[Music] coming up on Tech news today why Apple made peace with HTC and why Samsung is sticking it to Apple and also YouTube cancels the 60% I’ll that more coming up netcasts you love from people you trust this is TWiT bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cash fly at CAC fly.com [Music] this is Tech news today for Monday November 12th 2012 Tech news today is brought to you by go to meeting with HD Faces by Citrix the powerfully simple way to meet and collaborate with colleagues and clients from anywhere you can share the same screen and see each other face to face with HD video conferencing even from an iPad sign up for your 30-day free trial today visit goom meeting.com click on the try it free but and use promo code tntt and by the new Squarespace Squarespace introduces a new content management system making it faster and easier to create a high-quality website blog or online portfolio plus more than 50 new features including mobile responsive designs for a free trial and 100 10% off your first purchase go to squarespace.com and use offer code tnt1 and buy gazelle the fast and simple way to sell your iPhone iPad MacBook or Android smartphones find out what your Gadget is worth and get cash to upgrade to the latest iPhone e gazelle.com welcome to Tech news today I’m Tom Merritt I’m Sarah Lane giving 110% I’m 32% and I’m Jason ow and this is the show we keep you up to date on the most important stories in the tech world and put them into context for you starting with the top 10 stories of the day in the [Music] news finish it uh apple and HTC surprised folks this weekend by finishing their patent battle declaring patent peace between the two companies they’ve been fighting a patent battle since 2010 now have agreed on a 10year cross licensing deal uh the terms were confidential but analyst sha wo reports his sources say HTC will probably be paying between 8 to $10 per Android handset Rim president n CEO Thorston hes has announced in a press release that the Blackberry 10 launch event is happening on January 30th 2013 the event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries around the world and come with very juicy fun interesting Blackberry 10 phone details we hope juicy blackberries get it it’s funny digitime says that Apple’s already working on the next iPhone the iPhone 5S the site says Apple ought to have a trial production started in December with production uh at full steam ahead starting up in quarter 1 of 2013 the reason the yield rates for iPhone 5 is low so Apple’s accelerated the certification process for the next phone instead that’s Digi times reporting that right just reemphasizing that Steve Balmer told French newspaper for laoren that sales of Microsoft Surface are quote starting modestly uh Steve bobber is usually a little more over the top than that so everybody paid attention uh he blames the uh the modest sales on restricted availability uh you can only buy the surface online and at Microsoft stores Balmer took the opportunity to extol the virtues of the Surface Pro which will run Windows 8 and should be out after the first of the year Samsung has raised the price of the mobile processors the company supplies to Apple by 20% Korea is shoan ilbo reported Monday citing a person familiar with negotiations according to the report Apple buys all APS used for production of iPhones and iPads from Samsung with the volume estimated to be 130 million units last year and more than 200 million units this year with a contract running through 2014 tomorrow Call of Duty Black Ops 2 launches and USA Today reports that the game will have an impact on productivity USA Today interviewed some bosses and found that they expect a a number of employees to take the day off and others to have unplanned absences Call of Duty Black Ops 2 hit stores at midnight YouTube’s getting ready to decide which of its partner channels it will renew and which it will set free all things D reports YouTube estimates it will fund around 40% of the 160 channels I I let me correct that it will not fund around 40% of the 160 channels it launched last year channels that don’t receive a second round of funding may continue on YouTube and they get to keep more of their ad Revenue they just have to pay for the whole thing themselves after the government in Gabon shut down kim.com Mega domain idea with the domain. ga uh Mega the holding site is now live at new zealand-based domain mega.co.nz a statement by.com on Twitter read New Zealand will be the home of our new website mega.co.nz powered by legality and protected by the law at this point the site only offers an email sign up to keep users up to up to date on news of the launch plus links and information for hosting partners and developers seeking apis and financial investors the USA is King of the supercomputers and uh it’s inart thanks to Nvidia in fact Nvidia and AMD both announced new high performance Graphics chips for supercomputers today there’s a big conference going on in Salt Lake City Nvidia unveiled the Kepler 2 K20 and k20x cards it’s the k20x that powers the new supercomputer Titan a 20 pedop flop supercomputer at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and now the fastest supercomputer and MD announced the firepro SM 10,000 GPU which targets high performance computers and servers in virtualized environments here we go Hardware news from valve Gabe Newell told forchan that the company is already beta testing its Hardware Newell said that there are three different controller prototypes being tried out pictures of the device have yet to leak but this is the internet so expect pictures eventually this episode of tech news today brought to you by Citrix and go to meeting with HD faces uh when you’re meeting in person you Express a lot that doesn’t come out of your mouth it comes out of your eyes it comes out of your facial expressions comes out of your hand movements uh and if you’re just on a phone call you can’t see 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cet.com uh good good to have you back on the show Dean how’s it going hey I can’t complain all is well here at CAD how are things with you folks we are we are doing well off to a a roaring Monday start uh with a little bit of patent piece HTC and uh Apple settling their differences uh and lots of theories as to why this is here here’s the uh the basics in case you missed it in the news fuse 10-year deal uh HTC had lost it its uh case at the International Trade Commission uh in late 2011 they did a workaround to get around that