AdMob report shows iPhone market Web access growth
Apple
Smokers: Apple doesn't want your business
This seems somewhat strange to us: Apple is allegedly refusing to honour warranties on Macs belonging to smokers, voiding warranties while arguing that smoking near a Mac exposes the tech support worker to secondhand smoke.
Sure, chain smoking can make everything around disgusting and we feel for those technicians who have to deal with those machines that probably stink and have some tar residue in the fans. But does smoking actually cause damage to the computer?
Apple doesn't want to be a successful business?
Very good post at Computerworld from Mike Elgan about Apple, though I’d venture that a lot of you already know this:
Tech watchers love the horse race aspect of technology industry competition. Apple competes with Microsoft. Apple competes with Google. Apple competes with companies like HP. But Apple doesn’t see it that way.
Industry titans like Microsoft, Google and HP instinctively “fill out” their product lines to dominate huge areas of technology. Microsoft, for example, wants Microsoft software running on wristwatches, supercomputers and everything in between. Google wants to offer every conceivable service that can be squeezed through an internet connection. HP’s massive product line runs the gamut from consumer digital cameras sold at Best Buy to entire data centers filled with enterprise systems.
Apple doesn’t want to dominate like this. It has no interest in this kind of imperialist expansion. Apple is interested only in surgical strikes into this business or that product category, where they can solve design problems others have failed to solve.
Understanding this about Apple helps explain otherwise inexplicable decisions, such as why Apple got into the mobile phone handset business, and why the company is so ambivalent about business products.
To Apple, the mobile phone industry proved clueless at how to offer a compelling user experience with a phone, with its history of cramped buttons and claustrophobic user interfaces. They believed, correctly it turns out, that their designers could drop a game-changing phone into the market and “change the world” again. But when Apple casts its gaze at the enterprise space, it doesn’t see sufficiently compelling design problems that will emotionally affect users. So why bother?
Apple’s choices in markets it gets into make no sense, unless you understand that they don’t want to dominate industries, or even maximize revenues. They just want to design and sell better products that will affect user experience in markets where that’s an achievable goal.
Of course, business success is great. But Apple sees that as only a means to the end of shipping thrilling designs.
Steve Jobs was recently named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine. I’m sure Jobs’ ego was pleased by the designation. But ultimately, he doesn’t care about this sort of thing as much as you might expect. Jobs doesn’t want to be viewed by history as a Lee Iacocca or a Henry Ford. He wants posterity to look at him as a Mozart or a Da Vinci. He wants to be seen as a builder of beautiful things, not a builder of business empires.
Next time Apple does something that infuriates you, or makes you go “huh?” remember that Apple has its own unique world view. And only by understanding that perspective can you understand why Apple does what it does.
This is just the 4th part of the post, read the whole article here.
Microsoft's Ballmer concedes Apple's gains; Dell income dwindles
Microsoft executives faced a barrage of Apple-related questions during that company
Atom support now enabled by a hack in 10.6.2
Yep, we knew this would happen. Apple, for whatever reason (they didn’t test it and don’t care or they are trying to prevent Hackintosh) killed support for Atom in their latest 10.6.2 build.
All of you cheap bastard Hackintoshers can rest easy though. A Russian hacker was able to slap an old Atom-supporting OSX Kernel on the newer Mac OS 10.6.2 build and get it running on his little Atom netbook. Depending on how much Apple cares, we’ll probably see this shut down in 10.6.3. Rinse. Repeat.
Video demo of Google Chrome OS
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62iBuf2btVI&w=600&h=380]
A video demo of Google’s Chrome OS from TechChrunch.
Google today released information on its ChromeOS. Some fun facts:
- Released 2H2010 (Just like Apple’s tablet?)
- Will boot only from SSD, in 7 seconds
- Runs on ARM or x86
- Will only work on new Netbooks, not your current POS Netbook
- Is basically just an Internet Thin client -Just a HTML 5 Browser – Chrome
- Open Source so other browser makers could use it as well, and Microsoft already has an online version of Excel ready for it.
This is so slimmed down that it will run on extremely small laptops. That might give Apple’s tablet some competition. Feel free to comment below.
Apple tablet – two flavours, delayed till late 2010 – Digitimes
We
Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 released, Camino 2 goes Final
Mozilla just released Firefox 3.6 Beta3. This one features Component Directory Lockdown which will disable support for incompatible add-ons, theoretically making Firefox more stable. Make sure your important Add-ons are Kosher before installing. Other fun new stuff in this version.
