iPhone News Desk

How Hard Can White Plastic Be?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:15:00 EDT

Apple says it still can’t deliver any white iPhone 4s because they “continue to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year.” A week ago Steve Jobs said they would be out at the end of the month. Apparently they’ve picked up a yellow tinge. Anyway, as of June 30, the iPhone 4 will be shipping in another 17 countries: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. It started in the U.S., UK, France, Germany and Japan.

RTL, a Commercial TV Station, Opts for Netbiscuits Hybrid App for iPhones

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:29:57 EDT

On behalf of RTL interactive, Netbiscuits, a software platform for the development, operation and monetization of mobile Web sites and apps, has developed an iPhone app for RTL Television, Germany’s most successful private television station. Netbiscuits developed the app in the form of a hybrid application: a combination of Web site and app that employs the latest HTML5 technologies as well as the native functions of the iPhone. The new RTL iPhone app is now available for download from Apples German App Store and can be used for free for a period of 30 days. After this period, a service fee of 1.59 € per month is charged. With regard to content, the new iPhone app utilizes RTL’s mobile portfolio with all of its various functions and offers, such as video clips and live content, in order to enable RTL program highlights to be viewed in an impressive and dynamic manner on mobile devices. In addition to numerous additional services, such as a program planner with a reminder function, a video search feature or viewer review functions, the application also provides access to the entire world of RTL television that is available via the mobile Web site http://mobil.rtl.de, including news, entertainment and program information. Local weather information and numerous subscribable sports, entertainment and news channels round off the impressive range of offers.

Apple Hits the Cover Off the Ball

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:30:00 EDT

Apple posted its best quarter ever Tuesday Antennagate notwithstanding. Revenues were $15.7 billion, up 61% year-over-year, a billion dollars ahead of expectations, and 52% from international sales. Earnings were up 78% to $3.25 billion, or $3.51 a share versus expectations of $3.12.

Apple to Flog iPads in More Places

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:15:00 EDT

Amid the antennagate kafuffle, an unrepentant Apple is supposed to start selling iPads in nine more countries on Friday, namely, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, Holland, Mexico, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. The company said “many more countries” would follow. The device is already sold in the major European markets, Canada and Japan. Wall Street thinks it’s sold 3.3 million of the things so far, which should tickle its third-quarter numbers due out Tuesday.

Geminare Adds iPhone Integration to its Cloud Recovery Services

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:00:00 EDT

Geminare on Tuesday announced the availability of iCloudRecovery, an iPhone application that lets partners and end customers manage their entire server ecosystem from their handheld device -- anywhere, any time. Fully integrated with Geminare's Recovery as a Service Platform (RaaS) and Cloud Recovery offering, iCloudRecovery links users directly to Geminare's portal environment, providing full access to an extensive suite of RaaS management tools. Available through the Apple Store in Q3 2010, iCloudRecovery will allow current customers, partners and lead partners to access their portal accounts directly from an iPhone. Geminare partners can manage their entire customer base through iCloudRecovery, affording them a real-time service response level unparalleled in the industry.

iPad II Reportedly Coming

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 05:00:00 EDT

There’s a second-generation iPad in the works according to DigiTimes that would add 5.6- and 7-inch OLED screens as well as repeat the current 9.7-inch screen. The smaller screens are supposed to be for e-book readers while the 9.7 is more for multimedia. However, OLED supplies are supposed to be tight and unlikely change much by Q4 when the widgets are reportedly supposed to appear. The first iPad was announced in January and took a while to wend its way out to the street.

Apple Reportedly Bid for Palm

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 15:30:00 EDT

Silicon Valley Insider thinks it’s identified the companies that tried to buy Palm and didn’t. Remember Companies A through D that Palm talked about in the merger proxy filed with the SEC? Well, the blog thinks Company A, which offered $600 million cash, was Apple. It was Apple’s second time through (Steve tried to buy Palm years ago) and it was mostly interested in Palm’s patent stockpile but reportedly seemed willing to fund operations. It thinks Company B was Lenovo. It put stock on the table but said it needed time to close the deal. Palm didn’t have time.

