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SEC violated procurement law by purchasing Apple equipment
The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission violated procurement law having purchased computer equipment in April, 2008. Total amount the SEC paid for equipment is almost $ 1 million. The SEC violated federal regulation then it avoided seeking competitive bids and placed order immediately with Apple. The SEC was seeking to purchase updated equipment in order to help meet its expanded duties in regulating the financial industry. Apple relied on the know budget (originally $200,000) of the SEC and forced the Commission to purchase essential equipment that cost the SEC another $773,000. The SEC responses that it has already taken appropriate actions against the employee, who was responsible for purchase.
Leave a commentiOS 5 To Feature “Completely Revamped” Notifications and Widgets
As far as we know, WWDC, set for the 6th June, will be about software and the future of iOS and Mac OS X. TechCrunch believes that the forthcoming iOS 5 will be unveiled at the WWDC because Apple invited journalists and the iPhone PR team that usually covers major iOS announcements. As expected, Apple will introduce a completely revamped notifications and widgets. Apple’s fans’ videos in the past weeks showed how Apple could change notifications and bring new voice-recognition features and implement Lion-like Dashboard and home screen widgets. Other interesting feature, Nuance’s voice-recognition, which Apple is rumored to implement with some licensing deals on iOS and OS X Lion, will unlikely to be introduced in a new version of Voice Control (functionality that allows users to quickly call a contact or control music playback only using their voice) for iOS 5.
FCC launched investigation of AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile
As you may know, in March Deutsche Telekom reported its intention to acquire the rival carrier, T-Mobile, for AT&T, its subsidiary company. The estimated price of the deal amounts $39 billion. The fact has recently attracted attention of federal regulators, as in case of successful transaction AT&T will become the leader in the field of wireless carriers, and the number of its customers will reach about 130 million people.
The FCC is eager to find out "how AT&T's wireless spectrum is being used, the nature of its overall network and why it believed it needed T-Mobile's spectrum to meet its goals for 4G", MacNN this Friday. Officials also investigate whether AT&T considered solutions alternative to acquiring T-Mobile, and what is the scope of those solutions.
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Mac OS X Lion Nearing Public Release
TUAW reports that Mac OS X Lion has gone “live for internal testing” at Apple last week. Whilst it’s not clear what that means, we assume Apple has begun widespread internal testing of a new build of the OS that’s nearing GM status. TUAW suggests Lion might see a public release at WWDC in two weeks, or at least sooner than previously expected:
This suggests the new OS might possibly ship as early as WWDC with an “available today” mention at the keynote — or it might not. But Lion is looking to be one step closer to availability for Apple customers.
Remind you that the latest developer preview of OS X Lion brought minor graphical changes to apps Apple had already updated, as well as tweaks and performance improvements to make the OS more stable and faster.
Chengdu Plant Shut Down May Reduce iPad 2 Production By 500,000 Units
It seems that the explosion at the Chengdu Foxconn plant may in fact lead to a loss in production of 500,000 iPads, despite contrary reports from yesterday. The figures come from IHS iSuppli, which did note the exact figure will depend on how long the plant remains closed.
The Chengdu plant is said to produce 30% of all iPad 2s and some, including Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets last week speculated that the impact could even be as large as a loss of production between 1.8 million and 2.8 million iPads. Whilst others such as Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee doesn’t believe the Chengdu shut down will have much of an impact at all on iPad 2 production, with other plants picking up the slack.
Survey Reveals 63 Million iOS Gamers Download 5 Million Games Per Day
Research firms Distimo and Newzoo conducted survey that revealed that there are roughly 63 million gamers on the iOS ecosystem who (individually) download, on average, 2.5 games per month. Games represent half of all apps downloaded across the iOS and Mac App Stores with more than 5 million games downloaded per day – based on the survey that included the US, UK and five other European countries. A clear majority of 4.6 million are downloaded for the iPhone or iPod Touch whilst just over 400,000 are for the iPad and just a sliver for the Mac with 41,000 per day.
Apple Opening A New Data Center in Silicon Valley
Apple is planning to open a new data center in Silicon Valley in the third quarter of 2011 to provide “additional IT capacity” to Apple’s rumored new cloud services that include music, video, storage, and more. The new space is located in Santa Clara, California, and it’s smaller than the massive data center Apple has been building in Maiden, North Carolina, throughout 2010 and 2011.
