Talkingapple's List: 105

• Apple Inc. (AAPL) acquired Anobit Technologies Ltd. for about $390 million, paying below the price sought by the Israeli maker of a flash-memory drive part for the iPhone, people familiar with the purchase said.

• • Lovefilm immediately dropped the price to £4.99 for unlimited online viewing.
    Netflix as some really good content: myth busters; prison break; scrubs. Quality is pretty good on ATV, almost every movie comes with CC, but no 5.1.
    
    My experience with lovefilm...
    
    Netflix on ATV should be viewed as the plan for  future TV plans from Apple.

• Belkin Thunderbolt Express Dock - $299 
    
   - Quickly connects into a desktop workstation and instantly accesses multiple devices with a single cable 
   - Adds reliable, gigabit Ethernet connectivity to your laptop 
   - Includes three USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire 800 port, one HDMI port, one 3.5mm Audio port, one gigabit Ethernet port and two Thunderbolt ports (one upstream and one downstream) for daisy-chaining to another Thunderbolt compatible device. 
   - Utilizes Thunderbolt Technology for data transfer rates of up to 10Gbps bi-directionally
• Apple offers similar docking functionality built into its Apple Thunderbolt Display. The $999 27-inch display includes three USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a FireWire 800 port, a FaceTime HD camera, and a 2.1 speaker system, all connected to the user's computer over a single Thunderbolt cable.

  • I know the Screen is 3 times as much, but hey, who will give this much for hub? 
    
    We are also seeing hard drives with TB...but the price is horrendous. Definatly for the Pro market right now.

• Apple's 1.2 million MacBook Airs reportedly sold in the December quarter was 200,000 more than Apple achieved in the September quarter, according to DigiTimes. That made Apple the only vendor that managed to maintain its total notebook shipments from the third quarter to the fourth of calendar 2011.
  
• Apple's 1.2 million MacBook Airs reportedly sold in the December quarter was 200,000 more than Apple achieved in the September quarter, according to DigiTimes.
• Apple is expected to refresh the ultraportable notebook line in the coming months with Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors.
• Ultrabooks will be a major part of this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nev.

  • trying to get just below the Air's price by £30-£70. No doubt by reducing profit margins. Unlike these guys, Apple does not need to fight with anybody.
• Aspire S5 Ultrabook at its CES press conference, touting it as "the world's thinnest Ultrabook," set to launch in the second quarter of 2012.

  • It's a putty it runs windows.

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• Back in 2010, an Apple patent publication was published revealing the company's concept for an iMac supporting both mouse-driven and touch-based input with a hinged display arm allowing the screen to transition from an upright position to a horizontal surface.
• Lenovo's new IdeaCentre A720 being shown off at CES this week (via Engadget) offers a similar flexibility
• The hands-on demonstration shows a rather sluggish response to touch input, but offers a good glimpse of the flexibility afforded by the multiple orientations.

  • These things have been around for a while, they just didn't swivel. The UI is absolutely atrocious. Like Samsung, leave that stuff alone, leave it to the pros.
    
    I think a mac with more touchy stuff will come. But I do think it will be through an evolution of the touchpad with display.

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• Forrester Research issued its Global Tech Market Outlook for 2012 and 2013 on Friday, as noted by MacNN.
• The firm said "Bring Your Own Device" policies have helped to open up IT departments to Macs, iPhones and iPads. Other factors cited as reasons for the growth include small businesses buying Macs and iPads for employees to use at home and work and IT departments' shifts toward mobile with the iPhone and iPad.
• The rise in corporate spending on Apple comes as Windows-based computer purchases are expected to decline slightly over the next two years. Forrester sees business and government sales of Windows PCs and tablets falling three percent in 2012 and another one percent in 2013.

  • This will not affect big companies where cost is everything. It will affect manly the start ups. But this will mean also that when this start-ups grow, they might stick with the mac.

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• • I like Nuance. I got to figure Apple is really annoyed they could not buy them out. These guys I'm sure rejected a lot of money by putting faith in the future of their product. Good for them.
    
    And I don't know how easy it would be for Apple to one day shift away from these guys even if they developed their own in-house technology.
• Nuance today announced the launch of Dragon TV, a natural language recognition platform specifically tailored for the television experience.

  Leveraging Nuance’s voice and natural language understanding capabilities, Dragon TV creates the “lean-back experience” consumers demand, with the ability to easily find content by speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names. People can even search for content by actor and genre, and stay connected via Twitter, Facebook and Skype.
• In addition to Nuance's push into television, the company today also announced the launch of a partnership with Intel to bring voice recognition technologies to the chipmaker's new "Ultrabook" platform for ultra-light notebook computers. While Nuance already offers a number of voice-related applications for PCs, the new partnership will reportedly deliver greater integration of the functionality for core system features.

  • basically having hardware acceleration.

