The Flash Player and a browser with Javascript support are needed..
Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Is Google preparing to challenge iTunes in the cloud?
February 18th, 2010 | 
Author: As the four biggest record companies wait to hear more about a proposed iTunes cloud music service, word comes now that Google has kicked the tires on a start-up specializing in cloud media.
Google has showed interest in possibly acquiring Los Angeles-based Catch Media, a company that intends to help make it simple for consumers to enjoy their digital movies, music, and books across numerous different hardware and service platforms, according to sources with knowledge of the negotiations. It’s unclear whether talks between Google and Catch have gone beyond informal discussions.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt (left) and Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris prepare to shake hands at the Vevo launch party two months ago.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)
If Google did acquire the company, it could help the search giant keep pace with Apple’s expected efforts to take iTunes to cloud computing. Last month, CNET reported that Apple has spoken to the top labels about plans to offer a streaming music service free of charge to consumers. Before agreeing to any new licensing deals, the labels are waiting for Apple to supply more information.
A Google spokesman responded to a request for comment by writing: “While we’re always talking to various people about various things, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” A representative from Catch declined to comment.
Catch doesn’t offer or store content. The company wants to be to digital media what Plus, Cirrus, and ATM networks are to the banking industry. Catch has developed a technology that helps hardware companies and service providers register, track, route and clear digital media as it moves across different platforms.
If Catch has its way, consumers will one day access media from different vendors and devices as easily as people withdraw money from any available ATM.
Founded in 2003 by brothers Boaz Ben-Yaacov and Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, Catch is focused on cloud-based music at this early stage in its development, sources said. In order to enable the cross-platform accessing of songs, Catch has licensed music from all four major record labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Music.
Conceivably, Catch is one way Google could equip Android cellphone owners with a means to access their iTunes music libraries.
Google’s interest in a start-up focused on cloud music has sparked speculation within the recording industry about the search engine’s music plans.
According to a December story in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Google was attempting to buy Lala, but Apple won out.
In December, Apple paid more than $80 million to acquire the company, which enables users to store a copy of their music libraries on the its servers and then access those songs from anywhere they can connect to the Web.
Barely two months prior to Lala’s acquisition, Google made news by partnering with the streaming service on a music-search deal. One music industry source said Google began circling Catch soon after losing Lala.
Because Google was pursuing an acquisition of Lala, some in the music industry see the search engine’s interest in Catch as part of a larger effort by Google to go deeper into digital music.
According to music sources, the industry would welcome a new music venture from Google CEO Eric Schmidt with open arms, sort of like how the chiefs of three of the largest labels literally welcomed Schmidt to the Vevo launch party in December.
Google’s YouTube has already become one of the Web’s biggest music outlets. Music videos at YouTube and Vevo, a site created by three top labels with YouTube’s help, attract millions of viewers each day.
The music industry has said for years that it would prefer an iTunes rival to emerge. As Apple and Google’s businesses increasingly begin to collide, who better than to face down Jobs and Apple than Schmidt and Google?
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10455535-261.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Apple, Entertainment, Google, media, Mozilla | 
Tags: Apple, Catch-Media, Google, iTunes, movies, multi-media, Music | 
No Comments »
Apple seeks ban on U.S. Nokia imports
The ongoing patent battle between Apple and Nokia escalated Friday, when Apple moved to block imports of Nokia cell phones to the U.S.
Apple made its request in a complaint filed with the International Trade Commission in Washington, an independent federal agency that examines issues including unfair trade practices involving patent, trademark, and copyright infringement. The agency will need to approve the request before it begins an investigation.
Will Nokia devices be blocked from the U.S.?
(Credit: Nokia)
In December, Nokia filed its own complaint with the USITC. In it, the Finnish company alleged that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents “in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers” and sought to ban imports of Apple’s iPhone, iPod, and MacBook products.
Responding to Apple’s latest move, Nokia spokesman Mark Durrant told Bloomberg that “Nokia will study the complaint when it is received and continue to defend itself vigorously. However this does not alter the fact that Apple has failed to agree appropriate terms for using Nokia technology and has been seeking a free ride on Nokia’s innovation since it shipped the first iPhone in 2007.”
Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment on the filing.
Back in October, before the patent debate between the two companies moved to the trade commission, Nokia filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Delaware regarding 10 patents related to wireless handsets, which Nokia says Apple has refused to license. Every iPhone model since the original, introduced in 2007, infringes on those patents, Nokia has charged.
