Amazon is only carrying the 32GB and 64GB Wifi versions currently but will likely round out its inventory as we approach Christmas. Amazon carried the iPad through third party vendors previously but often with over-inflated prices — and that’s still the case in the UK.
We already know the White House is full of iPad users, now it’s the same in the UK at Number 10 Downing Street, where Tory/Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron has come out to declare himself an iPad (and Mac) user.
Apple is on the way to seizing the number one slot in the Standard & Poor’s 500 market index, eclipsing the market value of current number one global company, Exxon.
Buoyed by its iPhone, iPad and Mac sales, Apple appears on course to exceed Exxon’s market value. Expand Expanding Close
Poring over a somewhat thought-provoking note penned by former Apple exec and Be Inc. founder, Jean-Louis Gassée, in which he argues that most operating systems are variants of one (Unix) and that the OS doesn’t really matter — it needs the apps.
He gives us a whistlestop tour of the evolution of OS development. On Apple, he writes: Expand Expanding Close
Amazon UK’s got a new book for us on iLife ’11 due in November. How convenient!
In case your German is a little rusty, that red band reads: “iPhoto, iMovie and more with apps for Mac, iPhone 4, iPod and iPad.”
That’s interesting. Does it mean that there are iLife apps for iOS or does it mean you can create apps for iOS with a new iLife Application? Or is this whole listing just a farce?
We’re expecting some new MacBooks of some sort during the next month or so, so an iLife ’11 introduction during that time would be a good fit.
Update: The German site has some more goodies (thanks commenter!)
Fortune reports that Microsoft today announced that they have filed legal action against Motorola due to patent infringements relating to their devices running Google’s Android operating system.
“Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smartphones. The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.
We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market. Motorola needs to stop its infringement of our patented inventions in its Android smartphones.”
As you can read in the statement, Motorola’s implementation of Android on their smartphones are accused of infringinging on Microsoft patents relating to e-mail, calendar, contact, and meeting time synchronization. Motorola also apparently infringes on patents for pulling cellular signal strength and device battery information. Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Horacio Gutierre, wrote a blog post about the situation that is surely worth a read. Gutierre perhaps best sums up this lawsuit with his closing statement in his post: “Our action today merely seeks to ensure respect for our intellectual property rights infringed by Android devices; and judging by the recent actions by Apple and Oracle, we are not alone in this respect.”
Yet more wheels within wheels on Apple’s move to abandon Infineon for Qualcomm subsequent to Intel’s acquisition of Infineon, manufacturer of baseband chips for the iPhone.
Now we’re told Qualcomm will contract Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to make the 3G wireless chips that will equip Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPad 2, which will be launched in mid-2011, as reported by the China Economic News.
COMPUTERWORLD: Apple is taking another step closer to the release of a touch-sensitive iMac, if a new Digitimes report is to be believed. This follows months of feverish speculation that the company intends releasing a touch-controlled desktop Mac. Is Apple preparing a new wave of innovation to boost sales of its desktops?
Apple faces renewed competition on October 6 when Logitech is inviting media to attend the launch of its first Google TV device. This will be followed scant days later by Sony, which will host its own Google TV launch event on October 12. Expand Expanding Close
According to sources close to the matter, Apple Stores across the nation will begin to start selling iPhone 4 Bumper cases again tomorrow, Friday October 1st. All Bumper colors will be available starting tomorrow at Apple’s retail stores. The Bumpers will be sold at their $29.00 price point and some stores may only have limited quantities. Note that colors will be subject to availability so it’s possible that your local store will not have all six colors tomorrow.
The main thing going on here is that you will finally be able to get a Bumper in any color you like, not just black. Hopefully for that $29 Apple will be selling the Bumpers in their usual packaging, not plastic bags.
Facebook CTO, Bret Taylor, at a dinner in New York last night said he is “very confident” that Apple and Facebook will figure out a way to work together on Ping. For those following the news about Ping, Facebook was pulled from the new music-oriented social network at launch. Recent reports also suggest that Apple and Facebook negotiated a Ping deal for 18 months before it obviously failed.
According to reports out of France (via HardMac) data carriers are currently in negotiations with Apple to allow for price subsidized sales of the iPad 3G. This would allow carriers to sell the 3G iPad model at lower costs for the customer if they agree to sign 1-2 year contracts. This would be an amazing thing for customers as they could potentially buy the higher end, 3G-rocking, iPad, get it for cheaper, and still get rid of it in a year when Apple releases their next iPad.
Apple is already wanting to get their 3G iPad into the hands of as many users as possible and this is evident through their data-pricing in the United States with AT&T. Users can have a 3G iPad but not use the 3G portion of it. They also pay month-to-month with no contract at all. The report also states that Apple may even already be in these negotiations with other European nations as well. Oh, could Apple being doing this because the Galaxy Tab is sold subsidized?
Back in July of this year, we told you about an Apple job description looking for someone to work on the team that is creating a “new and revolutionary core feature for Mac OS X” that has never been done before. Today, Patently Applemay have uncovered our first glimpse of this next-generation core feature. Apple’s patent filing details “virtual input devices” that tie into the future of iOS gaming and Mac OS multi-touch displays with 3D interactivity.
