slowdown
Latest
NVIDIA reportedly slows down hiring as it braces for a drop in gaming sales
A slowing economy continues to affect the tech industry, as NVIDIA has become the first chipmaker to announce that it will pare back on new hires.
France fines Apple $27 million for slowing down iPhones
France's Competition and Fraud body, DGCCRF, has fined Apple €25 million ($27.3 million) for intentionally slowing the performance of older iPhones. The issue, which centered on battery management, was seen by many as an attempt to force users to upgrade before they needed to. Apple would eventually disclose the feature, but has agreed to pay the fine, and display a press release prominently on its French website.
Justice Dept and SEC are reportedly reviewing Apple’s iPhone slowdowns
In December, Apple admitted to slowing older models of iPhones, saying the practice kept older phones with aging batteries from suddenly rebooting. Apple is now facing multiple lawsuits in the US and abroad as well as an investigation in France. And now, Bloomberg reports, the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into whether the company's handling of the slowdowns violated any securities laws.
US Senator questions Apple about slowing older iPhones
Senator John Thune, chair of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, has sent Apple CEO Tim Cook a letter with questions about the company's decision to slow older models of iPhones, Reuters reports. In December, Apple admitted to slowing older iPhones in order to prevent spontaneous shutdowns and later reduced its battery replacement price to $29 as way of apology for its lack of transparency.
Apple faces two lawsuits over intentional iPhone slowdowns
Well that was quick. Just two days after Apple admitted that it intentionally slowed down older iPhones with older batteries (to prevent sudden unexpected shutdowns), the company is being sued. Both suits claim that Apple does this to force customers into a shortened upgrade cycle.
Sharp to cut LCD production in Osaka plant by half
Remember that brand-spanking new production facility in Sakai City, Osaka that Sharp just christened a few years back? Japan's Nikkei business daily reports that Sharp will be cutting output at that factory by a whopping half for a month or maybe longer -- its second major reduction in a year. The Sakai factory typically makes 1.3 million 40-inch panels per month but was running at 80-90 percent capacity after being idled in April. Sharp continues to be impacted by the same cutthroat competition in the LCD market that has affected Japanese rivals like Hitachi and Sony as the high yen continues to push up pricing for domestically produced goods while dragging down overseas revenues. Sharp, which recently announced its 2012 lineup, is now thinking about reconfiguring the plant to make panels with higher resolutions and other features during the slowdown.
Slow Down app slows down your tunes until you slow down your car (video)
Speeding is easy to do, and like it or not having someone else in the car nagging you about it actually can help. What to do if your mother is unavailable? Check out Slow Down in the App Store. It's a product of the Belgian organization OVK, Parents of Children Killed in Road Accidents, and it has a very simple idea: if you drive too fast it slows down your music, as demonstrated below. Cross the limit and your thumping beats get run through molasses, but get back to a legal speed and Joanna Newsom's lilting highs stop sounding like a zombie's baleful lamentations. We're not entirely sure whether the app works outside of its native land at this point, and given how unreliable the indicated speed limits in navigation software tend to be we're not sure we want it to. But, if you have a bad habit you can't kick, this free app might just help.
Korea institutes nighttime shutdown for underaged MMO players
"You've been playing long enough, it's time to do something else now." It's a statement you'd expect to hear from your parent, but from your government? The Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has introduced a set of policies known as "nighttime shutdown" for underage users -- an enforced six hour blackout time. According to today's report in the Korean Herald, kids can choose the start time for their six hour window -- midnight, 1:00 a.m., or 2:00 a.m., and internet access will automatically shut down at that time for six hours. The point of this new "curfew" of sorts is to help curtail video game addiction among Korean citizens, a problem that's been making headlines off and on for a while. While it's only in the testing phase at the moment -- it affects four games right now, including Dungeon Fighter Online and Dragon Nest -- it will eventually expand to include 19 of the most popular online games in Korea, such as Mabinogi and MapleStory. The new policies aren't limited to nighttime shutdown, either. If an underage player is online for a significant amount of time online, a "slowdown" will come into effect, throttling back the user's connection speed and presumably making it much more difficult to play. You can read the full story in the Korean Herald. [Thanks to Amana for the tip!]
