No one before Israeli designer Danit Peleg
has ever 3D-printed an entire fashion collection at home, but the
27-year-old has used small consumer 3D printers to create her graduate
collection
3D
printing has been around for almost 30 years. Fashion designers like
Iris van Herpen - one of Lady Gaga's favourites - and Francis Bitonti
brought it to the catwalks. But no one before Israeli designer Danit
Peleg has 3D-printed an entire fashion collection at home.
The
27-year-old used only small consumer 3D printers to create her graduate
collection. From red high heels to a long striped skirt, all the
garments have been printed in small A4-size pieces and then glued
together. The process is extremely time-consuming - some pieces took
more than 300 hours to come to life - and therefore very expensive.
Despite
that, Peleg thinks this is the future of the industry, in part because
of the increasing speeds the printers can operate at as well as their
rapidly falling prices.
A
Witbox 3D printer like the one Peleg used is sold for around $2,000 - a
reasonable price considering that some of Peleg's designs cost up to
2,500 pounds ($3,856).
However, 3D printers are not doing as well as expected. One of the biggest players in the sector, 3D Systems Corporation, missed second quarter estimates at the beginning of August because of a “challenging operating environment", as the company stated.
3D Systems Corporation's CTO and former president is Chuck Hull,
the inventor of stereolithography or, more commonly, 3D printing.
The future of the market seems uncertain. According to an Oct. 27 report published by Gartner, customer spending on 3D printers will hit $13.4 billion by 2018; a report published on the same day by analysts at CCS Insight suggested the market to less valuable, growing to $4.8 billion by 2018. Different factors, such as high costs of printing materials and intellectual property issues, are holding the industry behind.
It seems it will probably take another few years before waking up in the morning and 3D printing clothes before going to work.
IPhone users who don’t want the new Apple Watch have a new option: Android devices.
The software that powers the Google Inc.-friendly smartwatches will
integrate with Apple Inc.’s iPhones through a new service, according to
Jeff Chang, lead product manager for Android Wear. The new option
enables an iPhone to pair with a smartwatch from LG Electronics Inc.,
along with those planned from Asustek Computer Inc. and Huawei
Technologies Co.
“There’s a lot of different tastes out there,” Chang said. “Between
round and square, sporty and traditional and classic and all that -- I
really think that there’s a wide variety of preferences there. And so
we’re giving that choice to everyone.”
Google is looking for new ways to make its Android Wear software more
popular as it tries to woo customers from Apple, which released its
watch earlier this year. In the second quarter, the Cupertino,
California-based rival sold 3.6 million
of the devices, or about two-thirds of smart wearables, while Android
Wear took about 10 percent, according to Ramon Llamas, research manager
for IDC’s wearables team.
Android Wear was announced last year, offering manufacturers software
for their wearable devices. The new offering could help expand Google
reach with many iPhone users still without the Apple smartwatch, Llamas
said.
“It’s a shrewd move,” he said. It’s market that’s “really in its nascent stages right now.”
Popular Features
The new service for smartwatches with
iPhones aims to use some of the most popular features from Android,
including providing alerts for e-mails, calendar items and fitness
updates. Also, with “Google Now,” users can get tips on the status of a
flight or weather forecasts.
Yet it won’t have some of the features available on other Android
devices -- including Google’s maps, third-party apps through the Google
Play store and Wi-Fi connectivity. Chang said longer term the company
will look at what users prefer on iOS and Android devices -- and
prioritize features accordingly while abiding by Apple’s restrictions.
IDC expects the smart-devices sector to grow to 89 million units in
2019 from 33 million this year, surpassing sales of basic wearables,
which are forecast to increase to 66 million units in 2019 from 39
million this year.
Tepid demand for Samsung
Electronics Co.’s newest Galaxy smartphones triggered a fifth straight
monthly decline for the electronics maker, wiping out about $44 billion
in market value since April.
Shares of the world’s biggest smartphone vendor slumped 8.1 percent
this month, extending their longest losing streak since December 1983.
Samsung dropped almost $12 billion of value in August alone as the South
Korean company surrendered market share to Apple Inc. and Chinese
competitors.
Samsung’s decision to steal a march on Apple and advance the release of new Galaxy smartphones failed to dispel pessimism about its second-half earnings. Apple is expected to take the wraps off a new iPhone on Sept. 9 and release it in time for the crucial end-of-year holiday shopping season.
