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[...] japan is 100 million (and you HAVE to have advanced gadgetry there - cellular phones that cannot display tv broadcasts dont sell - that includes apple's iphones http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/02/why-the-iphone/ )

You might want to check your sources: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/02/28/japanese_hate_for_iphone_all_a_big_mistake.html http://mashable.com/2009/07/04/iphone-japan/

or is it some marketing hype in order to make the stocks in nasdaq move ?

I don't think AAPL really needs this kind of help. Selling a crapload of high-profit stuff seems to work well enough for them.

And my goodness there are a lot of Windows PC customers, and neither Google nor Apple have that advantage.

Actually Apple have a good market penetration among people who actually buy smartphones like college students and people with the disposable income to actually buy these things. That's confirmed by studies like this : "74 percent of iPad owners surveyed currently own a Mac, while just 26 percent own a PC." and "iPhone users twice as likely to own a mac"

Most of the PC's out there are corporate desktops or owned by people who aren't interested in the latest in computing, these are not potential smartphone customers.

Apple didn't "request" anything. The judge saw enough graphical evidence in apple's case, she decided a "preview" was in order.

"Without expressing an opinion on the merits of Apple's claims, the court acknowledged that "Apple has produced images of Samsung products and other evidence that provide a reasonable basis for Apple's belief that Samsung's new products are designed to mimic Apple's products."

there's an image from APPLs filing here:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/24/samsung_ordered_to_show_its_new_prototypes_to_apple.html

I'm not sure where they're getting these numbers from, because the IDC Graph they're re-printing shows business sales going from ~870,000 in Q4 2010 to ~890,000 in Q1 2011. Now I'm no mathematician, but that doesn't look like a 66% increase to me.

From what I've read about Apple they seem to work very hard on supply chain management. They have entered into long term contracts for critical components like flash memory. There were stories that one reason that not many competing tablets were 10" was that Apple had cornered 60% of the market by being first and through long term contracts.

Keyboards are electromechanical nightmares anyway, so there would have to be a BIG advantage to anything that made them more mechanically complex.

Consider that the failure modes on this would make individual keys have different sensitivity when typing.

Bleah. Count me out until they've had a few years in harsh environments.

BTW, here is another link to a similar story - the submission seems slashdotted as I type this.

It's rumored Apple bought the "iCloud" domain name to do this sort of thing. We'll have to wait and see though, Apple traditionally sucks at doing web based stuff.

Are you seriously acting surprised that multiple people can come up with the same UI design?

it's not copyrightable in the first place.

Also, iphone UI even noticeably looks the same as samsung's UI.. If you think Apple came up with a unique design, you are sorely mistaken.

http://androidcommunity.com/who-was-really-first-apple-vs-samsung-story-truly-debunked-20110420/

I’m not going to get to deep on this, but the F700 was never seen until February of 2007 and our very own slashgear had it completely covered. This is AFTER Apple announced and showed the world the iPhone January 9th 2007 at MacWorld.

We can go even deeper here also. The photo above mentions that the Samsung F700 was “shown” at CeBit 2006, that is wrong it was 2007. Here is the hard proof.

Are you seriously acting surprised that multiple people can come up with the same UI design?

it's not copyrightable in the first place.

Also, iphone UI even noticeably looks the same as samsung's UI.. If you think Apple came up with a unique design, you are sorely mistaken.

Yet Apple blows them out of the water on a revenue basis.

Uh no. Perhaps you need to go back to elementary school math. Apple blows them out of the water with *profits*. Revenue is something entirely different. They beat Apple on product shipped and revenue. Apple beats them on profits.

When you don't understand basic principles like the difference between "revenue" and "profit" it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
 

And when you can't read, yet insist on jumping on every thread, you make a total ass out of your self.

From the first link: (its in bold here, because even though you have a newbie slashdot number your eyes must be old and weak):

Quote Appleinsider from Reuters:

Apple crossed another major milestone in its second quarter of fiscal 2011, surpassing Nokia for the first time ever to become the world's largest phone vendor in terms of revenue.

