Apple acquires Embark, another public-transit app developer

Apple is once again on the acquisition train, if you will. The company confirmed to former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin that it has bought Embark, a Silicon Valley-based maker of public transit apps.

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because exactly a month ago, news broke that Apple had acquired HopStop, another maker of transit-related apps. Unlike HopStop, which sold but a single app that incorporated transit directions for many cities, Embark sells several individual programs for various transit systems, including BART in San Francisco, the MBTA in Boston, the New York City subway, and more. As of this writing, Embark’s apps remain in the App Store—however, the company’s Android offerings, which included iBart and NYC Subway, are no longer available on the Google Play store. A similar fate befell the Windows Phone version of HopStop upon that company’s acquisition.

Combined with the HopStop purchase, it seems a lock that Apple will bring its own transit directions to a future version of iOS—at present, the company’s Maps app still routes transit information through third-party apps (of which HopStop and Embark were but two). And with Apple’s earlier purchase of business-data-location company Locationary, it’s clear that mapping is of intense interest to the company. That’s little surprise, given the public reception of iOS 6’s Maps, unveiled last year, which even prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to apologize.
The only question is when such an update might appear. To date, there has been no mention of substantial Maps improvements to the upcoming iOS 7, which would likely accompany new iPhone hardware expected to be launched next month. That would peg such enhancements to be introduced alongside Apple’s next major iOS update, presumably announced at WWDC 2014.

Of course, Apple has already been on quite the run this year, as far as acquisitions go, and there’s no telling if the company has already set its sights on a new target. Though, to be fair, it may soon run out of quality public-transportation apps to buy. 

Samsung's eight-core Galaxy S4 chip offered on new developer board

A Samsung eight-core chip used in some Galaxy S4 smartphone models is now available for hackers to play with on a developer board from South Korea-based Hardkernel.

Hardkernel’s Odroid XU board has incorporated Samsung’s eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip, which is based on ARM’s latest processor designs. Samsung recently announced a new eight-core chip, the Exynos 5 Octa 5420, which packs faster graphics and application processing than the 5410. The 5420 has not yet been shipped yet, however.

The Odroid board is priced at $149 through Aug. 31, after which it will be offered for $169. Samsung for many months has said that a board with an eight-core chip would be released, and has shown prototype developer boards at conferences.

The board has an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544MP3 graphics processor, 2GB of low-power DDR3 DRAM, two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports. Other features include Wi-Fi, ethernet and optional Bluetooth. Google’s Android 4.2 operating system is preloaded, and support for other Linux distributions like Ubuntu is expected soon.

The board has already been benchmarked on Ubuntu 13.04.Odroid-XU will provide developers an opportunity to write programs tuned for Samsung’s octa-core chip, which has been a source of controversy. Analysts have said the eight-core design is overkill for small devices like smartphones and tablets, which need long battery life.

The eight-core chip design also takes up a lot of space, which prevented Samsung from putting LTE radios inside some Galaxy S4 models. Qualcomm, which hesitantly moved from the dual core to the quad-core design on its Snapdragon chips, on Friday criticized eight-core chips, calling the idea “dumb.”

Despite the criticism, the board will give developers a first true glimpse of, and an opportunity to write and test applications for, ARM’s Big.Little design. The design combines high-power cores for demanding applications with low-power cores for mundane tasks like texting and calling.

Samsung’s iteration of Big.Little in the Exynos 5 Octa 5410 chip combines four processors based on ARM’s latest Cortex-A15 processor design, which incorporates four low-power Cortex-A7 CPUs. The Cortex-A15 is ARM’s latest processor design and succeeds the previous Cortex-A9 core, which was used in popular smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and the Galaxy S3. Samsung said the eight-core chip provides a balance of power and performance, with the high-power cores kicking in only when necessary.