During these economic and political hard times, it’s nice when people can get together to rejoice about something wonderful. You know: the good times.
Such was the case this morning at Apple stores around the nation, where still-employed Apple workers sold phones and stuff (and clapped a lot), and eager shoppers bought the new iPhone 4 for $200, and signed up for — or renewed — contracts to pay AT&T $2,400 or more over 2 years.
Woo hoo!
Russian president at Twitter, off to Silicon Valley-Reuters
“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited microblogging sensation Twitter and sent his first tweet message on Wednesday before heading to U.S. technology hub Silicon Valley, which he sees as a possible model for Russia to follow,” writes Peter Henderson.
Fans scramble for Apple’s iPhone upgrade- Reuters
Apple fans queued overnight by the hundreds outside stores in the United States, Europe and Japan to snap up the latest iPhone, setting a new benchmark in the fast-growing smartphone market.
Apple’s new iPhone approaches as iPad surprises again-Reuters
“Apple Inc has sold 3 million iPads in less than three months, a faster-than-expected pace that boosted its stock days before the company’s newest iPhone hits store shelves,” reports Gabriel Madway and Paul Thomasch.
Apple is, of course, absent from this week’s video game extravaganza, the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. The company just doesn’t do trade shows. But its presence looms over the event.
Apple has managed to create a whole new gaming market with the iPhone since its debut in 2007. There are tens of thousands of games available for download via Apple’s App Store, and it’s an open debate as to how much the iPhone’s success has hurt the traditional hardware makers, namely Nintendo and Sony, which both make portable gaming devices.
Nintendo is making a big push to differentiate its portable gaming platform with it’s new 3D-enabled DS, which offers a glasses-free experience.
It may be the World Cup, but when it comes to sapping productivity in the United States the global soccer tournament still has a thing or two to learn from March Madness and the National Football League.
Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which often measures lost workplace productivity, said many U.S. fans will tune in for the quadrennial soccer tournament, which kicks off Friday in South Africa, but the event still trails the NCAA men's basketball tournament, dubbed March Madness, and other events.
"Soccer simply has not caught on with the majority of American sports fans, Challenger CEO John Challenger said in a statement.
Sure, you already peeped the next version of the iPhone months ago, thanks to that hapless Apple engineer’s fateful beer-haus outing.
But Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs filled in many blanks about the gadget on Monday during a nearly two-hour on-stage unveiling of the iPhone 4 in San Francisco at the Apple developers’ conference.
Herewith, the key features of Apple’s latest smartphone, as well as some of the other noteworthy nuggets that Jobs ticked off at a rapid-fire pace during his presentation.
The relationship between Apple and the media industry has had its ups and downs, as Apple expanded its reach and exerted increasing control over businesses like music and television program distribution.
But when it comes to Apple’s newest gadget, industry honchos go ga-ga.
We’re midway through the first day of the All Things Digital conference in California’s Palos Verdes on Wednesday, and already the event is turning into something of an iPad lovefest, with heartfelt paeans to the iPad as common as Rolexes at the exclusive gathering of business bigwigs.
Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, said the iPad was destined to become Apple boss Steve Jobs’ greatest legacy.
Apple is keen on describing its Apple TV business as a “hobby.”
But one week after Google barged into the living room with its high-profile Google TV announcement, Apple suddenly looks like it’s taking its hobby a lot more seriously.
According to technology blog engadget, which cites an anonymous source “very close to Apple,” the Cupertino, California company has a new version of its Apple TV in the works that completely overhauls the original product.
The price of the Apple TV will drop from $229 to $99 (read: priced to move), and the device will be based on the iPhone operating system and pack Apple’s home-grown A4 processor under the hood.
Apple developed the processor for it's recently launched iPad tablet PC in-house. Intel was left waiting on the sidelines but change may be in store. Future tablets from other device makers, and maybe even Apple, could prove to be a lucrative for the world's largest chipmaker. And why not, Intel already makes the microprocessors that are used in more than three quarters of the world's PCs. Tom Kilroy, Intel senior vice president and general manager of sales and marketing, says "wait til Computex" for a big announcement. So, what's likely to come out of the industry trade show this June in Taipei? Any thoughts? Click below to hear what Kilroy had to say in San Francisco at the 2010 Reuters Global Technology Summit.
Intel on Tablet Opportunities from Reuters TV on Vimeo.
For Matt Murphy, partner with influential Silicon Valley Venture fund Kleiner Perkins and point person on the firm’s iFund, old-school is still the way to go.
During an interview at the Reuters technology summit, the VC said picking the right startups to back was tough, given that he had received 8,000 business plans for iFund, which invests in iPhone and iPad applications.
The onslaught of business plans from app developers escalated to almost 500 per day when the fund expanded to $200 million in March.
Good news for us computer geeks! PCs are nearly ready to ditch hard drives for faster, less energy-intensive drives with flash memory, like in a camera or cell phone, according to memory maker Micron, which ought to know. That is exciting news for victims of crashed hard drives and people who always want something new.
“I think it’ll be a story in 2011, and it’ll be pretty good penetration in 2012. But, you know, maybe I’m wrong,” said Mark Durcan, president and chief operating officer of Micron, during the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
Sadly, he may well be right about the last part. The last Micron exec to speak about so-called solid state drives to an appreciatively nerdy Reuters summit was CEO Steve Appleton, who in November 2005 predicted that flash drives would replace hard drives within five years. Actually, he’s still got time, but folks better hurry!