Update: In other Mozilla/Apple News, Camino 2.0 has gone final.
Apple begins Mac OS X 10.7 development, MR claims
Apple has quietly begun development of Mac OS X 10.7, the next iteration of its OS and an as-yet completely unknown animal, MacRumors informs.
That Apple
Microsoft knocks a few bucks off of Office for the holidays
Microsoft is getting in the Holiday spirit by offering $20 off of the retail prices of Home and Student, $40 off of Business Upgrade and $50 off Business Edition of Office 2008 for Mac. The new prices are still more than Amazon charges but it is the thought that counts, right?
Video: Microsoft stores, the gift that just keeps giving…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSAXEVXvNz8&w=560&h=340]
So, here are some of the more athletic staff at Microsoft’s Mission Viejo (Calif.) store basically demonstrating the do’s and don’ts of school dance doings, (with an accent on the don’ts, frankly). Something about this is, well, it is embarrassing – even to watch – so don’t miss it! (Comments plz).
Adobe ships Flash Player 10, AIR 2.0 betas, will iPhone smile?
Adobe has introduced pre-release beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0, making these available from Adobe Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
Flash Player 10.1 is also available for x86-based netbooks, and expected to be available across a broad spectrum of smartphones and other Internet-connected devices in 2010. Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 are easily updateable across all supported platforms to help ensure rapid adoption of new innovations that move the Web forward.
Both Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 boast support for multi-touch and gestures and deliver full GPU acceleration of H.264 for smoother HD Flash video playback – though, somewhat tellingly, not on Mac OS X.
AIR 2 functionality can be updated/added to current AIR 1.0 applications. New AIR 2 features include enhanced support for mass storage devices and native application processes, as well as peer-to-peer and UDP networking alongside faster WebKit rendering
Flash Player 10.1 is the first browser runtime release of the Open Screen Project that will Adobe promises will,
Wall St. Journal asks why PCs at work are so much worse than at home
The Wall Street Journal gives me a laptop with Windows XP, an operating system I found satisfying when it came out eight years ago but that lacks a lot of modern touches, like a speedy file-search function. My home computer, meanwhile, is a two-year-old iMac running the Leopard version of Apple’s Macintosh operating system. Among other virtues, it’s got a search function called Spotlight that lets me track down files in a flash. Or take email. Please. There’s a limit on how much email employees can store on the company’s system, and I routinely bump into it. So, I need to spend time hunting through old notes in Microsoft Outlook and deciding what to keep and what to delete, or risk a shutdown of my account. I’m not the only one; a colleague told me she often receives messages with large attached files that overload her inbox while she’s asleep.
The Wall St. Journal’s Nick Winfield talks about something we Mac users often face in the workplace. Shitty, locked down Windows boxes that block sites we use and take forever to do basic computing operations. The question is: Why?
As the WSJ points out, the technology exists to divide work and play. Give me the $2000 you’d pay on my Thinkpad running XP and I’ll put a Citrix client on my MacBook and maybe a VMWare partition for the 10 year old Intranet. Meanwhile at home I’ll use a more robust Google Apps setup with 25GB of email storage. I’ll even have some change left over if you keep those Windows Active Directory jockeys away from me.
It isn’t just desktops. The story talks about Kraft’s experiment to give users a choice on phones. No surprise that 60% chose iPhones. Kraft employees were choosing Macs despite (or perhaps because?) the fact that they wouldn’t get support from IT.
The message isn’t explicitly Windows PC vs. Mac / Microsoft Servers vs. Cloud / iPhone vs. BBY, but that is how it reads.
The story is a great read and includes an audio portion as well. Also not blocked by the WSJ Paywall for the moment.
Latest MacBook Air 'Clone' packs SD Card, 3G, removable battery and $249 pricetag
We think this might be a huge stretch on the term ‘clone’ but the latest aspiring Air coming out of Taiwan packs an impressive array of features, especially for the $249 pricetag it carries. This one has:
- Built in Ethernet port
- 3G Wireless
- HDMI video out
- Full laptop HDD
- SD Card slot
On the downside, it has a Intel Atom 280 processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a battery rated at 2.5 hours -and it is plastic and not so thin…
So really, it is simply a flattened out Netbook with a 12-inch screen. Still, some of these features might be nice on the Air – which would you like to see? We’re in the 3G camp. Lots of pictures below.
