News

As a regular user of Skype (John F. Braun and I rely on it for producing the our Mac Geek Gab podcast, and I use it daily to maintain regular contact with distant staffers), this scares the bejeezus out of me, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think.The Mac version, despite always having…

Microsoft plans to buy Skype The deal has been approved by the boards of directors for both companies and finally lets eBay offload the rest of Skype. eBay paid some $2.6 billion for Skype back in 2005 raising questions about why an online auction company would want an Internet chat company. eBay sold off 65…

According to the magazine’s sources, Mr. Jobs called the MobileMe team into a town hall meeting in one of Apple’s auditoriums after the service launched with problems and garnered unflattering reviews from noted tech commentators like Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Jobs reportedly asked the assembled engineers and other MobileMe team members,…

The CalDigit AV drive is a 1TB external drive designed to be used for audio and video applications.  These applications often demand high throughput, so the AV has two of the fastest interfaces you can find, two FireWire 800 ports and a USB 3.0 port.  To provide USB 3.0 connectivity, we used the CalDigit SuperSpeed…

The New Yorker gets iPad subscriptionsThe New Yorker readers can subscribe to the publication on their iPad for US$5.99 a month, which works out to be a much better deal than the magazine’s original $4.99 per issue price. For readers that don’t want to pay for a subscription, they can still pick up individual issues…

So much so that I’ve never jailbroken an iThing… Well, it’s partly fear, and partly with over 350,000 apps in the App Store it’s hard to see why I’d want to. But there’s a healthy amount of fear in there, where I’m concerned. Not apparently with a lot of other people, and that lack of…

The Sanlitun Apple Store on a calm evening at The Village in Beijing Source: Apple Inc. Accounts are confused at this point, but what we do know is that the front door got smashed, and that a fight of some sort broke out afterwards. Michael Hakel, for instance, was an Apple customer waiting in line…

For instance, last week I looked at the Stocks app. I don’t follow stocks (though everyone tells me I should) so I’ve rarely bothered with the app, or any of the more feature filled replacement apps available in the App Store. What I discovered was that the Stocks app has a lot of nice features…

The Senate hearing was convened by Senator Franken following revelations about the ways in which Google and Apple were collecting location data through their smartphone platforms (Android for Google and iPhone for Apple). “This hearing is the first step in making certain that federal laws protecting consumers’ privacy-particularly when it comes to mobile devices-keep pace…

So why I am getting a 3D television anyway? The main reason is that most of the top-end TVs have 3D included. At this end of the market (which is where I am), you wind up getting 3D whether you want it or not — at not too much extra cost. Having 3D does not…

Apple goes looking for customer feedbackCustomers that agree to participate in the Customer Pulse program will be asked to participate in no more than two surveys each month. Apple said answers will be anonymous, and that survey results will always be viewed as a whole instead of individually.Apple’s other feedback tools have typically been reactionary,…

“The performance gains and power savings of Intel’s unique 3-D Tri-Gate transistors are like nothing we’ve seen before,” Mark Bohr, Intel Senior Fellow, said in a statement. “This milestone is going further than simply keeping up with Moore’s Law. The low-voltage and low-power benefits far exceed what we typically see from one process generation to…

Mr. Laporte’s tweet, which reads: “I have it on good authority that Tomlinson Holman (of THX fame) is joining Apple to run audio. Major upgrade.” Leo Laporte is a very well connected and highly respected blogger and podcaster in Silicon Valley, giving his tweets more weight than many other sources. If he’s right, this would…

“When we compared a white iPhone 4 with a black iPhone 4 in our Yonkers, NY, lab using high-quality calipers, we found they were both the same thickness (0.37 inches),” CR said in its report. The magazine’s tests were conducted after sites such as Engadget reported late last week that the white iPhone 4 was…

The Portable Quick Stand from AViiQ is 11-in. long and raises the laptop two inches off the work surface.  When folded it is not quite ½ inch thick and weighs 5.5 ounces.  It features a 12 degree typing angle that reduces wrist strain.  The MSRP for the stand is US$39.99 and is available now as…

The nano maintained its stealth presence when the pants were tossed in the washing machine. It remained undetected when the pants were next transferred to our dryer. It was only when I went to put the freshly-cleaned pants back in my closet that I finally discovered the nano. The nano had almost literally been put…

Apple bought icloud.com? Seems likely.News of the second unnamed source comes courtesy of AllThingsD. GigaOM offered up its own anonymous source earlier who also said the deal set Apple back over $4 million.Adding a little more credibility to both reports, Xcerion has rebranded its icloud online storage service as CloudMe, and the icloud.com domain redirects…

Apple passed Microsoft on the revenue side in the September quarter of 2010, as you can see in the chart below. It took three more quarters for Apple to pass its erstwhile foe in profits, however, in part because of the disparate nature of the two companies’ business models. Apple and Microsoft revenues in billions…

Even handheld devices enjoyed a certain segregation, though, admittedly, these devices were far more personal. They resided in pockets, purses, briefcases, or riding the hip of fashion challenged nerds, and were always ready. Though they were personal they, nonetheless, maintained a strict adherence to the unwritten Law of Human/Machine Fraternization, which loosely states that Man…

Nokia has faced a triple assault on its global domination of the smartphone business from Google’s Android platform, Apple’s iPhone empire, and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry corporate tool. Nokia once owned more than 50% of the global smartphone market, a market in which Nokia was a leading pioneer, but the company has watched its market…

Apple and Google were both invited to attend a hearing on mobile privacy that Senator Al Franken convened in the wake of revelations about the kinds of data collected or stored by both Apple and Google on smartphones. Android devices were found to be transmitting location data and a unique identifier back to Google, while…

When I read that Equinux was introducing Mail Designer, an application that works with Apple’s Mail application and allows the user to send out designer emails, I was immediately interested. So interested that I asked for the opportunity to review it. I was not disappointed. I send out at least a dozen e-mail messages a…

Apple filed for a trademark on for the name “App Store” when used as an online marketplace for downloadable apps (and other related uses). The company met with resistance from Microsoft, which asked the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to throw out the trademark, arguing that it’s a generic term that should not be…

I am an adequate musician for many tasks, a barely competent recording engineer (that’s probably being generous), and when it comes to producing and mixing, I know just enough to be a significant danger to myself and those who love me. But I love music — I love playing, I love writing, and I love…