The significant achievement was noted on Thursday by research firm Strategy Analytics. According to Reuters, Apple's iPhone revenue of $11.9 billion surpassed Nokia, which saw its revenue shrink to $9.4 billion.

"With strong volumes and high wholesale prices, the PC vendor has successfully captured revenue leadership of the total handset market in less than four years," analyst Alex Spektor said.

And this isn't the first time its been reported.

It said REVENUE. Not Profits.

Learn to read, Ok? If you won't learn to read, try NOT starting every post you make with an insult.

Actually Apple raked in the profit, mostly at AT&T's expense.

Apple is the the largest handset maker when measured by Revenue.

While slipping to a dismal third in terms of actual smartphones sold Apple rakes in more money than anyone.

The odd thing is just how proud of this Apple fans are. Imagine being told you are being overcharged (gouged) for your device and saying "thank you sir, may I have another".

Yes, a bug -- See article I guess the bug knows how to write files.

Are you referring to the black rectangular slate with a grid of icons Apple is suing Samsung over? Why is this copying Apple, when black rectangular slates and grids of icons have existed before the iPhone both separately and in tandem? I'm sure many people have seen this image, but it seems to invalidate anything Apple has to say about owning the slate form factor/grid of icons UI.

http://photos.appleinsider.com/Sam.Apple.001.jpg

"Right-clicking" or "hovering over" will never be implemented intuitively in a touch device.

Really? Oh, what a shame. Then Apple paid their lawyers for nothing, I guess.

No file system upgrades yet, but Lion (v10.7) will ship with full-disk FileVault.

Claiming someone is a paid shill because they disagree with you is the lamest way to lose an argument.

In this case, the original article, where it states:

However, the Samba team has moved active development of the project to the more strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially.

... was written by AppleInsider Staff. If you're not happy about the misrepresentation, tell them so.

AppleInsider takes commercial advertising, so yes, paid shill (or commercial FUD-packer) fills the bill nicely.

Claiming someone is a paid shill because they disagree with you is the lamest way to lose an argument.

In this case, the original article, where it states:

However, the Samba team has moved active development of the project to the more strict GPLv3 license, which prevents Apple from using the software commercially.

... was written by AppleInsider Staff. If you're not happy about the misrepresentation, tell them so.

AppleInsider takes commercial advertising, so yes, paid shill (or commercial FUD-packer) fills the bill nicely.

There are plenty of others, usually from patent trolls, though. Earlier this month, there was one over smartphone camera functionality.

Does your statements equally apply to Apple? Just curious. Apple sued HTC and Motorola over Android for patent infringement..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030203916.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/04/apple_adds_12_more_patents_to_lawsuit_against_motorola.html

To me it applies as much to Apple as it does to Microsoft.

Actually I want almost if not all patenting ended. If you can't compeat with a better product then get out of business.

Falcon

Does your statements equally apply to Apple? Just curious. Apple sued HTC and Motorola over Android for patent infringement..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR2010030203916.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/04/apple_adds_12_more_patents_to_lawsuit_against_motorola.html

Whose to say the customer doesnt want the product? You're kidding yourself if you think hackers and tinkerers are a large part of any customer base outside dev products.

Oh, I don't know about that.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/28/unlocked_iphone_sales_as_high_as_40_percent_in_europe_report.html

Not only that but I'm guessing the reviewer wasn't familiar enough with the iOS settings for Mail to know that iOS does indeed let you sync contacts, mail, and calendar with GMail over the air via WiFi or 3G. It will do so with ActiveSync, GMail, Yahoo, and AOL accounts without issue. The only app they indicated was perceptibly better was the navigation app, which I happen to agree with. Apple's navigation app is in desperate need of some updates as it's essentially unchanged since the first version of iOS.

He also goes on about the Finder like column views for folders indicating it's a strength over iOS but doesn't appear to know you can simply click a button and drop a message in any folder on iOS without having to leave your finger in constant contact with the touchpad while you browse through your folder structure. In addition he indicated that Honeycomb doesn't allow nested folders so a significant number of folders would make dragging and dropping a message to a folder in the bottom of the list from the top of the folder list tedious at best.He also indicates that embedded font sizes override your font preferences as he apparently does not know that you can set a minimum font size in the mail preferences.

