This week: Shining Apple, Flash, legal troubles

This week Apple sent out invitations for a special media event to be held on October 12th, depicting closed theater curtains with the words "One more thing..." written in the foreground; several reports suggested Apple may be planning to unveil a video-capable iPod at the special event. Analysts have high hopes for Apple as it gears up to deliver its fourth-quarter results on October 11th, which will be broadcast live via the Web just one day before the planned special event. First Albany raised Apple's stock target with the belief that iPod nano's success will provide "upside momentum" heading into the fourth quarter. Adding fuel to the fire, Piper Jaffray said a survey of teens regarding buying patterns for digital audio players and online music indicated that Apple's iPod and iTunes gained market share, rather than plateau or lose share as had been expected.

Flash Memory

Flash prices are rising in anticipation of Apple's new product debut next week, and buyers in the spot market are aggressively placing orders due to concerns of a tight supply. Samsung said it would seek ways to reduce the gap of supply price between Apple and domestic MP3 player makers to less than 10 percent, but other MP3 manufacturers say that Samsung may not offer Apple's price to them, which may lead to an investigation by South Korea's government over antitrust allegations.

Legal Troubles

Apple has continued its crackdown on small businesses that use its trademarks to sell products, this time targeting companies using Google AdWords containing Apple product names. On Tuesday Judge Jeremy D. Fogel passed a ruling along in favor of Forgent Networks and its wholly owned subsidiary, Compression Labs, which holds the "672 patent." The patent covers technologies used in JPEG image compression. Apple -- along with over 40 other companies -- are accused of infringing on the patent.

Software

Digidesign announced Pro Tools 7 software, which it says is an "evolutionary leap" in the creative power of the industry-standard digital audio workstation software. Macromedia unveiled Flash Player 8.5, its high-performance runtime client for rich internet applications that builds on version 8 by improving script execution on the virtual machine. Finally Apple released Logic Express Update 7.1.1 and Logic Pro Update 7.1.1 to address "isolated reliability issues" also improve compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

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