Mace - 20 November 2009 12:37 PM

Thank guys.  These discussions demonstrate that Apple is good at cost control.

Tim Cook is a master of all aspects of supply chain management.  He is the perfect complement to SJ.

It brings to mind the combination of Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa.

Macworld: Core i7 iMacs beat even octo-core Mac Pros

Multi-carrier iPhone in France doubles sales
updated 06:30 pm EST, Fri November 20, 2009

iPhone non-exclusive helps Apple, hurts RIM

The elimination of the iPhone’s exclusivity to Orange in France has resulted in “more than double” the sales of the device and dealt a blow to the BlackBerry, according to research notes issued recently. Estimates from Bernstein, Strategy Analytics and others report twice as many iPhones being shipped in the summer quarter as in the spring due specifically to Apple’s handset being readily available at Bouygues Telecom as well as SFR. That added exposure is thought to have directly impacted RIM as customers at the new carriers had a new, major alternative to the BlackBerry line.

Absolute market share has reportedly borne this out as a Morgan Stanley note claims that Apple’s influence grew 17 percent between the two seasons. Gartner believes that as many as 600,000 iPhones sold in France during the quarter, making it the single largest market for iPhones in all of Europe.

While the iPhone 3GS had its first full quarter of sales in the period and likely spurred on at least some of the gain, a non-exclusive deal is considered important as, like the UK, the French market is relatively fragmented and doesn’t leave any one carrier with a commanding influence. Adding extra carriers as a result may translate directly to more exposure and more sales.

France’s precedent has potentially mirrored itself in the recent end to O2’s exclusivity in the UK, as Orange recorded breakthrough first-day sales and has strong expectations for the future that may be helped by T-Mobile UK’s tentative merger with Orange. Vodafone UK plans to carry the iPhone in early 2010 and, at that point, should put the majority of British cellular subscribers on a network that offers the iPhone.

Canada has also recently ended exclusivity, albeit through the addition of new networks rather than contracts or legal action. AT&T’s exclusivity is rumored to end in mid-2010 but has never been confirmed.

RIM’s advantage over Apple in smartphones risks being canceled out by the iPhone’s expansion. Recent strong BlackBerry sales have been helped primarily by the sheer number of carriers that use its devices, as all major North American carriers, many European carriers and others abroad all carry at least some of its lineup.

Apple announces Black Friday Sale.

[quote]New iPhone jailbreak worm seeks banking info

A new iPhone worm affecting jailbroken units is targeting owners who use their device to access Internet banking services from Dutch online bank ING. BBC News reports that the worm was discovered by security company F-Secure, and uses the same SSH vulnerability—specifically, jailbroken iPhones that have had SSH activated without having the default password changed—to redirect the bank’s customers to an unauthorized look-a-like site with a login screen. According to F-Secure, this new worm is more dangerous than prior threats because it can behave like a botnet, enabling the phone to be accessed or controlled remotely. “It’s the second iPhone worm ever and the first that’s clearly malicious - there’s a clear financial motive behind it,” F-Secure research director Mikko Hypponen told the BBC. “It’s fairly isolated and specific to Netherlands but it is capable of spreading.” Hypponen added that while the number of infected phones is thought to still be in the hundreds, the worm could potentially jump from phone to phone when multiple vulnerable devices are running on the network, such as at Wi-Fi hotspots. A spokesperson for ING Bank said the company was going to post a warning about the worm on its official website. “We are also briefing call centre personnel,” she added. “It’s important to remember that the worm only affects jail-broken phones and it is only aimed at customers in the Netherlands.”

incorrigible - 23 November 2009 10:12 AM

Apple announces Black Friday Sale.

BGR has the leaked details

This is far more credible than the discounts of 30% off iMacs that BGR originally reported.  It lost massive credibility.  Apple’s Black Friday Sale has historically offered modest price discounts.

Apple strikes back at Verizon, entering the fray to counter the latter’s ad campaign.  Not sure if this means Apple and V delay any future nuptials or not…  HERE

Early info on the new Intel i9 Gulftown, which is destine for the next generation Mac Pro.
i9

Despite being more than a month away from the public, Intel’s Core i9 (Gulftown) platform has already been tested and is shown to be potentially as fast as its design implies. The move from four to six cores has translated into an almost perfectly linear increase in speed for those apps that can use multiple processors. In tasks such as 3D modeling and video encoding, a 2.8GHz Core i9 is found by PCLab to be roughly 50 percent faster than a Core i7 at the same clock speed.

  Handbrake

For those into video Handbrake has a new major release which brings 64bit goodness to the Mac.  Haven’t tried it out yet, but I would guess it cuts encode time significantly.

Another candidate for the Apple tablet display

Pixelqi

Epaper Screens- with Color And Video
Our first screens will be 10” diagonal screens for netbooks and ebook readers that are sampling now and will ship in high volume in late 2009.  These screens rival the best epaper displays on the market today but in addition have video refresh and fully saturated color.  The epaper mode has 3 times the resolution of the fully saturated color mode allowing for a high resolution reading experience without sacrifice to super color fidelity for graphics.  In addition these screens can be used in sunlight.

Mac clone maker promised investors huge sales
But Psystar sold just 768 systems, says Apple’s economist

By Gregg Keizer | Computerworld US | Published: 10:01 GMT, 26 November 09

The Mac clone maker now fighting for its life in federal court pitched an extremely aggressive business plan to potential investors last year, claiming that it would sell as many as 12 million machines in 2011.

