Digital Zone 216: Next of ‘Kin’

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on July 5, 2010 under Tech Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

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In this edition of the Digital Zone, we talked about:

• Apple’s signal strength
• iPhone 4 manufacturing costs
• Microsoft’s next of “Kin”
• Windows 7 sales
• YouTube serves video like no other
• Google scores huge legal victory
• Chrome making their move
• Government to nearly double wireless spectrum

Apple said that it was “stunned” to find that its iPhones have for years been using a “totally wrong” formula to determine how many bars of signal strength they are getting. They said that’s the reason there’s been widespread complaints from users that the iPhone 4 can show a sudden plunge in signal strength when they hold it in a way that covers a small black strip on one edge of the phone.  Apple said the drop seems exaggerated because the phone can wrongly display four or five bars of signal strength when it shouldn’t. The company said it will fix the formula to one recommended by AT&T through a free software update within a few weeks for iPhone models, 3G, 3GS and 4. However, the “wrong” formula goes back as far as the original iPhone, launched in 2007. Apple also said they’ll make bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

Apple’s new iPhone 4 costs almost $20 more to make than its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS, according to research group iSuppli.  iSuppli estimated the cost of the parts total $187.51. That’s more than the $170.80 iSuppli estimates for the cost of the materials inside the iPhone 3GS. The estimate doesn’t include manufacturing, software, marketing and other costs. The most expensive part of the iPhone 4 is the new, higher-resolution LCD screen, which iSuppli estimates carries a cost of $28.50. Flash memory, which has been in short supply, costs $27. Apple’s processor, which was manufactured by Samsung, according to iSuppli, costs $10.75, and the capacitive touch screen costs $10.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Cliphanger.

The perfect accessory for all cell phones, PDAs, iPods, and MP3 players.

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Microsoft said it is killing the Kin line of mobile phone it unveiled in April. The company said it made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship Kin in Europe this fall as planned. Microsoft added that it will continue to work with Verizon to sell Kin smartphones that have already been made.

Sales of Windows 7 have reached about 150 million licenses — or about seven copies of Windows 7 sold every second and said about 75 percent of all enterprises are “looking at Windows 7 for their organization.” Earlier this month, Microsoft said that more than 100 million licenses had been sold in the first six months of the operating system’s release, which was in October. Last Thursday, Microsoft released a beta of Windows Live Essentials. The company also said that an overwhelming majority of Windows 7 users approve of the new OS, with about 90 percent rating it as excellent, very good, or good.

Google served up a record number of video clips in May to U.S. Internet users, mostly through YouTube and said each Google visitor watched an average of more than 100 clips during the month, according to comScore. Almost 183 million U.S. residents watched online video during the month, with 14.6 billion video clips viewed at Google sites, primarily YouTube. That’s a record for Google, which also nabbed 43.1 percent of all online video clips served up during the month. Hulu came in a distant second place, with 1.2 billion video clips, or 3.5 percent of the total, followed by Microsoft with a little over 642,000 (1.9 percent) and Vevo with 430,257 (1.3 percent). Viacom, Yahoo, CBS Interactive, Turner and Fox Interactive, which includes MySpace, at 1 percent. Facebook followed with a little over 245,100 clips (0.7 percent).

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by Bluehost.

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YouTube scored a huge legal victory when Viacom’s US$1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube, filed more than three years ago, was dismissed. The judge in that case granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, saying that YouTube complied with the requirements of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to remove user-uploaded video clips when copyright owners asked they be taken down. Viacom said it plans to appeal the decision.

Google Chrome is now the third-most-popular browser in the U.S., behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox, but ahead of Apple’s Safari for the first time, according to a study by StatCounter. Chrome overtook Safari during the week ending June 27, and now has a share of around 8.97 percent of the U.S. browser market, just ahead of Safari at 8.88 percent. Internet Explorer and Firefox still dominate with shares of 52 percent and 28.5 percent respectively, all versions combined. StatCounter said it based its statistics on an analysis of 3.6 billion page views, 874 million of them in the U.S., captured from its network of counters embedded in the pages of 3 million Web sites.

The Obama administration intends to nearly double the available amount of wireless communications spectrum over the next 10 years in an effort to keep up with the ever-growing demand for high-speed video and data transmission to cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices. The president committed the federal government to auctioning off 500 megahertz of federal and commercial spectrum. Revenue from the auctions would be spent on public safety, infrastructure investments and deficit reduction. The administration said it hopes to encourage the spread of wireless broadband across the country, including rural areas.

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PODCAST SPONSOR: The Digital Zone is sponsored by LegalZoom.com.
Enter discount code DIGITAL at checkout.

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