Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the fastest and most power efficient browser of them all? We will answer this and also cover the battle for the Internet, who will have control of the web? All this and more in this episode of WRLWND Radio.

Show Notes:

Apple iPhone 7

On Wednesday of this week, Apple unveiled what it called the best iPhone ever, the iPhone7, but it seems that investors don’t have the same excitement in this announcement as Apple does. Apple shares dropped 0.38 per cent immediately after the announcement of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

The reason being, there is no new innovation that we’ve all come to expect from Apple. In this latest version of the iPhone what is really new is the improvement in battery life. Other features include a dual camera, which is not really new and can be found in about 8 other devices and there is no port for a traditional headphone jack.

Analysts predict that the new iPhone (the best iPhone ever) will have strong holiday sales but suggest that the new upgrades in this phone is not enough to reverse the trend of the slowing iPhone sales growth, a decline that Apple is seeing for the first time in many years in dominating the market.

So why I am not excited about the best iPhone ever, well, the biggest thing is the iPhone line has been stagnated for a little while now. Nothing new to be excited about!

After 5 years under Tim Cook, Apple has become a more profitable company, there is no doubt about that, but, there have been no real game-changing innovations, the kind that we have seen when Steve Jobs was around.

The iPhone 7 at best is a solid but an average product that offers only small updates to its earlier version, updates that the competition have delivered months and perhaps years ago.

The battle for the Internet

With September quickly slipping away, we are headed to a deadline that will see the US giving up control of the Internet. Republicans in Congress are in a showdown with the White House over its plan to give up oversight of the Internet.

Lawmakers have warned that the Obama administration's plan to give up its authority over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN, a non-profit organization that is responsible for managing the internet's domain name system, could give authoritarian countries like China and Russia an opening to make an online power grab.

Now, with congressional roadblocks on the horizon, what the Obama administration has been doing is to quietly urge tech companies to support this transition.

In his pitch to industry, Deputy Secretary of Commerce Bruce Andrews stressed that the credibility of the U.S. government and its commitment to the international community are on the line, according to a piece from POLITICO.

The Republicans criticized the decision, saying the loosening of U.S. control would create a vacuum filled by the likes of Russia and China, leading to more online censorship. Since then, Congress has passed a series of funding provisions that bar the agency from giving up its responsibility over the domain name functions. The latest of those provisions is set to expire on Sept. 30.

The most power efficient browser

Which is the most efficient browser of them all? A few months ago Microsoft released battery tests with claims that you can browse for a longer time on Microsoft Edge than Chrome and even Firefox.

What Microsoft did was to stream videos on Surface Books running the latest versions of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Then they compared how long each ran for before dying. According to a blog post from Microsoft, the Microsoft Edge browser outlasts the rest, delivering 17%-70% more battery life than the competition.

It was reported in this blog that Microsoft Edge lasted three hours longer than Google Chrome.

But, Google isn't buying Microsoft's claims that Chrome's battery life is terrible. The search giant has posted a video that shows battery life improvements, which makes Google Chrome far quicker and more battery-friendly than versions from just a year ago.

With their new update, Chrome 53 — released last week — battery usage is down a third on Mac laptops, with a general 15 per cent improvement in speed across all platforms since last year.

Google pointed out that, you will be able to get better performance and battery life when using streaming video sites — this is good for users, especially when you consider that we consume more video than ever before.

There’s one big power and performance drain though that still remains supported (at least for now), and that’s Flash. That’s not for too much longer though: Google already has started to block about 90 per cent of “background Flash” with this release of Chrome, however with Chrome 55 due in December, flash will be blocked by default.

And that could be more good news for Chrome battery life and also performance given Flash’s bad reputation of slowing down the browsing experience and being battery eater.

Download the white papers we talked about in the show by going to: http://vmwareonibmcloud.pagedemo.co

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