By Gaurang Donovan

On a cold morning three days before the official first day of winter, Melbourne and its two Apple Retail Stores at Chadstone and Doncaster shopping malls provided a warm welcome for the international launch of Apple's iPad for the retail customers who did not already order their iPads through the Apple Online Store.

The line of people waiting at the one-hour-earlier-than-normal opening of the store numbered over 250 buyers at the Chadstone store and over 230 buyers at the Doncaster store. One hour after opening people were still entering the queue that extended into the mall and numbered over 80 in each.

This was not a bad turnout, but the larger iPad numbers are in the courier deliveries for the device. "The Sydney Morning Herald" reported on a bulletin board commentator identifying himself as a driver for a large courier company operating in Australia (but perhaps not known so well outside the country) as having 7,800 iPad...

Recently, iTunes was given a new icon (removing the CD), but I think it's time the software received a whole new name. Or, even more radically, is broken up into several different apps.

When iTunes was launched in 1999, it was a simple music player with the ability to do MP3 conversions. Now iTunes is houses music, movies, shows, podcasts and audiobooks. It's the conduit to your iPhone, iPod and iPad. And it's a link to an online store for buying media.

It seems it's time for a name change. iMedia, perhaps?

Or perhaps iTunes on the Mac could be broken up into multiple apps, as it is on iOS devices. It's gotten a bit bulky and and cumbersome on the Mac.

On my iPad there's the Video app (for movies I've bought online and self-made videos), the iPod app (for all my music), iTunes (the online store) and the App Store (for buying apps). (The iPod app also has music videos listed, but it seems to me they should show up in the Video app.)

So perhaps...

By Greg Mills

Since the Islamic attack on the US by Bin Laden's boys, the burden on the US Government and us as citizens has been increasing dramatically, to protect us from further similar attacks, or worse. This has cost a lot of money for increased security and some lost freedom for us as citizens. I am a veteran of the US Army. I love my country but have serious issues some times with our government.  

I recently had an article I had written "lost" in the either of cyberspace despite 10 attempts to send it to my editor as email. I wrote an innocent article regarding dealing with spam, particularly Nigerian bank fraud spam. That article in email form, was somehow filtered out and not delivered from my .Mac account to my editor's email, a number of times over a week's time.  I suspect that there were key words in the article, that, in combination, were enough to convince a security filtering system at Apple that my message might be related to...

By Greg Mills

I no longer get much Nigerian Bank fraud email, since I developed a policy to deal with that.  When you get an email, "You have won $50,000,000" or your unknown distant, long lost uncle died in South Africa and left you a million dollars, that is called Nigerian 419 spam and the email is really from a crook who wants to steal you blind.  

The scammers take a doctorate or official sounding banker's name for themselves. Masked behind the respectable facade is a dirt poor thief, hunched over a junk PC at a cyber cafe somewhere in a third world country. Some people don't know that if you give a thief your bank account routing numbers, that while they promise to deposit gobs of money into your bank account they actually plan to use the information to withdraw your money through the international banking system.

If email sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, so don't be taken in. Most people just delete such junk email...

Apple's upcoming US$1 billion data center could become the hub for an all-streaming broadcast network, says tech pundit Nike Carr, as reported by "InformationWeek" (http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/interviews/showArticle.jh...). And I think an Apple home server could fit into the picture.

"Apple increasingly views its mainstream computers, from iPod Touch to iPhone to iPad to MacBook Air, as media players, with 'media' spanning not just audio and video but also apps," Carr wrote in an email. "From that perspective, the North Carolina data center can be seen as essentially a broadcasting system that will enable Apple to make the shift from a downloading model of media distribution to a streaming model. It's a proprietary broadcasting system (not...

Apple patents involving a light sensing device, radio presets between a portable media player and an accessory and remote control signal learning and processing by a host device and accessory have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 20100282953 is for a light sensing device having a color sensor and a clear sensor for infrared rejection. A light sensing device has a first filter to block visible light in a light path. The light sensing device also has a first color sensor and a clear sensor, to detect light in the light path after the first filter. A light intensity calculator computes a measure of the intensity of visible light in the light path, based on a difference between (a) an output signal of the first color sensor, and (b) an output signal of the clear sensor. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. Chris Yu John Tam is the inventor.

Patent number 20100285763...

