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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…

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…

Smartfish Technologies has a new wireless mouse on the market, specifically designed for laptop computers. It is called the Whirl Mini Laser Mouse and it offers anti-gravity comfort with pivot ErgoMotion™.  What, you may ask, is anti-gravity comfort and pivot ErgoMotion?Well, that is why you have me – to try and explain it.Whirl Mini Laser mouseThe…

The iPad as a software-based musical instrument, a portable recording studio, a flexible wireless remote controller for synthesizers or mixing consoles — basically every manufacturer of keyboards, mixers, and audio software showed off their take on how to include an iPad in music performance and production.Here are a few of the iPad-related highlights that caught…

Thunderbolt uses the same Mini DisplayPort connector Apple relies on for external displays, but offers 10Gbp/s data transfer speeds, and can handle video and audio along with hard drives and other peripherals.HP said it did consider Thunderbolt, but hasn’t completely shut the door on the idea of including the technology in its computers. “We’re still…

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…

“The economic gains provided by the Lodsys inventions (increase in revenue through additional sales, or decrease in costs to service the customer) are being enjoyed by the business that provides the product or service that interacts with the user,” the company said. “Since Lodsys patent rights are of value to that overall solution, it is…

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…

Last week I concentrated on the Camera app, and I have a confession to make: I don’t use any of the free camera apps I talked about. I had been using Gorillacam a while ago, and FrameXFrame briefly, but that’s pretty much it. The reason is because when I take a photo on my iPhone…

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…

Recently, we’ve become even more aware of the fact that the devices or Internet software we use, while providing lots of utility, is really a black box. It all started with Google mail which we, at first, thought of as serving us, but realized only later that it was a massive data mining operation. These…

Music Beta lets users upload music to an online server where it can be played back in a Web browser or through an Android OS-based app. The service is free for now, but eventually Google plans to charge customers a fee.Negotiations between Google and the record labels apparently failed for several reasons, not the least…

The new case was filed in U.S District Court in New York. The earlier case was filed in California.According to the filing, Pandora and Backflip Studios, maker of the Paper Toss game, collected the unique UDID numbers from user’s iPhones to track people and push targeted ads to them without consent. The lawsuit also alleged…

  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…

“We will continue to invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms,” Mr. Ballmer told reporters, according to Computerworld.While Microsoft plans to continue supporting Skype on Mac OS X, iOS, and other platforms, the company also plans to expand support for its own products. “Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and…

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…

As a regular user of Skype (John F. Braun and I rely on it for producing the our Mac Geek Gab podcast, and I use it daily to maintain regular contact with distant staffers), this scares the bejeezus out of me, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.The Mac version, despite always having…

Microsoft plans to buy Skype The deal has been approved by the boards of directors for both companies and finally lets eBay offload the rest of Skype. eBay paid some $2.6 billion for Skype back in 2005 raising questions about why an online auction company would want an Internet chat company. eBay sold off 65…

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,…

The CalDigit AV drive is a 1TB external drive designed to be used for audio and video applications.  These applications often demand high throughput, so the AV has two of the fastest interfaces you can find, two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 3.0 port.  To provide USB 3.0 connectivity, we used the CalDigit SuperSpeed…

The New Yorker gets iPad subscriptionsThe New Yorker readers can subscribe to the publication on their iPad for US$5.99 a month, which works out to be a much better deal than the magazine’s original $4.99 per issue price. For readers that don’t want to pay for a subscription, they can still pick up individual issues…

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…

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…

For instance, last week I looked at the Stocks app. I don’t follow stocks (though everyone tells me I should) so I’ve rarely bothered with the app, or any of the more feature filled replacement apps available in the App Store. What I discovered was that the Stocks app has a lot of nice features…