- Apple HTML source reveals 'iPhone Extreme'
- Woz, Jobs gain Lego fame
- Apple: 270K iPhones in two days
- The iPhone: Popular, but will it blend?
- Jobs, Gates share D5 stage
- Steve Jobs at D: All Things Digital, Live Coverage
- Apple bringing YouTube to Apple TV
- Exec explains Apple-Cisco iPhone interoperability
- Check: Mac OS X on Apple TV
- Apple Boot Camp does Vista
October 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple HTML source reveals 'iPhone Extreme'
"This one's a stretch..." reports AppleInsider.
Um, yeah. Reporting on HTML code sightings of product names could be called a stretch, but iPhone Extreme has a ring to it.
Now, that sounds like the product Apple should have released first, rather than the now 30%-reduced, lawsuit-strapped original iPhone.
Let me guess. Extreme will have 3G, a better phone and a user-replaceable battery.
Maybe Apple should call the "iPhone Extreme" the "iPhone Legal".
All fun and games when in rumorville, eh?
Posted by Mike Barton on October 2, 2007 09:33 AM
September 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Mac fans, Lego is shaking a leg again. After rolling out a Intel-Mac version of Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics invention system, another Mac-fanboy move was made by PodBrix, which has delivered the Young Woz and Jobs Playset in Lego.
Get those orders in, if a must-have. PodBrix says the Young Woz and Jobs Playset is "a 300-unit limited numbered edition and features meticulous detail." There is no "sold out" sign for it today on the PodBrix site. It was released on 8/29/07.
Posted by Mike Barton on September 4, 2007 10:43 AM
July 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple: 270K iPhones in two days
Apple revealed Wednesday it sold 270,000 iPhones in the first two days the device hit the U.S. market.
Yesterday, AT&T said iPhone sales had boosted earnings, but indicated that it activated only 146,000 iPhone subscribers in the first two days. It said more 40 percent of them were new customers.
Tom Yager may be right, given this coup for AT&T, that this lock-in deal is "funny business".
Reality Check on iPhone: Analysts predicted Apple would sell 500,000 iPhones in the first weekend. Notice how the faithful Apple press did not take the same tack as The New York Times business section, which noted "IPhone Use Disappoints; Apple Slides"
Meanwhile, back at the desktop, Apple said Mac sales lifted Apple for $818 million in third quarter profit.
This news comes on the heels of our report yesterday that said Windows Vista use was growing as Mac OS X stayed flat.
Given how far off Blackfriars was in on iPhone sales, I will take a stab and say I think Vista will continue to go up at cost of Mac, given that while it is not great, the choice in term of laptops -- the fastest growing segment, on the PC side puts Apple to shame.
And on price, Apple is way off still. Too bad the quality of Apple gear has slipped too, making the price premium hurt even more. A friend has had two hard drives crash on his Core Duo Macbook, and let's not forget the site macbookrandomshutdown.com.
Posted by Mike Barton on July 25, 2007 03:41 PM
July 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The iPhone: Popular, but will it blend?
The iPhone's hook is that it's a little bit of everything: It's a mobile phone, a PDA, a pocket-sized Web browser, an iPod, a floor wax, and a dessert topping. Its technical merits have been thoroughly discussed by the experts, hackers are already hard at work trying to unlock it, and Joe Public has embraced it with startling quickness.
But amidst all the hype, the predictions, the hype, the long lines, the hype, the reviews, and the hype, one simple question remained unanswered:
Will the iPhone blend?
Well, wonder no longer. The good folks over at high-end blender company Blendtec have put the iPhone to the ultimate test and posted the results for all to see. (Kids, don't try this at home.)
The surprising conclusion? In fact, the iPhone will blend. It probably won't redefine the term "Apple margarita" anytime soon, but it can be transformed from "technological wunderkind" to "smooth concoction" in a manner of seconds. Now that's versatility!
Posted by Pete Babb on July 11, 2007 03:21 PM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
By Jason Snell and Peter Cohen, Macworld.com
Note: See Macworld.com's live coverage for updates
Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates are making a rare joint appearance at this year’s D: All Things Digital event; Macworld is providing live coverage of the session. Click refresh to see the latest update of our report.
The appearance of the two technology giants is certainly the marquee event at this year’s D: All Things Digital conference, an annual gathering coordinated by the Wall Street Journal. The interviews of top tech executives are conducted by the Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
History repeats itself, in a sense: Tonight's meeting between Jobs and Gates has opened with videos originally recorded in 1984, 1991 and 1997, showing the two of them talking together. The video ended with Jobs and Gates entering from opposite ends of the stage.
Tonight's hosts are Wall Street Journal technology columnist Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. Swisher started by asked the two men what each has contributed to their industry.
"Bill built the first software company in the industry. And I think he built the first software company before anyone in our industry knew what a software company was, and that was huge. And the business model they ended up pursuing ended up working really well," said Jobs. "Bill was focused on software before anyone else had a clue. There's a lot more you can say, but that's the high-order bit."
"First I want to clarify, I'm not Fake Steve Jobs," said Gates, to peals of laughter from the audience.
The good old days
"What Steve's done is phenomenal," Gates continued. "Back in 1977, the Apple II, the idea that it would be a mass market machine and an incredibly empowering phenomenon. And the Macintosh, that was so risky. Apple really bet the company, Lisa hadn't done that well, but the team that Steve built within the company to pursue that, some days it felt a little ahead of its time, remember the Twiggy disk drive and..."
Jobs interjected, "128K!"
"In a certain sense we build the products we want to use ourselves. He's really pursued that with an incredible taste and elegance and had a huge impact on the industry. Apple literally was failing when Steve went back and reinfused innovation and risk-taking that have been phenomenal. So the industry has benefitted immensely from his work. I'd say he's contributed as much as anyone," said Gates.
Jobs called Gates and himself "incredibly lucky" to attract great partners and great people to work with. He agreed with Mossberg's assessment that in a sense, he and Gates are standing in for all the people at both their companies.
