Right now you have 3 large players in the device OS marketplace.

You have Android, Apple and Microsoft, in order of the number of devices.

Apple is content, they are raking in profits like no other computing business has ever done, and are not particularly interested in "taking over the market" as they already own all the parts they want.

Apple could take more, by having a less expensive line of laptops and phones, and they have been considering this move for years now but haven't quite decided to go do it yet.

Google has been all hung up with its two part Android/Chrome approach for YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS too long.   Plus, Google has been running around playing Switzerland and being all Budda-like all over the place instead of being a competitor.  This was a big mistake.  By stupidly waiting for MS to completely finish all their Win 10 moves, Google has just about guaranteed themselves the loser position in PC/laptop space and may well lose their mobile crown as well, with mobile going to Apple.  

Google, excuse me Alphabet, is too occupied with their internal stuff right now to watch the baby.

Microsoft is acting like a competitor again and they are moving more and more quickly into taking chunks of market share that they see hanging out there unattended.   By in essence "taking over" their own customers machines Microsoft has begun a Gengis Khan type move back into the marketplace that they had once owned 100%.

Microsoft is the only computing company NOT DISTRACTING ITSELF trying to build a car right now.   Apple and Google are both occupied with these sorts of "exterior distractions" that are turning out to be a lot more distracting than they thought they would be.

Right now, the ones moving quickly and seizing opportunities IN COMPUTING goes like this.   Microsoft, Google, Apple

If Microsoft gets its Gengis on, look to see Google get bashed up pretty good both by its internal restructuring woes and a strategic lawsuit or two (prompted again by MS behind the scenes).

Google is a bunch of very smart people who have just been playing at what they want to do, as opposed to a revitalized MS who is coming out of all their Win 10 disasters as a well sharpened spiked instrument totally focused on gutting their competition and having a honed ability to rewrite whatever is needed to do just that.   And the chutzpah to just throw it out there 3/4 written and to fix it on the fly.   And totally "owning" their customer base, so loyalty is not an issue, even when flogging the peasants fairly frequently the way they are currently doing with their constant nightly faulty updates.

Google has a better set of people, and writes better code that works better when it is released, but they are very very LATE coming out of the gate and MS may actually fix their stuff before Google even gets into motion good.

I look to see Android lose market share to a "zero initial cost" MS Win 10 product group, as MS is focused on making that happen RIGHT NOW and Google is still floundering about "restructuring" again.

Unless Google has indeed written something really good in the past two years they have been "working on it" then Google and Android are doomed to lose their first place position to Microsoft (PC side) and to Apple (mobile side).

Furthermore, the new Alphabet soup group is going to wind up being lots of small competitors which will each separately not really have the traction to win anything going out into the future.

Google as a whole was a force to be reckoned with, Alphabet soup, not so much.

Apple and Qualcomm are now testing 10nm pilot runs off of the Samsung process and the TSMC process in order to correctly award next year's production orders.

Rumor has it that low yields and overheating issues exist with at least one of these sets of submissions.   Enough so to make it necessary to get a fresh large production sample from both companies, letting them fix everything they can in the meanwhile.

A smart company (and Apple is a smart company, as is Qualcomm) will also be doing risk analysis on this new lithography level to see if it could possibly bite them in the ass like 20nm TSMC did for the Qualcomm 810 year before last with its rampant overheating  (which was never totally fixed by TSMC, btw).

Apple, if not satisfied that 10nm is a good "smart" move from either vendor can certainly stop at 14nm level and simply wait until the non-silicone 7nm stuff is ready in 3 years.   Or, both ARM and Apple can redesign their chipsets to a massively multicore arrangement, to help with the 10nm overheating issues.

NOTE:   APPLE JUST ANNOUNCED A HEXACORE PRODUCT DESIGN FOR PHONES AND AN OCTACORE DESIGN FOR TABLETS/LAPTOPS

The monkey is now squarely on the backs of Samsung and TSMC to make their 10nm performance/heat yields and actual performance levels pay off correctly.   And they HAVE TO BEAT THE OVERHEATING ISSUES or else come clean on the overheat slow down curve that their version of 10nm actually has to have so the chipsets can be correctly redesigned.

Intel finally had to take this path with their overheating 14nm chipsets, finally having to develop correct specification curves for cooling and performance that actually reflected what they were really actually shipping.

Intel NEVER COULD FIX their 14nm overheating slow down issues, they simply spec'd them correctly in the published product specs.    And they correctly spec'd some serious chip cooling as part of the performance curve sales package.    Intel now markets 14nm as a battery saver, not as a performance improvement.

10nm ARM may have to do the same.   A possible dodge is to go massively multi-core at the ARM 10nm design level, to keep each individual core's temperature down at a reasonable heat level.  

A part of this trick will be the supporting ARM bios software, able to rapidly switch out the tasks assigned to an overheated core to a cooler core.   Since many phone tasks are only 1-2 threads deep, a 6-8 core chipset could move things around to cooler cores in a round robin fashion to keep the throughput up higher.  

Good chipset cooling DESIGN REQUIREMENTS would be needed as well.


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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/xiaomi-flagship-smartphones-pack-mediatek-chip-10-co...

Late breaking design news from Mediatek and Qualcomm as they try to design some massively multicore chipsets that will work well on into 2016 and 2017 and be able to bump down the lithography shrinks for those years  ......

"Qualcomm, in contrary, is also said to be planning for a new SoC featuring the deca-core processor dubbed Snapdragon 818, in a bid to compete with MediaTek's Helio X20. Qualcomm's upcoming chip is expected to support LTE-Cat 10 speeds.