uh but HTC’s complain against Apple at the ITC failed uh August 29th chairwoman of HTC Sher Wang and said we’re really not going to settle it looked like they were going to keep pressing HTC already pays Microsoft $5 per Android handset uh and so it was a priz this weekend when Apple which had you know threatened to go thermonuclear against Android handset makers settled uh HTC which had said they weren’t going to settle and had like had picked up a lot of patents from Google had picked up patents when they bought S3 Graphics they settled and sha wo says it’s probably $6 to 8 I think I said8 to 10 in the news fuse that was a mistake $6 to8 doll per handset uh that HTC will pay Apple at least that’s what sha wo’s sources tell him there the the actual agreement is confidential Dean when you look at this there there’s lots of reasons uh why you wouldn’t want to continue this patent battle it’s it’s costly uh maybe HTC is shifting their focus to Windows Phone what what do you think brought this about well I should preface this by saying I don’t cover patents full time I I’ve tried my best to stay away from it it’s a morass you could spend your entire lifetime and then some covering patent stuff my colleague at seen at Josh lenson covered the Apple V Samsung case in San Jose though um against my better judgment I’ve been drawn into um some patent coverage including last Friday there uh there was a um so-called patent troll um had a preliminary Victory against Apple that I wrote about but the way the way I think of this here is that I mean a p a patent litigation this kind of these kinds of M multi-million dollar uh lawsuits that enrich really only the um outside law firms companies use I mean it’s it’s a lottery and you might win the lottery or your competitor might win the lottery and the problem is that uh if you lose uh then you have to pay out their lottery winnings and so sometimes it’s better uh to have this certainty of uh it’s it’s a stiff payment I mean $10 a handset if that’s what it is can add up but it’s better than having this uh uncertainty of a billion doll Samsung esque uh Lottery payment when a jury just doesn’t understand uh technology um and uh at all and so you you end up with uh what what can happen let’s have certainty instead of uncertainty is the bottom line I mean hcc’s Android phones aren’t exactly like like a chart topper any by any means and if they can settle up with apple and they could have features that no other Android phone could have at this point because HTC actually has licensing rights to certain things that Apple let you do like slide to unlock as silly as that is it’s still Apple’s if HTC has some of the same functionalities and ease of use buil into their own phones that might be more advantageous to them than figuring out okay look fight Apple indefinitely try to keep coming up with workarounds and then maybe get our stuff blocked from import all the time but why would Apple settle Sarah I mean that’s a good those are good reasons why HTC would settle they had a horrible quarter at 79% downturn year-over-year U but there’s no advantage in in apple helping HTC out is there well there is if they get eight to10 or even as something as low as $600 dollars on each handset sold I mean if if if Apple believes in any way that HTC still has a future as a as a dominant play well maybe not dominant player for a while but as a player um it in in the Android market Apple wins sure I mean Apple the thing is that the Apple versus HTC it’s obviously very unfair apple has a lot more money they can stay in court forever but it’s not really advantageous for Apple either it’s a waste of time um it’s it could drag out for years the whole thing with Apple and Samsung is different also than Apple and HCC some say you know well Samsung in many ways really was confusing to the customer people didn’t really know the difference HTC not so much I mean Apple might have known you know what this might not even really turn out the way that we want it to why not just get some dollars for every handset go into a multi-year uh licensing agreement and everybody wins and it’s sort of is a slap in the face to Google because Apple’s like hey look we can play nice with certain Android handset makers when they’re about to go out of business and we need them to stay around to keep competition pressure on Samsung yeah that that is kind of a really good point Apple doesn’t want there to be one opponent they want many opponents cuz it’s easier to fight them off of course HTC uh did settle with Microsoft and now HTC has become a premier partner for the Windows phone uh I I want to go around the horn and just get everybody’s opinion do we think this indicates a slowing down of the uh the smartphone patent battles or or is this uh this just mean that HTC is going to be the first victim of many in this Dean what do you think it’s going to take a lot to slow the the thing down I mean we’ve already basically gone thermonuclear um in terms of silicon Valley’s patent Wars the a loss that I wrote about last Friday uh was a holding company set up by Sony and Nokia and they um created this it’s not not quite a front company it’s a patent holding company and they went ahead and sued Apple over um know GPS patents and answering phones put putting the call on hold while you’re uh in another call um uh patents uh it’s and so these lawsuits were were already in progress and uh and so it’s going to take a lot to settle them all um but but I I’m hopeful I hope that this is uh reducing the tensions because it’s the only folks who really are winning out out of this are uh the lawyers uh it’s it’s not the engineers it’s not the executives who keep getting distracted by having to fight off patent lawsuits and go to depositions I hope this is a a reducing of tensions Apple settled with Nokia Microsoft settled with Barnes & Noble now we have another one as a retired lawyer I do you feel like you’re Miss missing out on on the end of the patent there’s a good reason why I didn’t go into IP law I probably have a heart attack that’s why I don’t do that that stuff and that’s why I studied it for a little bit in school I I do think that this is going to slow down the the whole Wars when it comes to smartphones in general except when it comes to Samsung and Apple I think those two are going to keep bickering to the you know very Bitter End even with a billion dollar you know damage settlement uh but the thing is if Apple can say to other people hey look HTC us we worked it out this is the way it