Project 2501 by Andy Patrizio (bio )

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October 26, 2009, 5:32 PM

Apple's secrets keep leaking out

Apple's obsession with secrecy is well-established, and there is quite a cottage industry of bloggers and Apple Web sites dedicated to exposing their secrets. One of the more impressive efforts came during the iPhone 3GS launch, where one site was tracking a shipping vessel from China believed to be carrying the phones. The site even had the manifest.

But other times, all you need is a little carelessness. Case in point: the folks who gave away Apple's upcoming tablet and new MacBooks. In the case of the MacBooks, it was Apple that did it.

The bigger news is the iPad, iTablet, or whatever you want to call it. The rumor mill has Apple releasing this thing early next year. Word is it's basically a large version of the iPod Touch, but with things like windows and allowing multiple apps to run at once. There might even be two of them with different size screens.

Well, New York Times Executive Editor for news Bill Keller committed what we in the profession call "an oops." While speaking at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University last week, the Times newsroom boss was discussing all of the issues of print vs. electronic, pay vs. free, and then said this (at the 8:30 mark).

"I'm hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate..."

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October 24, 2009, 4:05 AM

The 451 Group acquires The Uptime Institute
This is one of the more unusual mergers on the surface but it does make sense. The 451 Group, a market research and analysis organization, has acquired The Uptime Institute, a consultancy and think tank that is focused specifically on datacenter efficiency and reliability. Both firms are privately-held, and terms were not disclosed.

Usually analyst firms go for broad-based or general purpose firms, but 451 seems to have datacenters on the mind. It also bought Tier 1 Research in 2005, which also focuses on the datacenter.

Uptime founder Kenneth Brill is one of the more well-known experts on datacenter issues and is frequently quoted in the tech press (including us). In his new role, he will be a global spokesman for the organization.

"We are delighted to welcome Ken, Pitt and the 25 other staff of Uptime to join the 85-plus professional staff here at The 451 Group," said Martin V. McCarthy, CEO of The
451 Group in a statement. "The Uptime Institute has a global reputation for integrity, independence and innovation in the areas of datacenter availability - uptime - and IT energy efficiency.

"Particularly now, when the promise of cloud computing can obscure the criticality and vulnerability of physical infrastructure, The Uptime Institute plays a unique role for all organizations for which full-time availability of mission-critical facilities is paramount. The Institute's database of over 4,000 facility 'gotchas' and its comparative benchmarking help users make sound management decisions involving risk and millions in cost," McCarthy continued.

Uptime recently added a professional services business to advise datacenter managers, and 451 seems particularly keen on it. "Uptime Institute Professional Services eagerly anticipates reaching all industries and regions with services defined by technical rigor and long-term operations focus," said Uptime Executive Director Pitt Turner in a statement.

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October 20, 2009, 6:03 PM

The clueless intrude on the Oracle-Sun deal
What should have been a slam-dunk deal, Oracle's $7.4 billion purchase of Sun, has turned into a tragi-comedy of epic proportions. If there weren't so many people being negatively affected, this would be downright funny.

Today, that noted economist Ralph Nader come out against the deal and urged the EC to reject it. Nader's Knowledge Ecology International group is joined by the U.K.-based Open Rights Group and the eminent capitalist Richard Stallman in opposing the deal.

TheStreet.com reports Nader sent a letter to European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, warning that Oracle is bad, bad, bad.

"Oracle seeks to acquire MySQL to prevent further erosion of its share of the market for database software licenses and services, and to protect the high prices now charged for its proprietary database software licenses and services," he wrote. "If Oracle is allowed to acquire MySQL, it will predictably limit the development and functionality of the MySQL platform."

Nader should stick to Pintos because he does not know what he's talking about. If any company would want to buy MySQL to kill it, it's Microsoft. Secondly, Oracle couldn't stop MySQL if it wanted to, since it's open source. Both Larry Ellison and MySQL founder Marten Mikos have pointed out that Oracle couldn't kill MySQL if it wanted to, and Ellison has made it clear he has no intention of doing that.