Jobs KNEW: Bloomberg

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:45:00 EDT

Apple’s resident antenna expert Ruben Caballero warned CEO Steve Jobs last year that using a bezel antenna in the iPhone 4 could create reception problems and dropped calls, according to an unattributed story put out by Bloomberg. Another source told the wire service that an iPhone carrier said the same thing but Apple decided to go with the design rather than one of the alternatives it had in hand because it yielded a lighter, thinner and perforce sexier widget. Sexy widgets sell as the iPhone 4 proves. Apple released its alleged software fix for the problem on Thursday ahead of its scheduled press conference on Friday. It’s an operating system update called iOS 4.0.1 and contains a jimmied “formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display.” InformationWeek says it makes the three lowest signal bars bigger but doesn’t fix the problem and calls it “flat-out visual trickery.”

Apple Schedules Emergency Press Conference

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 06:45:00 EDT

Catching flak for arrogance and shoddy PR, Apple has whistled up what looks like an emergency triage press conference for hand-picked reporters at 10am Friday morning Left Coast time at its Silicon Valley headquarters. It presumably means to stem the unaccustomed lost of reputation and drop in its runaway stock price created by its so-called “Antennagate” crisis, an event that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner compared Wednesday to Microsoft’s Vista debacle, or hoped as much.

Own Your Mistakes and Win the Customer!

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:49:12 EDT

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve watched in utter amazement the utterly poor response by Apple to the technical design flaws in the iPhone 4 Antennae. Basically if you hold the iPhone with your left hand you run a high risk of dropped calls. When Steve Job’s was confronted by Rory Sinclair about the issue Steve Jobs responded to Rory “Just don’t hold it that way.” Come on let’s get realistic! It reminds me of the old joke. A man says to the doctor, “It hurts when I do this!” The doctor says, “Don’t do that.” Apple’s latest response is for customers to purchase a bumper for $29.00 to protect you hand interfering from with the device. Wow! Now I feel like the patient in the old joke only now the the doctor response “Don’t do that and pay the receptionist $150 on the way out”. Why doesn’t Apple just give the bumpers away while they fix the problem? Don’t they realize the positive press and customer respect they would gain?

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Others Sued for Patent Infringement

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:45:00 EDT

NTP Inc, the patent troll that nicked Research in Motion and its Blackberry for a cool $612.5 million in 2006, sued Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, LG Electronics and HTC last Thursday charging their smartphones infringe the same Ur-wireless e-mail patents that RIM ran afoul of. In Apple’s case the suit names the iPhone, iPad, server software and MobileMe. The suits were filed in federal court in Virginia near where NTP lives. NTP is already suing AT&T, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and Palm. RIM wound up settling because an injunction could have barred it from the market, a situation that’s unlikely to happen again thanks to a subsequent Supreme Court decision limiting the imposition of injunctions when the claimant is a “non-practicing entity.” So NTP’s chances of getting giant settlements from its new suits are supposedly slim and NTP said it would prefer to settle.

iPads to Cannibalize PCs: Barclays

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:45:00 EDT

Barclays Capital has cut back on the number of PCs it thinks will ultimately move this year on the theory that the iPad and its ilk will eat into PC volumes. It thinks that 15 million tablets will be sold this year – and with Europe stalling – PC growth will drop from 21% to 19%, with notebooks making the sacrifice. It’s figuring a 30%–40% cannibalization rate in netbooks and low-end notebooks and giving Apple 70% market share at the expense of Microsoft and Windows. Intel is also supposed to lose business to ARM and its followers.

1.7 Million iPhones Sold in Three Days

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:15:00 EDT

Apple said Monday that more than 1.7 million of the new iPhone 4 had sold between Thursday when the device, now apparently in spotty supply, hit the stores and closing time Saturday. It’s unclear whether the historic number includes the 600,000 the company said had been pre-ordered. In a statement CEO Steve Jobs said, “This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.” The white version of the phone isn’t available at all right now because of some production glitch. Apple sold a million of the iPhone 4’s 3G predecessor in its first three days last year.

iPhone Expected to Have a Million Unit Day

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:37:00 EDT

Apple’s new iPhone 4 went on sale Thursday in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan and the punters are expecting hear that a million of them sold and are thinking maybe 10 million by the end of September. Like the old Model T, you can have any color you want so long as it’s black. Apple’s got some production glitch or another with the white one. It’s delayed until the middle of July. AT&T, its sole carrier, won’t be selling the thing until next week because its inventory is already depleted by the pre-orders that crashed its provisioning system. Verizon Wireless is expected to crack AT&T monopoly next year.

Sybase Study Shows Business Benefits of iPhone 4 and iOS 4 to Drive Demand

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:00:00 EDT

Sybase on Tuesday announced the results of a survey gauging consumer opinion on the forthcoming iPhone 4 and iOS 4 software, finding that many of the new features are expected to increase the use of iPhone as a business tool. Over half of respondents who currently own an iPhone said that the new features of iOS 4 will cause them to use their iPhone for work purposes more often. More than a third of respondents who don’t own an iPhone said they would consider purchasing one for work purposes based on the new features of both iOS 4 and iPhone 4. Over 2,000 Americans were polled in the Sybase commissioned study, conducted by Zogby International, that explored increasing demand for iPhones in the workplace, most anticipated iPhone and iOS features for conducting work, and work-related usage habits between iPhone users and non-iPhone users.

Sybase Backs iOS 4 in the Enterprise with Device Management and Security

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 05:30:00 EDT

Sybase has expanded its support for Apple devices with a full mobile device management and security solution for iOS 4. The release of Sybase Afaria delivers proven, market-leading functionality to empower enterprise IT to effectively manage the proliferation of personally and corporate-liable iPhones, while providing a high degree of security to meet the strictest corporate standards. “The increasing diversity of platforms being incorporated into enterprise environments, such as iPhone 4, have companies scrambling to enable the use of such high user-demand devices while maintaining corporate security policies,” said Jack Gold, President of J.Gold Associates, LLC. “Third party management and security applications like those from Sybase enable companies to augment these devices’ capabilities by keeping corporate data assets safe and separate from the private user sections of these devices. When such enhancements are deployed, these consumer devices can become capable business productivity tools connected to a corporate environment.”

Should We Be Writing Epitaphs for the Mac?

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:15:00 EDT

When Steve Jobs said diddley about the Mac at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference some people started writing obits for the widget. It had the Motley Fool, for instance, speculating about the iPhone’s newfangled iOS and the Mac’s OS X eventually merging into a new operating system built to run on an Apple proprietary A4 chip or its descendents and designed for highly interactive open web standards like WebKit, JavaScript and HTML 5. Developers, it said, would be ready to adopt it because “it’ll already have played host to hundreds of thousands of software apps.” The financial blog went on the say that if that sounds scary, it should.

FTC to Investigate Apple’s Business Practices

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:00:00 EDT

The Federal Trade Commission is going to investigate Apple for anti-competitive practices because it’s shut Adobe Flash out its mobile ecosystem and is now trying to keep Google ads off of IPad and iPhone applications. Bloomberg says the Justice Department and the FTC have been debating which one should take the case for weeks. Apparently the FTC won the coin toss though the DOJ is already investigating Apple and other Silicon Valley types over a possible illegal agreement not to poach each others’ employees. The Wall Street Journal says the DOJ has also started looking at Apple’s practices in its dominant music business.

Apple Blocks Google Ads

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 12:15:00 EDT

Apple has picked another fight and the Financial Times says it will draw fire from the antitrust police for barring third-party ad networks that aren’t independent or are affiliated with competitive mobile widgetry – like, oh, say, Microsoft and Google’s recently acquired AdMob – from using analytical data from ads on its iPhones and iPads. Only companies whose “primary business is serving mobile ads” qualify. That pretty much shuts AdMob out. Google squeals that the new license policy, which favors Apple’s own iAds program, shortchanges developers. Google outbid Apple for AdMob and Apple had to settle for Quattro Wireless, which then encouraged the antitrust police to let Google’s acquisition of AdMob go through. Evidently this isn’t business. This is personal.

