Patrick Spence, 14-year veteran of Research in Motion (RIM) and its head of global sales, has departed the company. Spence "will be taking on a leadership position in a different industry," according to RIM spokeswoman Rebecca Freiburger. No comment has been made if the move is in response to the announcement of RIM's new Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer three weeks ago.
Apple is by far the largest buyer of all kinds of microprocessors, buying 50 percent more RAM, processor and other chips than any other company, with its appetite having tripled since 2009 due to the success of its iOS devices (and to a lesser extent its growing Mac business). At an industry conference, IHS iSuppli researcher Dale Ford said that the company will buy $27 billion worth of chips, up from $9B in 2009.
New details have emerged about two upcoming Apple Stores. The first of these is another Parisian outlet, which Apple has announced will launch Friday morning at 9 AM in the city's Quatre Temps mall. The shopping center sits along the north extension of the Champs Élysées. Apple already has several Apple Stores in the Paris area, but just a handful scattered throughout the rest of France.
Apple and Samsung have failed to reach any kind of settlement after court-ordered talks on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Korea Times. A Samsung official tells the publication that the companies could find "no clear agreement" on their patent dispute. The talks were extremely high-level, involving Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung.
Apple design guru Jonathan Ive has revealed to The Telegraph that Apple’s current projects are ‘the most important and the best work’ that his team at Apple has ever done. In the UK to formally receive his knighthood from the Queen, Ive said that it will likely be this work that will be his legacy. Ive’s comments, while revealing nothing specific, are likely to set speculation alight ahead of expected revamps of key Apple products as well the rumored Apple TV.
Facebook's forthcoming App Center portal will feature a "Send to Mobile" option, allowing users to purchase apps on a desktop or tablet and have a notification delivered to their phones. The feature duplicates capabilities already found in Google and Apple's app stores, but uses Facebook's notification system. The Send to Mobile option is expected to be ready in time for the App Center's launch later this year.
Apple has maintained its lead over other companies in the Millward Brown 2012 Brandz study. This marks the second year at the top for Apple, increasing their brand value from $153 billion to $182 billion, while previous branding leader Google slips behind IBM to third place. The study covers brand value as a perceptual worth independent from any financial undertakings, instead of market capitalization as typically used by financial analysts.
Apple late today has issued Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.13, adding support for six new and recent camera models now on the market. The new update adds support for models from Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic and Sony. Still missing from the list of supported cameras (among other models) is the Fujifilm X-S1, a high-end "superzoom" camera we reviewed in late March. The new update requires OS X 10.6.8 or later.
At Apple's online store today save on iPods, iPads and more. A selection of iPod touch models start at $169 for the refurb. current-generation 8GB Touch. For $249 is the refurb. current-generation 32GB iPod touch, or for $339 is the current-generation 64GB Touch. A $120 price break is offered on a 64GB Touch originally released in September 2009, now $249. The refurb. 8GB iPod nano is priced at $99 with the 16GB Nano following closely at $119.
Yesterday in the MacNN forums, ghporter asks "is it worth upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion?" read more here. Also yesterday one Senior User discovered they were having problems copying and pasting from e-mails and have turned to the forums for some advice.
Today's deals from DealNN include discounted MacBook Pros, webcams, and more. Macmall.com still has the 2.3GHz MacBook Pro on sale this week, which includes a 17-inch widescreen display, 4GB of RAM, a 750GB hard drive, and quad-core Intel Core i7 processor. Currently featured at DealNN, the MacBook Pro has dropped to $2,099.99 in price and offers savings of up to $549.
Apple led the market in mobile PC shipments during the March quarter, at least when including the iPad, according to preliminary NPD data. The company shipped 17.2 million iPads and MacBooks, representing a 118 percent jump year-over-year, and 22.5 percent marketshare during Q1. About 80 percent of those units were iPads though, whereas the other top sellers succeeded on the basis of notebook shipments.
More details have emerged about the new 4-inch display that Apple is rumored to be testing for the next iPhone with 9to5 Mac claiming its sources have confirmed that Apple is currently testing an iPhone with a 3.95-inch display. The new display is also expected to retain a Retina Display level of pixel density, maintain the same width as the current display (1.94-inches), but be stretched to 16:9 ratio at 3.45-inches tall. If accurate, this would permit a 16:9 movie to play in its native aspect ratio using the full display sans the black bars while even potentially retaining the same overall phone size.