According to a slide presentation that Psystar showed to venture capitalists in 2008, the Florida-based computer maker projected sales during 2011 of between 1.45 million and 12 million, with the first figure its “conservative” estimate and the second number representing an “aggressive” growth model.

The presentation was one of the documents Apple appended to a motion filed Monday in a San Francisco federal court that asked US District Judge William Alsup to shut down Psystar’s sales of Mac clones.

Apple asked Alsup for a permanent injunction that would force Psystar to stop selling any computer bundled with Mac OS X, a move prompted by Alsup’s ruling earlier this month that Psystar violated Apple’s copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) when it installed Apple’s operating system on Intel-based computers.

Apple acquired the presentation during the discovery phase of its July 2008 lawsuit charging Psystar with copyright and software licensing violations. Psystar started selling Intel machines with Mac OS X pre-installed in April 2008.

Psystar was looking for $24 million in funding, the presentation said, to expand its operations as well as to back its own branded hardware so it could “compete directly against Apple.”

Under its conservative projections, Psystar told investors it would sell 70,000 computers in 2009, 470,000 systems in 2010 and 1.45 million machines in 2011. The firm’s aggressive growth model, however, put those numbers at 130,000, 1.87 million and 12 million during 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.

By comparison, Apple sold 10.4 million Macs during its 2009 fiscal year, the 12-month span that ended 30 September, 2009.

To make its numbers, Psystar realised it had to sell a laptop, which it told potential investors it would launch in the first quarter of 2009. That notebook, tentatively named “OpenBook” to identify it with the company’s “Open” line of desktop and server systems, was to boast a 13.3-in. display, an Intel 2 Core Duo processor running at 2GHz, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The OpenBook’s price was set at $699, $300 below the price of Apple’s lowest-cost notebook at the time, the MacBook.

Although Psystar’s CEO, Rudy Pedraza, told reporters in August 2008 that his company was working on a notebook, one never appeared. Currently, Psystar sells only desktop computers and rack-mounted servers.

Psystar’s sales models also appear to have been dramatically off the mark. According to an economist hired by Apple to analyze Psystar’s business records in order to make recommendations on the damages the latter should be made to pay for its copyright infringement, Psystar sold fewer than 1,000 machines from April 2008 through mid-August 2009.

“Psystar produced incomplete financial records,” Dr. Matthew Lynde, who works as an economics consultant for Cornerstone Research, said in a declaration submitted to Alsup on Monday. After digging through invoices, purchase orders and other documents, Lynde was able to pinpoint only 768 sales of machines with Mac OS X pre-installed. “Psystar has not challenged my analysis of its financial records,” Lynde added.

Psystar even tried to turn the Apple lawsuit to its advantage when it pitched investors. In one slide of the presentation, the company argued that the ongoing litigation would “insulate” Psystar from “other PC manufactures [sic]” who might want to leap into the OS X market but would be frightened off by Apple’s suit.

“This presents us with a unique window of opportunity to gain market share and achieve brand recognition before competitors can even enter the market,” the slide read.

Alsup will hear oral arguments 14 December from both parties on Apple’s request for an injunction. The case is slated to go to trial in January 2010.

http://news.techworld.com/sme/3207425/mac-clone-maker-promised-investors-huge-sales/

New details on the Intel Arrandale from Fudzilla
These cores will probably end up in the next version of the MacBook and MacMini and probably a split between these cores and the 4 core Clarksfield in the higher end MacBook Pro.  One of the key features of Arrandale is moving the GPU and CPU to the same die so the days of the 9400M are numbered IMO.

Three Arrandale 32nm arrive January 3rd      
Written by Fuad Abazovic    
Tuesday, 01 December 2009 09:24

Two days before CES 2010

Intel plans to launch at least three Arrandale-based Core i5 and Core i7 processors on January 3rd and none of them will be what we call cheap.

Core i5 520M, the cheapest of the lot, has two cores and four threads at a base frequency of 2.4GHz and as expected, it supports Turbo Mode and can run even faster. It features 3MB of cache and will sell for $225.

The next runner up is Core i5 540M with two cores, four threads, Turbo Mode, 3MB of L2 cache, a 2.53GHz frequency and as of January 3rd, it will sell for $257.

The last one is called Core i7 620M and it also has two cores and four thread. However, it features 4MB of cache and is clocked at a base frequency of 2.66GHz. It supports Turbo Mode and can run faster. On January 3rd, it will sell for $332 in quantities of 1,000,

From   ifoAppleStore

New iPod Touch POS May Go CommercialDecember 1st, 2009
Just weeks after rolling out a ground-breaking iPod touch point-of-sale system (POS), Apple may be preparing to commercialize the system and generate some revenue from its creation. Coincidentally, the move comes on the same day that the founder of Twitter announced a possible competitor to the iPod POS, which will allow small businesses to easily and quickly accept credit card payments using a mobile device. According to insiders, Apple has been deluged with inquiries about the POS system, which is comprised of a sleek, custom-designed and manufactured shell that surrounds the iPod touch, and also incorporates a barcode scanner and magnetic stripe reader. The hardware links to custom-programmed software that streamlines the process of taking cash, credit or debit card payments for merchandise.

Since the debut of the iPod POS , inquires have been coming from all directions, including from end-user small businesses, larger chains and system integrators. Until now, Apple’s response has been that the iPod POS is a proprietary product, unavailable for sale.

But now, tipsters say, Apple retail executives have asked the retail store business specialists to collect contact information from anyone who inquires about the iPod touch system, apparently to create a database of potential customers if Apple decides to commercialize the product.

This is sweet