科技新闻

If the merger between Arm and NVIDIA is approved (I expect Great Britain, the EU, and China will have reservations), the result could be a massive change in AI capability. And, given that Arm is dominant in mobile devices and IoT, and NVIDIA is dominant in both graphics and AI training, it's a merger that could have a dramatic impact on how we work as well.We’ve had several efforts, most recently from Dell and Microsoft, to integrate smartphones with PCs. But there has been no dedicated bridge hardware vendor yet.  Yes, Microsoft seems to be working in that direction with its Surface Duo, but it is a niche product and if it does go mainstream, it likely won’t be until its third version.  Qualcomm could do this, but its Always Connected PC effort is just getting off the ground – even though the company does have critical mass with cell phones. Even so,  Qualcomm doesn’t seem that interested in blending the two concepts. To read this article in full, please click here

A year and a half after launching the free file-sharing service Firefox Send, Mozilla canned the concept, part of a retrenchment that began this summer when the organization laid off a quarter of its workforce.Firefox Notes, another service that got its start from the Test Pilot program, also went under the knife Thursday. Notes will be decommissioned on Android Nov. 1, and Mozilla will not provide security updates to the desktop browser's add-on after that date."As Mozilla tightens and refines its product focus in 2020, today we are announcing the end of life for two legacy services that grew out of the Firefox Test Pilot program," Mozilla said in an unsigned post to its primary blog.To read this article in full, please click here

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, governments around the world have highlighted the importance of contact-tracing apps to monitor infection levels, let people know when they may have been exposed and as a pre-cursor to a safe return to the office.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)

Twenty years ago this month Microsoft released a stink bomb of an operating system, Windows Me. Unstable, unloved and unusable, that was Windows Me. Many people believe it was the worst version of Windows ever built.The anniversary got me thinking: Was Windows Me really the worst Windows ever, or was it outdone by other notable flops?I’ve used every version of Windows since the Windows 1.x version that shipped with the desktop publishing program Aldus PageMaker (later Adobe PageMaker), so I’ve had plenty of experience with the best and worst of Windows. Here’s my list of the worst three Windows versions of all time. I’m offering them in order of ascending horribleness, so you’ll have to wait to get to the bottom of the article to find the worst of the worst.To read this article in full, please click here

This pilot fish sets up a point-of-sale system for a local restaurant that’s moving into a new location, but two days later, one of the owners calls and says the system isn’t working. They’re getting a message on one of the stations that it can’t connect to the server.Any problems with the server? asks fish.“I don’t think so, but it’s turned off right now.”Fish: I have a suggestion … To read this article in full, please click here

Samsung recently announced its second-generation Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G and Microsoft announced its Surface Duo foldable devices. Others have tried foldables in the past with limited success (LG, Huawei, Motorola), so why push these out these now?The market for smartphones has gone tepid, with overall sales falling (and not just because of COVID-19). With little incentive to upgrade due to a lack of major compelling new features, couple with increasing prices on premium smartphones, people are keeping their devices longer. (This is true for both Android and iOS phones.)[ Keep up on the latest thought leadership, insights, how-to, and analysis on IT through Computerworld’s newsletters. ] Users who once kept their devices for an average of 12 to 18 months now routinely stretch that out to a more PC-like 24 to 36 months. Vendors believe, rightly so, that new and innovative products will drive sales in an otherwise saturating market – Apple has played this strategy well over the years. And innovative new products like foldables can drive a renewed interest and increase sales.To read this article in full, please click here

Apple released two new Apple Watches, new generations of the iPad and iPad Air and new subscription services and plans at its Time Flies event on September 15. Macworld senior writer Michael Simon and Computerworld executive editor Ken Mingis join Juliet to discuss highlights and how new releases compare to previous generations. Plus, is the iPad Air as good as the iPad Pro for enterprise use? And when can you expect to see the iPhone 12 and new MacBook events?  To read this article in full, please click here

Apple on Wednesday upgraded Safari for Mac owners running macOS Catalina or macOS Mojave, giving those users a new browser before releasing the Big Sur operating system refresh.Safari 14 can be downloaded by selecting "System Preferences" from the Apple menu, then clicking on the "Software Update" icon.[ Related: 9 steps to lock down corporate browsers ] The browser will also be bundled with macOS 11, aka Big Sur, which has yet to be given a release date. This week's upgrade targets users who will, whether permanently or temporarily, stick with 2019's Catalina or 2018's Mojave.To read this article in full, please click here

