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Posts tagged with "apple"

Retina Display Featured In Latest “If You Don’t Have An iPhone” Ad

The iPhone 4’s Retina Display is the latest feature to be showcased in Apple’s new advertising campaign characterized by the “If you don’t have an iPhone” tag line. It highlights how without a Retina Display,  “movies aren’t this dramatic”, “maps aren’t this clear”, “emails aren’t this detailed” and “memories aren’t this memorable”.

Jump the break to watch this latest ad, as well as the other four featured in the “If you don’t have an iPhone” ad series which demonstrate Game Center, the App Store, iBooks and the iTunes store.

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Apple Wins First Round of Patent Battle Against Nokia

According to Reuters news agency, a US panel has said that Apple didn’t infringe any patents from Finland-based cellphone company Nokia. The 5 patents claimed by Nokia in the past months included mobile phones, portable music players and computers.

A judge at the International Trade Commission, which hears many patent cases, said that Apple did not violate the Nokia patents.

In the past months, the two companies fired back at each other with a series of lawsuits. In September 2010 Apple sued Nokia in the UK over 9 cellphone-related patents the company had purportedly implemented in their products, and sued again in January challenging one of the seven patents filed by Nokia in its lawsuit against Apple in Germany. Indeed, had previously sued Apple in the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands over 37 patent infringements claiming that Apple “owed it royalties for using Nokia technology that allows such basic mobile tasks as sending email or downloading applications”.

More specifically, Nokia sued Apple in May 2010 over five patents related to “enhanced speech and data transmission, and antenna configurations that improve performance and save space” that, according to the Finnish company, Apple implemented in their iPhones and iPads. Before that, Nokia had filed a lawsuit in October 2009 accusing Apple of infringing 10 patents and demanding royalties for more than 51 million iPhones sold since then.

We’ll update this article with more information as details surface in the next hours.

Bloomberg reports a statement from Nokia:

While we don’t agree that there has been no violation, we’ll wait to see the details of the ruling before we decide on any next steps,” said Laurie Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Espoo, Finland-based Nokia.

Apple has a “no comment”:

Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, said the Cupertino, California-based company had no comment. The judge’s reasons will be released to the public after both sides have a chance to redact confidential business information.

Keep Your Files Safe! Two Copies Of Disk Drill Pro Up For Grabs

Your Mac can be kind of a jerk sometimes ya know? I mean, it’s totally not your fault that you accidentally dropped that school report in the bucket then emptied the trash the day before it was due. But not to fear: Disk Drill for the Mac knows right where’s it been marked for deletion, and yanks it right from our hard drive (without boring any holes). And if you’re just buying Disk Drill, a deep scan should uncover just what you’re looking for. You need Disk Drill as assurance against unfortunate mishaps, lost files, and damaging deletions. Not only will Disk Drill protect your home folder, but it’ll keep an eye on your hard drive’s health so you’ll never have to worry about a dying disk. And if all goes haywire: just back up your documents to a disk image! It’s that simple, and Disk Drill comes in free and pro versions so you can decide what’s right for you. Super easy to use, we’re giving away two licenses to a couple lucky readers.

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Analyst Predicts Apple Will Be Bigger Than IBM and HP→

Analyst Predicts Apple Will Be Bigger Than IBM and HP

Founder of Forrester Research George Colony thinks Apple will outgrow IBM and HP, keeping its steady 50% sales growth rate year after year:

They’ll be bigger than IBM next year, and they’ll be bigger than HP the year after that,” Colony said, citing Apple’s 52 percent sales growth last year. At current growth rates “they’re going to be a $200 billion revenue company,” he said.

Hewlett-Packard had sales of $126 billion in the year that ended in October and IBM’s revenue was $99.9 billion last year, making them the largest technology companies, respectively, by sales. Apple ranks No. 1 by market capitalization.

HP is coming out with a tablet this summer (following the Palm acquisition), whilst IBM has become more of a research giant rather than a consumer electronic company. Apple may be bigger than both companies from a user’s perspective, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the HP TouchPad will be able to change the current tablet market landscape.