Psystar shot down in flames – Groklaw reports
Psystar just suffered a major blow in the California case. Here’s the order [PDF]. Psystar’s first-sale defense went down in flames. Apple’s motion for summary judgment on copyright infringement and DMCA violation is granted. Apple prevailed also on its motion to seal….
Groklaw reports: “Psystar’s motion for summary judgment on trademark infringement and trade dress is denied. So is its illusory motion for copyright misuse.
“There are still issues remaining for trial, despite Psystar’s attempt to present everything now as being moot. Here’s what’s left to be decided at trial: Apple’s allegations of breach of contract; induced breach of contract, trademark infringement; trademark dilution; trade dress infringement; and state unfair competition under California Business and Professions Code
Firefox passes 25% of browser market share. One in four web hits now on Firefox
As the Firefox browser prepares to celebrate its 5th birthday, NetApplications reveals quite an accomplishment for the Open Source Mozilla foundation. A few years ago, Microsoft’s standards-defiant IE 6 held 95% of the browser market share, having destroyed Netscape by using what was later ruled as monopoly tactics.
Firefox, however, has been gaining steadily since its introduction in 2005 but faces fierce competition, not only from Internet Explorer but from Webkit browsers like Safari and Google’s Chrome which are very popular in the exploding mobile browsing category as well as the desktop.
For the week of Nov. 1 through Nov. 7, Firefox accounted for 25.1% of all browsers, said Vizzaccaro. Internet Explorer (IE), meanwhile, led all rivals with 63.3%, while Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome and Opera Software’s Opera followed, in that order, with 4.4%, 3.9% and 2.3%, respectively.
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s community coordinator said, “When we reached 20%, we became the favored browser for anyone who understood what a browser was.”
It is also interesting to note that Internet Explorer continues to tumble to 63%. Falling below 50% seems like a possibility in the coming years with not only Firefox growing but also Chrome (the fastest growing browser) and Safari exploding, especially in the mobile space which Microsoft has all but ceded.
Dell's 'TorrentBox' takes on Apple TV, Mac mini
While we wait for Apple to add HDMI outputs to the Mac mini, or shake things up with the new-breed of Apple TV, it may be worth taking a look at Dell
Chrome OS to come within a week?
Techcrunch is reporting that the first releases of ChromeOS, the “mostly just a browser running on Linux OS” from Google is set to launch within a week. The major work continues to be driver support which spreads out among PC makers’ many components and manufacturers. The new OS will initially target netbooks with a particular aim to give Windows XP users something besides a crippled, expensive Windows 7 to upgrade.
From there, however, Chrome should would on just about any Intel hardware including Macs. You’ll likely be able to test Chrome on Parallels or VMWare on Mac when it is released.
In other Google Chrome news, Google has released specifications to a new application protocol called SPDY that they say is up to 64% faster than the HTTP protocol. New builds of Chromium are available to test this protocol, but there aren’t too many webservers out there using SPDY since Google hasn’t released that code yet.
Google is certainly ambitious, if not downright scary, in the scope of its footprint on the web.
Pen-based tablet rumour and the Apple touch
Another day, another tablet rumour grabs its calling card and heads out looking for a dance partner, and today
Windows 7 smashes Vista, while XP users stay away
For Windows 7 to be declared a full success it will need to tempt Windows XP users to its fold – and while users of its last attempt at an Apple-competing OS, Vista, are migrating rapidly to Win 7, there
iPhone Apps v the rest: you get more for less with Apple
Latest data from analytics firm, Distimo, suggests that not only do iPhone users have more apps to choose from, but, dollar for dollar, they get a whole lot more for the money.
While this may not be so great for developers in terms of making the most they can, the popularity of Apps on the iPhone mean iPhone users actually do purchase and use their apps.
In conjunction with this morning
Apple (slightly) improves App Store rejection process
In the same week Facebook.app developer, Joe Hewitt, gives up working on the app, Apple has made its App Store approval process ever so slightly less Baroque, pushing out a new system by which developers can keep an eye on their app applications.
It
Come and see inside Motorola's Droid
Merely because there seems to be lots of interest (at least among techy types) in the device, we thought we
Windows 7 was "inspired by Mac", Microsoft admits
Update: Microsoft has issued some sort of “clarification” – you can read its incredible denial of the obvious under this story below…
We reckon a lot of Mac users will be dashing across to read PCR