. That's on the lower side of the $55.7 billion in sales Wall Street expected ahead of the report.
In a call with Wall Street analysts, Apple explained that part of the hit on margins was because of a $900 million deferral of revenue due to changes in how it's accounting for free iOS and Mac software. That has trimmed margins by $5 on each iOS device it sells, and by around $20 for each Mac, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said.
Early in after-hours trading, Apple's stock initially shot down around $12, or roughly 2 percent, selling around $529 per share. Following its earnings call, it rallied up $3.27 to $533 a share.
Along with its earnings, the company announced plans to offer a $3.05 per share dividend to its shareholders on November 14.
Other tidbits from the earnings call:

• Apple noted that all future versions of OS X would be free, something that wasn't entirely disclosed when announcing the immediate availability and price change for its latest -- OS X Mavericks -- last week.
• The Retina Display version of the iPad Mini could be hard to come by, Cook said. "It's unclear whether we'll have enough for the quarter or not," he told analysts. "You never really know the demand until after you start shipping." The device is slated to come out "later" next month, though Cook did not elaborate on a more specific date.
• The company has 94 percent of the market for education tablets with its iPad. Where that number came from was not exactly clear.
• Cook and Co. don't believe the iPhone 5C is a budget phone. "That was never our intent, honestly.Our entry iPhone is the iPhone 4S," Cook told analysts who were curious about how well the 5C was doing in "cost sensitive" countries.
  
• The company has made 15 "strategic acquisitions," according to Cook, who mentioned the figure in the preamble of the earnings call. He did not go into detail about what those companies were. However, some recent buys include transit company Embark, Passif Semiconductor, location-based-data company Locationary, as well as local-navigation company Hopstop.
• New product categories are still coming, but not this year. Cook told analysts that "exciting new products" are still on the way, but he didn't say they'd arrive in 2013 or in the first half of next year.

Supercharge your laptop's sound with the ALO Island headphone amplifier

The ALO Island is a USB-powered digital audio converter/headphone amplifier, and it's a honey! Functionally, it's not so different than many of the other USB digital converter/amps I've covered on this blog, but it's a bit bigger. The others are about the size of a thumbdrive; the Island is a 1.25x1.25x3.25-inch aluminum "brick," but it's still small enough to be considered a portable device. It handles low- and high-resolution files, up to 192kHz/24-bit. The Island sells for $299 in the US direct from the ALO Web site, and it's also available from ALO's US and international dealers.
The all-metal construction and solid feeling volume control knob imbue the Island with a high-end feel. Thanks to the big knob it's easier to dial-in exactly the volume you want than it is with volume up/down buttons. My review sample is anodized blue, but the Island is also available in yellow, black or silver.
Connectivity goes above and beyond the norm for this type of device, in addition to the Micro-USB and 3.5mm jacks, the Island features a "balanced" four-pin headphone jack. This square jack is starting to be used on more and more high-end portable headphone amps. That's nice, but most users will use the Island's 3.5mm headphone jack.

The ALO Island's rear panel

(Credit: ALO)

I was so impressed with the Island's sound I used it with the new Audeze LCD-X headphones, and that's where I took advantage of the amp's balanced headphone jack. I'll soon cover the LCD-X in a separate review, but the match-up between these state-of-the-art headphones and this little amp was enticing. This headphone exceeds Audeze's other headphones' already high transparency and you-are-there realism. The clarity is thrilling, and the Island makes it possible to take high-quality sound with you, anywhere! Mark Nauseef's all-percussion "With Space in Mind" CD had a fully tactile feel; the texture in the sound of the instruments was amazing! The dynamic shadings of each beat were reproduced with rare fidelity. The balanced connection sounded ever so slightly weightier than what I heard from the regular 3.5mm jack. A lot of USB-powered digital converter/headphone amps don't seem all that powerful, but the Island had no such problem; low-end bass oomph was never in doubt. In addition to the Audeze headphones, some high-end Hifiman and Sennheiser full-size headphones can run balanced, and so can select custom, molded-to-your-ears earphones from Ultimate Ears, JH-Audio, Westone, and so on.
High-resolution 192kHz/24-bit WAV files upped the ante, mostly by sounding more "live," so I felt like I was hearing the musicians in the studio. For those listening tests I was using my high-impedance Beyerdynamic T90 full-size headphones. My JH-13 in-ear headphones sounded warmer and fuller than I'm used to with my iPod, and that's a compliment. The Island is a purely solid-state design, and yet it delivers an almost tubelike warmth to the sound of many headphones. I just got a set of Westone UM Pro 10 in-ears for review, and their sound really clicked with the Island. The sound was surprisingly dynamic and vocals were immediate and present.
AC-powered headphone amps and digital converters, like my Schiit Asgard 2 ($249) and Bifrost ($449), with my Hifiman HE-400 headphones produced superior resolution and bigger dynamics, but the Schiits are stay-at-home devices. The Island sounds a lot more than decent at home, but can travel along with your laptop.