A group of notable public figures, including two US presidents and a class of schoolkids -- along with the reunited "Mac and PC" team of Justin Long and John Hodgman -- paid tribute to Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs at the Webby Awards held yesterday in New York City. As part of the ceremony, a video tribute was run featuring "five words" (and sometimes more) from various celebrities and politicians who in turn paid tribute to Jobs, who died in October.
Some details revealed about how Apple intends to make its Maiden, North Carolina data center almost entirely powered from renewable-energy sources have come to light, showing a combination of solar and fuel-cell technology and practical energy-saving policies. The plans show that the company behind the iMac are also applying some cooling lessons learned from computers to the buildings, such as variable-speed fans.
Following a delay of nearly a week after repeated denial of service attacks, low-cost Sprint reseller Voyager Mobile has launched in 22 states. Voyager provides Sprint's 3G and WiMAX network for $39 a month, contract free. Alternatively, a $19/month unlimited-talk plan is available.
The US International Trade Commission has ruled that a patent involved in Kodak's lawsuit against Apple and Research in Motion is invalid, according to AppleInsider. In particular an administrative law judge has quashed the 6,292,218 patent, Method for Live View Display and Digital Camera Using Same, on the basis of claim 15 in the document. Kodak will reportedly appeal the decision to the full commission, a necessary step if it intends to continue suing Apple and RIM for infringing the patent.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was the highest-paid CEO of 2011, according to a study released by the Hay Group and the Wall Street Journal. Cook's package for the year was valued at $378 million, although most of it is locked up in the form of stock grants issued after he took control from Steve Jobs in August. The first half of the shares will vest in 2016; the remainder will follow in 2021, contingent on Cook staying with Apple.
Samsung has accused experts on Apple's side of patent litigation as being strong fans of the Cupertino-based company, pointing towards an engineered “cult-like following to all things Apple.” The claims that the experts had “cast aside established scientific methods... in favor of slavish adoration of their client” appear in Samsung motions filed on Thursday, as noted by Florian Mueller.
Apple is reaching out to its neighbors in Cupertino, having mailed a packet to residents of the city of Cupertino containing images and information about its planned Campus 2. The mailing requests feedback from Cupertino residents and attempts to allay resident fears over the impact the new campus will have on their community.
Samsung is still hoping to settle in its global legal disputes with Apple, Reuters reports. The head of the company's mobile division, J.K. Shin, spoke to journalists at a Seoul airport yesterday shortly before flying to the US. "There is still a big gap in the patent war with Apple but we still have several negotiation options including cross-licensing," he said. Shin is joining Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung to meet Apple CEO Tim Cook today for court-ordered settlement talks.
Asian manufacturer Foxconn is preparing to spend $210 million on a new Huai'an production line for Apple, according to China Daily. The plant has been announced by local officials, and is expected to consume 40,000 square meters (over 430,556 square feet), and employ 35,800 people. Predicted output is valued at 6 to 7 billion yuan, or somewhere between $949 million and $1.1 billion, with an import/export value of $55.8 million.
Apple sent an email reminder to developers working on apps for the Mac App Store letting them know that new programs will have to be compatible with the platform's forthcoming "sandboxing" constraints in order to be offered in the Mac App Store. Developers are expected to implement sandboxing within their apps by June 1, though existing programs can be updated after that date. Apple has previously extended the deadline for app sandboxing, first November 2011 to March 2012, and later to June 2012.
After possibly infecting up to 1.8 percent of the Macintosh population with a click-fraud macro through a Java vulnerability, the Flashback creators won't get paid despite their efforts, reports Computerworld. Following a coordinated security effort between antivirus vendors and security experts, remote malicious orders were blocked or prevented from effecting an estimated peak 600,000 infected computers. Apple joined the fray late, but provided patches and a removal tool for the malware.
