“The Kindle 3 has 38 buttons, 37 more than the all-new Nook,” Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch said (wryly, according to Fortune) during the media event announcing the device. “Anyone who has mobile devices with [a lot] of buttons and nav bars knows that means a lot of scrolling and a lot of interface……
Bryan Chaffin
Bryan Chaffin is the cofounder of The Mac Observer and currently serves as Afternoon Editor. He has contributed to MacAddict and MacFormat magazines, and co-authored the last two updates of iPad and iPad Pro for Dummies with Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus and Ed Baig. You can find out more about Bryan at his personal site, GeekTells, or find his Twitter link below.
Articles by Bryan Chaffin
Orange Boss Praises Apple for iPhone, Criticizes App Store Control
France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard speaking at an EU symposium on Net Neutrality in 2010 Photo courtesy of Olivier Ezratty Praise be to the iPhone The comments came in a speech in San Francisco last week that was attended by AllThingsD. In that presentation, Mr. Richard spoke on a variety of topics concerning the smartphone…
Apple Boosts IP Portfolio with 200 Freescale Patents
Terms of the deal are unknown, but PatentlyO noted two facts that point to a cash transaction. The first is that Freescale has billions of dollars in debt that has come due, and the second is that Apple has more money than Bill Gates. At least a smattering of the patents deal with various aspects…
Analyst Raises Estimates for iPhone, iPad, Mac; Price Target $460
In a research note obtained by The Mac Observer, Mr. Wu told clients that Apple had reduced some of the production constraints on iPad shipments, and that the company’s manufacturers had successfully retooled and converted more production lines to making the iPad 2. The analyst’s sources said that Apple was still well shy of the…
Patent Application Suggests Apple Began “Seamless” iCloud in 2009
Uncovered by PatentlyApple, the patent application is titled “Local Storage of a Portion of Streamed Media Items,” and it was filed on November 13th of 2009 and published May 19th, 2011. In the application, Apple makes the case that a combination of library size and limitations to streaming technologies combined to make for unsatisfactory experiences…
Apple (Not Intel) Applies for Thunderbolt Trademark
On its website, Apple calls Thunderbolt a, “revolutionary I/O technology that supports high-resolution displays and high-performance data devices through a single, compact port.” Apple also said, “Thunderbolt began at Intel Labs with a simple concept: create an incredibly fast input/output technology that just about anything can plug into. After close technical collaboration between Intel and…
Report: iPhone 4 Uses Audience Noise Cancelling Tech
This information isn’t particularly relevant to anyone outside the rarefied field of chip nerds and those curious about what their iPhones are made of — and possibly Apple’s competition. The chip involved, for instance, was “white labeled,” meaning that the normal branding and manufacturing information was not printed on it (as you can see in…
Analyst: No NFC Mobile Payment Support in Next iPhone
NFC technology is the name for low-power wireless transmitters that can be added to electronic devices or embedded in just about anything. The transmitters can then be embedded with data of all sorts, including identification information, but they require a very close proximity (typically in the 4cm range) to work. One popular theoretical application of…
MobileMe Mail Outage Hits Some Users
On the MobileMe status update website, Apple added an alert early Monday afternoon that reads, “Some MobileMe members may be unable to access MobileMe Mail. Normal service will be restored ASAP. We apologize for any inconvenience.” The outage comes as Apple is rumored to be working on rolling out a new online service that may…
Apple iPhone Earns Four Entries in Guinness Book of World Records
The Fastest-Selling Portable Gaming System: Guinness said Apple moved 1.5 million iPhone 4 units on the first day of availability, making it the fastest selling portable gaming system in history. This company compared it to Sony selling 200,000 PlayStation Portables on launch day in 2005 and Nintendo taking a week to move its first 500,000…
Microsoft Exchange Host: iPhone/iPad Crushing Android in Enterprise
Chart by The Mac Observer from data provided by Intermedia Right off the bat, we’re going to focus on two caveats: The first is that Intermedia claims to be the world’s largest Microsoft Exchange hosting provider with over 320,000 “premium hosted” corporate accounts, but this data is still limited to only its clients. The second…
Apple Supply Chain April Sales Miss Historical Average