The recent Apple patent for "scrollable menus and toolbars" indicates that Apple will continue to add similar features to iOS and Mac OS X. As I've said before, I think eventually there will only be one operating system, Apple OS, in computer and mobile versions.

The patent in question also shows further evolution of the Mac OS X Finder with the replacement of hierarchical computer menus by a scrollable window, in which functions would be more clearly displayed and navigated by gestures. Those gestures on a Mac would be made on a laptop trackpad, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad.

At last week's MacTech Conference, Mac guru pundit Andy Ihnatko said Mac OS X Lion shows a move toward non-hierarchical menu structures and "uni-tasking." ("Multitasking is 95% a lie," he said.)

With the scrollable menus and toolbars patent, you'll be offered a menu that includes several selectable menu items assigned a particular order for scrolling through a selection window based on...

Apple has been granted a patent (number 7,830,461) by the US Patent & Trademark Office for a light sensitive display. It relates to touch sensitive displays that could eventually be used with iOS devices.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Touch sensitive screens ("touch screens") are devices that typically mount over a display such as a cathode ray tube. With a touch screen, a user can select from options displayed on the display's viewing surface by touching the surface adjacent to the desired option, or, in some designs, touching the option directly. Common techniques employed in these devices for detecting the location of a touch include mechanical buttons, crossed beams of infrared light, acoustic surface waves, capacitance sensing, and resistive materials.

"For example, Kasday, U.S. Pat. No. 4,484,179 discloses an optically-based touch screen comprising a flexible clear membrane supported above a glass screen whose edges are fitted...

Leander Kahney of "Cult of Mac" says (http://www.cultofmac.com/how-apple-almost-got-microsofts-kinect-game-con...) that Apple was the first place that PrimeSense, the company who developed the technology behind Microsoft's Kinect camera for the Xbox 360.

Kinect is a motion control system for the game console. It can can sense and respond to users' body motions as well as their voices. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360, it enables users to control and interact with the console without a game controller. Instead they use gestures, spoken commands and/or objects and images.

Kinect responds to how you move. If you have to kick in a game, you kick. If you have to jump in a game, you jump. What's more, it's designed to respond to the sound of your vo...

Think there's little growth opportunity for the Mac? Think again. The Toffler Associates (http://www.toffler.com/) think tank says there are more than one billion personal computers in use today -- and that number will double by 2014.

Apple now has around 10% of the computer market in the US and is approaching 5% worldwide. And that percentage keeps on going up.

Imagine Apple nabbing 10% of more of a billion computer sales over the next four years. That's a lot of Macs. Also, in the latest Toffler Associates they predict that:

° Companies will increasingly follow the Apple/iPhone model of creating value, not by creating products (in Apple’s case, apps), but by hosting the marketplace and charging to connect consumers to producers.

° The world will enter the “Petabyte Age,” where data saturation is the norm.

° Widespread quantum computing will be a realistic possibility in the...

A new Apple patent (number 20100278513) at the US Patent & Trademark Office shows that the company is looking for ways to make it easier for Macs to read commercial DVDs. The patent involves embedded access information for DVDs independent of the DVD player software.

Per the patent, an operating system extension is used to implement embedded information on a DVD. The operating system extension examines DVD sector addresses requested from the DVD hardware. When address associated with an embedded link is requested, an application program that can run the embedded link is started, and the embedded link is provided to the application program.

The system of the present invention has the advantage that it does not require modifying the DVD software program and thus can be used with a variety of different DVD software programs. The inventors of the patent are Freddie Geier and Stefan Bauer-Schwan.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "The...

According to a new patent (number 20100279768) Apple is eyeing ways for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad users to use features of the devices --- such motion detection, GPS and camera -- to play and compete with others in a real-life 3D space.

The patent is for interactive gaming with co-located, networked direction and location-aware devices. An interactive game environment includes two or more co-located, networked, direction and location aware interactive game devices. The game devices share a common reference coordinate frame (e.g., a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate frame).

Each game device maintains its own device state (e.g., position, orientation, time) in the reference coordinate frame. Each interactive game device shares its device state with the other interactive game devices using communication technology (e.g., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular). Each interactive game device can use the device states of the other interactive game devices to project the relative...

The Mac has over 10% market share in the U.S., but under 5% globally (though both those figures would skyrocket if you figured in iPad sales, as I think you should). I think that number will grow at a significant rate, especially with China figured into the equation.

Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty says in a report co-written with Mathew Schneider, that "China is undergoing a 'megatransition' from being the leading producer of goods to the leading consumer of them" and that there's "evidence of strong uptake of Apple products among higher-income China consumers."

If their numbers are right, Huberty says Apple then would have to grow revenue by just 19% and operating income by 11% in the rest of the world to hit the current consensus two-year EPS [earnings per share] growth forecast of 21% (and our 22%)."

The report also says that Apple's brand is already preferred by urban Chinese. A November 200 Morgan Stanley survey of Chinese handset users in tier 1/2...

A new Apple patent (number 7,827,489) at the US Patent & Trademark Office shows that Apple wants to make it easier for professional filmmakers to edit to tape. A method and apparatus is described that allows edited media to be recorded to a sequential storage device is disclosed.

An edited time based stream of information of a source media is displayed. The edited time based stream is transferred to a sequential storage device to be recorded using an icon where the icon represents a function to be performed on the storage device. The inventor is Randy Ubillos.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "Editing is generally the art of making subtle adjustments to a material or materials in a form that communicates a message with maximum impact. In the area of video editing, the editor defines and shapes the video and/or audio until the message to be delivered is accomplished. Generally, video editing may be divided into two categories: linear video...

At the "Back to the Mac" event on Oct. 20, Apple Steve Jobs explained why there are no plans for Macs with touchscreens: touch interfaces don't feel right in a vertical plane and you don't want to touch your iMac's screen. This means trackpads and the Magic Mouse are the interfaces for the future Mac OS X/iOS integration. Beyond that, I think Apple might take a lesson from the Xbox and its new Kinect technology.

Kinect is a motion control system for the game console. It can can sense and respond to users' body motions as well as their voices. Based around a webcam-style add-on peripheral for the Xbox 360, it enables users to control and interact with the console without a game controller. Instead they use gestures, spoken commands and/or objects and images.

Kinect responds to how you move. If you have to kick in a game, you kick. If you have to jump in a game, you jump.

What's more, Kinect is designed to respond to the sound of your voice. Just say “Xbox” to...

By Greg Mills

Those who read Greg's bite regularly may have noticed I tend to dump on Microsoft and the pope of Anti-Mac, Steve Ballmer.  It seems I am not alone as numerous articles have come out lately which confirm my observations, exactly.  Some have speculated that Microsoft will actually go belly up even after Ballmer is forced out. They are riding the Windows PC Operating System monopoly into the ground.

Microsoft has been chronically late to respond to new markets and have been ridiculously smug about it. Recently, the clown of high tech, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went on and on about the Vista Windows 7 smartphone OS being early? My question for Mr. Ballmer is "early in what respect?" By the reckoning of those in the best position to know, Mobile Vista 7  is about three years behind the Apple iOS.  

That is very late to the party Mr. Ballmer, not early. Considering Apple is not sitting on their laurels, as they seem to do a lot at...

I've been reading the tech tea leaves lately, and I'm predicting that within two years, perhaps sooner, Macs will ship with no optical storage or hard disk drives. In other words, the new MacBook Airs are a glimpse at the future of most all Macs, not just Apple laptops.

My forecast is that all Macs -- except the Mac Pros -- will, sooner rather than later, ship with SSDs only. As prices drop, the capacity of the SSDs will increase. Still, it's going to be a looong time before they're price comparable with hard disk drives (HHDs), and folks need ever-bigger HDDs as their digital content increases. Though some companies might want you to store all your data in "the cloud," I contend that most folks will also want a local copy -- as in their home or office -- of their tunes, movies and photos.

For this reason, I think Apple will begin selling its own line of HDDs when the Mac line moves to all-SSD (excepting, as I've mentioned, the Mac Pro). One advantage of this is that...

New Apple patents at the US Patent & Trademark Office involve multi-connectors, microphone lines, RAW imaging processing, and EMI switching circuits. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 20100271790 is for a multi-connector assembly. The invention can relate to multiple-connector assemblies for use in, for example, electronic devices. Each of the connectors are constrained to another connector by aligning one or more complementary sets of reference features. A locating bracket may be used to couple multiple connectors together. Alternatively, the connectors may be coupled to each other directly. The electronic device also may include a retainer coupled to the connectors (either directly or indirectly through the locating bracket). The retainer and a surface of one of the connectors may form a single plane to which an end cap of the housing may be coupled, thereby accurately locating the end cap with respect to the connectors. The present...

