9to5 Staff

 Apple and CBS are being sued for trademark infringement by a competing interface manufacturer.

The case against Apple and CBS was filed by a firm called Man and Machine. It alleges Apple began selling its Mighty Mouse over one year after Man and Machine began selling waterproof and chemical resistant mice under the same name to labs and hospitals in 2004.

The company claims its earlier use trumps Apple’s. 

Apple licensed use of the Mighty Mouse brand from CBS, the network which owns the animated television show featuring a superhero mouse of the same name.

Man and Machines now argues that CBS didn’t have the right to offer Apple the license to the name, as the CBS trademark on the name doesn’t cover goods in that category. Man and Machines argues it holds the trademark for use of the Mighty Mouse name in conjunction with an interface controller. Alongside the legal case it is also challenging the CBS trademark with a filing at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple has released a much extended version of its latest ‘Get A Mac’ ad, with PC offering his full-length country and western ode to the failures of Vista. Go see…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f4xUrHmhxI&hl=en]

 Apple will introduce the iPhone at WWDC on June 9, the latest report claims.

Meanwhile, Apple’s set to work with Korea Telecom and NTT DoCoMo to launch the device in Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia and China; and Apple’s existing iPhone partners in the UK, France and Germany seem set to keep their exclusive status, even while the company makes deals with multiple carriers in other territories.

June 9 launch

Straight to the big deal, though, with Gizmodo this morning citing the usual shadowy “sources” to definitively claim the next generation 3G iPhone will be announced during the WWDC keynote – and will be available worldwide directly after launch, staggered across June/July (we suspect).

“In Spain, for example, the 3G iPhone will be available for sale at the June 18 grand opening of Telefonica’s megastore in Madrid,” the report explains.

Even better, “the 3G iPhone will no longer be available at a fixed price point—at least in some countries,” the Gizmodo gasps.

Apple and Asia

CNN Money reveals the Telecoms Korea news service claimed late last week that Apple plans a special joint release of the next-generation device with two carriers whose names are synonymous with 3G: Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Korea Telecom Freetel. That covers Japan and Korea, with the latter firm also offering mobile phone services in China,  though not necessarily the iPhone.

T-Mobile keeps Germany

Finally, T-Mobile Chief Executive Hamid Akhavan said today that the carrier will stay the only one in Germany to offer the next-generation 3G iPhone according to Reuters. "If and when there is a 3G iPhone we expect to have it exclusively in Germany as well," he said.

 It’s a fairly slow day today, so while you wait we thought we’d offer another re-run, here it is, the ever-popular ‘Apple Keynote Bloopers!!”

Laugh as Apple CEO Steve Jobs throws his non-functioning digital camera at a hapless Apple employee, share the pain as Phil Schiller waits and waits and waits for a game demo to start…

Anyway, you get the drift, enjoy. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsKKQNZG3rE&hl=en]

 We’ve been watching Napster’s decline for some time, but now the company is fighting back with the introduction of a new download service that takes the market wars to Apple – because it’s made a move to drop DRM..

Napster has announced that all six million tracks it sells through its music service will from now on be available in DRM-free MP3 format, (256kbps bitrate). This means each 99-cents track will play on any device, including Macs, iPods and the iPhone.

What’s also significant here is that all the major labels have signed up to offer their catalogue through the Napster DRM-free service: EMI, Universal, Warners, and Sony BMG have all agreed to sell tracks free of rights-restriction. Having the majors on board means Napster is declaring that its service offers 50 per cent more DRM-free tracks than any other music service. And it’s an aggressive kick at Apple’s iTunes marketshare, where only EMI has so far agreed to sell music DRM-free.

"Music fans have spoken and it’s clear they need the convenience, ease of use and broad interoperability of the DRM-free MP3 format, and they want to be able to find both major label artists and independent music all in one place. Napster is delighted to deliver all of this and more with the world’s largest MP3 catalog," said Napster’s chairman and CEO Chris Gorog.

UPDATE TO ADD: What’s pretty sad about the company’s anti-iTunes attempt is that Napster has failed in one essential element: its online music store is incompatible with Apple’s Safari web browser….go figure… 

It happened. We now officially feel bad for Ballmer. What? He’s worth 10 billion dollars? Nevermind.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crhxKNkZy-Y&hl=en]

Thanks the

FSJ

 The iPhone is coming to Spain under exclusive arrangement with Telefonica Movistar, the network confirmed privately this month.

Apple has been widely-expected to ink a distribution deal with a Spanish mobile phone network to bring the iPhone to the country, and it appears Movistar has won the toss.

The company’s José Santos Esteras confirmed the news speaking at the Professional Communications Congress, PROCOM, earlier this month. He revealed the network to have secured an exclusive distribution deal for the iPhone in Spain, though competing firms this is only a limited contract, offering exclusivity for just a few months.

