We knew it had to happen. There was no way the great white (and blue, and whatever color Yahoo is) search engine sharks could resist the fire hoses full of text chum Twitter produces 24/7. Heck, Twitter even chops its textual fish heads into lovely bite-sized chunks.
The Apple store went offline Tuesday morning and when it returned, it did so with a groaning board of new hardware, including a range of aluminum and edge-to-edge glass iMacs, new Mac Minis, a 13-inch unibody polycarbonate MacBook and a wireless, multitouch “Magic Mouse.”
Apple has long been a subscriber to the underpromise-and-over-deliver school of guidance theory, so it’s not unusual to see research houses raising their guidance on the company in advance of its fourth-quarter financials. Among those doing so today: Morgan Keegan, whose Tavis McCourt says the June refresh of the MacBook Pro line and the recent launch of Snow Leopard have juiced sales at Amazon and Best Buy.
Looks like tethering on Apple’s iPhone is still a matter of “when and not if,” as AT&T likes to say. Though the carrier’s decision to allow Internet telephony apps on its 3G network has lead some to speculate that the company will soon allow data tethering as well, that’s not the case. Evidently, there’s still a while to wait until AT&T supports that long-promised feature.
After nearly a year out of the public eye, Apple CEO Steve Jobs returned to it yesterday at the company’s annual music event. It was his first public appearance at an Apple gathering since Oct. 14, 2008, when he uncrated the company’s new unibody MacBooks, and it far overshadowed the new products he was about to announce. In fact, it could be argued that public confirmation of Jobs’s health since his return to the company was truly the most significant announcement of the day.
The high-end PC market is not a bad place to be. Just ask Apple, which rules it and with great financial success. According to new stats from NPD Group, Apple now claims 91 percent of the U.S. retail market for personal computers costing more than $1,000. Nine out of 10 dollars spent on such machines in June went to Cupertino.
So that mysterious touch tablet Apple’s rumored to be developing? It’s about to go into production in advance of an October launch date. This according to a report in the Information Times, which claims that three of Apple’s manufacturing partners–Foxconn, Wintek and Dynapack–have received orders from Apple that suggest the company is building a “netbook” with a 9.7-inch touchscreen.
Looks like Apple may have another hit on its hands with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. The company is reportedly having a hard time keeping the machine in stock as it heads into the back-to-school buying season. And for good reason: It’s a significant upgrade at a lower price. Starting at $1,199, it’s $100 less than the original aluminum MacBook it replaces.
10:01, and lights dim to reveal a movie screen. Onscreen: John Hodgman, as PC, welcoming attendees to WWDC and encouraging developers to slow down iPhone App development. Increasingly frustrated Hodgman finally fires off a raspberry. Replaced by Mac guy, who welcomes everyone to WWDC. Phil Schiller takes the stage now. “Can’t you feel the love in this room.” 25 million active OS X users in the past two years, he says, talking up Leopard. Installed base has tripled in the past two years.
Earlier this year, Apple COO Tim Cook said the company would use “whatever weapons we have at our disposal” to pursue anyone who “rips off” Apple’s iPhone intellectual property. He’d better hope those weapons are as effective a defense as offense because the company may soon need them. Elan Microelectronics has slapped Apple with a lawsuit claiming the MacBook, iPhone and iPod touch infringe upon touchscreen patents it holds.
I’m not sure which is more surprising: that Dell would publicly criticize Apple’s environmental claims in a post to the company’s Direct2Dell blog or that anyone would pay any attention whatsoever to that post, which is poorly researched and as unwieldy and silly as late ’90s-era Inspiron.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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