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October 18, 2009, 2:12 AM

All quiet on the Windows front

A week before the release of Windows 7, an awful lot of fingernails are being chewed up. There's a lot riding on it for just about everyone in the chain from Microsoft to retail.

For Microsoft, it's a chance to restore its name. CEO Steve Ballmer has said that Microsoft's reputation was damaged by Vista and never recovered. Perhaps Windows 7 can erase some of that.

For OEMs, it's a chance to reverse the horrendous slide in business. They've kept the raw numbers up selling cheap netbooks, but decked out PCs are not moving in the numbers they used to. Businesses are not buying at all, as Dell is finding out painfully.

Now there's a real fear that OEMs have overbuilt PC inventory in anticipation of the Windows 7 launch. They certainly have made plenty. I get press releases almost daily announcing more system launches. A version of Windows that doesn't make you scream is as good an excuse as any for consumers to buy a new machine.

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October 16, 2009, 7:50 PM

Acer recalls CULV notebooks
This is not a good way to launch a whole new design of notebooks.

Acer has been forced to issue a recall of the company's consumer ultra low-voltage (CULV) laptops because they may overheat in certain conditions. The problem, though, is not in the Intel CULV processor but the super-thin design.

The affected units are Acer Aspire Timeline AS3410, AS3810T, AS3810TG, AS3810TZ and AS3810TZG, all manufactured prior to September 15, 2009. The problem is associated with a microphone cable, which may overheat when extreme pressure is applied repeatedly to the left palm rest.

"Acer has voluntarily instituted a safety recall program to proactively replace the microphone cable in the affected units to eliminate any risk of overheating," said an official statement by the company. The company also provided instructions on how to check if you own an affected model.

CULV is a whole new style of notebooks attempting to find a niche between regular notebooks and netbooks. They are notable for being extremely thin, very light and having a long battery life. As such, they sacrifice some performance to achieve this battery life.

Both Intel and especially AMD have made big pushes into this space but product has been slow to emerge on the market. More will hit the market with the release of Windows 7 next week.

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October 16, 2009, 6:43 PM

Moore's law will outlive most fab companies
The continued race to the bottom, or in this case to the smallest possible die size, is going to weed out all but just a few foundry players in the next few years. Gartner projects that by the time semiconductor process technology reaches 8 nanometers, there will only be four to eight left.

The discussion was part of Gartner's semiconductor briefing session in San Jose, where the firm also discussed how the market will grow and change in the next few years. While the market for chips will continue to increase, the number of players will shrink as things become prohibitively expensive.

Moore's law is defined as doubling the amount of transistors in the same area of silicon every two years. In 2004, the 40 anniversary of Moore's law, Intel had 592 million transistors on one device. Its largest chips now, the quad core Itanium and Nehalem-EX, will have 2.3 billion transistors, and nVidia's new Fermi chip has three billion transistors.

If Moore's Law is projected out to 8nm, there will be 75 billion transistors on a chip at the 8nm technology node. Plus, the process technology will change radically. The days of silicon dioxide or even gallium dioxide materials are likely over

At sub-12nm, silicon may no longer be usable. As the industry gets down to 8nm and 5nm, things like carbon or grapheme nanotubes are needed. Below 5nm, molecular transistors may emerge enabling self assembly. Fabrication plant assembly costs at 8nm will double the cost of 45nm to around $10 billion.

Now who can afford that?

A few very profitable companies with high volumes, said Dean Freeman, a research vice president with Gartner. That means Intel, Samsung, IBM's alliance (including Globalfoundries), TSMC, Toshiba, Hynix, Elipda and Micron.

But then there are the companies that make the equipment they use to make the chips. If a supply chain firm drops out, the whole group of semiconductor makers built on their products could fall with them.

