Perseus Books, which also represents 330 smaller publishers, has signed on to have its electronic books distributed through Apple’s iBookstore.[From Apple inks iPad deal with largest independent publisher]
I welcome a deal that allows authors to make a living from their work. Goodbye freetard economics.
Macs are often the black sheep in the many enterprise environments which have been dominated by Windows for nearly two decades, but the growing consumerization of IT is slowly changing that perception. Though Macs often have a higher up-front price than many business-class PCs, Macs are usually believed to have a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) due to lower support costs. A recent survey of IT professionals in large enterprise environments that have a mix of Macs and PCs overwhelmingly agree that Macs cost less than PCs to support.
The Enterprise Desktop Alliance, which seeks to make it easier to integrate Macs in Windows-centric IT deployments, surveyed IT admins from companies that made large deployments, including universities and government agencies. Responses included in EDA’s analysis include those from environments with a mix of Macs and PCs that had a total of 50 servers or over 100 Macs.
A majority of respondents said that Macs cost less in terms of time spent troubleshooting, user training, help desk calls, and system configuration. Admins generally agreed that costs related to software licensing and supporting infrastructure were the same between the two platforms.
Two-thirds of those managing mixed environments plan to increase the number of Macs deployed in 2010. Twenty-nine percent cited lower TCO as a “key reason” for deploying Macs. Almost half cited lower TCO, ease of support, or a combination of the two as leading factors in Mac adoption. User preference and increased productivity were considered important factors as well.
“As a greater percentage of enterprise applications become OS-neutral, the cost to support a more diverse hardware and OS mix will decrease, making Macs a more viable choice for a greater number of users who continue to demand them,” noted Michael Silver, vice president and research director at Gartner, in a recent report on PC trends. Macs tend to be popular among C-level execs, as well as with those in creative departments and developers (especially cross-platform developers).
Apple has historically done little to actively develop a traditional strategy to target enterprise deployment. Instead, the company tends to focus on consumers first, and lets individuals drive enterprise demand for its computers and mobile devices. It does, though, make continual small improvements that make it easier to integrate Macs, iPhones, and soon iPads into many corporate environments.
Read the comments on this post
[From Survey: Macs cost notably less to support than Windows PCs]
That’s a no-brainer! Pretty much every IT person I know makes sure their family members buy Macs so they don’t have to deal with support hassles.
I saw the Swedish film yesterday and it was very well done. The next two parts are due in the UK in September and November and I’m now looking forward to them keenly.
Microprocessor company ARM says there will be more than 50 new tablets launching worldwide to compete with the iPad. [From iPad Could See 50 Tablet Rivals This Year]
It seems quite a few companies think it is a good idea if they are copying it already.
Mozilla’s high-performance TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which was first introduced in 2008, has lost a lot of its luster as competing browser vendors have stepped up their game to deliver superior performance. Firefox now lags behind Safari, Chrome, and Opera in common JavaScript benchmarks. In an effort to bring Firefox back to the front of the pack, Mozilla is building a new JavaScript engine called JägerMonkey.
The secret sauce that will drive Mozilla’s new JavaScript engine engine into the fast lane is some code borrowed from Apple’s WebKit project. Mozilla intends to bring together the powerful optimization techniques of TraceMonkey and the extremely efficient native code generator of Apple’s JSCore engine. The mashup will likely deliver a significant boost in Firefox’s JavaScript execution speed, making Mozilla’s browser a formidable contender in the ongoing JavaScript speed race.
Read the comments on this post
[From Mozilla borrows from WebKit to build fast new JS engine]
Another nail in the coffin of Flash.
Apple on Thursday dropped the price of becoming an official Mac Developer to $99 a year.[From Apple drops price of Mac developer program]
Same as the iPhone dev program.
For the third year in a row Apple has been named the World’s Most Admired Company by Fortune Magazine — this year by the widest margin ever. What makes Apple so admired? Fortune explains: “Product, product, product. This is the company that has changed the way we do everything from consume music to design products to engage with the world around us.” Apple also ranked #1 in Innovation among all companies. [From Apple World’s Most Admired Company]
And Google is #2.
Winter is, indeed, coming.
HBO has greenlighted highly anticipated fantasy series “Game of Thrones.”
The premium network has picked up the project for a first season debut next spring (below is the first released photo from the series). Nine episodes plus the pilot have been ordered. Production will begin in Belfast this June.
I’m thinking this must be rather condensed to fit that few episodes.
Apple is using its strong patent portfolio to fight iPhone competitors in court. Its latest target is HTC. Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the cell phone manufacturer. The suit involves “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” Steve Jobs is quoted in a press release saying: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.” The lawsuit itself is not available yet online. We’ve asked Apple for a copy. The lawsuit could be a way to go after Android, although Android is not mentioned in the press release. HTC manufactures some of the most successful Android handsets, from the first G1 up to the latest Nexus One. HTC’s touchscreen Android phones are the most similar to the iPhone. If that is the case, the lawsuit is a shot across Android’s bow and a warning to all Android manufacturers. This is not the first time Apple has gone after a mobile phone competitor. It is involved in similar patent litigation with Nokia. That lawsuit is more about Apple trying to get Nokia to license its patents. And the HTC suit may have the same motivation. But the fact that the lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as in a U.S. District Court in Delaware suggests that Apple is really going for the jugular. “The ITC does not award damages,” says Peter Toren, a patent lawyer with New York City law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The only remedy the ITC can award is an order to stop the importation of the infringing product. HTC is based in Taiwan. Apple thinks it owns the concept of the touchscreen Web phone and it wants other cell phone makers to pay for copying the iPhone or to stop altogether. Who will Apple sue next? Motorola? Palm? Research in Motion? Update: The complaint is embedded below. Some of the patents in questions are Patent Nos. 7,362,331, 7,479,949, 7,657,849, 7,469,381, 5,920,726, 7,633,076, 5,848,105, 7,383,453, 5,455,599, and 6,424,354 .
Apple vs HTC
CrunchBase InformationAppleHTCInformation provided by CrunchBase
[From Apple Goes After HTC In Lawsuit Over 20 iPhone Patents]
With all this suing going on it will be interesting to see if some of these patents (Apple’s, Nokia’s and others) actually stand up, and who has to concede what when the dust settles. In several years time…
Web analytics firm Quantcast has recently published some usage statistics for operating systems, broken out into geographical regions. The company’s data shows that 10.9 percent of online users in North America are using Mac OS X, an increase of nearly 30 percent over the past year.
Unlike determining market share by units sold, Qauntcast measures OS share by comparing the operating system of users via the company’s “audience measurement services,” similar to statistics gathered by Net Applications. Such usage patterns can give us a rough idea of the installed base of an OS among end users.
Read the comments on this post
The trends in other territories are also up. That’s the highest OS X has ever reached.
Powered by WordPress