Apple and Cisco rise, but chips weigh on techs

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Shares of Apple Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. rose on Monday, but semiconductor stocks weighed down the tech sector.

Apple (US:AAPL) shares rose 1.7% to close at $595.03 after the technology powerhouse said downloads of its new Mountain Lion operating system topped 3 million in four days, the most successful operating system launch in its history. Read more on Mountain Lion's popularity.

The patent infringement legal battle between Apple and Samsung also goes before a U.S. federal court in San Jose on Monday. Apple has accused Samsung of violating patents related to technologies used in the iPhone and the iPad.

Shares of Cisco (US:CSCO) gained 1.2% to close at $15.87, one of the top gainers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (US:DJIA), which was down 3 points at 13,076.



“I think both are seeing relief rallies today,” Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said in emailed comments. “Both stocks were under pressure last week, Apple with earnings and Cisco with the VMware acquisition of Nicira ... At the end of the day, they are still two of the better companies in technology.”

Cisco lost 4.1% last week after analysts speculated that VMware’s acquisition of Nicira could pose a threat to the networking giant. Apple fell 3.2% last week after the company missed Wall Street’s earnings estimates for its fiscal third quarter.

The VMware acquisition, followed by Monday’s announcement from Oracle Corp. (US:ORCL) that it has agreed to buy Xsigo Systems, a network virtualization technology company, heightened the focus on the so-called “software-defined networking” and the impact on other software players like Citrix Systems.(US:CTXS)

Shares of Citrix (US:CTXS) slumped 5.9% to close at $73.25, while VMware (US:VMW) slipped 3.5% to close at $92.37.

Mizuho Securities analyst Gabriel Lowy said in a note, “We believe investors are overreacting to the hype and acquisition flurry around software defined networking, most recently with Oracle’s acquisition of Xsigo. The weakness in shares of both VMware and Citrix is an overreaction in our view, presenting a buying opportunity in both, particularly Citrix.”

Meanwhile, the chip sector was in the red, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index(US:SOX) down 1%.

Wedbush analyst Betsy Van Hees cited investor worries related to the third-quarter forecasts from the sector.

“We think Q2 earnings for the most part have been in-line with some notable beats, but Q3 guidance has been well below seasonal,” she said in emailed comments.

“I think investors may be taking some profits today given the big move in the last two weeks of the Philadelphia Index vs. the S&P as concerns over Europe and the strength of the broader market may be moving off the back burner and back to forefront of investors minds,” she added.

Highlighting the decline was SanDisk Corp. (US:SNDK), shares of which lost 3%, closing at $41.17

This article comes from:http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-07-30/markets/32932699_1_agee-analyst-shaw-wu-cisco-systems-apple

Apple earns a place on Chinese blacklist

The consumer watchdog based in the southern province of China, Guangdong, has included technology giant Apple on a "company integrity" blacklist.

The company's after-sales service policies has come under fire from the China Consumer Association (CCA), who researches and monitors company and consumer policies affecting Chinese customers. Described as "unfair", National Business Daily reports that strong customer dissatisfaction within aftercare has resulted in numerous complaints.

The China Consumer Association released a report documenting an investigation into the support structure and policies of the popular technology developer last week.

The report focused on a number of complaints made during the first half of 2012, including the case of a customer named Wang -- who needed his iPhone 4 repaired. Although it was within the official warranty period, Apple replaced the parts but refused to renew the warranty.

The Chinese report singled out a number of electronics companies that maintain "poor" after-sales care -- including some that refuse to offer such a service altogether.

The CCA has previously branded Apple's policies as "unfair", and some critics suggest that recent policy changes made by the company to alleviate some of their customer's dissatisfaction is not enough. Pointing to a clause in Apple's repair policy, according to National Business Daily, it apparently states that the technology giant is able to use old, spare parts to repair dysfunctional devices -- and as users must hand defective parts back to Apple, suspicion exists that these parts may be repaired as part of the system, to be used once more.

The China Consumer Association raises the point that potentially, Apple's current policies may impede on Chinese consumer rights and protection laws. Apparently, there has also been cases of complaints made against the company due to product damage occurred in transit -- which Apple takes no responsibility for.

There are currently no official Apple stores within the southern province of Guangdong, although recent rumors have suggested that new stores may soon be appearing within Shenzhen and Guangzhou. The nearest outlet is currently located in Hong Kong.

This article comes from:http://www.zdnet.com/apple-earns-a-place-on-chinese-blacklist-7000001781/

Apple to release new Mac operating system 'Mountain Lion' Wednesday

Apple Inc. will release its new operating system for Mac computers on Wednesday, with features borrowed from mobile devices and a tighter integration with online file storage.

Dubbed Mountain Lion, the new software narrows the gap between the PC and phone software packages, making Mac personal computers work more like iPhones and iPads.

