The Google Nexus 7 is dead, long live the Nexus 7

The Google Nexus 7 is dead, long live the Nexus 7
A big week for Android hardware, plus Google getting bullish on the tablet market, Sony promising a lot of Android 4.3, Play Games, security news and Samsung still talking about some imaginary friend called "Tizen."

The best way I can think of to describe the tech press' moderated, polite reaction to the official release of the new Nexus 7 this week is that it reminded me of somebody who'd heard about a surprise party in advance, but didn't want to ruin things for their friends.

Pretty much every salient detail about the revamped Nexus 7 had leaked well before the official release, though some of it was in the form of rumors, so there wasn’t much that came as a genuine surprise.

Don’t get me wrong – I think the new devices look very nice. Full HD screen? Check. Substantially upgraded hardware? Check. Latest Android version? Check again.

But, to be frank, it’s just not as big a deal as its forerunner.

I got to play with the original Nexus 7 when it came out, and I think it’s fair to say I was pretty impressed – I found it functional, a pleasure to use and tough to beat at $200.

Along with the Kindle Fire HD, the original Nexus 7 helped jump-start the small tablet market, and pushed Android tablets into a more respectable position in terms of overall market share. The new one is an upgrade, for sure, but it seems unlikely to be as groundbreaking as its predecessor. It’s not as focused on offering maximum bang for the buck, and doesn’t cover any particularly new territory.

On the other hand, maybe it won’t get that horrific slowdown problem that older Nexus 7s reportedly suffer from.

* Speaking of market share, Android chief Sundar Pichai said Wednesday that Android tablets now account for half of all such devices sold worldwide, despite past dominance by That Other Tablet.

Still, wonders analyst Benedict Evans, how come That Other Tablet still draws the lion’s share of mobile ad dollars and uses vastly more data? He’s essentially not sure, though he does have a few interesting guesses.

(H/T: BGR)
* Chromecast, though not itself an Android-based device, is making enough headlines that I think it deserves a mention. If you were unaware, it’s essentially an HDMI dongle that you plug into your TV, allowing you to watch Netflix and YouTube (as well as Google Play Videos and Music) on a bigger screen. You can control it with an Android phone, a Chromebook, or even just a Chrome browser window on a laptop. Plus, it costs just $35, including three free months of Netflix service.

It impressed tech pundits enough that Google has already had to come out and publicly declare that its pre-existing Google TV service isn’t dead, and terms like “game-changing” are being used freely.

Although I am a cynical person, who tends to look on new gadgetry with a jaundiced eye, it’s difficult to avoid the opinion that Chromecast is a genuinely impressive achievement, particularly for the price. It could, at a stroke, make your home entertainment experience a lot more seamless than it likely is at the moment.

The only genuinely unpleasant thing about it, as the estimable Larry Magid highlights, is that it represents a still-greater level of ubiquity for Google in day-to-day life; another way of consuming media curated entirely by Google. Regardless of how valuable the resulting usage data will be to Google’s ad business, I’m far from alone in being leery of the Goog’s increasing control over my information. I’ll take my tin-foil hat in XL, please.

* Sony says it’s going to roll out Android 4.3 on a lot of its top-end inventory, including the Xperia Z, Xperia ZR, Xperia ZL, Xperia Tablet Z, Xperia SP and Xperia Z Ultra. (Version 4.3 was leaked in its entirety last week, though it officially launched Wednesday.)

Assuming the company can follow through, it’s heartening to see a major OEM put some emphasis on keeping up with the latest and greatest Android version.

(H/T: Phandroid)
* Google Play Games, the company’s app to “socialize” your Android gaming experience, launched this week, letting players connect with friends and then ruin those friendships by getting overly competitive about Temple Run scores.

I haven’t tried it out yet, but it sounds a lot like an Android version of Steam, the PC gaming platform that includes many similar features. More to the point, it also lets Android compete directly with That Other Phone’s Game Center framework, though TechHive’s Florence Ion says it’s got a long way to go to catch up.

* A really worrying hack that could let malicious actors modify legitimate Android apps without changing their security signatures has cropped up in the wild, according to Symantec.

The so-called “master key” vulnerability was discovered on third-party app stores based in China, which were modified to steal IMEIs, deactivate some mobile security programs, send premium-rate text messages and even remotely control infected devices, the security company says.

You should be safe if you stick to the Play Store, but third-party distributors can be vulnerable to this sort of thing.

(H/T: BBC)
* Despite being the undisputed king of the Android castle, Samsung continues to forge ahead on the open-source Tizen mobile operating system, announcing a developer conference on Tuesday scheduled for late October.

A report from Computerworld’s Matt Hamblen provides several viewpoints on why Samsung would be so eager to jump off the horse that it has ridden to smartphone pre-eminence, but they all mostly boil down to wanting greater control over the software part of the stack. Good luck with that, I guess.

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Microsoft's latest Patch Tuesday vulnerabilities already being exploited

Don't waste any time - get that thing rolled out quick because it's wide-ranging and already being exploited.

Normally companies should proceed at their own pace when deploying Microsoft's monthly updates, known as Patch Tuesday, since they come out on the second Tuesday of every month.

This month's batch, though, is pretty hefty in terms of impact and volume, so you may want to make them a priority. This month’s Patch Tuesday consists of seven bulletins addressing a total of 34 vulnerabilities, and half of them are in Internet Explorer. Six of the seven bulletins are critical, a little more than usual, that can give attackers power to execute code on victim machines.

Fortunately, the bugs in Windows and IE require the end user to do something, like use their browser to visit an infected site or click on a link in an instant messenger. "So they all require end-user actions. If you don’t browse or use instant messenger, it won't affect you. So on servers you can take your time, they are not that urgent," said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of the security firm Qualys.

