Best Buds… 

With smartphone refresh season in full swing, it’s also time to revisit audio accessories. Here are some of the latest in-ear headphones from LG, Sony and Samsung.

LG

The HBS-FN7 features technology from Meridian Audio, the renowned British audio technology company and LG’s trusted partner in delivering superior sound. Powered by Digital Signal Processing, a technology that Meridian has been perfecting for over 25 years, the LG Tone Free FN7 can recreate a realistic soundstage that simulates the experience of listening to real loudspeakers.

Sony

At full charge, the headphones offer 9 hours of power, while the handy charging case provides an extra 9 hours. That’s up to 18 hours of noise-free listening. With noise-cancelling switched off, it’s even longer – 13 hours of power on a full charge, with an extra 13 hours provided by the charging case, for up to 26 hours of playtime. That’s enough time to go up and down the Med Steps a few times!

Samsung

The South Korean electronics firm offers this latest iteration of their Galaxy-branded wearable products. Like LG, this is a collaboration. 12mm speakers with sound by Grammy-Award winning AKG work together with Galaxy Buds Live’s ergonomic design to deliver spacious sound, while the large driver and bass duct help emit deep bass with airflow that helps the sound flow.

The RRP for each one of these earbuds is circa £200.

Gibtelecom has today unveiled the next generation in fibre technology for Gibraltar and is today launching its Gigabit Gibraltar plan, bringing hyperfast connectivity to everyone, Gibraltar-wide, by the end of 2022. 

Gibtelecom’s new 1Gb fibre broadband is already available to over 2000 homes across 13 large residential estates. 

Gibtelecom’s Chief Executive, Noel Burrows said: “this is a giant digital leap forward for Gibraltar.  For the first time ever, all of Gibraltar will be able to experience hyperfast and reliable gigabit internet connections thanks to the latest technology and the power of our network.”

“This upgrade plan will see gigabit speeds rolled out at an unrivalled pace right across Gibraltar, bringing our customers the future-proof connections of tomorrow” he added.

Thanks to Gigabit Gibraltar, customers will be able to take advantage of emerging consumer technologies such as cloud gaming, virtual reality entertainment and 8K video streaming across the home.

“The latest in Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) technology is being rolled out across the entire country. Our network, which has been meticulously engineered using Point 2 Point direct fibre, will not only be faster, but will also deliver more robust, superior and future-ready solutions. With this technology, Gibtelecom will have the capability to roll out multi-gigabit connections and further improvements over the next decade.” said Jansen Reyes, Director of Technology.

Adrian Ochello, Director of Consumer and Marketing, said “This is a huge technological stride for Gibraltar and we’re proudly leading the way, making it faster and accessible to everyone. With our hyperfast 1Gb broadband, ultra-high definition content can be streamed without buffering and very large files can be downloaded and uploaded in a flash, even across multiple devices sharing the connection simultaneously. This launch comes only weeks after introducing great new mobile plans loaded with much more data, new landline plans with inclusive minutes, simpler tariffs, and an improved fully licensed TV service which now carries over 100 TV channels, popular on-demand content, catch-up and a mobile app to watch TV on the go. Our service bundles are extremely popular and offer great savings, and there’s plenty more to come… so watch this space.”

Customers can check 1Gb availability and pricing, as well as register online at gibtele.com/gigagib.

BMW Digital Keys

Off the back of the Apple iOS 14 unveiling, BMW published further details of its digital key implementation with Apple devices.

Customers will be able to tap to unlock their vehicles and start their cars entirely using an iPhone. Users will need to use the BMW to setup and use this feature.

The Secure Enclave on the iPhone is used to store and access the digital key, and like the express transit option for the London Underground, the power reserve function on the phone can be used for up to around 5 hours. In addition there is Apple Watch compatibility and the provision to share car access with up to 5 friends using iMessage.

Work from Bermuda

Fellow British Overseas Territory Bermuda has always been a place that has protected its legal residency requirements. Although Bermudians are also British Passport holders, only those with “Bermudian” status can live there easily with free access to the local housing market and total ownership of local businesses. Anybody wanting to live there from elsewhere would usually need to go through a number of tests and sponsorship.

Because of COVID-19, however, a chink of light has emerged for digital nomads, i.e. those people who can remotely work.

The Bermuda Government has launched the Work From Bermuda One Year Residential Certificate form, which once completed, allows workers who are currently working remotely, to work from Bermuda.

When launching the form, Premier the Hon. David Burt, JP, MP stated, “This government invites individuals who are already working from home to work remotely from Bermuda instead. COVID-19 has impacted the world. Overnight, companies have had to solve the problem of employees being able to work outside of the office. Workers are as productive, if not more so, working in their own environment. There is now the opportunity for employees, who I refer to as digital nomads, and university students to work and study, remotely from Bermuda. Applicants for the One Year Certificate must have the means to support themselves while working remotely, and cannot seek work in Bermuda.

“Once the form has been completed, the applicant will receive a response within five working days and if approved, can relocate to Bermuda.

“To date, Bermuda has successfully managed the Coronavirus pandemic and our COVID-19 testing regime is the most stringent in the world. This has kept transmission of the virus to a minimum which allows our residents and visitors flexibility not seen on other jurisdictions. We look forward to welcoming these new long term visitors to our shores.

“The Bermuda Business Development Agency (BDA) and the Bermuda Tourism Authority (BTA) are working closely with the Ministry of Labour to continue to promote Bermuda as the ideal location from which to work remotely. The international media have tracked the story and we have received many queries about this opportunity.”

The Premier concluded, “I extend my thanks to all those who worked tirelessly to get the form ready and put the process in place to accept applicants. Thank you to the Minister of Labour, the Hon. Jason Hayward, JP, MP and his team, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the Hon. Wayne Furbert, JP, MP and his team for their hard work together with the teams at the BTA and the BDA.”

The application fee is Bermuda $263 and more details can be found at forms.gov.bm/work-from-bermuda/

TESLA Cybertruck

Tesla’s Cybertruck seems to have struck a chord with customers with pre-orders reaching 650,000 units.

The vehicle was unveiled in November 2019 and is expected to be available next year. The pre-order number is higher than Tesla’s cumulative combined vehicle deliveries for 2018/19.

Cybertruck’s design has been divisive. Some have likened it to a warped version of the DeLorean, while others have been wowed by its modern looks. Judge Dredd wouldn’t look out of place driving it.

It uses a number of technologies used in Elon Musk’s other companies. For example, the stainless steel alloy configuration is the same as used by SpaceX. A solar sunroof is proposed as an extra to help boost range.

At launch, three configurations will be available, with differing numbers of electric motors. All wheel drive is standard on all versions.

When it launches, the lines will be blurred between motoring and technology, and it faces a number of competitors from the more traditional car companies. In particular, Ford has redoubled attempts to launch as many electric variants of as much of its range as possible, including a version of the Mustang that is part sports car, part SUV.

Every year around this time, developers for Apple’s various platforms normally gather en masse to hear about the intended roadmap for Cupertino’s hardware and software over the coming months.

Usually there are a couple of surprises, and people travel from all over the world to watch the Keynote speeches from the various Apple executives. For many years, Apple was the outlier for being both a hardware and software company, with the majority of the profit coming from selling computers, phones and tablets.

In 2020, things had to be a little different. There were no attendees. No jamboree of media and enthusiastic fans. Instead, the Worldwide Developer Conference took to Apple TV for the “live” main event in a slickly produced, socially-distant film.

There were a few standout moments, and embodied the ethos of Steve Jobs on a number of levels.

