@RandallB
This is Apple’s original AppleTV, from circa 1996. Rob Gould, who works on the AOL HD project with my company, Castfire, sent me these awesome pics from his time back at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) when they had access to this box. He calls it the “Pippen”, likely a spin-off from the Apple Pippin, from earlier in the decade.
Pictures are a lot different than what we have now.
Note: This is a guest post by Matt Richman. You can learn more about Matt on his Web site.
RIM just reported earnings (PDF) for its second fiscal quarter of 2012. Seventy-three percent of its $4.2 billion in revenue came from the sale of hardware, which includes Blackberrys and Playbooks. This means RIM brought in $3.066 billion from hardware sales.
RIM shipped 10.6 million Blackberrys and 200,000 Playbooks. Assuming the average selling price of a Playbook is $554 (what I used last quarter), then RIM brought in $2.9552 billion in revenue from the sale of 10.6 million Blackberrys.
That means the average selling price of a Blackberry this quarter was $278.79. It rose 3.80% over last quarter’s $268.56, but it’s still down 7.76% over the last six months.
The following chart shows the average selling price of a Blackberry since 2009:
Mat Honan, for Gizmodo:
If you’re not intrigued by Windows 8 and Metro, if you can’t recognize that it’s a big leap forward, if you’re not excited about what it means for you, personally then you don’t really care about technology; you care about brands. You care about platforms. You care about politics. You’re a fanboy.Look, we all lean certain ways. I have my own set of preferences. I tend to vote for Democrats and buy Apple products. But that’s because they tend to support my priorities, not vice-versa. If the Democrats suddenly turned their backs on science, or Apple began pushing out products with buggy cluttered interfaces, I’d look elsewhere. I don’t really get those who treat brands like sports teams, offering blind allegiance over self-interest. That’s just zealotry. God bless that file system; my platform, right or wrong.The older I get the less I trust anyone who puts party or platform over the advancement of society.
I agree with Mat wholeheartedly. Use what you want to use – Windows, Android, OS X, iOS, whatever. Just stop being such a dick about it.
It took RIM a full quarter (let’s say 90 days) to ship (not sell) 200,000 PlayBooks. In its last quarter, Apple sold 9.25 million iPads, or approximately 102,000 per day. In two days of sales the iPad beat the PlayBook.
Update: I fixed the silly calculation I made in the numbers. Still doesn’t change the end result.
The numbers are in and they don’t look good for RIM.
The company reported shipping approximately 10.6 million BlackBerry smartphones and approximately 200,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. Keep in mind, those numbers are shipped, not sold.
By using the shipped number, RIM could fill up the channel with product, but not actually sell a single device to customers.
Sales and earnings at the low end of its forecast, so it’s bad all the way around for RIM.
Winrumors.com did a comparison.
A Sharp has announced the release of King of Dragon Pass, a unique indie strategy game for the iPhone. It costs $9.99 and is available for download from the App Store.
King of Dragon Pass is set in a mythical land called Glorantha. You are the leader of a clan fighting for its survival. Each time you play is different – the developer says 475 different situations are possible. Even choosing the same response from game to game can force a different outcome, depending on different factors.
King of Dragon Pass originally ran on Mac OS and Windows; A Sharp has streamlined the game play, added new stories and reworked the interface to be optimized for iOS.
Namco Bandai has announced plans to release Sky Gamblers: Rise of Glory worldwide on the App Store on Thursday, September 22, 2011. The game will cost $4.99 and a “Lite” version will be made available the same day.
You can also go head-to-head with other players in a multiplayer mode that works with up to eight gamers in either individual or team-based matches.
It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.Gizmodo — September 22, 2009
Courier was canceled in April 2010 without ever being released.
Essentially, we think the success of the Kin One depends a lot on how much it sells for – if it’s less than £200 then it’s got a very real shot of being a massive phone.TechRadar — April 14, 2010
The first time I opened Kin Studio felt like magic. An entire website was created to hold my Kin’s content, yet I had done absolutely nothing extra to put it there.AllThingsD — May 4, 2010
The Kin sold for $49.99 (£31) and was canceled less than two months after it launched.
Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win.Paul Thurrott — September 13, 2011
We’ll see.
In the last 24 hours Apple has posted two separate EFI firmware updates for Thunderbolt-equipped Macs and a software update that provides support for the new Apple Thunderbolt Display. All are available for download from Apple’s Support Downloads Web page.
A MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.2 is aimed at MacBook Pro (early 2011) models.
This update enables Lion Internet Recovery which starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection if the built-in recovery is unavailable. It also includes fixes that resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on MacBook Pro (early 2011) models.
Mac mini EFI Firmware Update 1.3, meanwhile, is aimed at Mac mini (mid 2011) models.
This update includes fixes that enhance the stability of Lion Recovery from an Internet connection, and resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on Mac Mini (mid 2011) models.
Thunderbolt Software Update “provides support for the Apple Thunderbolt Display and bug fixes for Thunderbolt device compatibility,” according to Apple.
Australian Business Traveller:
According to Mark Larson, technical manager at Boeing’s Dreamliner Gallery, all 787s now in production will be fitted with Android-based servers and touchscreens.