Apple is expanding its Internet infrastructure with a new data center in Silicon Valley, as it prepares to bring additional server and storage capacity online later this year. The new server space, housed in a third-party facility, will be smaller than the huge iDataCenter that Apple has built in North Carolina.
iPhone 4S To Go Into Production In August, Apple Reducing iPhone 4 Shipments
DigiTimes reports that the next generation iPhone, which they call the iPhone 4S, won’t have LTE capability and will go into production in August. LTE capability will likely make its way into the following (sixth generation) iPhone in 2012. A number of carriers, including three top Chinese telecommunication companies will be disappointed after expressing interest in selling an LTE capable iPhone.
With plans to begin production of the iPhone 4S in August, and nearly 2 million iPhone 4s in inventory according to sources, Apple has reportedly lowered its expected shipment volumes for the iPhone 4 (for Q2 2011) to 17.5-18 million units, a reduction of about 2 million units. Around 2 million are expected to be the CDMA version whilst around 16 million 3G models. Apple is however expecting shipments of iPad 2s to increase substantially from 7-8 million units to 10-10.5 million units in Q2, 2011.
Guinness World Records Awarded To The iPhone 4, App Store and iOS Games
The iPhone 4, the iOS App Store and a number of iOS games have been honored with Guiness World Record awards. The iPhone 4 was named the fastest-selling portable gaming system following a first day sales figure of 1.5 million units when it was released on June 24 last year.
“The release of the iPhone has not just changed the mobile industry, but the video game world too,”Gaz Deaves, Guinness World Records’ gaming editor, said in a statement. “With the never-ending App Store selection and an intuitive device, Apple has created a gigantic new space for itself in the casual games genre that literally brings entertainment to users wherever they may be.”
Apple I Comes Back To Life In Italy
Apple I, a computer that back in the 1970′s was sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Jobs’ garage at $666.66, and was the first machine to come with 8K of RAM, was bought by Italian entrepreneur Marco Boglione, a long-time Apple user and fan who spent €150,000 to buy the #82 copy of the original Apple I. The item includes the original motherboard, manual and a letter from Steve Jobs, but no screen or keyboard.
How People Actually Use iPads
Silicon Alley Insider has posted a chart showing the comparative results of reported iPad usage from November 2010 to the current month of May 2011. Since November, Apple has sold well over 10 million iPads, so it's interesting to see how behavior with the iPad is changing.
15% of mobile apps launched while offline
The mobile analytics firm Localytics’ study shows that 15 percent of applications for mobile devices are launched while a phone is offline. The firm analyzed data sent to their servers by apps that integrate Localytics’s framework in their code and comparing the app’s launch time with the delay in receiving the data (Localytics works in real time), the firm came to the conclusion 15% of apps are opened while a device can’t connect to the Internet.
What does the Skype sale mean for Apple customers?
By now everyone seems to know that Microsoft has acquired online communication giant Skype for a huge 8.5 billion dollars. Mac and iOS users immediately questioned the acquisition as a way for Microsoft to turn Skype into an exclusive service for Windows Live-connected devices and other Microsoft products such as the Xbox, Windows 7 and the new Windows Phone 7 OS. Steve Ballmer, however, was quick to reassure everyone that Skype will continue working on the Mac, iOS and all the other platforms it currently runs on (including RIM’s BlackBerry and Symbian). Microsoft, of course, takes Apple as one of the major rivals, though it has a full version of Office 2011 available for Macs, and many apps for iPhones and iPads. The question, however, is whether Skype will ever release a native iPad app as promised last year, and if the new owner will also bring some welcome interface changes to the Mac app.
iPad 2 would have bested 1990s-era supercomputers
Dr. Jack Dongarra, who teaches at the University of Tennessee, is the keeper of the Top 500 list of the fastest supercomputers and also one of the authors of the Linpack computing benchmark, introduced way back in 1979. Dongarra's group decided to check performance iPad 2 having ported Linpack on the device. Tests on the iPad 2 have so far only been run on a single core of the A5 processor, but Dongarra estimates that a dual-core Linpack run will yield performance of between 1.5 and 1.65 gigaflops -- that's up to 1.65 billion floating-point operations per second. That raw performance means that the iPad 2 would have remained on the list of the world's speediest supercomputers until about 1994. The iPad 2, of course, is a 21st century device, but it is amazing that the single-processor iPad 2 has results of the four-processor version of the Cray 2 supercomputer (pictured). Perhaps, in 20 years or less, the power of modern supercomputers could be n an iPhone.
Apple Named World's Most Valuable Brand at $153 Billion
Marketing and advertising group WPP conducted its annual study of global brands and placed Apple at the top of the list of the most valuable brands for the first time. Brand values are calculated using an analysis of financial and market data alongside reports from analysts and surveys of over two million consumers around the globe. Apple checks in with a brand value of over $153 billion, up 84% over last year and well ahead of second-place Google, which had topped the survey for the previous four years, at $111 billion.