Of course, the next iterations of macOS, tvOS, iPadOS and iOS were front and centre. They are all natural progressions of the previous versions, nuanced and refined – and all available as betas for members of the developer community. watchOS had a few tricks up its sleeve, including a nifty smart hand-washing mode that uses the watch’s accelerometer and microphone to judge whether the wearer is using soap and water, and subsequently display a countdown to make sure of a hand-wash well-done. Very clever. Also announced was the sleep measurement function that the hardware has long been capable of, just never enabled.

But the killer announcement – and one that’s circled the Applesphere for a long time on the web – was the transition from Intel processors to Apple’s own CPUs. This wasn’t and shouldn’t be a surprise given that all iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches are powered by Apple chips. These are based on the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture pioneered by a company called ARM Holdings. In a quirk of history, Apple actually helped to found this company in the 1990s with Acorn Computer, and the first designs were manufactured in the Archimedes desktop computer that was particularly popular with British-based schools since it was entirely backwards compatible with the hearty BBC Model B Microcomputer. Apple’s well-documented financial instability later in the decade meant that it sold its stake, even though it had been the brains behind the first proper PDA, the Apple Newton.

The transition to “Apple Silicon” as they were calling it, is envisaged to take 2 years. And in an almost complete replication of the PowerPC to Intel switch, Universal Binaries will once again be used, plus software (really an instruction set) called Rosetta to transparently translate Intel code to Apple Silicon compatibility. It’s envisaged that performance will take a 20% hit in doing so for older software. One thing conspicuous by its absence, however, was any mention of using virtualisation software on the new chips. As this is being written, three OSes are running simultaneously on Apple hardware, including Windows 10 Pro. This is used for legacy apps that will never be ported to macOS, and some design/audio/video professionals and companies will need to have a think about their own application roadmap ahead. All that said, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, did say that Intel-powered hardware would continue to be supported for some time, and that new hardware with Intel architecture is still being developed.

So there you have it – a lot to think about certainly for the next 18 months. Despite all the great announcements, however, the internet did decide to focus on the small-fry iOS 14 home screen evolution. C’est la vie.

Apple Logic 10.5

The problem with refining software, is it’s often hard to improve things further once breakthrough features have become established and embraced by competitors. 

The digital audio workstation (DAW) software used by most top producers and engineers tends to be dominated by either Avid Pro Tools or Apple Logic. Each have their merits and specialise in different areas. For example, Logic has traditionally been much more comprehensive for MIDI whereas Pro Tools focused more on waveform manipulation and plug-ins.

Apple has released Logic 10.5 which they claim has one of these coveted breakthrough features, called Live Loops.

Loops, samples, and recordings can be organised into a new musical grid, where musicians can spontaneously perform and capture different arrangement ideas into the timeline. From there, tracks can be further refined using all of the professional production features in Logic.

Remix FX enhances Live Loops with an exciting collection of electronic effects like Bitcrusher, filter, gater, and repeater that can be performed in real time over individual tracks or the entire song mix. Both features become even more powerful when using the free Logic Remote app, allowing users to pair their iPhone or iPad with their Mac to provide Multi-Touch control over Live Loops and Remix FX.

Apple Logic 10.5 is available to download in the Mac App Store now, with a free trial version also on offer.

The Cloud is watching

The drive to the cloud permeates every part of IT. Be it in enterprise, consumer or government, the rise to the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model shows little sign of slowing down.

As with every evolving technology, sometimes it can be applied in new ways, not thought of from the onset. Sony and Microsoft have announced a new partnership that falls into this category.

Using system-on-a-chip Sony imaging and sensing technology, information can be sent to Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform where complicated artificial intelligence and machine learning can interpret the images and send instructions to third party apps or humans to further interpret.

What this means in practical terms, is the ability to maximise existing revenue streams, or uncover new ones. Every square inch of a business’s premises (a premium in Gibraltar) can also be optimised by further learning and analysing customer behaviour, so that the right stock can be held at the right level, at the right time.

