Apple Archive

A Forbes article notices that while the iPad's reception from the public and the mainstream press has been overwhelmingly positive, the prevailing sentiment among some alpha geeks has been negative to the extreme. The conclusion, of course, is that these people aren't reacting to what the iPad is, but rather what it represents: a violation of the ethos of the personal computer. The author of the Forbes article concludes that much of the anti-iPad vitriol is hyperbole, and doesn't help advance the cause. It's a thought-provoking question.

While it wasn't a very important link in the story about the iPhone 4's antenna issue, we did link to an article over at Boy Genius Report which supposedly contained emails coming from Steve Jobs. Apple has told Fortune and Engadget that these emails are, in fact, not from Steve Jobs. Apple claims they're fake. Also, on a funnier note, I'm assuming all of you have already seen last night's brand new Futurama episode in which they make some serious fun of Apple, Google, the iPhone, and its fans?

Ars Technica reviews the iPhone: Despite regular modifications to the OS and yearly hardware upgrades, the iPhone 4 is very much a more modern, more capable version of that original device that made such a splash in the industry back in 2007.

So, I might not be able to do much work on OSNews due to my internship (I always wondered what tumble weeds looked and sounded like on a website - now I know), but I did know one thing: Monday, June 21, is iTunes day. This means launching that horrid mess to go through the painstakingly archaic backup/update iTunes/update iOS routine (and yes, they still try to cheat you into installing Safari) - because Apple released iOS 4.0 today, adding a number of welcome features to bring the iOS up to par with the competition.

When Apple announced its iAd mobile advertising initiative, many of us wondered how this would effect other mobile advertising agencies on the iPhone, and more specifically, Google's AdMob. Well, now we know: Apple has revised its iOS developer agreement to specifically lock out Google's AdMod. And then people wonder why Apple is no longer the darling of the geek world.

We're a little late with this one, but hey, I have to sleep too. In the middle of last night, Apple released version 5 of its Safari web browser for both Mac OS X and Windows, and it contains some very interesting improvements, including an extensions framework.

As everybody already expected, Apple "unveiled" the new iPhone tonight. It's called the iPhone 4, and brings the iPhone up to par with what's already available on other smartphone platforms, hardware wise, while raising the bar on a few specific points (the display, mostly). The company also announced a name change for its mobile operating system - it's now called iOS. What we didn't get during this year's WWDC keynote? News about the Mac, Mac OS X, or the Apple TV. Make no mistake: the iPhone and iPad is where it's at.

I've been meaning to write this for some time, and for all the time I delayed the more poignant the point I wanted to make started to become as new news came out further solidifying my angle. When I begun writing this article the iPad had not yet been revealed, iPhone OS 4 was not on the map and Apple had not yet purchased Lala. You've probably just noticed that all of these events in fact point toward Apple embracing the web more and in this article I will point out why this is not the case because I believe Apple's agenda here is similar to something we've already seen in recent history.

Remember MacOS 9, or Classic as Apple named it once Mac OS X was released? On PowerPC Macintosh machines, you can install a Classic environment which launches a virtualised instance of MacOS 9 whenever you launch a Classic application. This environment has been dropped from Intel releases of Mac OS X, but thanks to SheepShaver, you can still set it up yourself on Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and even BeOS if you want to. I decided to try SheepShaver on my Ubuntu machine, and discovered just how easy it really is.

"Apple today quietly refreshed its entry-level MacBook laptop, boosting the processor speed and inserting a longer-life battery. The MacBook remains priced at $999. Apple bumped the MacBook's Intel Core 2 Duo processor speed to 2.4GHz, up from 2.2GHz, and replaced the battery with a 10-hr. battery to match the estimate that it uses in the higher-priced MacBook Pro line. Like the batteries used in those more expensive cousins, the MacBook's is within the case, and cannot be swapped out by the user. The MacBook now sports Nvidia's GeForce 320M integrated graphics, the specially-made-for-Apple successor to the GeForce 9400M, the MacBook's former chipset. The GeForce 320M also powers the two lowest-priced 13-in. MacBook Pro laptops, priced at $1199 and $1499."

"I didn't plan to pick a fight with Steve Jobs last night. It just sort of happened: An iPad advertisement ticked me off; I sent the Apple CEO an angry email; he told me about 'freedom from porn'. The electronic debate proceeded from there." Says the man who used to use LSD. This man knows how to sell iPads to America: think of the children!

Since 2006, Jonathan "Wolf" Rentzsch has organised the popular and successful C4 developer conference for independent Mac software developers. In a blog post published yesterday, Rentzsch announced that due to Apple's infamous section 3.3.1 in the iPhone developer agreement, the C4 conference will not return this year.

Well, this is interesting, and, I must say, rather surprising: the New York Post is reporting that the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are looking into launching an antitrust probe into Apple's policies. You'd expect this to be about iTunes, but that's just the thing: it's about the Adobe-Apple spat. Update: Since I'm not familiar with the entire US media landscape, I was unaware the New York Post is considered less than reputable. Still, Reuters has confirmed the Post's report, so maybe it's true after all.

Apple published the financial results for the latest quarter, and it's been stellar once again, best non-holiday quarter in company history. "Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 second quarter ended March 27, 2010. The Company posted revenue of $13.50 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $9.08 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.62 billion, or $1.79 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent, up from 39.9 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter's revenue."