Have Apple lawyers targeted Palm as a potential target for patent-infringment lawsuits? Concerns sent shares of the Palm Pre handset slipping Tuesday.
Palm shares were down $0.40 as of 1:22 p.m. Eastern. Apple’s stock was up $0.86.
Worries were renewed earlier today on word Apple had been granted a patent covering a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.
Turns out, while the iPhone and iPod Touch are just about the awesomest fart-generating devices ever, the considerable power of Apple’s mobile devices can also be marshaled to more productive uses, such as processing credit card sales.
ProcessAway, a Tustin, CA-based company has submitted to Apple software that will allow busiiness owners to process credit card transactions over any available network connection. The app is designed for use in places such as conventions, street fairs, antique shows, and by business owners performing mobile detailing, on-site consultation or construction, but certainly the list of scenarios is virtually endless where on-the-spot transaction processing could be useful.
ProcessAway software utilizes the Authorize.net gateway (one of the very first Internet payment gateways) with one of the largest customer bases in the card processing industry. “The Authorize.net API fueled development of ProcessAway,” according to spokesman Randy Palermo, allowing “millions of iPhone (and iTouch) users to turn their device into a credit card terminal.”
Authorize.net merchant accounts used with ProcessAway include an option to download transactions into Quickbooks and also a comprehensive Virtual Terminal. This will give business owners the benefit of processing transactions out of the office with ProcessAway as well as in the office through the web-based Virtual Terminal, all with a single account. Even though the Virtual Terminal is available, ProcessAway was designed as a stand-alone comprehensive processing solution that can be used effectively in any environment.
ProcessAway software will be sold through the iTunes AppStore for $19.99. A fully functional free version, called ProcessLite, will also be available, identical to ProcessAway except the charge amount is limited.
The apps were submitted to Apple on January 26 and the developer offers a notification sign-up page should you want to hop on this one as soon as it’s available.
Apple was granted a key patent covering many aspects of the iPhone interface as well as potentially other “multi-touch” handsets. CEO Steve Jobs was listed among the inventors in a 358-page filing awarded last week.
The patent covers the iPhone, gestures and the handset’s OS X operating software.
U.S. Patent No. 7479949 comes saber-rattling between Apple and other touch-screen handset makers. Last week, interim Apple CEO Tim Cook warned unnamed competitors that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company would protect its intellectual property.
Meet Rob Baca. He’s a serious vintage Mac collector, with a total of 75 machines in his possession. He’s also the man who co-directed the documentary Welcome to Macintosh, which counts among its interviewees our very own Leander Kahney.
One of Rob’s computers – bought from a friend on the condition that Rob would give it a loving home – is this original 128k Mac.
What can you tell us about it, Rob?
Here are two iPhone home screens. On the left, my iPhone home screen from a few months ago. Everything normal.
On the right, my iPhone home screen from yesterday. And something weird has happened.
An additional line has been added to the status bar at the top, pushing all the app icons closer together. It displays only the characters “O2” – the name of my British network provider. Which is already displayed, of course, in the main part of the status bar. What, as they say, the frak?
The Apple Mactintosh Division, 1984
The Macintosh Division, 2009
Apple’s Macintosh Division had a 25th Anniversary reunion at the home of Alain Rossman (software evangelist) and Joanna Hoffman (the division’s conscience and first marketing person) to celebrate the unveiling of the Macintosh on January 24, 1984 – and Guy Kawasaki has a bunch of pics up from the event, complete with interesting tidbits and backstory info on the people and events that drove the evolution of Apple’s groundbreaking invention.
He’s also got a couple of interesting videos up, one of which we’ve posted here, showing Steve Jobs unveiling the Mac for the first time.
Time flies when you’re having fun, eh?
MacHEADS – The Movie, the recently-released documentary on the interesting, outspoken community of people who believe Mac is the Holy Grail of personal computing, went up on Amazon VOD Monday, where you can “rent” the film for a week for $2.99 or buy it outright for $9.99.
MacHEADS debuted at Macworld Expo 2009 with over 1000 people attending the premiere. In an interview for BBC director Kobi Shely added, “The movie explores everything from the early days to the current days. Central to the success of the Mac has been the community that has supported Apple through the good times and the bad. That included the years when the company was written off as having lost its way and the ink on one of its many obituaries was all but dry.”
The film also features footage and commentary from multiple Mac evangelists, including Apple Chief Evangelist and savior Guy Kawasaki; the first official employee of Apple inc., Daniel Kottke; publisher of the first Apple newsletter Adam Engst; Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist Andy Ihantko; and a special guest appearance by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
MacHEADS is due to be available on the iTunes store next week.
Delays in shipping Apple’s new iMacs are due mostly to “business reasons,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told clients Monday.
Chief among the reasons are decisions on which chip to use in the iMacs and the timing of Apple’s release of its upcoming Snow Leopard operating system.
“Apple is in the midst of figuring out whether to power the new iMac line with Intel quad-core processors or more high-powered dual-core processors with larger caches,” Wu wrote in his report.
In a technological tale of two cities, Microsoft reported quarterly sales of its Zune media player fell by 54 percent as demand for Apple’s dominant iPod rose by 3 percent.
The $100 million drop in Zune sales came amid word Friday Microsoft would lay off up to 5,000 employees.
A number of factors are part of the contrasting sales picture. “It’s the category, it’s the business, it’s the economy,” Zune marketing director Adam Sohn told Macworld.
The BlackBerry Storm, RIM’s first touch-screen handset, has gotten off to a rough start in its bid to compete with Apple’s iPhone, according to a report Monday.
The phone, plagued by technical problems, sold 500,000 units a month after RIM unveiled the device Nov. 21, according to the Wall Street Journal. By contrast, Apple sold 2.4 million iPhone 3Gs in its first quarter.
Jim Balsillie, RIM’s co-chief executive, said swatting bugs after a product hits the shelves is now the “new reality” as cell phone makers attempt to duplicate Apple’s success with the iPhone.
A new trojan horse variant has been found in pirated versions of Adobe’s latest version of the Photoshop suite, security researchers warned Monday. The trojan horse is considered a “serious” security risk, opening Macs to malicious takeover by remote users.
The Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.B, is included in Photoshop CS4 cracking software distributed on file-sharing networks such as BiTorrent, according to security software developer Intego.
“The actual Photoshop installer is clean, but the Trojan horse is found in a crack application,” Intego announced in a statement.
James Savage from the RetroMacCast got in touch to share his story of original Mac ownership.
James owns up to having a collection of 170 Macs. I’ll let him explain more…
When a computer gives up the ghost, there are a lot of things you can do to keep it around the house.
Here are a few ways we’ve found, if you’ve found a new way to give new life to your dead Mac, let us know.
Macquarium: when your mac is swimming with the fishes.
There are a ton of these — flickr counts nearly 700 — but this slick black version was made by Dave D’aranjo who rescued a Mac from a Singapore sidewalk and turned it into an aquarium. He spent a couple of months fashioning the fish bowl, following the how-to in low end Mac, then adding his own touches and getting a custom logo to give it a screen-saver look.
This is a page from The Magazine, an ezine-in-an-app that’s now available on the App Store for a dollar.
By itself, it’s not much to write home about in my opinion. The presentation is amateurish and the content not terribly interesting. And there simply isn’t very much of it. Not my kind of magazine at all, frankly.
But what’s more interesting is the concept of a mag-as-an-app.
Australian Cult reader Dirk Spennemann is one of those lucky people who, on starting a new job where everyone’s on Windows boxes, can insist on a Mac. His fabulous photo set demonstrates just how much he admires these old Macs, but we wanted to know how he got his hands on that 128k.
Over the last 25 years, Apple has put out legions of Macs. In honor of the anniversary of the world’s greatest computer, I’ve taken the liberty of classifying all of Apple’s industrial design into six eras, starting with putty, and continuing to the current black and aluminum hey-day. Click through and come take a trip with us back to 1984!
SOURCES
Walking the desolate streets of the Information Superhighway this morning, I thought I’d never find that slippery textured, geometric laptop modification of my dreams…
*(and it's not owned by Apple, inc)
Lacking the network of preexisting business customers, and B2B distribution channels of it’s principal rival IBM, Apple’s success was midwife’d by a hodge-podge of independent resellers and enthusiasts.
It seems apropos, on this the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, to celebrate one of the few that remain of this early band of crazy ones, misfits and rebels, without whom Apple Computer would be little more than a footnote.
Image © 2009 Nik Fletcher
This post is really more about Macworld, the trade show and conference, than it is about the device that spawned it. But for 24 of Mac’s 25 years, the two have gone hand-in-hand.
While indications seem clear the Mac and Apple are both healthy and vital at 25, with years of relevance and innovation ahead despite whatever rough patches the economy may present in the near term, the fate of what has been for many years the Apple community’s most anticipated event is very much up in the air.
Of course the entire world is aware by now Apple decided to make 2009 its final appearance at the huge trade show held the first week or so of January at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. The smart money immediately proclaimed Apple’s move to quit Macworld spelled doom for the event.
Rumors swirled during this year’s show that Apple itself might be moving next year to the larger, far more ambitious International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas right around the same time as Macworld.
Just this week, iLounge announced plans to fund a high-profile unified pavilion area for iPod and iPhone products at CES in 2010.