“We all know its smartphone business isn’t doing well,” said Lee
Seung Woo, an analyst at IBK Securities Co. in Seoul. “I can’t really
figure out when the stock will stop declining. The fundamentals look
problematic.”
The stock has been the biggest drag on the 758-member Kospi index in
the past six months, leading the benchmark 2.2 percent lower in the
period. It ended Friday at 1,089,000 won.
The drop in market capitalization is almost equivalent to the value of General Motors Co.
Misreading Market
Samsung profit has fallen five straight
quarters, and third-quarter net income is estimated at 5.33 trillion won
($4.5 billion), down from 5.63 trillion won in the three months ended
June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Samsung’s global smartphone market share fell more than 3 percentage points in the second quarter, and it no longer is the top seller in China, the world’s biggest mobile-phone market.
It is being undercut at the high end by Apple’s bigger iPhones and at
the mid-range and low end of the market by devices from Xiaomi Corp.,
Lenovo Group Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co.
Samsung misread demand for the S6 models released in April, failing
to produce enough three-sided screens for the Edge while the regular
version struggled against the iPhone.
One of its latest models, the Galaxy Note 5, was criticized
by reviewers and customers this month as the company acknowledged that
the device can break if the stylus is inserted backward into the storage
slot.
“Foreign selling of shares is adding pressure on the stock, which now
seems attractive value-wise,” said Greg Roh, an anlayst at HMC
Investment Securities Co. in Seoul. “The smartphone business isn’t going
to worsen further from here, but any rebound seems highly unlikely.”
Apple may not have officially announced the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus yet, but we can now put money on what its biggest change will be…
Buried deep in the code of iOS 9 – which will launch alongside the
new iPhones – is a reference to the command ‘DeepPress’ for selecting
text. DeepPress is the same command found in the watchOS code for the
Apple Watch and inside Mac OS X for activating Force Touch.
This code was discovered by Hamza Sood, a developer renowned for his
code discoveries. Over the years he has used iOS to uncover evidence of Touch ID, Apple Activity and iPhone camera upgrades.
Force Touch references found deep inside iOS 9 code – image credit Hamza Sood
“Some force touch code in iOS. Looks like they’ve tested kb trackpad
gestures on the 6S, activated via force touch,” explained Sood in a tweet. Force Touch Potential
For the few still unaware of Force Touch, it gives users an
additional command by pressing slightly harder on the screen. With the
Apple Watch this can be a shortcut to options like changing watch faces
or in OS X a quick way to speed up or slow down panning speed through a
video.
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Read more – Massive iPhone 6S Leak: Chassis 2.7x Stronger, 5x More Expensive
Some examples of how this will be used with the iPhone 6S and iPhone
6S Plus have already leaked such as a shortcut to turn-by-turn
navigation in Maps, jumping to voicemail by force touching the phone
icon or getting song options when force touching a track in Music. Big Risk, Big Reward
Interestingly, while it is likely to be an upgraded camera, increased
performance or perhaps better battery life which sells most iPhone 6S
and iPhone 6S Plus devices, it is Force Touch which is the more
important long term.
Get Force Touch right and Apple creates a notable differentiator to
Android which provides a simple and intuitive new command which can
bring a whole new dimension to usability and third party apps. GoogleGOOGL +0.56%
is unlikely to be able to edit Android or convince Android
manufacturers en masse to increase costs by adding this functionality
(Force Touch is a hardware addition) to their phones any time soon.
But get Force Touch wrong and Apple, for the first time, will
complicate iOS in a manner which may alienate users. After all iOS has
always worked based primarily on tapping commands you can see. But when
to use Force Touch will be less certain and could leave users randomly
guessing what can and can’t be force touched around the phone.
The interesting thing about Sood’s discovery is it is just the latest
in a long line of Force Touch leaks which stem all the way back to March.
Both Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal
have also pinned their colours to the mast and declared Force Touch
will be the big new iPhone 6S/iPhone 6S Plus feature. Meanwhile iOS 9
has even given hints about Force Touch before now.
iPhone 6S production sample showing cut away for Force Touch display access – Image credit Nowhereelse.fr
On top of this hardware leaks have shown the new iPhone 6S has an access panel cut in behind the screen.
