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News tagged ‘Apple’
Speaking About Reasons of Apple's Actions
After the news about Apple's lawsuit many of us have been wondering why Apple did this. Obviously, the thing is not about money as the company already has $40 billion of cash and investments. Digital Daily's editor John Paczkowski thinks the reason is a desire to extend iPhone's growing lead on the market.
"Apple is suing to make an example out of HTC and lengthen the engineering time-to-market for Android handset builders."
While other Android smartphone manufacturers will spend their time solving a problem with developing of noninfringing technologies to avoid lawsuits, Apple will continue to iterate the iPhone.
Ok, this is clear, but why Apple accused HTC now?
Leave a commentApple Accuses HTC of infringing its patents!
Yesterday morning began with shocking news about lawsuit that was filed by Apple against HTC. As it turned out, Cupertino's company is accusing smartphone manufacturer of infringing 20 Apple patents tied to the iPhone. Google Nexus One, Droid Eris, T-Mobile G1, Touch Pro2, Touch Diamond and the Imagio are listed as exhibits in the litigation.
Copies of the suit can be read and . Short list of patents at issue is under the cut.
iPad Uses Cortex A8-based Chip
As you remember, Steve Jobs clearly said at the iPad's presentation that the device will have a 1 GHz A4 Chip. But after that event there was no information given about this secret two-letter name "A4". And this isn't usual, as almost every company reports the specification of every announced device before it'll come to market.
Later it was rumored that the chip is based on Cortex A9 with dual cores. But finally Arstechnica author Jon Stokes revealed that A4 is a 1 GHz custom system-on-chip with a single Cortex A8 Core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. Though the information is not announced publicly, the author is sure it is true.
iPad Can Be Delayed
Analyst Peter Misek from Canaccord Adams had issued a report about Apple. It says that iPhones sales are better than expected, but the iPad production has some "manufacturing bottleneck", that can cause a delay of the sales start.
"An unspecified production problem at the iPad’s manufacturer, Hon Hai Precision, will likely limit the launch region to the US and the number of units available to roughly 300K in the month of March, far lower than the company’s initial estimate of 1,000K units. The delay in production ramp will likely impact Apple’s April unit estimate of 800K as well. It is also possible that, given the limited number of units available in March, the launch will be delayed for a month".
He also thinks such a delay won't affect iPad sales in 2010 and 2011 (approximately 1,2 million and 3.5 million units respectively).
Apple Admitted Using Child Labour
Last year at least 11 fifteen-year-old children were working in 3 factories that supply Apple. They are situated in China, but Apple also has factories situated in Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Czech Republic, Thailand and of course United States.
Cupertino's company claims children are no longer used for work or at least they are no longer underage:
"In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment".
This is a citation from Cupertino's Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report. After studying of it we summed up a whole bunch of interesting facts...
What We Can Expect After The iPad?
After the unveiling of iPad in January most of us understood that it looks like enlarged iPod Touch. French web-resourse decided to think about what should we expect from Apple in the next years, so look what they concocted:
Associated Press Has Plans for iPad's Customers
Yesterday the Associated Press announced plans to create a new unit named "AP Gateway". It will focus on creating an application for mobile platforms and particularly for iPad tablet device.
It is likely that their app will require a paid subscription, but at first it may appear as free, according to AP senior vice president Jane Seagrave.
AP Gateway will work with local news affiliates to create package of their own content.
Other publishers are still expressing concern over the profit that will be shared with Apple and the latter's unwillingness to report information about subscribers (which is important for marketing and tailoring publisher's content).
Accessorу Manufacturers Prepare For iPad's Launch
Since only one month remains to iPad's launch, such hardware manufacturers as SDI Technologies, Gelaskins Inc., Sanho Corp. and Griffin Technology gear up their production of chargers, sticker covers and other accessories for a new device. And it is not surprising - according to Poper Jaffray & Co, overall sales of iPod and iPhone accessories in 2009 were about $3.7 billion.
But while these companies want to release their products as soon as possible, some other accessory manufacturers are taking a wait-and-see approach. Jonathan von Rentzell, a representative for Blue Microphones commented on this:
"If you're making it for a product, you want to make sure there's a market."
Steve Jobs already showed 2 key accessories for the iPad - a case and a keyboard dock with charging function. Both of them are created by Apple and will be sold separately with iPad.
Grooveshark Released Their App On Cydia
Grooveshark is a web app that allows you to listen to music on-demand through the Internet without any charge (it requires only a Grooveshark VIP subscription for $3/month). The song can be chosen from the gigantic 7-million song catalog.
