9to5 Staff

Microsoft today announced the Explorer Touch Mouse, their third multitouch-capable mouse, the other two being the Touch Mouse and the Arc Touch Mouse. The selling point? The Explorer Touch Mouse features a touch strip that supports four-way scrolling by swiping in any direction. Plus, its scroll wheel allows for three speeds of scrolling. Other perks include five programmable buttons and sexy design bound to turn heads with its smooth curves, rounded appearance and the minimalistic surface. Deal-killer? It is based on RF technology rather than on Bluetooth, meaning it requires the included USB wireless receiver that will only add to the clutter on your desk. Microsoft claims eighteen months of battery life and a more precise tracking on common surfaces stemming from the use of blue laser.

The Explorer Touch Mouse will arrive in September, retailing for $50 (versus $69 for Apple’s Magic Mouse). The gizmo will be available in black, gray and two shades of red. Microsoft’ spec sheet for the product mentions Mac compatibility (yes, OS X Lion is supported), but the somewhat ambiguous wording leaves the level of multitouch integration on Macs hanging in the air. We’ve reached out to the Redmond company for clarification and will update the post accordingly. More juicy press shots after the break…

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Great news for students from Amazon today. You can now save up to 80 percent off the list price of the print textbook by renting Kindle Textbooks on the Kindle or Kindle-compliant devices such as Windows and OS X PCs, iPads, iPhones and BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices. “Tens of thousands of textbooks” are available for rent across those platforms, reads an Amazon page promoting the deal. You can choose a rental length between 30 and 360 days and extend your rental for as little as one day. What’s best, regardless of your chosen rental period, Amazon will charge you only for the exact time you need a book. From Amazon:

Kindle Textbook Rental is a flexible and affordable way to read textbooks. You can rent for the minimum length, typically 30 days, and save up to 80% off the print list price. If you find you need your textbook longer, you can extend your rental by as little as 1 day as many times as you want and just pay for the added days.

You can tell whether  a Kindle edition is available for rent in the Textbooks Store section of the Kindle app or from the search bar. The ability to rent textbooks in fair terms is good for students, but it ain’t like they were going to keep them anyway.

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[UPDATE July 19, 2011 8:10 Eastern]: The article has been updated with a comment from Samsung included at the bottom. In addition, an Asian Economy story establishing family bonds between the case maker’s CEO and Samsung’s chairman, provided in the comments, has been added.

Apple is suing “the copyist” Samsung because they “imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success”. Be that as it may, the similarities between the two tech giant’s gadgets are nothing compared to what other Asian knockoffs are doing for a living. Like Anymode Corp., which is in the business of designing, manufacturing and selling a blatant Smart Cover rip-off, pictured above and below. Conveniently dubbed the Smart Case – obviously because Apple trademarked it – the accessory comes in five pastel color choices. It too can prop a tablet upwards and it folds like Apple’s accessory as well. The Smart Case is designed exclusively for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 – and not by a coincidence, warns our reader Jun.

Apparently Sang-yong Kim, the Anymode CEO, was “born in Samsung family”. Jun tells us – and you’re free to take it at face value – that the Anymode CEO “is nephew of the Samsung’s chairman Kun-Hee Lee“, the claim we were unable to verify at the time of this writing. UPDATE: This Asian Economy article establishes family bonds between Sang-yong Kim and Kun-Hee Lee. The 69-year old chairman of Samsung Electronics stepped down in April 2008 amid the Slush funds scandal, but returned at the group’s helm in March of last year. He is credited for improving the quality of Samsung’s design and products. Anymode is not even attempting to conceal the Samsung link. The company describes itself on a LinkedIn page as…

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You must be quite puzzled with the no-show for native Skype and Facebook apps, in addition to Google+ for iPhone. Indeed, Google as long as three weeks ago said a native Google+ app had been sent to Apple for review. Skype created a confusion by posting a teaser video some 25 days ago, soon removed by the company and re-uploaded by RazorianFly. The clip demonstrates what appears to be Skype video calling running natively on an iPad. As of today, neither program is to be found on the App Store, creating valid suspicious that Apple has been intentionally delaying those particular submissions for competitive reasons – and we know from Steve Jobs public remarks that Apple approves 95 percent of the apps within seven days. Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft and they recently announced video calling integration with Facebook.

