HP second to iPad?

So says the research firm NPD Group. Sales for the failed HP Touchpad were second only to the all mighty iPAD for 2011. In the firm’s estimation, HP held 17 percent share of U.S. tablet brands, followed by Samsung at 16 percent, Asus at 10 percent, and Motorola and Acer at 9 percent. Overall, consumers in the United States snatched up some 1.2 million non-iPad tablets from January through October, according to The NPD Group’s data. Collectively, those tablets generated an estimated $415 million at retail, with accessories bringing that total to around $700 million. To put the numbers of all the other non Apple tablets in perspective Apple sold some 11.12 million iPads in its fiscal 2011 fourth quarter, a 166 percent unit increase over the same quarter in 2010.

FCC says no to AT&T T-Mobile deal

The FCC has made a decision and it seems that they have agreed with the US Department of Justice and will say no to the agreed merger between the company's. The FCC said that the deal would lead to an unprecedented concentration of the mobile market in one company. In the report the FCC also doubted AT&T's claim that with the proposed merger it would make the roll-out of 4G faster. The FCC also did not agree with AT&T's claim that the merger would result in more jobs. The FCC made a statement that the opposite would happen. With this latest blow to the proposed deal AT&T has one last chance to change the outcome. The FCC is now required to send the merger request to a hearing before an administrative law judge, where AT&T and T-Mobile USA will have the opportunity to argue against the FCC and see if it can complete the deal.

AT&T Hacked???

AT&T recently announced that a shadow organization had attempted to obtain some customer information. The AT&T spokesman said that the organization tried to use some kind of custom autoscript that tried to determine if customer's telephone numbers were linked to online AT&T accounts. AT&T said that no accounts were breached and it only affected less than 1 percent, or 1 million customers, of the wireless accounts. AT&T said they were going to do further investigation to figure out what they were trying to do and how. It seems that the goal of the organization was a form of phishing that they were going to send messages to customers pretending to be from AT&T and steal credit card and other personal information.

When will Apple release the next batch of products???

According to sources not that long. The website iLounge has some interesting new rumors from a reported reliable source. That source says that we should expect the iPad 3 to launch in March and that it will be approximately 0.7 mm thicker than the iPad 2 due to the need to incorporate a dual light bar system for the higher -resolution display. The next iPhone should have a summer launch and carry a 4-inch display. The new iPhone will be 8 mm longer than the current form factor and not the teardrop shape design that earlier rumors has reported. The source also said that a new MacBook form factor thinner in design than the current one will be released sometime in 2012. All in all it seems like Apple is looking to get the next batch of products out to consumers to keep its lead in the market.

Triumph of the Nerds Part 3 Summary

In 1971 Xerox started a think tank in Palo Alto, Ca. called PARC. The goal of PARC was to think of the future of computing and how to dominate the market. For years they developed and built a computer they called "Alto." It cost them $10,000 to build and was never sold to the public. The Alto computer was unique because it had a graphical user interface or GUI. Unlike the current leader IBM that ran on the disk operating system or DOS Alto had a nice GUI that let the user move around a mouse on a screen and click it to select documents or other items. They could then do whatever they wanted to it like copy it to a floppy disk by dragging the file over to the destination and dropping it in the folder. This went way beyond what anyone at the time was using with the keyboard based typing input of DOS. The Alto computer was also able to connect to other computers via an Ethernet that was also ahead of its time. The Alto had a printer connected to it that was able to print out what the user viewed on screen. This went beyond the normal dot matrix printers of the time.