We’ve been predicting this network would snag the distribution contract for a few months now, but it’s nice to confirm it.

Thanks to the SevenClick blog for the info.

We’ve always known that Apple’s marketshare figures are skewed by enterprise sales of servers, terminals and word processing PCs, and new research from NPD confirms this, revealing that two-thirds of laptops costing $1,000 or more and sold across US retail chains are Macs.

Macs? That’s right. New figures from the research group as reported by eWeek reveal that 66 per cent of laptops sold in US retail stores that cost $1,000 or more are Macs. And while that share slides to just 14 per cent for computers costing under $1,000, the news still confirms Apple’s growing footprint in retail Mac sales.

NPD vice president Stephen Baker told eWeek that Apple’s notebook marketshare is growing at twice the market rate, with Windows notebooks “pretty flat right now”.

It’s not just notebooks. Apple’s retail desktop sales have climbed 45 per cent, against industry patterns for desktop sales (down 20 per cent) and far outweighing Windows’ Vista’s continuing decline – sales of desktop PCs running that OS are down 25 per cent, eWeek reveals.

"iMacs are growing and the Windows desktop ain’t. No matter how you look at it, Apple is outperforming Windows,” Baker said.

"Apple has got better distribution than it’s had in the last 15 years," he adds. "They’re in the right spot right now. There’s the iPod advantage. But the big thing is the stores."

It’s an inflection point for Apple, alright – don’t forget the company recently surpassed Dell to become the biggest laptop vendor in the US education market.

There’s been a flurry of iPhone distribution announcements from a variety of mobile phone networks in recent weeks. We were beginning to lose track of which nations have been declared with some kind of iPhone presence, so we thought it may be of some use to provide a list of announcements made so far:

• Argentina, Claro
• Australia, Optus & Vodafone
• Austria, One & T-Mobile
• Belgium, Mobistar
• Brazil, Claro
• Canada, Rogers
• Chile, Claro…
• Colombia, Comcel
• Czech Republic, Vodafone
• Dominican Republic, Claro & Orange
• Ecuador, Porta
• Egypt, Mobinil & Vodafone
• El Salvador, Claro
• France, Orange
• Germany, T-Mobile
• Greece, Vodafone
• Guatemala, Claro
• Honduras, Claro
• India, Bharti Airtel & Vodafone
• Ireland, O2
• Italy, Telecom Italia & Vodafone
• Jamaica, Claro & MiPhone
• Jordan, Orange
• Mexico, Telcel
• New Zealand, Vodafone
• Nicaragua, Claro
• Paraguay, Claro
• Peru, Claro
• Philippines, Globe Telecom
• Poland, Orange
• Portugal, Optimus & Vodafone
• Puerto Rico, Claro
• Romania, Orange
• Singapore, SingTel Mobile
• Slovakia, Orange
• South Africa, Vodacom
• Switzerland, Orange, Swisscom
• Turkey, Vodafone
• UK, O2
• Uruguay, Claro
• USA, AT&T

 UPDATE

Spain, Telfonica Movistar

UPDATE 2

TeliaSonera AB: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

As you can see, there’s still some major holes in coverage, principally in Russia, Japan and China. We can’t believe Apple will waste too much time entering these countries.

UPDATE 3

Holland and the Netherlands, Royal KPN NV.

UPDATE 4

Hong Kong, Macau, Hutchison Telecommunications International.

Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments below:

The FCC just released information on Intel’s upcoming 5350 WiFi/WiMAX combo Mini-PCI card.  "What’s that got to do with me?" You might be saying…

Physically, this card will fit into the MacBook Pro’s Mini-PCI card slot, replacing the current Wifi card.  The only caveat is that the WiMAX antenna might not do so well with the Wifi antenna setup that current MacBook Pros possess.  Oh, and there is no Mac driver software (Bootcamp?) for this semi-unofficial product yet.  Oh, and Sprint-Clearwire are late in the nationwide WiMAX rollout…

Intel’s 5350 WiFi/WiMAX combo Mini-PCI card (Above)

Apple’s current 802.11NWifi Card (below)

Other than that…it is a go!

 Here’s an interesting one for all you jailbroken iPhone users out there: the developers behind Soulseek have introduced iSisk, a file-sharing client for jailbroken iPhones.

Now, as we all know, Soulseek was developed by former Napster programmer, Nir Arbel. And while it isn’t as widely-used as other file-sharing applications, meaning its kind of a place where people go to steal music from independent labels and artists (you know, the people who don’t have the kind of legal funds of the RIAA, the indies who were prepared to reach a deal with Napster 1).

