Apple now represents about a fifth of all technology sales in the US, new NPD data showed Monday. By the end of 2011, 19 percent of revenue in the US was related to an Apple product. The company was now the top company selling technology in the US, topping HP, Samsung, Sony, and Dell even when the others could include their sales from all categories.
Apple on Monday took the step of asking the Fair Labor Association to orchestrate "special voluntary audits" of its last-stage suppliers. The investigations, which include Foxconn plants in Chengdu and Shenzhen, began the same day. They include both interviews with "thousands" of workers over conditions as well as inspections and document reviews.
A tentative rumor has had Pegatron allegedly forced to choose between manufacturing ASUS' Zenbooks and Apple's iOS devices. Taiwan's Commercial Times had heard that Apple was supposedly unhappy with the similarity to the MacBook Air and didn't want one of its own contractors to be making what was perceived to be a clone. If it happened, production wouldn't stop until at least March and would be outsourced to a nearby contractor like Compal or Wistron.
The 13- to 14-inch notebook screen size is currently one of the hottest areas of competition right now: it's where Apple, HP, and others start off their higher-end models. Dell has certainly been one of the most active in this space and has brought its high-end XPS line to that space through the 14z. We'll check in our Dell XPS 14z review whether the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Sony VAIO S, or comparable rivals will feel the strain.
Microsoft's Windows leader Steven Sinofsky picked an interview this week to reveal that Windows 8 on ARM wouldn't support plugins. He explained to AllThingsD that Internet Explorer on these chips, even in the regular desktop, wouldn't run Flash or any similar browser add-ins. Mobile devices were moving away from Flash as a whole, he said.
Apple is now selling a special scaled-back 13-inch MacBook Air to schools, a report says. The model is said to have the same internal specifications as the standard 11-inch Air, including a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of flash storage, and Intel graphics. The new option is limited to schools buying in bulk, though, at a price of $999 per system, or $4,995 for a group of five. A regular 13-inch Air would normally cost $1,299.
On and off rumors of a major MacBook Pro redesign were supported on Friday with leaks supporting a complete overhaul. The AppleInsider hints had Apple's high-end notebooks being overhauled over the course of 2012 to more closely resemble the MacBook Air, dropping optical drives and slimming down. Rumors of a 15-inch Air were more likely references to Apple repeating what it did with the unibody MacBook Pro, where the 15-inch model led the redesign and other sizes followed later.
New Chitika traffic data has seen Apple possibly cross a milestone for web use online. As of February, 8.15 percent of all web traffic being monitored was coming from an iOS device, passing the Mac for the first time with OS X share at 7.96 percent. The two platforms had been converging since October, with the Mac losing share mostly as Apple's other OS gained prominence.
Today's Deals from DealNN include price breaks on Mac Pros, Flash memory cards, and more. Apple.com has recently lowered the cost of the refurbished 2.8GHz Mac Pro, which includes 3GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive, 18x SuperDrive, and ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics processor with 1GB GDDR5 memory. Currently featured at DealNN, this Mac Pro is now available for the discounted price of $2119 and delivers savings of up to $380.
Amazon’s rumored Kindle Fire 9-inch model could be shipping by as soon as the middle of this year, according to All Things D. Pacific Crest Analyst Chad Bartley has raised his estimates on Kindle Fire shipments from 12.7 million to just under 15 million units based on this line of thought. In addition to a new 9-inch Kindle Fire, Bartley’s research also suggests that the first refresh of the original Kindle Fire will also arrive at the same time.
Intel and New York state together stated Thursday that they had settled New York's antitrust lawsuit. The chip designer had managed to pay just $6.5 million and avoided having to admit or change its behavior over the wrongdoing. Its light penalty came after a district court judge had previously ruled that New York couldn't get tripled damages for willful violations and cut the statute on those affected by half, to three years.
Samsung's new Ivy Bridge powered gaming laptop has popped up at the company's US website and is available for pre-order. The 17.3-inch NP700G7C-S01US is powered by a third-generation and so far unannounced 2.3GHz Intel Core i7-3610QM quad-core processor. It comes paired with a similarly unofficial, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M for graphics.