9to5Mac reached out to Google seeking clarification about Google+ for iPhone. A spokesperson responded that the search giant has “nothing further to add on our end about the Google+ iPhone app”. The spokesperson added the software is “still coming soon”. Asked if Skype for iPad was still in the process of being reviewed by Apple and whether the company anticipated a launch soon, a Skype representative would only say that “the current version of Skype for iPhone works on the iPad”. They also removed the broken link, telling 9to5Mac it led to the existing Skype for iPhone app even though the URL had the “ipad-for-skype” part in it. Also, as you can see in the above screenshot, the Skype homepage lists “iPad” as one of the platform choices under the Get Skype link. Apple did not respond to our email inquiries about the state of Skype for iPad and Google+ for iPhone apps.

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In an exclusive report, Boy Genius Report’s Jonathan Geller says that Apple is about to launch an inexpensive iPhone costing $350 by the end of summer:

According to our source, Apple will indeed be launching a prepaid / lower cost iPhone this year. We are told the handset will retail for no more than $350 without contract. Ready for the really interesting part? It’s entirely possible that the low-cost iPhone will in fact be the iPhone 3GS.

The author theorizes that “there would be an iPhone 4S in addition to the prepaid iPhone 3GS available within the next month to two” in addition to the iPhone 4 which BGR is told Apple will continue to sell…

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ChangeWave Research is out this morning with the newest survey based on a poll of 4,163 consumers in June, eleven percent of which were outside the US. The research focused on planned and past purchases of smartphones, showing that Apple’s handset is still the preferred device in spite of Android becoming the top-selling smartphone platform as millions of feature phone consumers in the United States and elsewhere upgrade to their first smartphone, usually a cheap Android handset.

According to the research firm, the iPhone is the go-to phone for some 46 percent of respondents planning to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, a two percentage points increase over ChangeWave’s March survey. Google’s Android is second with a 32 percent share of smartphone purchases planned in the next 90 days. Google, however, grew just one percentage point in the eyes of the consumer from the March survey. Just four percent plan on buying a BlackBerry in the next 90 days, a far cry from the platform’s high of 32 percent in September of 2008.

In November of 2010, when the iPhone was available exclusively on the AT&T network in the US, ChangeWave discovered that over a third of non-AT&T consumers would have liked to have purchased the iPhone, if their wireless provider carried it. Apple also tops the customer satisfaction rankings and the iCloud service could help the company widen its lead in terms of happy customers…

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Some new tidbits arrive this morning in a story The Korea Times which claims a next-generation iPad will feature a display with a pixel resolution going beyond full HD (1920-by-1080 pixels):

Apple’s upcoming iPad 3 will feature an improved display to support quad extended graphics (QXGA), a display resolution of 2048×1536 pixels with a 4:3 aspect ratio to provide full high definition (HD) viewing experience. The imminent deals would assure that Samsung and LG continue to be the biggest providers of flat screens to Apple for the foreseeable future. Samsung and LG are two of the few LCD makers that are at ease with highly-advanced LCD screens. 

Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes and research firm IDC were among the first to assert back in January that a next-generation iPad is getting a very high-resolution display. The Korea Times report is based on “a source close to the talks” between Apple on one side and Samsung and LG on the other. The iPhone maker has allegedly begun quality testing LCDs from both Samsung and LG “at one of its laboratories in China”. The testing process is expected to be completed during the third quarter and both suppliers were required to produce screens with “better picture quality and density”. How?