worked same thing with Microsoft they did the same thing with a lot of different companies with their Android patents and said look we kind of got you this way this first company fell this you should be the second you should be the third to the point where Microsoft doesn’t litigate when it comes to the Android patents to the point where they just have a huge bunch of money coming in because everyone’s like okay we’re not going to fight you because those other companies didn’t fight you so if it starts off this way I think it’s going to slow down Sarah peace or or obliteration or some other apple and HTC yeah just in the patent Wars in general does is this just a one-off or apple or are we going to see these things start to get settled I sure would like them to start to get settled I’m with you as far as Apple and Samsung they’re so intertwined still which is kind of leading us into our next story but they they’ve Apple and Samsung is a little bit of a of a unique relationship especially because Samsung is such a huge competitor I mean that is Apple’s big competitor right now at least in the mobile space so I would like I would like this to be the beginning of a a widescale piece agreement but I’m not really optimistic well and it’s a really good point the Apple Samsung battle is shaping up to be the bigger battle than the patent battle patent’s just one front in that battle we we’ve talked before how Samsung you know they’re in many different businesses they do white goods and they they do appliances and they do uh which are the same thing they and they and they make chips for apple and we’ve said look it’s easy to to personalize these situations and say oh well they they hate each other but they’re big businesses and certain arms of businesses often will do things that aren’t in the best interest of the other arm Sony’s a great example of that where they’re making uh DVD rippers while their Sony movie arm is is fighting against DVD rippers but there’s a story out today that looks like maybe Samsung is fighting back against apple with its chipm yeah so the A6 mobile processors that are custom designed by Apple we’ve talked about this in the past are built uh by Samsung they used to have a more of a a a deeper relationship but Samsung is still putting them together and part of that reason is because Samsung just uh is is is sort of Top Dog in production value uh Apple has experimented and is trying more and more to get things like RAM and flash storage from other companies but still need Samsung in order to keep up with demand um Korea’s shen.com had a story out of course citing Anonymous sources that said Samsung is increasing the price of these application processors by about 20% up to anyway and that it’s apparently the first time Samsung has decided to rais the prices on processors the ones that that Apple’s buying and that Apple’s arms are tied hands are tied rather arms in two that would my arms there AR processors are tied up that’s the thing twin peak’s reference number one everybody drink uh at Apple is really has no choice um has to keep up with demand I mentioned in the news fuse that Apple and Samsung apparently have a contract that extends through 2014 yeah I don’t know if how much that really plays into it you know contracts can always be uh redrawn but I think the question is The Verge article uh one of the articles that wrote up about this said you know maybe maybe part of this is the fact that Samsung just uh invested a significant amount of money $4 billion or so into a plant in Austin Texas which is the same plant that builds Apple’s processors do they just want some more money I mean is this really personal is it really Samsung saying okay the writing’s on the wall we know eventually apple does not want to work with us so while they have to until they have a plan B they’ll just pay us more they can afford it what do you guys think I mean I I could see this being okay there’s a billion dollar settlement they’re like okay well you know what we need to make money somehow why don’t you pay us 20% more and we’ll give it back to you in Damages eventually but I can also see this being simply supply and demand the Galaxy S3 is sounding like crazy they have to make their own processors for their own machines they’re also making uh Chromebooks they’re making all kinds of things that are using arm processors and the fact is if Samsung could get it at the best price even with a 20% increase that’s what Apple’s going to do they’re not going to bother to increase the price just out of spite because they want to make sure that those devices Apple Hardware continues to make them as much money as possible yeah I I think it’s uh quite possible that it’s just Market forces I think it’s also quite possible that uh Samsung does see the writing on the wall as you mentioned Sarah that uh Apple’s starting to lower their orders and and reduce what they order from us so uh you know we’re going to have to make it up somehow and why not raise the price while we still got them if they’re going to leave anyway Dean does that make any sense to you um possibly I mean there’s a but let let me get back to one other other uh thing that uh I wanted to return to and and that is regarding the broader patent Wars uh we have a specialized patent Court uh in Washington DC that hears patent appeals and you know guess what if you’re a specialized patent court if you’re um you think the patents are really important uh just like if you were a specialized agriculture Court you think that you know Farmers might be really important and so what happens is that you have the specialized Court uh take a series of rulings make a series of rulings over the decades uh that expand intellectual property holders rights I mean there were no software patents until just uh 20 years ago I mean within recent memory and in the 1980s computer software actually existed and flourish and people bought it uh so you see that the interesting thing is the Supreme Court uh is starting to put the smackdown on some of these patent uh really over Brad patent abuses and so so I I think that the what might uh happen uh if this war continues this thermonuclear patent war is that the Supreme Court’s going to say you know the software patents they weren’t intended to go that far Congress never intended them to go that far and it just sort of happened and nobody expected it and this is the result and it’s a mess so guess what this stops now that’s my prediction all right uh let’s move on to YouTube pulling the plug on at least 60% of its programming deals uh YouTube will give a second round of funding you know I corrected myself and I corrected myself wrong in the news fuse today uh they are only funding 30 to 40% of their original partners that means they’re cutting at least 60% uh of the partners how bad is this I well yeah depending on the headlines you see that they’re funding new things or they’re killing 60% at least 60% of the channels and uh those Channel makers by the way if you are a YouTube channel maker you’re not going to find out until the next few weeks whether you’re getting additional funding so that’s kind of scary um channels don’t get new deals that don’t get new deals will still be on YouTube so they’re not being like can are kicked off in the traditional sense it just means that YouTube won’t be giving them money and I believe the way the advertising thing works the companies have to they won’t be able to make any money until they pay back their initial investment from from YouTube so there’s not going to be a ton of windfall that way the uh directory uh directory director of content strategy at YouTube he says that the site is most concerned about engagement primarily the total watch time so a channel that’s generated and cost how efficient programmers have been with their programming budget so it’s not just just about pure views it’s about the amount of time they have and the engagement they have that determines whether these YouTube channels will continue this kind of sounds like traditional television where it’s we give you a season if you don’t do too well we’re g to we’re going to cut off funding is this the strategy that YouTube should be trying or should they be giving a more of a reinvestment SLU guidance kind of approach as opposed to the traditional television approach well I mean I think if you’ve got a successful YouTube channel well you’ve got two of them right they both have you know a million views a week something like that and production company number one that’s working with YouTube uh has some sort of a you know a crazy overhead because they’ve got these beautiful sets and they’re you know maybe they’re paying actors or you know they they’ve got quite a bit of budget and then company number two has a lot less than that obviously YouTube’s like well I mean company number two just makes more sense for us because there’s just there’s it is a a traditional model but it’s also a model that we have at twit as well I mean you there’s only so much money that you should put into a production unless you’re getting enough back for it to make sense and I don’t think that changes just because you’ve got YouTube now and it’s easy to to get your stuff out there Dean what do you think do you think because this is a a new ecosystem that maybe YouTube should be thinking differently or is it just look it’s content we got to keep doing what works I I think YouTube is thinking differently and uh the it just happens that the result of the thinking so far mirrors some of the more traditional approaches and the the broader way to think about it is that Google is an incredibly datadriven company much much more so uh than any other tech company I can think of and this this was because of uh the the F the founders I mean if you have Founders who are computer science phds and they’re going to create a company that’s that’s going to be very responsive to what actually H happens as opposed to what you want to happen and so they tend to be ruthless in cutting products that don’t live up to their expectations and it’s just entirely D data driven if uh you look at the numbers numbers don’t make sense it’s kind of a dispassionate I wouldn’t want to be on the uh the receiving end of that if my show got cancelled but in the long run it probably is a good thing for the company uh full disclosure in a week’s time my wife becomes an employee of YouTube that gives me no insight into this particular story but but what does is the fact that I do a show sword and Laser on The Geek and Sundry Channel and the geek and sunry channel is funded by YouTube now this mean this doesn’t affect me directly because I’m I get my funding from uh for our little corner of geek and sunry directly from them uh but I know that what YouTube’s plan is here is to get all of the channels off the YouTube funding so this is this is different than television from the beginning they’re basically saying we want to fund these channels so that people start to see how they can use YouTube to make successful television we’re we’re just basically trying to jumpstart things so that production companies can come in on their own and use YouTube as a platform YouTube doesn’t want to be in the business of being a production company so when they cut 60% some of it is saying look these aren’t worth funding anymore we’re we’re just not not seeing the the integration we’re not seeing the uptake that makes it worth uh the experiment anymore but they may continue on their own maybe they’ll get more efficient and maybe it’ll be better and they’ll be more successful without our money so it’s not against their original premise to cut funding for a channel some of those channels they may say you know what they don’t need our money anymore uh and the channels that they are continuing to fund are channels that they say this is worth the experiment you know we we are make we’re making enough money they’re they’re efficient with their budgets uh it’s worth giving them another year to prove themselves but I know that the ultimate goal here or at least from what I understand anyway the ultimate goal here is for YouTube not to fund any channels but channels to fund themselves well then should they be cutting the funding from the top companies then because they don’t necessarily need YouTube anymore instead of cutting the bottom 60% no I mean you you want to I mean it’s still early enough in the experiment that you want successful channels right so if you’re it would make it would be even more ridiculous in my opinion to cut the successful channels because then you’re just fun things that aren’t working as well I think what YouTube is looking at is saying hey you know what we we’re going to fund these things we’re going to get these things going but we’re going to be smart with our money let’s take a quick break and thank our other sponsor for today’s show Squarespace the new squarespace.com now faster and easier than ever to create a high quality website or blog online portfolio if you’re photographer the new Squarespace 6 is beautiful