Article by Andrew Vanacore (AP)

Apple Inc. (AAPL-Q $209.04 ) shares hit an all-time high Thursday after a published report suggested the intensely scrutinized yet secretive company may be getting ready for a major product announcement.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the preparations, the Financial Times reported on its website Wednesday that Apple has rented space for several days in late January at an arts centre in San Francisco.

The company is famed for its highly staged launches. CEO Steve Jobs has used past events to introduce groundbreaking – and lucrative – gadgets such as the iPod and the iPhone.

Although Apple has not acknowledged working on a tablet computer – the company is known for keeping upcoming product plans closely guarded – analysts expect the company’s next blockbuster to be something of a cross between a laptop and an iPod Touch, which is essentially an iPhone without the calling features.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request Thursday for comment on the FT report.

In a note to investors this month, Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner said Apple could have a tablet out by late March or April based on checks with contacts in the U.S.

Brian Marshall, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech, expects the device to launch late in the first quarter, but he said the rise in Apple shares Thursday had more to do with investor behaviour at the end of the year.

After cashing in from the rise in Apple shares over the past few months, “people are coming back to the well,” betting the stock will head even higher in 2010, Marshall said.

Apple shares hit an all-time high of $209.35 (U.S.) at one point on Thursday, topping the previous record of $208.71, set Oct. 21. The stock was up $6.94, or 3.4 per cent, to $209.04 in afternoon trading.

Apple shares have recovered from a 52-week low of $78.20 in January, helped by consistently growing profits.

Even during the worst of the recession, people continued to buy iPods, iPhones and Mac computers. In its most recent quarter, the Cupertino, Calif., company reported a 47 per cent jump in net income to $1.7-billion, on revenue of $36.5-billion.

With a market capitalization of more than $182-billion, Apple is now bigger than rival computer makers Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. combined. Dell has a market cap of about $28-billion, while HP is at $124-billion.

Apple have announced that they are possibly going to launch their new iPod Tablet before christmas.

With all the choices on the computer market nowadays, the general consumer has more choice than ever before. However, as a visually impaired user, the only option I want to have is mac and Apple products. Here’s why.

On Thursday, I turned my trusty macbook 13 inch, 2008 model white onto to check my email and such to discover it wouldn’t boot beyond the apple logo and timer thing. I was so upset. I love my macbook so much, it recently travelled to the US with me and if I don’t take the time to at least boot it once a day, I’m sick.

Anyway, I called Apple care and booked an appointment to see an Apple genius the next day. The problem I next had was that I had to pull out my old sony Vaio laptop that runs Windows XP and has a version of Jaws for windows running on it. It wasn’t a prospect I was looking forward too, let me tell you. Nevertheless, I loaded it up and encountered twitter issues with the program I have running on that laptop, then had issues setting up my gmail account in outlook express, followed by issues with not only importing music to itunes but getting the damn program to work correctly for me. I was still fighting with Itunes at lunchtime when I left to go to my apple appointment.

I never realized how counter-intuitive windows was, and I missed my specialized features that voice over on the mac offers, such as spelling as I type. I missed hearing, “misspelled” which happens frequently when I’m typing a lot. Itunes was a complete nightmare, how anyone uses that program on windows with a screen reader is beyond me. And the screen reader itself frustrated me beyond belief, freezing on several occasions, jumping on others, it was just a nightmare I do not want to repeat.

Hasten to add, my macbook was fixed and is happily being used again. I know some people prefer windows but for me, it is mac all the way. snow Leopard can keep purring happily inside my pretty white macbook with voice over being its Captain. ☺

My Mighty Mouse needed me to save its balls, literally.

Picture adopted from Macrumours

Ok I admit, I’m anti-Apple, anti-MacBook, anti-iTouch. And for my iPod that hardly ever gets to see the light of day, I regret every single day that I somehow managed to get blind-sided into purchasing it at Walmart (it was Black Friday, where sales were up to 90% off, could you blame me??).

Since I’m suffering from such a serious case of iHate, it would behoove upon me to let off some iSteam on Cowboy Steve.