“By linking Sony’s innovative imaging and sensing technology with Microsoft’s excellent cloud AI services, we will deliver a powerful and convenient platform to the smart camera market. Through this platform, we hope to support the creativity of our partners and contribute to overcoming challenges in various industries,” said Terushi Shimizu, Representative Director and President, Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation.

Retailers in the US are already using smart cameras to detect when to refill products on a shelf or to better understand the optimal number of available open checkout lanes according to the queue length. Alternatively, a manufacturer might use a smart camera to identify hazards on its manufacturing floor in real time before injuries occur. 

In these COVID times, a further practical application could be its use to monitor social distancing rules in public places and alert accordingly.

UCLAN harnesses virtual tutorials & lectures

The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), home to many Gibraltarian students, has adapted to the current social distancing regulations by turning to Microsoft Teams. Along with Zoom, Skype and FaceTime, Teams has been part of the charge to move person-to-person interaction and meetings online.

In-person teaching was halted in March as part of the UK Government’s measures to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic. UCLan, which has its main campus in Preston, quickly set up virtual lectures via Teams, which enabled students to continue learning while they are at home.

The university wanted to ensure online lessons were as accessible to as many students as possible, so they asked British Sign Language interpreters to sign the content in real time. Students also use Microsoft Translate to receive live captions of the lectures, which also helps those who don’t list English as their first language.

Maureen Nicholson, one of the British Sign Language interpreters at UCLan, said: “It’s all about giving students the right level of access and making them feel like they don’t have to jump through any hoops and to have anything extra. It should be just an equal playing field, and I think that’s what I really like about this University, accessibility isn’t an afterthought.”

Lectures delivered via Teams can be recorded, allowing students to review them as often as they like or, in the case of overseas students, watch them at a time more appropriate for their time zone.

It’s safe to say that without a bit of sport going on, the world is a poorer place (unless you’re in Belarus who are still running a full schedule at the time of going to press).

The thrill of seeing the team or professional you follow, or merely the buzz from the likes of Wimbledon, is sadly missing for all of us.

A few clubs and governing bodies, along with TV sports channels, have embarked on a “greatest hits” approach to keep fans engaged and the airwaves busy. This is all very well, but the edge of the unknown is missing from all of it. Quite simply, we all know what comes to transpire.

Enter eSports. For a long time, eSports has been seen as a bit of a poor relation to the real thing. After all, these are virtual reality representations of the athletes and sports we are all familiar with. But what if the COVID crisis makes this type of sport part of the “new normal”?

Gibraltar already has a healthy eSports community, and with greater exposure we could see a groundswell of global adoption of playing sports online. NHL teams in North America have used this pause in the regular season to run matches online, complete with national anthems and all the pomp of the “real” event. Manchester City was one of the first football teams to actually employ an eSports athlete full-time – it helps their brand reach and keeps a different demographic hooked into their team. Leyton Orient stole a march on the bigger clubs, however, when they set up a virtual tournament during “the great pause” by inviting them to compete on Twitter.

There are, of course, some sports that suit the virtual world slightly better than others, and Formula 1 is probably one of them. Self-heralded as the most technologically advanced sport in the world, it’s no wonder that these brands have looked at eSports seriously, and not necessarily confined to their own area of expertise.

At the end of April, Red Bull qualified for the Le Mans eSports Super Final, which is due to take place later in the year. This is the type of event that stakeholders see as complementary to the real world, and give followers of motorsport even greater insight into the technology – virtual or real – that powers their business.

All that’s missing, however, is the champagne – it could damage the game controllers.

In relative terms, it’s been a quiet month for technology news, other than hearing about various firms’ response to the COVID-19 crisis. Whether it’s Apple closing its stores temporarily or Microsoft offering part of the Office 365 suite for free to health care workers, pretty much all the planned product launches and keynote speeches have been cancelled. Google has even shuttered the I/O conference for this year in its entirety.