Apple then filed a countersuit accusing Nokia of copying technology inside the iPhone.
In November, research firm Strategy Analytics reported that Apple had surpassed Nokia in quarterly mobile phone profits, bringing in $1.6 billion from the iPhone, compared with Nokia’s $1.1 billion in cell phone profits.
Nokia’s new mobile chief, Rick Simonson, acknowledged in an interview earlier this month that 2009 had been a difficult year for the company.
“Yes, we have lost ground in the smartphone space over the past 18 months, but the decline has stopped and stablized in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Simonson told the India Times.
“The new year will see [our] recovery in smartphones with the introduction of Maemo and the stabilization of the Symbian operating system, which by the way, continues to be the platform for the largest number of smartphones, globally,” Simonson added.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10436415-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
iMovie update reveals new Apple video format
Like most companies, Apple periodically releases software updates for its applications, fixing minor issues. However, an iMovie update released on Tuesday revealed a brand new video format the company has been developing.
(Credit: Apple Dubbed iFrame, the new video format is based on industry standard technologies like H.264 video and AAC audio. As expected with H.264, iFrame produces much smaller file sizes than traditional video formats, while maintaining its high-quality video. Of course, the smaller file size increases import speed and helps with editing video files.
iMovie 8.0.5 released on Tuesday adds compatibility with camcorders using the iFrame video format. Currently there are two cameras that support iFrame: the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A and the Sanyo VPC-FH1A.
The two cameras were introduced earlier Tuesday and default to shooting video in the new format. iFrame shoots at 960×540. The cameras can also record in high-definition 1080p (1920×1080), as well as high-speed video formats for slow-motion playback, according to Sanyo.
Apple hasn’t said how long it has been working on iFrame or if other video camera manufacturers would adopt the format. The company also didn’t say when support for the iFrame format would be added to its Final Cut Pro video-editing suite.
The iMovie update can be downloaded from Apple’s Web site or from the software update mechanism in Mac OS X.
Source :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10374263-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Heads up Apple, the Intel Netbook is unstoppable
Friday night at a Best Buy in Southern California. Maybe not the hippest place to be but some interesting dynamics were at work.
HP ‘Mini’ promo: more than a few of the newer Netbooks are not low quality
(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)
A typical flow of people passed through the laptop section in the 20 minutes I was there. Towards the end, all of the remaining customers (a few men and women, each) were marveling at all the cute, inexpensive laptops. Cute, inexpensive laptops to them, Netbooks to us in the media who like cut-and-dried categories.
I was mildly shocked to see these people ignore the 50 or so standard laptops behind them and focus solely on Netbooks. So, I began querying the sales guy and one of the customers. It came down to essentially two things: price and selection (surprise, surprise). Best Buy now has a large selection of Netbooks–10 or so on display. A far cry from the Best Buy display of six months ago: a single, tiny, neglected Asus Eee PC pushed into a corner.
And I visited a second Best Buy. The sales guy there gushed about Netbooks. “They’re extremely popular,” he said, adding that “almost all of my customers” just want to do e-mail and surf the Web.
That is circuitous way to get to my point. The Intel Netbook is not going away and is just getting more popular as this marketing research report indicates. Apple’s Tim Cook dissed Netbooks back in April for what seemed like acceptable reasons: cheapness equates to downmarket, shoddy products. But that Apple reasoning needs an update–the fall 2009 version: a lot of the newer Netbooks coming out now are not shoddy nor cheap feeling. (And I am hereby updating my previous pessimistic take on Netbooks too per this post.)
People like cute, light, and cheap–especially in a laptop. This sentiment won’t be overcome, as Intel believes, by the emerging ultrathin laptop category, which ranges from about $500 to $1,000 (formerly called CULV or consumer ultra-low-voltage). Certainly not this year. Ultrathins are not different enough in appearance from a standard laptop and not cheap enough. (And recent reports indicate that the ultrathin category is not taking off as expected.)
Intel will never admit in a thousand years that it has created a Frankenstein monster of sorts. Intel will of course take credit (which it should) for the creation of a new category of computing devices but my sense is that the company is not head over heels about the Netbook business model–and this is also a reason for Apple’s very conscious decision not to make a Netbook. And, as many people are predicting, its reason for pursuing a more upscale tablet-like touch device.