But first, Apple-philes will be pleased to know that their beloved Apple have struck back at Nokia with a counter-lawsuit alleging that the latter’s iPhone infringed on 13 of its patents. The patents Apple alleges Nokia has infringed upon, deal with, among other things, interacting a phone to a computer (Samsung, Sony Erricson and all other mobile manufacturers please take note if you haven’t licensed this particular technology from Apple), teleconferencing, touch interface, power conservation techniques, and “pattern and color abstraction in a graphical user interface (whatever the hell that means)”

In addition, Apple is also accusing Nokia of exhorbiting excessive licensing fees for patents that cover the wireless technologies that Nokia accused Apple of infringing in the first place. The “patent-holdup” described by Apple accuses Nokia of deliberately obtaining unjust market advantages. My opinion is this — regardless of whether the alleged “patent hold-up” was deliberate or not, it does not give Apple the right to wilfully infringe on intellectual property that it does not own.

A equivalent analogy to this will be to make an offer to buy someone’s house only to be snubbed because the owner is demanding an amount double the original offer. You then decide to barge into that house and unilaterally choose to reside in there – an act of blatant disrespect and intentional violation of the owner’s rights to the property. Can you then blame him for calling the cops? In other words, what is the use of a patent, if not to enforce the right to prevent another trader from using one’s invention without a proper license (provided that the good of mankind is not at stake). Ruling otherwise will only bring us down a slippery slope of patent litigation and abuse.

In any case, the number of patent infringments each side is suing the other for is immaterial. Rather, it will be a test of stamina and will, in overwhelming each other (and the poor judge) with mountain loads of documents declaring their respective innocence and justifying the other party’s alleged infringments (and not to mention handing obscene amounts of money to their litigation lawyers).

We’re in for a patented spectacle for 2010 and you can bet your latest iPhone that I will be on top of every apple-juicy nugget of bad iPress.

It appears to be. The video in question surfaced on a French web site, and the tablet in the video looks and acts like something that Apple Inc. would make. It would apparently be used for high-end furniture shopping, as notes The Register, who turned me on to the video. Surely we can think of better uses than serving the needs of the bourgeoisie consumers (hi how’s it going) who would likely consume them en mass?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple Inc., the company that restructured the music industry around its iTunes service, is exploring an overhaul of the way it sells and stores music that is aimed at extending its influence to the Web, according to people briefed on the strategy. The key vehicle for the move is Apple’s newly acquired music-streaming service La La Media Inc. for which Apple paid $85 million.

Apple Inc is being featured here today and at
Stock-Market-Keywords.com for the time period
starting 12/1/2008 to 12/9/2009.

First, click on the Daily Historical Metadata Summary report screen shown below. Here you’ll see one type of metadata analysis with results for Apple Inc showing stock price ranges and price relationships for a defined time frame indicating how shares of this company have been trading.

You can then use these types of statistics to obtain hints of what to expect and not expect to happen with the stock price during the day, a sort of best-case or worst-case scenario.

While you’re there, you can also use the direct one-click links to some of the most popular sources of stock market news, information and data from sites like Google, Yahoo!, MSN Money, WSJ’s MarketWatch, Bloomberg, along with others for this company.

Stock-Market-Keywords.com contains no advertising and no affiliate marketing programs whatsoever. No stock market recommendations are made nor opinions offered. It was built strictly to present stock market related information.

Click here to read the news about details about the
Stock-Market-Keywords site being ranked #1 on all the major search sites shortly after going live this year in September.

Click here to read a price prediction that I posted to the Yahoo! message board for Morgan Stanley. One of the stocks that I’ve been trading this year is Morgan Stanley.

Click here to see the results I’ve enjoyed using stock market metadata to plan my stock trading strategies in my virtual account. My personal account is actually doing much better.

An advertising blitz by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainement, two music giants alon with Abu Dhabi Media Co. hoping that their new website, Vevo.com, will finally send to hell any idea that MTV is a place for top flight videos.The idea is to create an MTV for the digital age, a music site where all the latest and archived videos can be found.

As music companies are loosing revenues and profits at a rapid tick due to the combined impact of falling sales CDs, online piracy and the lack of creativity.Recording companies are experimenting with new ways of distributing their music online through ventures such as VeVo.It will show videos for free, supported by ads.While Google Inc’s Youtube has been an important music discovery tool fro the record companies, it has failed to attract premium advertising dollars.But Vevo just landed the sort of blue-chip brands that have shied away from Youtube because of the high production avlue of the videos, and the top flight artists they feature.

