tech snippets

stoweboyd:

Engineers at NC State University (NCSU) have discovered a way of boosting the throughput of busy WiFi networks by up to 700%. Perhaps most importantly, the breakthrough is purely software-based, meaning it could be rolled out to existing WiFi networks relatively easily — instantly improving the throughput and latency of the network.

I found the description at ExtremeTech to be extremely unintelligible. I will look for other descriptions of how this new algorithm works.

thenextweb:

If there were any doubts that Apple CEO Tim Cook was afraid to take the reins and remake the company if necessary, those should now be gone. As of last week, Apple ceased to be the House of Jobs and has become Cook’s domain. With the removal of iOS chief Scott Forstall and the redistribution of his responsibilities to senior executives like Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, Cook has eliminated a fiefdom that was proving to be a barrier to progress and cooperation inside the company.

parislemon:

Marco Arment:

Apple’s been selling midrange and high-end products at midrange and high-end prices for years, trying to get people to compare (sorry) apples-to-apples, but it just doesn’t sink in: Apple still has an “expensive” reputation, mostly because they don’t address the unprofitable low end of any market.

That’s exactly right. It’s not that Apple can’t go after the low-end of the market — of course they could, and they’d likely dominate from a market share perspective. But they choose not to time and time again because the low-end of the market is unprofitable. Apple prefers to work in the profitable end of the spectrum. Crazy, I know.

And when you see that the $499 Surface has double the memory of the iPad at the same price, it’s not because Microsoft is super nice, or better at manufacturing. It’s essentially a mind trick. They’re eating a roughly $15 cost to make it seem like the Surface is a much better deal.

There’s no question that it’s a better deal from the storage perspective — 32 GB is double 16 GB — it’s just not that much better of a deal (not that the consumer has an option to get the extra storage at cost). It’s a smart trick for the new guy in the space to play.

And it does work the other way, as Arment notes:

But the bigger reason is that the storage-price upgrade trick works against them in the other direction. Customers would expect a 16 GB Surface to cost $100 less, and Microsoft might only save $16 on the component costs. A 16 GB Surface would be about $84 less profitable. In this business, especially for a new, low-volume player, that can easily push the device far into the red.

Why isn’t Microsoft selling a 16 GB Surface at $399? That’s why.

Update: And yes, as Arment himself notes in his post, another reason not to do a 16 GB Surface is that Windows RT itself takes up a lot (7-8 GB) of space. But given the cloud storage options they’re offering, they could make it work if the economics worked for them — they simply don’t.

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