Apple Without the 'Computer:' Life with iPhone
On Tuesday morning in San Francisco, Apple did something it had never done before. In 1976, it basically created the personal computer industry; if it had ever come into fruition without Apple, the computer today would probably be unrecognizable, and maybe even unlikable. In 2001, the company essentially invented the portable digital music industry, even though MP3 players existed prior to 2001, and personal computers of some sort existed prior to 1976.
But this time, Apple jumped into an already burgeoning industry like a diver into a raging river. Its collective mind was clearly set on reinventing the wireless phone, and indeed, it may have done so. With its now-typical flourish, Apple shed from its corporate image some historical baggage, in a move whose significance may only be understood clearly, if not ironically, in a few years' time: It let go of the "Computer" from its name, trimming it down to "Apple, Inc." And even while its new Apple iPhone embraces a surprising chunk of the Macintosh methodology and technology that helped get the company this far, when introducing the device at a conference called "Macworld," Steve Jobs and the slides that accompanied him omitted the "Mac" from the name "OS X."
Cingular Made iPhone Deal with Apple in February 2005: NYTimes
A New York Times report this morning cites high-ranking officials with Cingular and Apple as having confirmed they entered into a deal to produce the iPhone as far back as February 2005.
Apple apparently did not shop the phone out to other carriers; instead, the companies had entered into an exclusive relationship early on. That relationship culminated at one point in the iTunes service deal for Motorola's ROKR phones, which may have helped cement relations between the electronics company and the cellular provider, but not between the former and the phone producer.
Cisco Offers to License 'iPhone' Name to Apple
A representative of Cisco Systems, which acquired the iPhone trademark by way of its Linksys division having acquired Infogear in 2000, told BetaNews this afternoon that it is offering to license its trademark for Apple's use, and has drawn up papers to that end.
"Given Apple's numerous requests to use the iPhone trademark, and extensive discussions with them," the representative told BetaNews, "it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final documents and public statements that were distributed to them last night, and that addressed the last few remaining items. We expect to receive a signed agreement today."
Intel Debuts Two Quad-core Server Processors, Touts Q6600 at CES
A consumer-oriented trade show is perhaps an awkward place for a CPU manufacturer to be releasing a server processor set, but Intel may be using its server performance jump as a leveraging point to push its Q6600, its entry-level 2.4 GHz quad-core processor.
The quad-core Xeon 3200 series targets single-processor servers, with the notion that today’s 1P server could be as powerful as yesterday’s 4Ps – or, more realistically, a “2.5P.” The 2.4 GHz X3220 will sell for $851 to vendors purchasing in units of 1000, while the 2.13 GHz X3110 will sell for $690. There currently is no 2.13 GHz consumer-grade counterpart in Intel’s quad-core line. Using today’s CES news cycle, Intel was able to get these figures out to far more potential customers than for almost any other time of the year.
Sprint Nextel to Go WiMAX with Nokia
There are two networking standards battlefronts shaping up this week for CES: 802.11 WiFi, where the question is, "To 'n' or not to 'n?,"' and 802.16, the WiMAX standard that's battling with UMB (the former EV-DO Rev. C) for supremacy in the municipal-area broadband space. Verizon is squarely behind EV-DO, while Cingular is riding high on its EDGE network. Today, Sprint Nextel evened the stakes by bringing Nokia on board as its infrastructure supplier for WiMAX.
This announcement gives each of the three biggest cellular carriers in the US a well-distinguished position on broadband Internet coverage for their respective handsets. Last August, Sprint announced WiMAX as its own way forward, though the company had made overtures toward WiMAX adoption as early as February 2005. Today, the company said it could spend as much as $2.8 billion over the next two years in rolling out its broadband infrastructure. Intel, Motorola, Samsung, and now Nokia will be the big benefactors.
Warner Hybrid Discs to Premiere at CES
Though the formal press release has yet to be delivered, press services including Reuters were formally alerted this afternoon that movies made using hybrid multiple-layer, Blu-Ray/HD DVD/DVD disc manufacturing system for which Warner Home Video applied for a patent earlier this year, will be formally revealed to the public by Warner Home Video next week at CES 2007.
It may seem like magic, but Warner's format, which reports say will be christened Total HD, can sandwich up to three data layers atop one another - not one format on one side and another on the flip side - with each layer capable of being read by its respective player. Up to 22 configurations were described in the application, including mixtures using the high-capacity DVD format SD-9, with the objective being to create a single disc that can be operated in more than one type of player - conceivably as many as three.
New Adobe Acrobat Flaw Resembles Old
Last September, the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT) discovered an exploit made feasible by way of intentionally malformed arguments placed to certain methods in Adobe’s Acrobat Web reader control. Adobe advised its customers of the flaw in November, and issued a patch for Acrobat 7 in early December.
But when a pair of Italian security engineers demonstrated a new way to exploit the same flaw, in a presentation before a hackers’ convention in Berlin just before Christmas that at one time was supposed to have been entitled, “Hijacking AJAX for Fun and Profit,” FrSIRT picked up on the news as though it were a new discovery, issuing a fresh security bulletin.