Fixing FPS issues with patch 3.1
A few people are experiencing slowdown issues with patch 3.1, and since our last bit of technical help went over so well, we figured we'd do a little troubleshooting for you on this one, too. If your computer is running slower since you updated into patch 3.1, the first thing to do is check your video options -- Blizzard has tweaked a few things in there, and chances are that by tweaking them again, you might be able to fix your problem (or at least make it a little better). Specifically keep an eye out for the new Video Mode Ultra setting -- that specifically is not designed to be used unless your computer is current and top-of-the-line. Shadows also are quite a drag on the video card and CPU, and turning them down won't affect gameplay that much.If your options are already low, the next thing you might do is check your videocard's make and driver version (scroll down to the "manually" section there -- you don't need to run Intel's program). Nvidia, who makes the common GeForce series of video cards just updated their drivers to version 182.50 on April 2nd, so if you have an earlier version than that, running the update will probably help. If you have an ATI card, you can find the drivers over on their site.And of course if all of your software is set up and you're still having issues, there's always the possibility of updating your hardware. That can be quite an ordeal, though, so if you're not so sure on how to install new RAM or can't recognize the difference between SATA and IDE, you might want to enlist a friendly techie for a little help. WoW is still very forgiving, but Blizzard has been slowly adding on the graphical goodness, so if you've been playing with the same PC since launch four years ago, it might just be time for an upgrade.
Mobile market grinding to a halt in first half, year uncertain overall; Nokia could win
Though wireless is probably better positioned to weather a historically weak economy than many other industries, it's not bulletproof by any stretch of the imagination -- and following years of double-digit year-over-year growth, a slowdown of some sort is all but inevitable. The extent of the slowdown is a subject of endless debate among analysts, with some suggesting year-end contraction as low as 3.5 percent and others saying the market could slow down by as much as 10 percent or more, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that smartphones are best positioned to continue to grow. Interestingly, the changing economic picture seems poised to entrench the big players like Nokia and Samsung and put the little guys even further behind, with Nokia -- despite its forecast of negative growth in '09 -- possibly adding to its already immense share of the global market. Sucks to hear that mobile sales are going downhill along with everything else, but hey, at least smartphones are continuing to win big, and 2009's shaping up to be another breakout year.
Cellphone jammer crammed into key fob, ends texting / talking while driving
Face it, kids. You missed the best time to be a teenager by around five or so years. As it stands now, technology is cutting into that adolescent fun, with device like Ford's MyKey and this one here ensuring that you're actually safe behind the wheel. In all seriousness, the terribly named Key2SafeDriving is a fine concept (at least in the parent's eye), as it fuses a cellphone jammer (of sorts) into a key fob in order to put the kibosh on freeway conversations. Essentially, the signal blocking kicks into action anytime the "key" portion is flicked out, connecting to a handset via Bluetooth or RFID and forcing it into "driving mode." No actual jamming, per se, is going on; it's more like a manual override of the ringer. Anyone who phones / texts you while you're safely driving will receive an automated response informing them of such, though we are told that handsfree devices can be utilized. Researchers at the University of Utah are hoping to see it on the market within six months via a private company "at a cost of less than $50 per key plus a yet-undetermined monthly service fee."[Via Gadgets-Weblog]
Rumor: Starfox 64 update restores historically accurate slowdown?
No word if this is a real issue or a NeoGAF freakout, but if the perfect beauty of one of your Virtual Console games is in danger, it's our solemn duty to report on it. What is known is that Nintendo has issued an updated version of StarFox 64. What isn't known is what it does.NeoGAFfer Nuclear Muffin (judging by the name, a level-headed character) reported that after downloading the update this morning, he found the game slowing down in the same way the original Nintendo 64 version. Again, no idea if this is true, or if it's a delusion created by someone trying to find an effect of this update, but it's terrifying if true.Normally, we're all about accurate presentation of emulated games, but we have no problem with Nintendo fixing the resolution and speed of N64 games, because they totally need it. We really hope they haven't decided to unfix it.
Vista DRM to slow down high-end graphics? [update 1]
We've posted before on how the Vista brand will change the PC gaming market. But how will the OS affect the gameplay experience itself? An in-depth analysis of the operating system's draconian digital rights management features suggests gamers might not be too happy with some of the system's unintended performance effects.The write-up itself is long and rather technical, but the main section of interest to gamers deals with unnecessary CPU resource consumption. Apparently, Vista does a sweep of all computer hardware over 30 times every second to make sure no one is trying to leech a digital video signal through a modification. Besides taking up valuable computing cycles, this method also makes it harder for the computer to perform video decompression, especially in low-end graphics chips.While it remains to be seen how these "features" will actually impact Vista games, the fact that it's even an issue is enough to make us question Microsoft's devotion to Vista gaming. As the analysis' author puts it, "I wonder how [the gaming] market segment will react to knowing that their top-of-the-line hardware is being hamstrung by all of the content-protection "features" that Vista hogties it with?"[Update: Fixed typo in headline][Via Boing Boing]