One of the co-founders of Apple computers Steve Jobs eventually took a tour of PARC and saw the Alto computer. It was after this viewing that he decided that a GUI on a computer was the way to go and the future of the personal computer. He made it his goal to make a computer that used a GUI interface and not the text based interface of DOS. IBM was taking a big chunk of sales away from the Apple II so Apple needed a better competitor. Steve Jobs called the next computer Lisa and wanted it to have a GUI like what he saw on the Xerox ALTO computer. The Lisa eventually came out in the year 1983 and cost a staggering $9,995 dollars. It was not a commercial success because of the high price compared to the IBM computers even with the fancy GUI interface. Jeff Raskin then came up with a lower priced computer for Apple that he called the Macintosh. Raskin's idea was to sell the Macintosh for around $600 dollars closing the gap on the IBM machines. Steve Jobs took over the project and using the ideas from Lisa came up with the machine.

The Macintosh was finally released to much fan fair on January 24 in 1984. It was accompanied with a 15 million dollar advertising campaign that had a Super bowl ad. It was sold at the price of $1,995 half of which was pure profit for Apple. The Macintosh became the first affordable PC with a GUI interface. After an initial surge by last 1984 sales of the Machintosh were slow. It did not have a killer ap for the system and Apple needed to find a way to bring back up sales. They decided to work with Microsoft to come up with a software package to be sold for the Mac. Later they decided to talk with John Warnock who had founded a company called Adobe. Adobe was working on a program that would enable you to print out exactly what you saw on your screen. At the time because of the limits of the software and dot matrix printers this was not possible. Warnock, who was at one time a member of PARC, came up with what he called laser printing. With this new technology it lead to a new business called desktop publishing and led to a big boon for Apple. It was not cheap to buy the laser printers so it never grew into a larger market for Apple. Apple was floundering as a company and needed to turn things around. John Sculley, who was originally hired by Steve Jobs from PepsiCo, came up with new ideas to turn around Apple. Unfortunately for Steve Jobs those ideas did not include him being with the company. The Apple board decided to use Sculley's ideas and Jobs was forced out of the company he had founded.

Another development also doomed Apple. With there partnership with Microsoft Bill Gates saw another opportunity for his company to expand. Gates saw the future of a GUI interface and began work on one. At first they used a GUI on top of there DOS OS that they called Windows. It was very rough and at first did not work very well. Apple saw Windows and tried to sue Microsoft for using an interface that looked like Mac. Eventually Apple lost the suit and Microsoft was able to continue to work on Windows. Six years later in 1990 they released a version of Windows they called Windows 3. This was the first Windows OS that was exactly like Mac. It was an instant hit selling 3 million copies in the first year. Windows 3 led to Microsoft being the computer OS standard. Because of the nice GUI interface and wealth of programs Windows outraced all the competitors. Microsoft became the software company in the world while Apple was left struggling along and trying to find a new vision without Jobs at the helm.

Google launches Online music store

Google has finally released their answer to iTunes and iCloud. The Google music service lets users upload about 20,000 songs into cloud storage and play them on any computer, even in iOS, or on an Android smartphone running version 2.2 or better. What's more unlike Apple Google will not charge you for the service. You will still have to deal with your phone contractor for your data usage but Google will not tak on anything else for using the service. Like Apple Google will also have a online music store that you can purchase songs to store in the cloud. A total of eight million songs are available for purchase from Universal, EMI and Sony. Google has also integrated the Google + service with the music store and you can share your purchased music one time with your friends. Google will also have a free song of the day that you can add to your collection.

Microsoft to change Windows Update for New Windows 8

Say goodbye to the pop-up dialog box asking you to restart your computer after updating Windows. In a recent blog post on its site Microsoft has given some details on the new updating procedure for Windows 8. You now will get a restart notification on your login screen. Windows 8 will consolidate all updates for a month period in one restart. When needed you will get the notification on your login screen. If you do not do so after a 3 day period Windows 8 will do it for you. The big plus is that it will not do it if you are running critical applications. If you are Windows 8 will the restart the next time you login (to prevent data loss). You will than be given 15 minutes to save your data, and then the restart will take place. This seems like a positive change to not have any annoying pop-ups during presentations or while playing games on your windows machine. Once a month seems reasonable and if you are smart the changes wont matter to you because you will not be using the automatic install of windows update anyway.