Texas

Apple and Austin are in business together for the company's new Texas campus, following a vote from the local court.

The Austin-based Statesman newspaper reports that the Travis County Commissioners Court today voted 4-1 in favor of a deal that will give Apple $5.4 million to $6.4 million in tax rebates over the next 15 years as the company constructs a campus that will bring some 3,600 jobs to the area.

The decision comes days after a local official said a deal was "in peril." Concerns were raised about the contract, which remained under … Read more

Apple had every intention of expanding its operations in Austin, Texas, but county officials aren't so sure it's the right move for the city.

Speaking to the Austin-based Statesman newspaper, Dave Porter, senior vice president for economic development at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, said that the deal between the city and Apple is not done, and "remains in peril." Porter went on to tell the newspaper that Apple is now "frustrated" with the recent developments.

Austin announced Apple's plans to put a new campus in the city back in March. At … Read more

Windows 8 running on small devices using chips from Qualcomm, Nvidia, and others is not just a consumer play, as Microsoft made clear in a post this week.

In a blog posted Thursday, "Managing 'BYO' PCs in the enterprise (including WOA)", Mircrosoft's Jeffrey Sutherland, a program manager lead in the company's Management Systems group, addresses the "drive towards consumerization of IT" and how consumer technology is "bleeding into business organizations." In short, employees are bringing their personal laptops, tablets, and smartphones to work rather than using the devices assigned to them by … Read more

Texas Instruments has cut its revenue and earnings outlook for the first quarter, citing weakness in its wireless business and setting off a series of supply chain sleuths.

By the numbers, TI yesterday projected earnings of 15 cents a share to 19 cents a share for the first quarter. TI's previous range was 16 cents a share to 24 cents a share. The company added that its first quarter revenue will be $2.99 billion to $3.11 billion, down from its previous range of $3.02 billion to $3.28 billion.

TI blamed the cuts on "lower … Read more

Would you buy a Windows tablet that doesn't run older Windows applications?

That's the question that keeps dogging me when I see Microsoft demonstrating tablets based on ARM processors from Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia. Tablets with those processors will not run so-called Intel "x86" legacy software (though they will run a full version of Office 15).

Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky wrote about this on February 9. "If you need to run existing x86/64 (Intel-based) software, then you will be best served with Windows 8 on x86/64."

And he reiterated this at … Read more

Microsoft made it clear today why Windows 8 on an Intel-based tablet will be different from competing tablets based on ARM chips.

After speaking in Barcelona for close to an hour today about how Windows 8 on Intel and Windows 8 on ARM (WOA) will be the same, two Microsoft executives addressed, albeit briefly, a much more sensitive topic: why they're also very different.

Windows 8 marks the first time that a mainstream Windows operating system will run on processors from ARM chip suppliers like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia in addition to those from Intel and AMD.

First, … Read more

Will Apple's next iPad reach performance nirvana with a monster quad-core chip? Nirvana, maybe, but not necessarily via quad-core.

But let's put aside whether Apple's latest chip will be quad-core for a minute and look at what others are doing. (See a post at The Verge on this topic too.)

One of the leading lights among ARM processor suppliers is Texas Instruments. They've made it clear that they're not going quad-core this year and not even next year (necessarily) with their first next-gen OMAP5 chips.

In a CES demo, TI showed off the next-gen OMAP5 … Read more

Steve Appleton mirrored the survivalist streak in the company he led.

Micron Technology CEO Appleton died Friday at 51 years old when a high-performance Lancair plane he was piloting crashed at Boise Airport in Idaho.

Lancairs aren't easy to fly. In fact, they're difficult enough that the Federal Aviation Administration gave notice to Lancair operators in 2009 that the planes had a "disproportionate" number of fatal accidents.

Though Lancairs accounted for only 3 percent of the nation's amateur-built airplanes, they accounted for 16 percent of the fatal accidents in the 11 months prior to the … Read more

So, does AMD have a solid Windows 8 tablet strategy this year? I'll let the reader decide, but AMD needs to be extra aggressive on the power-efficient chip front because it's not just an Intel-AMD fight now.

Windows 8 will bring ARM chip players like Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Freescale into the market, presenting AMD with plenty of heavyweight Windows competition.

Earlier in the week, I spoke with John Taylor, director of client product marketing and software at AMD, who cited two major chip designs for tablets, Hondo (2012) and Temash (2013). AMD now calls its chips … Read more