Designed to be used in top-notch mobile devices, the Helio X20 is the world's first mobile processor incorporating Tri-Cluster CPU architecture, with 10 processing cores. The company has confirmed that the chipset would be ready by third quarter of this year and available in consumer products by the end of the year."

Qualcomm has a 4 core chipset that is a horsepower chipset, but it sounds like it won't translate well at 10nm with the thermal constraints, so Qualcomm is going to go massively multicore to beat the heat .....

Sounds like they've hit a wall.
The wall is no longer can we make it smaller, but how many electrons do we need to flip this switch.

Believe it or not, Chrome OS has many vocal fans.   It only pulls down 3-5% of all computing devices, but it bulks "large" in new low end laptop sales for the last 3 years running.

It also has a fairly strong lock on Education right now, holding a majority market share there.

It is beloved for what it does well, easy installation and minimal maintenance by instructors, with only one computer geek being required in each elementary school.

Google has now come forward saying Chrome for Education will only gain a few new features, not convert and become Android per se.

Android will get more Chrome features as far as resizeable windows, ease of keyboard and mouse use goes ..... and they can have the stronger Chrome security system and the no hassle update system too.

Blend the billion or so individual loaded Android apps with Chrome's ease of use and Chrome's really VERY GOOD security structure ......  then give it a new name that won't alienate either group.

Here is the trick -- Android is really quite Organic now and nobody is going to do anything in Organic Android that they don't want to do.  

If Google goes odd places, they will go there by themselves.

Chrome OS is more of an ecosystem, complete and whole -- Google can sway that ecosystem, but will quickly find out that the Open Chromium Project means that folks don't have to follow bad moves there either.

Android has some historical things in it that gets them sued periodically --- this would be a good time to lose those things and use the Chrome bits instead.    

It would be nice if nobody had to pay MS their Android "or I'll sue you" extortion tax any more ......

Food for thought ...... by inference Google is saying by 2017 you can simply dock your midrange to upper range Android phone and use it as your PC to run your keyboard, mouse, controller and big screen.

Will Steam (games being the only real reason to use MS) come to the new Android?   Yeperoo.   It is a no brainer since it is already available for Android.

Now you understand MS's latest big fixation with buying some sort of controlling interest in GAMES.    They MUST control premium games, or they are gone in 5 years.

So, in two short years, the world may sort itself out into "everybody else" and MS .... with MS being by far the lesser item.   If Google does it smart, this "everybody else" will be a huge mass of organic contributors who, as a whole, run things but willingly adhere to the skeleton rules Google keeps up with.


   
Steamboxes are out and shipping in quantity this Christmas -- folks who don't want to upgrade their Xbox or Sony Play station for the umpteenth time can simply buy a Steambox from a competitive variety of suppliers for similar to less money.

The good news is Gabe is telling the game developers to write ports of all their big games for his Steam machines.    If they do this, they automatically write Linux Mint ports as well.   This is good for us old farts as MS is going to drive us all to Linux eventually with their unbridled greed and ever changing EULA rules.

Some few big game houses are still under exclusivity agreements with Xbox/Microsoft.    Very few houses write solely for Playstation/Sony any more.    

This "restricted" age is ending ......   finally.

http://liliputing.com/2015/11/hp-chromebook-with-4gb-ram-fhd-display-now-avai...

HP responds to WSJ article by releasing an upgraded Chromebook

As expected, HP’s fourth-generation Chromebooks are now available, and as expected, they sell for $249 and up.

But the sweet spot is probably the $280 model. Because that version has 4GB of RAM and a 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display, making it one of the most affordable Chrome OS laptops with those features.

Best Buy is selling the $280 Chromebook in two colors: Silver and Sky Blue.



The cheaper model has a matte 1366 x 768 pixel display and 2GB of RAM.

Both models feature Intel Celeron N2940 quad-core Bay Trail processors, and 16GB of eMMC flash storage.

The notebooks measure about 0.7 inches thick and weigh about 3.7 pounds. Other features include 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth, a full-sized HDMI port, a microSD card slot, two USB 2.0 ports and a USB 3.0 port with sleep and charge support (allowing you to charge your phone or other device even when the laptop is sleeping)

Art,

You have an atypical set up with no router and no home LAN and nothing except a AT&T skate board with its single connector jack.   Chromebooks, although desirable to you are not consistent with your connection/environment.

Some of what you struggle with is the atypical nature of your set up, which isn't going to change without you moving and getting a internet company instead of a phone company as your provider.   Right now you lack choices in the matter, as you only get it one way (the phone company way).    They can hook you up, but count on it costing you beau coup dinero when they do it.

Something for you to check into is a WIFI or mobile "HOT SPOT" which is a small box you can get from your provider to give you a WIFI hot spot in your house.

The price for such varies, with T-Mobile being dirt cheap, Sprint less cheap and AT&T being down right rapish last time I looked.

Want a cheap ebook setup?  well, remember that RCA Pro 10.1 I got and still have? (It is running great by the way, and I use it every time I go out to appointments or will be away from the house for awhile)

Walmart has them for $69.99 right now, except its the RCA Pro II 10.1 which runs 5.0 lollipop in place of 4.4 kit kat. (android)

I ordered one up for the wife and will get it next week, and I will do an unboxing (I will need to set it up for her accounts) video and put it up on you tube, and will link it here.

Its her Christmas present, i'm not sure I will be able to hide it though, LOL

http://www.walmart.com/ip/44185467?productRedirect=true