The same Microsoft preview that discussed Windows 8 on ARM in detail also gave the first official appearance of Office 15. True to some earlier rumors, the interface will be much sparser than Office 2010 and, at least in the touch implementation, lets users hide the ribbon. Both the menus and the main document view have ample amounts of white space to improve their usefulness for touch.
Microsoft's Windows lead Steven Sinofsky in an elaborate breakdown Thursday ended rumors and confirmed that Windows 8 on ARM would support a conventional desktop. Users could still have access to the file system, desktop Internet Explorer 10, and "most" other core features as their x86-running counterparts. Office 15 would carry over, too, and would have touch and power optimizations despite running in the conventional desktop space.
An exceptional run on Apple stock over the past few days has made Apple's stock value worth more than either of its two most direct rivals combined. A comparison has shown that, as of mid-day Thursday, Apple's market cap of about $456 billion was greater than both those of Google ($198.9 billion) and Microsoft ($256.7 billion). As noted by AppleInsider, Apple was taking advantage of both Google missing targets and bruising its share as well as Microsoft's historic inability to excite shareholders.
MIUI 4 has arrived for the Kindle Fire. The custom UI gives users an iOS-like interface, however retains the much improved Ice Cream Sandwich experience. However, in order to install the ROM Kindle Fire users will need to root their device and flash the new ROM, which will remove any trace of the tight Amazon integration in the standard Kindle OS.
Lenovo as part of record results for its fall quarter clinched the top spots in key parts of the PC business. While it wouldn't give exact numbers, it mostly sided with IDC rankings that saw it claim 14 percent of the computer market worldwide, or second place. It was now large enough that it was the leader for shipments in work PCs of any kind as well as in home desktops.
Apple has now informed resellers that the educational version of the white MacBook, the last such model, is now discontinued, MacRumors reports. The $999 notebook was marked "end of life" for consumers last July, but the company continued to offer the model to educational institutions. The move marks the end of any non-aluminum Macs, and reflects the growing tendency of schools to focus on significantly-cheaper iPads as digital learning portals.
HP has provided the developer community a software kernel that could enable its now discontinued TouchPad to run the Android OS. The kernel and some other GPL components evidently had been used by the company to adapt some of the tablets to run Android on the device's hardware. RootzWiki has posted the officially blessed code for download.
Microsoft will ship its public beta of Windows 8, otherwise known as Consumer Preview, on February 29 at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona. The OS will have a two-hour event devoted to it starting at 3PM, according to invitations sent to ZDnet and others. The date lines up with Microsoft's previous promises of a late February release, if only just.
The Consumer Preview of Windows 8 will have a number of Metro-style apps preinstalled, The Verge has learned. They will include mostly simply-titled core apps, such as Camera, SkyDrive, Messaging, Mail, Calendar, People, Photos, Video, and Music. There may be even more than that, and all will be updatable from the Windows Store.
HP on Wednesday began selling its most direct competitor to the MacBook Air, the Envy 14 Spectre. The pseudo-ultrabook starts at a relatively steep $1,400 with a 14-inch, 1366x768 display, a 1.6GHz low-voltage Core i5, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB solid-state drive. Options can take it to a 1.8GHz Core i7 and a 256GB SSD.
Logitech chose Wednesday to unveil its own alternative to the Magic Mouse. The Touch Mouse M600 uses the same concept of an all-touch surface as Apple but with the technology behind its Cube mobile mouse. Having the larger surface solves some of the issues of the Cube, letting users left- and right-click more naturally while opening the door to horizontal scrolling along with the vertical.
Rambus on Wednesday struck a deal with NVIDIA to license its patents. The deal extends for five years and is in return for ending Rambus' lawsuit as well as any other legal action. Other details were secret, Rambus said.
Key Microsoft program managers Sharif Farag and Ben Srour on Tuesday gave a detailed outline of how Windows 8 will manage Metro apps to control power. While the two stressed that multitasking will still be active, the principle will be to devote attention almost exclusively to apps in the foreground. If in the background, especially if the screen is asleep, it should be having no impact on the battery, they wrote.
Cleveland-based AVADirect is accepting pre-orders for a new gaming portable that integrates one of the refreshed, Sandy Bridge-E Intel Core i7 desktop processors into a laptop form factor. The Clevo P270WM is a 17.3-inch desktop replacement that can come equipped with either a 3.2GHz or 3.3GHz Extreme Edition chip. It can also house dual NVIDIA mobile graphics chips in SLI.
Raspberry Pi has recently revealed it will begin shipments of its $35 PC near the end of the month. The first batch will complete its manufacturing phase on February 20, with the first buyers expected to take delivery before month's end. That first PC will be sized similarly to a deck of playing cards and is not much more than a bare board with a number of connections.
Three large Japanese electronics makers are involved in talks on merging assets to build computer chips. Renesas, Fujitsu and Panasonic will at first spin off their separate chip design and development divisions to create a joint company, according to Japan's Nikkei newspaper (login required). The three are doing so in order to better compete in the industry for devices and vehicles.
Yesterday in the MacNN forums one Professional Poster shared an amusing link to a parody about Siri in the thread titled "The horror! Siri goes Psycho!" Today Forum Regular gregfripp was concerned about a rogue program that has found its way onto their system and has turned to the forums for some answers.
Today at Apple's online store save on iPads, iMacs and more. A selection of refurbished iPads include the first generation 32GB iPad with Wi-Fi, now $399 after a $100 price cut. Also priced at $399 is the 16GB iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G. Currently iPad 2 models start at $419 for the 16GB iPad 2 with Wi-Fi in black or white. A $100 price drop can also be found on the refurbished 64GB iPad 2 with Wi-Fi + 3G, now $729.
The Windows 8 public preview when it ships will have a handful of available games that mostly come from familiar sources in the Microsoft universe, according to new tips on Tuesday. Some of the games seen by The Verge will be direct ports of Xbox 360 downloadable titles, such as Ms. Splosion Man and Toy Soldiers. Others would be titles that are better known on mobile even with a big-screen version, such as the seminal Angry Birds and ilomilo.
New Gartner data breaking down European computer market share has shown poor results for almost every computer builder outside of Apple. Continent-wide, both market leader HP as well as Acer, Dell, and Toshiba were all dropping market share. Only ASUS (up 1.5 points) increased share based solely on its own merits among the top five; Lenovo's gain was inflated by its acquiring Medion last June.
Acer was reported Tuesday as having sued its ousted former CEO Gianfranco Lanci. The Taiwan PC builder claimed in an Italian court that Lanci broke a non-compete clause by signing with Lenovo and working for a direct rival. Neither Lanci nor Lenovo had responded to the accusations.
Toshiba appears to have quietly released its Satellite U840 ultrabook for customers in Australia. The notebook builds upon the company's Z830, adding a larger 14-inch display with 1366x768 resolution and powered by Intel's 1.6GHz Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor.
Skulking in Apple's Mac OS X 10.7.3 update has raised possibilities that Apple's on-again, off-again high-DPI support may be more established in the final version. Art assets found for mouse pointers by Marc Edwards both look different and scale to large sizes without the usual pixelated look. One claim had a Mac mini using HDMI kick into the normally hidden HiDPI mode after 10.7.3 was installed.
NVIDIA's 2012 Kepler-based GPU lineup may have been revealed ahead of an official announcement. A list of alleged specs posted by EXPreview suggest the card range will be built from three different GPUs, including the GK110 produced from a 550mm² die. The flagship GTX690 is said to integrate two GK110 chips, for a total of 3.5GB of memory, with a 1.5GHz shader clock and a 4.5GHz memory clock.
Intel picked Monday to bring out its fastest solid-state drive so far. The SSD 520 mixes denser 25-nanometer memory with a specially created SandForce memory controller to get high-end speed. It can peak at 550MB per second for reads and 520MB per second for writes, while mustering as much as 80,000 I/O operations per second at peak and 50,000 in normal use.
New leaks have shown that the Windows 8 public beta, the Consumer Preview, will take the risky step of dropping the Start button in the conventional desktop. As shown on PCBeta's forums, later pre-release builds now just have the app shortcuts, running apps, and taskbar. The menu will still be available, but users will have to mouse to the relevant corner to bring it up.
Signs that Apple and Google are honoring laws barring no-poaching deals may have surfaced this weekend after new tips that Google had hired away one of Apple's veterans. VentureBeat understood that Simon Prakash, Apple's senior director for product integrity, had been hired away to work on a "secret project." He would reportedly start on Monday.
Micron has picked its COO Mark Durcan as its temporary CEO in the wake of its CEO Steve Appleton's death in an airplane crash on Friday. Durcan had intended to retire in August but agreed to stay on as CEO until a permanent replacement could arrive. The memory designer hasn't given a clear indication of any short-listed candidates.
HP has taken a potentially major step in its direction by approving a vote on a measure (PDF) that will let shareholders determine some of the board of directors. Any large shareholder holding three percent or more of stock for more than three years will have the option of nominating as much as 20 percent of the board. HP would be required to accept the nominations.
AMD in conversations at the end of the week wouldn't discount the possibility of making ARM-based processors. When pressed by Wired, CTO and former Apple executive Mark Papermaster made the unusual non-denial that "the answer is not no." The company's long-term plans were aiming for a modular chip design that could drop in ARM or another architecture without losing Radeon graphics or other AMD-specific touches.
Apple has temporarily solved problems with the CUI bug in the Mac OS X 10.7.3 update by changing the download users get. Anyone who checks Software Update, along with seeking the usual download, now gets the combo update to Lion (1.3GB, link may not work) instead. The full installer is known to work properly at the expense of a much larger file size.
Creative has introduced a pair of noise-canceling headphones. The HN-900 integrates an in-line microphone with the over-the-ear headset. The Aurvana X-Fi 2 is a pure headphone, but supports a multi-dimensional surround-sound effect.
A Canalys wrap-up of 2011 smartphone share painted an overall picture that kept Apple and Google in front, but also provided clearer pictures of Windows Phone. Android was just short of an absolute majority at 48.8 percent, while the iPhone held 19.1 percent. Nokia's Symbian and RIM's BlackBerry still held on to the double digits at 16.4 percent and 10.5 percent each.
This week 10.7.3 was released, and MacNN forum goers were quick to start discussing this latest update to the Mac operating system. Yesterday Moderator OreoCookie started a thread looking for some advice on what kind of Solid State Drive to get for their MacBook Pro, click here to read more.
At Apple's online store today save on refurbished iPods, iMacs and more. The 8GB iPod nano in green, pink, yellow, blue, silver or black is available for $99 after a $30 price cut. For $119, after a $30 price cut, is the 16GB iPod nano in pink, silver, black or blue. A $120 price cut can be found on the refurb. 64GB iPod touch, now only $249.
The Chairman and CEO of semiconductor maker Micron, Steve Appleton, died in a small plane crash in Boise on Friday morning. Details of the crash weren't immediately known. He leaves behind wife Dalynn and children. Appleton joined Micron in February, 1983, becoming an officer in August of 1989.
Apple is likely uninterested in building a MacBook Air with an ARM-based processor, says Citigroup's Richard Gardner. The analyst met with Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer at the company's Cupertino campus on Thursday, when among other things Cook repeated a view that iOS expansion will eventually result in tablets outselling conventional PCs. "We have wondered whether Apple might offer an ARM-based version of the MacBook Air at some point; we walked away from this meeting with the impression that Apple feels iPad satisfies -- or will soon satisfy -- the needs of those who might have been interested in such a product," writes Gardner in a new memo.
Computer chipmaker AMD took the opportunity at its yearly Financial Analyst Day to show off upcoming products for 2012 and 2013. They include CPUs and APUs (combined CPU and graphics) for ultrathin notebooks, tablets, all-in-ones, desktops, and servers, with most focusing on lower power use. Some are also designed with the developing world in mind and accessing the cloud.