Jobs ruefully recalled some of Apple's early television advertisements. "We had a kitchen, with the wife typing in recipes and the husband looking on approvingly," he said, to laughter from the audience.
Jobs and Gates also recalled Microsoft's efforts to provide floating point computation in the Apple II's BASIC programming language. "My partner, Steve Wozniak, brilliant guy. Writes the best BASIC on the planet. Perfect in every way, except for one thing: it's just fixed point, not floating point. So we're getting a lot of input, please make it floating point. I'm begging Woz, and he just doesn't do it. He wrote it down on paper, never got around to doing it. So Microsoft had this very popular, very good floating point BASIC. And we went to them," said Jobs.
Gates picked up the story from there. "It was $31,000 for the floating point BASIC. And I went down to Apple getting the cassette tapes to work," he added.
Gates and Jobs both agreed that Microsoft made a huge bet with the Macintosh when Apple first introduced the new computer. "What's hard to remember now, is that Microsoft wasn't in the applications business then," said Jobs.
"We made this bet that this paradigm shift would happen, to graphical interfaces, and that the Mac would be the one to do it," said Gates. "The big bet wasn't Mac versus Windows, it was character-mode versus graphics interface."
Gates added that Microsoft eventually saw the benefits of that bet come home to roost when PC-compatible computers were outfitted with 386-era micprocessors.
The bad old days
Jobs recalls 1997, the year he returned to Apple computer after a decade running Next. "Apple was in very serious trouble. and what was clear, where if the game was a zero-sum game, where for Apple to win Microsoft had to lose, and if that was the case, Apple would lose," he said. "A lot of people's heads were in that place ... There were too many people at Apple playing [that] game. It was clear that you didn't have to play that game."
"Apple had to remember who Apple was, because it had forgotten," he said. Jobs' decision was to call Bill up. "And we tried to patch things up."
Gates said that since then, Microsoft has had a dedicated Macintosh application development group -- the Mac Business Unit, or MacBU, which works very closely with Apple. "It's a great business for us," he said.
A good natured rivalry?
Gates and Jobs also traded comments about the Mac vs. PC television advertisements that pit actors John Hodgman and Justin Long against each other, as anthropomorphic Windows PC and Mac, respectively.
Jobs said the art of those advertisements is not to be mean, but for the guys to like each other. "His mother loves him," said Gates, ruefully, about the PC character.
"PC Guy is what makes it all work," added Jobs, but Gates seemed unconvinced.
Mossberg noted that Apple and Microsoft continue to vie for the hearts and minds of consumers -- recently with the Zune, Microsoft's iPod competitor, and Vista, Microsoft's new operating system that has been pitted against Mac OS X in numerous head-to-head comparisons in magazines and tech Web sites.
Jobs reiterated a point he made with Mossberg during his interview earlier in the day: The iPod, said Jobs, is a response to the development of digital music players by Japanese consumer electronics makers, who, in Jobs' opinion could create great boxes but not develop good software to manage them. The iPod and the Mac are both principally differentiated from their competitors by the software that drives them.
"So the big secret about Apple is that Apple views itself as a software company. And there aren't very many software companies left. And Microsoft is a software company," said Jobs. "We look at what they do, and some is really great, and some is competitive, and some of it's not."
Apple's goal is much more modest than world domination, said Jobs. "We don't think we're going to have 80 percent of the market," he said, doubtlessly disappointing legions of Mac enthusiasts. "We're happy when our market share goes up a point."
The future of computing
Jobs cited Apple alumnus Alan Kay next, and illustrated a key difference between himself and his colleague and rival. "Alan Kay said, people who love software want to do their own hardware," said Jobs.
"I can resist that," retorted Gates.
Jobs waxed philosophical. "In the consumer market at least, I think one can make a pretty strong case that outside of Windows on PCs, it's hard to see other examples of the software and hardware being decoupled working super well yet," said Jobs. "It might in the phone space over time, it might, but it's not clear."
Gates believes the future of computing is what he describes as "rich local functionality." He points to single-function computers and network computers as examples of devices that didn't sell as well as the industry expected. "It's using local richness together with richness elsewhere," he added.
Jobs agrees with Gates, and provided what he believes is a practical example of Apple's innovation at work when it comes to providing users with a rich local experience combined with remote data: the Google Maps functionality embedded on Apple's forthcoming iPhone, which ships in late June.
"The experience is unbelievable, way better than a computer. And that client app is the result of a lot of technology on the client. And you can't do that stuff in a browser," said Jobs.
Gates opined that in five years' time, consumers won't depend on a single computer -- the'll have multiple devices, such as a tablet with "voice and ink," along with "a phone, a pocket-sized device."
Jobs sees a history for the same computer we've grown accustomed to. "As Bill said earlier, the death of the PC has been repeatedly predicted," he said. The PC will continue to be with us and will evolve, Jobs added.
Jobs forsees a "an explosion" of what he describes as "post-PC devices" such as the iPod. "There's a category of devices that aren't as general-purpose," he said, "And that category is going to continue to be very innovative. And we're going to see lots of them."
Posted by Mike Barton on May 30, 2007 08:25 PM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Steve Jobs at D: All Things Digital, Live Coverage
By Peter Cohen and Jason Snell, Macworld.com
Our coverage of Walt Mossberg’s interview with Steve Jobs at the D: All Things Digital event has concluded.
Apple CEO Jobs sat down on Wednesday with Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg to discuss the state of Apple, new products and more at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital event in Carlsbad, Calif.
Apple TV “a DVD player for the Internet”
Mossberg asked Jobs what kind of businesses Apple is in. Jobs told him that Apple is in two businesses today — the Mac business, and the music business. And that Apple is entering a third business with the forthcoming release of the iPhone. The Apple TV represents a fourth opportunity for Apple, said Jobs, but he described it more as a hobby.
“The reason I call it a hobby is, a lot of people have tried and failed to make it a business. And it’s a hard problem. So we’re trying. I think if we work on it and improve things over the next year, 18 months, we can crack that,” said Jobs.
“What everybody’s tried, and where we’ve come from, too, is coming from the personal computer market, you first think about getting content from PC to widescreen TV. And I’m not sure that’s what consumers want,” mused Jobs. “Yeah, it’s great to get that all on there, but we tend to think of that as the entree. And the more we think about it, we think that that stuff is the peas on the side. And the entree might be content on the Internet.”
Mossberg referred to the Apple TV as a “set-top box,” and Jobs corrected him.
“We thought of it as a set-top box replacement, but the minute you do that you get into a gnarly set of problems because you have to have the cable cards, and go through the cable companies, and they use this very strange software so you can implement their billing systems, and that’s just never something we would choose to do ourselves. We want to be a DVD player for the new Internet age. That’s our motto for the Apple TV: a DVD player for the Internet,” said Jobs.
Some have criticized Apple’s decision not to sell HD-quality video from the iTunes Store, especially when the downloaded video can look pixelated or displays artifact on HDTVs connected to the Apple TV.
“We’re not selling HD yet, because of the tradeoffs between download time and quality. But that might change in the future,” said Jobs.
Jobs acknowledged the popularity of the Google-owned Internet video site, YouTube. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could see YouTube in your living room? So we’ve had a great opportunity to work with the YouTube folks, and we’re putting YouTube in the main menu,” he said.
YouTube support in the Apple TV will be available to users as a free software download in mid-June, Jobs added.
Still committed to the Mac
Jobs explained that Apple is “steadily trying to improve things” in the Mac market, and suggested that Apple makes the best notebooks and desktop computers in the world.
“Our share in notebooks is ahead of the industry, two-thirds notebooks. I can see a time when notebooks are 80, 90 percent of what we sell. We’re also always improving our OS, generally have a release 18 months or so. And we had a big release we didn’t get much credit for, which is Mac OS X Tiger for Intel,” he said.
Jobs pushed aside criticism that with Apple’s name change from Apple Computer to Apple Inc., it was setting aside the personal computer business for good. When asked by Mossberg if Apple remained committed to the Mac, Jobs responded enthusiastically.
“Oh yeah, totally. At WWDC, we’ll have the largest attended we’ve had,” he said. Jobs said that Apple is making “massive investments in that business.”
What’s more, thanks to the popularity of iTunes on PCs, Apple has become a major Windows software developer. “We’ve got cards and letters from lots of people who say that iTunes is their favorite app on Windows,” noted Jobs. “It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in Hell.”
The iPod and the iPhone
“You haven’t updated the iPod in a while,” Mossberg noted.
“We’re working on the best iPods that we’ve ever done, and they’re awesome,” said Jobs.
Turning his attention to Apple’s hotly anticipated iPhone, Jobs said that Apple is on track to deliver them in late June. “I think we’ll ship a lot of them,” he added. “Will it be enough? I don’t know. I hope not.”
Jobs admitted that Apple is a new player in the cell phone business, saying “We’re newcomers. People have forgotten more than we know about this.” Jobs noted that the operating system to run the iPhone — Mac OS X itself — has been in develop for more than a decade (its roots like in NeXT’s Nextstep operating system). Mossberg suggested that the iPhone doesn’t have the entire operating system on it, but Jobs protested.
“Yes it does. The entire OS is gigabytes, but it’s data. We don’t need desktop patterns, sound files. If you take out the data, the OS isn’t that huge. It’s got real OS X, real Safari, real desktop e-mail. And we can take Safari and put a different user interface on it, to work with the multitouch screen. And if you don’t own a browser, you can’t do that,” said Jobs.
Jobs also noted in an audience question and answer session following Mossberg’s prepared queries that access to the Internet through the iPhone is unfettered by AT&T, using AT&T’s network.
Jobs told Mossberg that Cingular — now AT&T — did a deal with Apple differently from the arrangements that it’s made with other cell phone makers. He attributes this to two major benefits Apple brings to the table — one is music, which Jobs says hasn’t been successful on phones so far, and the other is the ‘3G’ cell phone network. “They have spent a fortune building these 3G networks, and so far there ain’t a lot to do with them,” Jobs said wryly. Apple promises a richer multimedia and Internet experience with the iPhone than many of its competitors are capable of.
Jobs said the iPhone is much like Apple’s iPod and the Mac itself — it’s “a software product in beautiful hardware.” That’s a conceptual leap that Jobs said Japanese manufacturers were incapable of making. “They’ve got their hardware down, but they haven’t been able to make the leap to software,” he explained.
Many developers have expressed an interest in creating software to run on the iPhone after it was revealed that the iPhone runs Mac OS X. Jobs told Mossberg that users shouldn’t expect straightforward Mac OS X conversions, or ports, to run on the iPhone. Theoretically, could the iPhone run Mac OS X apps? Mossberg asked.
“We don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Jobs. “We don’t have a mouse on our phone, or pull-down menus. We think there’s a different UI for the phone.”
Later asked by an audience member about writing applications for the iPhone, Jobs said that Apple ultimately wants both the iPhone to be secure and open without compromising either attribute. The last thing Apple wants, he suggested, is an iPhone that can be easily hacked or that crashes as a result of installing third party software.
“I think sometime later this year we will find a way to let third parties write apps and still preserve security. But until we can find that way, we can’t compromise the security of the phone. Nobody’s perfect, but we sure don’t want our phone to crash. We would like to solve this problem, if you could be just a little more patient with us, I think everyone can get what they want,” he said.
Jobs admitted to being wrong about video on the iPod — a concept he initially scoffed at. “I was definitely more skeptical than customers,” he said. “I think video’s here to stay on portable devices.”
iTunes Plus and DRM
Apple on Wednesday also introduced its long awaited “iTunes Plus” feature on the iTunes Store, offering customers the ability to purchase and download DRM-free music at higher bit rates than was previously offered. While EMI is the first major commercial music publisher to offer its catalog in iTunes Plus format, Jobs said the next group will be independent music labels.
