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The MacBook Defect That Apple Doesn’t Want You to Know About
WhatsApp Hits 700 Million Users, 30 Billion Daily Messages
HoloLens: Microsoft brings augmented reality to the masses

The MacBook Defect That Apple Doesn’t Want You to Know About

Posted: 22 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST

After filing a class action lawsuit against Apple, consumers allege that the company purposefully hid a a MacBook Pro defect from users to avoid fixing it.

Apple’s line of MacBook computers are incredibly expensive; for the price of one Apple MacBook you could buy three average Windows powered laptops. But it’s a price that millions of people the world over are willing to pay as Apple promises and assures the highest quality.

With the 2011 MacBook Pro Apple made one of these very promises, explaining that "The powerful 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models feature quad-core Core i7 processors up to 2.3 GHz and AMD Radeon HD graphics processors with up to 1GB of video memory for high performance gaming, pro video editing and graphics intensive applications”. Many people bought the 2011 MacBook Pro specifically for this feature, after all, Apple had told them exactly what to expect.

So imagine their disappointment when some time after, these very graphics cards packed up, offering severely diminishing visuals. Rightfully, these consumers were angry and in a class action lawsuit against the company, they allege that Apple knew the graphics cards were faulty and attempted to cover them up.

Following the lawsuit filed against Apple in October 2014, law firm Whitfield, Bryson & Mason LLP has now written:

“Specifically, we allege that between early- and late-2011, Apple released a software update that dramatically reduced the graphical performance of the GPUs in order to prevent them from reaching temperatures that would cause the GPUs to effectively self destruct."

As far as an allegation goes, that’s pretty damning, especially given how much money Apple could have made from this not just in terms of MacBook sales but in repair fees, with many users having to pay Apple to fix their computers and replace the graphics cards. Some consumers even saying that their replacement graphics cards broke too. Just to prove that Apple did do this, several members of the lawsuit have put their MacBook Pros forward for testing by a computer hardware expert.

While it’s yet unclear just what will happen, we know that Apple is expected to file a motion to dismiss the case on January 29th and that Whitfield, Bryson & Mason LLP will respond with a filing on March 5th. This could a drawn out court case then but we’ll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: AppleInsider

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WhatsApp Hits 700 Million Users, 30 Billion Daily Messages

Posted: 22 Jan 2015 04:00 AM PST

After Facebook bought messaging service WhatsApp in 2014 it has gone from strength to strength, now having achieved 700 million active users.

There are few smartphone users who haven’t heard of messaging service WhatsApp. As tariffs threaten to deplete your bank balance to pay for texts and calls, apps like WhatsApp, Kik and even Skype have proved to be popular free alternatives to communicating with friends and family via your mobile network operator.

And that’s exactly why WhatsApp was snapped up by Facebook in February, 2014 for the cool price of $19 billion. At the time, plenty thought that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had lost his mind as although the service was on the rise, the fact that it was free for most people (although you have to pay an annual $0.99 subscription to continue using the service for more than a year) led many people to think that the Facebook money man would never get a return on his investment.

WhatsApp is doing its bit to prove those doubters wrong though, as after hitting 600 million active users in August, 2014, the service has now blitzed past that figure and now sits at 700 million active users as of January 6, 2015. That, fact fans, is over half as many users as Facebook.

And that’s not the only metric that WhatsApp has to be proud of either. Users also send 30 billion messages daily, which equates to over four messages sent per person on the planet. More than looking good in a headline, that figure means that people are using the service regular and are incredibly likely to pay for that minimal $0.99 subscription once their free trial year is up.

Even more impressive are analysts predictions that WhatsApp will be able to reveal even better data at the end of the year. In China, India and South Africa smartphone sales are massively increasing due to their low cost and with WhatsApp also allowing users to keep the costs down in terms of messaging it means the service could increase its user base in these particular countries. Co-founder of WhatsApp Jan Koum also said this in a post on Facebook:

“As humbled and excited as we are by these numbers and our continued growth, we're even more excited to keep building a great product in 2015. Most of all, we're grateful that so many of you are using WhatsApp to stay in touch with your friends and family, business colleagues and classmates. We promise to continue working hard to make WhatsApp even better.”

It’s unclear just how Koum and co. will be making WhatsApp better but we’ll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: Mashable

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HoloLens: Microsoft brings augmented reality to the masses

Posted: 21 Jan 2015 11:55 AM PST

Windows 10 won’t just be confined to your computer and cellphone, but will be all around us thanks to augmented reality and new hardware.

Just as if we were living in the world of Minority Report, augmented reality is now ready to become, well, a reality itself. Thanks to its holographic technology, Microsoft can now create augmented reality version of their Windows 10 OS to combine real and virtual interface elements for users wearing the HoloLens, their latest wearable headset device. By using it, a new range of possibilities and uses open up, such as engineers seeing instructions overlaid on the actual projects they’re working on, or the layout of a location or project to organize tasks in a team.

This technology has universal support under Windows 10, Microsoft’s latest OS, so users can build once and use everywhere. The Redmond company says holographic technology will work with all kinds of headsets already out there, such as the Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR, but it’s their new in-house headset that took our attention: the Microsoft HoloLens is their idea of a headset, and will be available "within the Windows 10 timeframe."

HoloLens can pair up with all kind of devices running Windows 10, and has its own custom CPU and Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) as to not tax the system it’s interacting with. HoloLens doesn’t require mobile phones or computers, and can be used completely independent of any other gadgets.

Because the life or death of these gadgets depends mostly on what you can do with it, Microsoft is also releasing HoloStudio, which is a 3D modelling tool users can employ to create their own holograms that others can interact with, or even 3D print them for physical use. Now it really feels the future is among us.

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