In the App section, I also agree with the poster above. Even if the number of apps doubled from 16 to 37, it still pales in comparison to the full library available to the iPad. The scoring difference here was very slanted as the difference was almost non-existent. I was also curios about the statement regarding 'lack of popups' on the iOS UI. Push notifications have existed for quite a long time, and various apps like Facebook, twitter, email clients, etc all typically support them.

On the web browser section, nearly every section showed an advantage to the iPad yet it was declared a tie? He does state the Xoom score better on the benchmarks and then immediately states that the iPad felt much snappier even though the Xoom scored higher in benchmarks. In fact that was the only item where the Xoom seemed to win where every other feature was done better in iOS or simply lacking in the Xoom, yet it was declared a tie for web browsing.

On the location piece I probably would have called a tie although I much prefer the Android navigation app, I also see a great need to control individual app's ability to use location services. Leaving the option out to control that access at the app level seems like a glaring omission, where a large number of comparable navigation apps which do include voice capabilities are available for iPad for free or a small fee.

Under the UI, Operational UI, and Text tools, the reviewer again shows an advantage for the iPad again, while at the same time knocking the widget area which he praised in the proceeding paragraph and earlier in the review for taking up too much screen real-estate. He states the settings are difficult to read on the Xoom, and that the keyboard is not full size, unlike the iPad, making it more difficult to type on. In the text section he again calls the iPad superior on text handling capabilities. He then proceeds to call it a tie yet again.

The hardware section shows many flaws in Xoom, from it's plastic casing, it's back facing power switch, and a battery time that's half the iPad's while weighing significantly more. He also failed to test the graphics capabilities of the tablets which are becoming a key area in mobile performance for gaming. Had he done so he would have found that the iPad 2 rips the Xoom to pieces by a huge margin.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/12/dual_core_sgx543_dramatically_boosts_ipad_2_graphics.html

I think the Xoom has a lot of potential, but it is a far cry from 'close' to the iPad 2. Candy coated reviews aren't doing anyone any favors, and they remove pressure from hardware manufacturer's to improve their products faster.

A scoring system for the review would have been a good place to start, rather than the fluffy numbers this review is giving.

Counter-intuitive GUIs, definitely. Office '11 has improved over previous ones, but it's still not 100% native. Bonus for using the built-in media browser. There also seem to be some PPC-only apps (not the core ones, fortunately) left in the package, which is going to fuck things up when Lion is out (Apple are killing Rosetta).

From an article on the new release:
http://photos.appleinsider.com/office2011.004.jpg

I'm not sure I like that look even on Windows. Looks like somebody gutted a GUI builder all over it.

yes, quite right - 14 million for that quarter, not 40. sorry guys.

competitors are designing to the original ipad, and maybe the ipad2 if they are lucky.

HP and RIM seem to be doing more innovating than imitating. They've already surpassed the iPad in terms of the UI. Check them out -- they can't honestly be called iPad clones.

It took the competition 3 years before they couldn't really start to challenge the iphone.

I thought Apple went from second to third-place in the US smartphone market?

First movers have the advantage you can shift target goals easier.

Apple was years late in the smartphone game. I guess that's why they haven't really been able to challenge early leaders like RIM.

Sure, devices like Apple's iPhone 4 are technically superior to the RIM's Torch -- but you can't judge these things on specs alone. In this post-PC world, it's the overall experience that ultimately wins out. That's what RIM gives you that Apple just doesn't "get". RIM makes phones that "just work".

iPad 3.5 will probably come with Palladium 3.5, where even sites like Youtube will be charged for streaming to iDevice users.

Already, Netflix, Kindle, etc. are on the chopping block on the App Store unless they pay up 30% of the user's fees to Apple. Want to read your Kindle books or Netflix movies on the iPad? Be forced to pay up to cover Apple's tax. The best thing is that according to Apple's rules, the price has to be same for other devices too, so even if you don't use the iDevices, expect your prices to go up because of Apple's policies.

Readability was kicked off the App Store for failing to pay up http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/21/apples_rejection_of_readability_ios_app_stirs_subscription_controversy.html

Before you mod me overrated/flamebait/troll etc. maybe reply to tell me why you're doing so?