“There’s zillions of independents jumping on this bandwagon, so as they get their stuff encoded you’ll be seeing more of them. Half of all the songs on iTunes will be available on iTunes Plus by the end of the year,” Jobs said, reiterating a milestone he mentioned when the news of DRM-free music for sale from iTunes first appeared in April.
Apple is negotiating to bring other record companies in line, too. Benefits to the record companies include higher revenue, as the tracks cost moderately more, and the resolution of interoperability problems, as the songs are no longer limited to playback on iTunes or through an iPod (“iTunes Plus” is encoded using 256Kbps AAC format, so it’s playable by any music player or portable device that supports the AAC format).
“We were successful in persuading EMI and hopefully over the rest of the year we’ll be successful with the rest of them,” said Jobs.
On Fake Steve Jobs and Apple talent
After Mossberg opened the Q&A session to the audience, questions rolled in that covered the gamut of Steve Jobs’ Apple experience. Many attendees had questions about the upcoming iPhone. Others wanted to know more about Steve himself.
Jobs confided to the audience after one question that he’s read some items on The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a “fake Steve” Weblog.
“I have read some of those Fake Steve Jobs blog entries lately, and I thought they were pretty funny. And I get asked a lot if I know who it is, but I don’t. And it is pretty funny,” he said.
Jobs said that the secret to Apple’s success isn’t in building huge factories. “All we are is our ideas, or people. That’s what keeps us going to work in the morning, to hang around these great bright people. I’ve always thought that recruiting is the heart and soul of what we do,” he said.
“We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. This age we’re living in, these tools surprise you. We didn’t think about education when we launched iTunes, but we launched iTunes U today. That’s why I love what we do. Because we make these tools, and we’re constantly surprised with what people do with them,” Jobs said.
Coordinated by the Wall Street Journal, D: All Things Digital is an executive conference set at the Four Seasons Resort Avaria in Carlsbad, Calif. This is the fifth edition of the D event, dubbed D5. The interviews are being done by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
Among this year’s speakers are Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of Youtube, filmmaker George Lucas and many others.
Jobs is slated to appear with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at another D session later Wednesday. Macworld will have full coverage of that event.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 30, 2007 06:14 PM
May 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple bringing YouTube to Apple TV
By Jim Dalrymple, Macworld.com
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday said the company is bringing the Google-owned YouTube video service to Apple TV. A free software update will be available in mid-June, which will enable the service.
YouTube will be offered as an item in the Apple TV main menu. Using the Apple Remote users can browse, find and watch free videos from YouTube. Apple said that thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full YouTube catalog is available this fall.
It will take a while to have the full YouTube catalog available because the service is converting all of its content using the Apple supported H.264 video codec, explained David Moody, Apple’s vice president, Mac Hardware, Product Marketing. Any video uploaded in June will automatically be encoded using H.264.
While Apple TV will have search functionality for YouTube, the company would not comment on whether that feature would be available for other media on the device.
Users will be able to navigate through YouTube’s categories and members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV.
In addition to YouTube support, Apple is offering a new build-to-order option for Apple TV. The new configuration adds a 160GB hard drive — four times the current storage for up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.
Apple TV costs $299 or $399 for the 160GB model.
Posted by Mike Barton on May 30, 2007 06:12 PM
April 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Exec explains Apple-Cisco iPhone interoperability
In the previous chapter of the iPhone Saga, Apple and Cisco had agreed to put aside their differences and attornies and instead share the coveted iPhone name -- and work toward iProduct interoperability.
That was all well and good, except it left some people scratching their heads, wondering just what "interoperability" might mean between the Apple iPhone, which is a iPod/cell phone crossbreed, and the Cisco iPhone, which is a telephone handset designed for use on a VOIP network.
Well, Cisco Chief Development Office Charlie Giancarlo shed some light on what that interoperability might look like in a recent interview, according to reports. "Cisco wants the Apple iPhone to work with its corporate phone systems, Giancarlo said. A partnership would allow users to get the same services, such as instant messaging and teleconferencing, on their Cisco desk phones and Apple iPhones," Bloomberg reports.
Apple, meanwhile, has remained mum on the subject, perhaps still suffering painful memories from the last time it let a certain cat out of the bag.
Posted by Ted Samson on April 18, 2007 12:16 AM
April 02, 2007 | Comments: (0)
It should comes as no surprise that it is so, given our sister publication Macworld's finding that Apple TV's limited functionality is not so limited with a little hacking: Mac OS X has been sighted on an Apple TV.
First it was USB support, now comes full OS X, say reports, which all link to this how-to, which is down at last check just after 10 a.m. Monday Pacific.
Fear not for proof(?): Gizmodo has a video showing Mac OS X booting on an Apple TV.
Will Apple clamp down on this, and save its sales of Mac mini (which has FireWire, a bigger HD, etc.)? I think not. At $299, the Apple TV is not even aimed at the Mac-hack people -- it's digital home types who do not want to open up their Apple TVs any more than their fridge.
And by the time you upgrade the Apple TV's Lilliputian hard drive, as some vendors are doing for a fee, you'll be within about $100 range of the Mac mini, with its better expandability and included OS X.
Still, if you want to earn your stripes in the Mac hack community, or are seeking how-low-can-you-go status for cost, it is conceivable a full Mac OS X machine can be had for what two years ago would seem impossible.
What do you think? Is it stupid to put the effort into hacking the Apple TV? How about a one-Mac-per-child effort at this price, for disadvantaged kids and schools in the U.S.?
Posted by Mike Barton on April 2, 2007 10:10 AM
March 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple delivered a new beta of Boot Camp, 1.2, yesterday, complete with support for 32-bit Windows Vista.
Rather than updating my Boot Camp install, I wiped out my old partition and reinstalled and it was as smooth as can be. A new drivers CD complete with support for iSight in Vista is the next step, and this was smoother than in the past too.
After all, I was up and running, with Vista's Aero Glass feature at full speed on my Core 2 Duo MacBook with 1.5GB of RAM.
Vista has been supported by Parallels for a while, but as I understand from the blogosphere, Aero is not working in that virtual setup. I am not sure, and have not tried to "map" Parallels to my Boot Camp Vista install yet.
I tried to get Parallels to run using my Boot Camp install as the drive and it would not work, but a Parallels spokesman said the engineering team would be delivering an update to enable it shortly -- firm date not yet set.
I recently tried VMware's latest Fusion beta, which touts the ability in Windows XP to support DirectX natively while running virtually, potentially giving VMware a leg up on Parallels for one primary reason anyone would want Windows on a Mac: gaming.
But it is currently experimental and only works with XP Pro. Fusion is well behind Parallels Desktop in many other areas, but I would expect it to catch up soon.
I personally find booting into Vista to be no big deal for my home machine -- and that would seemingly be the faster performer; however, on my work Mac I need Parallels so that I can run IE6 inside Mac OS.
Boot Camp 1.2 beta's support of Vista could provide the best of both worlds... Will report back. But Anyone out there running such a setup and able to confirm Parallels mapped to new Boot Camp is getting better GPU performance, or if it even works yet?
Posted by Mike Barton on March 29, 2007 12:17 PM
February 01, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Interoperability key in 'iPhone' talks
The Cisco-Apple iSaga took a conciliatory turn today as the companies returned to the negotiation table to hash out an agreement over the coveted iPhone moniker.
In a tersely worded joint statement, the companies stated "Apple and Cisco have agreed to extend the time for Apple to respond to the lawsuit to allow for discussions between the companies with the aim of reaching agreement on trademark rights and interoperability." (The emphasis is mine; more on that in a moment.)
As you may recall, the captain of the iPod Mothership (i.e. Steve Jobs) announced plans [Video] at MacWorld to beam down an iPod cellular phone called the iPhone.
Shortly after, Cisco cried foul and filed a lawsuit against Apple for copyright infringement, arguing that it has held the trademark for the name iPhone since 2000. The company released VOIP phones with that name through its Linksys brand last year.
Cisco argues that Apple was well aware that it owned the iPhone name and noted that prior to Apple announcing its own iPhone, it had approached Cisco on several occasions to discuss usage of the moniker.
In the lawsuit, Cisco asked for Apple to cover its legal fees and to surrender all profits eventually made from iPhone sales. The lawsuit also demanded that Apple eradicate all promotional materials associated with the iPhone.
However, since filing the lawsuit, Cisco CEO John Chambers has said the company is not looking for money; rather, it seeks "interoperability, or the ability of the Apple phone to work smoothly with Cisco product," according to bizjournals.com.
Interoperability, of course, is the operative word here; you may recall, it was part of Cisco and Apple's carefully worded press release. While all the hype about the iPhone has drawn attention to Cisco's Linksys-branded version (a product I'd wager few people had been aware of prior to the skirmish with Apple), the promise of having compatibility with Apple's oh-so-juicy end-user iBlank line is potentially more lucrative to Cisco than simply having Apple's iPhone disappear (or be renamed) all together.
Specifically, as noted by Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service:
According to published reports, Cisco would have been willing to license the iPhone name in exchange for Apple making the handset interoperate smoothly with Cisco's products. Linksys is the biggest seller of consumer Wi-Fi access points and is expanding its home product line into the voice and entertainment realms. Apple's iPhone is equipped with Wi-Fi and includes audio, photo, and video player software.
Posted by Ted Samson on February 1, 2007 11:48 AM
January 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple to reap 50% margin on iPhone
Betting its fortunes on the power of its brand and the loyalty of its enthusiasts, Apple stands to gross a 50% margin on each iPhone it sells, according to research company iSuppli.
"iSuppli estimates the 4GB version of the Apple iPhone will carry a $229.85 hardware BoM and manufacturing cost and a $245.83 total expense, yielding a 50.7 percent margin on each unit sold at the $499 retail price," said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and senior analyst for iSuppli, in a written statement. "Meanwhile, the 8GB Apple iPhone will sport a $264.85 hardware cost and a $280.83 total expense, amounting to a 53.1 percent margin at the $599 retail price."
Following is iSuppli's estimated cost breakdown of the iPhone. (Click the image to enlarge):
It's not unusual for Apple to tack on a hefty margin to its wares. "The company having achieved margins of 45 percent and more in products including the iMac and iPod nano, according to iSuppli."
If people are willing to pay it, why not, right? And sure, there obviously are other expenses associated with the iPhone, including research and development, marketing -- plus Apple does need to pay for its ever-busy iLawyers.
But Dr. Jagdish Rebello, director and principal analyst with iSuppli, notes that the pricing puts Apple in a position to reduce the cost on the iPhone and still make a profit, something it may need to do given the number of music phones that will hit the market in 2007: 835 models are expected -- including some that rival the stylishness of the iPhone -- such as LG's KE850 Prada phone -- or that can be tweaked with new themes and icons to resemble it (try as Apple might to stop that from happening).
For more information about iSuppli's estimates, go here.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 18, 2007 10:22 AM
January 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple miffed over faux iPhone icons
The iSaga surrounding Apple's iPhone took another turn over the weekend as the company's lawyers sent out cease and desist letters not only to Web sites hosting iPhone-like theme and icons for Treos, Pocket PCs, and other mobile devices -- but also to bloggers who had merely linked to said sites, according to reports.
Over on XDA-Developer, for example, a user called hanmin posted a Pocket PC screen emulating the iPhone. Soon after, hanmin received a request from Apple's iLawyers that he remove all the "copyrighted materials" from the forum (which he did).
But Apple also sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Paul O'Brien, asking him to remove a link in his blog to the aforementioned forum, as well as a screen image comparing the iPhone screen to the Pocket PC emulation.
O'Brien complied, but posted in his blog: "A bit excessive IMHO... and although I can accept that they can get upset over the screenshot, can they really demand I remove the link too? :-S"
iPhone-esque icons developed for Palm -- called iPhony -- suffered a similar fate over on Brighthand.com. As I write this, though (at around Tuesday, midnight PT), The Unofficial Apple Blog (tuaw.com) still has a link to the forum as well as a screen image posted.