Returning to iSisk, application developer Errrick created the software because he “saw the capabilities this little gadget had and then thought, ‘why didn’t someone already do something like this?” At least, that’s what he told TorrentFreak.

iSlsk lets iPhone users search for and download files directly on their phone. The software also imports downloaded files to the iPod music database so that they can be played with native iPhone controls.

Now, given that WiFi hotspots are available worldwide, will major labels begin serving cease and desist orders against providers such as McDonalds when people choose to use their public network for sharing files? 

Oh – here’s a video of it in action:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HHdMTwDSZc&rel=0&border=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&hl=en]

OK. Apple opened its largest retail store in the US in Boston this week – we’ve just come across this video clip of the crowd gathered for the store opening.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWl1VhHui1g&hl=en]

As the Apple press release detailing the opening of the store on Boston’s Bolyston Street explains: “The Apple Store Boylston Street is Apple’s largest store in the US with two floors of Macs, iPhones and iPods for customers to experience hands-on, as well as a top floor dedicated to innovative services including the Genius Bar and personal training through Apple’s popular One to One program.”

The company is also offering free, in-depth training on Apple’s industry-leading pro applications including Final Cut Pro. The store’s staffed by 165 people.

The Apple Store Boylston Street is located at 815 Boylston Street, convenient to the Prudential Center and Copley Square, the Berklee School of Music and Fenway Park. It joins eight existing Apple retail stores in Massachusetts including popular stores in Cambridge, Chestnut Hill, Burlington and Hingham.

 Apple is moving toward the release of a redesigned MacBook, a new report emanating from the company’s Asian Mac manufacturers claims.

AU Optronics Corp. and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. have been signed-up to produce flat-panel screens for the new MacBook models, confirmed the Commercial Times this morning, citing “sources”.

In line with Apple’s continued marketshare growth for its laptop offerings, Apple has set strong targets for sales of the new device, which MarketWatch claims is set for launch in the third quarter of 2008 (so that’s somewhere between July and September, people). Apple is aiming for three million MacBook sales. The two flat-panel manufacturers are the two largest in Taiwan, the report adds.

France Telecom’s Orange mobile phone unit today announced a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to a dozen additional countries.

The network will offer Apple’s device in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange’s African markets later this year.

Once again, this news quadruple confirms Apple to be moving away from its original strategy of offering iPhone through exclusive launch partners, as Swisscom this week also confirmed plans to offer iPhone in Switzerland. Vodafone will also offer iPhone in Portugal and Egypt.

Apple has taken two of the world creative industry’s most-coveted awards, a pair of Black Pencils from the D&AD, one for the iMac, another for the iPhone.

The D&AD winners were announced at an awards ceremony held in London tonight, on 15 May. Apple’s a regular winner at these events, taking two of the slightly less-coveted Yellow Pencils in 2006 (for the iPod’s video and nano). 

In 2005, Apple’s head of industrial design Jonathan Ive won his own award, a special one made in recognition of his world-class achievements in design, the D&AD President’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Industry. Apple’s iPod,iPod mini and Cinema Display took Yellow Pencil awards in the same year. 

In 2004, Apple again won a Yellow Pencil, this time for the PowerBook. Before this, Apple had won at least one award every year since 1999.

Apple has filed a patent describing ways to use an iPhone to pay for groceries, a restaurant meal and sundry other wireless ecommerce applications.

The patent discusses over the air downloads of podcasts and a number of specific location-based solutions, such as shopping, groceries or recipe discovery.

“For example, if the merchant is a restaurant, the merchant may provide a menu to the personal media device and the user may place an order on his or her media device by selecting items on the menu,” the patent states.

Additional ideas include purchasing cinema/movie theatre tickets, or information about objects or creatures on display at a museum, art gallery or zoo. The patent even describes ways to locate others – specifically children – should both the guardian and child be carrying “a media device”.

While the filing of such a patent doesn’t mean Apple is definitely about to introduce such services, we recall some whispers the company may be moving to transform iTunes (with its sophisticated micro-payment infrastructure, tied to a credit card) into some kind of virtual wallet.

We also recall that Procter & Gamble, The Clorox Co., Del Monte Corp. Kimberly-Clark, and General Mills Inc., plan a four month test later this year to see if shoppers would be prepared to begin using mobiles to hand over virtual discount coupons for their shopping. 

 What’s a band to do if it hasn’t got the cash to make its own music video and lives in a country with extremely high levels of CCTV? Well, Get Out Clause used state CCTV cameras and their rights to access information to create this clip, (full story, do read on).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98u1HuqS7Nk&hl=en]

I think this is such an ingenious plan that it’s rather fantastic and want to let you know about it. The UK has one of the highest concentrations of CCTV in the world (fact), and new band Get Out Clause needed to make a point, promote themselves and make a video (in that order)…

Here’s what they did:

Unable to afford to make their own music video the band set up and performed their music in front of 80 of the 1,300 CCTV cameras used by British state security – one camera was even on a bus…

Now comes the good part: the band used the UK Data Protection Act – that’s the UK equivalent of US reader’s access to information laws – to request all the footage the state collected of them…

It gets better: the band then took all the clips of them performing in front of those CCTV cameras, spliced it all together in iMovie or something, and created their very own music video.