for showing off galleries uh and if you do any kind of content uh and you haven’t tried Squarespace in a while go try out Squarespace 6 uh along with the 247 customer support that Squarespace gives along with the the staff that is so dedicated that that they’ll they’ll carry buckets of fuel up 17 floors after a hurricane to keep their site online uh the new Squarespace is also entirely easier to use with a different code base that uses HTML 5 css3 JavaScript and Json uh for Speed and flexibility or Jason as some people say the new Squarespace gives you and your website users the best mobile experience too it resizes photos across different 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very un Balmer like to say anything modest to say anything in a in a reserved tone so a lot of people are jumping on this saying if balmer’s calling it modestly must they must be in the tank yeah uh asked about supply shortages which is the other side of this there it’s been out of stock online from time to time some people have been going into Microsoft stores and finding they’re not available for sale bomber said it’s a good sign uh and that they’ll fix this problem quickly so they’re not selling enough of them because they don’t have enough of them apparently and then he went and started talking about the Windows 8 Pro surface which will come out after the first of the year saying it was unique and equipped with a new Intel processor with a higher screen resolution uh and that he really thinks that you know that’s the way to go well he didn’t say that but he he really seemed to point towards Windows 8 Surface as the way to go I have to say I’ve been using the Microsoft Surface RT I like it but I really do think I’m going to trade it in for a Windows 8 Pro surface because the things that I don’t like about it won’t be a problem when I’m running windows8 they’re all RT restrictions I mean the surface is Microsoft’s worth their real first Venture into hardware for it to be like selling like Gang Busters or the fact that uh it’s got that new interface there’s a whole bunch of things going against it from the start it’s got It’s it’s RT so you don’t know you’re not going to get the full desktop you’re not going to get the full app that you used to have it’s Microsoft’s first piece of Hardware there’s all this it’s only available online at Microsoft stores a ton of reasons why it shouldn’t be selling huge I’d imagine but I mean it’s it’s their first product so I’m just expecting for it to be anything less than modest I would be surprised by I guess if it was like this sold millions of people bought it billions of people bought it that would be insane because this is very billions of people bought anything that would be insane I’m saying it’s an untested product completely H well we bought a surface for our home over the weekend there was a key no well it’s I mean I just everyone’s like calling me a Microsoft hater so now I get really uncomfortable whenever I talk about it cuz I’m worried that I’m going to say something you know that and you guys will all jump on me she had a smirk on her face she said surface oh yeah she said Windows mobile but uh but uh there was a key there’s a kiosk at one of the stores in downtown San Francisco is full of full of Surface tablets so I’m not really sure where the the the the supply shortages are I mean online is is one thing and that would be certainly annoying but there were heaps and piles of them at least locally for me so yeah anecdotally I went into CTO Madera California stores uh this week and there’s a Microsoft store right near an Apple Store both of them were filled with people uh I couldn’t tell if you know more people were carrying out iPads than than carrying out surfaces but uh people were interested in in both of the places Dean you’ve you’ve covered technology long enough to be able to read between the lines read the tea leaves what what’s your interpretation of Balmer calling this modest sales I wouldn’t read to too much into it I mean it’s it’s much better to surprise on the upside than the downside if you lower everyone’s expectations and then you actually do well uh uh then then your stock is going to go up and everyone’s going to be happy uh but I mean this last year Balmer called um the shipments of Windows phone uh going from uh uh very small to very small um The Wall Street Journal is reporting that there’s going to be something like 3 to 5 million uh surface units sold uh this quarter I mean you know for for a lot of other companies 3 to 5 million would be a wonderful success I mean if I could start a business and have 3 to five million people actually paying hundreds of dollars for my I’d be happy the the problem is with Microsoft uh there’s there’s such an expectation of instant success and it might it might take a while I mean there’s not not everything is going to uh succeed uh instantly especially when you’re creating a different product and almost a different ecosystem yeah I I think that’s a really good point that Balmer did say very small to very small because we may be seeing Steve Balmer just getting better at being CEO and managing stock expectations uh and that’s the way I read this too is him saying look when our next quarterly report comes out you’re not going to see gargantuan figures for the Microsoft Surface so so get ready for that but it is selling well and when the Windows 8 Pro surface comes out after the first of the year we think it’s going to sell like hot cakes it’s Steve Balmer is not always going to be the one saying everything is going to be awesome uh anymore if he if he wants to keep his job and it’s something that he’s under Fire with if you look at Microsoft stock price for the last decade it has not been awesome this is not the 1990s all over again it’s kind of the opposite yeah uh let’s get over to that Digi Times report that we mentioned earlier about iPhone 5S would they do that to people coming out with a new iPhone just 6 months after the old one just like they did with the new iPad let’s hit that rumor mill shall we because this is what happens when uh their stories out so yeah digit times like you were saying uh you can see how excited I about this Apple’s working on the next iPhone due to lack of uh of of of yield when it comes to the iPhone uh 5 the new iPad would be coming in the second quarter of 2013 would they mess with people like that again I I mean it’s possible the thing is would Apple bump up their production schedule so such that effectively they’re releasing products