August 2, 2012
Written by Jim Dalrymple
But sources are telling us that this is coming to an abrupt end after the company’s Legal and Corporate Affairs team sent out a memo banning the word “Metro.” LCA’s memo reportedly says that Microsoft has been threatened with legal action for infringing on “Metro” trademarks held by German retailer Metro AG.From now on, the new terminology that Microsoft is using is “Windows 8-style UI” when talking about Windows 8 applications, and “New User Interface” when talking about the company’s full product line-up.
That’s totally going to catch on.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Ben Brooks shares some details on how he is still utilizing his G4 Mac mini.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Talk about a bad day. In the mother of all computer glitches, market-making firm Knight Capital Group (KCG) lost $440 million in 30 minutes on Aug. 1 when its trading software went, to use the technical term, kablooey.
Wow, now that’s a software glitch.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Apple’s lawyer William Lee on Samsung releasing evidence to the press:
“Mr. Quinn’s declaration does not adress two of the Court’s questions: who drafted the statement and who released it,” Lee wrote. “Samsung’s multiple references to the jury in its statement make plain its intent that the jurors in our case learn of arguments the Court has excluded through the press.”
Written by Jim Dalrymple
“We expect the Surface pads to have a similar impact on the PC industry as the Zune did in portable music players,” commented Canalys Analyst Tim Coulling.
If someone said that about my product, I’d just kill it and close the company.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Research In Motion today launched the new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks.
Who knew RIM was still in business.
August 1, 2012
Global PC shipments rose 12 percent in the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period a year ago, according to a new report from market research firm Canalys. Leading the way is Apple, which regained the top spot from HP.
It’s important to note that Canalys counts tablets as PCs, so Apple’s iPad is counted in the numbers. Having said that, other companies that make tablets are also counted in the final numbers.
“Reports that poor economic conditions and the wait for Windows 8 hurt the PC industry this quarter do not tell the whole story,” said Tom Evans, Canalys Research Analyst. “The PC industry is performing well and 2012 is shaping up to be a record year. Vendors with innovative products will reap the rewards.”
Apple lead the way with 19.6 percent of the market, followed by HP with 12.5 percent, Lenovo with 12.1 percent, Acer with 9.8 percent and Dell with 8.9 percent.
While Apple’s Mac and iPad sales were high points in this quarter’s results, the same could not be said for Windows PCs.
“In contrast to pads, Windows PC shipments continued to disappoint,” wrote Canalys. “Ultrabooks have not hit the price points that could excite large numbers of buyers and the share of the overall market taken by Windows fell to a new low of 73%. Intel’s share also hit an all-time low, falling below 70%.”
Of course, Microsoft recently announced its Surface tablet, but the outlook from Canalys is not good.
“The information available to date suggests the prices of both will be too high to capture significant market share, and a direct sales approach will prove inadequate,” said Canalys Analyst Tim Coulling. “We expect the Surface pads to have a similar impact on the PC industry as the Zune did in portable music players.”
Written by Jim Dalrymple
This hot pink Nokia Lumia polish is designed to match the pink version of the Lumia 900 which was recently introduced in the U.S., via AT&T.
Yeah, everything is just fine at Nokia.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Fender did not pursue the Strat-clone manufacturers in court; and then after attempting to trademark the iconic Statocaster contours decades later, a court ruled in 2009 that “the body shapes were generic and that consumers do not solely associate these shapes with Fender Musical Instruments Corporation”. The ruling went so far as to say “in the case of the [Stratocaster] body outline, this configuration is so common that it is depicted as a generic electric guitar in a dictionary.”
Protect your property from thieves or lose the rights to it.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The popular Sonnox Oxford EQ Plug-In, newly optimized for UAD-2 DSP Accelerators and the Apollo audio interface, incorporates the exact equalization algorithms from the legendary Sony OXF-R3 mixing console — regarded as one of the best-sounding mixing desks of all time.
Great news for UAD users.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
With its bigger, excellent Retina display and a still-unmatched app store, the iPad still has the edge over the Nexus 7. But if you want a tablet in a smaller package for a lot less money, the Nexus 7 is worth thinking about.
First intelligent thing they’ve said in years.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
“Our role is to imagine products that don’t exist and guide them to life,” he told the jury.