Indeed, Vevo launched with the support of nearly 20 new advertising partnerships, including names like McDonald’s Corp, MasterCard Inc, AT& T Inc. and Nissan Motor Co.’s Infiniti brand of luxury cars.These advertisers will pay a near premium rate around of $20 to $45 for every 1,000-page views, Vevo Chief executive  Rio Caraeff said in the interview.

Over the next year , as current licensing deals expire , Vevo’s player will gradually replace online videos that are on artist Web sites and other online destination such as AOL.The Vevo Web site and player will also have links to allow viewers to buy songs from Amazon.com or Apple Inc.’s iTunes.Links to artist merchandise will point to Bravado, Universal’s online retailing company.

Source: Reuters, Forbes.com

Coverage of VEVO Launch

]]> http://the115.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/the-daily-habit-politics-141/ Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:48:11 +0000 the115 http://the115.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/the-daily-habit-politics-141/

Student Ordered to Destroy MP3 Files

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091207/ap_on_hi_te/us_music_downloading;_ylt=AhwVBOb0mX2JKXjx52sa0r9H2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTM5amtkNmc0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjA3L3VzX211c2ljX2Rvd25sb2FkaW5nBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDNgRwb3MDNgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA3N0dWRlbnRvcmRlcg–

Hi-Tech Happy Holidays

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091204/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_holiday_tech_gifts_budget;_ylt=Aqwb0IcfIV8VkyhIe6.tMfUjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTMxMnNjdTlyBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMjA0L3VzX3RlY19ob2xpZGF5X3RlY2hfZ2lmdHNfYnVkZ2V0BGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDMgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNnaWZ0Z3VpZGVoaWc-

Esta foto es notable. Es domingo en ChilenoMac, así que no perdamos el tiempo en palabras:

Espero que les guste, y que sigan pecando xD. Si quieren enviarnos alguna foto que les guste, pues comuníquense con nosotros por los comentarios (en breve habilitaremos un sistema mejor). Y para las chicas, paciencia… ya habrá algo para ustedes.

Saludos a todos, y disfruten de la chica Apple de la semana

Mac OS X es un hijo de padres muy distintos: NeXTSTEP y Mac OS. Aunque lleva menos de diez años con nosotros, en realidad su gestación ha sido bastante larga. Esta es una continuación del artículo que puedes encontrar aquí.

Se aquietan (un poco) las aguas

Entonces, NeXT ha sido comprada por Apple, estamos listos para desarrollar un nuevo sistema operativo, están todos los ingenieros de NeXT felices y dispuestos a trabajar y además, como la guinda de la torta, está un tal Steve Jobs. Al comienzo, sería solo un consejero, luego sería iCEO (CEO interino) y, bueno, todos sabemos que sigue siendo CEO (sin i) hasta ahora. Eso, hasta donde sé, se llama progreso.

Pero no son las aventuras personales de este muchacho lo que nos convoca, si no la historia de OS X.

Recordemos un poco la situación: Apple tiene un sistema operativo agónico, que ha sido mantenido durante años con medidas casi cosméticas. Sin embargo, tiene algo, una ventaja comparativa sobre todos los demás, y no es la facilidad de uso. Es QuickTime. Y no es esa aplicación media fea (recién QuickTime X tiene una interfaz agradable), si no que toda la arquitectura que hay detrás, que permitía hacer cosas bastante avanzadas. Esa ha sido una de las razones de la supervivencia de Apple. Por otro lado, tenemos a NeXT, con su sistema operativo avanzadísimo pero sin usuarios y, la verdad, sin killer apps, salvo algunos mercados como… bancos. Tenemos mercados bastante distintos, pero Apple sabe que debe satisfacer a sus usuarios o simplemente desaparece.

Es entonces cuando revela por fin cuál será la estrategia de Apple: Rhapsody.

Rhapsody in blue

¿Qué necesita Apple? Un sistema donde los usuarios puedan correr sus aplicaciones preferidas, donde esté la “joya de la corona”, QuickTime y que, sobre todo, funcione. Y eso se dedican a hacer. La estrategia de Apple entonces es:

• Portar Quicktime a NeXTSTEP.
• Crear un “entorno de compatibilidad”, que es donde correrán aplicaciones para Mac OS antiguo, aisladas (como en cuarentena) del resto del sistema.
• Hacer que NeXTSTEP se viera como Mac OS.

El resultado de esto es Rhapsody.