every six months instead of the yearly cycle that we’ve been used to because a lot of other manufacturers do that there’s not like this big long wait oh finally September something comes out it’s like no six months maybe even with the press release this is what we’re giving you what do you think Tom do you think they’re going to move to the six-month model I think I actually think we’re overthinking it saying like oh well they were on the yearly model and so now that they’ve moved well that’s going to be a yearly model maybe Apple’s just getting off the cycle and saying you know what we’re going to start putting out products when we’re ready to put out products and the iPhone the new iPhone could be coming at any time you just never know that’s the way it’s been with their other products that’s the way it’s been with laptops you you don’t get new Macbook Pros at exactly the same time in fact there’s whole websites uh devoted to kind of gauging the average time between product releases and guessing when the next one’s coming well and Apple’s already surprised us at the mini launch we also got a refresh of the well what’s now the fourth gen iPad Retina Display and everyone went ah my God why are they doing that and it’s like I I think you’re right I think Apple’s like it’s ready I mean we might as well start selling them and when something better is ready then we’ll roll out without too I actually think it’s kind of makes more sense do you think they’re trying to fight off the Osborne effect where it comes to okay it’s it’s it’s uh it’s August nobody’s buying an iPhone nobody’s going to do anything there going to be a weird quarter coming up by staggering or like making these surprise releases is that going to help apple or is this something that sounds like a Digi times rumor oh I love I love that phrase fighting off the Osborne effect the the way I I read this and I’ve been an apple uh user since the the 1980s the Apple 2 e days um and so I followed the company on and off and uh it’s it’s that there for the first few years of the iPhone they um this this was a company with a product that nobody else was competing effectively with until they could set their own release schedule and uh uh and and now there’s so many very good uh even excellent Android roid devices and xus 4 just just came out uh there’s uh that now Apple is is has to be much more competitive and that probably means more frequent uh updates because you know every week there’s there’s there’s or every month there’s some interesting new Android phone I I I I wouldn’t be a surprise if there’s an iPhone on um something like a year to a year and a half uh schedule as opposed um and maybe every half year we get a refresh yeah I I I agree with you Dean I think this is just a a shift in in the Apple cycle all right let’s uh finish off with uh some analysis of the Korean Tech scene that was really interesting at the diplomat. yeah North Korean um at that I am obsessed with North Korea it’s just a fascinating place to me because there’s so little that we know about so much of the company for me it’s because I grew up with the Soviet Union looming so large and the secrecy around it North Korea’s kind of almost nostalgia in that it’s one of the few places that’s that same exact Trope and so many millions of people in the country do not have access to some of the basic internet tools that we think you know should be a right as as as citizens of the world so this is a um this was authored by Scott Thomas Bruce um he’s the project manager for the partnership uh for nuclear security at crdf Global also an associate at the Nautilus Institute and the East West Center he wrote up um in the diplomat. comom a really fascinating account of cell phones being becoming available to some North Korean citizens and why the story is is that the government is allowing up to 1 million cell phones in the country for the first time but only available to about 5% of the population they’ve got sort of a cast system uh so these are people who have been determined to have good social standing to be uh um um very uh with the Korean uh the North Korean government and what they’re using is uh a cell phone system made by corol link so members can call other members on the corol link network no international calls though it’s state sponsored intranet in North Korea which is called Quang yyang which is also restricted to people in North Korea with social standing so you’ve got you’ve got about 5% of the population who has these sort of cell phones they can call each other they have access to the internet which is stuff like message boards chat state sponsored media um University students are encouraged to use this internet technical experts scientists as well but then they’ve also got daily sponsored text coming in uh on the phones internet activity on discussion boards is closely monitored by the state Security Department the network can be shut down by the state at any time so it’s not as if all of a sudden you’ve got a million people in North Korea who’ve got smartphones and now they can kind of go nuts it’s a very uh very different experiment at all the state will have to choose which calls to monitor though I mean with a million phones they can’t possibly monitor all of them so you figure probably some focus on uh foreigners senior government military officials but it really does change the dynamic of the country if someone in a large city can call someone in a remote area of the country that just wasn’t possible before um it uh is is is is is is supposedly being rolled out because North Korea is interested in acquiring scientific information also from abroad to support development in North Korea obviously State screened of course plus the North Korean government is interested in investment um from other countries particularly from China apparently limited use of cell phones um was a huge Challenge and has been for investors dealing with North Korea if you’re going to be involved in infrastructure and building out well it’s really hard to get anything done you you certainly can’t bring in your own cell phones you can’t even talk to people different it’s like how does that all work but at the same time making sure that the public even though only a very small part of the public even has access to these tools still does not actually have access to any sort of Internet of any kind it does change the dynamic of the country it’s sort of G giving a little bit opening the door a little bit but still holding people back well if it’s if it’s only