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Apple's third-generation AirPods fall back to $150
You can now grab Apple's third-generation AirPods at Amazon for just $150, a significant 16 percent ($29) off the regular price
Switched On: The iPad's landscape orientation
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. The two major classes of tablet seeking to grab a share of the iPad's market have in many ways been driven by operating system advances. Windows 8 will bring the new Metro user interface and ARM support to allow what has historically been the more powerful PC class to scale down. Android 4.0 unifies the platform's tablet and smartphone operating systems, encouraging it to take better advantage of the larger screen capabilities and scale up.Indeed, the full potential of the new iPad won't be known until the release of iOS 6 to fuel Apple's historically tight pairing of hardware and software; that other shoe will likely drop at its developer conference in June. Despite the lack of a new operating system or form factor, the third-generation iPad and its now price-reduced predecessor have set the stage for how Apple plans to defend against Android and Windows tablets.
MS opens in-house chip lab for Xbox 720
The NY Times reports that Microsoft is ending its partnership with IBM to found it's own chip design lab to work on chips for a planned third generation Xbox:The design effort will initially be split between research labs at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., and its Silicon Valley campus here. Tentatively named the Computer Architecture Group, the project underscores sweeping changes in the industry. One reason for the effort is that Microsoft needs to begin thinking about the next-generation design of its Xbox game console, said Charles P. Thacker, a veteran engineer and Microsoft engineer who will head the Silicon Valley group. Voice recognition may also be an area where the research could play a significant role. Thacker is famous in certain circles for his work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The division will be called the "Comupter Architecture Group" which isn't the snazziest name ever, but then, neither was IBM.