Indeed, Apple may have its work cut out for it if it aims to clamp down on both developers of free iPhone-like icons and themes (such as one currently available for the Sony Ericsson on Atacama.com), as well as blogs that talk about them.
The iPhone emulations, of course, are indicative of just how popular Apple's technology is -- both in look and functionality. Perhaps the company could take that emulation as a high form of flattery, rather than a cause for saber rattling. After all, we're not talking about other companies cranking out arguably cheap knock-offs of Apple wares here. I really don't see this costing Apple anything.
Now, as to Apple's attack on blogs that are doing nothing more than reporting the news, well, we all know what happened the last time the company attempted to stifle the blogosphere.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 15, 2007 11:35 PM
January 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Cisco VP lays out case against Apple
The sugar buzz surrounding the announcement of Apple's sweet iPhone at Macworld promptly crashed with Cisco's trademark infringement lawsuit against the company.
Tempting -- or instinctive -- as it may be for die-hard members of the Apple Nation to hurl accusations of "sour grapes" at Cisco, the fact remains that Apple has quite brazenly (though not necessarily illegally, some argue) appropriated the trademarked iPhone moniker.
Cisco's senior vice president and chief counsel Mark Chandler has published a public statement about the issue, and it's well worth examing, as he intelligently lays out Cisco's case against Apple.
Cisco, he notes, has held the iPhone trademark since 2000 when it purchased Infogear Technology. (InfoGear registered the term in 1996.)
Cisco has supported the iPhone product for years, has "been shipping new, updated iPhone products since last spring, and had a formal launch late last year," Chandler writes.
Apple was aware that Cisco had rights to the name "iPhone" and approached Cisco to negotiate usage starting back in 2001, according to Chandler.
"For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark. We genuinely believed that we were going to be able to reach an agreement and Apple's communications with us suggested they supported that goal. We negotiated in good faith with every intention to reach a reasonable agreement with Apple by which we would share the iPhone brand.""So, I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of 'we're too busy.'"
So there you have it. Cisco held the trademark. Cisco was willing to sit down with Apple to work out a agreement. Yet Apple opted to move foward before that agreement was reached and market its newest gadget under a name it very likely had no legal right to use.
Apple's response to the lawsuit has been dismissive, according to reports.
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling called the Cisco lawsuit "silly,' adding there are several companies using the term iPhone for VOIP products, and Cisco's trademark is "tenuous at best." "We're the first company to ever use the iPhone name for a cellphone," he said. "If Cisco wants to challenge us on it, we're very confident we'll prevail."
While my colleague Ephraim Schwartz has suggested a crafty underlying strategy behind Apple's seemingly calculated trademark infringement, I'm frankly a bit disgusted in Apple and its utter hypocrisy. The company has a reputation of working overtime to protect its own trademarks. For example, it unsuccessfully sued Luxpro for marketing a portable MP3 player originally called Super Shuffle that in many ways resembled the iPod Shuffle.
So as Ciso's Chandler notes, were the shoe in the other foot -- if Cisco, or Microsoft, or any other company out there audaciously released a product bearing a name knowlingy swiped from an existing Apple product -- you can bet your bottom dollar (if you haven't spent it on an iTunes download) that Apple would sic its legal team on the offending company.
I'll close with this thought. Apple has a reputation for being admirably creative and innovative with its products. But it also has a reputation for rigidity. It's unfortunate that the company couldn't apply some of the former traits to either coming up with an alternative name or developing suitable terms of use for the iPhone name with Cisco. Rather, it would seem that Apple opted to stubbornly adhere to the course it had set for itself. Even if Cisco's lawsuit isn't successful in the end due to technicalities, this incident will still cost Apple resources and credibility.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 12, 2007 10:40 AM
January 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple hit with yet another lawsuit
It seems that everyone wants a juicy piece of Apple lately. The company has been tagged with a number of lawsuits over the past year over patent infringement, but a forthcoming one will seek $100 million from Apple over its "abuse of global power," Financial Times reports.
Filing the lawsuit -- technically a countersuit -- comes in response to Apple's unsuccessful lawsuit against the Taiwan-based electronics operation for patent infringement.
"We plan to sue Apple in a Taiwanese court before the end of the month and demand $100 million in compensation for the revenues we have lost due to their abuse of their global power," Wu Fu-chin, Luxpro chairman, reportedly told the Financial Times.
Apple sued Luxpro in a Taiwanese high court last year, accusing Luxpro of copying the iPod Shuffle with an MP3 player initially called Super Shuffle, released in 2005. Although the company changed the product name to the Super Tangent and added to it the Luxpro logo, it still resembled the iPod Shuffle's weight and design; hence Apple's lawsuit and successful bid to have production of the Super Tangent halted.
However, a Taiwan high court as well as the Taiwan Supreme Court later ruled that Luxpro had not infringed on Apple's patent. Luxpro is now planning to fle the countersuit in an effort to compensate the revenue it claims to have lost while the Super Tangent production was held up.
Posted by Ted Samson on January 5, 2007 01:40 PM
December 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple bitten by various lawsuits
Although Apple has enjoyed great success of late, 2006 hasn't been all kind to the Cupertino, Calf.-based company. Beyond facing federal probes for alleged stock-option manipulations, the company has disclosed in a recent SEC filing that it's facing a number of lawsuits, according to reports, including one accusing the company of creating a monopoly by linking its iTunes store to the iPod.
"The case, filed July 21, is over Apple's use of a copy-protection system that generally prevents iTunes music and video from playing on rival players. Likewise, songs purchased elsewhere aren't easily playable on iPods," AP reports.
A judge denied Apple's request to dismiss the case on Dec. 20.
A second lawsuit, filed in November, alleges that the logic board of Apple's iBook G4s are prone to failure at an unusually high rate, AP reports. Apple has yet to file a response.