On the heels of an appeals court win that suggested that Samsung should have been barred from selling its copycat Galaxy Tab 10.1 from the get-go, Apple has now filed a motion for a new injunction against the tablet asking it to be pulled from US shelves. The two companies are scheduled to begin high-level settlement talks on Monday, but should they fail the new injunction request could be ruled on as early as June 7.
On the heels of last week's opening of the Murcia, Spain Apple Store, various sources have reported stores underway or near opening around the world. The next most likely international store is thought to be in Paris, France in the La Defense district, which is scheduled to open on May 26. Also coming later in the year is a new story in Salt Lake City, Utah; one near Bakersfield, California; a planned expansion of the existing store in Calgary, Alberta in Canada, and Apple has allegedly taken over a lease on a store in Plymouth, England.
A recent patent award reveals plans for further improvement in iOS cameras, allowing for two or more different zones of an image to be selected for focus and other settings, with the camera selecting a compromise point automatically if there is too much difference in the selected zones. The patent application also suggests that future iPhones might incorporate a dedicated image processor for photos and video.
The independent biopic of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher that begins filming next month has modified its title to simply jOBS with the "Get Inspired" portion that was previous thought to be part of the title now identified as just a tagline. The low-budget production from Five Star Feature Films says it will commence principle photography next month, including the actual Los Altos home of Jobs' parents, including the garage that started it all.
Continuing with a string of recent arrivals on US regional carriers, the iPhone has arrived to two news that cover northwest Oklahoma and Puerto Rico, respectively. Open Mobile, the Puerto Rico carrier, may be the first exclusively no-contract carrier in the US to offer iPhones. Oklahoma-based Pioneer Cellular is carrying only the iPhone 4S, while Open Mobile has both the 4 and 4S at various capacities.
In the wake of legal "requests" sent to its organizer, the London-based Apple Expo is now called the Appule Expo. Undaunted, Microsoft has recently booked space at the show. The newly named gathering will take place on October 11 and 12 of this year. Apple is not expected to attend.
Apple is one of several parties in talks with Russia's Skolkovo technology park about possible research and development facilities there, according to local publication Izvestia. Other interested companies are said to include Google and Facebook; agreements are reportedly already in place for firms such as Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, and Cisco. Skolkovo's organizers are said to be aiming at making the park a Russian equivalent of Silicon Valley.
A new class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple in California, accusing the company of "unfair, unlawful, deceptive, and misleading practices" in promoting iCloud, according to AppleInsider. The case -- filed on behalf of Danyelle Comer in the US District Court for the Northern District of California -- specifically targets Apple for failing to properly transition paid Mobile Me subscribers over to iCloud. "Throughout the migration, Apple failed to adequately ensure that features Mobile Me users were paying for would be accessible, including access to their e-mail accounts for which customers pay additional fees," complaint documents read. "As a result, numerous Mobile Me users suffered damage from the inability to access their individual accounts."
Today at Apple's online store save on Mac minis, iMacs and more. Starting at $519 is the refurbished Mac mini with a 2.3GHz Intel dual core i5 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Or for $699 is the refurb. Mac mini with a 2.5GHz Intel dual-core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive.
This week in the MacNN forums, one Forum Regular noticed that the only way to quit Chrome in OS X Lion is by using Force Quit and they are looking for any possible better solutions, read more here. Forum members discuss App store terms in this thread started by Grizzled Veteran Doc HM earlier this week.
Apple has announced details of the 2012 iTunes Festival, to be held at the Roundhouse in London, England. The event will consist of 30 nights of free concerts by over 60 artists, including the likes of Jack White, Norah Jones, and Usher; only a handful of artists have been announced so far. For 2012, the festival has been moved from July to September.
RIM and Motorola have submitted a new, compromise nano-SIM design based on a concept from Apple, reports say. The new design has the same outline and contacts as Apple's proposal, but with a notch on one side making space for what RIM calls a "push-push" mechanism; pushing in the card once secures it, pushing it in again pops it out. Apple's idea may have been less practical, requiring a tray to hold a card steady.
Today's deals from DealNN include price breaks on Mac Pros, speaker systems, and more. Macmall.com is now offering discounts on multiple Mac Pros, one of which is the 2.4GHz Mac Pro with a quad-core Intel Xeon Westmere processor, 6GB of RAM, 18x SuperDrive, and 1TB Hard Drive. Currently featured at DealNN, this computer has now dropped $280 in price and can be purchased for only $3,219.