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October 7, 2009, 3:30 PM

Nehalem is proving Intel's own 'cash machine'

This was a switch. Usually when a vendor offers customer case studies, it's the customer with the big story to tell. So I was quite willing to hear IT managers discuss how Intel's Nehalem had saved them money. Remember when Intel launched Nehalem and Pat Gelsinger called it a "cash machine?" Well, as it turned out, Intel had the best story to tell.

Intel said that more than 40 percent of the servers currently deployed and chugging away in datacenters around the country are powered by single-core chips that are four or more years old. That's a lot of old, inefficient 32-bit servers that run at single-digit utilization rates.

Intel had a similar situation of its own. It had 147 datacenters, many of them running single-core processors. In the last few years, even before the economy went into the drink, CEO Paul Otellini and Andy Bryant, who is pretty much a de facto chief operating officer although his title is chief administrative officer*, have been on an efficiency hunt trying to cut costs wherever possible. So those servers had to go.

Diane Bryant, the company's CIO, said that in the past year, Intel has been able to cut its datacenters from 147 to 70, consolidate single-core servers to Nehalem-based by a factor of 10 to one, and in the end, save Intel $250 million over the course of eight years. Just this year alone, thanks to reduced power and cooling and maintenance costs, Intel will save $19 million.

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October 5, 2009, 2:46 PM

Windows 7 already stealing market share from Vista

We knew Windows Vista was unpopular, but this is downright funny. A survey by Net Applications found that Vista is already beginning to shrink in terms of market share and those loses are to the gain of Windows 7.

Net Applications is a site monitoring and analytics provider. It gathers data from 40,000 Web sites around the world using an analytics package called Hitslink. Among the many things it gathers are the browser and operating system of each visitor.

Now how can that be when Windows 7 won't be on the market for 17 days, you ask. Simple. The Net Applications survey counts both the Windows RC1 that has been out since May as well as the final Windows 7 code, which has been on MSDN for developers to download since August.

The most recent survey from Net Applications puts Windows 7 at a total installed base of 1.18 percent, mostly because of the RC being so widespread. The company estimates Windows 7 grew by 0.3 percent in August, when the final code became available, and Vista lost 0.2 percent.

Big surprise.

It's a pretty pitiful showing for Vista, which never managed to go beyond 19 percent market share in its maligned three-year history. Windows XP, as creaky, old and downright ugly as it is, still holds 71.5 percent of all operating systems that connected to servers monitored by Net Applications last month.

Figure on both numbers going down fast. There is palpable excitement on message boards over this release, something I've never seen before. People are actually psyched to get Windows 7 and put Vista and XP out to pasture once and for all. For once, the widespread betas worked in Microsoft's favor.

Some stores are already getting their Windows 7 product, which means you can probably figure on someone somewhere blowing the release date and selling early. In some cases, that may be legitimate, as Microsoft is letting system builders pull the trigger early.

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September 21, 2009, 6:01 PM

MSI netbook claims 15 hours of battery life
Maximum battery life is an obsession for laptop makers and buyers alike. Well, MSI, a Chinese OEM/ODM that makes both laptops as well as components like notebooks, has introduced the Wind U110 ECO netbook with a nine-cell battery that MSI claims is good more than 15 hours of battery life.

Of course, you won't be playing Crysis on it. Bejeweled, maybe. It comes with an Atom Z530 CPU running at 1.6GHz, 1GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 integrated graphics and a 10-inch LCD screen with a resolution of just 1024x600. Some netbooks have added GPUs to make up for the lack of CPU performance, but that draws power.

The Wind U110 weighs just 3.2 pounds and is just 1.24 inches thick. It has a 160GB HDD a built-in high definition Webcam, speakers, a built-in microphone and 802.11 b/g/n wireless support, plus Bluetooth.

MSRP is $430, you can get it from Newegg for $399.

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September 15, 2009, 3:44 PM

Another week, another Apple Tablet rumor
Actually, it's been a while since we had a good Apple "iPad" rumor, so it's about time one showed up. This one is pretty good, too. It comes from the Taiwan Economic News, which cites local parts suppliers.