Grooveshark creators claim it supposed to be released in App Store but it wasn't because Apple has been "ritually rejecting" the app for "primarily selfish reasons". TechCrunch reports there were spent months of waiting for Apple approval. After Grooveshark's patience gave out they decided to release its iPhone application via Cydia.
From now on you can download it from the Big Boss Cydia Repository.
Steve Jobs uses iPhone firmware 3.1.2
What firmware version do you expect Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, to use on his iPhone? Probably something like 3.2 beta or 4.0 beta with many new unannounced features.
Mike from Macsoda got a response from Steve Jobs to his email wondering about the future of Final Cut Pro (40 Final Cut Pro developers were recently let go). Typically brief, Steve Jobs said:
No worries. FCP is alive and well.
Sent from my iPhone
Now let's look at the header information from the email as well:
The email looks legit as it originates from an internal Apple 17.x.x.x IP address. Here is an interesting part: Steve Jobs iPhone is listed as iPhone Mail (7D11) which means he's using firmware 3.1.2. That's not even the current version of the iPhone OS (3.1.3 - 7E18), let alone the 4.0 Beta we're were hoping to see.
Apple Wins Patent for IM Chat
Apple has been granted a patent relating to the iPhone's IM Chat. Apple's invention relates generally to a user interface for displaying an exchange of messages during an instant messaging session, and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for displaying instant message exchanges in a manner that graphically differentiates the participants in a conversation.
The patent number is 7,669,134, originally filed in Q2 2003. For more information, .
Apple files for "Magic Trackpad" trademark
Patently Apple reports that Apple filed for the 'magic trackpad' trademark. US Patent & Trademark Office published application on February 26, 2010. 'Magic Trackpad' likely refers to an external peripheral device for desktop computers or laptops plugged into external displays. There has been speculation about some sort of multi-touch "trackpad gadget" from Apple. Maybe Apple will provide desktop users a way to take advantage of some external multi-touch system.
The application requests registration in International Class 009 under a number of categories relating to computer hardware and software, as well as several types of peripheral devices:
International Class 009: Computers; computer software; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer hardware; computer peripherals; scanners; touchscreens; keyboards; computer mice; trackballs; trackpads; touchpads; light pens; joysticks; game controllers; graphics tablets; digitizers; cables and connectors; flash memory drives; USB drives; solid state storage devices; barcode readers.
Adobe comments about "Flash on iPad"
The Wall St. Journal published a small article about Adobe Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen's talk at the Goldman Sachs technology conference this week. Adobe's CEO spoke on his view of why the iPad wasn't equipped to play Flash:
Narayen said Apple's decision likely had everything to do with its business model as it tries to keep a proprietary, closed system so everything goes through its iTunes store, and has nothing to do with the Flash technology. He said about 85 of the top 100 Web sites in the world use Flash, and 75% of the video on the Web today is in Flash, including Google Inc.'s (GOOG) YouTube, News Corp.'s (NWS) Hulu and broadcasters such as ABC and Fox.
Flash will be on every Android device sold at the end of the year. It will also be on Nokias, Palm Pres, Windows Mobile, Blackberries and just about anything else with an ARM Cortex processor. Not to mention 98% of all the Macs and PCs (and Windows/ChomeOS Tablets) throughout the world. It looks like Apple has it's own vision of what is good and bad for the business.
News from Apple's shareholders meeting
Shareholders meeting started at 1 p.m. EST Thursday. For almost 2,5 hours they discussed different topics and revealed some interesting information.
First of all, Apple is going to open 25 retail stores in China. As you know, the first Chinese store was built in 2008, and since then only plans about revealing another store were announced.
Secondly Steve Jobs told Apple will build its reserves to make big investments in the future. He also mentioned it is a better way of dealing with profit than paying dividends or doing stock buybacks. At this moment Apple has ~40 billion dollars in their chest.
iPod Touch is for kids?
An interesting fact was revealed by Admob Mobile Metrics when they ran an opt-in surveys on iPhone, iPod Touch, webOS and Android devices to understand how they are engaging and interacting with applications.
As you see on the photos below, it becomes obvious that iPod Touch is more popular for teenagers. Moreover, as latter are mostly supported by their parents, they use these devices differently, and that is why the number of free downloads is so high for iPod Touch users.
Apparently, iPods make a high profit to Apple, but is this so because of children?