It's similar to what Microsoft Corp. is doing with its forthcoming Windows 8 system. That system, to be released Oct. 26, will bring the look and user interface of Windows Phone to PCs.

Mountain Lion will cost $20 and will be sold only as a download. Only computers running the two most recent versions of Mac OS, Lion and Snow Leopard, can be upgraded.

Macs bought on or after June 11 can be upgraded for free.

Apple previously announced Mountain Lion's features, but it hadn't disclosed the exact availability date until Tuesday's release of its earnings for the April-June quarter. Apple provided no new details in that release.

Among the features of Mountain Lion:
-- The new software will have better integration with social networks such as Facebook Inc.'s. It will have built-in features to facilitate sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other services. For instance, you'll get notifications when you get a message or a mention in a Facebook or Twitter post. You need to sign in only once, and you can share directly from other apps you are using.
-- Power Nap keeps your Mac updated even while it's in power-saving "sleep" mode. It will get your email messages, back up your files and download software updates automatically. It will work with recent MacBook Air computers and the higher-end MacBook Pro model, the one with the sharper, "Retina" display.

-- A new Messages app, copied from Apple's mobile operating system, will replace iChat. It will allow you to send messages to other Apple users, whether that person is on a Mac or an Apple mobile device.

-- Mountain Lion will be integrated with iCloud, the new Internet storage service designed for the mobile devices.

-- The software will bring dictation to Macs, essentially allowing the computer to type as you talk.

-- Game Center will store high game scores and help users find opponents on both Macs and Apple mobile devices.
This article comes from:http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/07/24/apple-to-release-new-mac-operating-system-mountain-lion-wednesday/

Why An iPad Mini Will Crush Google's Nexus 7

We don’t know when it will arrive. We don’t know what it will cost. We don’t even know — for certain — if it will ever materialize.But we do know this: Google’s $199 Nexus 7 is quick, slick, and pocketable. The fact Google’s 7-inch tablet has done so well since its earlier this month only ups the odds Apple will respond. And if, as rumored, Apple does launch a compact version of its iPad tablet computer, it will almost certainly crush Google’s Nexus 7.

Here’s why:
More content — The Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has done more deals. Result: Apple’s iTunes music store has more songs. Apple can offer more movies: unlike Google, Apple offers movies from Fox. And Apple’s TV offerings include more than a half-dozen major channels that are absent from Google Play. And that’s a big deal, considering that once you own a piece of content purchased from Apple, it’s easy to move it to your other Apple devices.

More applications — Yes, there are plenty of apps available for Google’s Android smartphone software. Very few, however, are optimized for tablets. By contrast there are hundreds of thousands of apps available for Apple’s iPad.
Better distribution — Visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing? An Apple Store is just a few steps away. Apple operates hundreds of retail outlets in more than a dozen countries. Its products are sold at Best Buy and on Amazon.

Apple won’t screw up — The Google Nexus is the most polished Android tablet yet. It’s got a zippy four-core processor with a knack for slick graphics from Nvidia. The ASUS-built device’s round edges and soft-touch back panel feel more expensive than the device’s $200 price would suggest. And yet polish and price are what Apple does best. None of the devices it sells are clunky, and — outside of its line of Macintosh computers — it doesn’t leave its competitors a ‘price umbrella’ where it can undercut Apple’s product line. In other words, nothing will get in the way of Apple pressing its three other advantages — more content, more applications, and a better distribution — hard.


This article comes from:http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/07/23/why-an-ipad-mini-will-crush-googles-nexus-7/

Australia Judge Calls Apple-Samsung Dispute Over 3G ‘Ridiculous’

Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. (AAPL) (AAPL)’s patent dispute over wireless transmission technology is “ridiculous” and might be best settled in mediation, the judge overseeing the case in Australia said.

Samsung sued Apple claiming the maker of iPhones is infringing three patents covering data transmission over the 3G wireless spectrum. The suit was in response to Apple’s claim that Samsung stole its design ideas for computer tablets and phones. A trial scheduled to run for three months began today before Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett.

Apple refused to pay a license fee for the technology that allows phones to conduct multiple tasks including taking calls while uploading photos to the Internet, Samsung’s lawyer Neil Young said at the start of the trial. Apple was willing to pay and Samsung refused, the Cupertino, California-based company’s lawyer Stephen Burley said.

“Why on earth are these proceedings going ahead?” Bennett asked the lawyers in court today. “It’s just ridiculous.” A similar dispute between any other two companies would be immediately ordered to mediation, she said.

“Why shouldn’t I order the parties to mediation?” she asked. She said she would expect an answer before the end of the week.

The Australian trial is part of a global dispute between the two companies and a prelude to proceedings in the U.S. and U.K.

$312 Billion
Samsung, the biggest maker of smartphones, and Apple, the largest seller of tablet computers, are fighting for an increased share of a handset market that Bloomberg Industries said was worth $312 billion last year. Apple has won a ban on the sale of Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 tablet in the U.S. and failed to win a ban in the U.K., pending patent infringement trials in those countries.

“Both companies are fighting every single battle, no matter how small, with great intensity,” John Swinson, a partner specializing in intellectual property at King & Wood Mallesons in Brisbane, said in a phone interview.

Whatever the outcome of the trial, the losing side will probably appeal, Swinson said.“You could say, they’re working out the issues for the appeal court.” Fiona Martin, a spokeswoman for Apple in Sydney, declined to comment on the trial.

This article comes from:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-22/samsung-and-apple-global-patent-fight-moves-to-australia-trial

Fotopedia Launches China iPad App on iPad-in-China Day

Just in time for the new iPad’s arrival in China, Fotopedia, which publishes iOS-based photo and travel apps, has introduced a new iPad app geared toward China.

The free app, called Fotopedia China, features high-res photos of various provinces, regions and cities throughout the nation, as well as descriptive captions, maps, Wikipedia entries and recommendations for other destinations.

Like another one of my favorite apps, Here on Earth, Fotopedia’s app is part travel porn and part travel planning. In addition to the 5,000 crowdsourced photos currently available within the app, users have the ability to add, with one click, images and stories to a “My Trips” folder. Through a new partnership with Expedia, users can actually book travel — and not just put photos in a daydream folder.

Based on some light browsing through Fotopedia China, the Expedia integration doesn’t feel totally seamless right now, popping up as full pages in between photos and taking you out of Fotopedia entirely when you click on an Expedia ad. If you’ve already got the Expedia app on your device, you’ll be directed to that app, and if not, you’re prompted to download the app.

But for users so inspired by Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, Temple of Heaven in Beijing or the Huangpu River in Shanghai that an immediate booking is in order, the detour to a travel site could be a coup.

The China app marks the 11th iOS app for Fotopedia, which was created in 2008 by five former Apple employees under a company named Fotonauts Inc. Jean-Marie Hullot, the company’s founder and CEO, says its 10 previous apps have been downloaded more than 12 million times, with more than 20 percent of app downloads coming from China, followed by the U.S. The iPad audience, in particular, is growing, with 30 percent of users now checking out Fotopedia from the tablet device.“China is our No. 1 market; over the past 18 months, it’s the market that’s growing the fastest,” Hullot said. “So we’re excited to finally bring an app about China to that market.”

This article comes from:http://allthingsd.com/20120719/fotopedia-launches-china-ipad-app-on-ipad-in-china-day/

Does Obama think Steve Jobs didn't build Apple?

 
“To say what he said is to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple Computer or that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft or that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor Company or that Ray Croc didn't build McDonald's or that Papa John's didn't build Papa John's Pizza,” Romney said today at a town hall in Ohio. “This is the height of foolishness. It shows how out of touch he is with the character of America. It's one more reason his policies have failed. It's one more reason why we have to replace him in November.”

It’s not a new line. Here’s what Romney said yesterday: “The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor; to say something like that is not just foolishness. It's insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America. And it's wrong.”

It’s part of the Romney campaign’s latest condemnation of the president, who it says is anti-business. The Jobs charge is based on the Romney campaign’s reading of President Obama’s speech on Friday in Virginia, in which he said, in part: “If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

But does that mean the president doesn’t believe Steve Jobs built Apple? Here’s what Obama said in his statement after Steve Jobs died:

“By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity.”

This article comes from:http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/18/12815514-does-obama-think-steve-jobs-didnt-build-apple

Checkmark for iPhone

While Apple may have complicated the field of to-do and reminder apps with the introduction of its own Reminders app in iOS 5, that doesn't mean other developers have given up. Checkmark, a new app from developer Snowman, has upped the ante with a superior implementation of one of Reminders's key features, location-based reminders.

My biggest problem with Apple's Reminders is the sheer frustration that comes with actually using the app. The process of entering items is slow, many of the features aren't fully fleshed out--for example, you can set a priority, but that priority doesn't show up anywhere--and you can set location-based reminders only for places listed in your Contacts. Checkmark addresses most of these issues and packages its features in a sleek, efficient interface that doesn't put the skeuomorphic cart before the horse, as it were.

The app is broken down into two handy lists of reminders: Where, for location-based reminders, and When, for time-based reminders--you switch between the two using Where and When buttons at the bottom of the screen. You won't find custom lists here; every reminder is tied to either a place or a time. Also note that there's no system of "priority" as in other apps of this ilk. I'm of the mind that assigning priorities is a time-sink, but if that's a feature you rely on, Checkmark isn't for you.

Checkmark's location-based reminders trump those of the Reminders app from the get-go. The app uses custom iOS-Home-screen-style pages of frequently visited locations. You add a location by using your current location, searching for a point of interest on a map, importing an address from your Contacts, or manually entering an address. This means that not only can you easily add locations such your home or work, but also other arbitrary places, such as your local drugstore, grocery store, library, post office, and so on. In my testing, this worked pretty well, although Checkmark occasionally failed to match locations such as my local coffee shop, or even my neighborhood Target, when I searched for them as points of interest; I had to instead add them via their street addresses.

When you trigger a location-based reminder by entering or leaving the geofence around the location, Checkmark sends you a reminder. In addition to onscreen notifications, you can choose for your reminders to include an alert sound, and you can opt to display an app-icon badge showing the number of pending reminders.

You can also view all your location-based reminders in a single list, delineated by location; if you choose to create a new reminder from this screen, you'll be asked to choose a location. When viewing the list, you can choose whether to view reminders that are currently active or those you've marked as completed, but there's no option to see both in the same list.

This article comes from:http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9229270/Checkmark_for_iPhone?taxonomyId=77

Apple's Ive is building the "most important and best work"

Apple is famous for its marketing and getting leading newspapers to print it for free. This week Jonathan Ive, the company's senior vice president of industrial design, pulled a swifty with the British media.
Ive came back from the colonies to pick up a knighthood from the queen for services to religion, er, design. He hinted that he was working on something that "feels like the most important and the best work" Apple has done.

He could have been referring to anything. The iBoat. The iTV. A very nice sandwich he made for lunch - or even the very satisfying dump in the office iBog. It is not a real quote.

If David "I am an Ordinary Bloke" Cameron told the Telegraph the Coalition is "working on a brilliant programme to cure unemployment and will shake up British history," readers would want to know what it was he was doing - and the Telegraph, we would hope, would ask on their behalf. If Cameron said "I can't tell you because it is a big secret", the reporter would have the public's permission to punch him in the face or not print the comment.

But in the case of Apple, this quote set off PC Week which felt the need to publish tons of speculation and marketing guff based on that one quote.
Ive has been working on the "hotly anticipated iPhone 5", the magazine pointed out. Who is "hotly anticipating" shelling out more cash for another update?

The Jellygraph enthused that it will have a screen larger by one inch. Not even an Apple cultist would claim that would make it the best work Ive has ever done.
Ive is also working on "the Apple TV," gushed PC Week. It does not take a genius to design a telly and Ive could not say it was the best work he has done.

Ive, like many people in Apple, gave nothing away, and yet the Tame Apple Press prints his marketing with fervent enthusiasm.

This ritual is seen so often in the trade press. Reuters is doing it now. How many stories about PCs do you see which has the mistaken comment that the PC has been killed by the iPad? Reuters said it twice in one story about Dell. Nowhere did Dell say its PC business was being killed by the iPad. Instead, it quite rightly said that its business was being done in by the European economy. Regardless, Reuters felt the need to throw in a free advert for Apple.

This reporter has asked the ethics staff at Reuters why the news agency is showing a marked Apple bias. TechEye heard that it wasn't, so that is the end of that. But when you see words like "eagerly anticipated" used to describe a product, then the reporter is editorialising in favour of the company's marketing department.

In the good old days, a hack would have been fired for that. It was unethical to talk up one company - that was up to the paper's advertising department. Now, it seems that it is the job of the media: to hawk products at the expensive of their readers.

This article comes from:http://news.techeye.net/software/apples-ive-is-building-the-most-important-and-best-work

Why Google and Microsoft want to emulate Apple

It's clear as retina display. Microsoft and Googlewant to do an Apple. The time for bluster, arguments and experiments has passed. The situation has turned desperate in the iPad, er,tablet market. All the 'Transformers' 'Galaxies' and 'Playbooks' haven't humbled the iPad. Worse, research firm IDC forecasts that by 2016, iPad and iPad-Mini (moniker for rumoured 7-inch version) will still control over 60% of the market. If you can't beat Apple's game, what do you do?

Play by its rules and share the spoils. Don't just code, weld. Microsoft went all the way, Google found a Taiwanese partner, Asus, to chip in. Two companies which swore by "open systems" took the first step towards controlling the entire user experience.

Of course, neither admits to the strategy change. Carefully worded scripts say the same blah-blah: adapting to market and giving consumers something they hadn't seen before.

Like the two weren't going green in their gills with Apple envy. Or weren't worried that a whiz-bang for Apple was vending out pennies for them. What if the Cupertino guys thought of "one more thing" before they got a chance to understand the slate market?

From this perspective, the hardware route wasn't a choice for Google and Microsoft. It was a compulsion, not just because of Apple but demons in their backyards.

Survival issues
Google's operating system (OS), Android, is all over the place. The big complaint: most devices don't do justice to the tablet version of the OS. As a result, smartphone apps perform poorly and dilute user experience on the tablet.

For Microsoft, the problem is more existential. The tablet and smartphone markets are growing at the expense of laptops and PCs. Tech advisory firm Gartner predicts that by 2016 tablet sales will total a whopping 665 million units. Microsoft is staring at a shrinking source of bread-and-butter revenue.

Yet, it remains a laggard in the smartphone/tablet market. Latecomer Windows Phone 7 hasn't been able to lift the fortunes of Nokia or Microsoft. Nokia's Windows 8 tablet was due this summer but has been delayed.

Microsoft couldn't afford the wait. It needed a product bang. So it imported the only strategy that has proven successful in the market - hardware plus software. But imitating a business model doesn't guarantee that Surface will make money. Look at Kindle Fire.

Math behind hardware
Google earns nothing from Android as the OS comes without licence fee. Last year, it even gave up its share of glory when Kindle Fire pipped Samsung, Asus, etc, to become the world's second largest, and Android's highest-selling tablet-cum-e-book reader between October and December 2011.

But Amazon doesn't make money out of Kindle Fire. In fact, some say it suffers a net loss to sell at $199. Yet Google wants to snuff out Amazon Fire. For the Nexus 7 may be a long-term bet against iPad Mini, but immediately, it bulldozes Kindle's territory. Same price - $199 - similar looks, more features.

This article comes from:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/Why-Google-and-Microsoft-want-to-emulate-Apple/articleshow/14988446.cms

iPad mini: How much would you pay for one?

If the blogosphere is anything to go by, it seems that while the iPhone it too small, the iPad is also too big.The endless speculation that Apple is planning to shrink the iPad while at the same time make the iPhone bigger continues. While I believe that there is a strong case for making the iPhone bigger, it's harder to make a compelling case for a larger iPad.

According to Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy, Apple needs a 7-inch tablet because without one the Cupertino-based giant face the prospect of losing market share and profit dollars."The Google Nexus 7 will sell well," writes Moorhead, "which is good for Google, Android, ASUS and NVIDIA, but bad for Apple, unless they act before the holidays".

The problem though, is price. "Apple may have redesigned some of the innards of the new iPad 2 as they lowered the price," writes Moorhead, "but not nearly enough to offset the $100 price reduction, so a mini-iPad would be additive, not dilutive like the $399 iPad 2".

The problem is massaging the numbers to make it work.Take a look at the bill of materials estimate for the iPad 2 and iPad 3 drawn up in March by iSuppli Research:

Let's take the cost of a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2, listed as a little over $245 as a starting price for the mythical iPad mini. We can make a few common sense assumptions about any smaller iPad, for example, that it would have a smaller screen, a smaller touch screen and, one would assume, a smaller battery.

Problem is, it's hard to see this shaving much more than about $40 off the bill of materials. Let's push the numbers further by assuming that the component costs have dropped by some $20 since the original bill of materials was drawn up in March and we come up with a device that has an overall materials and manufacturing cost of around $185. This figure excludes costs associated with R&D, marketing and so on.

If the iPad mini costs around $185 to make, how much should Apple slap on the price sticker? $299 is the logical price point, pegging it at $100 cheaper than the current 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2. On the face of it that seems like a healthy $115 above what it would cost to make.

However, scanning through the cost analysis we find that this would mean the iPad mini would have the smallest gap between the bill of materials plus manufacturing costs of any iPad.

In other words, this would mean that by releasing a 7-inch iPad Apple would be risking cannibalizing the sale of iPads with a better profit margin.

That doesn't sound like the Apple we know.

There's another problem with that $299 price point. Would the market stand a $100 price premium for the Apple logo on the back of the tablet when Amazon and Google already sell cracking tablets for $199? And what if Amazon slashes the price of the existing Kindle to $149? Where does that leave the iPad mini at $299?

In theory, a smaller and more portable iPad sounds great, but in practice, unless Apple is willing to massacre its profit margins to bring one to market, it's just not going to happen.


This article comes from:http://www.zdnet.com/ipad-mini-how-much-would-you-pay-for-one-7000000694/

Google Could Pay $22.5 Million for Safari Violation

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Google are reportedly close to agreeing on a $22.5 million settlementstemming from charges that the search engine giant bypassed the security settings in Apple's Safari browser. This will be the largest penalty imposed by the FTC on a single company, but is seemingly chump change compared to the nearly $38 billion in revenue Google earned in 2011 alone.

This won't be the first run-in with the FTC. The company previously had to settle with the commission over complaints regarding the now-defunct Google Buzz and the "misuse" of personal data. The agreement, established in March 2011, forced Google to adopt a comprehensive privacy program as well as submit to an independent privacy audit every two years.

One year later, the FTC caught wind of an article by the Wall Street Journal which claimed that Google linked Safari's browsers to its servers in order to see if account holders were signed into their Google accounts. This linking not only bypassed Safari's privacy settings, but also established additional cookies on the users' computers.