What will recorded music sound like in 2050?

Last weekend in NYC John La Grou was a keynote speaker at the Audio Engineering Society convention. He based some of his assumptions about how recorded music will evolve on Moore's Law, which states that the number of transistors squeezed onto integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. That prediction was made in 1965, and if anything, Moore underestimated the cost savings we've enjoyed. La Grou rolled out statistic after statistic that painted a rosy future for music, gaming, and film tech advances in the coming decades.

John La Grou speaking at the Audio Engineering Society convention in NYC

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

La Grou believes that highly advanced gestural control and brain/machine interfaces will transform the way music is recorded and played back. That might preclude using a microphone to record the sound of an instrument or vocals; music in 2050 will be virtual and mostly electronic.
La Grou thinks that music will be mixed to create full 3D immersion over headphones long before 2050. Microphone and headphone designers and audio software engineers will develop 360-degree sound systems. Speakers play a much smaller role in sound reproduction in La Grou's future gazing. He described headphone sound as "spherical audio," where the listener is inside a sound bubble; spatial resolution within the headphone bubble will match reality, not just for music. He thinks games and films will drive the tech. By 2050 massive gains in processing power and virtual production techniques will provide unparalleled creative opportunities. I'm not sure how musicians, and their mastery of acoustic instruments fit in La Grou's virtual sonic frontier, but it would be a great loss to replace them with purely electronic music. I hope we can have both acoustic and electronic music coexisting in 2050's recorded music.
In an e-mail exchange after his AES presentation, La Grou said, "I see no technical reason why head-worn audio can't eventually (2040+) convincingly emulate any acoustic space and any room monitor technique with lifelike precision, short of sonic materials intended to impact the entire body (subs, etc.). There are some psychological/psychoacoustic issues related to this kind of future, along with issues on the microphone side, but that's for another conversation."
La Grou's predictions strike me as a little too idealistic; it assumes a future where listeners listen, and no longer text, talk, read, work, exercise, drive, and so on as they listen. Back here in 2013 music is mostly consumed as background soundtrack to other activities, and I can't imagine that will change all that much over the next 37 years. Full immersion might be too complete, and make it impossible to multitask. How do you see the future of recorded music, how will it be different than what we have now? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

iPad Mini adds a Retina Display: starts at $399, coming late November (hands-on)

There’s only two things, really, the original 2012 iPad Mini needed to become a perfect little tablet: a Retina display, and a better processor. (That Mini had a 1,024x768 screen and a 2011-era A5 processor.) With the newly announced iPad Mini with Retina Display, both those wishes have been answered. The new Mini does, indeed, pack an impressive 2,048x1,536 resolution into its 7.9-inch screen, and it’s got the latest, greatest Apple chips inside: the 64-bit A7 CPU, along with the M7 motion coprocessor. In fact, you could easily call the iPad Mini with Retina Display a shrunken-down clone of the new iPad Air: it has exactly the same specs as its larger sibling.
The only catch is that the 2013 upgrades come at a price: $399 for the base 16GB configuration. That’s $70 more than when the Mini debuted last year (that 2012 model remains on sale, with a price cut to $299). And it's significantly more than rival tablets from Google and Amazon. On the other hand, it’s also $100 less than the base iPad Air model.
With the screen and spec caveats of last year's Mini, it presented a real compromise compared to the big iPad of the time. This year? There aren’t really any technology drawbacks at all compared to the full-size iPad. It’s literally down to a size preference, and value proposition. Do you want to pay $400 for a mid-size tablet -- or $500 for its big brother? Or are you more comfortable with Android and Amazon models that are considerably more affordable?

Apple's crisp and clear iPad Mini with Retina Display (pictures)

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Design: Retina display...and a tiny bit heavier and thicker
Nothing’s really changed in the iPad Mini’s form. It has the same basic compact design as last year, which the iPad Air now also adopts: thin side bezels, a flat back, and a generally wafer-thin, metal-and-glass look. It’s actually a tad thicker and heavier than the older model -- 23 grams for the Wi-Fi version, 29 grams for the 4G model -- but you’d never know it from holding it. I’ve used an iPad Mini for a year, and holding a new one at Apple’s event felt nearly identical. The Mini’s much smaller than a larger iPad, but it’s still not really pocket-friendly unless you have very large, deep pockets.
The Mini comes in two colors: white and silver looks the same as last year, but the black and slate model’s been subtly adjusted to space gray, using the same lighter-metal back as the iPhone 5S and iPad Air.
As for the screen...well, that’s a big improvement, indeed. Other 7-inch tablets routinely hit 1080p resolution, such as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX, with 1,920x1,080 resolutions and 323 pixels per inch. The Mini’s 2,048x1,536 resolution amounts to 326 pixels per inch, offering even better pixel density over a larger amount of screen real estate. And the Mini’s screen is 7.9 inches with a more square-ish 4x3 aspect ratio -- not the 7-inch widescreen form factor of the aforementioned Google and Amazon models.