The data comes from an “Apple Barometer” that monitors such companies maintained by Ticonderoga. By watching the companies in the Apple Barometer, Mr. White tries to derive sales trends that reflect Apple’s own sales. In a research note to clients obtained by The Mac Observer, the analyst wrote, “We believe that a broad basket…
Google Jabs at Apple & iTunes at Google I/O 2011
Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering for Google, on stage at Google I/O Photo by Danny Sullivan, posted to Twitpic and published at The Mac Observer with permission(Click the image for a larger version) During the keynote presentation at Google I/O on Tuesday, Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra announced the official release of Android…
iBike Phone Booth Mounts your iPhone on a Bicycle
Velocomp said the iBike Phone Booth Bicycle Mount is water and shock resistant, and that it’s made from the same materials used to make modern bicycle helmets. The case is also water resistant. iBike Dash CC Features: Includes ANT+ speed sensor with optional sensors for cadence and HR. User customizable touch screens display cycling information…
Report: Apple to Leverage Nuance at NC Data Center for iOS 5
The point of working with Nuance technology would be for Apple to add powerful speech recognition tools into iOS, possibly coupled with a broader use of the artificial intelligence technology Apple acquired when it bought Siri in 2010. Siri currently exists as a “personal assistant” app for iOS that allows you to ask questions using…
Jobs to 2008 MobileMe Team: Why The %@&# Doesn’t It Do That?
According to the magazine’s sources, Mr. Jobs called the MobileMe team into a town hall meeting in one of Apple’s auditoriums after the service launched with problems and garnered unflattering reviews from noted tech commentators like Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Jobs reportedly asked the assembled engineers and other MobileMe team members,…
Disk Alarm Monitors Mac Hard Drive Free Space
Features: Alerts you when you have reach a certain amount of disk space Optionally alerts with a sound, very useful when you are away from the computer screen Runs as an agent app, close the settings window and it will still alert you Optionally stays in your menu bar for fast access mentioning the free…
Violence Shatters Apple Store Queue in China
The Sanlitun Apple Store on a calm evening at The Village in Beijing Source: Apple Inc. Accounts are confused at this point, but what we do know is that the front door got smashed, and that a fight of some sort broke out afterwards. Michael Hakel, for instance, was an Apple customer waiting in line…
Apple Taps Veteran Bud Tribble for Senate Privacy Hearing
The Senate hearing was convened by Senator Franken following revelations about the ways in which Google and Apple were collecting location data through their smartphone platforms (Android for Google and iPhone for Apple). “This hearing is the first step in making certain that federal laws protecting consumers’ privacy-particularly when it comes to mobile devices-keep pace…
Intel Announces 3D Transistor CPUs w/Video Explanation
“The performance gains and power savings of Intel’s unique 3-D Tri-Gate transistors are like nothing we’ve seen before,” Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow, said in a statement. “This milestone is going further than simply keeping up with Moore’s Law. The low-voltage and low-power benefits far exceed what we typically see from one process generation to…
Rumor: Apple Hires Inventor of THX to Run Audio
Mr. Laporte’s tweet, which reads: “I have it on good authority that Tomlinson Holman (of THX fame) is joining Apple to run audio. Major upgrade.” Leo Laporte is a very well connected and highly respected blogger and podcaster in Silicon Valley, giving his tweets more weight than many other sources. If he’s right, this would…
Analysts Upbeat on iMac Refresh
Both analysts noted that Apple was able to continue its long-term strategy of using Mac product refreshes to offer more performance at the same price point as the previous generation, the strategy that has allowed Apple to keep its computer business profitable. “The refreshed iMacs are up to 70% faster than the previous iteration with…
Consumer Reports Insists White iPhone as Thin as Black iPhone
“When we compared a white iPhone 4 with a black iPhone 4 in our Yonkers, NY, lab using high-quality calipers, we found they were both the same thickness (0.37 inches),” CR said in its report. The magazine’s tests were conducted after sites such as Engadget reported late last week that the white iPhone 4 was…
Apple Beat Microsoft in Revenue & Profit
Apple passed Microsoft on the revenue side in the September quarter of 2010, as you can see in the chart below. It took three more quarters for Apple to pass its erstwhile foe in profits, however, in part because of the disparate nature of the two companies’ business models. Apple and Microsoft revenues in billions…