Essentially your input device will be transposed to your display in a virtual view. To break it down even further, your trackpad will be displayed on your computer monitor and you would control it via your monitor’s touch-screen. This of course gets into the patents and rumors of multi-touch iMacs. This does seem a bit counter-intuitive but there are many future-applications Apple could potentially use this patent for. One would be those touch iMacs with no physical input device, and another could possibly be a notebook with a second, smaller, display as the trackpad.
Getting into the 3D side of the patent, it seems that when an item or action is just waiting to be touched on your computer it will sit in the normal 2D mode, but when interacted with, 3D mode can come about. Think of 3D cover flow, or text popping out of your screen. Apple’s latest patent even hints at the future of iOS gaming with the aforementioned virtual input devices being used as game controls on an iPad, for example.
UPDATE: All four Apple retail stores in China now require customer to show his/her identity card while purchasing the iPhone 4. Every customer could only purchase one iPhone 4. Apple employees will unbox the iPhone 4 for customers and activate the phone right away. So, the iPhone 4 scalpers could not resell the iPhone 4 as “brand new” and buy in large quantities. link
We reported earlier this month on the quaint habit of iPhone purchasing for a profit all across London, as various folk pick up units to send into the lucrative Chinese grey market for the device — today we learn that Apple had to close its Beijing Apple store yesterday because grey market buyers were sucking all the store’s supply. Expand Expanding Close
It seems not all is well with the Final Cut Studio development team, with a report claiming release of the next version of the insanely widely-used professional video-editing solution has been set back until 2011.
We had originally been expecting Final Cut Studio would ship this year, but development has suffered “significant setbacks”, a French report explains. This has also led the Apple team to scale back the scope of the release. Expand Expanding Close
Verizon’s trying to get some switchers by offering a trade-in program on phones from other carriers. Interestingly, they’ll take a shiny new iPhone 4 off your hands for a not-so-handsome $212.
We don’t anticipate a lot of business coming their way via this scheme. Expand Expanding Close
COMPUTERWORLD: I’ve been thinking about Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s belief that Apple may launch an all-in-one Apple television in the next 2-4 years. It makes sense as a natural continuation of Apple’s current strategy, but what would an Apple television look like? What would it do? And would you buy it?
Although Steve Jobs told a Swedish DJ that internet tethering (iPhone’s connection used for a WiFi iPad, in this case) wouldn’t be coming to the iPad, beta 2 of iOS 4.2 for iPad tells a different story. Hidden within the APN network settings on the iPad 3G is a new section dedicated to internet tethering. This tethering appears to be the type of tethering iPhones currently use versus tethering the iPhone’s internet to an iPad.
This section asks for the usual username and password to setup internet tethering, and this is similar to what the iPhone had before tethering got an official iOS interface. Because of this, we believe that internet tethering is in the iPad’s future and may even launch with iOS 4.2 in November.
One important thing to note is that we could not replicate this new settings pane on an iPad 3G running on AT&T’s network. This screenshot is from an iPad 3G running on 3’s network in Europe.
We’ve been waiting for years for Apple to include 3G chips in their notebooks and it looks like they’ve finally got a patent on it. The patent uncovered by Patently Apple sounds really confusing so we’ll break it down: It’s pretty much a patent for 3G antennas housed all around an Apple notebook.
Now, Apple, go make a MacBook Air with a high-res screen and 3G that launches in October, mk? Expand Expanding Close
We already told you that Office for Mac would be launching October 26th, a few weeks ago, and today Microsoft has made it official. Here’s a behind the scenes look at Office 2011 from our friends, Kurt Schmucker and Han-Yi Shaw:
OK, this Internet TV thing is just getting kinda nuts right now. A few months ago, the best thing you could hope for was a $600 Mac Mini with a Logitech diNovo Mini keyboard to get Hulu and Netflix and the rest of your movie collection into your living room with any sort of elegance. What a difference a few months makes.
Now with $99 AppleTV arriving in people’s homes and $200+ Boxee Box and GoogleTV coming at some undisclosed point in the future, everyone seems to want to share everything everywhere. And that’s great!
Roku/Hulu announced today that they’d be coming to those cheap little streaming Roku boxes. Incidentally, so did Tivo. So for $10/month plus a $60 down, you can pretty much have basic cable over Internet. Cut the cord! (except that its probably the same coaxial cable that brings your Internet)
I’m really hoping to see Apple to announce a similar Hulu deal for AppleTV. Hulu Plus already exists on iOS devices so there isn’t a technical issue and if it is on Roku, there is no legal issue related to TV streams. Soooo….
Let consumers decide whether they want to pay $1-$3/episode on iTunes or $10 + commercials for on-demand TV. If Netflix can be blessed on AppleTV, then why not Hulu? Oh, and how about some international rollouts Hulu while we’re at it?
COMPUTERWORLD: All reports now suggest Apple will introduce its second-generation iPad in the second quarter of 2011. The device will hit a far more competitive market than it faced in its first iteration, with tablets coming from all directions. Will features be enough to prevail in the growing tablet industry? I think it will be developers who determine who succeeds in 2011’s tablet wars.
