apple

Update at 2:47 p.m. PDT:The headline on this story was changed from "Apple's .Mac service unavailable during Tuesday's event.")

Apple is expected to unveil new iMacs during an event Tuesday, but it could also have some improvements to its .Mac service up its sleeve.

Mac Rumors noted that Apple's .Mac service, which allows subscribers access to e-mail, data storage and Web publishing tools for $99 a year, will be down for undergoing maintenance Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. PDT, which happens to be the exact same time that … Read more

The first iPhone lawsuit might have been somewhat laughable, but the second one may be a little more serious.

An outfit called SP Technologies has sued Apple over the touch-screen keyboard at the heart of the iPhone, claiming Apple is infringing on a patent held by SP Technologies for a similar keyboard. AppleInsider dug up the SP patent filing from 2000, which claims the company developed a "method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area."

Patent suits, of course, are a dime a … Read more

Herb Greenberg's "Weekend Investor" column today in the Wall Street Journal drives home an important point: it's easy to miss the razor for the blade. I'm referring to the classic "razor/blade" business model, one which is often cited as being well-suited to open source.

In Apple's case, it is critical to figure out the "blade" because Apple's iPod sales seem to have finally hit the saturation point:… Read more

Amid the growing group of instant-messaging solutions for the IM-less iPhone, Mundu (a Webware 100 winner) has just released a new contender that handles four of the most popular chatting protocols with a fantastic interface. If you're an iPhone user, just navigate your Safari browser to http://iphone.mundu.com, which takes you to a log-in screen with access to your AIM, Yahoo, MSN, .Mac, and Google Talk accounts. You can log into all of them simultaneously, although there's no master password system like you get with Meebo.

Each client gets its own buddy list, and any additional … Read more

Apple's long shadow over the flash-memory market might help it avoid serious problems in the wake of Samsung's production outage.

The second half of the year was already shaping up to be tight, as flash-memory companies switch over to new manufacturing technologies. But, of all things, a power outage in South Korea Friday could really make things difficult for companies that are depending on flash memory chips from Samsung this holiday season.

Analysts estimated that 15 percent of Samsung's output in the third quarter could have been lost because of the power outage. Not only will Samsung … Read more

I used an Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 pretty much every day for about seven years (see my previous blog entry about my Newton experiences).

What was so great about it? What kept me using it?

Well, I used the Newton to keep track of the good things about the Newton--and the bad things too. So to write this article, I just powered up the unit (which still works fine, along with a Farallon Ethernet PC Card, a 24MB linear flash card, and two of the three nickel metal hydride battery packs, plus another pack for AA alkaline batteries) and reviewed … Read more

Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek said today (here) that a group of independent software developers led by Patrick Walton have created what "appears to be the first downloadable program created for the iPhone." (More details here.)

But actually I think the first genuinely useful downloadable iPhone application might have been this one:

http://scicalc.belfry.com/

The programmer, a friend of mine named Garth Minette, discovered on July 28 that he could encode an entire application, 85 Kbytes in size, into an iPhone bookmark. So it works even when the iPhone is not connected to the network-- the basic … Read more

Apple could have a lot more in mind for the multitouch user interface found on the iPhone.

A recent Apple patent filing spotted by Macsimum News, among others, covers technology described as a "multitouch gesture dictionary." It's basically a way of assigning certain tasks, such as opening an application, to a series of gestures and "chords," according to the patent application.

Right now, iPhone users navigate by dragging a finger up, down, left or right to scroll through contacts, music or e-mail. Zooming in or out of a Web page requires two fingers that either … Read more

At last, we have the Venzero Slickr MP3 player in our cold, gadget-lusting grip. The German gadget manufacturer has been taunting us with images of their Slickr MP3 player for months now. We've only just opened the box, but we wanted to share a pre-review glimpse with our loyal Cravers.… Read more