I guess the real reason I brought it up was to show just how far behind the techno curve that Microsoft and Intel really live, and just what is considered as current tech "inside the walled garden".

You pay > $800 for the 9 pound backpack and goggles from MS.

You pay $69 from Google for a lite well padded accessory goggle that mounts your Pixel phone and does the same job as the huge noisy exhaust fan backpack.


============================


Wintel attempts to make their stuff "more attractive" to their fan boys by locking in the relatively few gaming titles that the Wintel backpack supports.
Buy our stuff or don't get any of it .....

Google already has a good many apps on the Playstore and a large volume of viewables on Youtube and the number of Google VR items are growing more all the time.    Google is far less restrictive, and has more content accordingly (mostly free content, too).

Google VR is built into the new Pixel phones that are shipping as we speak.    Google VR can be added to most all future Android phones if the manufacturer wants it.

This is rare, juicy and somewhat nasty.   A key Walled Garden player, HP, complains at a stockholder meeting about how they did all the stuff they were expected to do, shot themselves in the foot with the obligatory shotgun and did all the things that Mickysoft said for them to do --- but the promised sales bump never materialized.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/news/hp-it-s-windows-10-s-fault-we-re-not-selli...



As tablets and smartphones continue to rise in popularity, sales of the humble PC have fallen.

But CEO of HP Inc, Dion Weisler, has another theory about the decline of PC sales.

In the first quarter to the end of January, HP Inc suffered a 12% drop in financial revenues to $12.2 billion (£8.76 billion) year-on-year.

According to Weisler, that drop is down due to lack of demand for Windows 10.

Speaking to investors on a conference call this week, which was transcribed by Seeking Alpha, he said: "We have not yet seen the anticipated Windows 10 stimulation of demand that we would have hoped for, and we’re carefully monitoring any sort of price developments that could further weaken demand.”

Despite his view however, he made sure to add that he believes Windows 10 is 'a tremendous operating system'.

HP Inc is the part of HP which sells PCs and printers, the other part being Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

Sales of PCs and printers have both seen a steady decline in recent years, and a report from Gartner last month seems to back up Weisler's view of Windows 10 being part of the problem.

Related: Windows 10 vs Windows 8

The report found a lack of Windows 10 uptake at the end of 2015, which was partly responsible for a year-on-year drop of 8.3% in the PC market.

The latest financial results for HP Inc are the first since the company split in two last year.

It was expected that Windows 10 would help PC sales remain stable, but in HP's case that seems not to have been the case.



======================================



So, by pissing off everybody with a nightly upgrade that locked down EXISTING printers to only use HP brand cartridges and by aligning themselves completely with the Walled Garden crew on the PC side of things HP has come up a 12% cropper on new sales at the "locked in devices at elevated price point" that the Walled Garden crew is promoting.

Duh, dude -- how is your good friend Mickysoft, your super savvy marketing guru a-doing?

Slightly worse, huh?    Not so savvy, huh?

Both Lenovo and HP will quickly learn they actually did better aligned with FOSS than in active opposition to them.     HP needs to get aligned with their customer base, not Mickeysoft's BS buddies.

Look for more shrinkage to occur for all these guys inside the next fiscal quarter.

Ask yourself
What is the most appreciated//desired aspect of a computer?
Connection with the internet.
For what?
Places of interest.
Forums
News
search engines to look for articles on a topic.

That's me.
My NEED for a printer is almost zero. Certainly less than the cost of buying and maintenance. So infrequently used that ink dries up in the jets.

A tower computer? No way. A laptop? The wife kinda wants one, but she has,thus far, been unable to point out anything that Needs done that we can't Get done with a cell phone or a kindle.

In the words of the guys from that intellectually stimulating show
Psych
Micky and HP can
Suck iiiit!!!!

http://hothardware.com/news/windows-10-market-share-is-shrinking-according-to...

Hothardware, a MS loving publication, reports disturbing news

A slight regression in market share is being reported for Windows 10 by three sources: NetMarketShare, StatCounter and Valve’s Steam Hardware and Software Survey.

In NetMarketShare’s case, Windows 10 was sitting firm with 22.99 percent of the global operating system market in August. However, that share rolled back to 22.53 percent in September, which is troubling for an operating system that Microsoft had originally hoped would cross the 1 billion installs threshold some time in 2018 (that figure is currently claimed at 400 million by MS, but is actively disputed by various pundits).

During that same period, Windows 7 actually saw an uptick in adoption, going from 47.25 percent to 49.27 percent. Perhaps NetMarketShare is picking up on customers that have downgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 7?

Interestingly enough, StatCounter is also reporting Windows 10 backpedaling, with its September share dipping ever so slightly to 24.42 percent compared to 24.43 percent for August.

These small declines were then further backed up from another source: the Steam Hardware and Software Survey. In August, the survey showed that Valve’s Windows 10 user base stood at 48.95 percent. However, September saw that figure fall to 48.90 percent. This was the first time that Window 10 had seen a decline in share (even if it was a tiny one) since it launched over a year ago.

While we may never know the real reasons behind these nearly imperceptible declines in market share for September, it’s interesting to note that we’re seeing those declines from three different reporting agencies – so there’s definitely something amiss here.

Is this just a one-time dip or indicative of some potential rough waters in the months ahead for Microsoft? We’ll revisit this topic again next month to see how Windows 10 is faring in the marketplace.