The Android systems will be used for in-flight entertainment systems throughout first class and coach seating on the giant airliner, according to the report. Panasonic has built Android touchscreens certified for use by Boeing in the 787s.
The report says that “Boeing’s decision effectively locks out Apple [and others]” from being installed on the 787. Not such a big deal, considering how many of the 787’s passengers are likely to be carrying iOS devices anyway.
Feral Interactive on Thursday announced plans to publish a Mac version of Batman: Arkham Asylum on Thursday, October 13, 2011. The game will cost $39.99 and will be available on retail shelves and for online download.
Players use Batman’s stealth, strength and psychological terror to overcome opponents as he squares off against some of Gotham’s worst criminals, including Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow.
The game features a story penned by Paul Dini, Batman writer and Emmy Award winner. It also sports the voice talents of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who reprise their roles as The Joker and Batman from the animated TV series.
System requirements call for a 2.0GHz or faster Intel-based Mac with at least 2GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.6 or later. Nvidia 7xxx series, ATI 1×00 and Intel GMA graphics chips are not supported.
The Next Web:
Last weekend, Stevie Wonder made a special appearance at a nightclub in Los Angeles, ad-libbing to his songs, playing some other tracks but also taking some time to stop the music to give a speech on helping others with disabilities.At around the 4:38 mark in the video embedded above, Stevie Wonder takes time to thank Steve Jobs and Apple for how they made technology accessible for everyone…
Peter Kafka:
Netflix, which instituted a price hike earlier this fall, says the higher costs are turning off more customers than it expected. The video rental company has cut its third quarter U.S. subscriber projections from 25 million subscribers to 24 million, a four percent cut. The majority of the shrinkage, Netflix says, will come from its DVD-only customers.
I never thought the backlash would be this bad.
Andrew Richardson:
Well, Windows on a diet running alone in 2 GB sounds reasonable. Windows plus one non-bloatware application running in 2 GB, maybe. Windows multitasking a half-dozen apps, some of them legacy Windows applications like Outlook, Excel or Photoshop, and a browser with ten open tabs? Good luck with that. It won’t matter that the user can switch between the Metro UI and mobile apps, and something resembling Windows 7 and desktop apps, because it all has to fit in a RAM store that remains cost-competitive with a tablet.
Arrington took issue with a story and posted in the TechCrunch forums:
Erick, I’m still an AOL employee through tomorrow (15th). Also, as you know I had significant input into this list of finalists and spoke to Heather [Techcrunch CEO] for over an hour last night about them. My final list is somewhat different from this one, though, but we agree on four of the companies.Please be careful making statements on my behalf. And remember that reader trust is what matters. You shouldn’t say ‘he was not involved in the final selection of these companies’ just because it sounds nice. Since it isn’t true, you shouldn’t say it at all.Also, going forward, I don’t know if I’ll be disclosing our investments to TechCrunch.
Fresh wounds.
Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair at BGR:
On the PlayBook tablet, Blair’s opinion is even more dour. “Last quarter RIM talked about shipping 500,000 units but did not speak of sell-through for obvious reasons,” the analyst wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. “Channel fill could turn up another decent shipment number this year in the 500,000 – 700,000 unit range but we believe sell-through has been weak enough that that number will trend down over the year and RIM will likely send the PlayBook into the same graveyard as the HP TouchPad.”
If they would have put out a decent product to begin with, they wouldn’t be in this trouble.
Mobileburn:
According to the filing, Google increased its bid for Motorola by 33 percent in one day, bringing the purchase price up by $3 billion. This was without Motorola entertaining bids from other companies. The filing also says that Google first initiated talks with Motorola in July with regards to patent issues facing Android, and those talks quickly escalated to a plan to acquire the company.
Google didn’t want to mess around – it wanted Motorola Mobility and its patents, and was willing to do whatever it took to seal the deal quickly.
IndustryGamers:
In an interview with Japanese news organization Nikkei (translated by Andriasang), Nintendo president Satoru Iwata reiterated the company’s stance on creating games for smartphones.“This is absolutely not under consideration,” Iwata definitively replied when asked about Nintendo possibly making smartphone games.
Iwata is resolute and unambiguous – as long as he’s in charge, Nintendo supporting non-Nintendo platforms is off the table.
Earlier this year news sites buzzed when an analyst told his investors he thought Nintendo should start making games for smartphones. The news came a month after The Pokemon Co. announced a rhythm matching game featuring Pokemon characters for iOS, which some news sites conflated as Nintendo making a Pokemon iPhone game. (That game was released in Japan, but hasn’t been seen anywhere else.)
Fast Company:
LeVar Burton, a children’s literacy advocate and a former star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plans to make an ambitious comeback, giving the once-loved Reading Rainbow brand a 21st-century upgrade. Burton’s for-profit venture, RRKidz, plans to launch an educational iPad app that lets children explore topics of interest–such as, say space–in a multimedia-rich environment, with voice-over-enhanced children’s books, familiar videos of Burton at real-life places (like NASA), and, of course, games. Burton tells Fast Company he’s on a mission to “get kids hooked on books,” and says his company is “going to where kids are today; those devices that they love to spend time on.”