Apple has let things slip through. Here's some examples:

http://www.macworld.com/article/152835/2010/07/iphone_flashlight_tethering.html > app allows tethering as a hidden feature to being a flashlight tool.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/02/flurry_modifies_data_collection_after_being_called_out_by_steve_jobs.html > Apple themselves being surprised that Flurry was collecting info on prototype versions of iOS...

There might be more - but in both these situations here are applications doing something that Apple didn't know they were doing and they were screened applications.

Java is not included.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/26/mac_os_x_lion_drops_front_row_java_runtime_rosetta.html

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/14/apple_laying_groundwork_for_trim_support_in_future_ssd_based_macs.html

The goal with Light Peak is to connect two cords to your laptop (power and Light Peak)

Maybe not even that - they'll possibly have power & light peak in one cable: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/20/apple_to_announce_new_high_speed_connector_for_macs_report_claims.html

However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a website, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

That pretty much makes revenue drop by 30% for iOS platforms. How bad do the content providers want iOS ?

Don't be so sure, WebM may become just another patent trap soon.

"The iPad has an average selling price of $600."

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/18/notes_of_interest_from_apples_q1_2011_conference_call.html

Motorola has completely missed the mark.

you have RTFA

Well, via Apple Insider I found a more complete detailed account with AT&T's response:

"Transparent and accurate billing is a top priority for AT&T," an AT&T representative has responded, speaking with MacNN. "In fact, we've created tools that let our customers check their voice and data usage at any time during their billing cycle to help eliminate bill surprises. We have only recently learned of the complaint, but I can tell you that we intend to defend ourselves vigorously."

It is odd that it seems to only be reported by iPhone and iPad users.

Let Google spruce up the Android market, that is still half baked compared to the iOS app store, which remains the 'gold standard'.

Several people commented on the ads and tracking cookies and whatnot on that site. Here's an alternate article on the same topic.

Apple TV uses a bad setting for DNS by default. See here for a description of the problem and solutions.

It's not Netflix's fault, surprisingly enough.

AppleInsider has a very interesting write up on this. The last page touches specifically on the vulnerability of WebM to patent lawsuits and why Google isn't afraid of them.

Worth of a read.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/15/google_reaffirms_intent_to_derail_html5_h_264_video_with_webm_browser_plugins.html&page=2

Wrong.

First, for streaming. It was extended to 2015 for free streaming if the site was offering free videos to the end user. That has even more recently been extended indefinitely: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/26/apple_supported_h_264_standard_gains_free_license_for_internet_video_use.html

Second, sites doesn't pay for H.264 licenses to encode. They would have to pay IF they are building their own encoders. Sites would normally have to pay for the encoder themselves, like any other regular commercial software. The software encoders are the one who has to pay the fee. If you still want to go on about sites paying...you can probably find "free" software to get past paying and truely solve your price problem :)

Android has never 'eaten Apple's lunch' on iPhone sales. It has fed on WIndows Mobile, and RIM for the most part. It's sales also leveled off a few months ago. Although it will be a major player in the market, I don't think it will driving Windows or iOS out of the market any time soon.

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?threadid=115395

Yeah and now you're talking about a massively different user experience on different devices ... that's really annoying to application developers.

So basically no different than the current situation?

Thank you. That's the one that lingered in my mind. So the time-bomb failures are
1) Sony PS3 leap-year bug in 2010
2) Microsoft Zune bug 2 Januaries ago
3) An iPhone DST bug for Europe in November 2010
4) The latest iPhone's January 2011 one-time alarm bug

All are large companies and don't account for the indie app bugs we don't get to hear about on the front page. This furthers my point that something is seriously wrong with developer training in the past 5 years, both degree-less and degree-holding.

I mean lets forget about fucked up blue tooth support, not being able to send vcards (as i have done from small device to small device since my first palm/mobile phone), and lets just accept that automatic configuration (which worked for me in all courntries i have been in recently) is a little bit complicated for a phone for approx. 500Euro). Lets also forget that video calls follow just apples standard.

