Apple - page 19

You got another Apple gadget for Christmas, didn’t you? And you love it, don’t you?

So at what point do you officially declare yourself to be one of those Cupertino Kool-Aid-guzzling, Steve Jobs-worshiping, pathetically devoted Apple fans you used to loathe?

Ten years ago, there were two kinds of people: PC users (a.k.a. “regular people”) and Apple fanboys. At least that’s how it looked from the PC side.

Macs were pretty, but considered by us PC users to be overpriced, underpowered, insufficiently supported by either software or hardware, too hard to customize, optimize or repair and completely devoid of key application areas, such as games.

The world was black and white. You were either a PC or a Mac. Then things got complicated.

The upcoming Jack Black comedy, Gulliver’s Travels, which opens Christmas Day, will be one giant Apple ad.

When Gulliver travels to Lilliput, he brings his iPhone, which when used by the Lilliputians appears gigantic.

The movie has multiple MacBooks and other Apple products, and Apple logos galore.

Apple is easily the most successful company ever in getting its products into movies and TV shows. Some 41% of the movies that hit number-one at the box office featured Apple products.

Part of the reason for this success is that Hollywood is Apple-obsessed. Another is that Apple works at it. The company proudly boasts that it never pays for product placement. But it’s likely that there is some string pulling, proactive offers of devices to use and other actions that are kept secret by the company.

Whatever Apple is doing, it’s working.

Let’s face it, fanboys and girls love getting Apple related gifts for the holidays. But if you are lucky enough to have an Apple nerd in your family, you have by now realized that most Apple inspired gifts are usually boring or total crap. Fear not, though, friends, I present to thee 10 gifts that are guaranteed to make your Apple obsessed loved one squeal in glee.

Most Apple gifts out there have been made in this decade. But for the diehard Apple fan, vintage gifts are sure to please. This genuine Apple projector pen hides a special power—an Apple logo projector! I’m not quite sure what if any utility this might have, but I think we can all agree it’s a surefire way to impress the ladies.

Did you know Apple is currently embroiled in 42 patent litigation actions against two major Android phone manufacturers, Motorola and HTC? As these things tend to do, resolution of the disputes will take years — and the legal battles surrounding Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android will enrich dozens of attorneys and their families in the process.

Outside of those attorneys there may be no one on earth who has followed the litigation more closely than Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents. Mueller published an exhaustive summary of the current state of affairs last week, and updated it on Monday with the handy graphic pictured above.

Click on the image for a larger view and read Mueller’s updated summary if you dare: it’s a document synthesized from thousands of court filings, organized into 13 “moves” — and fills 25 PDF pages.

[Fortune]

If you’re in the netbook, notebook, PC, hand-held gaming, newspaper or DVD business, Apple wants to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti — at least according to a huge number of observers who don’t know what the word “cannibalize” means.

For example, Microsoft’s general manager for Windows product management, Gavriella Schuster, said this month that the netbook market is “definitely getting cannibalized” by the iPad.

Wait, “cannibalized”? What does that mean, exactly? And why is everybody saying it?

Business valuations are almost always a tricky figure to pin down, but analysts at Trefis figure they have a pretty reliable one for the iPhone, in case Apple and Steve Jobs might be thinking of spinning it off as a separate company.

By Trefis’s numbers, which assume a 140%-of-market-cap valuation for Apple (AAPL) as a whole and iPhone as representing 53% of Apple’s business, then the iPhone business alone would be worth more than all but 10 companies in existence worldwide today.

Interestingly enough, at $209 billion, iPhone, Inc. would be worth just slightly less than the 10th largest company in the world, AT&T.

[CNNMoney]

He drives a hybrid and he’s fanatical about recycling — here are some gift ideas for the man who cares about the planet. Don’t forget to recycle the packaging!

A metrosexual is a man who has a strong concern for his appearance (or any concern for his appearance, really). He typically craves the most stylish clothes and home accessories. He’s form-over-function. He keeps fit, takes care of himself, and he wants you to know it. Here are some metrosexual-worthy gift ideas.

When PC platforms were the central battlefield for technology, Microsoft was Apple’s big threat, hated enemy and all-purpose nemesis. But those days are gone.

Yet some Apple Faithful rage on against Redmond like abandoned Japanese soldiers on remote Pacific islands long after the end of WWII. It’s time for those Apple fans to come back to civilization understand what’s really happening now. Microsoft is more a friend than an enemy to Apple.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifrXlloH9s

Cult of Mac was asked by CNBC’s Street Signs to contribute our thoughts on the current market debate of whether it’s wiser to invest in Gold or Apple. Even though we don’t masquerade as financial advisors, the debate in the short-term seems fairly straightforward to us, and here are a few of the major points:

A recent teardown of the new MacBook Air today revealed that the pretty little notebook is unsurprisingly laden with a bevy of proprietary engineering making it one of the most difficult notebooks on the market to repair. Highlights of the full break down can be read after the jump.

UPDATE: Well, turns out we were wrong about this one; it’s been around for awhile. Crow, anyone?

That rumor we mentioned yesterday — the one where we thought Apple would announce a new social network based around Apple Genii? Turns out Apple quietly added something very close to what we predicted yesterday during the virtual Apple Store’s refresh for the new MacBook Air and iLife ’11.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M1r-xsFw0Q

We’ve been playing around with the new beta release of FaceTime, and while it’s slim on features, we’re fairly pleased with the app considering it’s still in the beta phase. So far FaceTime for Mac is a simple replication of FaceTime from iOS, but it’s simplicity is what I like about it so far.

This chart tracks the dizzying rise of new products in Apple’s sales mix. Currently about 60% of Apple’s sales come from products that the Cupertino company launched in the last three years.

“This last quarter is not a holiday quarter. Now imagine what next quarter will look like on this chart,” writes Horace Dediu, who charted Apple’s sales in the graph for Asymco. “Think back to 2001 before the iPod. The orange band was all that Apple had.”

Source: Asymco

If you recently used Limera1n or GreenPois0n to jailbreak your iOS device, and want to make sure that iTunes doesn’t automatically update your device’s firmware whenever the next update is released by Apple, then here is a quick fix to prevent you from accidentally updating your iPhone/iPod/iPad.

In 1983, Steve Jobs wooed Pepsi executive John Sculley to Apple with one of the most famous lines in business: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Jobs and Sculley ran Apple together as co-CEOs, blending cutting-edge technology (the first Macintosh computer) with cutting-edge advertising (the famous 1984 ad) and world-class design. But it soon soured, and Sculley is best known today for forcing Jobs’ resignation after a boardroom battle for control of the company.

Now, for the first time, Sculley talks publicly about Steve Jobs and the secrets of his success. It’s the first interview Sculley has given on the subject of Jobs since he himself was forced out of the company in 1993.

“There are many product development and marketing lessons I learned working with Steve in the early days,” says Sculley. “It’s impressive how he still sticks to his same first principles years later.”

He adds, “I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.”

Continue reading

Slide-on iPhone 4 do cause scratches and cracks on the device’s glass back, the vast majority of readers reported in a poll we ran on Friday.

Almost 75 percent of repondents said their iPhone 4 has been scratched, cracked or otherwise damaged by a slide-on case. Only 26 percent said they’d had no problems.

The poll was prompted by a report Ryan Block in GDGT that Apple is actively investigating slide-on cases before it turns into a PR disaster like Antennagate.

The results are at total surprise to me. I’d not heard of the issue before Friday, and I’ve used several slide-on cases with my iPhone 4 without problems.

Of course, online polls are far from scientific surveys. In fact, most commenters on the post report that they’ve had no problems. If you read the comments and ignore the poll, you’d get the impression that there isn’t an issue, or that trapped dirt affects all cases and all phones — not just the iPhone 4.

The results are interesting because it was unclear how widespread the issue was — it certainly didn’t seem mainstream. But as Block pointed out this morning, Apple is trying to preempt the issue before it becomes a public relations nightmare. More here: Following up on yesterday’s “Glassgate” story.

There is a great video of Steve Jobs giving an interview to 60 Minutes in which he states – rather boldly – that the problem with Microsoft is that they “simply have no taste.” He goes on to say that the Windows firm has “no originality” and “no culture infused into products.”

SAN FRANCISCO, MobileFocus, CTIA — The CTIA conference is one of North America’s biggest mobile phone shows and it was dominated by Apple — even though Apple wasn’t there.

Attendees were either talking about Apple, showing off Apple-challenging products, or selling Apple-compatible accessories and add-ons.

Just check out some of new iPhone and iPad accessories below that were shown off at the MobileFocus press-and-analyst-only sneak peek on Wednesday night.

Hello readers. Look at this remote. Now at your hands. Now back to the remote. Now back to your hands.

Maybe it’s a joke. Maybe it’s a clever ruse. Maybe it’s a prototype. Maybe it’s clever CGI like they used for Gollum. I have no idea. But the picture here (sourced from Engadget) is supposedly the remote control shipping with Sony’s TVs that have Google TV integrated inside. It is, in a word, a monstrosity (my friend MG said it best, “My God, it’s full of buttons!”).

Here are all the things wrong with it, in a nutshell:

SAN FRANCISCO: Google is not to be underestimated, but sitting here watching a demo of the first Google TV, I’m not sure it has mainstream appeal.

Built by Logitech and running Google’s Android software, the Logitech Revue Google TV has definite geek appeal. It does everything: the $299 box connects to satellite and cable TV, compatible DVRs and Web video, as well as other online multimedia. You can search for content using your voice and control it with a smartphone. It has apps, HD videoconferencing, and functions as a universal Harmony remote, controlling all your home theater devices. (For a detailed breakdown of how it compares to Apple TV, see here)

But there’s no way my mother will go for it.

Apple’s never really been very strong when it comes to designing usable mice, but they have certainly always been innovative: from the Mighty Mouse to the Magic Mouse to the Magic Trackpad.

Apple’s latest discovered patent describes a mouse that could have been: the Ambidextrous Mouse.

Back in the flower of my youth, I took a job at the local mall working as a minimum-wage cashier at a discount clothing outlet permeated with the distinct smell of moth balls. It was awful. My boss had a greasy pencil moustache and a lazy eye and was overly complimentary about the softness of my hands; my only customers were antique, gum-sucking grannies buying pre-soiled brassieres and underpants by the carriage full.

Meanwhile, across the way, my friend Josh had landed himself a job in a posh clothing boutique aimed largely at girls in their late teens and early twenties. It being summer, there seemed always to be a bikini sale going on, and I can’t even count the hours I spent watching him through the greasy yellow plate glass of my work store window, encouraging the buxom and spritely clientele — freshly emerged from the changing rooms in some impossibly flosslike two-piece to show off to their friends — to take a bounce on the complimentary trampolines that had been installed around the show floor. It was enough to make an undersexed teenage boy spill a vein in sheer impotent jealousy.

This memory came flooding back to me when I first saw the picture above of the Mall of America’s new Microsoft Store, which is currently under construction directly across from the Apple Store.

The iPad is set to become the fastest selling consumer electronics product in history, with initial sales running at three times that of the current record holder: the DVD player.

“The iPad did not seem destined to be a runaway product success straight out of the box,” retail analyst Colin McGranahan of Bernstein Research wrote in an investors’ note. “By any account, the iPad is a runaway success of unprecedented proportion.”