However, one release that did sneak through was further detail on the Xbox Series X. We’ve touched on vague architecture details in previous issues, but now we have more meat on the bones of what Microsoft likes to tout as the console to end all consoles. Although you’ll have to make-do with using the kit you already have to while away the days during the current shutdown, the next generation of Xbox sounds like really something special.

“The CPU is the brain of our new console and the GPU is the heart, but the Xbox Velocity Architecture is the soul,” said Andrew Goossen, Technical Fellow on Xbox Series X at Microsoft. “The Xbox Velocity Architecture is about so much more than fast last times. It’s one of the most innovative parts of our new console. It’s about revolutionising how games can create vastly bigger, more compelling worlds.”

This is illustrated most blatantly by the hardware accelerated deployment of DirectX Raytracing. In layman’s terms this is the simulation of the properties of light and sound – as they would appear to the human eye in the real world – in real time, with less latency, but more accurately than any other previous technology had been able to achieve. 

Sebastien Nussbaum, Corporate Vice President & Senior Fellow, Semi-Custom Products and Technologies​ at AMD “Xbox Series X is the biggest generational leap of System on a Chip and API design that we’ve done with Microsoft, and it’s really an honour for AMD to be a trusted Microsoft partner for this endeavour,” said Nussbaum. “The Xbox Series X is going to be a beacon of technical innovation leadership for this console generation and will propagate the innovation throughout the DirectX ecosystem this year and into next year.”

Jason Ronald, Director of Product Management on Xbox Series X, added, “While the Xbox Series X will deliver a massive increase in GPU performance and continue to redefine and advance the state of art in graphics with new capabilities such as hardware accelerated raytracing,” said Jason Ronald, Director of Product Management on Xbox Series X, “we don’t believe this generation will be defined by graphics or resolution alone.”

Goosen chipped in, “Competitive gamers and the best gaming experiences demand precise, responsive controls.

The Xbox team analysed the entire end to end input pipeline, from the controller to the console and from the console to the display and we challenged ourselves to identify every opportunity to further reduce latency to provide the best experience for gamers on Xbox.”

A practical application of this approach even extends to game states. These will be stored directly in the onboard SSD. So, they’ll persist even after the console is switched off via the system menu, hard switch it off, and even if it’s unplugged completely. On top of this system updates will persist, so in the case of one lucky beta tester on the project, they were able to unplug the console for a week, then take an update, and afterwards was still able to continue right where they left off without even a loading screen.

When you add in the ruthless pursuit of backwards compatibility, the Xbox Series X really seems like it’s ticking all the boxes for fans of Microsoft’s gaming ecosystem.

Over to you, Sony.

The next round of console wars are well and truly underway, with Sony and Microsoft trading blows in terms of the capability and raw specifications of their respective new devices.

Although it’s still the beginning of the year, both have their eyes on  lucrative Christmas sales, so building both hype and awareness beforehand is crucial.

The new X Box Series X appears to be an impressive engineering feat. For those of you conversant in “geek”, it features:

custom designed processor leveraging AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures which outputs four times the processing power of an Xbox One

Capable of 12 terraflops of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit performance

Variable Rate Shading (VRS): a patented form of VRS empowers developers to more efficiently utilise the full power of the Xbox Series X. This means that tasks can be assigned to the architecture in the most efficient way, without causing lag or having to go through the CPU first for instruction.

Hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing: in other words, true-to-life lighting, accurate reflections and realistic acoustics in real time as you explore the game world.

Other innovations include SSD Storage, Quick Resume to get back to gaming faster, Dynamic Latency Input (DLI), HDMI 2.1 and 120 fps support.

On top of all this, Microsoft has made a commitment to make the Series X backwards-compatible with Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

More details and test units will be in the wild soon, we’re promised. Can’t wait.

There were a few surprises at this year’s event in Las Vegas. Sony unveiled a car, Samsung and LG continued to push the boundaries of television display resolution, and smart home product manufacturers signed up to a more compatible, collaborative approach.

