DTNS WEEKLY - THESE AREN'T THE MB PROS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

DTNS WEEKLY TECH UPDATE 11/03/2016

Hey all, thanks for reading! This is the weekly newsletter companion to Daily Tech News Show at http://dailytechnewsshow.com/
You can get this newsletter by backing DTNS for $5 a month or more at http://patreon.com/dtns

This week we in a closer look I explain what we think Apple is doing with it's MacBook Pro line. But first, this week's Biggest Stories-- in case you missed it:

CenturyLink agrees to buy Level3
Microsoft announces Slack competitor
Google reveals Windows vulnerability
Facebook beats its earnings warns on future profits
Huawei announces mate 9
US Library of Congress implements auto repair exemption
Secure cryptocurrency Zcash launches


CenturyLink has agreed to buy Level 3 Communications to create the number two global enterprise networking company after AT&T. Netflix and Google use Level 3 to transit Internet traffic and it holds 200,000 route miles of fibre in metro areas and undersea routes connecting continents. CenturyLink has six million residential customers in the US but makes around 76% of its revenue from enterprise customers. The companies hope to complete the merger by Q3 2017, pending FCC approval.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/centurylink-to-buy-level-3-get-another-200000-miles-of-fiber/

Microsoft announced its Slack-like product-- Microsoft Teams-- Wednesday. Subscribers to Office 365 can use Teams to chat and collaborate. It has threaded conversations and a sidebar with things like meetings, files, chat, and activity notifications. The main Office apps, Skype, PowerBI, SharePoint and Planner are all integrated into Teams. Microsoft is making Teams extensible with open APIs and its own bot framework. Slack itself published a full page ad in the New York Times with advice for Microsoft on competing with it.     

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/2/13497992/microsoft-teams-slack-competitor-features

Monday, Google's Threat Analysis Group disclosed a critical Windows vulnerability on their security blog, 10 days after it was disclosed to Microsoft. The vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild. It exploits a flaw in the win32k system, in conjunction with another Flash exploit, to escape secure sandboxes. Google patched Chrome against the vulnerability, but Microsoft has not yet patched Windows. Google gives companies at least 60 days to patch vulnerabilities unless it is being actively exploited. Then the time falls to seven days.    

http://fortune.com/2016/11/01/google-microsoft-adobe-zero-day-vulnerability/

Facebook reported $7.01 billion in revenue and earning per share of $1.09 with 1.79 billion monthly users, up 4.6%. Daily active users rose from 1.13 to 1.18 billion, up 17% year over year, all of that soundly beating analysts' expectations. Facebook estimated its efforts to circumvent ad blockers boosted desktop ad revenue by 18% but mobile now makes up 84% of Facebook's ad revenue. Facebook did warn that growth would slow in Q4 due to limits on how many ads Facebook can serve in the News Feed.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/02/facebook-earnings-q3-2016/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/02/add-cash-plus/

Huawei announced its 5.9-inch Mate 9 phone with a 1080 x 1920 screen. It's 7.9 mm thick with a fingerprint reader on the back with dual Leica 4K cameras one above the other rather than side by side. It has a 4,000 mAh battery, 64 GB of storage plus a microSD card slot, 4GB of RAM, USB-C, and an octa-core Kirin 960 processor. Huawei also runs its Emotional UI on top of Android Nougat. It sells for €699 or €1,395 for the Porsche design.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13477424/huawei-mate-9-unveiled-specs-pictures

Last Friday the US Library of Congress put in force an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act allowing users to circumvent copyright protection in order to modify and repair their vehicles and tractors. Researchers can also report bugs to automakers without violating the DMCA. The exemption expires in two years.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/modders-rejoice-its-legal-to-tweak-your-cars-software-now/#ftag=CAD590a51e

Zcash launched its cryptocurrency offering Friday. Investors seem to think Zcash's ZEC tokens could match Bitcoin in value by the end of the year because investors are so excited to buy ZEC. A bit of circular logic, we know. Zcash uses its own protocol called Zerocash which offers anonymous coins called zerocoins and non-anonymous coins called Basecoins. Zerocash uses a zero-knowledge proof called a zk-SNARK, which allows two parties to provide each other with verified information without revealing their identities in the process. This hides the sender, recipient and value from anyone not holding a view key. The intensive proofs requires for zero knowledge proofs may make it difficult to scale.

http://www.coindesk.com/investors-going-crazy-new-digital-currency-called-zcash/


CLOSER LOOK - THESE AREN'T THE PROS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR

We had a really good conversation Thursday about what Apple is doing with its MacBook Pro line, and while I hesitate to say we cracked it, I think we hit on a likely scenario.

1. Apple is trying very hard to make inroads in serving the client side of the enterprise. Apple has partnered with IBM and more recently Deloitte.

2. Apple knows the laptop market is declining, so they need to target the people likely to actually still want to buy a laptop. That leaves off the low-end folks who will but smartphones and tablets. And honestly leaves off the high-end folks who will buy high-end desktop machines.

3. Apple needs models that will be bought by the majority of the people left in the middle of the market. That means that even though there are some people who want high-end laptops, they don't constitute a high enough numbers to make a model specifically for them.

4. That leaves middle management, product managers, sales associates and plenty of developers who don't need huge graphic cards, who will still pay the Apple premium for the reliability of the OS and the sturdy industrial design.

5. What it leaves out is Apple's most vociferous fans: the Apple geeks, if you will. They want max RAM, top graphics, and user-swappable hard drives. They are me. And Apple can't afford to target them anymore. Or at least our guess is that Apple doesn't think they can afford it.

And that is the conclusion we came to. Some people are upset that the Mac Book Pros aren't professional enough. But Apple may just be changing what they mean by pro. You're looking for a pro laptop that has top of the line specs in it. These aren't the pros you're looking for.