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Microsoft Prepares Enterprise Software To Manage iOS, Android and WP7 Mobile Devices

Despite the perception of Microsoft being bitter enemies with Apple it sure seems as if this rivalry is cooling off lately with Microsoft working to provide several services and products to iOS users in particular. From their iPhone apps to additional features in Bing (that won’t even make it to Windows Phone 7 till late 2011), Microsoft is making a concerted effort to be relevant in the increasingly iOS (and Android too) mobile market.

Its latest foray is an enterprise and corporate focused piece of software that will allow IT departments to more easily manage a workplace of iOS, Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7 mobile devices. Named, in typically superfluous Microsoft fashion, System Center Configuration Manager 2012, it will let those IT departments enforce password complexity and security, remote wipe devices amongst other key functions.

As Microsoft describes it, SCCM can “Streamline operations with a unified infrastructure that integrates client management and protection across mobile, physical, and virtual environments.” The Beta 2 of System Center Configuration Manager 2012 is available for download but it does require registration and only runs on Windows Server 2008.

[Via TUAW]

iPad 2 Price Comparison Across The World

Thanks to Italian blog Setteb.it you can easily check how much the iPad 2 price varies across most of the 25 countries launching the iPad 2 tomorrow. As is always the case for internationally sold products, and for a variety of reasons, the price varies quite substantially from country to country - even when currency and tax discrepancies are removed. The iPad 2 is no exception and some countries are paying a little more than their US counterparts, whilst some are paying far more.

The site tried to take the key variables of currency and tax out of the comparison by converting the local prices into the Euro and adding a rough sales tax average of 9.2% to the US prices. What was revealed was that the US had the cheapest prices for the iPad 2 but Australia was not far behind, only 14 Euros more expensive on the base 16GB WiFi only model and had the next cheapest prices for every other model except the 64GB WiFi + 3G which New Zealand had for the second cheapest price at only 18 Euros more than the US.

Comparatively the iPad 2 had the highest markup in Sweden and Norway at 100 Euros more for the 16GB WiFi model in Sweden and more than a 200 Euro markup in Norway for the 64GB WiFi + 3G. Click here for the full table of prices.

[Via TUAW]

Happy Birthday, OS X!

Ten years ago today, on March 24th 2001, Apple released Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah. Now ten years on, OS X has evolved into what we know and love as being Snow Leopard, that latest major update to OS X.

Between the original, and rather buggy version of OS X, Cheetah and Snow Leopard now, we had 10.1 Puma (September 2001), 10.2 Jaguar (August 2002), 10.3 Panther (October 2003), 10.4 Tiger (April 2005) and 10.5 Leopard (October 2007). With just a few short months before the summer, we don’t have much longer to wait until OS X 10.7 Lion arrives and brings a convergence of traditional desktop OS design and iOS design together into one great operating system.

So Happy Birthday OS X! If you’re feeling nostalgic you might want to have a read of the Wikipedia page on OS X which gives a nice synopsis of the major feature additions each release brought and jump the break to watch Steve Jobs introduce OS X at the 2000 MacWorld.

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The Big Data Center Theory

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Data Center Theory Banner

Amidst news about the departure of Bertrand Serlet, this morning has seen some outstanding opinions about what Apple will do with their data-center in Maiden, North Carolina. Combined with the unrelated rumors that Apple could license AirPlay to consumer-electronics makers, and we have various pieces of the puzzle that when brought together give pundits food-for-thought.

It’s stupid at this point to speculate whether Apple’s data-center is being built for delivering iTunes content and MobileMe: that answer was satisfied by COO Tim Cook at their shareholder meeting last month. Yet that’s a non-answer, because if Apple’s model for consuming iTunes content doesn’t change then why bother with a bigger facility? Scale is one thing, but you don’t invest a billion dollars in something without a game-plan. The question isn’t what the data-center will be used for, but how. Certainly MobileMe needs some help in the reliability department, but iTunes’ current model for consuming content (with a focus on downloading vs. streaming) has been well handled. Has anything recently consistently stuttered or ground to a halt on iTunes? Downloads have always been generally seamless. To instigate such an expenditure, the iTunes model would obviously move from primarily downloading content to streaming it. They’re not building a data-center because Apple can’t handle the iTunes load – they’re building it to prepare for what’s next. When you match this to today’s AirPlay rumors, I think Apple will make a huge play for the television market this year.

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