Tech Industry

Remember that Unibody MacBook that took a few bullets last week? Well, it appears there is more information on that.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihXtbB-4GWw&w=600&h=385]

Learn your Jewish holidays kids! Via PED

Apple

Apple is big – really big – in Japan, where the iPhone now accounts for 46.1 percent of the smartphone market, according to the latest data from Impress.

The company achieved sales accounting for almost half of the entire Japanese smartphone market across 2009, the analysts said. This drove the company

Windows 7 will be Microsoft

USB 3.0 is emerging from the shadows with the first wave of peripherals supporting the high-speed standard set to emerge early next year – even while there

Google

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8217311&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Just a short note to draw your attention to this video which shows you a concept of a future eReader device (possibly of some interest also to readers working within Apple R&D). It details a corporate collaborative research project initiated by Popular Science publisher, Bonnier R&D into the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. It illustrates one possible vision for digital magazines in the near future.

As the page detailing the video reveals:

Look forward to ever-more immersive media experiences on Apple products, with the company

The Federal Trade Commission today sued Intel Corp., the world

Morgan Stanley is singing seriously seasonal songs of praise to Apple Inc., the company the analysis firm says has a

This may already be apparent to any iPhone user, but it seems the age of generic single-purpose mobile phones is done and we

Apple won the permanent injunction against Psystar that it was seeking today.  According to Groklaw, it’s total, including Snow Leopard.  It also includes the Rebel EFI (which it is, as of this writing, still selling on its site) though Groklaw had this to say about the matter:

As for Rebel EFI, the judge while expressing that Psystar was not very clear about what it does, refused to exclude it from the injunction, and says Psystar continues to sell it “at its peril” at the risk of “finding itself in contempt if its new venture falls within the scope of the injunction.”

Only a clear explanation of the product, and discovery about it, can determine the matter, and Psystar is is free to bring a motion and submit to discovery about Rebel EFI, if it wishes to reopen the question. Since the injunction includes forbidding Psystar from “intentionally inducing, aiding, assisting, abetting, or encouraging any other person or entity to infringe plaintiff’s copyrighted Mac OS X software,” I’d think a reasonable person would find the injunction covers EFI as well.

Besides that, there is no ambiguity…

Psystar also can’t “manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, “or part thereof that is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure”, so I’d call this The End of Psystar’s adventures. Were this a normal litigation. Since it’s not, it’s certainly possible there will be more twists and turns. But in the California court, Psystar is toast.

Oh, and no “fire sale” before it shuts down, the judge said. He doesn’t want to see Psystar “engage in defiant or unreasonable conduct” and if it happens, there will be no insulation from contempt liability. It has until December 31st to comply, but if it can comply in one hour, then that is what the judge expects to see. Also Psystar must destroy everything it has used to circumvent Apple’s products. Then it is to report to Apple on exactly how it has fully complied by the deadline.

Here’s the order granting the motion and the final judgment:

12/15/2009 – 242 – ORDER GRANTING MOTION FOR PERMANENT INJUNCTION re 231 filed by Apple Inc.. Signed by Judge Alsup on December 15, 2009. (whalc1, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 12/15/2009) (Entered: 12/15/2009)

12/15/2009 – 243 – FINAL JUDGMENT. Signed by Judge Alsup on December 15, 2009. (whalc1, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 12/15/2009) (Entered: 12/15/2009)

This was outrageous litigation, and that is how the court viewed it.

Intel has teased out a little more information on its forthcoming 32nm six-core Xeon processors, the Intel Core i7-980X Processor Extreme Edition, the engine many expect will power a future model of the Mac Pro.

HardMac (via MacRumors and PCOnline.com.cn) confirms the new chips will retain the Core i7 name, but with an added X (for Extreme) to their name. These new Intel processors are expected to make their commercial debut in the second half of the first quarter 2010, according to a roadmap published by HardMac.

The last significant Mac Pro upgrade took place on March 3, 2009, when Apple introduced new models of pro desktop equipped with Intel

Google

Seems set to be an Apple Christmas in the UK, with the latest Hitwise data reporting the iPhone and iPod touch to be the current most searched for products in the UK this season.

iPhone pulled in 1.75 percent of all UK online product searches during the week ending December 5. In addition, it accounted for 14.01 percent of all mobile phone searches, Brand Republic tells us.

The second most searched for product? iPod touch, which gathered 1.29 percent of all searches in the period. The iPod nano took third place, with 0.5 per cent of all product searches. Amalgamated, the data means Apple products accounted for at least 3.04 percent of online product searches in the UK, hinting that as many as one in 34 consumers shopping online in the UK are at least considering an Apple product as a Christmas gift.

Consumer electronics are a buzz sector this year, with internet visits to websites dealing in such products shooting up by 16.5 per cent between October and November – the largest month-on-month increase in UK internet traffic to CE websites this year.

Reflecting just how popular Apple products are in the UK this year, Apple-related products (including compatible peripherals) account for 21 of the top 25 best-selling Portable Sound and Vision category products on Amazon UK.

Things seem pretty similar in the USA, where iPod touch sits in second (8GB) and third (32GB) place on the top-selling Electronics list – an overall list encompassing all sales in that category.

In related news, Amazon US warns that shoppers now have just two days left to order for Christmas with free SuperSaver shipping.

Apple scored a home run with the iPhone, and rivals are still struggling to catch-up, even while Google

Engadget put gallery of images of the Google Phone, aka Nexus One on its site over the weekend.

Speculation and chatter regarding the company

Time’s finalists for Person of the Year 2009 include Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs.  Jobs won Fortune’s CEO of the Decade earlier this year and is the lone business leader on this year’s Time list.  Here’s their ‘thinking’:

Pro: Named CEO of the Decade by Fortune in November, Jobs has continued to show the rest of the consumer technology world how it’s done. His iPhone App Store surpassed 1 billion downloads, proving that people will still pay for certain kinds of content, and a new version of the iPhone and its software kept improving on the original.

Con: Jobs spent the first six months of the year away from the daily management of Apple to deal with his health problems, including undergoing a successful liver transplant. While consumers continue to snap up the iPhone and its apps, more and more customers in major cities are griping about the poor wireless coverage that comes with it from AT&T. What’s more, new rival smartphones like the Google Android devices and Palm Pre have started to give discerning techies a reason to at least consider switching from the iPhone.

Ironically, they mention that AT&T’s coverage is a ‘con’ to voting Jobs in (like he can help that – or coming back from a liver transplant?!).  In fact, here’s a fantastic FakeSteve post from Friday that illustrates both why Jobs should be a contender and why AT&T’s mess isn’t his fault.

At this writing, Jobs is currently in 3rd place in the reader voting behind the very significant Iran Protesters and Barack Obama (last year’s winner).  Someone call 4Chan?

Apple seems set to achieve near ten million iPhone sales in its first financial quarter running until late December, indications from inside Taiwan-based component suppliers suggest.

Smartphone component suppliers there are looking at a boom quarter with market value of sales climbing 32 percent sequentially, a Digitimes report states, observing,

Computerworld informs us  that Apple has delayed shipping its newly-launched 27-inch iMacs until it can trace the source of a series of reports claiming flickering and other display problems.

Citing contacts within Apple

Today, Apple updated the App Store layouts.  Application pages now have a different look with bigger screenshots and icons.  There are also wishlists and other changes.  As an example take a look at the new TomTom US app which is incedentally $49 (half price) without Canadian maps.  Left is the old page, Right is the new one (click to enlarge).