to the top 5% of this Elite class I mean isn’t that something that’s somewhat they would benefit the most from from not I mean they wouldn’t be sharing and they’re probably not going to be giving phones to lower cast or anything so no I mean it doesn’t seem like this would be a larger a thing that it’s not a start of a trend by any means because if you’re just benefiting the top class isn’t that the class that just wants the power anyway well I mean if if 1 million phones are available to people where before there were zero I don’t feel like that’s just a few people who now get to talk to each other on the phone I mean this this has a little bit more to do with we have an infrastructure that foreign money could be interested in look what we’re starting to do we’re starting to open it up you can you can move about the country and and and make phone calls and communicate with folks if you are at least uh in in this elite member status whereas you couldn’t perform and China which is incredibly sophisticated at this sort of management has problems keeping things under control and granted it’s a much larger country uh I I’m curious whether North Korea can control the effects of allowing even a thin wedge of that sort of freedom in and DEET I’m curious what you think of that uh well I agree that giving phones are allowing the wealthy to buy phones this is not exactly the the folks who are going to overthrow the nation state which has to be what these leaders were worried about but uh three three thoughts I was in Burma uh and I reported on what was happening there when I was at time a while back and there’s I mean you you run um they had the same situation it’s basically lock down ex except if um if you’re in one of these Elite classes and look what happened to them I mean it’s been over a decade since I was there um and the economy has stagnated and so this uh leads us to the uh this it’s kind of a dictator’s dilemma right I mean how how how do you actually allow your economy uh to move forward and be competitive um well I mean free markets capitalism technology I mean these are some of the ways you can do it but also if you have um uh technology then you might have people PL plotting against you on Facebook and that cannot happen so so how how much do you allow I mean Singapore is is one model to follow it’s I’m not saying it’s the best model but it’s uh allow technology but only um and um allow the internet but uh try try to make certain uh types of discussions off limits through social pressure and otherwise and one last point you might have a million cell phones um uh but it it doesn’t take that much uh computing power to uh do speech recognition on the conversations and flag words I mean if the NSA could do this back in uh the 1990s in the US well there are plenty of us companies and European companies that’ll be happy to sell uh that same speech recognition or SMS uh um text recognition technology to the North Koreans for a price yeah the question is if if if they can they can run it effectively but you’re right the technology absolutely exists uh before we get to the randomizer uh real quickly there’s a story that’s been breaking since just before we started the show uh and been waiting to get a little more confirmation of it but Cena now uh following up on a Gizmodo report that John McAfee who started the McAfee antivirus software company has been accused of murder in Biz and according to the report McAfee is wanted by bise’s gang suppression unit in the murder of an American expat named Gregory Paul he’s a popular Builder who was shot Saturday night uh Gizmodo says that there was some some beef between the two also reporting that McAfee’s relationships with other expats in B had been deteriorating we don’t know uh much more about that but it is confirmed that the B police are looking uh for John McAfee sort of a Prime story more than a tech story but because you know we all know McAfee we all know that name we we all try to keep it from uh running trial version sometimes on on our software it’s uh it’s definitely something of note let’s move on to the randomizer randomiz this is a much more positive story Stanford uh developing self-healing plastic uh to keep Prosthetics and touchscreens in one piece so the the human interest part of this is that you know if you a prosthetic limb as it is used sometimes it deforms this plastic would keep the form of the limb but would also be useful for repairing scratches and dents and dings on your gadgets uh so you you know you wouldn’t have that whole scratch gate on the new iPhone you wouldn’t maybe you wouldn’t even need cases anymore well it says here that it doesn’t work on capacitive touchscreens so so not on the screen but on the case everywhere else would be fine like that I mean that’s a lot of complaints and it does have uh nickel so it can do uh it can actually carry a current so I guess you can be use as an antenna so something around the the device maybe it could be everything but the screen that would be I mean if although do you think anybody would want to put this in their phones they’re saying they have the self-healing phone putting the case manufacturers out of business Tom you’re going to kill the economy the economy is going to die unless the case is yourself heing we need subsidies for case makers uh no the material can heal within minutes of cuts through fast forming hydrogen bonds uh according to the story on in gadget.com but who who wouldn’t want a a a a gadget of any kind tablet laptop that would in scratched it just like slowly that’s Terminator that’s Terminator to right there it’s happening Dean are you are you afraid of these self-healing cases that might come not at all this technology advances uh let’s embrace it yeah uh it it is a few years off from from commercial use so you know we have we have time to teach it to use its powers for good let’s take a quick break and thank our final sponsor for today’s show gazelle.com you need a little fast cash uh you want the simplest way to turn your old devices into to cash I mean if if you you know maybe that new uh self-healing case comes out faster than you thought you want to get it get your old iPhone out of your house by selling it on gazelle it’s simple go to gazelle.com g- a z.com tell gazelle the condition they’ll even buy broken iPhones in some cases uh get a risk-free offer for your Gadget gazelle locks in the quote for 30 days and once you get your new iPhone you can then ship your old one to gazelle they’ll even pay for the shipping