Best Buy has a large Netbook selection
(Credit: Best Buy)
Intel’s sales chief Sean Maloney has intimated in the past that Netbooks are not huge money makers. Speaking about the expected emergence of the ultrathin laptop category back in May he said that this is “an opportunity for upsell. We don’t need to give this stuff away. The industry doesn’t need to give this stuff away. We can reach new price points and we can also get paid for it.”
But there is just too much marketing momentum now behind Netbooks at large PC makers–and in retail. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Acer all are pushing Netbooks. And in Japan, easily one the largest PC markets in the world, the Netbook is a hit–despite initial resistance from Japanese PC makers–for all of the same reasons cited above: small, light, inexpensive–and add fashionable. Major Japanese tech Web sites (such as ASCII) and large retailers (like Yodobashi Camera) have a significant Netbook focus now because that’s what readers and consumers are demanding.
And I just don’t think performance is that much of an issue for many consumers. Some will of course return a Netbook because their expectations were too high (I heard this from a sales person at Frys Electronics) but a lot of people across all consumer segments (kids, students, business people) will continue to buy these things by the boatload (unless Intel intentionally sabotages the category–which I hope Intel is savvy enough not to do.)
Apple’s products and marketing are good but not infallible. And the lack of a Netbook may come back to bite Apple at some point. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next month. But maybe next year. One of the Best Buy customers eying a Netbook made a comment that was a powerful counterpoint to all the Apple Mac-PC ads. To paraphrase: “You have to pay an arm and a leg for Apple (pointing to the Apple corner), I’m trying to make a practical business decision here.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10351387-64.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
iPhone users aren’t the only ones to get cool apps
The long awaited flood of Google Android devices is about to hit the market, which should help bring more cool applications to new Android phones.
Motorola will be the next big manufacturer to announce its Android phone. The company plans to formally unveil it at an event on Thursday in San Francisco. Motorola has already been reaching out to developers to get them on board to create new applications that it hopes will drive demand for the new phones.
Mobile applications for smartphones are hot. The fact that Apple’s App Store has had more than one billion downloads after only being around for a year means that smartphone users are hungry for applications that make their phones more useful and fun. But developers, whether they are large or small, have limited resources and time, and they must choose which platforms to develop applications for first.
Full story :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10348863-266.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Google reforms Chrome for Snow Leopard
Google released an update for Chrome to fix compatibility problems with Snow Leopard on Monday, which along with other fixes shows the gradually maturing state of the Mac OS X version of the browser.
Chrome 4.0.203.4 for the Mac is only a couple notches up the version ladder than the version 4.0.203.2 it replaces, but there are some significant changes in the developer-preview software. For Snow Leopard compatibility, programmers fixed a garbled text bug, said Jonathan Conradt, a Chrome engineering program manager, in a blog post Monday.
Google began Chrome on Windows but has been gradually moving it to Linux and Mac OS X. Those versions so far are still only developer-preview incarnations not ready for prime time yet, though I find myself gradually slipping over to Chrome on my Mac system now that it’s getting mature enough for me. I suspect a beta version isn’t far off.
Google is fleshing out some basic features, though. One user-interface tweak enables support for command- and shift-clicking.
Another feature coming to the Mac is support for the tab-to-search feature in the omnibox. That lets you perform a site search directly from the address bar by typing a URL, for example news.cnet.com, then the tab key, then search terms.
Tab-to-search also works with Amazon, Google, Google News, and Yahoo, The New York Times, but not Bing yet. I search a lot, and this saves me one step and waiting for a page to load just so I can click in its search bar.
The tab-to-search feature has arrived on Chrome for Mac OS X, too.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The most annoying issue I’ve found–and let me know if I’m missing something obvious here–is that I lose the file-upload dialog box while using Gmail with Chrome on Mac OS X if I switch away from the application while halfway through. If I don’t attach a file immediately, that tab’s instance of Gmail becomes useless because I can’t get back to it.
Performance still is an issue with the Mac version, though. I was pleased to see some work on new-tab creation speed, with programmer Mark Mentovai using various changes to work the time from 1-3 seconds down to a fifth of a second.
Google is working hard to spread Chrome, though it has small market share at present. It’s now installed as the default browser on some Sony laptops, as Endgadget noticed in July with the Vaio NW, and I heard about earlier in August.
Google has been advertising the browser as well and is at work making it the foundation of its Chrome OS.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10322746-264.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Mac OS Snow Leopard: Great news for Windows 7, too
OS X 10.6 includes Boot Camp 3.0, a new collection of software drivers that make Windows run much better on Mac hardware.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dong Ngo/CNET)
Every time I see the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ads on TV, I can’t help but wonder, “Why not both?” And it has never been a better time for that.
It’s been a three weeks since I first got my hands on Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. (If anything, this means lots of hard work benchmark testing the product while trying to keep my mouth shut about it till now, which was even harder.)
Overall, personally, I found that while the new Mac OS doesn’t warrant a “wow,” it’s still definitely worth the $29 upgrade price.Mac users can read more about Snow Leopard in my colleague Jason Parker’s full review. On the other hand, for Windows users, especially Windows 7, the release of Snow Leopard is straight-on great news.
Full Story :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10315168-1.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Apple’s new OS geared for multicore future
Apple began shipping Snow Leopard on Friday, but the true importance of the Mac OS X update likely will emerge well afterward.
That’s because Mac OS X 10.6 begins a longer-term Apple attempt to get ahead by cracking a problem facing the entire computer industry: squeezing useful work out of modern processors. Instead of stuffing Snow Leopard with immediately obvious new features, Apple is trying to adjust to the new reality in which processors can do many jobs simultaneously rather than one job fast.
“We’re trying to set a foundation for the future,” said Wiley Hodges, director of Mac OS X marketing.
Apple shed some light on its project, called Grand Central Dispatch at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June, but most real detail was shared only in with programmers sworn to secrecy. Now the company has begun talking more publicly about it and other deeper projects to take advantage of graphics chips and Intel’s 64-bit processors.
The moves align Apple better with changes in computing. For years, chipmakers such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices had steadily increased the clock rate of their processors, and programmers got accustomed to a performance boost with each new generation. But earlier this decade, problems derailed the gigahertz train.
First, chips often ended up merely twiddling their thumbs more because slower memory couldn’t keep the chip fed with data. Worse, the chips required extraordinary amounts of power and produced corresponding amounts of hard-to-handle waste heat.
Full Story :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10319839-264.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Apple, Mac, OS X, Snow Leopard, software |
Tags: Apple, Mac, OS X, Snow Leopard |
No Comments »
64-bit Snow Leopard defaults to 32-bit kernel
Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, released Friday, by default loads with a 32-bit kernel, despite running 64-bit applications.
While Mac OS X version 10.6 ships with a number of 64-bit native applications, the kernel itself defaults to 32-bit, unless the user holds down the “6″ and “4″ keys during boot time, at which point the 64-bit kernel is loaded. Only Apple’s X-Serve products, using Snow Leopard Server, boot into a 64-bit kernel by default.
“For the most part, everything that they experience on the Mac, from the 64-bit point of view, the applications, the operating system, is all going to be 64-bit,” Stuart Harris, software product marketing manager at Apple Australia said.
Harris said that at this stage there were very few things, such as device drivers, that required 64-bit mode at the kernel level but the option is available.
“But we’re trying to make it as smooth as possible, so people don’t end up finding that ‘oh, that doesn’t work’ because it’s not available yet,” he said.
Full Story :
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10320314-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Posted in Apple, Mac, OS X, Snow Leopard, software, Tech |
Tags: 32-bit, 64-bit, Apple, Mac, OS X, Snow Leopard |
No Comments »
Rumor: Apple planning new iPods with cameras
Apple’s expected September event may see the introduction of new iPod models, according to a report on AppleInsider.
(Credit: Apple)The fact that Apple would use a September event to launch new iPods wouldn’t be a big surprise, but the new iPod Nano and iPod Touch will reportedly have cameras. AppleInsider didn’t cite sources for this detail but said it “has it on authority” and that it has been able to “independently confirm” the information.
The addition of cameras would increase the functionality of iPods, making them dual-purpose devices.
AppleInsider, Boy Genius Report, and other rumor sites have also speculated that iTunes 9 will debut in September and add social networking to the music organizer, among other changes.
A new digital album format will likely debut in September, as well. Code-named Cocktail, Apple’s new album format is said to include photos, lyric sheets, liner notes, and clips from music videos.
It also seems clear at this point is that an Apple tablet will not make its debut during the September event.
Apple hasn’t officially announced the event yet, though it is expected to take place after Labor Day weekend. For the past several years, the company has gathered in September to launch its newest iPod products for the holiday-shopping season.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10319162-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
