It is a fairly logical development, the company has operated a reality distortion field to create an alternative universe where its products are new and revolutionary and light years ahead of everyone else’s. It will be curious to see how Apple integrates its reality with the real world, given that it is having a problem with that.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been doing his best to convince the world that Apple really is working on something. He needs to do this as the iPhone cash cow starts to dry up and Jobs Mob appears to have no products to replace it.

In an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday, Cook said Apple is “doing a lot of things” with augmented reality (AR), the technology that puts digital images on top of the real world.
He said:

“I think AR is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain we talked about.”

However Apple is light years behind working being done by Microsoft with its Microsoft’s HoloLens headset and the startup Magic Leap’s so-called cinematic reality that’s being developed now.

Cook appears to retreat to AR whenever he is under pressure. But so far he has never actually said that the company is developing any.

Appple has also snapped up several companies and experts in the AR space. And in January, the Financial Times claimed that the company has a division of hundreds of people researching the technology.
But AR would be a hard fit to get a product out which fits Apple’s ethos and certainly not one for years. Meanwhile it is unlikely we will see anything new before Microsoft and Google get their products out.

Courtesy-Fud

Founded in 2014, California-based Nervana offers a hosted platform for deep learning that’s optimized “from algorithms down to silicon” to solve machine-learning problems, the startup says.

Businesses can use its Nervana cloud service to build and deploy applications that make use of deep learning, a branch of AI used for tasks like image recognition and uncovering patterns in large amounts of data.

Also of interest to Intel, Nervana is developing a specialty processor, known as an ASIC, that’s custom built for deep learning.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but one estimate put the value above $350 million.

“We will apply Nervana’s software expertise to further optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library and its integration into industry standard frameworks,” Diane Bryant, head of Intel’s Data Center Group, said in a blog post. Nervana’s expertise “will advance Intel’s AI portfolio and enhance the deep-learning performance and TCO of our Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon Phi processors.”

Though Intel also acquired AI firm Saffron late last year, the Nervana acquisition “clearly defines the start of Intel’s AI portfolio,” said Paul Teich, principal analyst with Tirias Research.

“Intel has been chasing high-performance computing very effectively, but their hardware-design teams missed the convolutional neural network transition a few years ago,” Teich said. CNNs are what’s fueling the current surge in artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning.

As part of Intel, Nervana will continue to operate out of its San Diego headquarters, cofounder and CEO Naveen Rao said in a blog post.

The startup’s 48-person team will join Intel’s Data Center Group after the deal’s close, which is expected “very soon,” Intel said.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/intel-to-acquire-deep-learning-company-nervana.html

The Redmond, Wash. company regularly talks up the latest subscription numbers for the consumer-grade Office 365 plans — the $100 a year Home and the $70 Personal — and did so again this week during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

“We also see momentum amongst consumers, with now more than 23 million Office 365 subscribers,” CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday.

But analysis of Microsoft’s consumer Office 365 numbers showed that the rate of growth — or as Nadella put it, “momentum” — has slowed.

For the June quarter, the 23.1 million cited by Microsoft in its filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) represented a 52% increase over the same period the year prior. Although most companies would give their eye teeth — or maybe a few executives — to boast of a rate of increase that size, it was the smallest since Microsoft began providing subscription data in early 2013.

A year before, the June 2015 quarter sported a consumer Office 365 subscription growth rate of 171% over the same three-month span in 2014.

The subscription increase also was small in absolute terms: Microsoft added approximately 900,000 to the rolls during the June quarter, down from 2.8 million the year before and also less than the 1.6 million accumulated in 2016′s March quarter.

The 900,000 additional subscribers added in the June quarter were the smallest number in more than two years.

While Microsoft did not directly address the slowing of growth in the consumer Office 365 market, it did attribute a similar trend among corporate subscriptions to the difficulty of maintaining huge year-over-year percentage gains as the raw numbers of subscriptions increased.

Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsofts-office-365-subscription-slows-signficantly.html

But he didn’t say very much about Windows at all.