But what really disappointed me in this incredibly immature device is that under certain conditions EDGE support from the mobile cell tower prevents making calls on the iphone (my nokia works fine at the same conditions).

How is bluetooth support "fucked up"? I've never had a problem connecting to devices and it seems to work just the same as any other phone I've used.

You can't send vcards? I'm able to send them via MMS and e-mail without a glitch, I do it all the time.

FaceTime hardly follows just Apple's standards. It's using a ton of open standards such as H.264, AAC, and many more. Now, the entire process of establishing and maintaining a FaceTime connection is fairly complex and Apple has said that they will open the technology up to others at some point in the future, just as iTunes and the iPod used to be Mac-only but were eventually opened up to the Windows world.

I don't know what problem you are having with EDGE but I have unlocked an iPhone to run on another provider and so far there's been no unusual problems. Do you have any data on what these "certain conditions" are? Have you reported them to your provider? Perhaps the signal is out of spec in some way that the Nokia ignores but the iPhone doesn't, it's not always the right thing to make a connection when the signal is out of spec.

What's to excuse? Bugs happen, they get fixed.

Two points here.

First of all, it's not the first time a stupid but major bug is found in iOS alarm app.

Second, it's a major issue. Alarm not going off at the right time is a bug that would be classified as "critical" under any sane categorization system - it's the most basic, fundamental function of the application not working properly. Even worse, alarm is by its nature a "mission critical" app - unlike most other stuff, which is annoying but mostly harmless when it fails, this one really trips you up. Consequently, it should be heavily tested.

And this leads us to another issue... these kinds of bugs, both this one and the one back in November, show that unit and functional testing coverage of the alarm app in iOS is really horrible. I mean, DST change and year change? It's some of the most obvious and basic corner cases that you write tests for, especially in an application that specifically deals with time! It's practically textbook stuff, or an interview question for QA position. And so it's extremely surprising when that kind of thing goes wrong in production.

Apple's marketshare is more than that. It's several months old but AppleInsider has the article Apple sells estimated 1.4M Macs in US to capture 8% market share. That 8% puts Apple's marketshare in 5th place, behind HP, Dell, Acer, and Toshiba. More recently, October, Gartner and IDC say Apple marketshare broke 10%. That puts Apple's marketshare in 3rd, ahead of Acer and Toshiba and behind "Others". The only named companies with higher shares are HP and Dell.

the rest of us can go back to ignoring them, except for occasionally making fun of their bad software engineering and pompous commercials.

HAHA!!! I switched from Windows PCs more than 3 years ago after using PC for more than 10 years. My one regret is that I didn't switch sooner. Of 3 new Windows and one new Linux PC, only one did not need to be repaired in less than 1 year. In the more than 3 years I've had the Mac I'm typing this on I've only had to have it repaired once, about a year and a half after I got it.

Not only did I have my PC hardware fail a number of tymes, I also had to reinstall Windows a number of tymes which each PC.

I am now back in love with Symbian^3

You love Symbian because you're from the Third World.

Wouldn't a monopoly have... I dunno... a large market share? In June they had 28% of the market: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/06/apples_iphone_market_share_three_times_greater_than_android_in_us.html

"Monopoly" is the wrong word to use here. Antitrust is the right one.

And yet there's the trademark dispute over the Apple brand...

Since apparently you weren't paying attention, there was the trademark dispute but it was permanently resolved years ago.

(BTW it's amusing that you use the sosumi example instead of when they later sued when Apple started iTunes -- which I felt they actually had a solid basis on which to stand.)

iOS isn't acronym.

Sure it is Cisco's Internetwork Operating System. Trademark registrations are not case sensitive, so IOS == iOS, which is why Apple licensed the term IOS from Cisco.

It's the same with Cisco licensing the name iPhone to Apple

So yes, IOS or iOS is an acronym, licensed by Apple from Cisco.

iOS isn't acronym.

Sure it is Cisco's Internetwork Operating System. Trademark registrations are not case sensitive, so IOS == iOS, which is why Apple licensed the term IOS from Cisco.

It's the same with Cisco licensing the name iPhone to Apple

So yes, IOS or iOS is an acronym, licensed by Apple from Cisco.