 

What else is new?
As we mentioned, the Retina Mini has a 64-bit A7 processor, just like the iPhone 5S and iPad Air. It also has an M7 coprocessor, which helps track motion and could be used for motion-aware apps and to reduce strain on battery life. It has a better front-facing camera than the last Mini, an improved MIMO Wi-Fi antenna (but no 802.11ac wireless), and improved LTE connectivity internationally for LTE models.
In a lot of ways, the Retina Mini’s much like the iPhone 5S, except it lacks a fingerprint-sensing Touch ID home button: this year’s iPad home button still has a square on it, and won’t do anything with your fingerprint except collect a slight smudge.
Price: clearly no budget mini-tablet
This isn’t a budget tablet, but it’s clearly not meant to be. It’s a packed-to-the-gills little tablet beast. The storage configurations now add a 128GB model: the Wi-Fi-only 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models cost $399, $499, $599 and $699 respectively. LTE-equipped versions, available in the US from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile, cost $129 more: $529 to a sky-high $829.
The iPad Mini’s already been designed to truly do a lot of tasks equally as well as a larger-size iPad, and that Retina Display makes it a better e-reader, Web browser and photo viewer. But its price seems to acknowledge its versatility. And, while it’s $100 less than an iPad Air for the same specs and promised battery life, some people will inevitably consider paying up just for a physically larger screen on the Air, even at the same resolution.
iPad Mini versus the non-Apple competition
Of course, the tablet world is no longer an Apple-only affair. To that end, the iPad Mini with Retina is entering a very competitive landscape of small and midsize tablets (7 to 9 inches). The 7-inch Google Nexus 7 -- with its crisp 1080p screen -- starts at $229 for 16GB, and costs just $269 to double that storage capacity; the 32GB model with LTE can be had for $349 -- $50 cheaper still than the Wi-Fi-only, 16GB version of the Retina Mini.

San Francisco's bay barge mystery: Floating data center or Google Glass store?

The mystery surrounding a large structure built on a barge docked in San Francisco bay is deepening. Is it a floating Google data center? A floating Google Glass store? Or something else altogether?
On Friday, I reported exclusively that a company, very likely Google, has set up shop on Treasure Island, located between San Francisco and Oakland, and has been building a large structure made from shipping, or cargo, containers on a barge. Some evidence suggests it might be a floating data center, including the fact that Google itself has a patent for such a concept.
Google has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

The Portland (Maine) Press Herald also ran a story recently about a structure on a barge showing up there, and photographs taken by the newspaper look similar to what is being built in the San Francisco Bay. Plus, the barge being used in San Francisco and the barge in Maine are both owned by the same company, By and Large, which is leasing a large hangar adjacent to the Treasure Island pier on which the San Francisco barge is docked. I found that Tim Brandon, who was said by the Treasure Island Development Authority to be tied to By and Large, was also tied directly to Google.
Now, a report from KPIX -- the San Francisco CBS affiliate -- suggests that the Treasure Island project may not be a floating data center at all. Rather, KPIX -- owned by CNET parent CBS -- reported that the project is going to be a floating Google Glass store, and that the plan might be to tow it into San Francisco's Fort Mason for some indeterminate time.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, wearing Google Glass.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET) 

 

KPIX reported that Google has been unable to acquire the permits needed to bring it to San Francisco. The TV station was told that the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission has been unwilling to grant the permit. A CNET request for comment from the same commission last week was not returned.
The idea of a floating Glass store is an odd one, but anything is possible from Google. In fact, after our story ran on Friday, I was contacted by someone who said he had knowledge that the project in the works is a Google store of some kind. The tipster, who is well-connected in Silicon Valley but asked to remain anonymous, told me that he had heard from multiple sources at Google that the company plans to float the Glass stores from city to city by rivers, and that the idea for the project came straight from either Larry Page or Sergey Brin, Google's founders. Finally, he said, the idea is in part that Google wants to launch stores without looking like they are trying to chase Apple.
If Google is working on building intentionally non-Apple style stores -- usually open and filled with natural light -- it's possible Google is going after an entirely different retail experience by making structures out of dozens of narrow shipping containers with few windows.
But one expert in the custom cargo container business thinks that the structure in San Francisco Bay -- at least as it looked like in pictures he was shown -- couldn't be used to hold a lot of people. To have a store, said Joel Egan, the principal at Cargotecture, you'd need big open spaces, and a building made from the "little cubbies" that are inside shipping containers doesn't seem practical. Plus, Egan said, there would need to be lots of exits, something that doesn't appear to the case on the structure in San Francisco Bay, or the one in Maine. "I would say no, it doesn't [look appropriate for a store]," Egan said. "It would be a lame store. That doesn't sound right."