Items tagged with appl
This coming Monday, June 9, should be a big day for Apple. It is the first day of Apple's 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC08) in San Francisco--which not coincidentally--has been at sold out at capacity for some time now. When Steve Jobs takes the stage at the Moscone Center at 10 a.m. PT, he is expected to unveil the much-anticipated, 3G-capable, iPhone 2.0. News.com's Tom Krazit reports that Steve Jobs should also be announcing that the iPhone App Store will be open for business: "The App Store is going to be the only way to get official third-party iPhone applications onto your device. Developers have been submitting their applications to Apple for testing and verification since...
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Import Genius is a site that gives "you instant access to real-time information on all the goods entering the United States each day. Our easy-to-use interface shows you who your overseas suppliers are selling to in the United States and who your competitors are buying from overseas." They've spotted a few shipments coming into Apple with suspiciously new import descriptions, and they believe them to be shipments of the iPhone 2.On March 19 Quanta delivered 20 ocean containers of merchandise, described on the Bills of Lading as “electric computers,” to Apple, Inc. Neither Apple, Quanta, nor any other company has ever used this product description for any shipments to the U.S.The advanced...
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Apple MacBooks are due to get a LED backlighting as part of a future upgrade that will continue to raise the Cupertino-based firm’s green credentials. Apple first introduced LED backlighting in their 2007 MacBook Pro refresh, and since then they’ve also added it to the svelte MacBook Air. The movement is part of the company's charge towards "a greener Apple," which kicked into overdrive last year amid increased pressure from shareholders and environmental organizations who accused the electronics maker of dragging its feet when it came to removing environmentally harmful toxic chemicals from its products. As part of an open letter on the matter, chief executive Steve Jobs said plans...
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Back in the day, it looked like Napster was going to bust the digital music business wide open. They were sued back to the stone age over copyright infringement, and more or less dropped from sight. Apple leaped into the breach, offering legal but locked music for their iPods through their own online store. Well, zombie Napster is back in a big way. They're now offering the world's largest library of digital music in the MP3 format for just 99 cents a track, or about 10 bucks for an album. And it's all DRM-free. Napster's download store is more than 50% larger than any other MP3 store and boasts not only the largest major label MP3 catalog in the industry, but also the largest library of...
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The iPhone currently isn't subsidized. But what if it was? Can you imagine what the price might be? That's the rumor about the 3G version which is due out soon.When the 3G iPhone is introduced this summer, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone sales partner with Apple, will cut the price by as much as $200, according to a person familiar with the strategy.AT&T is preparing to subsidize $200 of the cost of a new iPhone, bringing the price down to $199 for customers who sign two-year contracts, the source says. Apple is expected to have two versions of the new iPhone, an 8-gigabyte-memory and a 16-gigabyte-memory model with price tags widely expected to be $399 and $499.Can...
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Rumored since last week, and revealed by the typical Apple Store outage, updated iMacs are here. Same prices, better specs.And what are those better specs?Packing dual-core performance into the convenience of a striking all-in-one design, the new iMac includes faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors across the line; a 1066 MHz front-side bus; up to 4GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory; and a widescreen flat-panel display supporting millions of colors. For the first time, the 24-inch iMac features an optional NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS with 512MB of video memory, to deliver up to two times standard performance for graphic intensive applications*. Providing the latest in high-performance connectivity options...
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Apple’s recent acquisition of P.A. Semi has started rumors of a PowerPC Mac revival. On one side there are people claiming that it’s hard for Apple to justify Mac prices because the hardware is now more or less identical to what PCs run with EFI support. The other side notes the drop in Apple’s product prices while the performance continues to increase.So the real question is, where does Steve stand?In an interview after Apple reported earnings Wednesday, Jobs told the Business Technology Blog that the company’s relationship with Intel, the provider of microprocessors for its entire line of Macintosh computers, is still strong. “We have a great partnership with Intel,” Jobs said. “We expect...
