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New iPad’s A5X Processor Holds Few Surprises Despite Enormous Size
FreedomPop’s New iPhone Case Promises Users Free Wireless Data
HTC, Where Innovation Is Bought (And That’s A Good Thing)
Houston, We Have Liftoff: Human BirdWings Guy Finally Enjoys The Miracle Of Human Flight
An Interview With Rob Schmitz, The Reporter Who Fact-Checked Mike Daisey [TCTV]
Sonos Updates PC/Mac Controller Apps With Drag-And-Drop, One Touch Party Mode

New iPad’s A5X Processor Holds Few Surprises Despite Enormous Size

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 02:49 PM PDT

Initial teardowns of the new iPad whetted many a chip nerd’s appetite when they revealed that the A5X chip inside was truly gigantic. At nearly 13x13mm, it is significantly larger than the A5, which was itself already kind of a hefty bugger.

Now some clear images (from Chipworks) have been taken of the die itself (some rather rough ones with initial “floorplans” showed up earlier over the weekend) and it’s becoming more and more clear that the A5X is a stopgap measure: a last-generation product that’s overcompensating, if you will, with a jumbo-sized GPU.

The A5X is manufactured with a Samsung 45nm process, a size Intel and AMD were using back in 2008. Nowadays all the cool kids are using 22nm. That means modern chips can fit around four times as many transistors and cells onto a piece of silicon than the technology used to create the A5X. It’s kind of ironic, since Apple has focused so much on getting four times the pixels into its displays.

Of course, it isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison; the ARM architecture and SoC model are a different animal than the x86 model. But it’s not going too far to say that the A5X is the processor equivalent of something like a souped-up street car from a few years back. Sure, it gets the job done, but you can’t keep adding turbos and wings forever. At some point that engine hits its limit. And while the GPU performance is good, the base technology of the A5X is starting to show its age, and the competition may use that to their advantage.

And even before the new iPad was released, the name A5X really tipped Apple’s entire hand. Our speculation was correct, and chances are the “true” successor to the A5 series will come in the new iPhone. Will it be based on ARM’s A15/A7 big.little model? Seems logical. Saving power is essential with the major GPU, screen, and LTE. It may be too late for Apple to adapt it, but anything could happen.

And it must be acknowledged that most consumers really, really don’t care what processor or chip is inside their iPad. But the drama going on behind the curtain is still interesting to those of us who do care, and as we have seen, sometimes these little technical stories shed light on long-term plans.

One last fun thing: if you go to the large photos over at Chipworks, you can actually see the varying densities of the logic cells on the dark areas. It shows up as a sort of mottled, almost sloppy look, but it is in fact highly precise engineering. All the wonders of our modern tech-based world have their base in these microscopic clusters of transistors, memory cells, and logic gates. It’s fascinating (to yours truly, at least) to see them forming this kind of micro-topography.

FreedomPop’s New iPhone Case Promises Users Free Wireless Data

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 11:09 AM PDT

Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom's new FreedomPop project was initially shrouded in secrecy, but they’ve recently become a bit more talkative about how the company plans to offer "free wireless broadband" to their customers.

FreedomPop VP of Marketing Tony Miller spilled the beans about the company's WiMax-based freemium wireless data service to Forbes, but left yet another question unanswered — what's the "innovative" new wireless device they've got in the works?

Well, according to a high-level source inside FreedomPop, it's an iPhone 4/4S case… with an integrated WiMax radio. Think of it as a mobile hotspot squeezed into a case — I’m told that it’ll run for up to 30 hours, and can share its Internet connection with up to eight devices (including the iPhone that it’s attached).

As I understand it, each FreedomPop iPhone case user will have free access to a 1GB data plan right off the bat. That's the only plan that FreedomPop will offer for the sleeve, though their overage fees seem strangely familiar: each MB over the limit will cost a penny, which means every gigabyte over the limit is $10. That’s not to say that FreedomPop users can ditch their carriers entirely — the case alone isn’t enough to let users place voice calls, and major carriers generally won’t let you buy a smartphone without a data plan to go with it.