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Shares of the Taiwanese Android phone maker HTC fell 6.5 percent this morning following the ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) that the company violated two patents held by Apple. The company’s shares had been pretty much in a free-fall throughout last week as well. The agency’s commissioners still have to support the ruling, but investors are already panicking over fears that the ruling will favor Apple. This, in turn, would open doors to ITC’s ban on imports of HTC’s phones into the United States. In response to the crisis, HTC announced a share buy back program worth up to $760 million in an attempt to stabilize its share price and restore investor confidence, reports Financial Times:

The attempt to prop up HTC’s share price appeared to have little effect as the stock fell below HTC’s minimum purchase price of T$900 to close down 3.9 per cent at T$871. The sell-off highlights investor fears that the legal battle could have wider implications for the competitive balance between Apple and Google Android-based phonemakers like HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

HTC is thought to have recently acquired S3 Graphics for $300 million in a bid to secure a stronger ground in its legal dealings with Apple, which filed its patent infringement complaint against the Taiwanese company back in March 2010. That’s not all HTC’s been doing lately in order to buy its way out of this mess…

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From 9to5toys.com:

Amazon offers the Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) PC3-10666 DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM 204-Pin Dual Channel Notebook Memory Kit, model no. CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9, for $54.99.99 with free shipping. The $10 mail-in rebate cuts it to $44.99.

The 8GB (2 X 4GB) DDR3 Laptop Memory Kit  is 1333MHz Unbuffered CL 9 SODIMM Memory 9-9-9-24 1.5V which matches recent iMac and MacBook Pro Specs.  Commenters at Amazon concur.

Got a 2009-2010 model?  Even better, save an additional $5

Apple charges 4X that for an 8GB upgrade:

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Apple released iOS 4.3.4 (build 8K2) fixing a PDF exploit which makes possible wireless jailbreaking by visiting the JailbreakMe.com web-tool  in mobile Safari. The exploit could also be used to inject and execute any code on iOS devices. The iOS 4.3.4 download is now available through iTunes for the iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1 and 2 and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. Verizon iPhone users will get the same fix via the iOS 4.2.9 update (build 8E501). Contents of the Verizon iPhone firmware update is outlined in this support document (here for iOS 4.3.4 for all other devices).

Stand-alone downloads below:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKF6nFzpHBU]

Here’s something quick and eyebrow-raising to boot this morning. A YouTube guitarist puts an iPhone 4 inside his instrument to capture some rarely seen footage of how the strings oscillate. The awesome effect is further amplified thanks to the way the iPhone 4’s shutter works, he explains in a video description: 

I just happened upon this trick when testing what it was like filming from inside my guitar. Note this effect is due to the rolling shutter, which is non-representative of how strings actually vibrate.

In other words, the iPhone 4’s CMOS sensor scans objects diagonally from the top left to the bottom right, producing the interesting effect. Now that we’ve seen it in action, we have a couple of ideas of our own to shoot fast-moving objects to take advantage of the camera shutter effect.

via TUAW

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Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes quotes unnamed industry sources who claim Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer for gadgets, will produce a rumored Android-driven tablet from Amazon, said to sport a 10.1-inch display, with shipments to begin in 2012 at the earnest. Quanta Computer, another contract manufacturer from Asia, has already begun shipping a smaller seven-inch device to Amazon, the report notes:

Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has reportedly landed orders for 10.1-inch tablet PCs from Amazon with shipments to begin in 2012, while Quanta Computer has begun shipping a 7-inch model to Amazon. Foxconn declined to comment on market speculation.

Foxconn of course is Apple’s long-time manufacturer so it comes as a surprise that Apple did not exercise its influence and billions to block rivals from tapping Foxconn’s manufacturing potentials. That’s not entirely unheard of, however…

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The second-generation Apple tablet and the arrival of a CDMA version of iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network together worked like magic to re-new interest in the iOS platform. Despite what a few disgruntled developers may tell you, Apple’s iOS is by far and large the go-to platform for both budding and veteran mobile app developers. This is a summary of a new survey by Flurry, Steve Jobs’ favorite analytics company. The above chart shows more new projects started on iOS than on Android:

Studying the chart, it’s readily apparent that Android has lost developer support to iOS.  Specifically, Android new project starts have dropped from 36% in Q1 to 28% in Q2.  Overall, total Flurry iOS and Android new project starts grew from 9,100 in Q1 to 10,200 in Q2.  Of note, this drop in Android developer support represents the second quarter-over-over slide, which follows a year of significant, steady growth for the Google-built OS. Over the course of 2010, Android developer support had climbed steadily each quarter, peaking at 39% in Q4 2010.

