Apple wins patent for entrance to retail store
Apple has been granted a patent for the cylindrical entryway into its flagship retail store in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai's Pudong sector.
Apple's retail store in the Lujiazui district of Shanghai's Pudong sector Shanghai's cylindrical variant of New York City's Apple store glass entrance cube
The US Patent and …
Icahn to Cook: 'Buy back $150bn of Apple's stock, or tell me why you won't'
Fresh from his flopped attempt to prevent Dell from going private, activist investor Carl Icahn has turned his attention towards Apple, advising CEO Tim Cook to up his stock-buyback plan to a cool $150bn.
Had a cordial dinner with Tim last night. We pushed hard for a 150 billion buyback. We decided to continue dialogue in …
Apple, AT&T settle 'bait and switch' iPad 3G data plan lawsuit
Apple and AT&T have agreed to a proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit that may drop forty bucks into your pocket should you have purchased a 3G-enabled iPad before June 7, 2010.
The lawsuit, filed on June 9, 2010, accused Apple and AT&T of using bait-and-switch chicanery when selling those iPads, promising unlimited data …
Rare gold iPhone 5s goes up against 50 caliber high precision rifle
iPhone haters are a dime a dozen, but it takes an especially hearty helping of heated hostility towards Apple's latest shiny-shiny to go after one with a 50-caliber Barrett M82A1 high-precision rifle.
Actually, we have no idea whatsoever whether Richard Ryan harbors any personal animosity to Cupertino's new iPhone 5s, but we do …
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 region-locking saga CLEAR AS MUD
On Thursday, we reported that UK mobile-tech shop Clove had noted on its order page for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that that device would work only with SIM cards issued in the region in which it was purchased. On Friday, it seems that the real situation might be different.
Might.
GigaOm's David Meyer now writes that Samsung's …
Global execs name Apple 'most innovative company' – again
When unveiling the soon-to-be-released computer-in-a-can Mac Pro at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference this June, Apple marketing headman Phil Schiller quipped "Can't innovate anymore, my ass," a barb aimed at those observers who accuse Cupertino of having lost its mojo.
Global business strategy firm Boston Consulting …
US House Republicans: 'End net neutrality or no debt ceiling deal' – report
Republicans in the US House of Representatives are reportedly including blockage of net neutrality among their laundry list of demands tied to the passage of an increase the government's debt ceiling.
This news comes courtesy of National Review Online, which reports that it received the outline of the GOP bill, which "originated …
Apple iOS 7 makes some users literally SICK. As in puking, not upset
Forging new frontiers in fanboi fragility, some members of the iDevice community have taken to Apple's discussion forum to complain that iOS 7 makes them want to puke.
No, their nausea isn't being caused by mere aesthetic revulsion. Rather, the source is iOS 7's many zoom animations along with the slight parallax effect that iOS …
Travel much? DON'T buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Samsung has crippled its new Galaxy Note 3 by adding region-locking, making buyers of unlocked units attempting to use it in geographies outside of the area in which it was purchased subject to exorbitant roaming fees.
"We wish to make our customers aware of certain functionality limitation regarding SIM cards on the Note 3. The …
There's ONE country that really likes the iPhone 5c as well as the 5s
After learning that Apple's iPhone 5s was being activated by carriers at a far higher rate than the less-expensive iPhone 5c, we were curious as to how the UK compared to the US when it came to that breakdown – so we asked Localytics, the company that provided the original activation stats this Monday.
"Comparing the United …
iOS 7 SPANKS Samsung's Android in user-experience rating
On the heels of the release of Apple's iOS 7, the researchers at Pfeiffer Consulting – a firm whose tagline is "Quantifying the Intangible" – sought to answer one simple question: "How good is it really?"
To Pfeiffer, competition in the smartphone market is about software, not hardware.
"Take any recent top-of-the-line …
Samsung's new image sensor promises better snaps in smaller devices
Samsung has announced a new image-sensor technology for smartphones and tablets it's calling "ISOCELL" – for "isolated cell" – that it says will improve color fidelity in low-light conditions, provide a higher dynamic range, and allow for slimmer devices.
"ISOCELL technology is yet another innovation that significantly raises …
It's official: Firm numbers show firm global lead of pricey iPhone 5s
There's been a tsunami of speculation about the relative sales figures for Apple's iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c, but now that the first firm numbers are in, it's abundantly clear that among the fervent fanbois who couldn't wait to get their hands on Apple's latest shiny-shiny, the flagship 5s is the clear winner.
The analytics folks …
Apple ups revenue estimates in wake of nine million–phone weekend
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Apple has announced that it now expects its revenue to come in at the high end of the range it projected when it announced its financial results for its third fiscal quarter of 2013 this July.
In the filing this Monday, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer cited the sale of nine …
BlackBerry inks deal to go private for $4.7bn
BlackBerry – or, as the struggling Canadian smartphone manufacturer has been renamed by the chattering classes, "Beleaguered BlackBerry" – has signed a letter of intent to be taken private by a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto, Ontario.
Fairfax currently owns about 10 per cent of BlackBerry, and the …
Steve Jobs' boyhood home may become protected historical shrine
The modest Silicon Valley ranch-style home where Steve Jobs spent his boyhood may soon be designated as an officially protected historical property. Not that the garage of 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos, California isn't already a venerated shrine among the Apple faithful – it's where the Two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, created the …
USB 3.1 demo shows new spec well on its way towards 1.2GB/sec goal
At CES this January, Jeff Ravencraft, the president and chief operating officer of the USB Implementers Forum USB-IF), told The Reg that the unfortunately named "SuperSpeed" USB 3.0 would double its throughput from 5Gb/sec to 10Gb/sec in its 3.1 incarnation. We recently sat down with him again and saw it in action.
The demo was …
Deep inside the iPhone 5s lurk a few surprises
The gleeful geeks at iFixit and ChipWorks have torn apart Apple's latest flagship iPhone, the 5s, and inside they found a lot of glue and a few surprises – including the manufacturer of the A7 processor and the source of the sensor-wrangling M7 chip that was much touted at the rollout of Apple's latest smartphones last week. …
Boffins: Earth will be habitable for only 1.75 BEEELLION more years
Unless we meddlesome humans – or our follow-on Earth inhabitants – muck up our planet with a nuclear holocaust, runaway greenhouse emissions, or some other ecological disaster, our 4.54-billion-year-old home should be habitable for at least the next 1.75 billion years.
Well, there's always the possibility of chance encounter …
Apple iOS 7 remote wipe: Can it defeat the evil scrumper scourge?
The two lawmen who fired up the Secure Our Smartphones Initiative – an effort to get smartphone makers to install kill switches in their handsets – have kind words for Activation Lock, the feature of Apple's iOS 7 that allows users to remotely wipe their iDevices, and which requires their owners' Apple ID and password to be …
Apple CEO Cook: 'We're not in the junk business'
Apple CEO Tim Cook has defended his company's strategy of sticking to the high end of the device market – read "expensive" – rather than competing at the low-cost, low-margin low end.
"There's always a large junk part of the market," Cook told Bloomberg Businessweek in a wide-ranging interview on Thursday. "We're not in the junk …
Life … moves … in … slow … motion … for … little … critters … like … flies
The smaller the creature and the faster its metabolic rate, the slower it perceives time, say a group of researchers from Ireland and the UK.
"Animals smaller than us see the world in slo-mo," study leader Andrew Jackson from Trinity College Dublin told The Telegraph. "It seems to be almost a fact of life."
Jackson and his …
Dog bites man: Apple's Macs trounce all Windows PCs in customer love
Once again, Apple's Macs – desktops and laptops – have outscored any and all windows PCs in a customer-satisfaction survey: the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
"Apple maintains the strong lead it has held for a decade, inching up 1 per cent to an ACSI score of 87," the consumer-surveymeisters write in a report ( …
Bill Gates again world's richest, tops in US for 20th straight year
Bill Gates has regained his title as World's Richest Human, and has also been named the US's wealthiest person for the 20th consecutive year.
According to Forbes' annual survey of the 400 top members of the silk-stockinged class, Gates elbowed Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim off the summit of Mt. Moola, posting a net worth …
Apple to uncloak new iPads, iMacs at October 15 event?
If you're a follower of Apple product rumors you know that the slimmest of evidence is enough to get the grapevine a-buzzing – and Monday's report that Apple is planning to hold an event on October 15 to announce new iPads, iMacs, and maybe more is as anorexic a bit of speculation as they come.
The French website MacGeneration …
Tokyo Apple Store staff rescue iPhone-queueing fanbois from typhoon
Japan is being lashed by a deadly typhoon that has forced a half-million people from their homes in advance of its torrential rains, but there are a handful of lucky fanbois who are riding it out in the Apple Store in Tokyo's tony Ginza district.
Not to make light of the deadly seriousness that is Typhoon Man-yi, but in addition …
The future of PCIe: Get small, speed up, think outside the box
The near-ubiquitous PCI Express interconnect – aka PCIe – is finding its way into mobile devices, working its way into cabling, and is on schedule to double its throughput in 2015 to a jaw-dropping 64 gigabytes per second in 16-lane configurations.
So said Ramin Neshati, the Marketing Workgroup Chair of the PCI-SIG, when The Reg …
Apple updates Mountain Lion, fixes Mail, Wi-Fi bugs
If you've been having problems with Apple's Mail app on your Mac running OS X 10.8.4 Mountain Lion, Cupertinian engineers have felt your pain and now offer a fix: an OS X 10.8.5 update.
The update, released on Thursday, not only fixes the bug that prevented some Mail messages from appearing, but also fixes the pesky bug that …
Intel touts 2-in-1s, the 'new' reincarnation of convertibles
To hear Intel tell it, the Next Big Thing™ in mobile computing will be the "2-in-1" (née "convertible"), which combines a traditional clamshell laptop form factor with a tablet that detaches from the keyboard, or flips, twists, or slides over it.
"The innovators at Intel and our partners have come up with the 2-in-1 – it's the …
Intel reveals new Haswell-based Chrome OS kit from old, new partners
Intel has announced that four of its OEM partners will have new devices based on the company's new "Haswell" chips and running Google's browser-based Chrome OS on the market in time for the holiday shopping season.
Or, as Intel software and services headman Doug Fisher described it during his keynote at the Intel Developer Form …
Apple quietly revives iPhone charging and syncing docks
Apple has quietly reintroduced an iPhone accessory that was discontinued when the iPhone 5 was unveiled last September: the lowly but in some quarters much-missed charging and syncing dock.
Apparently, Apple didn't want to clutter up its Tuesday-morning rollout of the iPhone 5C and 5S with a mention of such a quotidian piece of …
Intel reveals 14nm PC, declares Moore's Law 'alive and well'
Intel wants you to know that Moore's Law is not dead. And to prove it, CEO Brian Krzanich rolled out his company's next generation of process shrinkage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
"I'm here to introduce the first 14-nanometer PC," Krzanich said during his Tuesday keynote. The Ultrabook he displayed to his …
AMD's beating HEART of Internet of Things: 64-bit ARMs head for gadgets
AMD has announced the roadmap for a chunk of its business that's critical to its effort to "transform" the company from its dependence on PCs and x86 servers: the embedded market.
Perhaps one indication of AMD's aggressiveness can be deduced from the code names of its next four embedded parts – they're all named after birds of …
US military: 'Help us build the ROBO-WARFIGHTER OF THE FUTURE'
The US military has issued a formal solicitation for ideas about technologies that could help create a futuristic fighting suit for its special forces.
TALOS-wearing US serviceman You can only hope that when this guy is suited up, he's on your side
The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), headquartered at …
Apple spanked by judge in price-fixing injunction – but not too hard
The federal judge overseeing the ebook price-fixing case between Apple and the US Department of Justice has issued her remedy, and although it slaps Cook & Co. upside the head, the DoJ didn't get all it wanted.
After winning the case in Judge Denise Cote's court this July, the DoJ proposed a sweeping set of suggested remedies, …
Confirmed by cockup: New iPhones will be named 5S and 5C
Oops. If there remained any doubt that Apple was about to release two iPhones – one named the iPhone 5S and another named the iPhone 5C – those doubts have been removed thanks to a slip-up by one of Apple's Chinese iPhone carriers, China Telecom.
"China has been chosen as [the/a] first country where the iPhone 5S/5C will be …
The Solar System's second-largest volcano found hiding on Earth
Earth's largest volcano – and possibly the second largest volcano in the Solar System – has been discovered hiding deep beneath the waves about 1,000 miles east of Japan.