Thanks to David Atkin at Parliament Hill.

Intel Germany World’s managing director Hannes Schwaderer just revealed what a lot of people have been predicting.  A larger iPod Touch and iPhone is on the way and powered by the intel Atom Processors.  According to ZDNet Germany, Schwaderer said the devices will sport a Nokia N810-like 720×480 resolution.  If all of the other rumors are true, this will be one nice little media playing device.

Will we see this device at WWDC?  We hope so!

Update: Intel is backpedalling like crazy from the German’s remarks which means that Apple is (rightfully) furious or the head of Intel Germany doesn’t know what products their processors are going into.

Purely for the sake of creative self-expression, Brazilian designer Mario Amaya has put together an amusing set of logo mash-ups, some of which may raise a smile. We’ve ‘borrowed’ one right here – depicting what could happen if Apple bought Adobe (a constant rumour to file in the “not really happening” pile), but why not hop along to the designer’s website to see the rest, they’re pretty good (we particularly like the really rather telling Microsoft logo, featuring a popular icon)…you can reach the site right here.

O2 boss Matthew Key says the 3G iPhone will be unveiled “in the coming weeks”.

Key made the comment when speaking to press and analysts after the announcement of the network’s first-quarter results this morning. He’s the Chairman and Chief Exec of O2 owner, Telefónica Europe, and he said his company would be making an announcement with Apple in the “coming weeks”.

Key declined to say exactly when the announcement would take place, saying, “that’s more of a question for Apple,” while promising a joint announcement. He also confirmed the network to hold a multi-year exclusive agreement with Apple for selling the iPhone in the UK and Ireland.

While O2 declined comment on how many iPhones have been sold so far, the network did add 206,000 new contract customers in the first three months of this year, according to its own financial report, which states: “This was driven by iPhone and strong “traditional handset” connections and excludes connections to O2 UK’s mobile broadband offer, launched in April.”

The company also outperformed the UK market again in the qurter, posting revenue growth of 12.6% for the quarter and  adding 206,000 net contract customers, 2.5 times the figure for the first quarter last year. “Despite a slowdown on the high street, we are currently seeing no evidence of significant change in our customers spend or usage, but continue to monitor behaviour,” O2 added.

Key also commented on the revenue-sharing deal it has with Apple. It has been suggested the deal makes more sense for Apple than for the telco. Declining to enumerate the exact terms of the deal (which some industry insiders say isn’t as good as the deal reached between Apple and Vodafone), Key said: "Clearly I don’t know the economic deals they have done, and I would reiterate we are very happy with deals we have done, which clearly they don’t know the details of either."

iPhone is out of stock across Apple. There’s also limited availability in the UK where only the 16GB model is intermittently available from O2 – and this isn’t an inventory problem, but deliberate execution.

I’m not saying I know this for sure, but it makes sense that with a new model iPhone on the way, Apple is clearing its supply chain to make way for the device. But its a deeper strategy. I suspect (personal opinion, speculation, alert) Apple management have deliberately decided to make the device more or less unavailable in the weeks preceeding the release of the new model.

This makes sense for two reasons: 

First, Apple is stimulating demand for the new device when it ships by making it hard to get hold of the current edition. That move should help ensure “stellar sales” of iPhone v.2 3G within the first few weeks.

Second, Apple’s September 5 2007 decision to slash $200 off the cost of the first generation device saw the company hit with a storm of criticism as angry customers complained they felt ripped-off. These complaints reached such intensity Apple CEO Steve Jobs approved a $100 rebate to iPhone customers to keep the peace.

In an open letter on the matter, he said: “There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cut-off date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon.”

Well, we don’t know about the expense (though AT&T reportedly plans to offer the next-gen iPhone at a $200 subsidised discount); but we do know the keenly-anticipated ‘phone’s going to be “something better”.

Apple doesn’t want to upset hundreds of customers when it launches the new device, nor does it want to swap out/replace thousands of iPhones purchased in the week or two before the launch.

As such, I think the current lack of availability is deliberately designed to minimize complaints and maximize demand.

Initial reports of iPhone going out of stock emerged early this month. This suggests Apple’s preparing a launch window for June. Given the WWDC keynote’s admitted focus on development for OS X and iPhone,  smart speculation now favours the idea that Apple will introduce the 3G iPhone in late June, along with the iPhone Software 2.0 release in late June. That’s assuming it doesn’t announce the new model in early June, for shipment later that month.