Weekly recap

Weekly Tech Recap - № 227 - Galaxy Tab S6, Mackenzie Book, ThinkTiny, Azure Dedicated Host and drone delivery safety

By Laurent Gloaguen,

August 2, 2019.

Galaxy Tab S6

Galaxy Tab S6. © Sambung.

Though the market for Android tablets has not been very kind to Samsung, the company perseveres. It has announced a high-end tablet, the US$ 650 Galaxy Tab S6. The device, which has kept the 10.5-inch Super AMOLED display (2,560 × 1,600 pixels), features a Snapdragon 855 2.84 GHz processor, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The S6 is the first Samsung tablet with an in-screen fingerprint reader and also the first to get rid of the audio jack (even Apple hasn’t ventured this on its iPads). It is equipped with two rear-facing cameras, one a 13Mpx (f/2.0) and the other a 5Mpx with a wide-angle lens (f/2.2), plus a front-facing 8MP camera. Of course, the tablet comes with an S Pen. The design choice to magnetically affix it to the back of the device is questionable. Pre-orders for the Galaxy Tab S6 begin August 23rd and the device will deliver on September 6th. An LTE-connected model will be available later.

⇨ YouTube, “Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Hands-On: Keyboard and S Pen improvements.”

⇨ Ars Technica, “Samsung won’t let Android tablets die, announces the Galaxy Tab S6.”

Mac Book recommends the Microsoft Laptop

Mackenzie Book. © Microsoft.

There’s a cheeky Microsoft advertisement going around that somehow revives the Get a Mac saga that pitted a Mac (played by Justin Long) against a PC (John Hodgman). Surface’s ad creatives found an Australian actor named Mackenzie Book ... “Mac” Book, get it? The whole schtick is based on Mac Book asserting that the new Surface Laptop 2 is much better than the MacBook Air. A mischievous voice-over asks Mac Book which is the most powerful device. Not surprisingly, the young man points out that the Surface Laptop 2 lasts longer and is more powerful than the MacBook Air, which doesn’t even have a touch screen! Mr. Book’s interview ends with: “You should get a Surface. Trust me, I’m Mac Book.” Agreed, this ad won’t win international prizes, nor the Lion award at the Cannes Advertising Festival, but it might get a smile from even the most devoted Apple fan.

⇨ YouTube, “Meet Mackenzie “Mac” Book.”

⇨ The Verge, “Microsoft’s new Mac vs. PC ad gets a guy named ‘Mac Book’ to diss Apple.”

ThinkPad miniaturized

ThinkTiny. © Paul Klinger.

ThinkTiny is a miniature game console that picks up the ThinkPad design with the iconic red TrackPoint nub as a joystick. Based on an ATtiny1614 microcontroller by Microchip (8 bit, 2KB RAM, 16KB of storage), this Paul Klinger creation allows you to play classic titles such as Snake, Tetris and Lunar Lander on a 128 x 68 pixel OLED display. ThinkTiny is not intended for commercial release, if only because of potential lawsuits from Lenovo, but its creator generously made the code available on GitHub. Also posted are the blueprints for 3D printing and the necessary Gerber files to manufacture the circuit board.

⇨ YouTube, “ThinkTiny - A miniature laptop.”

⇨ Gizmodo, “This extremely tiny gaming laptop recreates the ThinkPad’s iconic nipple as a joystick.”

Azure Dedicated Host

Microsoft announced the release of Azure Dedicated Host. It gives you the option of leasing a physical server just for yourself to host one or more Azure virtual machines. This means that you don’t share any resources on this server with anyone else and you have full control over what is running on that machine. Azure Dedicated Host supports Windows, Linux, and SQL Server virtual machines. The price is calculated per host, regardless of the number of virtual machines you’re running. You can choose from different machines to suit your needs, with up to 144 physical cores and prices starting at US$ 4.04 an hour. You can add licenses that are also time-based (Windows 10, BizTalk, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP, Suse Linux Enterprise Server, SQL Server, Ubuntu Advantage). Microsoft says these new dedicated hosts can help companies meet their compliance requirements for physical security, data integrity, and monitoring.

⇨ TechCrunch, “Microsoft Azure now lets you have a server all to yourself.”

Drone delivery safety

Drone delivery is not yet fully developed and this raises legitimate questions about safety. For example, Swiss Post suspended its pilot drone-delivery project following a second crash. For nearly a year, Swiss Post and California startup Matternet were working on a drone delivery service in three cities (Zürich, Bern, and Lugano). Laboratory samples were transported between hospitals much faster and more efficiently with drones than with conventional ground transportation. The service had already made approximately 3,000 successful flights when a January 25 uncontrolled landing on Lake Zurich, due to a problem with the GPS unit, put things on hold until April. After the experiment resumed, a second accident in May led Swiss Post to suspend service again, this time for an indefinite period. This case is more worrisome because the 10kg drone crashed after a malfunction of its parachute “in a wooded area of the university district of Zurich, only 50 meters from a group of kindergarten children,” according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

⇨ YouTube, “Transportation of laboratory samples by drone.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “Swiss Post suspends drone delivery service after second crash.”