August 3, 2011
BBC:
A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax.
A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant.It later emerged that the company’s website was only recently set up and staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris.
The Loop was one of the media organizations that reported on the research – albeit mainly to have a laugh at our poor, beleaguered Windows-suffering brethren. Like Jim said at the time, IQ tests are stupid. (Admittedly, he said that mainly because he can’t get above about 80, but that’s still a B, right?)
Bloomberg:
InterDigital’s engineers invented some of the technology for high-speed mobile phone networks now used by the world’s biggest handset makers. The King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based company may fetch more than $5 billion, according to analysts at Algorithm Capital and Dougherty & Co. Other companies including Eastman Kodak Co. (EK) are also selling patent portfolios.
InterDigital’s CEO said its patents are “deeper and stronger” than Nortel’s.
New York-based photographer Taea Thale is suing Apple for using one of her copyrighted photos in an iPhone television ad. (more…)
August 2, 2011
Tim Bajarin on Steve Jobs:
They tell me he calls in regularly. He talks to Tim, he talks to the top guys, he talks about the Apple stores,” Bajarin said. “But while he used to micromanage everything in ways that most CEOs would not, right down to issues with the company cafeteria, the big change with his latest leave is that there’s less micromanagement and more management of his executive team and the big-picture issues.
The execs at Apple know what Steve expects from them and they do it. They buy into the system and make the decisions necessary to get to where Steve wants them to be. Make no mistake though, Steve is still involved.
Apple leads in almost every market it enters these days, and now you can add another metric to the list: connecting to the Internet while flying. (more…)
It’s out, it’s not out, it’s back out again – Skype for iPad is now available, and it’s a free download. (more…)
MacTech Conference 2011 happens in November in Los Angeles, and the event’s early bird registration, which saves attendees $200 on the cost of attending, will end on August 8th. (more…)
August 1, 2011
In addition to releasing iCloud storage prices on Monday, Apple also released a few images of what its Web services will look like. You can view them all on Apple’s Web site.
Apple on Monday updated its iCloud Web pages, detailing how much it will cost for users to purchase more storage on the service. (more…)
John Paczkowski:
Sources with knowledge of the situation say reports claiming AT&T has blacked out employee vacations during the last two weeks of September in preparation for the retail debut of the next iPhone are misinformed.
I thought September, but announced in September and shipped in October is certainly possible.
Apple has added the ability to re-download TV Shows to its iCloud service. (more…)
Kotaku:
Iwata said he is taking responsibility for the 3DS, which translates into a cut in his paycheck. “For cuts in fixed salaries, I’m taking a fifty percent cut, other representative directors are taking a 30 percent cut, and other execs are taking a 20 percent cut,” said Iwata.
A brave move. It’s inconceivable to imagine western executives accepting failure in a similar fashion for their underperforming products – otherwise there’d be more Toyota Corollas and fewer Ferraris in Silicon Valley parking lots.
Drawing a parallel to the Apple ecosystem: the disappointing sales of the Nintendo 3DS handheld demonstrate a point missed by many companies jumping into the tablet market – it’s not just about the hardware. As Bill Clinton might have said if tech was his bag instead of politics, It’s the software, stupid. The 3DS has been plagued by delayed and cancelled games since its release. As a result people aren’t buying. Nintendo can cut prices all it wants, but until gamers have a reason to get the 3DS, they’re gonna stay away in droves.
SecureMac on Monday updated MacScan, the company’s anti-spyware privacy and security software, adding support for Apple’s recently released OS X Lion. (more…)
Technologizer:
For years, Apple has confounded the rest of us by not buying things that it should clearly be buying. Not purchasing other well-known companies is so core to Apple’s strategy that it must have a whole department devoted to non-mergers and un-acquisitions.
Harry McCracken has some fun debunking some of the rumors about Apple acquisitions over the years. His point is worth underscoring, though – take much of what you read about such rumors with a grain of salt. Apple keeps its cards very close to its vest.
Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. won an agreement from Samsung Electronics Co. that the South Korean company won’t sell the newest version of its tablet computer in Australia until a patent lawsuit in the country is resolved.
Apple claims that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet – an iPad competitor – infringes Apple patents. The Australian suit is another volley in the ongoing litigation between Apple and Samsung which started earlier this year. It’s something of a sticky wicket for both companies – Apple still relies on Samsung for parts for its devices. What’s more, Samsung has responded to Apple with countersuits.
July 31, 2011
Adobe on Monday released a new tool called Adobe Edge that will allow Web designers to bring animation to Web sites using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS. (more…)
AppleInsider:
Apple was ordered by the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas early this month to pay damages to Personal Audio. Within weeks, the non-practicing entity had filed a second suit seeking damages for alleged infringement of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, which had not been included in the original suit.
Trying to double-dip against Apple. Thankfully, the judge stopped it.
July 30, 2011
When OS X Lion was released earlier this month, some users were inadvertently charged multiple times for the purchase. (more…)
AIR Users Blog:
In an attempt to promote his new venture, this PR stunt is being done in the hope of distancing his name from the brand that helped make the T-Pain effect so famous. He is asking for $1 million in damages and also for them to stop using his name and image in any marketing. I suppose a simple email wouldn’t sufficed for T-Pain?
