Tech Updates

Technology giant Microsoft has unveiled its third- generation Surface Pro 3 device with a larger surface area than its previous model but weighing lighter than a MacBook Air and expects it to replace laptops. The launch of the 12-inch Surface Pro 3 in New York city on Tuesday comes less than a year after Microsoft brought out the Surface Pro 2, which received positive reviews for being a powerful PC inside a tablet form factor but has struggled to gain traction in the market. The company announced the launch at its "small" Surface event, but didn't launch the Surface Mini rumored to debut at the presentation. "This is the tablet that can replace your laptop," said Panos Panay, corporate VP of Microsoft. Microsoft has its eyes set on getting business professionals on board with its new design. "Surface Pro 3 is a tablet and a laptop: multiple processor, RAM and storage options intersect with a sleek design that, with a simple snap or cl...

Google’s day-one keynote from the 2012 I/O developer conference has officially wrapped up. We’ll have plenty of analysis directly from the show, but here’s a quick look at what’s been announced so far. Nexus 7 Tablet Google officially unveiled  the $199 Nexus 7 tablet , built by Asus. Its feature list is as follows: Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system 7-inch, 1280×800-resolution touchscreen Quad-core Tegra 3 chipset with a 12-core graphics processor 8GB of storage (16GB version available for $249) Front-facing camera Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC Nine hours of HD video playback Weighs 0.75 pounds Google says the Nexus 7 tablet is “optimized for Google Play” – meaning it’s geared toward consuming music, movies, games, books, magazines and more. The feature-set and price tag will certainly put a whole lot of pressure on similarly-priced (but less powerful) 7-inch tablets like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s able...

Several of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s comments made during an interview this week at Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital D10 Conference could be taken as further indication of an  upcoming iPad Mini release . Quick Background The current round of rumors and speculation regarding Apple coming out with an iPad Mini in 2012 is increasing to a fever pitch. Apple’s supply chain has systematically done its job as far as “leaking” to South Korea, China and Taiwan media just enough info to keep the discussion going, and growing, regarding a 7-8 inch iPad.  There are now close to 10 million mentions of “iPad Mini” on the Internet, according to Google’s search engine. Market Conditioning There’s now only one major task left that Apple must accomplish from a market-conditioning standpoint prior to it announcing the release date for the iPad Mini, and it’s a little tricky.  And it has to be done in stages. And that is to help people understand that  Steve Jobs would have be...

After Samsung tried to offer the public a rival for Siri, now LG comes up with its very own solution called LG Quick Voice. LG announced this intelligent voice recognition system today and you should know that it’s coming to various Android phones and the few tablets that LG has sold so far. The Optimus Vu phablet is also among the devices to get it and that will happen this month. The LG Optimus LTE II will get it in July. Quick Voice offers the ability to make phone calls, send texts and emails, search the web, set alarms and make calendar appointments, everything by using voice commands, instead of having to tap the screen or type. Having screen Samsung’s S Voice in action I can say it’s underwhelming and I expect better from LG through Quick Voice. Siri’s recent evolution through iOS 6.0 demands a real rival before things get out of hand and Apple controls the voice command/recognition area as well. Rumors also say that Google is working on its own voice solution, codenamed Maje...

The Online Publishers Association (OPA) released a new study that examines the attitudes of today’s tablet users. It also shows the iOS and Android tablet usage level and I must mention that the number of people who own iPads versus Android tablets has evened from 72% versus 32% to 52% versus 51% this year. The Kindle Fire contributed greatly to this increase. As you can see, the iPad 2 is still the most popular iOS slate, with 31%, followed by the original iPad, at 22% and the iPad 3 at 8%. Kindle Fire has 28%, followed by some Galaxy Tab model with 13% (unless all the Galaxy Tabs are lumped in together) and other Android models with 10%. At 9% we find the Nook from B&N, while the HP TouchPad gets a surprising 8%. Overall tablet usage for accessing the Internet has grown to 31% in the USA, a jump from last year’s 12%. This means that there are now 74 million more tablet users and the predictions say that this adoption rate will continue, reaching 47% penetration by 2013. Right ...

On a wonderfully bright Monday afternoon in Hollywood, Steve Ballmer,  Microsoft’s ( MSFT )  chief executive officer, appeared at an art and film studio to deliver what looks like Microsoft’s finest, most controversial product in ages. In fact, it’s a family of products—a line of “Surface” tablet computers aimed at both consumers and workers. As it does with the Xbox, Microsoft has opted to make the Surface tablets—both hardware and software—on its own. This stands as a huge affront to Microsoft’s longtime PC partners. Making matters worse, the Surface products look far better than anything else the PC makers have shown to date on the tablet front. Even  Apple ( AAPL )  has been put on notice, if the hoots and hollers from the event were any indication. The first Surface device shown weighs about 1.5 pounds and is 9 mm thick. A second, the Surface Pro, is slightly thicker and heavier. Both tablets come with a built-in kickstand, so you can stand them up to watch mov...