And, according to Seeking Alpha financial analyst Mark Hibben in a note to his clients, it’s almost as if Nadella has given up the ghost on the now long in the tooth operating system.

He didn’t say much about smartphones either but admitted that Windows 10 won’t hit the one billion user mark.

But there are another billion and a bit people out there who are using previous versions of Windows and Hibben thinks that that’s Microsoft should really take advantage of that opportunity.

Hibben thinks that while Nadella is practically creaming himself about the cloud the same sort of urges don’t seem to apply to Windows.

Windows phone revenues have fallen 71 percent compared to the same period last year and Microsoft seems to lack a strategy for smartphones in the future.

So has Microsoft given up on Windows? That, surely, can’t be the case.

Courtesy-Fud

Once a die-hard cloud holdout, Oracle has been making up for lost time by buying a foothold in specific industries through acquisitions such as this one. Last week’s Textura buy gave it a leg up in engineering and construction.

“It’s a good move on Oracle’s part, and it definitely strengthens Oracle’s cloud story,” said Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics.

Opower’s big-data platform helps utilities improve customer service, reduce costs and meet regulatory requirements. It currently stores and analyzes more than 600 billion meter readings from 60 million end customers. Opower claims more than 100 global utilities among its clients, including PG&E, Exelon and National Grid.

Opower will continue to operate independently until the transaction closes, which is expected later this year. The union will create the largest provider of mission-critical cloud services to an industry that’s worth $2.3 trillion, Oracle said.

Oracle’s Utilities business delivers applications and cloud services that automate core operational processes and enable compliance for global electric, gas and water utilities.

“Oracle’s industry organizations maintain unique domain knowledge, specialized expertise and focused product investments,” said Rodger Smith, a senior vice president who leads the Utilities global business unit, in a letter to customers and partners. “This model has proven highly successful across several industries, and we look forward to bringing these same benefits to the customers of Opower.”

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/oracle-pushes-deeper-into-cloud-computing-with-another-acquisition.html

IDC siad that for the first quarter of 2016, overall worldwide tablet shipments fell to 39.6 million, a 14.7 percent drop from the same period a year ago,  However the only part of the segment which did ok were tablets with keyboards – or as we used to call them, netbooks.

IDC said that the decline of ordinary tablets was partly due to traditional first-quarter slumps but also a complete lack of interest on the part of customers.

Traditional tablets accounted for 87.6 percent of all tablet shipments. But tablets that come with detachable keyboards increased of more than 4.9 million units last quarter. That was a gain of 120 percent from the same period last year and an all-time high for tablets with detachable keyboards.

Tablets are dying because more people are buying big-screened phones as an alternative. You remember Fablets? They were what Steve Jobs claimed would never work because they prefered smaller smartphones or bigger tablets. In fact he was talking rubbish and was trying to keep his keyboardless netbook idea going.

IDC said that the newer tablets don’t offer enough new features to entice people to upgrade. After all tablets were always looking for an app which made them useful, which never arrived.

To counteract the downturn, more manufacturers are turning to tablets with detachable keyboards that can thus serve as laptops – on otherwords returning to the netbooks that the Tablets were said to replace.

“With the PC industry in decline, the detachable market stands to benefit as consumers and enterprises seek to replace their aging PCs with detachables,” IDC senior research analyst Jitesh Ubrani said in a statement.

Apple saw its shipments and market share drop but remained in first place. Apple’s latest 9.7-inch iPad Pro and the new 256GB storage option for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro are “healthy additions” to the lineup, IDC said. Samsung also saw its shipments and market share decline. Though the Samsung Galaxy Tab lineup is still popular, its detachable TabPro S is dead in the water thanks to its $900 price tag.

Amazon has found success with its starting-at-$49 Fire, showing that consumers will still buy bargain-priced tablets. Missing from the list was Microsoft in spite of the popularity of its Surface Pro products, which start at $900.

IDC said:

“The Surface line is great. But it’s tough to drive volume in the first quarter. Prices of Surface products are fairly high, but Microsoft is in the top five list for tablets with detachable keyboards. The top five for tablets as a whole is a tougher nut to crack given the large slate volumes compared to detachables.”

