Displaying items by tag: iPhone

Well you can now pre-order your less than impressive refresh of the iPhone. The new iPhone 4S pre-order sites went live around 3am this morning. However, despite several years of launching new phones none of the companies in question appear to have been ready for this. For some unknown reason Apple decided to perform maintenance on their Apple.com servers right around midnight.

According to many this caused the servers to be unavailable until almost 45 minutes after the pre-ordering frenzy began. Reports are that both Sprint and AT&T servers are overloaded and will require multiple attempts and patience to get to. Meanwhile other carriers are having similar issues. I have to wonder if some of this is not staged. After all, how can we see this with EVERY iPhone launch unless either Apple and their carriers are completely incompetent (which I do not believe) or they intentionally fail to prepare for this and want to spin the server downtime and other connectivity issues into their reports of how much in demand their new phone is. We know that Apple has overstated numbers before often including shipments to retailers in their initial sales reports, so why not leave things like this and make the claim that demand brought down their networks. It is all good press in the end really.

It should be an interesting day no matter what the real reasons are.

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One of the things that continues to annoy me about Microsoft is their constant failures. These failures are not due to product failures. The products they make are pretty solid; no it is because Microsoft fails to understand the market they are competing in. In the Operating system market Microsoft truly only has one competitor. I know I am annoying the Linux guys when I say this but Apple is their only real competition when it comes to the desktop OS. The same thing can be said for their Productivity suite Office. Even Mac owners use Office for Mac. Again I know there are multiple open source office products but even the most popular of them cannot compete with Microsoft sales in this area.

We have known that this was coming for months now and yet the world seems even more eager than before the announcement that Apple will have a Launch Event on October the 4th. What are they announcing? Well most are pretty well convinced that it will be long awaited iPhone 5. Along with this will be another announcement; one that will potentially change the balance of power in the mobile market (at least in the US). This is the announcement that Sprint will have the iPhone 5 for its customers.

We have actually been told on more than one occasion that Sprint will have it without ever hearing those words. As an example we told you that Sprint is cutting back the Silver and Gold VIP rewards. They end on October 1st. Sprint is expected to offer the iPhone 5 on the 15th of October. Several people that we know have been told they cannot take vacation during this time period. Now to top this off Sprint issued a statement saying that they will not be changing their unlimited data plan for their “new phones”. When you add everything up it all comes home to one thing. The iPhone 5 will be coming to the very last Unlimited Data plan carrier in the US.

We fully expect Sprint to draw in a very large number of new customers shortly after October the 15th. The question is; what is Sprint going to do about the customers that have been with them? That is the one thing that really could make or break their new power. If they do not take care of the people already with them, they could still potentially lose them to another company that offers the iPhone. I have read and talked to more than a few existing Sprint customers that are rather annoyed that they might have to pay full price for the iPhone (full price meaning $600+). They would rather cut their losses take the $200 hit for early cancelation and start up a new plan with a $199.99 phone and end up paying less than sticking with Sprint.

I tell you this, Sprint had better have a Loyalty Pricing plan up their sleeves or they could find themselves hemorrhaging customers rather quickly and to be perfectly honest; I am not sure that they can make up for them all with new buyers…

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Well here is an ouch for Apple; according to a report the new touch screen panel for the iPhone 5 could have a defect in many of them. According to the report that DigiTimes saw (through a source) the defect appears after lamination and is called a delayed bubble defect. The good news is that this defect appears during production and is easy to spot before the panels ship. Another good bit of news for Apple and WinTek (the company that is having the issue) is that this defect can be sorted fairly quickly and easily.

Now, if this defect cannot be fixed there is still hope. Currently WinTek is only producing between 20-25% of the panels that will be used in the new iPhone. Initial shipnents would be hindered but that type of delay is easy to spin into a positive with statements like “We are selling them as fast as we can make them” or “Demand was so high, we ran out of all of the initial production units”. You get the picture here I am sure.

