Talkingapple's List: 109

• Canada’s largest newspaper, the Globe and Mail, today said Apple has been working with wireless and wireline providers including Rogers and Bell to partner with the AppleTV.
• Canada’s largest newspaper, the Globe and Mail
• Rogers and Bell already have the product in their labs.

• s.

   

  Viewers can then control the TV by voice or hand gestures, all from the comfort of a couch. An on-screen keyboard, meanwhile, can also be activated in a similar manner, allowing viewers to surf the web, conduct video chats and use social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook – all without any physical interface.

  • Who wants to surf the web on the TV? This is what makes me think its bogus. 
    Whatever the Apple TV will be, is something simple to control. Web surfing would add unnecessary complexity to controls and what not!

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• • Apple over $120 since death of Steve in October. Are you kidding. If only I had invested.
• Apple stock has reached a new high of US$493.85, which is a record share price. It also gives the company a market capitalization of $465 billion, which exceeds the combined totals of Google and Microsoft.

• • That's not counting iPads.

• Comparing numbers from last quarter to those of 2011′s Q4, Apple was the only big PC maker to step into the positive. An increase of 17.2% to be more exact. Compare that to 32% decrease in Dell computers sales.

   

  Apple, with an overall 9.1 market share, is now very close to the 3rd placed Toshiba.

   

• Almost immediately after discontinuing the white plastic MacBook once and for all, Apple has replaced it with a MacBook Air designed for educational sales. The 13-inch model costs the same US$999 as the MacBook it replaces.

  • just over £600, which will mean £750 here :)

• • We will see if this is the reason with iPad 3. But I have to say...either my Car's mic is horrible or this earSmart thing is not working very well...probably my car!
• CNET reports on a new research note from analyst Linley Gwennap, who believes that custom circuitry in Apple's A5 system-on-a-chip including "earSmart" noise cancellation technology from Audience is the reason why Siri is currently an iPhone 4S-only feature.
• Audience outlines this development in its S-1, noting that it is now receiving royalties from Apple that will be lower than the payments it had previously received for the dedicated chips

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• • This is absolutely not  Apple's fault. It's not like their servers were hacked. In fact, even if they were, all users info, including passwords is hashed and probably salted. This is passwords from users. In Apple's defence, they have one of the more rigid password rules I've seen about.
    feedback... 

  • Apparently there are companies/groups who provide a service to app developers to put them on the top 10 by buying apps in the thousands with hacked accounts.
• The Global Mail called attention (via CNet) to an Apple Support Community thread with more than 70 pages of responses dating as far back as Nov. 2010.
  
• The Global Mai
• s iTunes customers were victims of fraudulent app purchases that drained gift card credits from their accounts. Others reported charges to their PayPal or credit card accounts and changes to their account information.
• some customers have begun to speculate that Apple has kept the problem under wraps despite not having fully resolved it.

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• • Apparently he did work for Bush junior, don't know what though.
• As noted by Gawker, the FBI has just released a 1991 background check on Steve Jobs. The 191-page document was undertaken as Jobs was being considered for a presidential appointment to the President's Export Council by George H. W. Bush.

• • But then apparently they are only putting IE and office apps in the desktop, that's it. Not gonna allow ports from developers. 
    Well, what the heck! If desktop in general will be crippled, then ARM will only make sense on tablets. why not invest the time/money they spent to port Office and Windows to ARM on creating new Office apps for iOS and metro.
    I understand they are trying to protect their cash cows, but, once again, Microsoft is obsessed with supporting current technologies, even if it means a degradation of the company image. 
    This is still stupid, Office on desktop windows will never work in touch.

  • When I heard this first I thought...here we go again. It will make developers and users lazy, as they will revert to the old style apps. It will degrade the pleasant experience that is a simple touch based OS.
• Steven Sinofsky
• WOA will be focused on Microsoft's "Metro" touch interface for Windows 8, but will also support a limited "desktop mode" that will more closely resemble traditional Windows and which will support versions of Microsoft's Office applications optimized for the ARM architecture to provide touch support as well as minimization of power and resource consumption.

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• Many criticise the campaign because Samsung is taking the mickey out their on potential users or because they themselves would love to have people queuing to get their Galaxys.

• They are playing on the iPhones biggest weakness. Let me explain…

   

  The iPhone has become the smartphone of smartphones. If you want to be recognised as having the best and the coolest, you would buy an iPhone, no doubt about it. But at a certain point, this leads to a big problem. And that is that now, you are buying a phone, not because of your personal preference, needs or wants, but because of social pressure. Perhaps not even realising you’re living in the “iphone-is-the-one-to-get” bubble. Going to the extent of spending more money, waiting crazy hours in a queue or doing some other clearly unnecessary thing just because you are not thinking independently.

   

  And that is what Samsung is trying to tell you in this series of ads: “Why succumb to peer pressure? Why not try one of our great devices? Be unique, and fill YOUR needs.”

   
• The phone itself, the Galaxy Note, is stupid!