and you’ll get paid fast by check or PayPal go to gazelle.com right now get get an offer on your your iPhone do it today because your phone’s not going to gain value most likely over time it’s probably going to lose value every day that you wait so lock in that quote now keep it for 30 days until you figure out whether you want to sell your phone or send it off right away they’ll pay for the shipping as I mentioned and you’ll get paid within a few days of the item being received it’s risk-free so try it out g- a z.com sell your used iPhone today uh and show your support for Tech news today we thank them for their support of tech news today what’s on the calendar Sarah God yes Tom lot of stuff going on this week Microsoft SharePoint conference started today it runs through the 15th in Las Vegas focus of course on SharePoint and social collaboration in the Enterprise IE 10 for Windows 7 preview is coming tomorrow it’s according to the company no word on a final release as of yet also tomorrow Call of Duty Black Ops 2 is arriving oh yes the next are you excited I I’m I actually not it’s not my game but I know pretty much everybody else in the world is well it’s not mine either but I know it’s I’s favorite game ever actually I’ve wasted a lot of time on that we won’t you are excited the LG Nexus 4 is hitting o02 over in the UK also tomorrow the Nexus 10 yeah it’s hit with a bang smack good thing it’s self-healing plastic no not yet uh Nexus 10 is available starting tomorrow at 3 $99 Nintendo has announced plans to host a Wii U launch event at its official Nintendo World store at Rockefeller Plaza 6 p.m Eastern on November 17th and Verizon has confirmed the Droid DNA on its Droid does portal and is promising kind of an interesting unboxing on Verizon’s Google+ Page on November 19th all right let’s see what’s incoming incoming message got a voicemail uh to 260 TNT show about about the Google Wallet from Good Old Chesterfield Missouri guys you had some discussions last week about the Google Wallet um and a new Google credit card one thing I didn’t hear discussed was the reward programs that a lot of credit cards have in place and I think Google could really uh get a good uh boost in the usage of their card if they allowed you to program the card to say hey if the uh transaction is from maybe a restaurant is going to go to card a everything else go to card b or maybe enough uh in cash over this month I’m going to switch over to this other card so I can maximize all my rewards for my various credit cards so uh would seem to be something right up Alle and uh maybe they’ve got uh in in there so that’s my thoughts thanks bye I think that that is a fantastic idea it certainly could be done and it would wipe out rewards programs because they all exist on breakage they all exist on the fact that people don’t actually use them efficiently or cash in the rewards right there are other tools like mint that suggest things that like oh yeah maybe you move this other car doesn’t necessarily mean that people do it if Google was doing it automatically that’s killer but if you have to program it I think they still have a chance all right let’s move on to the email we got an email uh gang I’m an Oldtimer during the Vietnam War I was in the military involved in things that necessitated that I have top secret crypto clearance it was drummed into us over and over again that the intelligence gathering capabilities that we approving to were in most cases more valuable than the actual information gathered to say it another way the source is to be protected at all costs flash to the present the methodology and techniques used by the seals if compromise could jeopardize many missions Downstream from the leak so did the Seal team know that they should have kept their mouth shut based on my experience unequivocally yes are the reprimands docs pay Justified absolutely thanks for that email uh yeah and he he wanted to keep his name Secret by the way uh appropriately enough the the thing is though and Declan I I I were you following this this story last week about the seals getting reprimanded for Consulting with ea uh yeah I I followed it peripherally I mean it’s it seems like uh this is an example of the Obama Administration I’m not saying it’ be any different from the Bush Administration I really like leaks that support it politically um but leaks that don’t well we’re going to put Bradley Manning in jail for the rest of his life my my thought on this male in particular is that I I did not see any discussion of things being revealed to EA that shouldn’t need to be pulled out of the game any actual risks it all seemed to focus on the fact that they didn’t get permission that they consulted with EA without consulting with the dod first and and and we’ve gotten plenty of emails from people saying you know the seals consult with gaming companies all the time so it’s not the fact that they shared information and maybe not even what information they shared it’s that they they did it without approval uh and so there’s still a missing piece for me here about why these guys who as our our emailer points out definitely know about keeping your mouth shut why why why they did this and got in trouble for this one well I mean there’s the Washington Post has run a wonderful series of Articles uh explaining how many things are classified that really shouldn’t be classified and so probably about one in 10 documents that are classified or what one um actually need to be uh but a lot of Rus routine stuff is as well so the the danger of classified really truly like will danger the National Security classified information being leaked is very is very small but you know the defense department has procedures government bureaucracies hate when their procedures aren’t followed uh and so yeah someone’s going to get in trouble kind of a shame yeah all right well that’s it for this episode of tech news today you can find us on the web uh oh oh before we go though don’t don’t forget to follow deaa uh at CET uh great stuff that you do over there Dean I always enjoy reading your pieces anything you want to let folks know about or just tell them where to find you oh well uh thanks uh Dean m is my Twitter ID and news.com is the best way to get to my stuff and my colleague stuff in our little news corner of seen it all right you can find us on the web at twit.tv TNT you can email us TNT twit.tv or give us a call and leave us a voicemail our phone number is 260 TNT show Derek coland duno joins us tomorrow we’ll see you then [Music] n