Gizmodo Barred from Apple Fest

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:00:00 EDT

Gizmodo, the blog that screwed with the grand unveiling of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone by buying a rogue prototype and writing about it, was noticeably absent from Apple’s developer conference this week, evidently banned and reduced to linking to other people’s reports and feeds from volunteers. Editorial director Brian Lam told the Wall Street Journal that “People ask it was still worth it to run the iPhone story despite it costing us access. My opinion is that commodity news is not anything to get worried about losing touch with.” A court-appointed special master is currently searching its blogger’s computers for evidence of a crime.

iPad Birthed the iPhone: Jobs

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 11:00:00 EDT

Steve Jobs said that Apple started work on the iPad months before it started developing the iPhone, but shelved it to chase the bigger phone market. The disclosure came during a nearly two-hour Q&A with the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D8 confab in California Tuesday night. Evidently the iPhone touch screen and inertial scrolling derives from Apple’s original tablet work and Jobs’ own personal vision. He also said that when he came back to run the place Apple was about 90 days away from going bankrupt, in worse shape than he expected. That explains why Apple had to take an investment from Microsoft and makes the fact that Apple’s market cap passed Microsoft’s last week all the more “surreal,” as Jobs put it.

Court Orders Gizmodo Gear Frisked

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:30:00 EDT

By court order a special master, whose identity is also shrouded by court order, is examining the computers and electronic gear that the cops seized from Gizmodo writer Jason Chen in chasing down the now-famous missing iPhone prototype. It appears there’s no absolutely definitive ruling on whether the seizure was legal or if the blogger was somehow protected by First Amendment shield laws, because according to CNET a deal was struck between Chen’s lawyer and the authorities that ushered the special master in. The cops seem to have been well within their rights considering they were investigating an alleged felony. Shield laws are no protection there.

Two Million iPads Sold to Mounting Competition

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:00:00 EDT

Apple said Monday that it has sold over two million iPads in less than two months. It began shipping the dingus, which only launched April 3, in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK over the weekend. Reuters says Japanese and Australian buyers "stormed" the shops while others in London, Munich and Paris stood in all-night queues. The hot new device will be available in nine more countries in July including Ireland, Austria and Mexico with broader distribution slated for later this year. Bootleg devices are selling in China. Internal targets are said to be to move 10 million units this year, a number iPad will exceed if the pace keeps up.

iPad Rivals Reportedly Sent Back to the Drawing Board

Sat, 29 May 2010 16:00:00 EDT

Quoting Freescale Semiconductor’s director of global consumer segment marketing Gary Burchers, Forbes says that some tablets, netbooks and smartbooks designed to compete with Apple’s iPad and originally due out in time for the holidays have been pushed into early next year around the time of the Consumer Electronics Show in January because they weren’t competitive enough. iPad’s got a lower price, longer battery life and smoother performance than they counted on. There’s reportedly too many operating systems for them to chose from including Android, Chrome, MeeGo.

Mac OS & Safari Accused of Patent Infringement

Tue, 25 May 2010 06:00:00 EDT

A licensing outfit called MonkeyMedia endowed with a 100 patents created by its founder Eric Bear has sued Apple in the Western District of Texas charging that the Mac OS X and Safari browser infringe three patents collectively known as the Seamless Contraction patent family. The IP covers the summarization and variable display of text and audio/visual content based on the saliency of the context. MoneyMedia claims the Mac operating system’s Summary Service feature, its Front Row media center software and the Safari RSS Reader’s Article Length slider infringe. It wants the usual injunction and treble damages. Microsoft licensed MonkeyMedia’s Seamless Expansion and Relativity Controller patents four years ago.

Another iPhone Prototype Surfaces

Sat, 22 May 2010 12:15:00 EDT

Another supposed iPhone 4G prototype turned up last week on a Vietnamese web site, this one reportedly bought for $4,000 by Taoviet, which of course cracked it open and showed it around à la Gizmodo. Engadget’s convinced it’s real and a closer-to-production model than the one Gizmodo bought. This one supposedly uses a version of the proprietary A4 chip that Apple’s using in the iPad, not exactly a surprise move. Taoviet apparently paid less than Gizmodo to find this out; Gizmodo, for all its trouble, didn’t seem to progress human knowledge any. According to the search warrant affidavit swore to by the cop, an ex-Secret Service agent, heading up the Gizmodo investigation and unsealed by court order last Friday Brian Hogan, the kid who sold Gizmodo the first gone-missing iPhone prototype, told his roommate that he got $8,500 for the thing and flashed $5,000 in hundred dollar bills.