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• • Siri queries to WA represent 25% of all WA work. The company itself is growing, with now over 200 employees. Google should be scared more than anybody else. They have to be working on something...
• Chief executive Stephen Wolfram said it was his firm's "biggest single step" since launching the computational tool two-and-a-half years ago.
• Under the pro version, users can upload their own data sets or other information which can then be cross-referenced against the company's own records.

• Mr Wolfram also showed off the site's ability to cope with pictures uploading a picture of an ostrich. After a short pause the site provided information about dominant colours in the photo and other characteristics. Limited editing functions were possible including user-defined blurs and edge tracing.

   

  The site can also provide linguistic analysis. Mr Wolfram demonstrated its ability to provide information about sentence lengths and the most common words used in an uploaded text of Alice in Wonderland.

   

       The site can accept scanned text - and then analyse its contents 

   

  Other types of analysable data include sounds, 3D object designs and molecules. In total about 60 different formats are compatible with the site.

  • imagine pointing the iPhone camera to something and it telling you what it is, adding more info on it. This is not just for Siri, I think WA is the single most important partner Apple has.

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• So, what were the terms of Motorola’s license agreement that Apple considered unreasonable?

   

  Foss Patents reported earlier that court documents revealed Motorola was requesting an approximate 2.25-percent royalty from Apple

  • If Apple sold 1.7 billion iPhones so far, £7 each would mean over 12B

• Microsoft subsequently states that in addition to honoring its commitments to FRAND licensing terms for such standards-essential patents, the company "will not seek an injunction or exclusion order against any firm on the basis of those essential patents."
• The company also says it "will make those essential patents available for license to other firms without requiring that those firms license their patents back to Microsoft, except for any patents they have that are essential to the same industry standard," and that "Microsoft will not transfer those standard essential patents to any other firm unless that firm agrees to adhere to the points outlined above."
• Apple also stated "a party who made a FRAND commitment to license its cellular standards essential patents […] must not seek injunctive relief on such patents. Seeking an injunction would be a violation of the party's commitment to FRAND licensing."

  • Apple started this up in 2007 and has been defending this since, other companies like Cisco have joined. Guess who is against it? The company who came out saying that others are attacking it with patents, crying like a baby, but acting differently in court.

  • This is not just a way to protect it self, Apple contributes patents on H.264, HTML5 and more for free.
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  • • Apple is also asking that this becomes a standard at least in Europe (european telecommunications standards institute)
• Yesterday, Google issued a letter to standards organizations in what is reported to be an assurance to EU regulators and standards bodies that it will continue to license Motorola's patents under the same fair reasonable and non discriminatory or "FRAND" terms Motorola has.

  • They are demanding the same 2.25 from Microsoft because of a H.264 related patent, a platform that Google doesn't even want to support and that Apple and Microsoft both contribute freely towards.

  • Of course not, it means they would have little to for Android. 
    I hope this shows people who really is the closed platform here. Who is not willing to open up technology which is as basic to devices as it gets.

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• A German court has ruled that Apple's wireless products do not infringe on inventions related to 3G/UMTS owned by rival Motorola Mobility.

• Reuters reports that Apple has filed a lawsuit against Motorola Mobility alleging that Motorola has breached a licensing agreement with Qualcomm in its efforts to have a number of Apple's iOS devices banned from sale in Germany.

  • They cannot request licenses over their implementation of a chip that they themselves license to implement.

• AllThingsD, which has an accurate track record in revealing Apple's new product media events, is reporting that Apple will hold an event to launch the iPad 3 in the first week of March
• The event will be held in San Francisco, presumably at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple’s preferred location for big announcements like these
• Update: As he frequently does, the reliable Jim Dalrymple at The Loop corroborates AllThingsD's claim with a simple "Yep."

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• The Next Web now reports that Apple is currently said to be in "crunch mode" as it works to finalize its plans for the event.

  • Ads and app demos
• emphasis on graphics-oriented applications with high-definition assets, which appears to be in line with the new iPad featuring a ‘Retina’ display.

• Tonight, Apple.pro posts an image of the back of the same shell, showing it to look quite simliar to the current iPad 2 backing, though the camera appears closer to the edge. There's no markings on the enclosure, however. No "iPad" or serial number markings
• The site also claims to have a photo of the Smart Cover magnets, suggesting the iPad 3 will share the same Smart Cover as the iPad 2.

• RepairLabs reports that it has received a photo of what is claimed to the inside of the rear shell of the iPad 3, comparing the part to the corresponding version found on the iPad 2. The iPad 3 version demonstrates a few minor changes compared to the iPad 2, with one of the most notable being an apparently narrower logic board that could make room for an expanded battery.
• The report also points out slight differences to the locations where the iPad's rear camera

  • At least it's consistent

• Snow Leopard security update which inadvertently caused problems with Apple's PowerPC emulation layer Rosetta. Macworld notes that Apple has since released Security Update 2012-001, version 1.1 for Snow Leopard. The new version seems to fix the PowerPC crashing issues described with the original update.
• Meanwhile, the crashing/CUI errors with 10.7.3 Delta updater has also been addressed by Apple. 9to5Mac notes that Apple has responded by pulling the Delta update altogether, leaving the Combo updater alone.

  • I remember when 300Mb took me a week to download nonstop

  • 1.3 gigs