It’s easy to be blindsided by the offerings of the big hitters. One product that could revolutionise the lives of millions with diabetes is the Add Care Glutrac. It claims to be a non-invasive wearable glucose monitor.

On the same tack, Focul debuted its first Dolby Atmos speaker. Part of three products revealed at the event, the floor standing Chora 826-D features a vertical-firing driver that delivers the spacial height channels of an Atmos soundtrack. Quite a technical undertaking.

The wireless earphones/headphones segment is one of the most rapidly growing areas in consumer electronics. There have been multiple new products introduced by both established and newer entrants to the market. Technics presented their catchily-named EAH-AZ70W at CES. It’s available in black or silver, and features splash-proof capability, as well as integration with digital assistants, depending on which smartphone is used.

Everyone had expected Sony to make a splash about the PlayStation 5. Much to everyone’s surprise, they simply unveiled its logo and concentrated on their concept vehicle, the VISION-S. Packed with loads of sensors, AI and a beefy entertainment system, it was certainly a bit leftfield.

Will next year live up to this? We’ll just have to wait and see.

2019 was a good year for consumer technology and the wider tech space. Smartphones became smarter and faster and Moore’s Law lost pace with reality. Gadgets in your hand or even something as simple as a lightbulb, now pack more power than possibly imagined even only 5 years ago.

CES is the yearly event that showcases many tech companies’ latest products, services and innovations. Some of these go on to be amazing successes, but others can fade away from public view even if they seemed to be a great idea at the time – Microsoft’s touch-screen coffee table, for example.

This year one of the main themes will be 5G and its integration into chips. Qualcomm will lead the way on this as Intel recently sold its entire modem division to Apple. Expect something from Cupertino later in the year, possibly even embedded on Apple’s own A series chips rather than a standalone unit.

The actually rollout of 5G, however, has also been problematic. Fears over mast security using Huawei gear has limited its adoption, with Vodafone leading the way in the UK, but only on a city-by-city basis.

5G is not just another fast version of mobile data. It can also handle digital TV and radio signals. It could be a game changer for remote areas, starved of broadband, around the world. It could also be the catalyst for retiring standards like DAB/DAB+ in radios.

Last year, Samsung made a splash with the 8K televisions it had in its product pipeline. Unfortunately, outside specialist natural history programming, not much content has been made to take advantage of the incredible definition 8K has to offer. Perhaps 2020 will be different, fuelled by sports events – the Olympics and Euro 2020 – but without an overall 8K offering, spearheaded by the likes of the BBC, such HDTV is likely to take another couple of years to breakthrough into the mainstream.

Talking of streaming, 2020 will be the first year that a varied, high quality choice of TV streaming services has become available. There has been a degree of consolidation, and juggling of licensing rights as some shows get removed from third parties, like Netflix, and find themselves exclusively on parent networks.

Disney+ is the big one, but in Gibraltar we await working out which IP law using the service would fall under. Brexit will possibly add further uncertainty since UK (and therefore Gib) IP law is aligned with EU law, for now.

Plex is a hybrid streaming service that looks and acts like Netflix, but using your own media library across a network. What’s interesting, is that it now offers a limited catalogue of TV shows and films for free, of varying quality. It requires a payment to unlock all the home network features, but the Plex Pass is a one-off cost. This is a downside of the streaming revolution – subscriptions are required across multiple services and free trials can very quickly end up as £200+ a year bills.

Gaming is normally also another big draw for CES. This year is the build up for the next-gen PlayStation and Xbox. Both are scheduled for release at the end of the year, and both offer resolutions of up to 8K. This could be one of the factors that aids 8K TV adoption, as hinted earlier.

There are, of course, many other categories and vendors at CES – including transportation and photography – but without seeing the nitty gritty it’s difficult to even attempt to predict new trends.

We’ll have a round-up of some of the best new gear, next issue.