News tagged ‘Intel’

Famous technology journalist Walt Mossberg published another review where he analyzes new MacBook Air notebooks and describes them as "gorgeous, very thin and light, but very sturdy aluminum computers".

After using notebooks for some time he made a conclusion that the 11.6-inch system is very iPad-like, the battery life of the devices is "strong" and the systems wake up from sleep every time almost instantly. Though such machines won't fit as primary computers, especially for power users, they should fit fine for light-duty users. Walt revealed that even the $999 model can run 7-8 programs at the same time, even if there are iTunes, Safari Web browser with couple of dozens of apps opened and Microsoft Office among them.

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Today two largest wireless carriers in the USA started offering the iPad in their brick-and-mortar stores. The date of Oct. 28 was announced few weeks earlier. As you remember, AT&T will be selling all 3G-enabled iPads with standard prices, and Verizon will only sell Wi-Fi iPads but with MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot routers, and the bundles will have the same cost as 3G-enabled models.

For information on data plans read this post.

Verizon's sale of Apple's iPad for the holidays became the reason to steam the rumors about CDMA version of the iPhone that will be compatible with its network and must supposedly appear in early 2011.

Yesterday iFixit posted some pictures of 11.6-inch MacBook Air teardown. Here are results of this disassembling:

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Few hours ago Steve Jobs presented two new MacBook Airs, which became the result of hooking up the iPad and a MacBook (according to his words). They have neither hard nor optical drive, as they keep all the data on the solid state drive. Here is how Steve Jobs explained such an innovation:

"MacBook Air is the first of a new generation of notebooks that leaves behind mechanical rotating storage in favor of solid state flash storage. We’ve taken what we have learned with the iPad—solid state storage, instant-on, amazing battery standby time, miniaturization and lightweight construction, to create the new MacBook Air. With its amazing responsiveness and mobility, it will change the way we think about notebooks."

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Yesterday Verizon and AT&T announced that the iPad will appear in their retail stores in two weeks, on October 28th.

Verizon will be offering only WiFi-enabled iPads that will be optionally bundled with MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot Routers (which is showed on the image above). The latter allows up to five users to access the Verizon Wireless 3G Mobile Broadband Network via Wi-Fi. The monthly data access plan for 1 GB of data will cost 20$/month.

Chief operating officer of Verizon Wireless John Stratton is excited about this new offer:

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MacBook Air availability from third-party resellers is showing signs of dwindling supplies, suggesting that a refresh may be approaching in the relatively near future, perhaps as early as next week. Nearly every retailer has run out of stock of the low-end MacBook Air model, while several vendors are also showing no stock of the high-end model.

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Research firm iSuppli estimated the component costs for the new Apple TV at under $64, representing a 35% margin on the new device before accounting for such expenses as research and development, software, patent royalties, marketing costs. The most expensive components in the new Apple TV are the A4 processor that powers the device ($16.55) and the 8 GB NAND flash memory chip ($14.00). It is worthwhile to say that Intel’s Pentium Chip ($40) plus the chipset ($28) on the previous model alone cost more than the whole new AppleTV today ($99 new vs. $299 old).

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Intel will increase its presence in the mobile phone market with the announced $1.4 billion acquisition of the wireless division of Infineon, a significant component supplier for Apple's iPhone.

Intel and Infineon announced  that they had agreed to the deal, in which Intel will own the wireless business of Germany's Infineon Technologies in exchange for $1.4 billion in cash. The deal pertains to a range of wireless technologies, including Wi-Fi, 3G, WiMAX and LTE. Infineon makes the baseband chip found in the iPhone, and the company has had a strong partnership with Apple, supplying chipsets for Apple's smartphone since it was first released in 2007.

Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and owner of a patent licensing company Interval Licensing, has filed a suit against 11 companies, including Apple, over several patents related to Web search technologies and e-commerce.

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Apple just released its third quarter earnings. Here is a quick summary:

• Revenue: $15.7 Billion (record)
• Profit: $3.25 billion ($3.51/share)
• Margin: 39.1% (vs 40.9% last year)

International sales accounted for 52% of revenue

Sales:

• Macs: 3.47 million
• iPods: 9.41 million
• iPhones: 8.4 million
• iPads: 3.27 million

Here is the official press release:

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Yesterday Silicon Alley Insider reported that Palm had a chance to be acquired by Apple, but eventually HP’s bid was higher. Referring to an anonymous source that was familiar with the negotiations, author Dan Frommer wrote:

"Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says."

It is reported that Google also wanted to purchase Palm to spite Apple, but the company didn't know whether Apple was actually bidding for Palm, so no moves were made in that direction.

Eventually HP acquired Palm and now has plans to use its webOS in company's future tablet devices that will compete with Apple's iPad.

Mashable reports about new Chinese iPad clone and this time it's called very originally - the iPed. Its price is only $105, and it runs Android OS. With Intel chip, 16 GB of storage space and 128 MB of RAM the iPed is available only in China. Let's watch this cute video with people describing the device on a Chinese language:

Apple released information on self-publishing for those authors who would like to sell their writings in iBookStore.

So the works must adhere to these criteria:

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Several web-resources including Gizmodo and TechCrunch confirmed that HP stops working on its "HP Slate" tablet device. The decision is caused by this week's deal that will end soon with acquiring Palm. Now Hewlett-Packard is rumored to integrate Palm's WebOS instead Microsoft WIndows in their tablet (which can take a year or more) and reconsider using Intel-based hardware in it because of its excessive power requirements.

So now it looks like HP changes it course and is going to convert webOS to a tablet OS and compete with Google's Android and Chrome on the market of operational systems.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has also cancelled working on its own booklet-style tablet device called "Courier". Gizmodo sources say the project will be no longer supported. Anyway, the device had never been publicly announced, though it could be very interesting with its two touch-sensitive screens in a foldable format and handwriting recognition input.

Yesterday Apple closed a deal of acquiring Intrisity, a small company in Austin, Texas, that specializes on mobile computer chips producing.

This is a second time for the last two years when Apple buys a small chip company to have the facilities for making fast and power efficient processors. In 2008 Apple purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million, but with the lapse of time many chip maker employees had left company because of inadequate compensation (by the way, some of them are now in Agnilux, another company that was recently acquired by Google).

Well-known chip analyst Tom R. Halfhill has information from his sources that Apple paid $121 million for Intrinsity, but company’s representative Steve Dowling didn't comment on this information.

Such a deal isn't expensive for Apple at all, thinks Tom Halfhill:

“The purchase price is like pocket change to Apple, and they get a lot of benefit”.

It is widely speculated that iPad's A4 chip is based on Intrinsity technology that improved its processing power from 650 MHz to 1 GHz without increasing the battery consumption. With acquiring this chip making company Apple will be able to increase that 350 MHz by itself. Moreover, the company seems to be looking forward for creating its own version of ARM chip. Some other companies like Qualcomm, Marvell and Nvidia had the same experience and spent millions of dollars to gain a satisfactory result.

It is interesting that rumors about this deal started when some people saw that a significant number of Intrinsity employees changed their employer section to Apple in LinkedIn.

Also Apple's desire to create its own mobile chip contradicts to its strategy of purchasing Intel chips for computers.