Analysts at IDC have dropped their year-end analysis of where the personal computer market ended up in 2021, and overall it’s a mixed bag. Despite seeing strong growth this year that was partly fueled by the pandemic and people being at home more, supply chain problems will be paramount in the fourth quarter’s holiday season, and will put a dent in the overall growth pattern, according to the forecast. which is based on data gathered from 90 countries, predicts the PC market will see a growth rate of 13.5 percent this year, as it’s anticipated to ship 344.7 million units globally.
(Photo: Jack Barton/Unsplash)Azure Space, one of Microsoft’s latest additions to its Azure cloud computing suite, now has the power to “see” through clouds with a new ability called SpaceEye. Cloud cover has historically been a persistent problem for Earth observation, given a majority of the planet is covered in fluff. SpaceEye artificial intelligence (AI) to produce daily cloud-free optical and multispectral photos of Earth from space. Using the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instrument from Sentinel-1 (the mission that sent the first phase of the Copernicus Programme satellite constellation to space), SpaceEye creates a base source of cloud-proof radar data.
When a company decides it wants to launch a subscription service and convert free users to paying customers, there are two basic ways to go about it. One method is to create new product features or service tiers that are only available to subscribers while keeping free benefits the same as they were before. Another is to remove services that were formerly free and lock them behind a paywall. The first encourages people to sign up by enticing them with new options. The second method “encourages” people to sign up by taking away valued functionality in the hopes people are willing to pay for it instead.
(Image: Vuity.com)One inescapable fact of life, alongside death and taxes, is once you careen over the hill into your 40s your vision starts to get a little blurry. For a lot of people this newfound condition requires the use of reading glasses, which magnify things that are close to your face, such as phones, computer, and those things people call books. This requires over one hundred million Americans to always keep a pair of glasses handy, but that could be a thing of the past thanks to a new type of eye drops that can temporarily correct vision problems.
(Image: Apple)Apple’s latest safety initiative incorporates nudity detection into messages sent to and by children. The feature rolled out to iPhones and iPads with iOS 15.2, which became available Monday. Though there isn’t much information on how the technology works behind the scenes, journalist Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter offers a bit of insight into how it manifests on a user’s device. The feature isn’t automatically enabled, but once implemented on a device with a family-sharing account, it will scan for nudity within images sent and received by the Messages app. If nudity is detected, Messages blurs the image and displays an on-screen warning, which explains the dangers of sharing explicit photos and asks whether the viewer would like to proceed.
Microsoft is jumping on the Right to Repair bandwagon via a new partnership with the popular product teardown and DIY repair website iFixit. Microsoft has begun making its custom tool designs for Surface repairs available for purchase from iFixit, which will sell them to certified repair technicians. While end users won’t be able to buy the tools, repair shops will, allowing you to get your device fixed somewhere other than at an official Microsoft shop. Per the release, “iFixit Pro independent repairers, Microsoft Authorized Service Providers, Microsoft Experience Centers, and Microsoft Commercial customers can now purchase Microsoft service tools for Surface devices directly from iFixit.com.
It’s a fact of life that all hard drives, at some point, will shuffle off this mortal coil. As a mechanical device, it’s simply inevitable. Sure, there’s stuff like Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T) to help warn you of potential problems, but have you ever tried to actually look at your drive’s SMART data? It’s not user-friendly, to put it mildly. Having to google certain codes that are listed in 3rd party software about specific drive attributes like “Power-off Retract Count” is not an ideal way to analyze your drive’s health, and it seems NAS manufacturer QNAP feels the same way.
(Image: Concept image by Intel’s Cristiano Siqueira (@CSiqueira97)Intel has been keeping all the details about its foray into the discrete GPU market quite close to its vest, despite the fact that it plans to launch in Q1 2022. That’s why it is kind of a big deal that the company showed some gameplay at this year’s Game Awards, although like most teaser videos it leaves us with more questions than answers. Intel seemingly took advantage of the fact that neither AMD or Nvidia appeared at this year’s gala, according to , allowing it to show its demo without worrying about being upstaged by an announcement or something along those lines.
Foldables are slowly gaining traction with devices like the Z Fold 3 and Flip 3 from Samsung. Chinese smartphone giant Oppo is no stranger to tinkering with new form factors, so it’s surprising it took this long for Oppo to get on the foldable bandwagon. The company has teased its upcoming Oppo Find N foldable, and no sooner did it release the teaser than more details leaked online. The Oppo Find N has the same basic design as the tablet-like Galaxy Z Fold3 as opposed to the Razr or Flip3, which are flip phones. There’s a display on the outside that doesn’t fold, paired with a larger internal folding OLED.
