Apple is this week expected to reveal the first major brands who’ve signed-up for iAds in Europe, though initial euphoria greeting the launch of the service has now waned, with ads agencies complaining on price and that Apple are difficult to work with.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple makes such beautiful products. Take the iPad for example — it is magical, and with hot new competitor the Samsung Tab receiving destined-for-the-grave reviews, wouldn’t it be nice to run Android on an iPad, rather than spend your cash on Samsung’s not quite as good as an iPad tablet-thing.
Relax developers, relax developers, for today Oracle and Apple have announced how they intend maintaining Java on the Mac — and to be honest it looks like it will be better than before.
Apple will contribute nearly all the key components, tools and technology required for a Java SE 7 implementation on Mac OS X, including a 32-bit and 64-bit HotSpot-based Java virtual machine, class libraries, a networking stack and the foundation for a new graphical client.
OpenJDK will then make Apple’s Java technology available to open source developers so they can access and contribute to the effort.
Press release follows:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ZUHbLHMBs&w=670&h=527]
Their second studio album went double Platinum, they released third album, Plastic Beach, this year, and the fourth album’s on its way and recorded on an iPad. That’s right, Damon Albarn’s project band, Gorillaz will release a fourth album recorded on an iPad.
Proving the adage that imitation is flattery, Google’s engineers are busily getting it together to bring something ‘magical’ to answer Apple’s magical iPad, at least that’s what Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says.
Speaking during his company’s Q3 financial call, he promised his company would start to develop its phone and tablet design wins. He also waxed lyrical on Google’s Android folk, “they’re building a magical product,” he gushed.
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I’d love to comment and I know full well that there’s rabid fans for Flash, but I’m going to keep this short and sweet. You’ve seen the headlines saying that the recent OS X update patched over 130 bugs? Well, don’t suppose you noticed that 42 percent of these bugs were bugs in Flash.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple is deadly serious about its plans for the Mac App Store. The company is about to disrupt the entire retail software sales industry in order to create the world’s biggest market for consumer software sales — only on a Mac.
We’re heading into the Holiday season and the smartphone wars seem set to get a even more gritty as this season Apple will be competing not just against other makers, but against that big little word, “free”.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GyO7gH_qk0&fs=1&hl=en_GB]
Lithuanian tipster tells us: “If the Western World use iPad for business and entertainment, in Lithuania the iPad is used by pensioners in demonstrations against the government :) You just have to mount it on a wooden stick, and you ready to go.”
iPad planet, I keep telling you.
There’s money in free. Please, bear with me, it may sound counter-intuitive, but why else are one-third of the top-grossing iPhone apps made available via the App Store free apps?
In-app purchasing has opened up new opportunities to developers to entice users with quality apps for free (the carrot) and then to upsale new features, layers, levels or any other conceivable kind of virtual good (I bought an obelisk once) via in-app purchasing, GigaOm tells us.
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If you love the smell of fried conspiracy in the morning then you may enjoy this observation from Business Insider — it looks like Apple TV sales may be being kept put of the ‘top selling’ categories on Amazon.
You see, even with a quarter million sold so far, Apple TV doesn’t show up in among the top 100 list of electronics items sold via the giant retailer, but there’s evidence to show it should be in the top 20. AppleTVs do show up here and here.
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The iPad seems like a pretty good deal in the US, where prices start at $499 (£309), but in the UK it costs from £429, and while the product’s selling like crazy here, a lot of Brits just think the price is too, too high to buy.
COMPUTERWORLD: Apple’s in pole position to reach millions more customers this holiday season: all the consumer reports agree the iPad’s set to dominate CE wish lists this year. A year in which one-in-three Android users would ditch their handset for an iPhone.
Apple began unleashing iAds across the world last week, with ads from the service reported to begin appearing on iOS devices outside of the USA. Now a report tells us Apple’s more than happy to explore partnerships in some key geographies to build up its service.
A report claims Apple may have crippled AirPrint before it began, abandoning support for printers shared via a network-connected PC or Mac.
On launch, Apple promised: “AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC.”
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Apple’s suppliers in Taiwan are complaining that their profits are being squeezed due to currency fluctuations. Touch-panel supplier, Wintek, estimates that it is losing half a percent off of its margins.
Another firm, Largan Precision Co., a camera-lens supplier for Apple, said a 1 percent appreciation knocks 0.4 point off the measure of profitability.
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COMPUTERWORLD: We’ve talked a lot about how the iPad is making Apple some space in the enterprise. On launch, critics slammed the device for neither being fit for enterprise use nor for use as a netbook replacement. They were wrong. With iOS 4.2 the iPad is an even better fit for business. I’ve taken a short look at what’s coming inside the upgrade, and identified five high-level iPad apps for business users.
Adobe has introduced a public beta of Audition for Mac, its professional audio toolset for recording, mixing, editing and mastering.
Sure is getting cold here. Soon I’ll be wearing gloves to keep warm, and that’s where my troubles will begin as people call me up on my iPhone – my touch-sensitive smartphone doesn’t respond well to a gloved hand. (I’d use mittens but I think they look passe). What’s to do? Looks like helps on the way, because Japan’s Hitachi Displays has developed a projection-type touch panel capable of detecting insulators such as plastic and cloth.
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We’re living in an iPad world, in which Apple holds 95 percent of the tablet market and nearly everyone owning one of the devices says they’re pretty satisfied. But now the iPad is breaking out, and entering corporate, enterprise and medical industries with a vengeance.
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Apple has iWork 11 ready for release but is holding back its introduction to debut the software along with the Mac App Store, itself scheduled for launch by early next year.
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COMPUTERWORLD: There’s been some talk on Lion’s new user interfaces and the removal of active indicators to show active applications in the Dock. Does this mean the Dock itself is set for change? Today a new European patent filing has emerged which describes an all-new system of “scrollable menus and toolbars.”
Toshiba has introduced new solid state storage that’s compatible with the MacBook Air but offers up to 256GB of capacity.
These are the same as those used in the MacBook Air, which are also manufactured by Toshiba. Apple’s association with Toshiba is extensive. Toshiba made the hard drives at the center of the original iPod range, for example).
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Epic Games has released its latest game trailer, a new trailer for its high-end iPhone game, Infinity Blade. The game — demonstrated at an event earlier in the year — promises powerful graphics on the Apple handset.