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Apple has agreed to buy a relatively small microprocessor company named PA Semi. PA is known for making powerful chips that have very low power consumption. That would seem to indicate that Apple intends to use their own chips in the iPhone and other portable devices going forward, as these devices rely heavily on low power consumption. It would also seem to indicate that Apple is fixing to tell Intel to take a long walk on a short pier. "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not comment on our purposes and plans," said Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) spokesman Steve Dowling. He declined to comment on the value of the...
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Many have written about how Apple was using iTunes Update to push Safari onto PCs. It was listing Safari as an update even if Safari wasn't on the computer originally. Humorously, since then stories have emerged about IT departments having to scramble to remove Safari as the default browser on PCs as it (naturally) wouldn't work with many Intranet sites.That practice got many people riled up, complaining that Apple was essentially deceiving people into installing a new program--Safari 3.1 for Windows XP--through a program meant to update already installed applications, namely iTunes and QuickTime.Among those complaining was John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla which makes the competing Firefox browser.In...
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Most people have been expecting Apple to wield the sharp stick of a lawsuit against Mac clone maker Psystar, but it may not be so easy.And while Psystar may be violating Apple's end user license agreement, or EULA, by doing this, legally there's not much Apple can do about it, says Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer who used to write patents for Apple."Basically, when people go to a store or download software, they have a license with Apple to use this patented software on their computer. But breach of contract is one of the weakest forms of legal disputes," Abhyanker says, referring to EULA violations. ...While Apple could likely tie Psystar up in litigation by filing patent or copyright lawsuits,...
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Apple has almost always had a reputation for not pushing new hardware on ‘old’ platforms, but to be fair, they’ve never really had the opportunity to update platforms quite as frequently as they have under their present partnership with Intel. As a result, the company is starting to offer new hardware products such as the 8800GT video cards for older machines, such as the original Mac Pros.The 8800GT available on current models ships with a 64-bit EFI which isn’t compatible with the ‘older’ Mac Pros. Here’s Apple’s marketing blurb for the 8800GT for the ‘old’ Mac Pro:For advanced graphics performance, choose the latest-generation NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 video memory. With...
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When Apple formally announced plans for an iTunes rental service it was only inevitable that a conflict between Blockbuster and Apple was to occur. We weren’t entirely sure how this conflict was going to be waged, but now things are becoming clearer: Blockbuster is developing a set-top box to compete with the Apple TV.“The product would be an offshoot of Movielink, the online film service Blockbuster acquired last year that allows consumers to watch films licensed from the major studios on their PCs.Delivering movies to TV might be the most audacious attempt yet that Blockbuster is making to reinvent its brand as digital delivery weakens the viability of its retail footprint. But by offering...
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Only two years ago Apple unveiled their new lineup of Intel-powered laptops, but for the most part the biggest changes were internal. The new laptops bore a strong exterior resemblance to their G4-powered predecessors, but all of that could be nearly at an end. Rumor has it that the next updates to Apple’s portables are going to see some major styling changes."Of the two, the 13-inch consumer MacBooks will undergo the most significant metamorphosis, shedding their plastic enclosures for ones constructed from more eco-friendly materials such as aircraft-grade aluminum and stainless steel, people familiar with the matter say.The move, which makes good on a promise by company chief executive Steve...
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Apple is very protective of its corporate image. Perhaps it needs to be more careful of the image it presents to the public, as here comes another instance of Apple acting the bully.New York might be called the Big Apple, and apples themselves might be beautiful creations of nature, but as far as Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs is concerned, Gotham has no business affixing depictions of the fruit to anything conceivably related to its products. Like, uh, organic cotton shopping bags, which carry the logo and are produced by the city's GreenNYC campaign in conjunction with grocer Whole Foods. Someone might buy one of those bags and expect it to be functionally equivalent to a MacBook Pro!Most...
