Thanksgiving yaya!!

Brace yourselves: Thanksgiving is coming!

You guys probably don’t really need to brace yourselves though, cos thanksgiving means yummy foods and cool leaves and family (maybe brace yourselves a bit).

It also means holidays! And this year, like many in the past, Apple employees are in for extra special thanksgiving- with extra days off to be thankful for!

Thanks Tim Cook! (Is what we’d say if we were given days off for thanksgiving. And we worked for apple).

Apple employees all over the world get the entire week of thanksgiving off WITH pay. WHHHOOOOOOOP!

Peeps who work in retail and customer service, as well as those for whom thankgiving means, well, not a lot, i.e. those in other countires, can take those paid days leave at other, convenient, staggered times.  Whoop.

Here’s the email Tim Cook Sent to his loved and thankful staff regarding the extra paid days off, thanks to 9to5mac.

Team-

It’s been an exciting summer. For the first time, we’ve launched two new iPhone product lines. iOS 7 was created from a deep collaboration between our design and engineering teams, bringing to our customers a stunning new user interface and amazing new features. We unveiled OS X Mavericks and the most powerful Mac ever. The App Store celebrated a new milestone — 50 billion downloads. And we continued to express our love for music with iTunes Radio and the iTunes Festival.

I had the opportunity to visit a few of our stores during the iPhone launch. There is no better place to see and feel why Apple is special. The best products on Earth. Energy. Enthusiasm. The best customers in the world. Passionate team members focused on enriching people’s lives. Innovative products that serve humanity’s deepest values and highest aspirations.

And I am proud to tell you that Apple is also a force for good in our world beyond our products. Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making a substantial contribution to society.

None of this would have been possible without you. Our most important resource is not our money, our intellectual property, or any capital asset. Our most important resource — our soul — is our people.

I realize many of you worked tirelessly to bring us this far. I know it required great personal sacrifice. In recognition of your incredible efforts and achievements, I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We will shut down with pay on November 25, 26, and 27 so our teams can have the whole week off.

Retail, AppleCare and a few other teams will need to work that week so we can continue to serve our customers, but will receive the same number of days off at an alternate time. Please check with your manager for details. Our international teams will schedule the vacation days at a time that is best suited for their specific country.

I hope you find the extra time restful and relaxing. You deserve it. Details will be available on AppleWeb soon. I am exceedingly proud of all of you. I am in awe of what you’ve accomplished and couldn’t be more excited about the future.

Enjoy the time away!

So that’s cool. But hey, even if we’re not Apple employees and aren’t getting more full paid days off over Thanksgiving, at least we’ve got Captain Halloween to look forward to.

And, if you guys are anything like us, lots to be thankful for.

Shenanigans!

Shenanigans!

Yes, we really like that word, but also, Samsung and others are totally participating in SHENANIGANS! And so we thought we should tell you about them. The SHENANIGANS!

The smart phone market is one wrought with lawsuits, competition edging on plain schoolyard bullying and lots and lot of money. Hence, the top competitors in the smartphone industry put a lot of work into making their product seem the best.

‘Seem’ being the operative word.  Sometimes, the competitors just wanna make sure it seem like their product is doing really well. Take Samsung, who recently have been caught artificially increasing the CPU speeds on it’s Galaxy Note 3 smart phone when benchmark apps are running. 

Benchmark apps are apps that measure the performance of your device and compare the scores with similar devices, in this case, other smartphones.

Ars Technica have found out that inside Samsung’s operating system on their smartphones sits a special little code. this little code identifies when benchmarking apps are being used, and in turn boosts CPU clock speeds and prevents CPU cores from entering low-power modes.

They’re big fakers, basically. In this specific case, anyway. Allegedly. And stuff.As a result of this special code, the Galaxy Note 3 benchmarks report CPU performance roughly 20 percent faster than most apps will experience on the device.

According to the guys at Ars:

“The difference is remarkable. In Geekbench’s multicore test, the Note 3’s benchmark mode gives the device a 20 percent boost over its “natural” score. With the benchmark boosting logic stripped away, the Note 3 drops down to LG G2 levels, which is where we initially expected the score to be given the identical SoCs. This big of a boost means that the Note 3 is not just messing with the CPU idle levels; significantly more oomph is unlocked when the device runs a benchmark”.

AND HERE”S THE BEST BIT:

According to Apple exec Phil Schiller via Twitter-

“shenanigans”.

Awesome.

Now… Anandtech has published evidence suggesting that nearly all mobile manufacturers, WITH THE EXCEPTION of Apple and Motorola, use CPU/GPU optimizations to game benchmark tests.

WHAAAAAA? IT’S ALL A LIE!

“With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung.”

Way to destroy our trust and beliefs everyone except Apple and Motorola. What else can we believe in if not technical benchmark data? At least we have Captain Halloween coming soon. Gosh we love Captain Halloween. You know, the guy.

You know the guy.

Image courtesy of gsmnation

Virgin offering shiny new iPhones at shiny new prices!

Virgin Mobile USA, a subsiduary of Sprint Mobile, has begun selling the shiny new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C!

And here’s the extra good bit- the pre-paid brand are offering a$100 discount from the normal (unsubsidized) pricing!

Sahweeeeht!

The 16Gb phones will be available both online and in retail stores whilst the 32 GB and 64 GB iPhone 5s and 32GB iPhone 5c are only available at Virgin Mobile’s website.

As is to be expected, stock is somewhat limited, especially on the gold iPhone 5s and the yellow 16Gb iPhone 5C models.

Another Sprint subsidiary, Boost, is expected to be offering a similar deal in the weeks to come.

Yay for Virgin!

Image courtesy of 9to5mac.com