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• • "Unfortunately, we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd. And to ensure the safety of our customers and our employees, iPhones will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being," she said.
• with violence breaking out ahead of the opening at Apple's Sanlitun retail store in Beijing. According to reports, the violence has resulted in Apple delaying the planned early opening of the store
• Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s main store in Beijing was pelted with eggs from a crowd of about 500 people after it failed to open on time for the start of sales of the iPhone 4S. 
    
   Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. At about 7:15 a.m., the crowd began chanting “Open the door!” and “Liars!” after a man with a bullhorn said the phone would not go on sale today, without giving an explanation. The man also declined to identify himself to a Bloomberg News reporter. The crowd chased away a man who tried to stop the egg throwing.

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• • What is the point. I've been buying macs to get away from windows. I got an iPad to simplify and enjoy computer tasks. 
    
    This is like the PC slates, just slower.
• OnLive Desktop offers iPad users access to full-featured versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The applications are running on OnLive's servers and streamed to your iPad. 
    
   OnLive offers a number of plans for the service, including a Free service as server capacity is available. Paid accounts will take priority over free accounts.

• which begins in February
• The full rollout is expected to be complete by mid-2013 at a cost to the company of £110m.

• Virgin Media's upgrade will mean customers currently signed up for 10Mbps will be boosted to 20Mbps, while users on 20Mbps and 30Mbps packages will both be upped to 60Mbps.

   

  Those on 50Mbps will be increased to 100Mbps. Customers already on the top 100Mbps tariff will be raised to 120Mbps

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• 9to5Mac reports
• The references to quad-core iPhone and iPad chips come by way of a hidden panel that describes cores that are supported by iOS device hardware. The updated core management software includes an option of “/cores/core.3,” and this represents a fourth available processing core…
• Apple's A6 system-on-a-chip has been rumored several times to carry a quad-core processor, and has been presumed to be set for inclusion in the company's next-generation iPad and iPhone models. Th

  • This for me is further proof that this are get-work-done machines. Otherwise, why would you need so many physical threads of processing power.

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• • All I want is retina display, faster processor and graphics and a lighter device.
• iLounge,
• The new iPad’s body is so slightly thicker than the iPad 2 that the change is unnoticeable on first inspection; a roughly 1mm increase will barely be perceptible to users
• , the camera in the upper left corner has become bigger—noticeably so when placed alongside the iPad 2
• Horwitz cautions that the rear shell part he was able to view seems to have been produced at least six months ago and thus may not represent the final design for the next-generation iPad

  • although they would not change much in that time.

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• Japanese blog Macotakara
• Japanese blog Macotakara reports that Apple's manufacturing partners Foxconn and Pegatron have begun production on the next-generation iPad, with Foxconn once again bearing approximately 85% of the load. According to the report, the initial production batch is targeted for shipment in early March, in line with a number of rumors regarding the iPad 3 launch.
• According to Chinese source, Foxconn Technology and Pegatron Technology started next generation of iPad assembly with Foxconn bearing 85% and Pegatron taking 15% of the production load like as iPhone 4S. Accelerated schedule is made possible by earlier Chinese New Year festival, 23rd-28th January. 
    
   This first lot production implements LCD's, which are produced by Sharp Electronics Corporation, and aims to be shipped at early March, source told.
• Macotakara notes that tight-fitting iPad 2 cases will apparently not fit the new model but that the Smart Cover will be compatible with the new model despite an adjustment in the location of the device's magnets.

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• Apple has long used Imagination Technologies' graphics processing unit (GPU) technology in its iOS devices
• Imagination has now revealed new details (via The Verge) on the upcoming Series6 family, touting performance improvements of 20x
• The press release notes that all Series6 GPU designs will support Apple-backed graphics APIs such as OpenGL ES "Haiti", OpenGL 3.x/4.x, and OpenCL 1.x for maximum performance.

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• • Acer has created a spot the differences game for the tech community.
• The Verge published images from Acer (above) and Apple (below) presentations of their respective cloud services. As you can see, they're remarkably similar. Sure, the clouds are shaped differently, but both contain exactly 20 images. Both images contain a laptop, a tablet, and a smartphone. Acer has even named their photo sharing element "PicStream," which sounds remarkably similar to Photo Stream. The only major changes are the location of the devices, the location of the phrase "30 days," and the addition of a tacky Wi-Fi signal indicator. Both slides are done on a gradient background, although the colors are different.

• • This will be in our future iPhones
• At this year’s CES, companies that have solved this problem somewhat effectively are attracting attention from big media and attendees. Liquipel tackled the issue with an oleophobic-like coating that, well, repels water.
• You need to send your device to Liquipel to apply the coating for you at a $59 value
• A firm called HzO employs a proprietary chemical and materials process aptly named WaterBlock that seals your gadget from the inside out without affecting function or aesthetics. It differs from Liquipel’s approach by protecting your device from the inside, on the molecular level, by coating the actual electronic components inside the device to provide protection.

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