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Apple patched QuickTime not once, but an amazing eleven times on Wednesday. Some of the patches were to improve stability and compatibility, but there were also some exploits which were found and patched.“It's at least the sixth time Apple has patched QuickTime since October, as researchers and hackers have been closely examining media players for vulnerabilities. As operating systems have become more secure, vulnerabilities in applications have become a favored route to break into a PC.”Apple is notoriously coy with information regarding the specific exploits, but the running rumor is that most of the exploits patched were actually found by Apple themselves....
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Apple TV users who updated to the new 2.0 software may have already received an update to 2.0.1.“The fix, available through the Apple TV's own update utility, is not documented by the company and appears primarily to be a maintenance update.However, a preliminary discovery reveals a Genres category under My Movies, letting owners browse by type.”We've been unable to discover any other changes at this stage, but we have a feeling that a patch rushed out without a list of changes might contain some fix for a critical vulnerability....
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Security researcher Charlie Miller attended the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacker challenge hoping to make a little money, I'm sure. But I doubt even he had any idea that he could compromise a MacBook Air laptop in two minutes flat and collect a $10,000 prize. Maybe Apple should stop using the picture of the fruit as a logo, and go with an "Easy Button" instead. The contest, which pits security researchers against three fully patched computers—VAIO VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10, Fujitsu U810 running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and MacBook Air running OSX 10.5.2—began on Mar. 26, but after the first day, there were no attempts to use a remotely exploitable pre-auth vulnerability to claim a $20,000 prize.On...
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Can't get market share the good old-fashioned way? How about sneaking your browser onto systems, then?With the release of Safari 3.1 on Tuesday, Apple started giving Windows users the option of downloading Safari via the Apple Software Update pop-up."Safari for Windows is the fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for the PC. It displays web pages faster than any other browser and is filled with innovative features -- all delivered in an efficient and elegant user interface," states Apple's message in the pop-up screen. Tsk, tsk. The browser that's really starting to take market share from Internet Explorer is Firefox, which, according to Net Applications, now has 17.3% vs. 74.9%...
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Put this in your rumor bucket for now, but the Financial Times says Apple is in discussion with the music industry over a possible "all you can eat" music plan for iTunes.Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about a radical new business model that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.The “all you can eat” model, a replica of Nokia’s “comes with music” deal with Universal Music last December, could provide the struggling recorded music industry with a much-needed fillip, and drive demand for a new generation of Apple’s hardware. It very much seems out of character for Apple. Apple...
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The Consumerist featured a story a year ago about a woman that wasn't allowed to buy an Apple computer because she wanted to purchase it solely using Apple-issued giftcards. Stung by negative publicity, Apple relented and she got her computer. But instead of liberalizing their giftcard policy, Apple simply gave the one customer a computer paid for with giftcards and then changed their giftcard FAQ. Others shut out in Apple's giftcard eligibility maze want a computer too. Or maybe their money back. I have 7 gift cards totaling $1250. Apple refuses to sell me a computer despite having $1250 upfront.As soon as I found I could not enter more than half my gift cards on the Apple website, I used their...
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During a recent broadband technology summit in Australia Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak took the time to gripe about a few of Apple's newer products.“Steve Wozniak says he wishes Apple hadn't released a 2G version of the iPhone; that the Apple TV is frustrating to use, and that the MacBook Air won't be a hit.”Many of these sentiments have been echoed on forums and even reviews of these products, so it wasn't exactly a surprise to hear The Woz tell it like it is....
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Apple recently went superslim with their MacBook Air notebook, which they famously demonstrated by slipping it into an interoffice envelope. Now they're following it up with upgrades to their more conventional MacBooks and MacBook Pros. They've utilized Intel's 45 nanometer scale Core 2 Duo processors for the heavy computational lifting with low power consumption.The new MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo technology with up to a 2.6 GHz processor with 6MB of shared L2 cache; up to 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory and up to a 300GB hard drive, plus NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with up to 512MB of video memory. Every MacBook Pro now includes a trackpad with Multi-Touch gesture...
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