Apple Inc. - page 131

It’s been a bad year for RIM so far. Their BlackBerry business has been harried on all sides by the iPhone, and their stock has delated largely thanks to the arterial spray of customers they are losing to Apple.

Worse, in response to the iPad, RIM released the much heralded BlackBerry Playbook, which might just go down in the books as one of the worst, least functional and woefully misguided pieces of consumer technology ever.

Finally, just last week, Apple totally eliminated RIM’s sole advantage over iOS by announcing iMessage, which Wall Street is already saying will kill BlackBerry’s remaining prospects in enterprise.

Anyone surprised that RIM”s now announcing layoffs after seeing their first quarter results? I thought not.

Neat spot by Alam van Roemburg: the iCloud icon uses the Golden Ratio, which has been thought since the 16th Century to lead to pleasing, harmonious proportions in aesthetic design.

Social networking giant Facebook is secretly working on a way to put their own App Store on tens of millions of iOS devices. It’s called Project Spartan, and it’s an aggressive attempt to build an HTML5 front end for all of Facebook’s existing apps on any Apple device, even without Flash installed.

We can all recall the terror-filled moment when we decided to create a home network. Just as two programs to ease the process gain steam, iCloud comes along, and risks making the whole concept of home AV networks obsolete.

If the patent drawing above is anything to go by, Apple is working on a new social experience for the iPhone that will allow irradiated, cycloptic mutants to find out what they have in common with one another even in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Based on the actual wording of the patent, though, it should work for everyone, allowing you to use your iPhone to find the most interesting person in the room, every time.

Apple has just erected plywood walls around their iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City, and some massive renovations are about to go down. Could the iconic glass cube be about to go sphere?

Here’s a bit of sweet timing. Just as the PC Era collapses and everyone moves to the cloud, what is Apple selling? Why, the MacBook Air, a light mobile device that seems perfect for the iCloud generation. Oh, yeah, it’s also a “quasi-tablet.” No wonder analysts predict Apple will make billions off the device.

Apple users are embracing the App Economy with abandon. Indeed, by 2015, income from apps will exceed that of iTunes music downloads, one analyst projects.

If you’re going to school in the fall and were anticipating a free iPod Touch along with your new Mac, prepare to feel ripped.

The iPad has been widely embraced by publishers who think it will stave off the death of print, but the latest forecast is grim: not even the “magical” iPad can save newspapers from the grave.

Just one day after we posted the top ten most common iPhone passcodes, Apple has yanked the app that generated them. According to the developer, though, he was only following Apple’s own rules.

Want to know what it’s like to work at the Apple Store? How to get hired, what training you’ll receive, how much you’ll be paid, even the choice of words you’ll be forced to use when you let a customer down? A new subscriber only report from the Wall Street Journal has all the juicy details. Here’s the most interesting bits.

After repeatedly being bashed by Apple, here some good news for RIM: mobile advertisers aren’t abandoning the platform, but actually taking a second look with dumb phone advertising rising, says one advertising network Wednesday.

We’ve often remarked how important iTunes and the App Store is to Apple’s future. Begun as a way to sell digital songs, the iTunes ecosystem now touches every device from the Mac to the iPad. Turns out, the Cupertino, Calif. company pumps more than $1 billion into the service each year.

In what sounds more like a court case between a feuding couple than two tech rivals, The notoriously-secretive Apple reportedly described Samsung’s demand to get a peak at unannounced iPhones and iPads as “attempts to harass.”

Apple Tuesday officially endorsed what hackers have already accomplished: selling an ‘unlocked’ version of the iPhone 4. The Apple Store announced Tuesday it is offering a 16GB and 32GB unlocked iPhone 4 – a day earlier than expected. However, there’s one hitch – the phone will work with only GSM carriers.

Apple’s annual Back to School promotion is rumored to launch this week, but it may not be quite as appealing as it has been in previous years. Rather than a free iPod touch with your new Mac purchase, one report claims this year’s giveaway will be a $100 iTunes Gift Card.

Steve Jobs wanted to build his futuristic spaceship campus thirty years ago, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

Jobs wanted a “shimmery glass structure” surrounded by trees in rural San Jose. He had purchased the land and had lined up world-class architect I.M. Pei to design it.

“To me, it’s as if time hasn’t shifted — 30 years, same vision, same scope, same dream,” said real estate consultant Bob Feld, who worked with Jobs at the time.

So what happened?

To celebrate IBM’s centenary next week, the world’s leading financial magazine, The Economist, took a look at what high-tech companies might survive 100 years.

Apple made the cut, but Microsoft didn’t. And Google is looking sketchy. Why?

Apple’s iCloud may be looking to revolutionize the way consumers interact with the cloud, but that doesn’t mean Cupertino’s not drawing on its competitors expertise when it comes to actually hosting their online services.

In fact, Apple’s pushing the iCloud online with more than a little bit of help from both Microsoft and Amazon.

One tech reviewer has likened RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook to “the herpes of tablets.” Although the CNN writer was joking, not so funny is how consumers are shying away from the iPad rival.

Need a clue to how fast the world’s changing? Apple – which has been in the phone business less than five years – is about to sell more smartphones than Nokia for the first time ever. That’s the last laurel Nokia has left.

Apple has just confirmed that they are recalling a limited number of Verizon iPad 2s, and now we know the reason why.

The bleeding just won’t stop for BlackBerry-maker RIM. A half-dozen Wall Street analysts are cutting the share’s target prices amid concern the Canadian company is in free-fall and Apple’s iMessage just cut the emergency parachute.

Mobile is the future. Despite App Store integration in OS X Lion and Apple’s increased excitement about the Mac, the number of iOS developers also working on Mac applications has dwindled to single digits.