Finally, a company called PhatRat filed a patent-infringement against Apple in October in response to an iPod developed jointly by Apple and Nike that allows runners to measure the time and distance they've run. Apple has yet to file a response to that lawsuit, either, according to AP.
This isn't the first patent-infringement case Apple has faced. Earlier this year, the company settled with Creative for $100 million after Creative had sued the company for infringing on its patented interface and file organization technology for MP3 players.
Posted by Ted Samson on December 30, 2006 08:49 AM
December 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Australia backs off iPod users
"Draconian" copyright laws poised for signing in Australia have been amended, taking iPod users Down Under off the hook.
Experts had feared that copyright law being proposed would mean that "simply owning an iPod, camera phone or a DVD recorder might be enough to land one in jail or lumbered with a large fine".
And it appears simple recordings would be OK too, or people recording such copyrighted material for personal use would at least not be pursued.
The changes came following an outcry by industry bodies and the public, reports SMH.com.au's Asher Moses.
"The Government has listened to the Senate Committee and stakeholders and has improved the effectiveness of the reforms," Australia's Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, said in a statement.
Seems the almighty iPod lobby has struck. Power to the iPod people, I say.
But almost all uses of the iPod remain illegal. It's just that the focus will be on people making financial gain from recording such copyrighted material.
That is, because unlike in the U.S., Australia does not have The Betamax Case decision on its books to set fair use rules.
Posted by Mike Barton on December 5, 2006 11:26 AM
August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Schmidt and winds of Apple-Sun
A quick browse of the Web to see what speculation emerged after the news that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will join Apple's board came up with a ditty from one John Dvorak: Is an Apple-Sun merger in the works?
Dvorak opines that Schmidt "may have been brought in as the set-up pitcher for what may finally be the often rumored merger between Apple and Sun".
Whoa! What gives? Dvorak explains:
Of course, speculation about a Sun-Apple deal has gone on for the last 20 years. On any given Sunday one of the companies was on the verge of buying the other depending on how the stock prices skewed. As of this writing the two stock prices have never been more skewed, making the deal attractive to Apple.In the past the deals have always fallen apart before they began because (among other reasons) the combined companies would not have an acceptable CEO. Neither Scott McNealy nor Steve Jobs nor John Sculley nor Mike Spindler (not to mention Gil Amelio) seemed capable of handling a combined operation.
With today's two CEO's, Steve Jobs at Apple and Jonathan Schwartz at Sun, this continues to be true. But with Eric Schmidt in the game as a middleman it's quite possible that he could take the reins of such a combined operation and make it work.
ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn takes a more sober look:
It's very possible Schmidt is on that board for other reasons. Like Google wants Schmidt out of the house while it deals with the hodgepodge of me-too "innovations" he has allowed to drain Google's resources. Like having the Google CEO on the board (Google is currently worth $116 billion, twice Apple's valuation) is a coup for Apple, giving it online cachet it hasn't gotten past iTunes.An Apple-Sun deal, midwifed by Google, would be a major blow against open source, I believe. While Apple's OS X is based on BSD Unix, and Sun's CDDL license is even more restrictive, Sun's commitment to open source is increasingly welcome. Apple, by contrast, might as well be Microsoft.
But I digress in the rumor mill. I was looking for some more tradional speculation that Microsoft was in trouble because of the Schmidt move. There's plenty of that. But technology guru Om Malik says the move is trouble for everyone.
Care to join in on the speculation mill and tell us who is in trouble because the mild-mannerd Schmidt is joining Apple's board? Why not take a swipe at SGI or Novell? "Dvorak made me do it." Talk back below.
Posted by Mike Barton on August 30, 2006 04:41 PM
June 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
With Macs now in near price parity with PCs, has the time come to consider switching?
TechWeb's Switching To The Mac: A Guide For Windows Users has the wrap for you on the decision facing many when it comes time to upgrade.
While Vista is snazzy, and the trial I am taking is a beta, I think the bloatedness of Vista (3.5GB?!) could push some to the Mac OS, which is snappy, and not overly loaded up.
TechWeb puts it more on the hardware:
Yes, there are times when a Mac will cost more than a similarly-equipped PC. In that case, why get a Mac? Well, ask a BMW owner why she didn't buy a Dodge. They're both cars; they both get you where you need to go. But the BMW does it with more style and grace, better construction, and more of an "Ooooh" factor. Same thing with a Mac. You get consistently better quality, style, grace, and the instant attention that the Apple logo creates. For more than 25 million people, that's well worth some extra cash.
Perosnally, I think Windows XP is OK and does the job ... might just try a Vista theme or something. I was amazed how much snappier a Core Duo laptop was when booting into a barebones XP install -- one CD worth of code.
Posted by Mike Barton on June 14, 2006 03:34 PM
May 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Rumor is building that a Google music store, which could compete with Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store and other download services, is in the works.
"The most recent evidence is adding "/music" to google.com's robots.txt file, meaning that such a subdirectory is expected to be created any time," reports the News.com media blog.We also noticed this odd behavior earlier today. No "google.com/music" Web site exists on the public Internet. But searching Google's index for "google.com/music" yields a different result than the standard "Sorry, no information is available for the URL" error message.
There's also news of job ads for Google Audio in New York. Well this could all be related to yesterday's announcement the Google would start delivering video ads.
But without a music store on the horizon, how do we explain Google's ownership if Googlemusic.com since 2003?
I think this segues into a rant I want to make about Apple and its lock-down approach of iTunes to its iPods. ITunes is good, but not great; same goes for the iPod.
Time has come for some fresh thinking in digital music land and Google is the one that can really break the doors down on this DRM madness with some universality, which Real is trying but is not really up to on its own, in my opinion after trying Rhapsody vs. Napster. Still, at least Real is flipping its nose at Apple by allowing iPod users to use its RealPlayer software and service. Nice.
So, since we are in crystall ball land with this whole post, I predict Google is going to buy Real and run with a universal services that will be able to convert DRM to a universal standard and let iPod and all other media player users use its service.
