Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Apple ‘threatens legal action’ over Steve Jobs Action Dolly

Friday, January 6th, 2012

The 12-inch figurine, which comes consummate with Jobs’s trademark dingy jeans, sneakers and smutty turtleneck sweater, was made by Chinese society In Icons and was set for release in February. Simply ‘their efforts get reportedly met with’ a legal challenge with Apple allegedly threatening to sue the plaything maker unless they cease trading.

The legal quarrel is over the likeness of the dolly to the former Apple founder, the rights of which the company claims it owns.

Apple reportedly stipulates in a letter to the Chinese manufacturer that any toy that resembles the technology company’s logo, person’s name, appearance or likeness of its productions is a criminal offence.

Online-auctioning site eBay is already selling the plastic dolly at $135 each. The normal retail price would have been $99.

The action design comes with a pair of smutty socks, some glasses, a leather belt, two apples (one with a collation demanded out of it), a bar throne and a “One More Thing” backdrop.

Apple Pronounced to Hire Adobe Exec to Fed IAd

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Apple Inc. (AAPL) hired Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE) executive Todd Teresi to principal its iAd mobile-advertising business, three people with noesis of the topic said, filling a role in an area where the fellowship has struggled.

Teresi, who was vice chairperson of Adobe’s media solutions group, has already got at Apple equally vice chairwoman of iAd, said two of the people, who declined to exist identified because the movement hasn’t been announced. Teresi is reporting to Twist Cue, a senior vice chairperson who besides oversees Apple’s iTunes and the App Store.

The iAd business, entered in 2010, has sought to parlay Apple’s leadership in consumer electronics into mobile- advertising revenue — with mixed results. While the organization has attracted ads from companies such equally Walt Disney Co., some marketers have complained that iAd costs more than other ad services and exclusively works on Apple devices. Apple trails Google Inc. (GOOG) in the mobile advertising market, which may generate $4.4 billion by 2015, granting to research firm EMarketer Inc.

Charging premium prices and reach entirely Apple devices is a much harder sell,said Noah Elkin, an analyst at EMarketer. That has been a vast stumbling block.

Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment. Jodi Sorensen, a spokeswoman for Adobe, confirmed that Teresi is no longer at the company.
Publishing Experience

Teresi, who joined Adobe finally year, had worked at Yahoo! Inc. for nigh a decade, serving as a senior vice chairman in charge of the company’s publishing network and vice chairperson responsible for worldwide sales, according to his LinkedIn profile. Before joining Adobe, he was chief revenue officer at Quantcast Corp.
At Adobe, a companionship Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had chided for making subpar products, Teresi grappled Digital Publishing Suite software, which allow magazine and paper publishers including Conde Nast put out digital editions of their publications for Apple’s iPad and tablets running Google’s Android software. Teresi too was asked making deals in this area1 lastly year, including Adobe’s partnership with WoodWing Software and the skill of Auditude.

Apple Provides International iTunes Match, iTunes in the Cloud Items

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Apple on Thursday provided more details about the international availability of its iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud services.

In two charts posted on the Apple digest forums, the fellowship disclosed down which types of files may exist downloaded via iTunes in the Dapple and which countries have access to iTunes Match.

At this point, users in 17 countries could usage iTunes Match: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Republic of Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The iTunes Match service went live in the U.S. on Nov. 14. It allows users to shop their intact music library in the cloud, or iCloud, for on-the-go access to music from any iOS device or computer—for $24.99 per year. With iTunes in the Cloud, meanwhile, substance purchased via iTunes is stored in the mottle and accessible for free, much similar Amazon’s Mottle Player.

In Apple’s iTunes in the Mottle chart, the companionship outlines which types of purchases may be downloaded again on a young iOS device in a given country: music, music videos, TV shows, apps, and books.

“If music, apps, or books are available in your country, you may enable Automatic Downloads on your computers and iOS devices to automatically download new purchases made from other devices,” Apple said. “This lineament is alone available for music, apps, and books.”

At this point, entirely four countries allow re-downloads for entirely five types of content: Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Many countries, however, experience everything simply TV shows, including France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, and more. All of the more than 100 countries listed include access for apps and books.

Apple investigating fuel cell powered MacBooks

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

Apple is actively considering using fuel cell technology to power portable devices which could finally for ‘weeks’ from a single charge.

A pair of patents uncovered by AppleInsider, the society asserts that hydrogen-powered fuel cells would see smaller and lighter MacBooks with unheard of battery life.
Significantly reduces size weight and cost

Apple’s filing says: “This fuel cell system includes a fuel cell deal which converts fuel into electric power. It besides includes a controller which controls surgery of the fuel cell system.”

“This eliminates the motive for a bulky and heavy battery within the fuel cell system, which may significantly reduce the size, weight and cost of the fuel cell system.”

