Month: January 2019

Enlarge / Artist's estimate of how small the rumored Nintendo Switch revision might look, based on a Nikkei report. (To be clear, this image is sarcastic.) (credit: Aurich / Walt Disney Pictures)

Nintendo's rumored plans to produce a revised Nintendo Switch model picked up steam on Thursday with a tantalizing bit of new information. Last year's rumor mill simply predicted a new model could arrive in 2019, but a Japanese report has narrowed fans' expectations based on its sources' intel: Nintendo may have a new SKU with portability and price, not power, in mind. (And the news outlet uncovered one other possible "service" to come as well.)

The report from official stock exchange news outlet Nikkei.com (helpfully translated by Nintendo Everything) cites a combination of hardware partners and game developers who all suggest the next Switch model will be "miniaturized." The resulting system will reportedly emphasize "portability" and "playing outside," and it will "cut features" to bring the retail price down.

Nikkei's report does not include more specifics, which still leaves plenty of questions about this rumored SKU. If we add up the details offered by Nikkei, though, we can guess that one of its cut features might be the removal of a bundled Switch TV Dock; this product can currently be purchased separately at an MSRP of $89.99. Cutting that combination of chipset, plastic mold, and increased box size and weight would be the easiest way to reduce the system's current $299.99 MSRP.

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  Fig. 1: The Switch isn't quite matching the Wii's record-setting sales pace, but it is outpacing most other consoles at this point in their cycles.

With two full holiday seasons of public sales data now under its belt, the Nintendo Switch continues to help right a company balance sheet that was nearly decimated by the Wii U. Last night, Nintendo reported 9.41 million Switch shipments in the holiday 2018 quarter, contributing to 32.27 million consoles shipped worldwide since the system's March 2017 launch.

Those numbers sure sound big, but they can be hard to judge in the abstract. So, as we have done in the past, we decided to provide some quick comparisons that put the Switch's continued success into the proper context. Use these numbers to calibrate your impression of how well Nintendo's new system is really doing and to adjust your projections of how it may do going forward (as Nintendo has).

(Lifetime sales measure slightly different calendar periods due to staggered release dates through the year, but all include two holiday seasons. Monthly periods rounded up for partial launch months).

Windows has a pretty poor reputation when it comes to error messages. All too often you'll get a meaningless hexadecimal number or perhaps a reference to a Knowledge Base article. The Windows setup process used for upgrading to each major Windows feature update is a good example of this; it detects and diagnoses a wide range of incompatibility issues prior to performing the installation but does very little to help Windows users actually resolve any of the problems that it finds, instead preferring to leave them with obscure codes.

The next major Windows release, the Windows 10 April 2019 Update (codenamed 19H1), is going to offer some significant improvements in this area. Microsoft described them on its Windows Insider webcast, and they were spotted initially by WinFuture. Currently, the best case during installation is something like this screen:

There's no clear description of the compatibility problem that's blocking the installation, and neither the back nor the refresh button is particularly useful. (credit: Microsoft)

The message says that an incompatible application is detected, and a Knowledge Base article is referenced. It turns out that most Windows users don't know what "KBxxxxxxx" actually means, and the article isn't hyperlinked to make accessing it any easier. Issues detected through the other setup experience aren't much better. Windows will offer to uninstall problem applications, but often the better solution is to upgrade the application in question.

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks about the new Apple headquarters during a media event in Cupertino, California, on September 12, 2017. (credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Last July, we reported that federal prosecutors had arrested a man for stealing secrets from Apple's self-driving car project and attempting to take them to a new job at a Chinese startup. This week, another man was arrested under very similar circumstances.

Apple hired Jizhong Chen last June to work on its self-driving car project, which employs around 1,200 people. According to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI, Chen began taking photographs of confidential Apple information almost immediately. A June 20 image found on Chen's personally owned computer showed "an Apple-designed wiring harness for an autonomous vehicle."

Apple didn't catch on to Chen's alleged espionage activities until January 11, when another Apple employee spotted him snapping pictures inside a secure Apple workspace. He thought that was suspicious and alerted Apple security. Apple investigators interviewed Chen and secured permission to examine his personally owned computer, hard drive, and smartphone.

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai speaking at a press conference on October 1, 2018, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Mark Wilson )

Oral arguments in the case against Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal are scheduled for Friday morning, and net neutrality advocates are confident that they will be victorious.

The groups that sued the Federal Communications Commission to reverse the repeal argue that Pai offered insufficient legal justification for deregulating the broadband industry.

The Obama-era net neutrality rules, which were upheld in court in 2016, relied on the FCC's Title II authority over telecommunications services. When it eliminated the net neutrality rules, Pai's FCC argued that broadband is not a telecommunications service and that it should be treated instead as a lightly regulated information service.