They explain Apple’s lead…

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Apple is scheduled to report their fiscal 2011 third quarter earnings next Tuesday so analysts are running their spreadsheets like crazy. We know Apple’s retail business grew a whopping 80 percent year-over-year, accounting for one-fifth of all sales growth by publicly traded retailers in the US and making them the nation’s fastest-growing retailer. Apple’s June quarter performance is especially important in lights of the soft patch which struck the economy. Make no mistake about it, the pundits will be interpreting any slow-down in Apple’s sales as a sign of a larger decline in consumer spending.

Analysts polled by Fortune are expecting exceptionally strong Mac sales ranging from 3.8 million units (a twelve percent annual increase) on the low-end, all the way up to 4.63 million units, translating into a cool 33 percent annual growth for the Mac. For comparison, during the March quarter Apple reported sales of 3.67 million Macs, a 28 percent over the year-ago quarter.

Even the most conservative estimates far exceed the not-so-rosy state of the PC industry. Global PC shipments decelerated considerably and grew between 2.3 percent (Gartner) and 2.6 percent (IDC), a material drop from the twelve percent growth IDC report in the first quarter of 2010. To put it bluntly, almost all first-tier PC vendors reported negative growth except Apple. More data points and IDC’s and Gartner’s preliminary numbers right below the fold.

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We’re taking this one with a healthy dose of skepticism (and so should you) and purely for the sake of the discussion. Straight from Chinese-language site Sohu.com comes a story of an iPhone 5 delay blamed on the A5 chip overheating. If machine translation is to be believed, that’s why Apple pushed back the next iPhone launch from the usual June-July timeframe into the late August-early September timeframe. The story has it that Apple’s silicon team is facing difficulties keeping the dual-core A5 chip cool in the iPhone’s tiny enclosure where space and battery are at premium.

This has led the company to postpone the iPhone 5 launch for an unspecified period of time, but quite possibly into 2012. And there you have it, the iPhone 5 – described as a major, “revolutionary” upgrade – won’t arrive “soon”. The story also mentions that Apple will be transitioning to a 28-nanometer manufacturing process with the A6 chip, apparently due next year. The A5 chip that goes into iPad 2 is manufactured on Samsung’s 45-nanometer process and is almost twice the size of the iPhone 4’s A4 processor. If there’s any substance to this story, what then (if anything) will Apple release come this Fall?

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Taiwanese Apple-focused forum Apple.pro has leaked what appears to be an iPad 3 part, pictured below. The machine-translated description mentions a part labeled “821-1259-06” which looks a lot like a dock connector with the accompanying ribbon cable attached to it. The ribbon cable itself makes a 90-degree turn whereas it was straight on iPad 1 and 2. This in itself indicates some design changes of the next iPad’s internals. For comparison, the iPad 2’s dock connector is labeled “821-1180-A”, the site observes.

It’s interesting that “821-1259-06” is a white plug, unlike the black connector found on both black and white iPad 2 (the original iPad’s dock connector was white, however) . This has led the site to speculate that the next iPad might arrive in black and white flavors and with matching dock connectors. The  component is said to be sourced from Apple’s “internal inventory” and leaked by an unnamed source.

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Patently Apple points to a new patent application from Apple which surfaced this morning in the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) database pertaining to a “database message builder” which might be Apple’s take on unified, platform-agnostic social sharing. “The user can publish the message to a target application or network resource (e.g., a social networking site)”, Apple writes in a summary of the patent application. The document describes tokens which are replaced with the structured data prior to publishing the message. In plain English, tokens are basically photos, location data, videos and other structured data one can embed in status updates. In fact, Apple’s solutions is a ubiquitous one and could easily support other micro-blogging platforms and publishing to web sites…

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In anticipation of a launch of the Photovine service which was announced Tuesday, Google has just released a free invite-only Photovine for iOS app on the App Store and posted the cutesy teaser (see below) on the official Photovine page. Beginning today, people can request an invite on the site, which is needed to take advantage of an iOS app. You’re advised to hurry up because invitations for Google’s recently launched products have been  in high demand (Google+, anyone?). By the way, don’t you find it weird they would feature an iPhone 4 app on both the website and in the video clip rather than a Nexus S?

