Tech Industry

Nvidia is coming clean with Dell, HP and Apple owners who purchased some of the Laptops with discrete GPU “bumps” that sometimes caused failure.  Apple went to extraordinary lengths (far beyond Dell or HP), covering Macbook Pros affected with these issues for up to three years and issuing refunds to those who paid for repairs.

If you purchased a MacBook Pro from May 2007 – September 2008, you are likely covered by the settlement.

To view the sample Reimbursement Claim Form formatted as a PDF file for an Apple notebook computer, click here. To view the sample Replacement Claim Form formatted as a PDF file for an Apple notebook computer, click here.
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If you are getting hyped about Rupert Murdoch’s new (delayed) iPad magazine called the Daily, you might want to start following @daily on Twitter.  The account was just created and is verified by Twitter.  Also the account is following one media exec, Greg Clayman.

Clayman’s Twitter bio says: Co-founder of Upoc, former head of mobile & digital distribution at MTV Networks, currently working on something awesome.

We’ll see.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Blink and you may have missed it (only joking, the yards of coverage gave it away) but Apple has begun beta-testing a feature-packed iPhone/iPad software update, iOS 4.3. With iOS features set to prowl over to Mac OS X Lion, what do these new mobile features suggest may be coming to the Mac?

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Apple has confirmed it will hold its FY 11 Q1 financial results conference on January 18, making the session available for playback online in QuickTime format. The event takes place Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 2:00 p.m. PST/5:00 p.m. EST/10:00 p.m. GMT. Apple’s  live audio streaming of the event will be available for replay here for approximately two weeks.

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Even as it prerpares for an imminent introduction of the iPad 2.0, Apple has begun sourcing components for iPhone 5, choosing Qualcomm for the baseband chip and a faster ARM chip for the processor.

Kinsus Interconnect Technology seems set to enter Apple’s supply chain for iPhone 5, as the new smartphone will adopt Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets, which use Kinsus IC substrates, according to a Chinese language Apple Daily report.
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The rush to build tablet devices to compete with Apple’s iPad is posing unexpected strain on component suppliers, a report explains, challenging those in the value chain to focus production away from existing products to meet expectations of non-iPad tablet sales which insider sources report may turn out to be “unrealistic”.

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Changewave looks at how a Verizon iPhone affects the carrier landscape – if iPhone users will exit en mass to Verizon.

Only 4% of Verizon’s customers plan to switch in the next 90 days. In comparison, 10% of Sprint/Nextel’s customers say they plan to switch, as do 15% of both T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s.  While there is some indication that AT&T has a contingent of customers with itchy feet, it doesn’t appear that there will be a mass migration.

But, as the following chart shows, AT&T’s churn rate is its worst ever in a ChangeWave survey.
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Sure but it is only a question of time. Preliminary PC numbers in the U.S. showed Apple (AAPL) jumped from 7.4% of total shipments a year earlier to 9.7% in Q4, a 24% rise, the largest unit shipment increase of any vendor. HP lost 6%, Dell lost 6.1%, Acer lost 30% in the U.S. market, and Toshiba gained 14.4%. At 10.3%, Toshiba is just slightly ahead of Apple in fourth place. (Barron’s and Gartner). There’s a poll after the break:

It is the iPad who dunnit. “Overall, holiday PC sales were weak in many key regions due to the intensifying competition in consumer spending. Media tablets, such as the iPad, as well as other consumer electronic (CE) devices, such as game consoles, all competed against PCs,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.
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As expected, Apple intends making a version of its CDMA iPhone available for sale in Japan, South Korea, China, India and other countries, leaks from within its supply chain have confirmed. Apple also expects to sell several million of these new devices in the first quarter 2011.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pb9-LbxFeU&w=640&h=390]

Even the pretty lady doesn’t make T-Mobile’s FauxG Network a real 4G network.  Guess T-Mobile’s not getting the iPhone this year.

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November saw Apple and Oracle confirm the loss of built-in Java in future Macs in favor of a jointly developed open source Java implementation, to be maintained by the OpenJDK project. Now the first code under the deal has landed.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Google and Apple continue their war, with the search giant overnight announcing plans to drop support for H.264 from Chrome, even while it continues to develop its very own tablet software to compete with the iPad. Does its code-name — ‘Honeycomb’ — suggest Google plans to turn to distributed computing in an attempt to unseat Apple’s iTunes empire? And how can Apple fight back?

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Have no doubt, for any supplier lucky enough to achieve it, landing a component supply order within the Apple product value chain is big, big business — now Apple’s iPad and iPhone screen supplier, Wintek, is making a $13 million investment in new land to build new touch panel production facilities.

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Microsoft is taking on Apple, protesting at the latter firm’s claim to a trademark on the name ‘App Store’. Ballmer’s boys are arguing that the term is generic and competitors should be able to use it.

Apple applied for the trademark in 2008. It is to be applied in goods and services, including those for computer software solve via the Internet. The App Store is now available for iOS and OS X devices.
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Google has decided that future versions of its Chrome Web browser will not support H.264, citing the ‘proprietary’ nature of the Apple-preferred standard. Proprietary, non-open, buggy Flash, of course, will be supported.
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Sure most of this is directed at AT&T but…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w83UQkiuNZQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]
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Well it has been announced and isn’t on sale yet but, oh look, the US FCC has published its approval of the new CDMA iPhone 4 for Verizon, there’s even a letter which provesAAPL asked nicely if publication could be made following the event.
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COMPUTERWORLD: As expected the iPhone 4 is coming to Verizon following (it was revealed) a two-year strategic consultation between the firms, and there’s good — and bad — news in this reality. iOS developers meanwhile should get ready to party as the iPhone economy is about to go “boom” all over again.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJvKEzRWzA8&fs=1&hl=en_GB]

Time to move onto the next hot rumor, iPad 2.0 — and here is the best fake iPad 2.0 video we’ve seen today. Though we’d like to let the protagonists know they need to work a little on their fonts and apps icons, m’kay?

Open source advocates are breathing a sigh of relief this afternoon — and that’s not because the iPhone has reched Verizon, but because a Microsoft-led, Apple-supported consortium has withdrawn from attempts to buy a host of Novell patents.

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Alright folks, the waiting is over and it has been confirmed — the iPhone 4 is coming to Verizon — the result of a two-year strategic consultation between the firms.

It will be available on pre-order (online only) to existing Verizon customers from February 3. Everyone else will be able to pick one up from Feb 10.
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