I was hoping he would stop making music, but apparently he’s just going with another company called Izotope.
Orlando Sentinel:
“When students at the new Lake Minneola High School in Lake County return to classes in a few weeks, they’ll have access to more than half a million dollars worth of new iPads that they’ll use at school and at home.“Lake Minneola will be is the first public school in Central Florida to buy the devices for every student as part of a state pilot program to save on textbooks and offer a new dimension in learning for students.”
In the current economic climate, forward-thinking schools looking to employ technology effectively for their students are faced with a dilemma: how to get the most bang for a dwindling amount of bucks? The iPad certainly helps – as long as curriculums, faculty training and IT policies are tailored accordingly.
NPR:
Patents are a big deal in the software industry right now. Lawsuits are proliferating. Big technology companies are spending billions of dollars to buy up huge patent portfolios in order to defend themselves. Computer programmers say patents are hindering innovation.
Personally, I think companies and individuals should be able to protect their products and ideas. However, the balance seems to be off kilter these days.
Techdirt:
The actual patent in question, 5,636,276, is for a “Device for the distribution of music information in digital form.” Sound broad? Of course, as the patent attorneys in the audience will tell you, it’s not the title of the patent that matters, but the claims. So go read through the claims and try not to gag. What’s described is the very generic idea of streaming music.
I’m surprised Spotify was able to last two weeks in the U.S. without being sued.
July 29, 2011
Macworld:
“As you might expect, the slower processor on the base 11-inch model provided more room for overall performance gains than the slightly faster 13-inch model. So here’s what happens when you spend $150 to upgrade the 11-inch MacBook Air to the Core i7 processor: Our Cinebench CPU and file compression tests ran 21 percent faster, our iTunes encode went 19 percent faster, and our HandBrake test went 14 percent faster.”
Choosing a Configure-to-Order (CTO) upgrade with the Core i7 processor certain offers you a measurable improvement in overall performance, but there’s a significant cost increase too. Take a close look at Macworld’s benchmarks to find out if it’s worth it.
Softpress has released an update to its Web design software Freeway. Version 5.6, a free update for version 5.5 users, is ready for download for both Freeway Express and Freeway Pro. (more…)
As reported on Thursday by 9to5Mac, AT&T on Friday confirmed plans to throttle the data transfer speeds of smartphone users still on “unlimited” data plans. (more…)
Matt Richman:
I think Apple will sell 36.89 million iPads during the first and second quarters of next year. If I’m right, then Apple will sell 100 million iPads in 2.25 years — 55% faster than it took the iPhone, and 144% faster than the iPod.
Apple’s sales are crazy these days. They are dominating every market they enter.
Washington Post:
The same goes for a myriad of mobilized gestures that can get confusing, even for power users. Do I use the three-finger double-tap or the two-finger double-tap to zoom? (It’s the latter — a three-finger double-tap pulls up the dictionary.) After playing around with the system for a while, I found myself regularly going back to System Preferences to disable new touchpad features because I simply couldn’t keep them straight.
Hayley Tsukayama is going through some of the same things I did with Lion. I turned off “natural” scrolling too, but turned it back on and forced myself to use it for week. It’s making more sense to me now, so I’m leaving it on. This is a good overview of how some of Lion’s changes affect how we interact with the OS.
Macworld:
“…if you haven’t yet gotten around to upgrading to iLife ’11, buying a new Mac mini or MacBook Air essentially gets you iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand for all your Macs running OS X 10.6.6 or later (since you need at least that version of Snow Leopard to run the Mac App Store). And this isn’t sneaky or dishonest—it’s right there in the Mac App Store’s software license.”
It’s efforts like this that make it plain to see that Apple is very intent on eliminating physical software distribution as much as it can – at least for its own products – and emphasizing the Mac App Store as the preferred delivery method for its users.
Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents:
There was some speculation on Twitter about it in light of the fact that I’m vocal about the intellectual property issues facing Android and WebM — just like I’m vocal about issues involving and concerning various other companies. All of my concerns are based on my convictions, and such concerns have repeatedly been proven right. It’s certainly not implausible at all that someone who disagrees with me (who could be employed by whichever company) might have attempted to hack my account and thereby triggered the suspension of my account and all of my Google services, including this blog. Since I frequently change my password and use very long (in this case, more than 40 characters) and safe (a random mix of lower-case letters, upper-case letters, numbers and symbols) passwords, brute-force algorithms that try out huge numbers of passwords in a short period of time wouldn’t realistically succeed in actually getting access. However, it appears that such activity then triggers a suspension.
Good to have Florian back online. He gives some of the best patent perspective on the Web.
Adobe’s John Nack:
Using an Android tablet for creative work? Let’s talk.If you use an Android tablet and use it (or would like to use it) for creative imaging, photography, etc., please drop me a line. We can’t let the iPad kids have all the fun. 🙂
There was no doubt that it was going to happen, but speaking for the iPad kids, we will still have more fun.