Unlike other Web browsers, Safari's default settings prevent sites from slipping cookies on the device, whether it's a smartphone or desktop. However the one exception enables users to engage in social media on other sites such as clicking the "like" button above an article. Google's temporary cookie allowed surfers to interact with the "+1" button, but the side effect was that it also allowed Safari to accept other tracking files from Google's ad network. Thus, Safari users saw ads based on their browser history which is a direct violation of Apple's privacy settings.

At the time, the FTC said that it was investigating whether Google had misrepresented itself when informing users that it would abide by Safari's privacy settings. It was also investigating whether Google violated its own Google Buzz consent decree as well. Google said that the user-tracking was inadvertent and didn't cause any harm to users, but so far both the FTC and Google have declined to comment on the investigation's status. Insiders claim the two are close to reaching an agreement.

"We cannot comment on any specifics," a Google representative said. "However we do set the highest standards of privacy and security for our users. The FTC is focused on a 2009 help center page published more than two years before our consent decree, and a year before Apple changed its cookie-handling policy. We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple’s browsers."

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google could face other government actions outside the FTC probe. A group of U.S. state attorneys general are currently investigating the issue, and could fine Google $5,000 per violation. Overseas, the European Union is still investigating the Safari incident as part of a wide-ranging examination of whether Google's new privacy policy actually complies with Europe's data-policy regulations.

This article comes from:http://www.tomsguide.com/us/FTC-Google-Safari-Privacy-Settings-Cookies,news-15829.html

Microsoft to Apple: Bring it on

A detail here, a tidbit there: we're finding out the specifics of Windows 8 a little bit at a time. We know how much Windows 8 will cost (a penny under $40 for most upgraders) and now we have a date, or at least a timeframe: the first PCs running Microsoft's latest OS will be available in late October.

Microsoft announced the release at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto on Monday, coyly declining to give the exact date Windows 8 will be available. No surprise that it'll drop in October: that's what most analysts were expecting, given that the Windows 8 Release Preview came out in late May (an October release also means Windows 8 computers, tablets, and smart phones will be ready in time for the holiday shopping season). The final version of the OS will be released to manufacturers at the beginning of August.

Microsoft has placed much of its future on this new release. As Apple gobbles up 25 percent of the American computer market with its MacBooks and around 60 percent of the tablet market with the iPad, Microsoft hopes the new OS can pull double duty. Windows 8's Metro interface will aid PCs, become the sole OS for tablets, and take on a modified form with Windows phones.
This article comes from:http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2012/0709/Microsoft-to-Apple-Bring-it-on

Apple releases fix for DRM-related iOS, Mac app crashes

Apple has rolled out a fix for a bug that caused several iOS and Mac apps to crash."We had a temporary issue that began [4 July] with a server that generated DRM code for some apps being downloaded," Apple said in a statement.According to an Apple spokesman, those affected can re-download the apps from the App Store.

Reports of trouble in the App Store cropped up on 4 July when Instapaper developer Marco Arment complained that users with the latest version of the company's app were reporting immediate crashes on launch.

Among the 114 affected apps listed on Arment's blog were Angry Birds Space Free, Dolphin, Yahoo! Search and GoodReader.

Arment confirmed in an update to his original blog post that the issue has been resolved. "Go to the App Store and redownload any affected apps — they should show up in the Updates tab. Do not delete and reinstall: it's no longer necessary and you may lose data in those apps," he wrote.

This article comes from:http://www.itproportal.com/2012/07/09/apple-releases-fix-for-drm-related-ios-mac-app-crashes/

Best Buy Tries On Apple's Sleek Look

RICHFIELD, Minn.—Best Buy Co. BBY -0.05% is testing a new turnaround strategy: making its cavernous electronics emporiums look more like Apple Inc.'s AAPL +1.73%sleek retail outlets.

The heart of a test store near Best Buy's headquarters here is a Solution Central help desk, rimmed with chairs and manned by the company's black-tied Geek Squad. It strongly resembles the Genius Bar at Apple's stores.

Best Buy's prototype has taken another cue from Apple, letting customers pay for products in several locations, rather than forcing them into checkout lines at the front of the store.

Best Buy said its slimmed-down store, which opened a few weeks ago, is focused less on displaying every conceivable gadget and more on connecting customers with employees who can answer questions or help program equipment.

Skeptics already are asking whether the new format goes far enough to attract customers and fight "showrooming," in which shoppers who browse in stores buy merchandise more cheaply elsewhere, usually online.

Best Buy, the nation's largest electronics retailer by revenue, has been particularly vulnerable to the trend; it says half the shoppers in its stores use cellphones or tablets to check competitors' prices, up from 10% in 2010. Sales at its stores open at least a year fell 1.7% last year after a 1.8% decline in 2010. The company's stock has dropped 33% over the past two years.