LG to Announce Blu-ray / HD DVD Hybrid Drive at CES
After having whetted the public's appetite for a high-definition console capable of playing both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats at this time last year, and then publicly withdrawing that plan, LG Electronics this morning announced it is jumping back into the high-def pool head first. The company is promising to provide "details" next week, at CES 2007 in Las Vegas, of a hybrid HD DVD / Blu-ray Disc player.
That is all LG is promising for the moment, "details." There's no name for the device just yet, only a promise that it will be unveiled in the US early this year. There's also a single sentence: "LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers."
Solid-state Hard Drive Capacity May Soon Double
Among the many miniaturized technologies that will descend upon Las Vegas at CES 2007. Samsung is gearing up to add to the mix the second generation of solid-state hard disk drives. This at a time while users even today continue to discover the first generation.
Since August of 2005, Samsung has been shipping solid-state drives (SSD) using 4 gigabit (Gb) and 8 Gb NAND flash memory components, in 1.8" and 2.5" form factors, and last June announced a new model with a 32 gigabyte (GB, with a big "B") capacity. This morning, Samsung upped the ante with its announcement that it is shrinking the lithography for its NAND flash memory from 65 nm to 50 nm, and will be shipping 16 Gb NAND flash components in this quarter.
University Claims Bluetooth Using Unlicensed Technology
Just before last Christmas, a patent rights holder called the Washington Research Institute, which manages patents for universities and their students, filed suit in US District Court in Washington against Matsushita, Samsung, and Nokia, claiming that chipsets they use in their Bluetooth-enabled handsets infringe upon patents they hold on behalf of an Arizona inventor.
While not a direct challenge to Bluetooth itself, the suit calls into question how manufacturers choose to enable Bluetooth in their products, and whether patent law can be leveraged to steer them into implementing Bluetooth in a certain way.
More Mysteries of the Win32 MessageBox Bug Revealed
Continued tests by BetaNews on the form of the Win32 API message box call discovered two weeks ago, capable of crashing Microsoft Windows Vista as well as earlier versions, indicates that while the executable code remains a problem, its capacity for damage to Windows computers may be limited to merely crashing the system.
Last month, security engineers discovered the latest incarnation of a problem first encountered eight years ago: When an API function dating back to the first version of the Win32 library tells the system to display a dialog box as though it were coming from the OS itself and not the active application, and when the text to be displayed in that message box appears to contain what may be a disused character code sequence, then memory becomes corrupted. At least one, sometimes more, repeated calls can cause Windows to crash.
FCC Approves AT&T / BellSouth Merger
After AT&T's offer late yesterday of expanded concessions, including some that would guarantee neutrality in its network and routing pricing arrangements, the US Federal Communications Commission voted to approve the merger of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth, the former Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) that was spun off from AT&T Corp. in 1984.
As a result of this merger - which was announced in March of this year - none of the RBOC entities formed after the original AT&T Corp. breakup remain in their post-breakup form. The names Pacific Telesis, US West, Southwestern Bell, Ameritech, NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, and soon BellSouth will be relegated to history.
Studios Take Claims of AACS Crack Seriously
After a daring programmer evidently seeking notoriety posted a relatively convincing looking homemade video to YouTube on Wednesday, purportedly showing an HD DVD video disc with AACS copy protection being cracked on a Windows-based system, a spokesperson for the AACS Licensing Authority told Reuters this morning it is seriously investigating the legitimacy of the claim.
It was the AACS LA that released last February - after production of high-definition disc components had already begun - interim specifications for how high-definition content must be formatted and organized to enable protection from components that will utilize AACS copy protection. The first wave of HD DVD and Blu-ray disc players did not implement AACS in full; most notably, they omitted the Internet-oriented clearing house scheme for mandatory managed copy (MMC), which AACS LA now says is optional.
Gore Certifies Apple Board's Confidence in Steve Jobs
In a statement accompanying Apple's delayed filing of its annual 10-K report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today, following an internal audit to discover stock options-based accounting irregularities, the senior members of the audit committee - former US Vice President Al Gore, and former IBM CFO Jerry York - announced that the company's board of directors "has complete confidence in Steve Jobs and the senior management team."
It is an important statement from an important source, especially in light of news that broke just after Christmas from a California legal journal stating that the committee discovered Jobs received a backdated stock options grant that was erroneously recorded as having been approved by the board of directors, and that Jobs may have known the board was unaware.
PayPal 'Virtual Debit Card' Beta Seeks to Eliminate ID Theft
The PayPal division of eBay, which operates the Web's most respected online payment voucher system, is beginning beta trials of a next-generation online payment system, in cooperation with MasterCard. Using what's described as a virtual debit card, a customer will be able to make a PayPal-authorized purchase using a one-time number good only for that transaction.
Perhaps the most innovative feature of the VDC system, the implications of which could be enormous if the trial is successful, is that it generates a new MasterCard number for each purchase. That number will be automatically filled in forms for retailers that accept MasterCard, by way of a browser-based add-in program. Once that number is validated, and a supplemental verification takes place between PayPal and MasterCard, that number would be discontinued.
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