...... duh, the Walled Garden Boys are pissing everybody off, getting the EU to begin investigating them and then going and scragging the 3rd party ink cartridge industry (AFTER the cartridges are installed and working, no less)  --- do you think this sort of bullshite has no repercussions ?????






Tipping Point Suspected -- prediction time has come again.

Work through it with me -- MS lies a lot with their figures, and the computer press is now finally saying that out in the open and IS NOT USING MS FIGURES ANY MORE.

They are carefully using impartial sources now, and are actually checking the impartial figures against each other for consistency.   The latest figures say that MS Win10 is below 50% market share counting all the machines converted or "sold new" AFTER the big Win 10 push has been completed (and after all the uninformed PT Barnum "one born every minute" suckers have all been gathered into the Walled Garden by force).

This is a tipping point, and very soon Google will grow to be the larger system in new unit sales, assuming that this hasn't already happened since MS and the others simply counted all the old converted Win 7 machines inside their Win 10 figures because they really can't avoid it.

Remember HP is complaining that their market has just tanked by 12% which is in line with the 9% generally reported MS PC/Laptop market decline -- with all of this in the new unit sales side of things and remember, HP is a MAJOR player in that area so what they are bitching about to their stock holders is likely very real.  

Newly sold Chromebooks however, are still doing very well with double digit growth reported again (in the Business to Business segment that are being reported impartially anyway).   The overall OS market share number is a different "unknown" animal, however, and needs to be reported with base figures that are not contracted for and paid for by MS.    MS has consistently refused to acknowledge that Chrome OS even exists, for over 3 years now no less.

Can you say perhaps the TIPPING POINT has been reached ????

Mebbe they just want their stuff to actually work again .......

I think everybody has some reservations about MS and what they have been doing lately.

I think the next big revelation is later on this upcoming year when Office 365 begins to include the Windows OS itself, and if you aren't paying for the 365 style support you don't get that support on the OS either.    And if you buy it in a new machine (with all the Walled Garden Lock Downs fully functional) then you got no choice but to go blood bowl all the way when that first year ends on you ....






Also landing at about this same time frame will be the Android PC/Phone thing as an integral part of standard 8.0 Android release, along with the new Andromeda OS beta trial thing (new fusion of Android and Chrome OS).    Or, perhaps they will actually be the same thing by then ????  

Who knows, Google ain't saying.


======================================


Sneaky Apple, Sneaky TSMC, Sneaky Global


I told you that 10nm was in production for Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek right now, right?    Global, Samsung and TSMC are a doin' it, for themselves and for Apple and Qualcomm.

I just got brain bushwacked a bit by a new just released bit of data that Apple has TSMC in production on one line using multi-pass 7nm tech right now for one of Apple's premium high end products for next year.

This ability signals that quite a few mgfs may well then intentionally chose to jump from 14/16nm all the way down to 7nm within the next calendar year, leaving Intel totally behind the entire pack tech-wise going forward.  

They will all likely want to skip the 5 volt 10nm half step as each finer lithography layout costs 10's of millions of dollars to develop, and if ARM has the 2.2 volt 7nm octacore map all laid out already many vendors will simply choose to pay the licensing fee and just use it during the transitional phase in year (and avoid all the known phase in risks).

What will drive this choice is that 7nm items run at 2.2 volts naturally.  This is an industry sweeper as once you convert all your various bits and pieces to the new lower voltage and get some economy of scale going, then you cannot easily go back to 5 volts.   Those stuck at 5 volts will get screwed due to rising component costs.   Doing a limited production at 5 volts will simply cost too much money.

Economy of scale cost savings are based on MAKING THEM ALL THE SAME WAY as cheaply as possible .....

And a number of medical bills as these things tend to go off in pockets... bra's... where ever.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-iphone-seen-losing-marke...

Let's talk about Apple a bit.

Apple used to be the 800 pound gorilla in all of cell phone technology, but this is no longer the case.

Google has grown past Apple in all desktop / laptop numbers, with Chromebooks actually approaching the second or third lap around point as Apple desktop/laptop shrinks down to inconsequence.

Apple phone in total is now 6x smaller than Android phone,  with the newest (non-Galaxy 7) Samsung phones out featuring and out selling iPhone by at least double on the new-new side of things.    Ditto for the Google Pixels, which are doing very well as a new product line introduction.

Yes, Google Pixel brand is out in the wild now, and it CLEARLY out features the Apple iPhone at the same price levels, with Google preserving lots of head room for lowering their initial pricing as the phones age out and the new Pixel phones come out.  

Google sells on line only, it does not have to support brick and mortar stores as does Apple.  Google Fi cellular service now supports family plans and it has much better pricing than the players supporting the iPhones by about a factor of two.

http://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-iphone-seen-losing-marke...


"Apple (AAPL) iPhone unit shipments are forecast to grow at less than half the rate of smartphones using Alphabet (GOOGL)-owned Google's open-source Android operating system over the next five years, research firm IDC said Wednesday.

IDC predicts that iPhone unit shipments will grow at a compound annual rate of 2.9% from 2015 through 2020. That compares with a 6% compound annual growth rate for Android smartphones during the same period.

IDC forecast iPhone shipments to fall 2% this year to 226.8 million units. Android smartphones from vendors led by Samsung are seen growing 6.2% this year over 2015 to 1.24 billion units.

Apple's iPhone is expected to claim 15.3% market share by smartphone unit shipments this year, while Android should take 83.7% market share, IDC said."



Mickyphones are still at LESS THAN 0.4% total market share, and nobody even mentions them any more except as footnotes to more layoffs.