Apple

So that report on Monday from JPMorgan Chase, the one about the supposed iPhone Nano? The financial gurus have decided to rethink that one.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog spotted a new research note from JPMorgan analysts (thanks Gizmodo) that takes a very skeptical look at claims made Monday by their colleague, JPMorgan analyst Kevin Chang in Taiwan. Chang said in his report that Apple was hoping to launch a smaller, cheaper iPhone based on the iPod Nano design later this year. But JPMorgan's Bill Shope, Elizabeth Borbolla, and Vlad Rom threw Chang under the iBus in their own report … Read more

Last week, Opti Technologies announced a patent infringement lawsuit against a bevy of chip companies: Advanced Micro Devices, Atmel, Broadcom, Renesas Technology, Silicon Storage Technology, SMSC, STMicroelectronics and Via Technologies. At issue are two patents for "Compact ISA-Bus" technology.

Opti had recently sued Apple and AMD over three patents for "Predictive Snooping" technology used in some computer chips. And, in August of last year, Opti settled with Nvidia for $11 million plus up to $9 million more if nVidia continues to use Opti's technology in its products. The nVidia action included all five of the above-mentioned patents.

Silicon Valley faithful will remember Opti as a once-respected chip company that fell on hard times. Is the company's recent patent litigation rampage the death-throws of a desperate company or a promising new business model? Let's go through it.

At present, Opti has but one full-time employee, CEO Bernard Marren. And, according to the company's 1995 proxy statement, Marren gets a cut of everything he brings in to shareholders on a sliding scale that starts at 5 percent and ramps down to 1 percent. Mike Mazzoni, the company's part-time CFO, appears to have the same deal.

Do the math; it's not bad work if you can get it.

I had lunch with Marren a few weeks ago. The 71-year-old industry veteran seemed excited about Opti's prospects and he may have reason to be. Marren isn't new to executive management. He's a former founder and president of electronic distributor Western Micro Technology and the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). He sits on a number of boards, including Microtune, Infocus and Unipixel. Marren knows his way around the negotiating table.

For better or worse, patent infringement litigation is business as usual in the chip industry. If not for broad cross-license agreements, chip companies might spend more time suing each other than developing products. Nevertheless, some companies have carved out significant niches by developing and licensing technology. ARM, Qualcomm, Rambus, Tessera, even IBM and Texas Instruments, make a solid business of it. But, for the most part, these companies develop technology with that business model in mind. Believe me, they prefer to negotiate than to litigate.… Read more

Speculation about iPhone 2.0 is already well underway, and the latest tidbit involves an iPod Nano-like phone supposedly scheduled for later this year.

Kevin Chang with JPMorgan Chase in Taiwan thinks a slimmer iPhone is on the way, based on conversations he had with unnamed sources and an Apple patent filing for a slim device that uses an input method similar to the familiar iPod scroll wheel, Reuters reports. This would allow Apple to ship a cheaper version of the original iPhone, he said.

I'm not sure what to make of this one. The iPhone's main selling … Read more

We have more iPhone battery results from CNET Labs. The talk time, video time, and music time tests are completed and we can report that the iPhone largely delivers on its power promises. And just to remind you of those promises, the iPhone has a rated battery life of 8 hours talk time, 24 hours of music playback, 7 hours of video playback, and 6 hours of Internet use.

Talk time: When we tested the iPhone with the Wi-Fi function turned off, we got about 7 hours, 45 minutes of talk time. When we tested it with the Wi-Fi activated, … Read more

Now that the iPhone launch is out of the way, many Apple watchers expect the company to turn its attention to its stagnant iMac designs with newer models later this year.

AppleInsider is reporting that along with new redesigned iMacs, Apple will introduce a keyboard design already in place on its Macbooks to customers that prefer the all-in-one design. The site expects the new iMacs to arrive in a month or so in 20-inch and 24-inch models, which would allow Apple to have fresh systems amid the August back-to-school shopping season, one of the more important buying periods of the … Read more

Today the iPhone is the alpha gizmo, the one item of consumer electronics that dominates all the others.

But in 1993, the hot new gizmo was Apple's Newton, and it was a whole different thing.

Not very many people had Newtons. Apple sold fewer Newtons over the whole life of the product than it sold iPhones the evening of June 29.

Also unlike the iPhone, the first Newtons weren't even very useful. Although called "personal digital assistants" (PDAs), using a Newton was significantly more difficult than using a Day-Timer. The original MessagePad had very poor handwriting … Read more

Hundreds of Web developers, designers, and ordinary geeks gathered this weekend to build usable applications for Apple's iPhone. The barcamp.org event was hosted at Adobe Town Hall and featured dozens of sponsors. The hack-a-thon began on Saturday morning, and wrapped up late Sunday afternoon when each team had a chance to present its app.

Some teams included a group of Yahoo! developers, and others included complete strangers who had just met the day before. I give credit to all teams who participated, but here are the 10 most memorable creations:

10. iPhoneVote This application was the first one presented at the hack-a-thon, and it was used as a voting system for the event. You would tilt your iPhone in portrait mode to vote yay, and tilt it horizontally to give a negative vote. There was a laptop set up in the front of the room, and it was updated in real time. Unfortunately, I don't think the app reset each time a new team would present, so the votes just tallied up into the 80s. Even though it wasn't used for its official purpose, it was a great burst of hope for future apps like this, and boosted the morale of the developers in the room.

9. AppMarks If you have an iPhone, make AppMarks your Safari home page. The interface models the iPhone front door, but instead, each icon links to a Web app or HTML bookmark. I mentioned AppMarks in this blog post a few days ago. AppMarks is cool, but I want to see more functionality. If the AppMarks people want users to add AppMarks as their home page, they need to always be thinking of new features. There are other products, like Mojits, that are right on their heels.

8. PickleView The only sports application presented was called PickleView. Ryan Christianson from the Walt Disney Internet Group explained that in baseball, a pickle is a play in which a base runner is trapped between bases with fielders tossing the ball back and forth and usually ending with the runner being tagged out. Most will remember it well from the 1990s classic,The Sandlot.

Their iPhone app visualizes a box-score view of your favorite teams’s stats, and then displays a mock Twitter feed of PickleView's friends. I am not sure if that's how this app works, but the developers have a cool concept.… Read more

The large screen and landscape viewing mode that come with the iPhone could make for a cheaper video iPod that can't phone home.

Apple watchers Piper Jaffray released a report Monday predicting that Apple will soon update its high-end iPod lineup with a wide-screen model that looks an awful lot like the iPhone, just without the phone and data connections. It's been a while since Apple released a new iPod, and rumors have been circulating for a long time that Apple has plans for a wide-screen iPod.

With the launch of the iPhone, Apple does indeed have that … Read more

Even companies that aren't selling the iPhone have taken to promoting its virtues.

AppleInsider spotted a Web page hosted by Best Buy's Canadian operation where customers can sign up to receive more information on the "revolutionary new device from Apple." That's a rather forward way of hawking a product you're not selling, eh? Neither Best Buy Canada nor its U.S. counterpart have plans to sell the iPhone any time soon, a corporate representative in Best Buy's U.S. offices confirmed.

As we all know, AT&T was the launch partner for … Read more