How large is "largest"? According to a paper published in Nature Geoscience, the "immense shield volcano" spans about 120,000 square miles, making it equal in …
iPad 5, Retina iPad mini with 'A7X' chip home for the holidays – report
Apple is readying its fifth-generation iPad for launch and is moving up the debut of its second-generation iPad mini – which will have a Retina display and will be powered by an upgraded processor – from next year to the fourth quarter of this year, if a new report by a longtime Apple-watcher is correct.
"Since iPad mini 2 will …
Intel's new top-dog desktop 'Extreme' CPU fails to excite geekerati
Intel has announced the latest in its 10-year line of "Extreme" desktop processors, and the consensus view from the geekerati who have put it through its paces in prerelease testing is a collective "Meh."
As ExtremeTech, Joel Hruska's review of the new chip was headlined, "Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge-E review: Intel's Great Limp …
iPhone rises, Android slips in US, UK
Apple's iPhone is gaining market share in the US and UK, while smartphones based on Google's Android operating system – which continue to lead all smartphones in both markets – see their share slipping.
According to the latest report from the market-watchers at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, in the three months ending in July of …
It's official: Apple sends out invitations for September 10 event
Apple has sent out invitations that confirm rumors it will hold a widely expected event next Tuesday, September 10, at the company's headquarters in Cupertino.
Are those two orange-ish circles actually 'champagne gold'?
Although – true to Apple's übersecretive nature – the invitation is merely a teaser that offers no concrete …
Amazon.com trumps other online retailers' sales by HOW much?!
It should come as no surprise that Amazon.com is the galactic leader in online retail sales, but what may be surprising is exactly how epic its lead is.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission recently wrote to "about a dozen" online retailers, The Wall Street Journal reports, asking for "hard details" about the amount of …
Look out ARM, Intel, here comes MIPS – again
Imagination Technologies, best known for its PowerVR graphics-core designs used by a host of system-on-chip (SoC) purveyors from Apple to Intel, wants world+dog to know that it is dedicated to grabbing a hefty chunk of the compute-core market with its MIPS-based designs resulting from its acquisition of that venerable company, …
Google's Project Glass headman answers most pressing question: 'Why?'
The creator of Google Glass sees his baby as being nothing less than the next step in human communications and humanity's "quest for knowledge."
"There are two main drivers for why we wanted to make Google Glass," Babak Parviz, who founded and heads up Project Glass at Google, told his audience at the Hot Chips conference this …
Microsoft Xbox One to be powered by ginormous system-on-chip
Microsoft has revealed details of the chip powering its soon-to-be-released Xbox One – and it's one big ol' mofo. How big? Does a 363mm2 footprint – using a 28-nanometer process, no less – filled with five billion transistors impress you?
Perhaps Microsoft is planning to use this big boy for Halo: OverReach
By comparison, …
Silicon daddy: Moore's Law about to be repealed, but don't blame physics
Moore's Law, which promises exponentially increasing transistor counts due to chip-manufacturing process shrinkage, is about to hit the wall. As Intel Fellow Mark Bohr once told The Reg, "We just plain ran out of atoms."
But there's one industry veteran, however, who looks at the reason for the repeal of the semiconductor …
Intel: Our new mobile chip SoCs it to its predecessor
Intel has released more details about its upcoming Clovertrail+ system-on-chip (SoC) platform for smartphones, and its enhancements appear to provide a big ol' boost above and beyond the company's current smartphone chip-wannabe, Medfield.
During a Monday morning session at the at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University …
The 'third era' of app development will be fast, simple, and compact
At the annual Hot Chips symposium on high-performance chippery on Sunday, the assembled chipheads were led through a four-hour deep dive into the latest developments on marrying the power of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, DMA engines, codecs, and other accelerators through the development of an open source programming model.
The tutorial was …
Workers at world's largest – and most remote – telescope go on strike
Workers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, aka ALMA, have embarked upon a decidedly down-to-earth pursuit at the world's largest astronomical installation: they've gone on strike.
"The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array regrets that it was unable to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement with its …
'Congressional watchdog' reports patent trolling rising fast
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent, nonpartisan "congressional watchdog" charged with reporting to that branch of government how tax dollars are spent, has released its long-awaited report on patent infringement lawsuits, and has concluded that such suits are on the rise.
From 2000 to 2010, the number …
