tequila bomb

Here’s the cover of the March 2011 edition of Wired magazine, which just showed up in the mail:

1 million workers

90 million iPhones

17 suicides

This is where your gadgets come from. Should you care?

Yes, you should care. We do. Kudos to Wired for shining a much-needed spotlight on this important issue.

The only problem with Wired’s and Cult of Mac’s “caring” is that the average number of suicides per 100,000 people in China in 2008 was 6.6. Making the average suicide rate per 1 million workers something like 66 people each year. More than three times that of the 17 suicides Wired are beating on about having been committed within the million people working at Foxxconn. But then that kind of careful analysis doesn’t make shocking covers, or sell magazines now does it?

17 suicides at Foxconn is actually better than the average suicide rate per capita in most westernised nations, which incidentally in many cases have higher suicide rates than countries like China anyway.

The Foxconn “suicide epidemic” has been largely debunked in the press already. Wired obviously didn’t get the memo. Or were too busy taking orders from their overlords in the Department of Homeland Security (on how to run interference against Wikileaks) to pay attention to any actual facts..

Just sayin’.

Surging iPad shipments have propelled Apple to a 17.2% share of worldwide mobile PC shipments in Q4’10, placing Apple at the top of the DisplaySearch market share ranking. According to preliminary results from the DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report, Apple shipped more than 10.2 million notebook and tablet PCs combined, nearly a million more units than HP in Q4’10. While Apple’s iPad is benefiting from a first-mover advantage, particularly in mature markets, its notebook PC shipment growth rate continues to exceed the industry average.

Rank	Brand	Units	Share
1	Apple*	10.2	17.2%
2	HP	9.3	15.6%
3	Acer Group	8.4	14.0%
4	Dell	5.9	9.9%
5	Toshiba	5.1	8.6%

*Including iPads.

Google’s answer to Apple’s Subscription Publishing packages.

“Free and Open”, just as we have come to expect from Google. Unfortunately it’s not going to be available in more than a handful of countries, with the payment model probably working in even less; assuming that it’s all part of the same system as Android and Google Checkout.

After many years of hard and personal work, I’m proud to present Maratis first release candidate !

Maratis is a powerful and visual game development tool designed for artists and developers. Engine has been tested on Windows, Mac and IPhone, and can be virtually used on every platform.

I really think Maratis can be useful to the open-source community, professional and student, and that it will respond to it’s primary use, creation. I am admiring for a long time the work of the Blender Fundation, and the open-source community, I’m convinced that the future of softwares (and not just software) will follow this way.

You can download Maratis binaries, source code and Blender export script at www.maratis3d.com

See you soon !

Anaël.

A very cool project.

This takes us to a more speculative train of thought: Moving to the ARM architecture.

When you experience the 11” MacBook Air on a relatively slow 1.4 GHz Intel processor, you can’t help but wonder how it would feel on multi-core ARM hardware. Porting an OS to a new processor is no longer rocket science, but moving third-party applications is much harder — unless they’ve been distributed and regularized in such a way that makes the transition smooth and transparent.

I don’t think it is speculation even. I’ve always seen it as a forgone conclusion.

Apple will slowly move lower end devices to ARM in the future.

I’ve ported OS X applications. And I mean fully blown desktop applications, and OpenGL engines to iOS. It really is not rocket science. And most mobile and desktop APIs of note are converging anyway.

I am sure Apple already have an ARM MacBook Air prototype, an early hybrid of OS X and iOS, and I said as much last year.

Television and laptop makers are trying to make 3D displays which can be watched without wearing 3D glasses – the thought being that the glasses may put a lot of people off 3D TV in the home.

But there are rumblings which suggest that 3D may have bigger problems – with holographic TV planned to be its successor.

On a holo-TV, images will be projected into the middle of a room as a “cloud” that can be viewed from every angle without 3D glasses, and manufacturers hope they could go on sale in 2012.

Spencer Kelly took a look at an early prototype.

Impressive stuff. I’d hold off until 2012 for this technology, rather than buying a headache inducing “3D” TV today, that requires a headset.

It is worth noting that 3D TVs today rely on technology that doesn’t work for around 12% of people, induces headaches in others, and perhaps harms the eyes of youngsters.

Where as Holographic 3D actually solves the very problem that respected movie makers (correctly) claim is the biggest issue for 3D today. An issue which is also the reason why it doesn’t work for some – and gives others those headaches.

The upside is that content produced today for existing 3D technology will still work with Holographic 3D tomorrow – only better!

Thanks to @jonrandy for the heads up.

Nokia’s executive vice president of mobile solutions, Anssi Vanjoki, let an interesting analogy go when speaking with the Financial Times today. When asked about the possibility of his company switching mobile operating systems from Symbian to Android, Mr. Vanjoki compared the prospective move to Finnish boys who “pee in their pants” during the winter months for warmth; the temporary relief acquired is soon followed by a larger issue.

From tequilabomb.

So I ask again, “What would switching to Windows Phone 7 be akin to?”. Which is exactly what Nokia announced today.

Nokia said on Friday it was teaming up with Microsoft to take on Google and Apple in the fast-growing smartphone market and set financial targets for the group.

From reuters.

To me this seems like an act of desperation. Desperation from a company that no longer has the vision to innovate.

And with Microsoft’s penchant for the colour brown, I think the new analogy is obvious.

The Qualcomm MDM6600 chip supports HSPA+ data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps and CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A/Rev. B. Datasheet can be downloaded at : http://www.docin.com/p-52040727.html

This is the same chipset as the Droid Pro world phone. It supports both GSM and CDMA—which means that Apple could have supported GSM!

Interesting. For reference here are some comments from Tim Cook about LTE support on Verizon…

Asked why Apple didn’t embrace Verizon’s LTE network, Cook said: “Two reasons — the first gen LTE chipsets force design changes we wouldn’t make. And Verizon customers told us they want the iPhone now. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve been asked ‘when will it work on Verizon.”

He’s referencing LTE’s extraordinary demands on battery life here. Apple doesn’t usually jump on new technologies fresh out of the gate anyway, so it’s to be expected.

From Cult of Mac.

It would seem that the iPhone 5 will most likely rely on the GSM functionality of the Qualcomm chipset included in the Verizon iPhone 4. And that Apple simply did not want the complication of redesigning a dual system antenna (GSM & CDMA), or including a SIM slot out of the gate on a Verizon iPhone 4.

A nice little roundup of what most people think the iPad 2 will offer…

• Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 CPU.
• POWERVR SGX543 GPU (with Open CL).
• No Retina Display, but a less reflective screen more suited to eBook use.
• Front and Rear Cameras similar to the iPhone 4′s.
• Gyroscope.
• More RAM.
• Smaller, lighter, thinner – especially the screen.
• NFC capabilities (maybe).

I am hopeful of the “full monty” Apple A5 making an appearance in the iPad 2. i.e. Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9, and the all singing all dancing Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX543 GPU, with OpenCL support and superb OpenGL ES capabilities – approaching OpenGL 3.x in actual fact. But I am still concerned that the silicon was only available to Apple very late last year. So we may be disappointed, or get one half of the full deal.

But all in all I think the collection of rumours Jonny Evans has gleaned from all the usual Apple web sites are pretty solid.

You can take it to the bank that all of the Apple A5 related goodies outlined above will certainly be the core of the iPhone 5.

Oh, one more thing: I don’t think the iPhone 5 will be called by that name exactly.