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FAILED Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation. Apple asked shareholders to vote yes on this non-binding proposal that gives input on executive pay. FAILED (1.9% voted “For”) Conflict of Interest Report. Apple asked shareholders to vote no on this proposal put forth by The National Center for Public Policy Research, which wants Apple to assemble a report that…

Image credit: Neal PannAlong with protesters outside the meeting, the organization plans to present the company with a petition demanding what they call an “ethical iPhone” during the standard question and answer session. The group claims to have over 300,000 signatures from several rights groups.Protesters were lined up along the street outside the Apple campus…

Edifier, a company that specializes in sound systems, has a new speaker out, identified simply as the MP250. It’s sleek, ten inches long and 1.5-in wide at the widest point, and triangular in shape. Edifer MP250 speakerThe top and bottom of the speaker are brushed aluminum and the front side, where the sound emerges, is covered with…

Sorry, Proview. No iPad ban for you.According to Apple, it purchased the trademark to the iPad name from Proview in 2009.Proview has been trying to get the iPad banned in specific cities, although that doesn’t seem to be working out very well for the company. The Shanghai court’s decision doesn’t help Proview’s efforts, and it…

Air Force scraps big iPad purchaseAir Force Special Operations halted its iPad purchase plans two days after Nextgov asked about the inclusion of GoodReader as one of the apps for managing and reading PDF documents on the tablet device. GoodReader is a popular iPhone and iPad app that handles file transfers to and from the…

To make matters worse, engaging in every technology that comes along can not only complicate our life but also create conflicts that waste time and create frustration. I saw a tweet recently that said something like: Google+ is like a health club: everyone’s a member, but no one goes. We sign up for things that…

Apple has been targeted by human rights groups for the working conditions in factories that build its products. The company responded by saying it monitors the conditions at the facilities it subcontracts for production, and that new inspections in conjunction with the Fair Labor Association were underway.The FLA said that its preliminary investigation showed better…

The class action lawsuit claimed that Apple misled customers by intentionally withholding information about antenna performance on the iPhone 4. Attorneys jumped on the issue after reports surfaced showing that holding the iPhone 4 in a specific way could cause signal strength to drop.Apple responded to the allegations by claiming all cell phones can lose…

Surprise! It’s Mountain Lion Sometimes it seems as if all of the Apple surprises are gone. We expect big sales numbers ahead of earnings reports. We expect new iPhones and iPads months before we get them. Software updates are seen from a mile off. Yep. The days of the Apple surprises seem to be long…

A Foxconn FactoryFoxconn issued a statement Friday that indicated junior level workers would now be paid 1,800 yuan (US$290) per month, and if that worker passed a technical exam they could earn as much as 2,200 yuan, according to a report by Reuters.This is up from the rate of 900 yuan which was being paid just…

If that’s the case, then the real secret is not sales. It’s solving a problem. The Gateway people could’t begin to handle the intricacies of Windows, all they wanted was your credit card for the hardware. In the Apple stores, as we know, the focus is on answers. And occasional maintenance. And everything that’s on…

The olloclip 3-in-One Photo Lens certainly caught the eye of Mac Observer staff at Macworld | iWorld 2012. Ted Landau mentioned it in his overview of the show.  Jeff Gamet is going to cover it from the point of view of pixels and all that technical stuff. Me, I just want to talk about how fun…

I participated in a live demo of the Garmin GTU 10 at Macworld | iWorld, and the very first thing that came to my mind was an incident concerning a young man out riding his bicycle when he was hit by a car in a hit and run accident. He was thrown off the road…

The audio quality of the recording is quite low, but it’s well worth listening to if you want some insight on Apple’s new CEO. If you can’t listen, however, Philip Elmer-DeWitt and the team at Forbes put together a written transcript of the event. You’ll miss what we considered some of the emotional nuances (and…

According to Bloomberg, Apple says that during the early 1990s, it was involved in the development of a digital camera with Kodak, and that Kodak patented the resulting technology. Kodak has denied that and is currently suing Apple and Research in Motion over its image preview patent. That case, filed in January 2010, is still…

Proview CEO Yang Long-san told Reuters: “The customs have told us that it will be difficult to implement a ban because many Chinese consumers love Apple products. The sheer size of the market is very big. We have applied to some local customs for the ban and they’ll report to the headquarters in Beijing.”The CEO…

The change in the SEC’s position is attributed to the efforts of Trillium Asset Management, which led the push on behalf of itself and two other large shareholders. Farnum Brown, an investment strategist at Trillium, told Bloomberg: “It allows shareholders to come to the table for the first time on an issue that we think…

Bloomberg Businessweek reported on the data gathered by Flurry, a company dealing in mobile application development, analytics and advertising. That data indicated that developers made approximately one new Android app for every three iOS apps during January.That’s down from last year, when there were two Android apps created for every three iOS apps. And while this data…

The comments came when Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope asked Mr. Cook about its cash holdings, which stood at more than US$97 billion at the end of the December quarter. He said that Apple had been sparing in its use of that money and noted that there has been a lot of talk about an…

Mr. Misek argued that Apple has three main uses to which it can and will put its cash hoard to use. He said that Apple would continue to be “very aggressive” in capital spending, which includes expanding its retail presence, buying factory equipment (which Apple does with some of its OEM partners), and expanding its…

That score put Apple well ahead of number two Google’s score of 82.82—Google was number one in last year’s poll, and Harris Interactive stressed that Google’s score was still quite respectable. That serves to emphasize just how well Apple did in this year’s poll, as shown in the chart below. “Customer inclination towards strong leadership…

Pegatron recently received iPhone orders from Apple and is rumored to be one of the suppliers for the iPad 3 that many expect to be announced next month. Ironically, Pegatron is an Asustek spin-off, but it is expected to cease making the Zenbook by the end of March.Image via 9to5 Mac

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of Internet Software and Services, accepted the award on Mr. Jobs’ behalf, according to Jason O’Grady at ZDNet.Image courtesy of ZDNetIn a tribute to Mr. Jobs published on the Grammy Awards web site, cellist Yo-Yo Ma wrote: “Before I met Steve, I first had to say no to him.” He…

My first education came from Glenn Fleishman back in 2011: “Keep your Mac safe from Web security flaws.” That’s been a starter kit for me. It’s tough, scary, but fundamental to your Internet life. As a result of my research, I’ve found that Firefox checks the OSCP database automatically while Safari, with no help from…