There are still some costs involved though, specifically a deposit that each user has to shell out for a WiMax-friendly iPhone case of their own. My source tells me that the deposit will be under $100, and will be fully refundable to customers if they ever choose to discontinue their service so long as the sleeve is still in good condition.

Users will also be running on ClearWire’s 4G network, and while that isn’t as fast as AT&T or Verizon LTE, it’s often more than enough to give 3G networks a run for their money (depending on their location, anyway). Their reliance on ClearWire could prove to be a bit of a stumbling block since it doesn’t have the biggest footprint, but FreedomPop is currently in talks with other “major” wireless providers about the possibility of branching out.

FreedomPop isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts — they’re obviously in it for some cold, hard cash. Their plan is to make money off of a slew of value-added services they intend to roll out in coming months — it’s their hope that they’ll be able to convert 10-15% of their free users into paying customers, which will subsidize the service for everyone else. Whether or not that actually pans out is another question entirely, but we’ll have to wait and see how much momentum FreedomPop will be able to build first.

As far as how innovative this thing is, well, that’s debatable. It's a concept that we've seen pop up a few times in the past, perhaps most notably when Sprint started offering the ZTE Peel, an add-on for the iPod Touch that gave the device a persistent wireless Internet connection. But hey, free Internet thanks to some low-cost, low-risk hardware? Giddy up.

HTC, Where Innovation Is Bought (And That’s A Good Thing)

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT

HTC's is the Cinderella story of the mobile market — they've gone from low-key provider of Windows Mobile hardware to Android-powered smartphone titan within the span of just a few years.

Impressive as that is, HTC has done much more than just push out smartphones. In the past year alone, HTC has inked big deals with Beats Audio, Dropbox, and LogMeIn, with rumors of a potentially final MOG acquisition swirling around to boot. It's pretty clear what HTC is trying to do here: they're trying to buy an entire ecosystem for their devices, and frankly, good on them for it.

The Android end of the smartphone spectrum has always struck me as a bit more cut-throat than the rest. While Apple is content to churn out one new smartphone a year, and most Windows Phones feel very similar in use, players like HTC, Samsung, and Motorola have continually pushed out Android devices to meet every desire and fit every niche.

It's not always the best practice though, and some of these companies are starting to realize it. HTC announced late last year that they would focus their new smartphone efforts around a smaller number of "hero devices," and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha announced they would be paring down their smartphone portfolio shortly afterward.

But great hardware is only ever part of the equation. The experience that users have with those devices is what really has the potential to turn them into manufacturer devotees, and rather than sink gobs of time, money, and manpower into building out an ecosystem around their devices, HTC is wisely letting their checkbook do the talking with their high-profile partners.

TechCrunch has covered the Beats Audio and Dropbox deals in the past, but the recently announced LogMeIn partnership strikes me as particularly savvy. Going forward, HTC devices will have a "LogMeIn Rescue applet" installed (that is, if the device's carrier gives them their blessing) that will allow their HTC tech support to remotely access and diagnose a smartphone's particular woes. With this in place, HTC seeks to establish themselves not only as the creators of great hardware, but your supportive partner if things go unfortunately awry.

At first glance, the MOG deal seems puzzling — the Google Play Store has within it a perfectly usable music portal after all. But if MOG indeed becomes part of the company's Beats Audio division, then Beats Audio becomes more than a fancy badge and a special audio profile on a phone. It could become the music hub of choice for HTC users; why buy a track for $1.29 a song when you can access 14 million songs with one touch? And if HTC can whip up a smart pricing model (or give it away for free like all that extra Dropbox storage), well, that's one more reason to buy an HTC phone over all the others.

It may seem a bit lazy of HTC to ink deals with these companies rather than work up their own solutions, but let’s not forget that they’ve tried in the past. Anyone remember the HTC Watch service, which allowed users to stream movies directly to their handsets? It never seemed to pick up much traction on its own, but these new strategic deals together make for a compelling argument to buy HTC. I imagine that they'll want customers to come for the solid hardware, and stay for all of the benefits that HTC users are (or will be) privy to. That, more than anything else, is what will turn regular customers to dyed-in-the-wool fans and it never hurts to have a few more of those.

