Surprise! It’s Mountain Lion Sometimes it seems as if all of the Apple surprises are gone. We expect big sales numbers ahead of earnings reports. We expect new iPhones and iPads months before we get them. Software updates are seen from a mile off. Yep. The days of the Apple surprises seem to be long…
Ken_Ray
Articles by Ken_Ray
MacOS KenDensed: Patent Wars & Microsoft, Buyer of iPads
Apple & HTC: Making it Real The patent infringement case between Apple and HTC is like the Whole Foods parking lot: it’s gettin’ real. AppleInsider has patent-tracker Florian Mueller poking at the issue. Among the many patents over which Apple has sued the Taiwanese phonemaker is one referred to as the ‘263 patent, which covers…
Pile it On: Apple, Samsung, Cash & Babies
Apple’s Big Ol’ Money Pile Many times when Apple adds to its billions-high cash pile Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi says Apple should give some back to shareholders, either in the form of dividends or stock buybacks. And yet, with Apple sitting on an astronomical US$81.6 billion, Toni, Tony, Tonee’s not singing the usual song.…
Hello, iPhone & Don’t Play with the Dead
iPhone 4S: Who’s Crying Now? Who’s disappointed that the next iPhone is an evolutionary 4S rather than a revolutionary 5? Indications seem to be no one. Apple issued a press release Monday — which I sure thought was some sort of holiday in the states — saying that iPhone 4S pre-orders had topped one million…
RIM on the Decline, iPhone 5 Rumors & Microsoft’s Flash Dance
RIM Shot Research in Motion announced some pretty dismal numbers late last week, and one analyst says the next iPhone is only gonna make things worse for the Canadian phone and kind-of-sort-of tablet-maker. I say “kind-of-sort-of tablet-maker” because, last quarter they were only able to ship 200,000 of their PlayBook tablets. Well, they were probably…
On Fat Phones, Lame Phones & a Little LeVar Burton
Apple and Web apps: Old New School If things go the way Apple originally intended them to go, Apple could get hurt. That’s one possible read of a bit of analysis from Sanford Bernstein research analyst Toni Sacconaghi. Computerworld has the Sack-Man saying that the widespread adoption of HTML5 for Web apps could cut Apple’s…
Dude, Where’s My iPhone?
The Streets of San Francisco… and iPhones So, San Francisco Police say — last week — that they knew nothing about an investigation into an iPhone 5 prototype lost by an employee in a bar in San Francisco. Not unlike the iPhone 4 prototype lost by an employee in a bar in Redwood City a…
iPad Competitors: Begging for a Black Eye
Don’t Cross the Streams Apple, earlier this week, released an iTunes beta to developers that included “Scan and Match,” the service that scans a users music library, matches it to music it’s already got stored in the cloud, then makes it available for multiple computers and iOS devices for US$25 a year. All of that…
The iPhone 5 Frenzy & Galaxy Tab Detention
Apple’s Big Ol’ iPhone Money Bags It looks like we’re going to have to retrain ourselves in thinking about how much Apple makes in the phone business. While I was stunned when Apple was shown to be taking in half of the profits of the entire cellphone business, I now find myself forced to be…
Of Fake Apple Stores, Lodsys Patent Games, and a Boy’s Dream
An Apple Store by Any Other Name… The news around the fake Apple Stores in China has turned into drama around the fake Apple stores in China. A Reuters piece from last weekend had people who’d bought stuff from the store freakin’ the frak out once they learned that those genuine Apple Stores at which…
On iPhones, iPads & a Little Bit of Mordor
iPad, King of the Tablets Nearly one percent of web-surfing worldwide is done via tablet, and nearly 100 percent of that comes from an iPad. That’s the word from Net Applications. Fortune has the stat tracker saying that, as of May, 0.95 percent of web-browsing on their client sites happened on tablets, 96.8 percent of…
Playing the iPhone 5 Guessing Game
Coming Down on Ben I have to say I’m a little disappointed in Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes. It’s not that he didn’t call to wish me happy birthday a few months ago, though he didn’t. It’s not that he’s never publicly endorsed my show, though he hasn’t. No, I’m a little disappointed in Barclays…
On Apple, Lawsuits & iPhones in Space
All Your Patents Are Belong to Us Remember Lodsys and its plan to squeeze patent licensing fees out of iThings app developers? Fortune ran a piece last week that said Apple was looking to intervene on behalf of iOS and Mac developers. The filing has Apple moving “to intervene as a defendant and counterclaim plaintiff”…
Patent Wars: Taking On the Little Guys
Patent Man: On the Prowl One patent holder is taking legal action against one type of in-app purchase implementation, though they’re not taking action against Apple. The story’s a little convoluted, though CNET says a company called Lodsys is threatening to sue App developers, Computer LogicX, individual developer James Thompson, and a few other developers,…
iPads, Doctors & Fun with Senate Hearings
iPad 2 Buying: A Full Contact Sport iPad 2 launched in China over the weekend, and it really sounds like things could have gone a bit better at one store. Riot, melee, no way to launch the second version of the future of computing… call it what you will. The Mac Observer compiles a few…
Fat Phones, Jailbreak Scams & One Boy’s Dream Job
So much so that I’ve never jailbroken an iThing… Well, it’s partly fear, and partly with over 350,000 apps in the App Store it’s hard to see why I’d want to. But there’s a healthy amount of fear in there, where I’m concerned. Not apparently with a lot of other people, and that lack of…