The report states Apple will launch its tablet PCs next February, with deliveries to Apple in December. The tablet, still unnamed but popular guessing has been "iPad" and "iTablet," will feature a 9.6-inch screen, finger-touch function and built-in HSPDA (High Speed Download Packet Access) module.

Most interesting of all: the tablet will use a chip designed by PA Semi, the chip design firm Apple bought last year. It has been rumored that Apple split PA into two groups, one working on existing chip designs and one working on new, future products.

The iPod/iPhone line runs on ARM processors, so it's about time Apple put its $278 million investment to work. The rumored price for the iPad: $799 and $999.

DynaPack International Technology has been selected to provide long-lasting battery packs for this new tablet, while Wanshih Electronic Co. will provide mini coaxial cables for the tablet PCs. Mag. Layers Scientific-Technics Co. and Wintek will supply power chokes and touch panels, respectively. All of these companies are already significant suppliers of Apple and apparently their loose lips haven't earned the Wrath of Steve just yet.

The HSPDA module is a sign that Apple is sticking with AT&T, despite numerous complaints about AT&T's poor service and 3G network quality. There had been speculation that Apple might make this device for Verizon, a larger player in the U.S. that uses a CMDA network. However, HSPA has a wider global reach, and Apple is obviously looking at this globally, not just the U.S.

I've long marveled at Apple's ability to defy everything, from business wisdom to the economy, but I really want to see if they can pull of the hat trick of selling a $1,000 oversized iPod Touch. If they do, President Obama should just give General Motors to Steve Jobs.

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September 11, 2009, 2:20 PM

Dell's super-thin, super-secret new Adamo
Timing is everything. I say that as an investor with a track record of buying high and selling low, and now it looks like Dell learning the same thing. The latest in its Adamo family of ultra-thin notebooks is really, really thin. As in 9.99mm thick. That's 0.40 inches for us in the States.

Dell thought it would be cute to announce the new super-skinny laptop on September 9. Get it? A 9.99mm thick Adamo XPS notebook on 9/9/09. Sure, it's corny but it might have worked if something else super-skinny hadn't sucked all the oxygen out of the room, for that was the day Steve Jobs returned to the stage he enjoys so much to introduce new iPods.

While waiting outside the Yerba Buena Arts Center before the show, I was in the area where they had all the reporters corralled, and you could hear idle chatter among them about a new, super-thin new Adamo, and it would be dismissed almost as quickly as it was brought up.

To quote Richard B. Riddick in the film Pitch Black: "Extremely. Bad. Timing."

Dell didn't divulge any details on the Adamo, just a side profile showing its thin profile. At 9.99mm, it's thinner than the 17.4mm MacBook Air and even the iPhone, although the Air tapers from the thickest point to the thinnest area, by the keyboard. The Adamo is the same thickness all the way through.

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September 3, 2009, 3:56 PM

Tom Seibel has a nasty encounter with wildlife
Thomas Seibel, the founder of Seibel Systems, is recovering from broken ribs and legs after an elephant charged at him and a tour guide during a tour of the Serengeti plain in Africa last month.

The billionaire, who cashed out when Oracle purchased his company in 2005, told the San Jose Mercury News that the animal plowed into the guide and then attacked him, breaking several ribs, goring him in the left leg and crushing the right leg.

He says he and the guide were watching a group of elephants from about 200 yards away when one animal charged at them without warning. The guide shot at the elephant but missed (ok, that's officially the worst guide in Africa. How do you shoot a charging elephant once in 200 yards, miss, and not shoot again?).

Siebel said they were able to radio for help only after the animal lost interest and wandered away, but it was three hours before he received any medical treatment. The attack occurred during a safari in Tanzania on August 1. He was airlifted to Naorobi and spent 18 days in four separate hospitals before returning home.

Since cashing out following the acquisition, Seibel has stayed relatively low profile, dividing his time between the Valley and his Montana ranch. Seibel is currently getting around in a wheelchair but said he expects to make a full recovery after reconstructive surgery and physical therapy.