HTC Complains to ITC about Apple

Sat, 22 May 2010 10:00:00 EDT

You probably know but for the record we should say that last week the notoriously patent-poor HTC complained to the US International Trade Commission in Washington that Apple’s iPhone, iPod and iPad tread on five of its patents, one so new HTC only got the thing the day before it lodged its grievance. It has not – well, at least not yet – filed suit in the federal courts like Apple has but it wants the ITC, where Apple also has a similar complaint, to block Apple from importing its precious gadgets, all made in China, into the US and to forbid it to sell the stuff. Three of the patents cited HTC acquired and relate to telephone directories in mobile phones/PDAs. The two others are its own IP and cover power management in portable devices. HTC says it uses the widgetry in phones like Google’s own Nexus One.

Industry's First Mobility Platform

Thu, 20 May 2010 10:34:00 EDT

Today Sybase introduces a mobility platform that will empower enterprises to engage customers in innovative mobile ways. Transforming Business by Integrating the Most Expansive Framework of Leading Mobility Servers, Mobile Applications and Mobile Services.

Guess What? There’s Gonna Be a Chrome Store!!

Wed, 19 May 2010 19:00:00 EDT

In a move that will come as no surprise to anyone, Google is planning to set up an online store for third-party Chrome apps later this year. It’s promising a secure payment system. It’s also got some documentation on how to write Chrome apps for the store but warns that technical details will probably change before launch. The Chrome OS itself is supposed to be free. So is the Chrome browser. Google is already claiming 70 million active users.

Google To Kill Direct Google Phone Sales

Tue, 18 May 2010 21:15:00 EDT

Having alienated carriers like Sprint and Verizon by trying to sell its Android-based Nexus One phone direct to the consumer from its google.com/phone online store - Google's attempt to change the traditional cell phone sales model - it's killing the four-month-old store, describing it as merely "niche channel for early adopters," meaning its sales have been paltry. It swears it's because "many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from."

Google To Buy Key VoIP House

Tue, 18 May 2010 16:17:00 EDT

Google said Tuesday that it means to buy Norway's publicly traded VoIP codec house Global IP Solutions Holding AB (GIPS) for $68.2 million cash, a move that could put it in contention with Skype not to mention the telecom companies that are selling its phones. The deal, which represents a 27.5% premium over GIPs' closing price Friday, will also give Google ownership of parts of the technology underlying the instant messaging systems used by Yahoo, AOL and Baidu. Global IP Solutions makes the real-time processing software for voice and video calls over the Internet, widgetry used by IBM's Lotus Sametime as well as Cisco's WebEx scheme under a shiny new deal.

iPhone and iPad Seminars Continue: Dallas, Denver and Atlanta

Thu, 13 May 2010 07:59:00 EDT

If you’ve been following the hype and excitement around iPhone OS4, the recent launch of iPad and the great success of the iPhone in the enterprise, then you don’t want to miss these in-person seminars in Dallas, Denver and Atlanta in May and June. Sybase offers a full complement of solutions that support iPhone...

SYS-CON Announces "iPad Summit" Colocated with "Cloud Expo" in Silicon Valley

Fri, 07 May 2010 03:00:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced on Monday that the first International "iPad Summit" (www.ipadsummit.net), will take place November 1, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit is co-located with the 7th International Cloud Expo and the 10th International Virtualization Conference & Expo. The iPad Summit is an intensive and content-rich one-day program designed to satisfy the growing hunger among software developers, as well as IT and "new media" professionals for a broad spectrum of sessions informing them what kinds of development options and opportunities the iPad provides. The event will be renamed as "iPad Expo" (www.ipadexpo.net) in 2011 to include extensive "developer" and "new media" tracks in addition to its 2010 summit content.