This article comes from:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303684004577507033027128596.html

Intel, HTC, Apple, Honeywell: Intellectual Property

Intel Corp.’s 1.06 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) fine for using rebates to block rivals is based on an “utterly hopeless” and untenable case by European Union regulators, company lawyers told an EU appeals court.

The 2009 decision by the EU’s antitrust regulator was based on claims that are “utter nonsense,” an Intel lawyer told the EU General Court in Luxembourg. Claims that Intel made payments to Lenovo Group Ltd. (992) to cut Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) (AMD) out of the market are baseless and should be overturned. Intel and AMD have engaged in patent and antitrust battles with each other since the early 1990s.“This case is utterly hopeless and should never have been brought,” Nicholas Green, a lawyer for Intel, told the EU’s second-highest court on the third day of hearings.

The EU probe concluded Intel impeded competition by giving computer makers rebates from 2002 until 2005 on the condition that they buy at least 95 percent of their chips for personal computers from the Santa Clara, California-based company. Intel imposed “restrictive conditions” for the remaining 5 percent, supplied by AMD, which struggled to overcome Intel’s hold on the PC processor market, the EU said. The infringement continued until at least December 2007, the EU said.

Accusations that Intel paid Lenovo, the world’s second- largest computer maker, in 2006 to delay AMD-based notebooks and gave the manufacturer rebates in 2007 under an agreement not to buy from AMD were wrong and the commission ignored evidence that showed otherwise, Green told the court yesterday.

The 2006 payments “were to win business, not to cancel a launch” of AMD-based notebooks, Green said. Lenovo also told the investigators the 2007 deal wasn’t exclusive and “there was serious concern that AMD was not a reliable supplier and business partner,” Green said.

The EU began investigating after AMD complained in 2000. Intel agreed to pay AMD $1.25 billion in 2009 to end all civil litigation. Sunnyvale, California-based AMD is no longer involved in the case and won’t intervene at this week’s hearing.

The antitrust fine was the EU’s biggest, more than double the 497 million-euro penalty against Microsoft Corp. in 2004. It represented about 4 percent of Intel’s $37.6 billion in sales in 2008, below the maximum penalty of 10 percent of annual sales.

Any decision by the EU General Court can be appealed to the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

This article comes from:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-06/intel-htc-apple-honeywell-intellectual-property

Apple Preps for its New Tablet iPad

Apple Inc.'s AAPL +1.15% component suppliers in Asia are preparing for mass production in September of a tablet computer with a smaller screen than the iPad, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting a launch for the device is near.

Two of the people said that the tablet's screen will likely be smaller than eight inches. The iPad's screen measures 9.7 inches, unchanged since the first model was released in 2010.

Officials at the component suppliers, who declined to be named, said this week that Apple has told them to prepare for mass production of the smaller tablet. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Apple was testing such a device but hadn't yet decided whether to proceed with production.

The iPad's screen measures 9.7 inches, unchanged since the first model.One person said the screen makers Apple is working with include LG DisplayCo. LPL +4.44% of South Korea and Taiwan-based AU Optronics Co.AUO +1.24%An Apple spokeswoman in California declined to comment.Analysts said a smaller tablet could help Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple maintain its dominance in a market that keeps getting more crowded. Competitors includeSamsung Electronics Co.005930.SE -0.50% and Amazon.com Inc.,AMZN +0.09% while Microsoft Corp.MSFT +0.65% and Google Inc.GOOG +1.25% recently unveiled tablet devices.

Last year, the iPad held a 62% share of the world-wide tablet market, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli, which expects overall tablet sales this year to surge 85% to 126.6 million units..

As the market continues to expand, consumers' choices—in size, technical specifications and price—are growing more varied. Last week, Google started taking orders for the Nexus 7, a tablet device with a seven-inch screen that will sell for $199. That matches the price of Amazon's Kindle Fire, which came out last year and also has a seven-inch screen.

Microsoft's Surface tablet, expected to debut this fall, has a 10.6-inch display, larger than the iPad. Microsoft's Windows Chief Steve Sinofsky said that it will be "priced like comparable tablets."

This article comes from:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304141204577506471913819412.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Apple volume production new iMac this month

It is said by the supply chain upstream Taiwan manufacturer, Apple volume production this month new iMac, and it will come up on the market on October this year, it is also said that Apple will use Retina Display screen to all products, it also means that the new iMac will use Retina Display screen.

Apple wants to deploy in the Retina Display screen to all products, which hope to be beyond the competitor's products in on the screen resolution.

At present, the main rivals use Full HD screen, because the Retina Display screen is expensive, and targeted content is less. Therefore, most PC manufacturers currently have no plans to purchase the Retina Display screen.

At present, apple is the world's largest all-in-one PC manufacturers, which is also one of the five desktops manufacturers. IDC data shows, in the first quarter of this year, apple iMac sales for 1.22 million departments, accounting for 3.1% of the global desktop sales.

Apple Shutters MobileMe, iWork Next

Apple's subscription-based online storage function MobileMe breathed it last breath Saturday, forcing cloud users who want to stay in the family to turn to iCloud.Last summer, Apple unveiled its iCloud and iTunes Match products, and said it would discontinue MobileMe. On May 31, users began receiving 30-day reminders to transfer stored filed before all data was lost forever.

Still, some users have, of course, failed to do just that. So Apple is giving them one last chance, with a message on its me.com site saying that "for a limited time," you can still move your account to iCloud, download photos from Gallery, and download files from iDisk.

In an attempt to ease MobileMe users' pain, Apple set up an information website, complete with Q&As and links to more in-depth articles about the changes.Despite Cupertino's huge technological successes, MobileMe was not an Apple triumph. It launched in 2008 to a number of bugs and an email blackout for thousands of subscribers.

That failure didn't sit well with Steve Jobs. According to a May 2011 Fortune profile, Jobs berated the MobileMe team during a town hall meeting. "Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" Jobs asked the MobileMe team after gathering them in an Apple auditorium. After someone provided the correct answer, Jobs reportedly said, "So why the f**k doesn't it do that?"

The Apple iCloud's domino effect also hit Apple's iWork.com, which will shutter on July 31, three and a half years after opening as part of an iWork software update that allowed users to share documents online and collaborate with third parties. Again, Apple reminded users to download all documents to your computer before the site closes."With a new way to share iWork documents between your devices using iCloud, the iWork.com public beta service will no longer be available," Apple's website said.

In March, Apple reported that millions of iWork customers had stored more than 40 million documents on iCloud.A revamped iWork was introduced earlier this year, including new 3D charts and animations, builds, and transitions. The Keynote, Numbers, and Pages applications were updated to take advantage of the Retina display option.

This article comes from:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406634,00.asp

Apple, Amazon, Google and Oracle: Are These The New Robber Barons?

What gets lost in the reality distortion field that surrounds these technology moguls is that, in the end, they are fanatically ambitious, competitive capitalists. They may look cool and have soothing bedside manners, but in the end these guys are in business not just to make money, but to establish sprawling, quasi-monopolistic commercial empires. And they will do whatever it takes to achieve those ambitions.
….

Thus began the era satirised by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which was published in 1873. Twain and Warner were struck by the rampant greed and speculative frenzy of the times – not to mention its pervasive political corruption. But in that febrile milieu a smallish group of ingenious, ruthless and visionary entrepreneurs created a modern industrial state. Leland Stanford, EH Harriman, Jay Gould, Charles Crocker, Henry Plant, Henry Flagler, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Charles Yerkes built railways; John D Rockefeller created Standard Oil and brought his distinctive brand of oligopolistic order to the oil business, eventually controlling 90% of the industry;Andrew Carnegie, Henry Frick and Charles Schwab created a vast steel industry; and bankers such as JP Morgan, Joseph Seligman, Andrew Mellon and Jay Cooke organised the finance that funded these huge ventures.

The yes is that yes, Jobs, Ellison, Gates, Bezos, Brinn and Page, they are indeed very like Vanderbilt, Carnegie and Rockefeller. But this does not make them anything like the Robber Barons.

For there were really two groups of entrepreneurs who made it big in the American economy of the 19th century. There were those who simply did thing better, cheaper, than their competitors and thus were able to stake a claim to large parts of an economy that was becoming a national economy for the first time. Rockefeller in oil. Vanderbilt in steamships, Carnegie in steel. Sure, they competed very hard against all comers: but they did it with better technology and cheaper prices. Well, by and large they did: Rockefeller was known for cute dealings at times, as they all were, but it was still true that Rockefeller was the most efficient oil company and offered the lowest prices to consumers. Carnegie was technologically streets ahead of his competitors and so on.

The robber Barons were a rather different group: this was more a description of those who organised themselves into trust, cartels to keep out competition, and at a slightly later date too. The point here was not to win the market by beating the competition but to raise profits by restricting competition: a very different thing indeed.

I would argue that the Apples, Googles, Oracles and Amazons of this current world are more like the former. Yes, there is that sad use of IP in fighting, but by and large they are fighting each other through market competition, technological advance and ever lower prices to consumers.

There are other sectors of the economy more like the Robber Barons: those who conspire with politics to restrict entry into their markets for example. Like those 30% of jobs where you need an occupational licence these days. Or Milton Friedman’s example of the way that the AMA restricts the number of doctors in order to keep wages for doctors high.

In short, we have both groups still, those who wish to profit from restricting competition and those who wish to do so by beating the competition. But our technology gurus strike me as being more those on the good side, as with Carnegie and Vanderbilt, than on the bad.

This article comes from:http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/07/01/apple-amazon-googe-and-oracle-are-these-the-new-robber-barons/