It will launch this whole shindig a la Napster with a free run of music at lower quality, and undercut on price the others with a hybrid ad-subscriptions service.
Send me your wishlist on digital music. Great start, but what needs to change, and who is up to the job?
Hey, is that a Google employee at WinHEC who is wearing a hazmat suit protesting Microsoft's DRM??
Posted by Mike Barton on May 24, 2006 09:53 AM
April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
A state appeals court in San Jose on Thursday "appeared openly hostile to Apple Computer's attempts to pry information from bloggers that would reveal who may have leaked confidential information on a new company product", Mercury News reports.
Apple triggered the legal battle a year ago by going to court to force bloggers to reveal the identities of individuals who leaked alleged trade secrets on a product code-named Asteroid. The judge sided with Apple, concluding the company had a right to find out who stole and leaked the Asteroid documents.
In a lively two-hour session on Thursday, however, the panel of 6th District Court of Appeal justices repeatedly swiped at Apple's argument, The Merc said.
"You don't really claim this is some sort of new technology, do you?" Presiding Justice Conrad Rushing, a veteran of Silicon Valley trade secret fights, said to Apple's Riley at one point. "This is plugging a guitar into a computer."
Reports said Justice Franklin Elia swiped: "All you want, excuse me, is the snitch ... I mean, c'mon. We're not here to be the super-personnel department for your company."
Posted by Mike Barton on April 21, 2006 02:04 PM
March 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple's chief software technology officer, Avadis "Avie" Tevanian, is stepping down at the end of the week to take some time off.
Tevanian is credited with being the brains behind Apple's OS X operating system, and he also oversaw the dawn of the iMac and iPod era along with Jon Rubinstein, senior VP of the iPod division and former hardware chief, who also will be leaving Apple on Friday.
Tevanian was a longtime technical chief for Steve Jobs, and moved into the top software spot soon after Jobs returned to Apple through the acquisition of NeXt.
Some have speculated that with Tevanian's departure, Apple's chances of shipping its Leopard OS ahead of the much-delayed Windows Vista are much less likely.
What are your thoughts?
Posted by Caroline Craig on March 29, 2006 06:43 AM
March 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Podcasts and viral videos are all the rage these days, what with the explosion of iPods that can play video and the enduring soul death of cubicles. But let's face it -- watching Piper the Cat survive that 80 foot fall only gets you so far -- and I don't care how long your subway ride is!
But fear not, lonely cubizen. Karl Storz Endoscopy-America is here to help, with full color podcasts of "actual surgeries performed at leading medical centers around the world." Hey man, who needs Piper the Cat falling out of a tree, when you can zone out to the "Imperforate Anus Pull-Through Procedure,"? For real -- check it out.
According to the press release, the company is offering three surgeries in the first series of podcasts: a pediatric laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication, a pediatric video-assisted thoracoscopy lung resection, and the *ahem* aforementioned pull-through procedure. The operations are all performed by Dr. Steven Rothenberg, M.D. Chief of Pediatric Surgery at The mother and Child Hospital at Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver -- so pay attention med nerds!!!
Joking aside, this is really a cool idea, and right in line with decisions by universities like Stanford and MIT to offer up their content as podcasts, whether through iTunes or not.
For medical schools that must comply with the miserly 80 hour per week (boo hoo hoo) cap on residents work schedules, the videos offer another way to reach students, according to Eugene Lucas, who's a marketing manager at Karl Storz.
As for the question of whether your seat-mate is up for watching a lung resection on the way to work, well...that's a problem for another day.
pfr
Posted by Paul Roberts on March 28, 2006 01:12 PM
March 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple, predictably, has lashed out at France's proposed law that would force online music stores to make their tracks playable on any portable digital device, saying it would result in "state-sponsored piracy" by encouraging French users to seek out illegally copied music.
The French bill, which overwhelmingly passed in the National Assembly yesterday introduces relatively lenient penalties for digital piracy, with proposed fines of $45 to $180.
BusinessWeek calls the legislation "a giant spanner in the works of the nascent online digital music business," although others see it as a boon for music companies, who could gain more sales once consumers are able to play their music anywhere.
Some analysts have speculated that Apple will simply abandon the French market rather than comply - although the company has refused to comment on the possibility of such a move.
Amid all the rhetorical crossfire, what does this really mean to users? According to Reuters, in a recent study consumers said they are prepared to pay twice as much for a song that can freely move between different devices.
So does this bill spell a win for consumers in the form of more flexibility and choice? Or does it actually amount to protectionism for the local French download services struggling against the globally popular iTunes/iPod combo?
Tell us what you think.
Posted by Caroline Craig on March 22, 2006 06:40 AM
January 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Apple lets slip a couple Macworld secrets (maybe)
An observant MacRumors forum hound spotted what may be two new product announcements slated for next week's Macworld Expo.
On Apple's iLife GarageBand Web page this morning, a link to something called iWeb was featured, as well as a link to iLife 06 features. This blog has a screen capture of the two product mentions, which Apple has since taken down from its site.
An update to the current iLife '05 isn't unexpected, but the mysterious iWeb is piquing much curiosity. The MacRumors forum is rife with speculation that it could be a Web authoring tool, a WYSIWYG blogging tool, or a Front Page-type application. But all that really is just speculation. Who Knows? With a name as bland as iWeb, the door is wide open.
Posted by Cathleen Moore on January 5, 2006 12:58 PM
TOP STORIES
Top 10 stories of the weekA new place to hide rootkits
Sun exec on OpenSolaris, Linux
AT&T: No free iPhone Wi-Fi info
MS to appeal E.U. fine
XP SP3 causes endless reboots
Vista as insecure as Win 2000
Google grilled on human rights
Java ubiquity an edge in RIA battle
The InfoWorld news quiz
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Virtualization: A Step by Step Approach to Success
- Dialing up Agility with Business Transformation
- 5 Things You Need to Know About Storage Virtualization
- Virtual Test Lab Automation: Manage development infrastructure
- Improve Resource Utilization and Lower Operating Costs
- Protect Your Data with SSL
