Apple Invests in Laser Chips for iPhone; T-Mobile Launching TV Service; Amazon Expands Same and One Day Delivery Service; Target Enters Same Day Delivery Biz

Posted: December 13, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple has plowed $390 million into laser chip maker Finisar. Cnet.com says they will use the money to refurbish a plant in Texas to make chips designed for iPhones, running features like Face ID, animojis, and portrait photography. The plant is in Sherman Texas, and will employ 500 skilled workers…Finisar expects to start shipping by the 2nd half of 2018.

Oft times renegade wireless provider T-Mobile is launching a TV service in 2018, with the purchase of Layer4 TV. According to geekwire.com, T-Mobile CEO John Legere says will take on cable companies Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Charter, Frontier and Fox with the same competitive zeal that he has applied to Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. Legere made the announcement in a video, noting about cable and satellite providers ‘It’s no secret that these guys are the absolute worst”

Amazon has announced that it is expanding same day and one day delivery service to thousands more cities for Prime members. Now, the rapid deliveries will be available in some 8,000 cities! Faster delivery has been a major selling point for Prime, and lately Walmart has been getting into Amazon’s jeans with their 2 day delivery service. Now, techcrunch.com reports that Target is buying same day delivery service Shipt for $550 million. Shipt will run as an independent division of Target, and work to expand partnerships with other retailers in addition to serving Target. Target customers will need to sign up to be able to use Shipt. The first products available for same-day delivery will include groceries, non-perishable essentials, home and electronics equipment, and will expand over time to include all of Target’s wares by 2019.

Apple TV Hires former Amazon Fire Exec; Google Cracks Extreme Picture Zooming

Posted: February 8, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Every year is going to be the year that Apple comes out with its own TV, or otherwise revolutionizes television by breaking cable’s stranglehold with Apple TV. Now, according to 9to5mac.com, they have taken another step in that direction. Apple has hired Timothy Twerdahl, former head of Amazon Fire TV, and before that at Netflix. It’s unclear what Apple might be up to, but this hire shows that Cupertino still thinks TV has an important future role to them.

We’ve all seen it dozens of times…TV and movie crime dramas where they zoom way in on a picture and get a perfect view of the crook blown up to full screen. Of course, in real life, you just get a hash of big pixels…until now. Zdnet.com reports that Google’s AI Brain team has developed something pretty close. By showing lots of images to the Google Brain, it learns and can interpolate the hash into a viewable image of a face or room. Of course, since it’s an educated guess, it couldn’t really be used as evidence, but it’s still a huge step towards making science fiction into reality.