The society adds: “Hydrogen fuel cells get a number of advantages. Such fuel cells and associated fuels could potentially achieve high volumetric and gravimetric energy densities, which can potentially enable proceeded operation of portable electronic devices for days or eve weeks without refueling.

“However, it is extremely challenging to aim hydrogen fuel cell systems which are sufficiently portable and cost-effective to be utilized with portable electronic devices.”
Eco-friendly

Apple’s filing besides details away the public’s desire for tech companies to explore renewable energy sources and end reliance on fossil fuels.

“As a outcome of increased consumer awareness, electronics manufacturers get got very interested in renewable energy sources for their products, and they get been exploring a number of promising renewable energy sources such equally hydrogen fuel which is employed in hydrogen fuel cells,” said the papers.

Apple’s Twelvemonth In Review, 2011

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Apple received a swell year, if you don’t numeration the red of co-founder and late CEO Steve Jobs.
Of course, that counts more than anything. Jobs kept Apple from bankruptcy in 1997 and left it equally one of the almost valuable and admired companies in the world. He left Apple too soon.
But aside from Jobs’s passing and a few missteps, Apple thrived and innovated in 2011. The value of its stock increase most 22% hence far this year. Its leading competitor in the mobile arena, Google, regarded the value of its stock rise 5%. And Apple’s longtime rival in the computer market, Microsoft, reckoned its stock slip more than 5% during the same period.
The companionship besides continued to foment a schism in the computing device market, luring consumers and occupation users off from desktop computers to the more contended and manageable surroundings of iOS devices, like the iPad. It is setting the groundwork for a time not far from straightaway when general aim computers get gone specialty tools for software engineers and tech enthusiasts.
Apple delivered two significant updates for iOS and one for Mac Bone X. It refreshed its popular iPhone and iPad, and entered a young data transfer technology from Intel. It waged warfare with patents, frustrating Samsung and flanking Google. And it started a long march toward a future as a mottle service provider, launching iCloud and iTunes Match.
Apple’s problems receive been difficult, merely not insurmountable. CEO Tim Cook and a talented squad of managers have maintained Apple in course. The iPhone position tracking revelations have been coped with adequately and the battery problems bound to iOS 5 don’t appear to have hindered iPhone sales. The problems surrounding the launch of Last Cut Pro X may have a bit longer to undo, and Apple developers won’t rest easy until Lodsys has been killed soundly in court.
More worrisome is the investigation into Apple’s pricing of ebooks, a issue of concern among both EU and U.S. regulators. Apple may not get such a good twelvemonth in 2012.

Samsung, Apple tablet tit for tat to extend to displays

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Sammy’s tab, feeding Google’s Ice Ointment Sandwich, would experience an 11.6-inch display that is “barely” larger than a 10.1-inch intent due to a redesigned bezel, allotting to a account at BGR.

But virtually importantly, it would employment an eye-popping 2560×1600 resolution display, posing it in the same league as Apple’s upcoming iPad 3, which is expected to sport a Retina display.

Needless to say, that makes for a radically different product. Not that different, say, than locomoting from a laptop with a 1366×768 screen to one boasting 1680×1050 resolution. And if Samsung gets to market first, that would be a unique competitive advantage, the draw of the Apple brand notwithstanding.

Samsung has been quite transparent about its plans, actually. In a press release last month, the Korean company said that its next-generation 2GHz Exynos processor is designed specifically to drive high-resolution tablet displays.

“The Exynos 5250 is designed specifically for high-end tablets…In particular, the Exynos 5250 purpose was architected to drive up to an industry leading 2560×1600 (WQXGA) display,” Samsung said. And Samsung, by the way, besides makes those high-rez displays, too.

How Apple May Keep Curb of the Tablet Market

Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011

The iPad from Apple (AAPL) makes up 65 pct of customer demand for tablets, according to a new ChangeWave survey that shows overall stake in tablets up 130 percent. For the first time, however, a individual competitor has emerged to pinch a sound percent of shoppers’ attention: the Kindle Fire.

The Amazon (AMZN) tablet was the device of selection for 22 pct111 of the 3,043 customers polled by ChangeWave for its latest survey. The next-closest device was the Galaxy Tab from Samsung (005930:KS), with simply 4 pct333 of those surveyed expressing a want to option one up. The Kindle Fire’s emergence as a strong minute to Apple’s iPad is largely bad news for other Android-based competitors. It’s less of an issue for Apple, which currently enjoys a market share about 67 percent. That doesn’t base Apple should quiet allow the Flaming to gibe itself in equally the budget-conscious shopper’s tablet of choice.

The easy resolution would exist to construct a cheap iPad—not something Apple will do easily or without a identical specific, measured approach. Apple’s brand cachet and success depend on consumer perception of its products as high quality items; merely pulling things away until a smaller iPad resembles a Flaming in damage of specs, while flowing iOS, is an unlikely option. That said, Apple has never been afraid to have a good idea from the competition and make it meliorate in guild to motility hardware. That’s what I conceive it will do in this case.

