Patents are very complicated and can be difficult to identify, Shin [Jong-kyun, Samsung’s mobile president] said, but Samsung tried to ensure that no known patent by Apple is included in the new Android smartphone.Despite such efforts, he could not say with certainty that the Galaxy Nexus, dubbed by media as Google and Samsung’s answer to the iPhone 4S, would be entirely safe from Apple’s legal offense.“We will see if (the Galaxy Nexus) will be 100 percent free,” from Apple lawsuits, he added.
The Galaxy Nexus was unveiled this week; it’s a new Android phone that uses Android 4.0, code-named “Ice Cream Sandwich” – the first version of Google’s Android operating system that merges tablet and cell phone code forks. The Galaxy Nexus is the first phone to run the new OS.
Samsung is in the midst of legal wrangling with Apple in several international courts over alleged patent violations, and so far Samsung has come up short. Shin seems to suggest that he knows fighting with Apple is a losing proposition:
“I don’t think there is much gain (from lawsuits against Apple). What we are losing is the pride in our brand.”
It’s the job of analysts to make sure that they set reasonable parameters to their estimates based on how Apple guides. Everyone knows that Apple is conservative, but they are consistently conservative. They do offer a clear-cut range, which should be the upper and lower parameters based on the quality of the quarter. This quarter, Apple harped on the fact that this would be a transition quarter. Yet, analysts didn’t seem to take the hint.
But Generation X is tired of your sense of entitlement. Generation X also graduated during a recession. It had even shittier jobs, and actually had to pay for its own music. (At least, when music mattered most to it.) Generation X is used to being fucked over. It lost its meager savings in the dot-com bust. Then came George Bush, and 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Generation X bore the brunt of all that. And then came the housing crisis.Generation X wasn’t surprised. Generation X kind of expected it.
As someone who strongly identifies with this demographic (I was born in late ’69, right at the trough of the “baby bust” that followed the Boomers), I couldn’t disagree with a single thing Mat says here. Especially this part:
Right now, Generation X just wants a beer and to be left alone. It just wants to sit here quietly and think for a minute. Can you just do that, okay? It knows that you are so very special and so very numerous, but can you just leave it alone? Just for a little bit? Just long enough to sneak one last fucking cigarette? No?
Mat’s rant is response to (and links to) an editorial from a twentysomething Millennial posted in New York magazine. Read both.
I thought it would be interesting to compare Android and iOS not by a checklist of features, but rather by a checklist of the words their developers choose to use on their presentation slides. From that alone so much can be inferred. For example, here are what I think the boldest statements Apple and Google made during their keynote.
I’ve been using iOS 5 for a few months and I never noticed a change to Apple’s built-in Weather app. A friend sent me an iMessage this morning and asked if the hourly was new. Sure enough, there it is.
It’s a handy little addition to the app, especially if the weather is going to change. Typically the Weather forecast will just show rain, but you don’t know when it’s going to start. Now you do.
It’s also important to note that the app knows where you are automatically now, so you don’t need to enter in a specific city or place to get the weather. If you’re there, it knows.
Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of the All Things D blog owned by Dow Jones, suffered a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) traveling to All Things D’s AsiaD event in Hong Kong earlier this week.
AsiaD is the organization’s first international conference, after holding them for eight years in the United States (Steve Jobs was a frequent guest). The event includes appearances by C-level executives and founders of companies ranging from Airbnb (the community marketplace for people looking for non-hotel travel accommodations) to Sony Corp., graphics and mobile chip creator Nvidia, HTC, Alibaba and many others.
A TIA – sometimes called a “mini-stroke” – is caused when blood flow is temporary disrupted to part of the brain. In Swisher’s case, she says she felt a migraine-like headache and lost the ability to speak temporarily. She blames the problem on “a not-uncommon but undetected-until-now heart condition” and 14 hours of intercontinental plane travel exacerbated by cramped seating conditions.
Swisher has posted some comments from her hospital room in Hong Kong, and she’s even posted a short video. Swisher’s sense of humor certainly hasn’t diminished; she warned Silicon Valley, “I’m still watching you very closely,” then donned a pair of aviator sunglasses and repeated, “VERY closely.”
We at The Loop wish Ms. Swisher a speedy and complete recovery.
The cluster of green at the bottom of the chart at right tells the story: This quarter, for the first time since we’ve been monitoring them, the bloggers got clobbered. And not just by a little. The average miss in the categories that matter most — revenue and earnings per share — was 5.8% for the institutional analysts and a humiliating 23.5% for the independents.
Elmer-DeWitt’s running analysis of the accuracy of analysts is always an interesting piece to read after an Apple announcement. Two different graphs will give you a sense of which analysts were closer to Apple’s actual results. It’s worth poring over to help get a better sense of who to pay attention to next time.
Apple on Wednesday posted a Remembering Steve tribute on its Web site, comprising comments well-wishers have sent following Steve Jobs’ passing.
After Steve Jobs passed away earlier this month, Apple directed people interested in sharing their thoughts to send e-mail to [email protected]. Now Apple says that over a million people have sent e-mail to that address. Apple has begun to post many of the tributes that people have been moved to write since learning of Steve’s passing.
“One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity,” said Apple.
Dana Wollman comparing the Motoactv to the iPod nano at Engadget:
With its square shape, 1.6-inch touchscreen and raft of fitness features, it’s impossible not to draw that parallel as soon as you even read about the thing. Without the clothing clip attached, they’re similarly, sized, too
In the months leading up to the release of the iPhone 4S, rumors of a redesigned, teardrop-shaped iPhone were hot and heavy. This led some to be ‘disappointed’ when the iPhone 4S was introduced. Although the 4S features a wide array of improved features including a faster processor, redesigned antenna and larger battery, the general consensus was that most rumor traders were expecting a redesign.
Keep in mind, these rumors have been going on for months. First people expected an iPhone in the summer, then September, and finally October. A large percentage of the iPhone rumors turned out to be false, so Web sites get pageviews and Apple gets screwed as people wait.
Included in this update are two of the most requested features by users: editing and deleting events and notes support. Also included in this update is support for iCloud calendars along with various other improvements and enhancements.
Apple on Tuesday reported a profit of $6.62 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter. These results compare to revenue of $20.34 billion and profit of $4.31 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Apple said it sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 21 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.12 million iPads during the quarter, a 166 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. They sold 4.89 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 6.62 million iPods, a 27 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.
According to Apple, International sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
“We are thrilled with the very strong finish of an outstanding fiscal 2011, growing annual revenue to $108 billion and growing earnings to $26 billion,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Customer response to iPhone 4S has been fantastic, we have strong momentum going into the holiday season, and we remain really enthusiastic about our product pipeline.”
Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2012, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said he expects revenue of about $37 billion.
Apple Inc plans to shutter U.S. retail stores for several hours on Wednesday so employees can take part in a company-wide celebration of co-founder Steve Jobs’ life.
Here’s what I don’t like about iMessage, though: it’s yet another proprietary service.But when it comes to sending tidbits of text here and there, I don’t want lock-in.I want a standard.I’ve been spoiled here by e-mail. All I need is your e-mail address, and I can drop you a line, and vice-versa.
Oh you mean like RIM did with BBM. Instead of making it a unique service for its users, it opened it up to the world so anyone could use it… oh wait, no they didn’t.
It’s not up to Apple to provide users with a standard, they are a company that is differentiating its products from the competition. If you don’t like, don’t use it.
RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis announced BBX at the Devcon 2011 keynote. He states that it brings together the best of BlackBerry and the best of QNX into one amazing OS. He goes on to explain that the QNX architecture is safe by design without compromising on real time, multi-core performance.
Does this mean that none of RIM’s operating systems will do email and calendaring now?
Oh and the other big news from the keynote:
Mike [Lazaridis] is excited about using the PlayBook with your thumbs, like a BlackBerry phone.
Well now, that’s something that will certainly spur sales.
Researchers analyzed 780 swab samples — 390 from mobile phones and 390 from the hands that used them — in 12 U.K. cities. They found that 16% of both hands and phones were contaminated with E. coli, potentially illness-causing bacteria that is fecal in origin. The likely reason: because people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet.
The researchers discovered that 82 percent of phones had some form of bacterial contamination. Their conclusion is that people either aren’t washing their hands sufficiently or are lying about it when asked.
Gives new meaning to the expression “butt dialing,” that’s for sure.
What Houston does is Dropbox, the digital storage service that has surged to 50 million users, with another joining every second. Jobs presciently saw this sapling as a strategic asset for Apple. Houston cut Jobs’ pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn’t selling, no matter the status of the bidder (Houston considered Jobs his hero) or the prospects of a nine-digit price (he and Ferdowsi drove to the meeting in a Zipcar Prius).Jobs went dark on the subject, resurfacing only this June, at his final keynote speech, where he unveiled iCloud… Houston’s reaction was less cocky: “Oh, shit.”
Apparent has billed its small Doxie scanner as cloud-friendly from the start. Now they’ve taken it to the next logical step with the Doxie Go, a new iteration of their scanner that removes the computer from the process altogether. Doxie Go is available for pre-order for $199 and ships in late November.
Doxie Go is a 600 dot per inch (DPI) scanner designed for scanning receipts, bills, reports, and anything else on paper. Battery-powered, Doxie Go can go with you when you travel; it features enough on-board memory to store about 600 pages, with expansion through an SD card slot or USB (you can connect a USB thumbdrive to store additional photos).
When it’s convenient or when Doxie Go is full, you connect it to a Mac or PC using a USB cable and the included software, and Doxie Go syncs, creating multi-page, searchable PDF files (OCR software is included). It can also push those files to cloud-based services, uploading images to Flickr, CloudApp, Google Docs, Dropbox and others. Doxie customers also get a free copy of Evernote.
What’s more, an optional $39 Sync Kit enables you to connect Doxie Go to an iPhone or iPad. The peripheral will be available in December.
Yesterday I pointed out a readers comment to me about how The Loop made him jump through hoops to read the content. I took offense to his comments and posted my thoughts.