SYS-CON Launches “iPad Summit” and Announces "iPad Expo"

Thu, 06 May 2010 10:15:00 EDT

SYS-CON Events announced on Monday that "iPad Summit" will take place November 1-4, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit is co-located with the 7th International Cloud Conference & Expo and the 9th International Virtualization Conference & Expo. The iPad Summit is an intensive and content-rich one-day program designed to satisfy the growing hunger among software developers and IT professionals for a broad spectrum of sessions informing developers what kinds of development options and opportunities the iPad provides.SYS-CON Events announced on Monday that “iPad Developer Summit” will take place November 1-3, 2010, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California. The Summit is co-located with the 7th International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo and the 9th International Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Oh No, They’re Gonna Inbreed!

Thu, 06 May 2010 04:00:00 EDT

In an apparent experiment in eugenics, a dating site called Cupidtino is going to see if crossing an Apple fan with an Apple fan is, well, fruitful. Cupidtino is going to be exclusively for Apple zealots and to weed out any rogue PC DNA invading its hothouse will only be accessible through Apple gizmos starting, aptly enough, in June. Cupidtino, a play on Apple’s location in Cupertino, says it was “created for fans of Apple products by fans of Apple products! Why? Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, and of course a love for technology. We believe there are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love, and so we created the first Mac-inspired dating site to help you find other Machearts around you.

Apple Staring at Antitrust Probe: NY Post

Mon, 03 May 2010 16:44:00 EDT

The New York Post claims the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are playing rock-paper-scissors and the winner will get to open a preliminary antitrust investigation of Apple and its newfangled Flash-blocking rules restricting iPad and iPhone developers to Apple’s development tools, making them good only on Apple’s platforms. The paper quotes an anonymous “person familiar with the matter.”

Jobs to Adobe: ‘Yer Stinkin’ Flash is Over-the-Hill. Get Over It.’

Sun, 02 May 2010 08:45:00 EDT

As a diversion from its high-profile “who-knows-where-it-will-end” dogfight with Gizmodo over an errant iPhone prototype, Apple has posted a longish open letter on its web site over the signature of its CEO Steve Jobs reiterating all the reasons why Apple has no use for Adobe’s Flash technology. Steve – or his ghost writer – says Adobe mischaracterizes the Apple ban when it says it’s business-driven and only meant to protect the Apple App Store. He claims it’s technology-driven.

Jobs Hints of Proprietary War on Open Source Codecs

Sun, 02 May 2010 03:45:00 EDT

Steve Jobs has certainly gotten a lot chattier and a lot feistier since he got a new liver. Right after he went public the other day with all the reasons why Adobe Flash sucks and why Apple wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot barge poll – an item the commentariat lavished billions of pixels on – he told the assistant on policy matters to the president of the Free Software Foundation Europe Hugo Roy to expect patent holders to “go after” the open source video codec Theora and its ilk for infringement.

They Say iPhone’s Next Feature Will Be a Cry ‘Help, I’ve Been Kidnapped’

Sat, 01 May 2010 14:45:00 EDT

So Gizmodo has lawyered up. And blogger Jason Chen has lawyered up. And the seller of Apple’s errant billion-dollar iPhone prototype – identified by Wired as 21-year-old college dropout Brian Hogan – has lawyered up while Apple has been hoist on Jon Stewart’s “Comedy Central” petard as a bunch of heavy-handed “appholes” because of the whole affair. The first thing the lawyer for Gizmodo did was to put it about that Gizmodo could sue the police for melodramatically breaking down Chen’s front door last Friday night and carting away all his computer equipment and other electronic paraphernalia – which is apparently still sitting untouched at a forensic lab somewhere waiting for somebody to decide if a crime has been committed like Apple alleges.

Apple Confirms Intrinsity Acquisition

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:15:00 EDT

Apple has confirmed that it bought Intrinsity last month, as widely assumed. It now appears, however, that the Austin, Texas, semiconductor developer contributed the ARM core of the proprietary processor Apple is using in the iPad. Quoting the Microprocessor Report’s Tom Halfhill, the New York Times puts the price at $121 million, less than half what Apple paid two years ago for PA Semi, the low-power PowerPC specialist, Apple’s first processor acquisition. Integrity is good at tickling processor speeds and in collaboration with Samsung got the Hummingbird ARM to 1GHz last summer. And Samsung reportedly makes the newfangled iPad A4 chip.