Amazon’s Flaming appeals because it provides cheap access to message acquired and stored in Amazon’s panoptic ecosystem of music and movies, as substantially as its ontogenesis Appstore. The hardware is actually secondary to those considerations, which believably accounts for Amazon’s willingness to sell it thence cheaply.
Narrowing the Cost Gap

If Apple wants to regain its absolute dominance of the tablet market, it needs to take cost croak the table while it avoids posing itself up for the variety of criticism that Amazon and other low-cost tablet makers face for having cut corners. It’s a tricky residue to strike, merely Apple has a circumstances of advantages, chief among them being Chief Executive Policeman Tim Fix and his masterful moderate of the component render chain. Apple doesn’t need to ending the gap entirely. It needs to take an iPad close decent that the Kindle Fire’s faults appear alike unwarranted sacrifices for what you save.

Amazon is taking a large risk on a relatively unproven market (7-inch tablets). In doing so, it credibly can’t achieve the parts-ordering volumes that Apple manages to achieve. That should permit Apple to eke away more profit per device, evening at a much-reduced price point. Apple is also making swell strides in achieving large cost breaks by leveraging older hardware; the free (on contract) 3GS is a neat example. A smaller iPad would automatically save on display costs, and Apple could too save money by using the older A4 processor (or an A5, if it launches alongside a next-generation A6 for the existing iPad).

It will likely exist hard for Apple to make Kindle Fire-cheap with a production it could suffer behind. Still, the entry-level iPod touch late hitting that $199 mark, and a slightly larger device with similar features at $249 (same cost as the Corner Tablet) (BKS) or $299 isn’t besides much of a reaching to imagine. It would likely kill the iPod touch by cannibalizing its sales, only Apple is famously willing to release forward-looking products, evening if they might suffered past summit producers.
Well-matched Content Ecosystems

Apple’s message ecosystem may away toe-to-toe with Amazon’s, especially in international markets, where much of Amazon’s content isn’t available. ICloud and access to past iTunes purchases help minimize the differences between the two. Nevertheless Amazon’s big advantages seeing books, Apple yet wins in digital movie and music sales. If a smaller, cheaper iPad may provide access to that content, with fewer hardware/software downsides, it will succeed customers, eventide with a price disadvantage.

Amazon plotting smartphone to challenge Apple’s iPhone in 2012

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Citigroup’s Tag Mahaney issued a bank-note to investors locution that, allotting to the render chain, the online retailer is planning on releasing a smartphone in time for future year’s holiday season, as notable by AllThingsD.

“Based on our furnish chain canal checks in Asia went by Kevin Chang, Citi’s Taipei-based hardware research analyst, we consider an Amazon Smartphone will be launched in 4Q12,” the bank-note read.

According to the analyst, the device will exist jointly grown with Foxconn. Amazon will reportedly remuneration non-recurring engineering fees to the manufacturer, but the telephone and some of its components will be manufactured by the same Hon Hai TMS grouping that works on Amazon’s Kindle e-readers and a rumored 8.9-inch tablet.

Amazon reportedly disclosed from its usual partnership with Foxconn for the Kindle Fire tablet in a haste to cause it away the door. The companionship is said to get contracted Original Intent Manufacturer Quanta because the ODM could save time by piggybacking choke of mould on RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook.

Mahaney estimates the Amazon smartphone will price between $150 and $170 to construct and may sell for roughly the same amount. “For a normal brand similar HTC, they need to cost the production at US$243 to build 30% gross margin. If Amazon is really willing to lose some money on the device, the cost gap could be even bigger,” he said.

The smartphone will likely fed Google’s Android mobile operating system, equally the analyst hinted that Amazon will motive to remuneration an “OS royalty” to Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash., software giant boasted lastly month that it has achieved patent licenses with half of the Android market. Amazon opted for Android on the Fire, merely gave the capable generator Os a customized look.

The online retailer has adopted a strategy of selling hardware at a loss equally a ploy to line customers to its substance offerings. For instance, a teardown of the Kindle Fire divulged that it costs more than its selling price.

In completely likelihood, a low margin strategy from Amazon would threaten low-end smartphone makers kinda than Apple’s iPhone. Backed by the world’s largest online store, Amazon may succeed the race to the undersurface on hardware margins because most other hardware makers won’t receive sales from a robust content ecosystem to drop back on. Downward cost pressure in the tablet market from the Kindle Flame has already resulted in a $300 price cut for the BlackBerry PlayBook.

Apple enounced earlier this month that it’s not apprehensive most the Kindle Flame because it believes the tablet will drive customers to the iPad by further fragmenting the tablet market. As such, the iPhone maker may view the aspect of a Kindle phone in the same light.