The US and UK governments seem to be pretty clued-up when it comes to the evolution of computing, kicking off criticism from critics to press forward with investments in mobile (think iPhone) apps specifically-designed to make government services accessible, just as they should be.
The BBC this morning has penned a seemingly anti- piece looking at how the UK government has spent
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Apple
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x9wu33_prince-kiss_music
The artist formerly known as squiggle who we all still know and love as
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Mongoose Studios think the unthinkable while the rest of the world thinks
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iPad or iPhone user with a little time to kill? There
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That mental image isn’t making our holiday any better. HuffPo says that two of the most powerful men in the world once shared a double date.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, two titans of tech, have been friends, competitors, and colleagues. They’ve even gone on double-dates.
Is that plural? Who were the ‘lucky’ ladies? Was this a deleted scene of Pirates of Silicon Valley? Anyone have any backstory on this one?
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Looking for a musically-diverting look at the impact Apple
This coming Christmas sees another chapter in the increasingly intense war between Apple and Google for the future of music in the cloud. Both firms are expected to introduce cloud-based music services for the holiday period, but why can’t we all just get along?
More developers than before are moving to build apps for both Apple
Tests taken across a small (24-person) sample group suggest reading eBooks remains slower than reading paper, with the iPad being faster to read than a Kindle device.
Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group set out to determine reading speed differences between the different platforms (book, ebook, iPad etc).
His initial findings are that there are significant speed differences. Participants were required to read a short Ernest Hemingway story on their device.
Using an iPad to achieve this worked out to be 6.2 percent slower than reading the story from a book, while using a Kindle 2 was slower again, 10.7 percent slower in fact.
Test subjects disliked using a PC for reading, giving this a satisfaction score of 3.6. iPad scored 5.8, Kindle 5.7 and the book — the book threw a 5.6.
The researcher notes,
Apple could be missing a trick in China because the company doesn
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Here
Frash is a port of Android‘s Flash implementation built by Comex for jailbroken iPads.
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BGR reported this week an email chain purportedly between an iPhone 4 customer and SJobs (or whomever answers his emails). It was pretty strong on both sides.
For the first time in memory, Apple PR went on record saying to Fortune and later Engadget (emphasis ours):
“Asked on the record whether Steve Jobs was the author of any of these statements, a top Apple spokesman emphatically denied it.”
The headers look pretty legit and Boy Genius was given access to the original leaker’s Gmail account where he logged in and confirmed the emails were from the sjobs@apple.com account.
He is claiming that they are legitimate and that the only way that Steve Jobs didn’t author them is if Jobs really isn’t answering his own emails…which wouldn’t be that surprising.
Either way, an interesting story…we’ll see if anything else develops.
New firmware discoveries in Apple’s latest Mac mini suggest future Mac desktops will house Radeon HD 5000 and GeForce 400 series graphics cards.
The portion regarding ATI’s future Mac desktop offerings is not very specific, but the NVIDIA side of things is. “GeForce 480” is specifically named and this can be seen in the screenshot below.
Where these chips will be used is not specified, but makes sense that we will see these powerful GPUs in upcoming iMacs and Mac Pros very soon.
ATI Screenshot after the break:
Mac Forums via Electronista.
Pretty cool store opening in Paris:
Set in a restored bank across Rue Halevy from the gilded Palais Garnier — longtime home of the Opera de Paris — the store eschews the usual bland Apple retail ambiance in favor of the site’s original architectural detail — the mosaic tile floor, the marble columns, the curving balustrade, the wrought-iron spiral staircases, the long narrow skylight.
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More below
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The iPhone is no stranger to the Consumer Reports folks who’ve rated it the best business and personal phone for the last 3 years and counting. So what are their thoughts on this iPhone antenna non-issue?
Bottom line: There’s no reason, at least yet, to forgo buying an iPhone 4 over its reception concerns. And even if those do materialize, Apple’s Steve Jobs helpfully reminds new iPhone buyers that “you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.”
There. And you were worried.
As Computerworld notes, Apple changed the terms of its return policy today in releasing its iPhone 4 memo. You now have a month (from ship date if purchased online) to return your iPhone 4. There is no restocking fee.
That’s a change from the company’s normal policy, which demands a 10% restocking fee for returned iPhones. According to the company’s Web site, Apple typically charges $19.90 for a returned 16GB iPhone 4 model, and $29.90 for a 32GB device.
Computerworld attributes the dropped restocking fee to a defense against some of the forthcoming lawsuits over the iPhone 4 antenna issues. Some of the people suing are claiming the restocking fee as losses and hope to move the suit to class action status.
Do you think this change in policy will have people going on 30 day ‘iPhone vacations’ and returning them right before the return policy is over?
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Does this mean I’ll get better reception?
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Here’s another example of how the iPhone’s signal changes when you touch “the spot”. Using the GSM speaker noise to show the signal transmission levels when touching and not touching, it appears that something changes significantly when touched.
It appears that there might be hardware issues with some iPhones because, while I can replicate this issue, others cannot.
Thanks Josh!
Apple this morning admits it messed up in its latest statement on the iPhone 4 signal problem fiasco — while this morning’s news media focuses on Apple’s future in television and iTunes’ move into the cloud. Exciting stuff.
At the same time a huge host of information has broken out which seemingly confirms Apple’s next adventures will be in television and music in the cloud.
Apple has published an official statement of response to concerns at the iPhone 4 signalling problem. We have a feeling that some are going to be totally placated by this response while others will see it as a cop out, not addressing the easily reproducible data and call drops. Have it out in the comments!
Repeated in full below.
Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4
Dear iPhone 4 Users,
The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple