Archived Links for February 2007

02.21	MacNN	Apple settles iPhone spat with Cisco, Staff: Cisco and Apple today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the "iPhone" trademark. After more than a month of public sparring, the companies recently agreed to several legal extensions, following the Cisco lawsuit over the iPhone trademark (in the US as well as in the UK).
02.21	MacNN	Apple hires away Nike account agency exec, Staff: Apple has hired away a chief ad agency exec working on the Nike account to help bolster its worldwide marketing efforts. Rebecca Van Dyck, a longtime global account director on the Nike business at Wieden + Kennedy, has left the multinational agency to become the worldwide advertising director at Apple, Wieden said today.
02.21	SeekingAlpha	Getting ’Non-Linear’ and ’New Steve’ On Apple, Staff: Bear Stearns notes the pending launch of Apple TV in February and iPhone in June has changed the Apple story for the better. Before, Apple launched "insanely great" products, but investors had no idea what, if anything, would come next and when it might happen, resulting in a "hit-driven" story that often pulled back as investors pondered timing and parameters of the next move.
02.21	MacUser	Vista’s going swimmingly, quoth the Gates, Pat Nakajima: In a recent Yahoo News article, we’re able to see that Bill Gates, bless his heart, has been able to keep a rosy view on his new operating system’s launch, despite the tepid response it has evoked thus far: People who sell PCs have seen a very nice lift in their sales. People have come in and wanted to buy Vista.
02.21	ZDNet	Steve Jobs on ’entrepreneurial education,’ circa 1995, Donna Bogatin: Although Jobs’ remarks last week were summarized and headlined by the Associated Press as "Apple CEO lambasts teachers unions," the totality of his thoughts on the U.S. education system encompassed much more.
02.20	MacUser	iPhone, YouPhone, we all yearn for iPhone, Scott Silverman: I find the four very simple pages that Apple has set up for the iPhone (iPod, Phone, Internet, and Technology) to be extremely limiting in the amount of information they provide. There are barely any tech specs worthy of my time, no information concerning contracts or pricing, and definitely nothing about a release date. So where do I turn (aside from the ever-reliable MacUser, of course)? Why, to Apple Discussions!
02.11	Forbes.com	Dim Vista, Stephen Manes: Windows Vista: more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: "The ’Wow’ Starts Now," and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple’s Macintosh.
02.11	The Norman Transcript	New Windows Vista hacked already, Staff: The marketing propaganda touting Microsoft’s new Vista operating system as "the most secure version of Windows yet" has done nothing to stop both white and black hat hackers from discovering Vista vulnerabilities. Unless you simply enjoy acting as an experimental Microsoft guinea pig, it’s best to wait before trying to run Windows Vista.
02.10	The Mercury News	Biting words on Apple come back to haunt Dell, Rachel Beck: Michael Dell offered up some harsh advice a decade ago on how to fix struggling Apple Computer, words that now provide an ironic sting for the newly minted CEO of his own slumping company. "What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," he said at a technology conference in the fall of 1997.
02.09	MacNN	’Well-timed’ Pixar options signed by Jobs, Staff: Apple CEO Steve Jobs helped negotiate an employment contract with film director John Lasseter and Pixar via a large stock-options grant carrying a ’well-timed’ date, according to MarketWatch and the Wall Street Journal.
02.09	Low End Mac	Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark, Tommy Thomas: Old timers, get ready for a time warp here - and even young squirts like myself will remember this one.
02.09	Apple Matters	Commentary: Apple’s New PDA!, James Bain: Apple has finally, finally, finally come out with its long-awaited and much-anticipated PDA! Surprisingly enough, however, no one seems to have noticed.
02.09	Ars technica	Parallels: "We won’t virtualize OS X until Apple says so", Jacqui Cheng: When the news came out that Parallels was actually owned by enterprise software maker SWSoft about a month ago, there was a not-so-tiny detail from Forbes article that drew a lot of interest. That detail was that SWSoft’s CEO hinted that it wouldn’t be difficult to run OS X in a virtualization environment.
02.09	BusinessWeek	Apple Embraces Casual Gaming, Douglas MacMillan: The consumer electronics maker is rolling out games for the iPod and is in talks with EA about games for the forthcoming iPhone.
02.08	ITworld.com	Apple’s Windows applications aren’t ready for Vista, Jonny Evans, Macworld.co.uk: An Apple technical support document confirms that none of the company’s Windows applications are yet compatible with Windows Vista.
02.08	MacNN	Apple files for five continuation patents, Staff: The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office today published five continuation patents for Apple Inc., including patents for Spotlight and iPod.
02.08	Electronista	Samsung targets iPhone with Ultra Smart F700, Staff: Samsung on Thursday unveiled what it says is one of the world’s most advanced smartphones. Closely resembling the minimalist design of the iPhone, the Ultra Smart F700 is conspicuously targeted at "the recent trend" in touchscreens, according to the Korean company.
02.08	Low End Mac	Growing the Mac Market by Reaching the Computer Hobbyist, Dan Knight: Apple makes a great operating system, great software, and great computers, but it’s missing some very important markets with its current product line.
02.08	Freelance UK	BBC accused of ’talking up’ Microsoft, Staff: The integrity of journalism at the BBC has been called into question after its news reports were accused of promoting Microsoft - and the computer giant’s new showpiece - Vista.
02.08	Forbes.com	Microsoft: We Like DRM, Dan Frommer: Steve Jobs wants the music business to drop restrictions for digital tunes. But Microsoft, which began competing head to head with Apple in the digital music business last fall, is happy with the way things are, says media exec Robbie Bach.
02.08	Technology Review	Vista vs. OS X?, TR Editors: In early January, we posted a review of Vista, Microsoft’s new operating system. Written by senior editor Erika Jonietz, the piece first appeared in the January/February 2007 issue of our magazine. In the piece, Jonietz described her disappointment with the company’s new software--and confessed to having crossed that clearest of lines in the cultural sand: she went from being a Windows user to being a Mac user.
02.08	The Street.com	Apple Deserves a Breakout , Jim Cramer: The froth of the iPhone coupled with a belief that the new device must be a failure because of its price point -- even as my teenage daughters tell me otherwise -- has kept a huge lid on the story. I think that lid could be sliding off.
02.08	globeandmail.com	Apple’s really shiny, but Microsoft’s in no danger yet, Mathew Ingram: Not that long ago, anyone suggesting that Apple might some day be as large as -- or even larger than -- Microsoft would have been laughed out of the room. After all, Apple was a mere pipsqueak in the personal computer market, while Microsoft controlled more than 90 percent of the desktop software business worldwide.
02.07	Apple Matters	Memo to Bill Gates: Don’t argue about the Mac, Chris Seibold: In a Newsweek interview Bill Gates is asked about the Mac by Steven Levy. Perhaps it was the fact that Stephen Levy wrote a book about the Mac or maybe Bill is just sick of hearing about how great Apple is but his answers reveal far too much Mac jealousy, heck it makes the Mac seem like actual competition.
02.07	Computerworld	Windows expert to Redmond: Buh-bye, Scot Finnie: Bye-bye Windows! My three-month Macintosh trial has ended, but my permanent gig with the Mac is just getting started. Apple’s MacBook Pro and Mac OS X are now my computer and operating system of choice.
02.01	Electronista	Rivals "feign complacency" over iPhone: analyst, Staff: Apple’s new opponents in the cellphone industry are only maintaining the illusion that the iPhone won’t affect their plans, ThinkEquity Partners analyst Jonathan Hoopes observed today.
02.01	Electronista	Zune phone confirmed?, Staff: Microsoft has begun planning a Zune-based rival to the iPhone, according to a tip received by CrunchGear. A "sound" informant has indicated that strategists from the Redmond company are already solidifying plans for the device and are holding meetings today to plan its final release.
02.01	MacNN	Cisco gives Apple more time in iPhone suit, Staff: Apple and Cisco have both agreed to give Apple more time to respond to Cisco’s lawsuit surrounding the iPhone moniker in order to discuss trademark rights and interoperability, the companies said late Wednesday.
02.01	Low End Mac	Two More Markets the iPhone Could Conquer, Jeff Adkins: Everyone has an opinion about how the iPhone will turn the cell phone industry on its head by pricing the hardware higher with the service agreements cheaper, how having a real version of iTunes on a phone will completely eclipse other phone/music combinations, and how the interface will revolutionize people’s attitudes towards the clumsy and recalcitrant interfaces we’re forced to struggle with now.
02.01	Apple Matters	Apple Charges Fee for Hardware You Already Have, Devanshu Mehta: Earlier this year at MacWorld, Steve Jobs revealed to the unsuspecting masses that many Intel Macs shipped with 802.11n chips, but they were disabled. They were like an appendix, a tail- bone, or a nictitating membrane--interesting to geeks of the field, but totally useless. Until now.
02.01	Apple Matters	Has the iPhone Killed the Video iPod?, Chris Howard: The iPhone guranteees there’ll be no video iPod for a long time. If you don’t need to buy an iPhone to get a video iPod, why else would you buy one? Certainly not just because it’s a phone. That’s one hell of an expensive phone! And it’s not quite smart enough as a smartphone.
02.01	Apple Matters	Why Apple Really Needs to Do Something Special Now, Aaron Wright : After exactly half a decade and almost three XP service packs later, Microsoft finally gets around to releasing Windows Vista.
02.01	Mac Night Owl	The Speculation Department: How Apple Tried to Trick Rumor Sites!, Gene Steinberg: In recent days, Apple has paid some $700,000 in legal fees to the defendants in its failed action to locate the source behind revelations about an alleged product under development bearing the code-name Asteroid. Although the product got lots of attention as a result of the lawsuits, it never saw the light of day. Supposedly an audio breakout box of some sort, there is no hint that such a gadget ever came close to release, or even that it ever went beyond a few sketches.
02.01	Mac Night Owl	Forget the iPhone: Let’s Return to the Mac!, Gene Steinberg: Listen, despite the fact that my personal needs don’t really include an iPhone, I can well understand that it’s going to be a freaking awesome product for many of you. Whether you want a so-called "smartphone," or just a cool gadget to show your friends, it comes across as a compelling package.
02.01	BBC News	Vista has speech recognition hole, Staff: Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders.