Tech Industry

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It is hard to imagine a bigger Apple leak than this: Gizmodo now claims to have got hold of the much-reported lost iPhone 4G, taken it apart and now states definitively,

Surprising few, it seems Apple will deploy its own unique processor within the fourth generation (ceramic-backed?) iPhone, industry sources have confirmed.

In a report looking at the impact of Apple

It looks like Apple

Apple is looking to open up production facilities in Latin America, seeking to exploit tax breaks available to foreign companies opening for business in Brazil.

The company is pondering production of iPhones and MacBooks in Brazil in an attempt reportedly aimed at cutting prices for Latin American consumers, it’s claimed.

Apple will need to join a Brazilian scheme that offers tax breaks on component imports in order to encourage final product assembly inside of that country, Sao Paulo

If you are in the market for a desktop or NAS/Server hard drive, you’ve no doubt been checking out some of the 2TB drives pictured above.  HotHardware just reviewed most of the majors in the market from Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung.  

There are 10 pages of hard drive testing glory, but like a lot of people, we’re most interested in the results:

Ultimately, our picks for each class of drive are as follows. For general-purpose drives, you’d think it would be a no-brainer and we’d pick the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB($139) for its relative high performance and great value. The problem is, it has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, versus 300,000 cycles for the other general-purpose drives–the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Once we took the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB out of the running, it was a very close call between the Samsung EcoGreen F3 2TB($179) and WD Caviar Green 2TB ($139.99), but we ultimately chose the Samsung EcoGreen F3 2TB because of its speedier overall performance. For the performance drives it was a much tougher call; but with almost identical overall performance, the Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB ($275) edged out the WD Caviar Black 2TB ($279), due to the Barracuda XT’s lower price tag and lower power consumption (see the specs tables on page three of this roundup). For the enterprise-class drives, it’s a runaway, with the WD RE4 2TB ($285) as the undisputed performance leader that also has high reliability ratings.

They also give the Western Digital AV-GP($173) high marks in media centers for being quiet and able to withstand high temperatures.

FWIW, I bought two WD Caviar Green w/64MB cache ($139) for my home NAS and they’ve been perfect so far.  via Engadget

Not much in the way of specs or anything but it appears that these Dell 7 and 10-inch Streaks are more 16:9 widescreenier than the iPad.  The smaller, 5 inch models  will launch on AT&T in June, the bigger ones come out toward the end of this year or beginning of next.

Oh well, the iPad had a good run.

Patently Apple today published a patent by Apple that details an “iTunes based web service for tickets that will naturally enhance the iTunes music empire.”  The iPhone and Mac application “Concert Ticket” would allow all facets of the ticketing process to happen automatically.  

The advantages of Apple’s system include electronic maps to the event, electronic distribution of tickets through email or other means, song lyrics, refreshments, the ability to purchase a live recording of the concert or other content, parking and finding people. 

It doesn’t stop with Music concert tickets.  Apple lays out plans for sporting events, weddings and conventions (like WWDC, pictured but not scheduled officially yet). 

Is Ticketmaster the next casualty of Apple?

Pink is now ‘Kin’.  Microsoft’s phones are now appearing in Verizon’s phone database according to phoneArena.  The line will be called ‘Kin’, shedding the project codename Pink.   From the image, it looks like one model will be the ‘Kin One’ and the other will be ‘Kin Two’.   Microsoft had so far used “Turtle” and “Pure” to denote the Pink project phones.

Adobe has officially announced CS5 and is now taking pre-orders for the different suites and individual products.  Adobe has also updated each separate application’s page: Photoshop CS5, Flash Professional CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, Premier Pro CS5 and Dreamweaver CS5.

Adobe will have a live streaming webcast at 11am ET.

Here are two demos of new Photoshop features: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAklIkMy4g&w=700&h=500] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI&w=700&h=500]

The only question now:  Who is going to buy them?  I think they might be piecemealled off.

Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, put itself up for sale and is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Just guesses here: HTC (for the patents).  HTC already has made a lot of Palm Phones.  Motorola (for the OS) – they are getting screwed by HTC and Android.  

Nokia already has Symbian and Maemo OSes.   Microsoft got burned too badly with Danger.  Blackberry just bought an OS company.  Google has Android (but wouldn’t hurt to have some more patents)

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In a previous post, I’d wondered why Adobe didn’t spend their time building HTML5 Authoring tools rather than putting so much time/energy/money into their  Flash->iPhone Apps exporter tool for Flash CS5.  

As it turns out, Adobe does have some, albeit rudimentary, HTML5 Canvas exporting tools as demonstrated in the video above.   Taking a simple animation, which is the beginning, middle and end of most Flash banner ads that we love, is an export/paste operation.

Now that Microsoft and their market leading IE browser are supporting HTML5, it would seem like a better move for web designers to export old Flash animations into HTML5, rather than miss out on iProducts/ClicktoFlash users’ eyes.  Thanks Timo!

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Brooklyn has been a rumored destination for an Apple Store for years but one has never materialized.  So Marty Markowitz, the Borough President, made a video plea directly to Steve Jobs to get one done.  (Steve Jobs’ response?)

One could argue that an Apple Store is just a short subway ride away in Manhattan

One App, Five screens

Apple and AT&T have a pretty solid 3G deal going on with the iPad — $15-$30/month with no commitment on top of your AT&T iPhone plans.  But I have to say, I like where Verizon is going a little more.  They just made the Palm Pre’s Mifi feature free.  That means you buy a Pre and you get to connect up to 5 devices to Verizon’s 3G network via Wifi for free.  

Now, Verizon caps you at 5GB/month, makes you sign up for two years and some say the Pre isn’t a fantastic router

For those waiting for Apple’s new Core i7 MacBook Pros, take solace in the fact that this isn’t Apple’s new pro laptop.  It is an Atom-powered knockoff from China (shocker).  Specs include a 1366X768 “HD” display, G Wifi, 100Mbps Ethernet and 512MB of RAM.

It does win one battle vs. current MacBook Pros however: It has HDMI out. We’d like to see Apple close that hole in the next gen but won’t hold our breath.

Via GadgetMix

Today, someone caught the two most important people in tech (yeah I know MS is worth more..for the moment) having some coffee in a mini mall in Silicon Valley.  We’re not feeling the ‘hatred’.  

What do you think is the topic of discussion?  Hint: It ain’t fashion.

According to Gizmodo,

Our tipster saw em and snapped these shots, and noted that the cafe is owned and operated by former Google chef Charlie Ayers. Overheard from the conversation were two lines by Jobs. Enthusiastically, “They’re going to see it all eventually so who cares how they get it.” Which seemed to be about web content, said the tipster. And, “Let’s go discuss this somewhere more private,” after they noticed the crowd gathering around. 

More below via Giz

We’re not here to judge or be judged, we are just throwing out the news that this is the most complete and up to date Notebook Hackintoshing table we’ve ever seen.  

Things to note:

• 10.6.2 is probably as far up to date as you should ever expect to go.  Going any further isn’t a guarantee. 
• The iPad is only a few hundred dollars more and can do most of the stuff these things do.  “Better”-SJobs
• Cramped keyboards suck almost as much as on-screen keyboards.
• The $385 Eee 1000HE  and $250 Dell Mini 10V make solid Hackintoshes (or so we’ve heard)

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=tech/2010/03/23/taylor.ipads.ebooks.cnn

Youtube/HTML5 version

Worth the upgrade tax?

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Nackblog via DF

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Eye-Fi has announced their new product, the $149 Pro X2 8 GB SDHC Class 6 Wireless Flash Memory Card.  We like the upgraded 802.11N capability and the “unlimited card feature” which deletes your oldest pictures once they’ve been safely uploaded to your computer or online service.  Eye-Fi announced at Macworld that they support iPhoto even though it isn’t shown in the video above.

Eye-Fi’s biggest attribute, however, continues to be its Geo-tagging ability which it gains from pulling known Wifi hotspot coordinates (so not as acurate as real GPS).   Besides a handful of cameras and smartphones like the iPhone, few manufacturers have jumped on the GPS (or Wifi) bandwagon, something that has made these cards all the more valuable.

You kinda have to laugh at this one.  Behind the scenes, Google’s Billionaire CEO Eric Schmidt has been dealing with a mistress/affair thing for the past few months. While normally that’s not really of interest to us, today some pretty funny pictures emerged which suddenly make them story-worthy.  Plus there is an Apple angle.

Gawker profiles Schmidt’s fall from grace with a bit of particular interest to Apple watchers.  His first fight with Steve Jobs:

Schmidt’s mobile phone rang on the highway between Reno and Burning Man’s movable city in Black Rock Desert. It was Jobs, angry. The call then dropped; bad signal, middle of nowhere. The disconnect couldn’t be blamed on a flaky iPhone connection: Schmidt had long ago given up on the Apple handset because he couldn’t stand the on-screen keyboard. His wife had tested a prototype, but didn’t care to keep it. Schmidt, we’re told, ended up giving his iPhone to [mistress]Bohner as a gift. Schmidt located a convenience store and used a pay phone to call Jobs back. The Apple CEO “shouted” at Schmidt and “railed” at him, furious about his smartphone plans and duplicity, said our source. After all, Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and was supposed to be a partner on the iPhone, providing internet services like maps. Schmidt, enduring the abuse, visibly lost his composure; his face went “weird,” said our source.

Perhaps ‘something or other’ was kicking in.

Also noteworthy in the story is that Google Founder Sergey Brin has had a chilly relationship with Eric Schmidt and didn’t invite him to his wedding.  Brin, of all the Google leadership, has the closest relationship to Steve Jobs, though all of them see Jobs as a mentor.