Courtesy-Fud

T-Mobile has been offering cheaper leasing plans and free music and video streaming to lure customers away from larger rivals Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.

T-Mobile, controlled by Deutsche Telekom, said it added 2.2 million customers on a net basis in the first quarter ended March 31.

That easily topped the average analyst estimate of 1.72 million, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

The company said it expected to add 3.2 million to 3.6 million postpaid customers on a net basis in 2016, compared with its previous forecast of 2.4 million to 3.4 million.

T-Mobile’s 10.6 percent jump in quarterly revenue to $8.6 billion suggested its strategy to boost revenue was working. Analysts on average had expected revenue of $8.43 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

In comparison, market leader Verizon’s operating revenue rose just 0.6 percent to $32.17 billion.

AT&T is scheduled to report results later on Tuesday.

T-Mobile reported net income of $479 million, or 56 cents per share, for the first quarter, compared with a loss of $63 million, or 9 cents per share, a year earlier.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/t-mobile-revenue-up-continues-attracting-new-customers.html

The Health Information Trust Alliance conducted a study of some 30 mid-sized U.S. hospitals late last year and found that 52 percent of them were infected with malicious software, HITRUST Chief Executive Daniel Nutkis told Reuters.

The most common type of malware was ransomware, Nutkis said, which was present in 35 percent of the hospitals included in the study of network traffic conducted by security software maker Trend Micro Inc.

Ransomware is malicious software that locks up data in computers and leaves messages demanding payment to recover the data. Last month, Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in Los Angeles paid a ransom of $17,000 to regain access to its systems.

This week, an attack on MedStar Health forced the largest healthcare provider in Washington, D.C., to shut down much of its computer network. The Baltimore Sun reported a ransom of $18,500 was sought. MedStar declined to comment.

HITRUST said it expects such attacks to become more frequent because ransomware has turned into a profitable business for cyber criminals.

The results of the study, which HITRUST has yet to share with the public, demonstrate that hackers have moved away from focusing on stealing patient data, Nutkis said.

“If stuff isn’t working, they move on. If stuff is working, they keep doing it,” said Nutkis. “Organizations that are paying have considered their options, and unfortunately they don’t have a lot of options.”

Extortion has become more popular with cyber criminals because it is seen as a way to generate fast money, said Larry Whiteside, a healthcare expert with cyber security firm Optiv.

Stealing healthcare data is far more labor intensive, requiring attackers to keep their presence in a victim’s network undetected for months as they steal data, then they need to find buyers, he added.

“With ransomware I’m going to get paid immediately,” Whiteside said.

Courtesy- http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/hospitals-should-brace-for-surge-in-ransomware-attacks.html

The bulk of the visits to DAP websites originate in the U.S.

So far Windows 10 has recorded 20.2% of visits in March by Windows PCs, smartphones and tablets. That was a one-percentage point increase from February and more than two percentage points above January’s.

Although Microsoft irregularly trumpets the number of devices running Windows 10 — the last time was nearly three months ago — data from DAP and metrics vendors like Net Applications and StatCounter are the only publicly available sources for monitoring Windows 10 adoption.

But these external measurements are rough at best.

A case in point: Because overall traffic to DAP websites plummets on weekends — total visits by Windows devices on Saturday and Sunday are typically less than half that of a weekday — Windows 10 may be unrepresented, as more Windows PCs used during the work week are business machines, which predominantly run the corporate standard, Windows 7.

Microsoft has just over four months left to boost Windows 10 adoption by pushing the free upgrade to eligible Windows 7 and 8.1 devices. That deal is set to expire July 29, on the one-year anniversary of Windows 10′s launch.

Windows 10 adoption growth has slowed each month this year. At the pace of past three months, Windows 10 should account for approximately 26% of DAP’s traffic by the end of July. (Other data sources have repeatedly portrayed global adoption of Windows 10 at lower rates than in the U.S.)

Will that match whatever goal Microsoft set when it decided to give away upgrades? Microsoft’s not saying, and even if it did, there would be no way to verify any claim.

Source- http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/windows-10-passes-20-user-share-mark.html