As opposed to Samsung, who look at products that do exist and copy them.
July 31, 2012
Written by Peter Cohen
Alexandra Chang for Wired:
On the same day the Obama campaign launched its iOS app Obama for America, the Romney campaign released a smartphone app Tuesday that provides an alert the moment Mitt announces his Vice Presidential candidate. Aptly named “Mitt’s VP,” the iOS and Android app will be the first place to find out who will run alongside the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
We’ll see if this works out any better in practice than the Obama campaign’s attempt in 2008, when they offered to notify phone users of his running mate choice by text message but were beaten to the punch by the New York Times.
The free app is available for iOS and Android.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Arnold Kim:
Apple has quietly launched a Hulu Plus channel on Apple TV this morning.
You have to reboot for the channel to appear.
Written by Peter Cohen
Sarah Frier for Bloomberg:
“They’re [Apple] more in a dictatorship mode where they say, ‘This is what you have to do or you don’t get the iPhone,’” Vasyl Latsanych, the Russian company’s vice president of marketing, said at the event. “Being arrogant with your partners in big markets doesn’t pay off.”
Latsanych works for MTS, Russia’s biggest regional cell phone carrier. Latsanych complains about the phone’s cost and about Apple’s requirements that “the carrier’s retail locations meet its standards, imposing additional burdens.”
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The microblogging service suspended Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for London-based daily The Independent, after he sent a tweet on Friday revealing NBC Olympics President Gary Zenkel’s email address.
The solution is simple — just don’t suck so bad, NBC.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Stories now include inline links as well as the “Sources” at the end of the article. Good. Justin Ellis and Joshua Benton from Nieman Journalism Lab have the details.
Written by Shawn King
BuzzMachine:
Reading the #nbcfail hashtag has been at least as entertaining as much of NBC’s coverage of the Olympics. It’s also enlightening — economically enlightening.The people formerly known as the audience have a voice and boy are they using it to complain about NBC’s tape delays of races and the opening ceremonies, about its tasteless decision to block the UK tribute to its 7/7 victims, and about its commentators’ idiocies.The counterargument has been an economic one: NBC has to maximize commercial revenue, which means maximizing prime time viewership, to recoup the billions paid for the rights to broadcast, billions that pay for the stadiums and security and ceremony. The argument is also made that NBC’s strategy is working because it is getting record ratings.
What do you think? Are you watching the Olympics live, either on TV or online? Or are you waiting for the evening recaps? Thanks to Dan Frakes for the link.
A new report released on Monday by Strategy Analytics shows that Apple’s U.S. smartphone market share is on the rise, while Android declined in the second quarter of 2012.
Apple’s market share rose significantly, rising 10 percentage points from 23 percent to 33 percent, when compared to the second quarter of 2011. Android’s share fell 4 points to 56 percent. Of course, it’s important to note that hundreds of devices use Android, while Apple only has a couple of iPhone devices on the market.
BlackBerry fell 4 points, coming in with 7 percent of the market, the lowest in recent years for the company.
Overall smartphone shipments fell 5 percent, which Strategy Analytics blamed on a “volatile economy, maturing penetration of smartphones among contract mobile subscribers, and major operators tightening their upgrade policies to enhance profits were among the main causes of the slowdown.”
Update: Changed Apple’s 10 percent rise to 10 percentage point rise.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Adam Engst:
But it’s important to distinguish the marketing discussion of new features from release notes about precisely what has changed, and one change might have escaped your notice: the elimination of the Web Sharing options in the Sharing pane of System Preferences.
Adam gives a couple of suggestions on how to bring the feature back for those that need it.
Written by Peter Cohen
Dan Pearson for GamesIndustry.biz:
The ESA has confirmed that E3 will remain in the city of Los Angeles for at least the next three years, with next year’s show taking place from “June 11-13, 2013, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, L.A. LIVE and a plethora of venues throughout downtown Los Angeles and the City.”
The annual video game trade show is a huge gathering for the industry and a big media event too. But the city of Los Angeles plans extensive renovations to convention center facility in order to accommodate a new sports stadium. As recently as last month the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), which puts on the E3 show, had indicated that it might leave Los Angeles all together unless they received assurances on a number of issues ranging from square footage to signage.