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August 31, 2009, 1:46 PM

EMC co-founder Egan passes away
EMC co-founder Richard Egan passed away on Friday amid reports he was suffering from a myriad of health problems. Egan, 73, had been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year and also reportedly dealing with emphysema, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Egan, the "E" in EMC Corp., co-founded EMC with Roger Marino in 30 years ago this week, who was the "M." He stepped down as chairman of the company in 2001 after accepting the position of ambassador to Ireland. He resigned from that job in 2002. Egan was politically active in the Boston area, mostly supporting Republican candidates, including former president George W. Bush.

Reports in the Boston Globe and other New England news outlets said that Egan committed suicide in his Boston area home.

Egan served in the Marine Corps as a helicopter pilot before obtaining a bachelors of science degree in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in 1961. He worked at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Lockheed Electronics, Cambridge Memories and Intel before founding EMC with Marino in 1979.

Joseph M. Tucci, EMC's Chairman, President and CEO, said in a statement, "The world has lost a great man and a great leader. On behalf of more than 40,000 EMC employees from around the world, we extend our deepest condolences to Mrs. Egan and the entire family."

Michael C. Ruettgers, retired EMC chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement, "I personally learned a great deal from working with him and always enjoyed our working relationship. He will be deeply missed by those of us who were fortunate enough to know him and call him a friend."

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July 30, 2009, 2:15 PM

Smile for the cell phone camera you created, Steve
The Silicon Valley is a long way from the flashbulbs and high speed chases of the west side of Los Angeles, where paparazzi chase after celebs at more than 100 mph on city streets. I used to live in that madness. You saw some real sights driving up Robertson Blvd., a.k.a. Paparazzi Row, where celebs went to be photographed. It was all so deliberate despite protestations to the contrary.

They may act like they didn't want their picture taken, but trust me, if it was taken, they wanted it to happen. This is a town where people call the paps to say where they will be ahead of time. All the chic restaurants on Robertson have two entrances: attention whore and non-attention whore.

Up here, we don't have that nonsense. Most Valley CEOs are kinda boring, although Yahoo boss Carol "F-bomb" Bartz has been providing considerable entertainment lately. Despite those goofy Intel commercials about their "rock stars," we don't really have any.

Well, except for one. And unlike the celebrity who protests having their picture taken while walking out the front door of The Ivy where the paps are waiting, Apple boss Steve Jobs really does hate intrusions into his life and probably isn't a happy camper over this. (click for a larger version)

Yes, TMZ strikes again. The site that was all over the death of Michael Jackson, leaving other press flat footed, caught the first photo of the Valley's last rock star since his liver transplant surgery and subsequent return to work. The irony of it is that the picture was taken with an iPhone camera, which would explain the lousy quality.

Just prior to the release of the 3GS, which has a new camera, a developer told me that the 3G camera phone quality would improve as well because of improved software. I have noticed no difference, and this picture seems to validate that. Granted, the photo was taken through the windshield of a car, which distorts the view. Still, while the iPhone is a great phone, the camera quality is seriously lacking.

Given it was taken in the Apple campus parking lot, with an iPhone and through the windshield tells me it wasn't a pap job. They would never be so sloppy. It was likely someone visiting Apple who sold the picture to TMZ (the name means "thirty mile zone," a portion of LA where all the celebs are clustered). Whoever it was, you better not let your identity leak out.

It's not lost on anyone that Jobs is now about as skinny as an iPod Touch turned sideways. Some have noted on various boards that following an organ transplant, patients are often shot up with steroids, and they gain weight, they don't lose even more. Now we know why he wasn't at WWDC. The audience would have had a collective heart attack if they saw him like this. The fact he's even skinnier tells me one thing: the last year has to have been absolute hell for him.

On the other hand, that's not a bodyguard or a personal trainer walking with Jobs, that's Apple design chief Jonathan Ive, who looks like the picture of health. Good thing. While Jobs gets the worship and fretting over his health, Ive's departure would be far more detrimental for Apple than Jobs's would be.

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