COMPUTERWORLD: Apple CEO Steve Jobs made the news today with a promise his company will make its online hosted MobileMe service much better next year. Other than improved stability, reliability and consistent performance, just what exactly do we want Apple to give us? Here’s a few suggestions.
Apple’s decision to end the Xserve has attracted criticism from some of the company’s existing enterprise users — critics who’ve managed to raise their voices on CNN.
What is interesting is that despite their general displeasure at being given just four months to plan the change away from Xserve, “many Xserve customers say they’re sticking with the Mac plaform.”
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Apple’s taken yet another slice of the enterprise market with the introduction of the all-new iPad-savvy version of Cisco’s industry-leading Webex platform!
This will let you schedule and start meetings on your PC — and host meetings on your iPhone — when you sign up for a WebEx account.
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Apple may have hatched a deal with Verizon under which T-Mobile and Sprint will be locked out of the sexy, beautiful iPhone everywhere post-ATT exclusive in the US next year, an analyst said.
I hasten to note that the analyst here is one Kaufman Bros., Shaw Wu, and I’ve noted that his analysis while widely reported is often incorrect. But here’s the story.
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What’s this we hear? Apple’s going to open up its Mac App Store for business just on time for Christmas? That’s how it seems with the latest claimed insider gossip suggesting Apple’s gonna open its doors on the new big consumer software online retail outlet on December 13, hurrah!
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Apple caused quite a stir when it announced the discontinuation of its Xserve line on November 5th. Mac IT departments immediately went scrambling for new solutions. Apple officially offered up a faster Mac Mini as a low end replacement and the Mac Pro as a high end replacement, both with Snow Leopard Server installed. IT professionals who maintain data centers small and large know that these aren’t complete solutions compared to the density of the Xserves.
So, what is everyone doing? CNET quotes the Enterprise Desktop Alliance that says about a third of Xserve shops will be migrating to other hardware within the year. That reaction might be a little extreme for Apple because we’ve heard that Apple has been sending out reps to quell the exodus.
One Apple Enterprise shop we spoke to said that Apple’s System Engineers have been on a campaign to assure that Apple has another solution in the pipeline beyond what they’ve announced. There wasn’t an exact timeline of release but there was an indication that when the Xserve inventory runs out, the new product will be released. That means a new Enterprise product could be ready in February.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Nokia — these big name firms are locked into eternal struggle in the ever-changing world of technology, but Apple may hold the central skill in this new world order, as building tomorrow’s dreams demands that old engineering adage, “less is more”, and “better is not necessarily better than best”. Why? Because they can’t get the staff.
(Image c/o, Wired)
SproutCore is something else, a technology which drives the superior Web experience that MobileMe is rapidly becoming. Now SproutCore creator, Charles Jolley, has quit Apple to launch a startup called Strobe, tasked to deliver Apple-like JavaScript and HTML5 technologies to create apps which run smoothly on any device.
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tutIDEbgZZ8&fs=1&hl=en_GB]
Renault will launch Europe’s first iAd on December 2, with a campaign for Renault Twizy, its new 100% electric tandem-style city car.
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Yet more iPad movement in the financial industry, JP Morgan Chase & Co will give its investment bankers iPads, as Apple grabs yet more of RIM’s lunch.
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While it has made the promise, Apple has not yet contributed its proprietary Java runtime to Oracle’s Open Source Jva, Open JDK project — though one French developer has already put together the first binary test builds of OpenJDK for Mac OS X.
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Apple is gearing up for smartphone battle with Nokia at the International Trade Commission, hiring a crack team of patent expert lawyers to argue its case in one of a series of landmark patent cases afflicting the smartphone industry.
Apple and Nokia are both alleging intellectual property violations on the part of the other, with both firms using these as big sticks in an attempt to prevent US imports of competing handsets. The battle is a precursor to similar campaigns between Apple and HTC and Apple and Motorola.
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Here’s a strange hint of Apple’s growing influence in the financial sector: Citibank intends opening a series of branches all across Europe — branches modelled on an Apple Store!
The bank would be seeking to slim down and target major cities in France, Britain and Germany, the Financial Times claims. The notion is to focus on 100 cities offering large, flagship outlets modelled on the Apple stores.
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Apple is expected to see monthly MacBook shipments hit one million units, according to component makers.
Apple will reach these one million per month shipment levels in the current quarter, with MacBook Air orders already accounting for 20-25 percent of the volume.
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Hang onto your hats — we already have word of yet one more special event to close out 2010 but Apple’s already plotting to delight and surprise with another update to its MacBook Pro range and that there long-awaited move to ship a new blend of Final Cut Studio — and we only need to wait till April (some say).
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple [AAPL] has so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: Mac sales are exploding; the iPad/iPhone/iPod halo is shining; The Beatles have reached iTunes; and in a few weeks time Apple will launch the world’s biggest and most convenient consumer software retailer — the Mac App Store. And next year will be the year of the Mac.
We’re looking at serious legal challenges across the mobile phone industry in the next couple of years, with Apple’s case against Motorola now set to be reviewed by the US ITC, which could ban import of Motorola phones into the US if the company is found guilty. Meanwhile, HTC and Samsung have teamed up with that renowned patent rights litigator, Intellectual Ventures, to protect those firms from attack.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple [AAPL] is pushing out iOS 4.2 today, and as it does it is dropping a few hints as to the philosophy which drives the company in its evolution of the Mac OS, Lion, which will itself hint at the future direction of Apple’s operating systems for mobile and computing devices on this Apple planet.
COMPUTERWORLD: Only this morning declared one of the greatest innovations of 2010 by Time magazine, we’re receiving reports that components for the iPad successor, let’s call it ‘iPad 2.0’, have been selected and approved with production set to accelerate come February, suggesting the next-gen Apple tablet will ship in Q1. I’ve gathered my thoughts and this is what I think we might know about iPad 2.0 at this time, though it is speculative, so some ideas may be wide off the mark.
Apple’s newest board member is a living embodiment of just why we should all be using Macs — but unfortunately not in a good way. You see, his former company, Northrop Grumman, is currently causing huge problems in its implementation of computer systems across the state of Virginia.
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The Financial Times is offering all 1,800 of its staff a £300 or $480 rebate against the cost of an iPad or other tablet.
The newspaper wants to get its staff using those tablets — it is even offering the rebate to staff who already own an iPad,
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NVIDIA has announced a new graphics card for the Mac Pro, the Quadro 4000 — a solution which brings nVidia’s advanced Fermi architecture to the platform.
Neil Ticktin over at MacTech has been thoroughly putting Microsoft Office 2011 through its paces and has found that in almost all cases it is significantly faster than its predecessors.
All of these items give users a great deal more “user speed”…and those are not the type of things that can be measured with a stopwatch. However, in many cases, you will see significant “user speed” improvements, regardless.
Microsoft Office 2011 is still $20-$50 off at Amazon.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple’s in a good position to take on PayPal with a move into mobile payment systems. A future NFC-based iPhone may enable people to pay for real world goods using their smartphones, with payments charged to them via iTunes. Is it game over for PayPal?
