Apple

Talk of purported Apple chip plant ‘Project Azalea’ pops up in Oregon

Cody Lee ∙ December 19, 2012

Last week, an interesting report popped up regarding 'Project Azalea,' a mysterious plan for a 3.2 million-square-foot production facility being pitched to New York economic development officials by an unidentified company. Because of its reported $10 billion construction cost, the general consensus is that it's likely a chip-making plant. And rumor has it that it's for Apple's products.

The theory is that the Cupertino company could be behind this Azalea project, along with a major manufacturer like Foxconn or TSMC. It's no secret that Apple is trying to move its mobile chip business away from Samsung, and a new $10B fab plant would definitely help out with that. The question is, where is it going to be built? Because Azalea talk just popped up in Oregon...

Apple awarded design patent for original iPhone by Jobs and Ive

Cody Lee ∙ December 18, 2012

In a world where the company with the biggest and baddest IP portfolio reigns king, Apple is superior. It's proven this on a number of occasions, most recently by winning a settlement of over $1 billion from Samsung in a northern California trial.

Today, it adds another interesting patent to the stack. The US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the Cupertino company a patent for the design of the original iPhone, released in 2007, and created in part by Steve Jobs and Jony Ive...

Tim Cook shortlisted for Time’s Person of the Year

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 18, 2012

Apple's chief executive Tim Cook is one of the frontrunners for Time's 2012 Person of the Year. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, 37, the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company, is another prominent person who also made the cut, along with South Korea's pop sensation Psy, the three scientists who discovered the Higgs Boson particle and Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati who leads the Atlas experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. Heck, even the Higgs Boson particle itself is on Time's list...

Samsung passes Nokia as the world’s top phone brand in 2012

Ed Sutherland ∙ December 18, 2012

The cellphone industry has a new king. South Korea's Samsung is #1 in the market, unseating the Finnish-based Nokia after fourteen years. As 2012 wraps up, Samsung is responsible for 29 percent of all cell phone shipments, up from last year's 24 percent.

Conversely, Nokia slips to #2, dropping to 24 percent of the market, a fall from 30 percent posted in 2011. Nokia's departure from a top spot it held since 1998 is largely due to the predominance of smartphones, an area where Samsung thrived and Nokia faltered, according to the hardware research firm iSuppli...

ITC: no, the iPhone didn’t violate Google’s patents

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 18, 2012

A United States International Trade Commission (ITC) judge ruled Tuesday that Apple's iconic iPhone did not infringe upon any of the patents owned by Google's subsidiary Motorola Mobility.

A spokesperson for Motorola said to the press that "we’re disappointed with this outcome and are evaluating our options".

Apple wouldn't comment but club Cupertino must be joyful with the outcome, especially knowing Google spent $12.5 billion just to get hold of Motorola's patent trove...

Surprise, Google Maps app boosts iOS 6 adoption rate

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 28, 2016

According to MoPub, which tracks over a billion ad impressions each day across over 12,000 apps and a dozen ad networks, the release of Google's Maps iOS app last Wednesday has benefited the iPhone maker in many regards, not least of which is a healthy boost to iOS 6 adoption rates.

The firm saw a 29 increase in unique iOS 6 users in the five days after Google Maps for iOS was released and a thirteen percent increase from Monday to Wednesday.

The reason: those who held off upgrading to iOS 6 because it removed Google's mapping software are making the jump now that the standalone Google Maps app is on the App Store...

Apple now tracking working hours for more than a million supply chain employees

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

It seems like for every report we hear that conditions are getting better in Apple's supply chain factories, there's another one that dispels the notion. Last week, French reporters snuck inside Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant, and things still looked pretty grim.

But that doesn't mean that Apple's not trying though. As proof of that, Apple has updated the supplier responsibility page on its website today to show that it is now personally tracking working hours for more than a million supply chain employees...

Instagram responds: ‘your photos are your photos’

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 24, 2016

There has been a whole lot of hoopla surrounding Instagram's newly updated terms of services, with commenters warning the new rules might give the popular Facebook-owned photography service the right to share your data with third-parties and - worse - sell your Instagram photos without compensating you. Does Facebook really intend to turn Instagram into a stock photo service that doesn’t pay a dime to photographers?

Cowed by privacy outrage, hours after releasing the new terms the company's co-founder responded by shedding more light on the matter. In a blog post, he makes it clear that Instagram does not intend to sell its users photos while sharing interesting tidbits concerning Instagram's advertising strategy...

You can now download App Store apps without leaving Facebook

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 18, 2012

Remember the App Center, a cross-platform application store Facebook launched ahead of its rebuilt iOS app? Hosted and curated by Facebook, the App Center is available as a link in the main menu of their iOS client, listing Facebook-enhanced apps and games that can be found on the App Store. Previously, tapping an entry yanked you out of the Facebook app and into the App Store.

That's no longer the case as it is now possible to install App Store software from a pop-up inside the Facebook app, which is an iOS 6 SDK feature available to all third-party developers who wish to implement it...

Microsoft’s post-PC trouble: capturing the profits of bygone days

Ed Sutherland ∙ December 18, 2012

Before PC demand dwindled, software giant Microsoft was happy with licensing its Windows software to computer makers. Now that we are taking the first steps into the post-PC era, the Redmond firm still wants its profit. But how do you charge a $50 per-tablet royalty fee when the device itself costs $199?

Enter the $499 Surface, says one independent analyst. While Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire both sell for $199, the Surface carries the much higher price tag because Microsoft stubbornly refuses to give up the 30 percent profit margin it's accustomed to receiving for Windows and Office software licenses...

Brazil launches its IPHONE, powered by Android

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 18, 2012

Forget about the iPhone, the best phone in the world - here comes the IPHONE, an Android-powered smartphone announced today by Brazilian electronics maker IGB Electronica SA (IGB). The company said in a securities filing that the first model will be called "Neo One". The firm claims to have a trademark for the "IPHONE" term in Brazil, originally applied for in 2000, way before Apple even began thinking about creating a phone. Somebody give Apple's lawyers a buzz...

Pegatron grabs the majority of iPad orders for the next three years

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 18, 2012

Always keen on never putting all its eggs in one basket, Apple has been trying to mitigate risk by sourcing components from multiple suppliers. The same goes for product assembly. Though the firm traditionally outsources manufacturing to Foxconn, the world's largest product assembler, Taipei, Taiwan-based Pegatron Technology has been rising increasingly as Apple's other manufacturing partner. According to a report from an Asian trade publication, Pegatron will now get to build the majority of iPad orders for the next three years...