I get it. You’re one of those enterprises that doesn’t (yet) support Apple products among employees, but does that moratorium extend to the C-suite? I’m willing to bet it does not, and that’s why even Windows-only IT must learn how to secure Apple’s products.Ignore the fantasy, this is reality The reality is that Apple’s products are popular in the enterprise. And while there are many businesses that don’t officially support them, one section of civic society that pretty much always do their own thing no matter what they ask others to do are the boys and girls in the C-suite. I can still recall the number of CFO’s I spoke with early on in the iPad days who were deeply interested in trying the Apple tablet. Many did.To read this article in full, please click here

The 2019 calendar year will long be remembered in the eyes of public market watchers as the year of WeWork. Once billed as the most valuable startup in the United States, the company unraveled in dramatic fashion after filing its S-1 with the SEC, thanks to numerous issues with the company's business model and management practices.This event, along with a succession of dud listings from such big names as Slack and Uber, spooked the markets, with IPO registration withdrawals up almost 50 percent in 2019, according to research firm Renaissance Capital. This left a sizeable backlog of potential listings for 2020, with the holiday rental company Airbnb headlining that list.To read this article in full, please click here

Who doesn't want more bandwidth?I sure do, and I currently have 300Mbps to my home office via Spectrum cable. What I really want is a Gigabit via fiber optic to my doorstep. Maybe I'll get it someday. But, what I do know for a fact is I'm not going to get Gigabit-per-second speeds from 5G. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.At the moment, there are a lot of things the telecomms are telling you in one ad after another that's just not true. I know – shocking news right? But, even by their standards, 5G is pretty bogus.[ Related: Enterprise mobility 2020: In a pandemic, UEM to the rescue ] Let's start with the name itself. There is no single "5G." There are, in fact, three different varieties, with very different kinds of performance.To read this article in full, please click here

Don't look now, but Chrome OS is about to undergo the biggest and most transformative change in the platform's history.It's something we've actually been hearing about since April but that's just starting to take shape publicly for the first time this week. And while its practical, surface-level significance is without a doubt massive, the philosophical effect of the shift may be the most monumental of all.Buckle up, gang. We've got some seriously deep thinking to do.Chrome OS and the browser foundation We'll go beyond the surface to explore the next-level impact of this move in a second — but first, let's address the basics of what's happening here and why it matters from a practical perspective. Google, in case you haven't heard, is working on an ambitious plan to separate Chrome the browser from Chrome OS the operating system. As it stands now, Chrome itself is an integral part of Chrome OS. It's built right into the operating system. And that creates a couple of unfortunate challenges.To read this article in full, please click here

A majority of IT administrators polled this summer said that the twice-a-year Windows 10 feature upgrades are not useful – or rarely so – a stunning stance considering how much effort Microsoft puts into building the updates.About 58% of nearly 500 business professionals who are responsible for servicing Windows at their workplaces said that Windows 10 feature upgrades – two annually, one each in the spring and fall – were either not useful (24%) or rarely useful (34%).[ Related: Windows 10 version 2004: Key enterprise features ] Only 20% contended that the upgrades were useful in some fashion, while a slightly larger chunk – 22% – choose a noncommittal neutral as a response, claiming that the operating system's updates were neither useful nor not useful. (It might be best to consider this answer as undecided since in this binary world if something is not not useful, that must mean it is useful.)To read this article in full, please click here

As anticipated, Apple recently announced new watches, iPads and services and you can read all about these products in a few minutes here, but two announcements stand out as particularly interesting for enterprise users: iPad Air 4 and the A14 Bionic processor it contains.A breath of iPad Air Apple’s fourth gen iPad Air was the star of the show, primarily because the tablet now contains Apple’s most powerful A14 processor, which isn’t yet available in any other product including the iPad Pro or iPhone. It will be in future.To read this article in full, please click here

It’s been a big week for Airtable and its customizable spreadsheet platform. On top of unveiling new features designed to boost its automation, low-code and team collaboration cred, the San Francisco, Ca.-based company unveiled $185 million in series D funding.To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)