Anything that improves childhood literacy is okay in my book, if you’ll pardon the pun. Burton’s Reading Rainbow helped get a generation of kids excited about reading; let’s hope that RRKidz has the same effect.
(Hat tip: Kelly Guimont)
Now you can quickly and easily convert your iWeb blog to a WordPress blog. Simply export your iWeb website to a Local folder and import it into iWeb to WordPress. In just minutes you will get all of your blog posts and comments into WordPress.
VMware on Wednesday released Fusion 4, the company’s virtualization software, allowing users to run other operating systems on their Macs.
Fusion 4 is a 64-bit Cocoa application, built with Apple’s new OS X Lion in mind. You can add Windows applications to LaunchPad, experience them in Mission Control, view them in full screen or switch between them using Mac gestures.
VMware said Fusion is also optimized for today’s multi-core Macs and delivers 3D graphics up to 2.5-times faster than previous versions.
Fusion 4 now supports OS X Lion in a virtual machine, so you can run OS X Lion, OS X Lion Server, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and Mac OS X Leopard Server in virtual machines.
Pat Lee, director of client product management at VMware, pointed out in an interview with The Loop that having the ability to run OS X in Fusion is a great way to test Mac apps, or different setups, without affecting your working machine.
“A big part of Fusion users are switchers that want to run the apps that they still need,” said Lee. “We want to make that easy.”
VMware Fusion 4 is available until the end of the year for $49.99. Customers who have purchased Fusion 3 on or after the July 20, 2011 are eligible for an electronic upgrade to Fusion 4 at no additional cost.
Fusion will not be available from the Mac App Store, but can be purchased from VMware.
Apple and Google are dragging their feet to assist with the Macrosolve and Lodsys patent bullying of small businesses, entrepeneurs, and developers. Without Apple’s and Google’s assistance, the app development community is vulnerable to the strategic attacks made by these companies. Since no Union for developers exists, individual developers are defenseless to the financial and legal bullying brought on by Lodsys and Macrosolve. Small companies and developers cannot afford to invalidate the patents claims made by Macrosolve and Lodsys.
The anonymous person behind the protest suggest developers should pull their apps from the App Store and Android Market.
It’s one thing to look at today’s Windows-8-on-a-tablet and say that it has a lot of potential. It’s another thing altogether to look at it and declare victory.
Exactly right. Windows writers are claiming victory over one of the most popular consumer electronics we’ve seen in years, all based on a half-baked demo from Microsoft.
Boy Genius Report has a glowing piece on Windows 8 that they say ushers in the “post-post-PC era.”
In the story, “Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era,” BGR makes some pretty amazing claims. As you can guess, I don’t agree with the assertions.
The reception, as you’ve likely read by now, has been overwhelmingly positive.
Joanna Stern from This is my next… describes Windows 8 like this:
“If we’re going to be totally honest though, we’d describe Windows 8 right now as incoherent and contradictory.”
In fact, Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by the platform that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing.
Like most people, I was shocked with the stupidity of putting a fan in a tablet. I wasn’t flustered, I was laughing my ass off. That’s why I made the joke about needing a fan. If a tablet has noticeable fan noise and heat, you lose.
Again, Joanna Stern’s observations:
“However, fan noise is very noticeable, as is the heat coming out of the top vent.”
Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8.
There’s an assumption that Apple’s in the same race as Microsoft. Apple developed the course, the rules and the vehicles. Microsoft is along for the ride at this point.
A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop.
Microsoft is trying to have it both ways.
We are not living in a “post-PC” era today any more than we were on January 26th, 2010, the day before Apple unveiled the magical iPad.
Of course we are. Apple outlined its vision for what will follow the traditional computer and it is the iPad. Millions of sales later and we have the start to a post-PC era.
At that point in time, Apple will be able to offer a computing solution that is infinitely more versatile and capable than the company’s current solutions. A solution like Windows 8.
I just threw up in my mouth.
If the iPad ushered in the post-PC era, then welcome to the post-post-PC era.
The iPad ushered in an era. It’s an era that Microsoft is trying to build on and that’s great for them, but you can’t say that another era has started based on the preview of a product.
When Windows 8 is released and millions of people choose that over the iPad, then you can safely say that Microsoft ushered in something — until then, they have nothing.
BGR.com
In an effort to edge in on MetroPCS and Sprint-owned Boost and Virgin Mobile, Verizon Wireless will introduce a brand new $50 monthly prepaid this week that includes unlimited text, talk and web. The new plan, which first launched back in April as “Unleashed” in limited markets, will be available to customers in Verizon stores, Walmart, Target and Best Buy.
Apple and Starbucks on Tuesday relaunched the partnership that saw the companies bring “Song of the Week” to customers. However, this new program is even bigger.
Dubbed “Pick of the Week,” the new program will include all types of content from iTunes, including including music, apps, TV episodes and books. Launching today is extended sample of Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus,” the first book to be featured in the program.
The book is available at all US Starbucks locations via free cards with download codes redeemable on the iBookstore.