Today, Davy Buntinx posted his own article pointing out how wrong I was and how disappointed he was in my reply. In a lot of ways he’s right.
I wear my heart on my sleeve — always have. When I get offended, I respond in kind, and I was offended.
Perhaps I could have handled the situation better, but I feel I’m offering a good service to my readers and I spent a lot of time thinking about the best ways to lay out the site to suit the content and reader, not advertising.
What I have done is increase the amount of text in the truncated RSS feed so readers without the full text feed will have a better idea what the story is about. I hope that helps readers that expressed concerns about that.
I do take issue with one thing Davy said:
Not that it’s something I hate to do, since the thing I eventually end up on on the site is worth reading, but still, it’s an extra step, introduced to bump up page views and resulting advertising income.
I couldn’t care less about pageviews and my income is in no way tied to the amount of pageviews The Loop gets. If I cared about pageviews, I wouldn’t link directly to external articles in the RSS, I would force everyone to come here first, but I don’t.
It doesn’t matter if I get 10 or 10 million pageviews a month, I get paid the same. That’s the reason I did the new site like this — for the reader, and for the content.
Thanks for all the feedback — good and bad — I’m always working to make the site better.
Without a platform-wide offering from Google, the individual providers will have to continue to battle it out for domination. Hopefully, eventually one (or possibly two) will win and everyone will use that service for social connectivity. But until then, I think things will be messy.
Android advocates would have you believe that everything is better without Google in the way, and point derisively to iOS’ “walled garden” approach. Situations like this remind me that I’d rather be in a walled garden than an open sewer.
I’m always looking for interesting, sometimes funny, things to read and pass along to you. I never know where I’ll find it, but today I found something in the comments right here on The Loop.
I am canadian but I just laugh everytime I see RIM in the news. Their phones are years behind, the outage, the abysmal app store, terrible direction, investing 100 mil to buy a cloud computing company a year or 2 to late and most of all the playbook. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot and then trying to shoot the original bullet out. (and further the metaphor sitting and watching your foot get gangrene then trying to shoot that off) RIM needs to design an awesome phone, os, AppStore, than give it away for free to get customers back.
I have very wide ranging musical tastes — from classical to heavy metal. Over the years, there have been many guitarists that have influenced my playing, some to the point that I wanted to know their secrets and be able to play their greatest songs. I spend countless hours in my studio playing just because I love the instrument.
Everybody’s list is different, but here’s mine:
Zakk Wylde Randy Rhodes Eric Clapton Stevie Ray Vaughan Dave Mustaine Andres Segovia Robert Johnson Angus Young Jimmy Page Eddie Van Halen Tony Iomi Tony Rombola Slash Jim Croce
Of course, Ross is correct, RIM definitely needs a big win like Siri. However, it occurred to me as I read through the article that RIM needs so much more than just a major new feature.
In all fairness to Ross, he was only focused on how RIM needed something — anything — to spur the company and didn’t get into everything else that was wrong.
RIM is like the Boston Red Sox of technology products. They were on top of the world, but ended up being the laughing stock of an entire industry. Now, no matter how hard they try to make it back, things just keep getting worse.
I still firmly believe that the problems with RIM start with the co-CEOs. They are responsible for driving the company forward with new technologies, designs and ideas (or in this case, driving the company into the ground). Yet for years they let the company rest on its laurels and not continue to innovate.
By the time RIM did start to put out new products, it was so far behind the competition that even catching up was almost impossible.
RIM desperately needs a change to the very top of the company. This will instill some much needed confidence in the company and its future products.
It also needs to figure out how to end system outages like it had last week. Things like that just can’t happen with a company the size of RIM.
The last piece of the puzzle is new products. Get rid of the crap they are currently selling and design a new line of products that people actually want.
Part of this phase is also coming up with some must-have features like Apple’s Siri.
Apple has taken the smartphone market in an entirely different direction than what RIM helped create years ago. The problem for RIM is that Apple circled back and created features and security options that directly compete with the BlackBerry.
I’m not sure users have enough confidence in RIM at this point to believe that any new hardware or software will be much different than what they already have.
Taiwan’s HTC Corp lost a patent infringement complaint filed against Apple Inc in a preliminary decision at the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday.An ITC administrative law judge found “no violation” by Apple of four HTC patents that include technologies for power management and phone dialing.
It isn’t over for Apple with HTC though. In February a full commission is expected to rule on whether to uphold the judge’s preliminary decision.
This is only one of several patent-related lawsuits Apple is fighting. Apple is also battling Samsung, another phone manufacturer producing handsets based on Android (similar to HTC), and that’s stretching across several continents.
A new network from Myke Hurley that encapsulates all of his podcasting work, including The Bro Show. Other hosts include Terry Lucy, Patrick Rhone, Dave Caolo, Joshua Schnell and Stephen M. Hackett.
According to The National, accidents fell 20% in Dubai and 40% in Abu Dhabi. Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim from the Dubai Police department said his force saw the largest decrease among young drivers and men.
If BlackBerry users had Siri, they wouldn’t need to read their texts manually.