En otras palabras, lo que Apple haría era maquillar un poco a NeXTSTEP, darle una apariencia más maquera, incluir una copia del Mac OS clásico como un programa más, donde se correrían aplicaciones ya existentes, pero protegidas en un entorno propio llamado Blue Box. Sin embargo, lo más importante es que las aplicaciones nuevas serían programadas usando las APIs de NeXTSTEP, que ahora eran llamadas Yellow Box.

Sin embargo, eso no es toda la historia. En el artículo anterior, hablé a la pasada de OpenStep, la especificación de las APIs de NeXTSTEP, que podía ser usada en distintos sistemas operativos. Ni cortos ni perezosos, en Apple lanzaron Yellow Box for Windows (y después decían que se congeló el infierno con iTunes). Efectivamente, como una manera de tentar a los desarrolladores, la idea era que podían escribir su software para mac y que además funcionara en Windows, lo que obviamente haría que sus ventas aumentaran y todos felices.

Y esto puede haber sido así para los desarrolladores pequeños, que de repente verían crecer su mercado. Pero el punto es que las aplicaciones nuevas debían ser hechas usando Yellow Box. Primero, usaban un lenguaje distinto y poco conocido, interfaces de programación distintas, pero sobre todo y por lejos, los grandes desarrolladores no aceptaron.

Y claro, cómo iban a aceptar. Imagina, por ejemplo, reescribir todo Photoshop desde cero. No sólo eso, si no que tendrías que confiar en que Apple haría funcionar Yellow Box en Windows o, si es por eso, que sacaría Rhapsody. Estamos hablando de Apple, la que en 10 años no pudo hacer un sistema operativo decente. Y de todas formas, si no salía Yellow Box para Windows, tendrías que reescribir todo lo que tenía que ver con la interfaz de usuario, una vez para Windows y otra para Rhapsody. Lo mismo Microsoft, con Office (una vez, consultado si desarrollaría para NeXTSTEP, Bill Gates declaró que “se mearía en NeXTSTEP”).

Resultado: un palmo de narices para Apple. Otra vez se quedaban sin estrategia para un sistema operativo.

Interfaces usuales pero no tanto

Antes de seguir con las desventuras de Apple, veamos un poco cómo era Rhapsody.

Rhapsody booteando. ¡Notemos el ancestro de la pelotita de playa!

El Workspace Manager, más conocido actualmente como Finder. Hasta antes de Snow Leopard, siempre hubo un grupo de gente que pedía a Apple que por favor rehiciera el Finder usando Cocoa (en Snow Leopard lo hicieron). Pues bien, esto fue lo más parecido a eso. Podemos notar varias cosas del screenshot, por ejemplo la manera casi orgullosa en que avisan que fue hecho usando Yellow Box. También un detalle raro, se ve como Mac OS, pero no totalmente. Por ejemplo, los bordes de la pantalla cuadrados (hasta Tiger, incluyéndolo, eran redondeados). No hay dock, pese a que NeXTSTEP lo tenía y OS X también.

Notas Adhesivas en Rhapsody.

Preferencias del sistema. Notemos un comportamiento curioso: en Rhapsody, como en NeXTSTEP, los menús se pueden “despegar” y mantener aparte.

La conversión no era completa: Algunas ventanas seguían con el mismo look and feel que NeXTSTEP.

Las vistas del Find… Workspace Manager (ciertamente, un nombre demasiado largo). Estas seguirían siendo las mismas hasta que se añadió CoverFlow en Leopard.

¡Yellow Box for Windows en acción!

Arqueología maquera

Ahora, todo eso es muy bonito, pero seguro que ya no tiene nada que ver con lo de hoy, ¿no? Pues no. Estas tecnologías forman la base de OS X como lo usamos ahora. Claro, ha habido un montón de cambios entre medio, pero la base del sistema sigue manteniendo cosas de Rhapsody y NeXTSTEP.

Como un pequeño ejemplo, les dejo una aplicación que hice para acompañar este artículo. Las imágenes que aparecen no están dentro de la aplicación, si no que están dentro de Cocoa, es decir, del sistema operativo. Algunas de estas imágenes son de los tiempos de NeXTSTEP, es decir, no las borran desde 1994. Por eso el nombre, Arqueología, pues eso es lo que hace, básicamente, mostrar fósiles. Pueden descargarla aquí.

Para terminar, en el próximo episodio, veremos por fin qué hizo Apple para lograr sacar OS X. ¡Saludos!