For those that missed out this week, here are the stories in the tech world that was making the headlines in the week of the 17th October.
- Apple iCar isn't
going to happen
It was a long
standing rumor for many years that Apple was getting into the electric car business, competing head on
with Tesla. Bloomberg announced this week that the project that headed up this initiative has been
dismantled with many lay-offs coming. One wonders if Tesla/Ford/Mercedes will welcome back those that defected. Oops.
- Tesla announces cars rolling off their production line can self-drive
While we are
on the subject of electric cars, Elon Musk teased the internet for a week about a big announcement and
this Wednesday he held a press conference and demonstrated a Model X driving by itself from home to the
office. The video is extremely impressive and worth the watch, complete with Rolling Stones theme.
This in the same week that Germany have asked Tesla to stop using the term Auto Pilot as it is confusing the poor Germans drivers.
- First it was
Samsung's Note 7; now Apple's iPhone 7 bursts into flames
While Samsung
are figuring out how to rebuild its reputation Apple's latest flagship handset, the iPhone 7, has had a
couple of reports of it bursting into the flames. They haven't officially commented on this, only to say
they are investigating this thoroughly.
This could seriously rock the high end handset market if both market leaders turn out to have handsets that can light a campfire quicker than Bear Grylls!
- Nintendo
announce its new handset, the Switch
The king of
gamers for the masses have set the standard again with its latest Switch device. Just as the Wii appealed
to everyone, Nintendo are hoping to capture that same family appeal with the Switch. Think of the Wii and
the 3DS and then put that in a portable, multi-player handset and you have something that could catch on.
Nintendo are entering a very competitive space now, with smartphones accounting for a large amount of mobile gaming (assuming they don't catch fire!). They are missing the Christmas buying period by launching it March 2017.
- Internet for North America goes
offline this Friday, due to IoT devices
The previous
week, we had DNS provider, hover.com, go offline due to a massive DoS attack on its servers. This week it
was the turn of Dyn who were the target of the same attack that knocked out many of the big players,
including Twitter, Amazon and Spotify.
Insecure IoT devices such as routers, printers, cameras, etc were at fault again. These devices are very easy to take over due to default username/passwords that most people don't even know to change, though some can't be changed anyway. This problem is not going away anytime soon. The ISP's may have to step up and start firewalling these devices.
- Amazon looking to provide you with Internet
Amazon is
looking to become an ISP, in Europe initially, and start to offer that as part of its Prime service. This
may not be as big a leap considering how big and expansive their AWS cloud computing is.
Amazon have repeatedly said that their Prime membership is where they make their money as members are more likely to buy from Amazon.com instead of going elsewhere.
- Microsoft's SalesForce competitor, Dynamics is selling very well
This week
Microsoft's stock was at its highest after a very good earnings call this week detailing that all its
subscription services are way above expectations, with the enterprise suite Dynamics getting most of that
attention.
Microsoft have successfully redefined itself away from relying on just Office and Windows revenue as it looks to things like Azure, Dynamics and Office 365 (an online subscription service).
- Indiana Jones, Ark of the Covenant, now on display
The real big
news of the week, was that a real piece of movie history, the Ark of the Covenant, went on
display at Walt Disney World Hollywood in Orlando. You can view this legendary prop while you are
queuing for the Great Hollywood Movie Ride, though you will be forgiven for just queuing and not
making it to the ride.
Hurry before Disney decide to put it back into the huge warehouse!
... and this week's soundtrack was provided by Norah Jones new album Day Break released this month. Good to see her back to releasing under her name.