Still, a delay in the launch of the iPhone would not be good for Apple. Consumers are still talking about the year-long delay to get a white iPhone4 to market. If there is any serious delay on the next gen iPhone it could impact consumer confidence in Apple’s ability to produce a product, especially when you add in the other problems with the iPhone 4 during its launch (Grip of Death, etc).

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Looks like Adobe has found a way to enable Flash content on iOS devices without needing the blessing of the JobsMob. Using a technology that is not really new, but has been upgraded to allow a more seamless streaming of content to devices with no support, Adobe hopes to allow millions of iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users to enjoy the virtues of its Flash Media Encoding. All that has to happen is for content developers to purchase an Adobe Flash Media Server (Version 4.5) and Adobe Flash Access 3.0. When combined these two take the rendering load off of the mobile device by pre-rendering the video on the server and then streaming the content to the device at the other end.

With the iPhone now reaching out to more and more carriers in the US this is something that was bound to happen. Of course, most of the carriers in the US are going to be capping their data plans which might make this complicated for some iPhone owners. There is also the $4,500 per system license fee that Adobe is asking just for the Media Server. Either way, although it is now perfectly possible to enjoy Flash content on an iOS device, we have a feeling that adoption of this technology will be very slow indeed.

Source bgr.com

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Well, well, well it looks like the folks at AT&T are going to have a go at settling the Anti-Trust suit brought by the DOJ. Originally some statements from the Telecommunications giant had indicated they would fight this in court. Now it according to a report from Reuters they are looking for a compromise that will allow the deal to go through without the need to bother any judges. This would seem to indicate that the deal is a bit shady in the first place, despite AT&T’s claims to the contrary.

But what kind of compromise would AT&T need to make to get this merger deal through? We know that T-Mobile does not care one way or the other. In fact they have a rather healthy failed merger clause that gives them a nice chunk of money in the event it is blocked. So the internet and the press begin to speculate and analyst put in their two cents. Right now there are rumors that AT&T will agree to sell off 25% of T-Mobile to its competitors. It will also probably agree to maintain the pricing and plan structure that T-Mobile has (for a predetermined period of time). These all sound good on the surface, but they hardly address the core argument in the suit. You see the DOJ put it very bluntly; if AT&T and T-Mobile merge it will reduce the competitive market by 25% and put the GSM Market firmly in AT&T’s hands.

This is something that is absolutely not in the interest of consumers, but then again most business dealings are not. AT&T is in a rough position, with the loss of the iPhone to Verizon and the possibility that Sprint will get the iPhone5 later this year AT&T no longer has a truly big seller and the fact that they banked on the iPhone instead of working on 4G put them behind their competitors. Now they have to act or they will fall even farther behind. Instead of investing in rebuilding their aging network they want to buy up one that is working towards modernization and pickup quite a few customers in the mix.

For now it is all in the hands of the Federal Regulators and perhaps even judges as this merger moves towards its fate; whatever that is

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Apple’s legacy of patent lawsuits might be coming unraveled in the EU. Although the California based company did get an injunction on Samsung selling the Galaxy S, Galaxy S II and Ace it only barely managed that one. The issue that got Samsung caught was the “way” you scroll through the Photo Application on the listed phones. Oddly enough the application in question is not a Samsung app but the default photo app that is released with Android 2.3 (which is the default OS on the phones in question).

Not affected by the ruling were the Galaxy Tab and Tab 10.1 which come with a different flavor of Android. The Judge also appear to have rejected the claim that Samsung copied Apple in the design of the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy S. More than likely this decision was influenced by the fact that the evidence used to support this fantasy of Apple’s was falsified intentionally or not.

Apple also took a blow in that the Judge ruled that Patent No. 1,964,022 is now null and void in the EU. This means that Apple can no longer use it in any legal actions. Patent 1,964,022 cover the “slide to unlock” feature that Apple uses on the iPhone.  Samsung has said that they will replace the software that is in violation of Apple’s patent and then begin selling the phones in the EU again. Apparently investors feel that Samsung will do just fine as Samsung’s stock went up after the verdict while Apple’s fell on the announcement of Steve Jobs’ resignation.