Houston, We Have Liftoff: Human BirdWings Guy Finally Enjoys The Miracle Of Human Flight

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 08:55 AM PDT

While I am indeed guilty of being pretty fly for a white guy, it’s never been able to help me achieve my life-long dream of actual flight. You know, in the air, like a bird. Or maybe like Superman or Captain Planet. Hence my excitement back in December when we caught wind of a mechanical engineer from the Netherlands who was pulling out all the stops to transform this dream into a reality. His name? Mr. Jarno Smeets. At the time, however, his so-called HumanBirdWings project was just in its infancy.

Smeets was busy trying to manage a successful pairing of the accelerometers of a WiiMote and an HTC Wildfire S, which would together allow him to control the outrunners on his giant, self-built wings. Gradually, the engineer honed his mechanical pinions to the point at which, in late January, he actually took flight. Well, when we say “flight,” we really mean that the motion consisted more of two or three extended hops. But, damn you, it was progress.

Today, Jarno took his wings out for a second/tenth try, and, in the process, may just have made semi-self-propelled aeronautical history. We’ll check on that, but as far as hacks go, this one is pretty high up there. Finding just the right concoction of wind velocity, speed of departure, and whispered Hail Marys, Jarno today flew over 100 meters on his self-built wings.

Move over Orville, Wilbur, and Leo da Vinci, there’s a new birdman in town. After 8 months of hard work, research, and testing, this mechanical engineer was able to defy gravity and participate in the miracle of self-propelled, human flight.

His inspiration? Why the majestic albatross, of course. If only Samuel Taylor were here to see this.

For more, check out Jarno’s blog, which provides a glimpse into his work.

But, without further ado, here’s Jarno in flight:

An Interview With Rob Schmitz, The Reporter Who Fact-Checked Mike Daisey [TCTV]

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 08:24 AM PDT

Rob Schmitz is a reporter and Marketplace Correspondent based in Shanghai, China. He has spent time in many factories – as well as a bit of time outside of the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, the same factory fabulist Mike Daisey interviewed workers he purported were 12 and 13 years old. Schmitz’s findings definitely didn’t jibe with Daisey’s and I decided to sit down for a few minutes to go over his experiences reporting on Chinese manufacturing practices and problems.

“I think the truth is pretty complicated,” he said. “Foxconn has a little over one million employees in China.” Schmitz spent time talking to employees with Daisey’s translator, Cathy, and found a whole range of problems, from low wages to, oddly enough, complaints about the food. He didn’t see much of what Daisey described, but there’s a reason: Foxconn is one of the tightest-run manufacturers in China and Taiwan. There are problems, he said, but many of these problems are being addressed and when issues arise, workers are actually beginning to strike.

The truth, as Schmitz said, is complicated, and Daisey’s fabrications sadly cloud the real and pressing safety issues found in many of China’s lesser suppliers. To go after Foxconn and Apple is an easy ploy to gain eyeballs and attention, but the real concerns happen away from the bright media glare.

Sonos Updates PC/Mac Controller Apps With Drag-And-Drop, One Touch Party Mode

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:09 AM PDT

Sonos has just announced an update to their Sonos Controller software, specifically for Mac and PC. The app, which runs on Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, and Android, now comes in 12 different languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, and Swedish. And that’s only the beginning.

The Mac and PC versions of the app have undergone a rather hefty makeover and now have new features. For example, Sonos software now allows for a Mini Controller on the desktop or laptop, allowing you to change songs or control the volume without leaving the app you’re working in.

The Mac/PC version of the app also offers a unified search box that will bring in results from music libraries, internet radio and various music services. Drag and drop functionality has also been added for more efficient playlist creation, along with One-Touch party mode, which lets you control the volume in all grouped rooms at once.

Of course, there’s a redesign somewhere in there too just to maintain uniformity, but I don’t see anything too staggering about the new UI to warrant a full-fledged discussion.

Android devices will also see a little update, in the form of access to the SonosNet wireless mesh network. This improves wireless connection between Sonos hardware and your Android device.

To learn more about Sonos software click here.

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