Apple will fill in some long-awaited missing features from its iPod and iPhone mobile players, a patent application published this week suggests. There’s just one problem: Much of Apple’s “invention” was dreamed up by Reg readers several years ago – and one embodiment is already on the market.
If you think everything that could have been written about the iPhone already has been written, prepare to be surprised. One vital aspect of Apple’s strategy has been overlooked – with multi-billion consequences for complacent network operators. Over at Telco 2.0, the blog of analysts STL Partners, we learn that networks who partner with Apple … Read more
A new report suggests that Apple and Tesco, not P2P file sharers, should take the most blame for the woes of the British music industry.
The report, prepared privately by consultants Capgemini for the Value Recognition Strategy working group, set out to examine the “value gap”, the amount sound recordings revenue has fallen in the UK since 2004. The report remains confidential, but details are starting to emerge.
The consultants suggest that “format changes” and price pressure from discounted CDs on sale in supermarkets, are most to blame for this “value gap”.
For all but three of the past 17 years, Microsoft has been involved in antitrust litigation with government agencies. That’s enough to wear anyone down. But as Europe’s highest appeals court delivered its judgement on Monday, I did notice some ennui – not from dogged old hacks, but from a new generation of pundits.
Take this example from former teenage dot.commer Benjamin Cohen – who was six when FTC first trained its lawyers on Redmond. After taking a pop at the at “anti-Microsoft lobby”, he declared on the Channel 4 News website:
The judgement is based on an old case and in many ways an old world – where Microsoft really was the dominant player in information technology
Stop kicking the kindly old man in the Windows outfit, he said.
It’s hard for it to have too much relevance today.
You’d think from this brilliant piece of insight, that there is hardly anyone left who uses Microsoft Windows or Office. Maybe, like the Acorn Archimedes, it’s a hobbyist system lovingly kept alive by a few, devoted enthusiasts! Benji even sounded slightly resentful at being torn away from Facebook (or Sadville) for a few minutes, to write about this piece of computer history.
But the question of “how we deal with Microsoft” is more relevant than ever for two very important and reasons: the second follows from the first.
So was nine months of relentless iPhone hype and froth just a distraction? Not quite, but you could be forgiven for thinking so. I believe Apple’s most important product of 2007 was actually announced this week, and its significance has been slow to sink in. It might be one of the cleverest moves Apple’s ever … Read more
I’m glad the iPhone’s is here – and I have very selfish reasons for wanting it to succeed. That’s because even without the cellular telephony, it looks like something I’ve been wanting to buy. But it’s also because after years of writing about smartphones, I’ve seen the established players become lazy and complacent, go down blind alleys, or standardize on horrible designs and feature sets. So the iPhone should focus minds wonderfully – it should raise the bar for everyone.
I’m also hoping a crushing wave of shame will overcome anyone who has a Blackberry, or one of its hideous clones from HP, Motorola, Nokia or Palm. Owning one of these is like volunteering for a lobotomy – then boasting about it afterwards.
I’m also hoping a crushing wave of shame will overcome anyone who has a Blackberry, or one of its hideous clones from HP, Motorola, Nokia or Palm. Owning one of these is like volunteering for a lobotomy – then boasting about it afterwards.
But common sense suggests it’s going to be a bumpy road for Apple, and it knows it. This isn’t a new experience: both the original Macintosh computer and the iPod received rave reviews on their debut but both were, a year of later, perceived to be failures. Both eventually recovered. Will Apple’s new PDA?
So, PalmOS ends up in the hands of an Japanese mobile browser company that almost no one has ever heard of. It’s a sad sign that expectations for PalmOS software have been so low, for so long, that PalmSource stock leapt 70 per cent on the news.
The origins of this decline have been well documented here at El Reg, we’ll only recap the key mistakes before raising a spectre that haunts this tale of Silicon Valley history: a spectre called Apple.