The fact that Samsung is conceding and changing the one application (that is not even theirs) could be an indication that they may have some counter suits of their own planned for Apple and want to remove any bargaining chips from the table before they fire back. Things could get messy for Apple in the next few months especially if the courts in the EU decide to do anything about all that falsified evidence, maybe at Samsung’s request…

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Apple is famous for many things. They are famous for making the iPhone and iPad, they are famous for their never ending stream of patents for things that already exist and last but not least they are famous for making sure that you cannot use their mobile products without their approval. You see if you buy an iDevice your core file system is pretty much locked down. Now there are ways to get into the file system and move things around, but it can get messy and things do not always make the transition intact. The other side of this is that there is no way to add more storage to any of their products. It is not like an Android or Windows based tablet with an SD card slot or USB ports. So what can you do if you bought one of the 16GB non-3G iPads or if you only own the iPad touch? Kingston has an answer for you. Kingston has put their expertise in making flash drives to good use and attached a flash drive to a wireless controller that can also act as a wireless bridge. They are calling it the Wi-Drive and when you pair this up with the WiDrive app from the AppStore you might just have a relatively low cost answer to a lot of people’s needs. So follow along as we take a look at the $180 32GB Wi-Drive on a first generation iPad.

Ok, I could not let this one pass. After hearing about the first instance of inaccurate evidence presented by Apple in court. I honestly thought that occurrence might have been nothing more that old images or an accident involving someone trying to fit both pictures in the same space. However, now we hear about another case where Apple has done exactly the same thing. This time the case in question is in the Netherlands where Apple is trying to get a permanent ban AND a recall of all Galaxy Smart Phones and tablets.

At this point it seems that Apple is willing to lie, cheat and maybe even steal to get what they want (market dominance). I certainly hope that the courts hold Apple responsible on both counts. It is very clear that Apple feels it is above the law in the US where they have led a charmed life with the Patent office and the US International Trade Commission. Now they are taking this to the EU where they managed to get an ex-parte, non-hearing preliminary ban on the Tab 10.1 with inaccurate images as evidence. Thankfully, as of this writing the ban has been lifted (citing jurisdiction issues) in all countries in the EU except Germany. With mounting proof of falsified (or at least wildly inaccurate) visual evidence being used by Apple we would certainly hope these injunction requests are dropped for good and Apple required to face the consequences of their actions.

Source ITWorld.
Picture credit WebWereld.

In news that surprises no one HTC has filed a complaint and suit against Apple today for… you guessed it Patent Infringement. All of this began not too long ago when Apple started its campaign against Android Phone makers claiming that Samsung, HTC and a few others have violated Apple’s patents on various functions and even the look and feel of their method of finger scrolling. Apple has one the first round in many of these cases, but things seem to be turning around.

It has recently come to light that Apple’s evidence in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 case is inaccurate. Apple’s legal team knowingly or accidentally submitted false evidence to show that the Tab was a copy of the iPad and iPad2. We do not know the outcome of this incident yet (but we are keeping our eyes open) but it is probably not going to be good for Apple.

Meanwhile HTC has just announced that it is filing its own patent suit against Apple that covers not only the iPad, iPhone and iPod but also every MAC computer with wireless technology that has “Wi-Fi capability that allows users to wirelessly network multiple devices at home, at work, or in public” as covered by US Patent 7,417,944. There is more to the complaint and suit which covers three specific patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 7,417,944, and 7,672,219 and 7,765,414). This is interesting as HTC has not even broken out their S3 Patents yet. These patents came from a purchase of ADC Telecommunications Patents back in April of this year that cover many wireless and even 4G technologies. ADC was later bought by Tyco Electronics (which became TE Connectivity) who sold its wireless communication division to Harris Corp.

Now think about this, if the ADC Telecommunications patents do not cut it they can always push for action based on the new S3 Patents HTC has recently picked up. As we said a couple of days ago; things are getting rather interesting.

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