Displaying items by tag: iPad

China intends to change some of their legislation to prevent local businesses from maliciously appropriating the commercial names of world famous companies and products. The owners of global brands have the right to prohibit the unauthorized registration/use of their names and logos in China. [It is not just world famous brands though as it is a common practice to try and register almost any name that is not registered globally – Ed]

One of the things that was most criticized about the new iPad Mini was certainly the lack of the Retina Display, but it seems that this will no longer be the case.  Just days after Apple officially started selling the iPad Mini, rumors about is successor have already started to spread.

According to reports on Bloomberg, Apple is working the possibility of a switch of all of their Mac PCs to ARM processors. If they do make this change it will be the third processor architecture they have gone through. Apple started with Motorola 68xxx series processors, to be switched to the PowerPC in 1994, and for the past seven years they have been running on the Intel x86 architecture. Most interesting of all is that Apple managed to successfully, usually with minimal shock to their customers, make such a fundamental transition every time by which they are unparalleled in the industry.

Often times consumers are duped into the allure of Apple on the grounds that they are supposedly getting superior product. There is an assumption that because it is an “Apple” product, rather than Android or any other competitor, it is made out of superior parts. What if customers found out that the differences between these products are really only skin deep?

Apple has increased its investment this year in research and development by 40%, but still lags behind competing technology companies. According to information published in Apple's annual report, the company has spent in its fiscal 2012 $3.4 billion on research and development of which is $952 million or 39% more than last year. In 2011, Apple spent $2.4 billion on research and development making it 36% higher than a year earlier.

Google’s tiny 7-inch tablet with Android has launched a new trend in this market. Although not completely a new idea, having Google’s official stamp on the 7-inch device and Apple’s inadvertent support of the form factor with the iPad mini have given the smaller tablets a boost. With a starting price of $199 it was a very interesting trade for customers, but so far no official sale numbers have been released. Now Asustek’s CFO has finally given a hint about the figures and they are pretty good for the Nexus 7. With decent competition coming from the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD ($199) and Apple's 7.9-inch iPad mini ($329); Google will not have an easy time in the market, but at least customers will have decent choices.

Amazon has decided to use their position as the world's largest on-line store, in an effort to draw attention to their device, or better yet, to dissuade people from the competition. Thus visitors to their home page are treated to a very "subtle" statement that the Kindle Fire HD offers "a lot more for a lot less money." The screenshot of Amazon's Web site makes it all clear. Kindle's manufacturer points out that Fire HD has an HD screen with 30% more pixels than the iPad mini and also higher pixel density (216 to 163 PPI).

If Apple were a person they would need some serious psychological help. It seems that they have a personality that will not let them tell the truth at all. They dance around the truth and mix it up with spin and outright fantasy. You can see this trait by looking at any of their product launches or at any of the court cases they are involved in. Earlier this year we said that Apple insistence on pursuing a global legal campaign instead of innovating was going to hurt them and badly. Because they wanted to try and compete in the market with vague patents and outlandish copyrights Apple felt secure in being able to keep the market focus while blocking their competition through sales bans.

The first one to come on stage during today’s event was Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, who welcomed the audience and happily opened this set with stories about the success of the new iPhone. He referred to the record sales of iPhone 5 (over five million units during the first weekend) which was accompanied by the typical Apple euphoric video. After that came information on successful sales of new iPods, 3 million so far, as well as the large acceptance of iOS 6, on over 200 million devices, and then about 1.5 million books available via iBook store, 35 billion downloaded applications and so on. Cook said with great pride that the Mac is currently number one in the U.S. in both desktop and notebook segment [Ed - Considering that Mac represents less than 20% of the market we are not sure about that claim...].

It wasn't that long ago that Microsoft announced that they would even be producing a tablet based off of Windows 8. They did not announce the prices in June, during the initial announcement. However, the wait is over for the first line of Surface tablets, which run a significantly trimmed down version of Windows 8, known as Windows RT. The release of information, sadly, only applies to this version of the Surface. The full fledged version is still under wraps.