This is a requirement for Force Touch technology as its hardware needs
direct access to the display. Yes, sadly this also means Force Touch is
not something which can be added to existing iPhone models by a software
update.
So while Apple may still have plenty of surprises lined up for us on iPhone launch day, I think we can categorically now say Force Touch is one announcement which should surprise no-one…
For years, nails have been hammering down on the coffin of
anti-virus. But none have really put the beast to bed. An industry
founded in the 1980s, a time when John McAfee was known as a pioneer rather than a tequila-downing rascal, has survived despite the rise of umpteen firms who claim to offer services that eradicate the need for anti-virus.
Now, however, movie streaming titan NetflixNFLX +6.78%
is hammering a rather significant nail in that old coffin, one that
could well lead to the industry’s final interment. Because Netflix, a
well-known innovator in the tech sphere, is the first major web firm to
openly dump its anti-virus, FORBES has learned. And where Netflix goes,
others often follow; just look at the massive uptick of public cloud
usage in recent years, following the company’s major investment in Amazon Web Services.
Let’s take a second to look at the decline of the anti-virus
industry. Anti-virus has been the first line of defence for many firms
over the last quarter of a century. Generally speaking, AV relies on
malware signatures and behavioural analysis to uncover threats to
people’s PCs and smartphones. But in the last 10 years, research has
indicated AV is rarely successful in detecting smart malware. In 2014,
Lastline Labs discovered only 51 per cent of AV scanners were able to detect new malware samples.
Netflix is quitting anti-virus. Will its millions of users benefit? (Photo by Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Netflix/AP Images)
Despite its shortcomings, many are still required to keep hold of
their AV product because they’re required to by compliance laws, in
particular PCI DSS, the regulation covering payment card protections.
There’s also the argument that AV is necessary to pick up the
“background noise”, as Quocirca analyst Bob Tarzey describes it.
“Despite more and more targeted attacks, random viruses are still rife
and traditional AV is still good at dealing with these,” he claims.
Major players, including SymantecSYMC +0.00% and Kaspersky, continue to make significant sums, even if results aren’t stellar.
But it’s now possible to dump anti-virus altogether, and Netflix is
about to prove it. The firm has found a vendor that covers those
compliance demands in the form of SentinelOne. As SentinelOne CEO Tomer
Weingarten told me, his firm was given third-party certification from
the independent AV-TEST Institute,
validating it can do just what anti-virus does in terms of protecting
against known threats, whilst providing “an additional new layer of
advanced threat protection”. Its end-point security doesn’t rely on
signatures, it monitors every process on a device to check for
irregularities and does not perform on-system scans or require massive
updates like anti-virus, Weingarten said.
Do you remember the concepts mooted when
the original iPhone rumor first surfaced way back in 2006 ? And do you
remember seeing the iPhone for the first time and laughing at the
pictures splashed all over the magazines a week before launch of a white
phone with a jog-wheel ? The mobile phone form factor as it is today is dying. AppleAAPL +2.68% knows this. Which is why the Apple Watch is like GoogleGOOGL +0.90%
Glass, it’s a pre-cursor to a new way of communicating with the world
around us and to disrupt the mobile phone industry again. The obsession
with screen size and resolution has reached its peak, nobody
really wants screen real-estate in a device we talk into, it’s
senseless, unnecessary and a huge battery drain for a communication
device. If you can control the actual communications functionality, make
calls, compose quick SMS
or email messages, and interface with a proactive AI assistant like
Siri, Google Now or Cortana to do it all without actually holding on to
the device itself then why wouldn’t you ?
But we’ve seen this before, and all it takes is a look back to Star Trek not Dick Tracy to see where we’re heading.
The ultimate wearable ? No, not the uniform…
The Apple Watch represents a shift in how we communicate and the
device form factor that’s really necessary to achieve it. Forget the
fitness tracking, what we have here is an experiment to see how users
will eventually shift and accept a complete disruption to the mobile
device space as we know it.
In 2007 Apple showed us that the OS was absolutely key in pushing
innovation forward, and it still stands true today in 2015. Where the
difference lies now is in how ambient, artificially intelligent
assistants can complete as many tasks as possible without being
explicitly called upon. Remember in Star Trek: TNG how they would tap on
the comms badge to communicate or recall a 24th Century Wikipedia entry
from the ship’s computer ? (eventually as the series progressed, they
dropped the need to tap the badge altogether…)