For those uninitiated, Photovine is Google’s attempt at social photo sharing that takes clues from Flickr, Facebook photos, Picasa and other services. “Photovine is a fun way to learn more about your friends, meet new people and share your world like never before”, says the official blurb. You begin creating a vine by taking a photo and creating a new caption.  Other people will see your vine and join in by adding their own photo, showing their own take on the caption. Google explains:

A vine is like a constantly growing family of photos connected through a common caption created by you, your friends, and people all over the world. Some examples of vines could be: “What Weekends Are Made Of”, “Secret Stuffed Animal”, “Party People”, or, “Love of My Life”. As people add photos to vines, they tell their own stories about the moments, images, and ideas that define our lives in a way that’s social, creative, and fun.

Release notes from iTunes after the break

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MPIZKPhfDY]

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Remember Locationgate? Some people took Apple to court over gathering location data without their consent and the company has now made its first payout related to the scandal, reports Reuters. Unlike in the US where a plaintiff would seek millions of dollars in damages, the Korean court put a modest value on the tracking suit, just shy of a thousand dollars:

Apple Korea agreed to pay 1 million won ($946) in compensation to Kim Hyung-suk, a lawyer, following a court order in May, two officials at Changwon District Court told Reuters on Thursday. They declined to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Kim’s law firm, Mirae Law, said Apple made payment last month.

The report does not mention why the court ruled in plaintiff’s favor. But if a South Korea user was able to cash in on the scandal, we imagine a potential class action lawsuit in the US might cost Apple dearly. South Korea will be a litmus test for such a lawsuit because said law firm, Mirae Law, has already set up a website for a planned class action lawsuit against Apple in the country at www.sueapple.co.kr.

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Apple scheduled its third-quarter conference call for next Tuesday around 2pm PST/ 5pm EST and the pundits, analysts and watchers alike are jumping over each other to predict key business metrics. Big media often refers to Apple as the Wall Street darling and this time around the company’s upcoming earnings will be scrutinized for signs of deceleration because “Apple’s sales could be a litmus test for the extent of the soft patch that struck the economy in recent months”, writes USA Today, speculating that “if demand for Apple’s product wanes, it could mean the downturn is less a soft patch than a hard landing”.

The paper quotes Morningstar analyst Joseph Beaulieu who estimates Apple is capable of achieving “a 20 percent average revenue growth rate for the next five years, even without the introduction of new products”. No wonder Apple is called both America’s fastest-growing and the greatest retailer. Despite the concerns about state of the economy, Steve Jobs-led iPhone maker has thus far been defying logic with one stellar quarter after another. Here’s what the financial community is predicting for Apple’s June quarter…

Table courtesy of AAPLInvestors.net

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Apple is taking “a massive bite” out of US retail sales, USA Today reports, citing findings by retail sales expert David Berman. Snowballing sales of iOS gadgets and Mac sales that continue to outpace other computer makers coupled with Apple’s margins that are the envy of the industry didn’t go unnoticed. The publication noted:

In the first three months of 2011, Apple’s U.S. sales rose by $4.6 billion, an 80% increase from a year ago.That increase accounted for one-fifth of all sales growth by publicly traded retailers in the U.S., according to a recent analysis of sales trends by retail sales expert David Berman. In part, that’s a reflection of poor sales among most retailers. But it also highlights how Steve Jobs’ technology giant is grabbing a big slice of market share in everything from smartphones to PCs.

Apple’s iPhone sales generated in the first quarter more than nine billion dollars of revenue for Apple, or about 40 percent of its quarterly sales. Another headline-grabbing fact: Total US sales encompassing public retailers, web companies, electronics retailers and auto parts dealers grew by $23.2 billion in the first quarter compared to Apple’s first-quarter revenue of $24.67 billion. It is interesting that Apple managed to beat the likes of  Amazon.com and Wal-Mart Stores in the US sales growth. Of course, other people have called Apple America’s greatest retailer before.

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