As evidenced by a new patent (number 20100273538) at the US Patent & Trademark Office, Apple is working to make its devices even more scratch proof. The patent is for nitriding stainless steel for consumer electronics products.

It involves cost effective system, method and apparatus adapted to provide a nitride layer on stainless steel used for the manufacture of consumer electronic products. In addition to providing a durable, hard surface that is both scratch and impact resistant, the nitride layer allows for the natural surface color and texture of the underlying stainless steel to remain visible to the user. It is this natural surface color and texture of the stainless steel that adds to the aesthetically pleasing appearance of the consumer electronic product thereby enhancing the user's overall experience, says Apple. The inventor is Douglas Weber.

Here's Apple's background and summary of the invention: "The stainless steels owe their resistance to corrosion...

The Gartner research group recently highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2011. Most of them affect Apple, mostly in a positive way. The top 10 technologies are:

° Cloud computing.Though I still don't think most folks want all their valuable data and files (including music, photos and videos) in "the cloud," Gartner thinks the next three years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between the two extremes of open public to closed private. Vendors will offer packaged private cloud implementations that deliver the vendor's public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies (i.e., best practices to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented inside the consumer's enterprise.

Many will also offer management services to remotely manage the cloud service implementation. Gartner expects large enterprises to have a dynamic...

Apple wants to make it easier to pair wireless accessories with host devices, per a patent (number 7,813,715) that has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. The invention relates to wireless devices and, more particularly, to pairing wireless devices for authorized data exchange.

Techniques that facilitate pairing of wireless accessory devices with wireless host devices are disclosed. Advantageously, the improved techniques permit pairing of wireless devices without requiring user entry of pin codes. In one embodiment, a wireless accessory device, such as a headset or earphone, can be paired with a wireless host device, such as a mobile phone or media player. The inventors are Chris McKillop and Chris Wiebe.

Here's Apple's summary of the invention: "The invention pertains to improved techniques that facilitate pairing of wireless accessory devices with wireless host devices. Advantageously, the improved techniques permit pairing of wireless devices...

Three Apple patents involving video encoders, data storage systems and electronic devices have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 7,822,118 is for a method and apparatus for control of rate-distortion tradeoff by mode selection in video encoders. The system of the present invention first selects a distortion value D near a desired distortion value. Next, the system determines a quantizer value Q using the selected distortion value D. The system then calculates a Lagrange multiplier lambda using the quantizer value Q. Using the selected Lagrange multiplier lambda and quantizer value Q, the system begins encoding pixelblocks. If the system detects a potential buffer overflow, then the system will increase the Lagrange multiplier lambda. If the Lagrange multiplier lambda exceeds a maximum lambda threshold then the system will increase the quantizer value Q. If the system detects a potential buffer...

By Greg Mills

The well oiled machine that is the Apple iTunes/App store is a far cry from the Android apps stores. While there are stories in the press about various app developers beginning to write apps for the Google smart phones, there are also just as many stories about developer's serious problems dealing with that loosely controlled  "go to market" system.  

Google engineer Andy Rubin was quoted as saying the Android platform is "still seeing the 1.0 version of the ecosystem." The race to quantity has resulted in a quality program for Android Apps. The percentage of apps that crash all the time are much higher that what we see in the iOS platform. Looser controls mean less quality for the end user.

While developers moan and groan about Apple's stringent and less-than-transparent review process and express great anger at their control over both content and the working of the apps, Apple developers who do things right get paid. Some of...

By Greg Mills

When Apple obsoletes technology a groan generally goes up from both people used to the status quo and hardware companies that are directly affected. Remember the demise of floppy drives and the near death of FireWire? Such a groan went up when Apple recently launched the new MacBook Air laptops that, like iPad, iPods and the Apple TV uses flash memory instead of a hard drive.  

While the cost for storage using flash memory is higher per gig of memory, there are distinct advantages to going with solid state memory instead of a mechanical rotating disk that is prone to crash. In time, all hard drives will fail. A hard bump at just the wrong time can sometimes destroy a hard drive and leave the user with a sudden data loss. Sometimes a strange noise will give a warning, but the sudden hard drive crash without a warning is common.

I am lucky, so far, and have never had a hard drive go bad, but there are a lot of folks that have had a...