Before his death, Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs allegedly worked on a redesigned, next-generation iPhone that features a larger screen and LTE compatibility, Bloomberg reports. Three sources have confirmed that the company has ordered larger screens for the next iPhone, but did not indicate exactly what size the new device would use. Current rumors have Apple favoring a four-inch (measured diagonally) screen.
Aaron Sorkin, the screenwriter behind 2010's The Social Network and the TV series The West Wing told reporters earlier today that he has little idea about what he's going to write so far in Sony's planned biographical film on the life of Apple co-creator and former CEO Steve Jobs. He did reveal that the movie won't be a "straight ahead biography" and that Steve Wozniak has been hired as an advisor.
One of the defendants dealing with multiple antitrust lawsuits has settled the overall complaint filed by many states' attorneys general. As a result, Judge Denise Cote granted a motion on Tuesday to dismiss Simon & Schuster from the federal complaint. The terms of the settlement have not been provided.
A small number of users in the Apple Support Communities have reported that their iCloud e-mail accounts may have been compromised by spammers, even in cases where the user had a strong, randomized password. Reports began flowing in of mostly little-used iCloud accounts sending out spam messages, replies to which alerted users of the problem. Apple has not commented on the issue thus far.
Unconfirmed reports of Apple testing Ivy Bridge-based MacBook Pro prototypes with latest-generation SSD storage may suggest that the company is considering making the faster drives part of the standard configuration of the new machines, which are expected to utilize a super-thin redesign like the MacBook Air and debut sometime in the near future. Whether the machines would continue to offer room for traditional notebook HDDs is unknown.
The US District Court of Delaware has ordered Apple and HTC to enter settlement discussions. Judge Sherry Fallon will be moderating the talks, which follow the import ban that has stalled HTC's Evo 4G LTE and One X from entering the US, reports Florian Mueller.
Before his death on October 5th, one of the things Apple co-founder Steve Jobs wanted to build was a so-called "iCar," according to company board member and J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler. "Look at the car industry; it's a tragedy in America," he said during a Fast Company conference this week. "Who is designing the cars? ... Steve's dream before he died was to design an iCar."
Apple has released a fourth preview of Mountain Lion Server to developers. The code is also listed as build 12S219n, and follows just a day after a third update of the main Mountain Lion preview. A number of known issues are listed in the Server preview; among others, there are several problems each in the use of FileVault, Time Machine, and Game Center.
Apple's large-scale datacenter in Maiden, North Carolina will run entirely on renewable energy by the end of the year, the company has announced. Currently Apple is in the middle of buying equipment from Bloom Energy and SunPower Corp. to build not one but two solar arrays in the Maiden area; previously, only one was known to be in development. Once the equipment is in place, it should generate 84 million kWh of energy per year. Apple's fuel cell farm should be finished later in 2012.
For a brief time on Thursday Apple was censoring appearances of the word "jailbreak" on the iTunes Store, reports note. One example included the Thin Lizzy album and song of the same name, which were suddenly renamed "J*******k." Other instances of the word, though, are said to have remained unaffected. By Thursday afternoon Eastern time, the extra censorship is observed to have disappeared.
Apple has managed to win the contested rights to iphone5.com, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization website. The case has been updated to "Terminated," and visiting iphone5.com currently displays a blank page, rather than a forum that used to be in place. Apple applied to take control of the domain earlier this month, hoping to wrest it away from a protection agency identified as the Corporation Service Company.
Data from research analysis firm Gartner has revealed that Apple has managed to capture almost eight percent of the global market for mobile phones of all types -- both feature phones and smartphones combined, The Mac Observer reports. This makes the company the third-largest mobile phone maker in the world, behind Nokia and Samsung. Apple has doubled its share of the global cell phone market in only a year.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) has released its latest findings on the state of US consumer satisfaction in the areas of cellphone manufacturers and wireless carriers. For the former, there was one runaway winner -- Apple. For the latter, Sprint was able to score a win among a tight field. Overall satisfaction was up an incremental 0.1 percent to a 75.9 score out of a possible 100.