For desktop users, however, these are critical because that's how most PCs get infected – by user interaction of one form or another. Kandek called attention to two of the Bulletins. Bulletin MS13-055 rounds up 17 known vulnerabilities and exploits in Internet Explorer. The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted webpage using Internet Explorer.

Kandek said at least one of the vulnerabilities is already being exploited by hackers, so either patch IE or use another browser until you do.

MS13-053 handles two publicly disclosed and six privately reported vulnerabilities in Windows, the most severe of which could allow remote code execution if a user views shared content that embeds TrueType font files.

With so many critical fixes to the OS and browser, Kandek said the desktop users should prioritize rolling out the fixes. "I don't see why you would extensively need to test it," he said.

Lost in the hoopla of Patch Tuesday was a trio of important bulletins from Adobe Systems, which issued significant fixes for Flash, Shockwave and ColdFusion.

Also, there will be a Java patch issued by Oracle next week, which appears to be running its own Patch Tuesday cycle, except it's on the third Tuesday of every month.

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Cisco, Insieme tout 'penalty-free' fabric architecture

At Cisco Live, Insieme articulates vision but shows no products; Cisco launches Nexus 7700 and fabric automation enhancements

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Cisco this week significantly extended its data center networking portfolio with a new fabric architecture, an enhancement to another and, as expected, an extension to its Nexus core switching line.

The new fabric architecture is the concept of Insieme Networks, the Cisco spin-in company believed to be developing programmable data center switches. There was speculation last week that Insieme would unveil new hardware at Cisco Live this week in addition to its fabric vision, but the hardware won’t come until the fall.

[GIVE US A BREAK: Breaking down Cisco’s new data center strategy]

ALSO: Chambers: Cisco waited too long to address SDNs]

The other is an extension to Cisco’s existing Unified Fabric for Cisco’s Nexus switches, including the new Nexus 7700. The Nexus Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) extension is intended to automate the configuration and provisioning of those switches.

Insieme’s Application-Centric Infrastructure is designed to simplify and speed application provisioning for IT shops, while DFA is designed to essentially do the same for the network infrastructure, in addition to simplifying fabric management and improving scale. DFA works with the new Nexus 7700 switch and the existing Nexus 7000, but equipped with new 40/100G F3 modules that also debuted this week.

Attributes of the Insieme Application-Centric Infrastructure include integration of physical, virtual and cloud resources with consistent endpoint access and visibility of hardware. It is designed to provide systemwide integration of infrastructure, services and security, with real-time telemetry and expansion for future services.

The SDN overlay model for network virtualization actually adds more complexity to the network by attacking only a specific task and limiting the view of the network to individual elements, Insieme officials claim. It limits performance, scale and visibility, and leads to architectural rigidity, they say.

Application-Centric Infrastructure “is a systems-based approach and not box approach,” said Insieme Senior Vice President Soni Jiandani, even though many SDN strategies from established and start-up vendors purport to do the same thing as the Insieme architecture. “This is penalty-free network virtualization.”

Application-Centric Infrastructure is designed to allow applications to define networking requirements based on service profiles similar to those Cisco developed for its Unified Computing System server and storage access platform. It is intended to reduce provisioning time from weeks to minutes, Insieme officials say.

The architecture is also intended to provide a common policy management and operational procedures for automation across network, security and application administration, and will include compute and storage in the future, Insieme officials said.

“Simplification of the infrastructure – this is where we will automate,” Jiandani said.

The architecture will support multi-tenancy with varying service-level agreements, Jiandani said. It will support firewalls and load balancing services, various encapsulation schemes -- like VXLAN, NVGRE and 802.1X -- without requiring gateways between them, and any hypervisor, she said.

Application-Centric Infrastructure will also include published APIs to enable integration with and third-party partner applications and extensions. Two of the APIs it will support are XML and JSON for network management.

It will also support both custom and merchant silicon to encourage customer adoption and achieve optimal price/performance, port density and power efficiencies, Insieme officials say.

Insieme products will also incorporate optical transceivers designed to utilize existing 10G cabling as customers upgrade to 40G Ethernet, officials say. This will alleviate the need to re-cable the data center as those upgrades take hold, they say.

Insieme will launch its products later this year. Around that time, DFA will ship. DFA is designed to optimize two-tier spine and leaf switch topologies by improving forwarding, distributing control, reducing the size of failure domains and providing unimpeded mobility for physical and virtual machines.

DFA will also provide multi-tenant scale of more than 10,000 tenants and 50,000 networks, Cisco says.

Fabric access will be from Cisco Prime Data Center Network Manager 7.0. DCNM 7.0 provides automated network provisioning and host, network and tenant visibility. Cisco Prime Network Services Controller 3.6 dynamically creates network services, communicates with VMware and Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switches, and passes relevant information to DCNM, Cisco says.

Using network profile templates, instances of network policies are automatically created and applied to leaf switches when a server administrator provisions physical and virtual machines, Cisco says. As VMs move across the fabric, the network policy is applied automatically to the leaf switch, the company says.

Target nodes are no more than two hops away, one hop more than Juniper claims it can achieve with QFabric. This is designed to reduce latency for east/west traffic.

IP addresses are used for forwarding, Cisco says. Localized VLANs are terminated at the leaf nodes, and devices are grouped together by type or by row and configure themselves automatically to servers and VMs.

Cisco and Insieme say they will release design guides to implement either DFA or Application-Centric Infrastructure, and integrate both.

DFA works on the new F3 modules unveiled this week for the Nexus 7700 switch, as well as the 5-year-old Nexus 7000. F3 for the Nexus 7000 include six-port 100G and 12-port 40G modules, half the port density of those for the Nexus 7700.

The F3 modules are expected to ship in the second half of 2013. The Nexus 7700 switches are scheduled to ship in July.

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