Blogger John Gruber penned Friday a misty paean to the City and the Expo, one of the smarter, more comprehensive assessments of the overall picture I’ve yet seen.
Gruber and I agree on a couple of points worth noting: as he wrote,
1) “There is nothing else like Macworld Expo, and if it fades away, there will be nothing to take its place.” With Apple gone, Macworld will be different and if it is to survive, it will have to be different in a way that keeps it vital and active for the diverse mix of large and small exhibitors that make up a healthy event; and
2) The great majority of exhibitors who make up Macworld, 90 percent of whose products are not available at the Apple Store, want the conference and expo to survive, but almost to a one they confirmed to me, as I walked the floor at this year’s conference (and to Gruber as well), – they will wait and see who else is going to stay on board.
This week a quiet campaign began, led by the community of Mac-o-philes who most definitely want to see Macworld survive and prosper. IDG, the event promoter, has agreed to give anyone who pre-registers now for next year’s event, January 4 – 8, 2010, a free Expo pass. Not buy one get one free, just register now and go for free.
IDG has also placed a big SUGGESTION BOX graphic on the front page of the website, a mailto: link the IDG PR representative I spoke with assures me the promoter will pay close attention to for feedback from attendees and exhibitors alike.
It may well be true that Apple no longer has a need for Macworld, that its growing chain of Retail Stores and increasing market awareness make it a bad business decision to spend millions of dollars to be the anchor tenant at the sprawling event.
For the hundreds of other businesses who’ve come to rely on Macworld as an opportunity to get their products in front of and tell their stories to thousands of people over four days in San Francisco, the stakes are very different.
Story and photos by Natalie Guillén
SANTA FE, New Mexico — As Arch Sproul unpacked half a dozen Macintosh Classic IIs, all six of his employees hovered around in excitement.
It was fall of 1992, and most of the employees had never used a computer before.
Today, four of those original computers are still in use, working overtime seven days a week at the Virginia Trading Post arts and crafts store, nestled next to dozens of other shops downtown. They are used mainly as cash registers, scanning bar codes, and keeping tabs on inventory.
The machines are rare examples of aging Macs that are still in daily use. They are a testament to the utility and longevity of the Mac, which celebrates its 25th anniversary on Sunday.
Times they have changed: a quarter of a century ago, reporter Michael J. Miller was on the West Coast bureau of Popular Computing. (Now he blogs for PC mag.)
A few choice extracts about his trip down to Cupertino to see the first Mac:
“I met with Steve Jobs, who was then Apple Chairman and heading up the Mac project, along with key designers including Burrell Smith, the original hardware designer and software designers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson.”
“Most of the time I was meeting with other members on the team, but I remember Jobs coming in — he was very charismatic: intense, proud of the work and a bit prickly about any criticism. He and his folks were quick to put down the IBM PC and its clones for not pushing the envelope and settling for “mediocrity.”
“Jobs and the team were rightly proud of the new machine, which was very different from the IBM PC that then dominated the industry. Maybe it was the famous “Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field,” but even then I was entranced by the new machine and the possibilities it offered – particularly the graphical user interface.”
Miller’s trip down memory lane — complete with anecdotes about the Mac II, Apple’s first laser printer and the role of industrial design at Apple — is well worth a read.
Some iPod nano owners may being getting refunds after Apple agreed to pay $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit, according to a report Friday.
Consumers who purchased the original nano introduced in 2005 could receive $25 as part of an agreement yet to be signed by the court, CNBC reports.
“Apple has agreed to provide a cash settlement of $22.5 million,” the Cupertino, Calif.-based company told nano owners this week. A $25 refund will be given to nano owners who purchased the digital music player without a “slip case,” designed to prevent the screens of early nanos from scratching.
Tarus Balog got in touch to tell us this fantastic story of an original Mac that got dumped. Tarus rescued it from certain doom, gave it a little TLC – and found a little software surprise waiting for him.
Get the full story, and some more great pics, after the clicky jumpy thing.
Palm said Friday it won’t be threatened by Apple’s hint of lawsuit should rivals mimic too closely its best-selling iPhone. The maker of the new Pre smartphone did some trash talking of its own, bringing up “fundamental” handset patents it owns.
“If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves,” Palm spokewoman Lynn Fox told the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.
Fox said Palm controls a “robust patent portfolio” that includes possibly vital aspects of cell phone design. Palm’s Treo handset is seen as breaking ground for Apple and other smartphone makers.
Apple has delayed shipment of some of its new unibody MacBooks by up to a more than a month after originally promised, according to a report Friday.
In one case, a 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro ordered earlier this week won’t ship from its Chinese plant until February 26th and may not reach the buyer until early March, a reader told Apple Insider.
In another instance, Apple has automatically upgraded shipping to overnight for MacBook buyers.