Author Archive | Ed Oswald

IBM to Watch Papermaster’s Moves at Apple

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 28, 2009 at 9:33 am

It appears as if for now, IBM will let Mark Papermaster work at Apple starting in April, but with a catch. Everytime there may be a question of whether or not Papermaster might disclose confidential information, he must check in with IBM, court documents indicate.

IBM’s assistant general counsel Ron Laureldale would then make a determination “in good faith” whether or not the information may include trade secrets of the company.

Additionally, in July and October he would be required to sign declarations that he has not shared any IBM trade secrets with Apple under penalty of purjury. The agreement expires on October 24, one year after he left IBM.

What does this mean? Big Blue could get unprecedented access by a third-party into Apple’s plans for future products. No doubt, this must not have Jobs and Co. very happy considering the level of secrecy they like to maintain over products, however Papermaster must be such a catch that Apple is willing to sacrifice a little security.

Agreements like this are not unheard of, but are rather rare to be disclosed publicly. No doubt, the media attention this case has made this a little higher profile than most non-compete litigation.

When he joins Apple, Papermaster will take the position of iPod/iPhone developement chief, replacing Tony Fadell who stepped down late last year.

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Conflicting Reports on Jobs’ Whereabouts

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 27, 2009 at 1:03 pm

Gossip site Valleywag likely sent the Apple faithful into a near panic late Monday when it reported that ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs had supposedly checked himself into Stanford Hospital over the weekend in anticipation of an apparent surgical procedure Monday.

It is not clear what Jobs may have been getting surgery for. However doctors–who, it must be noted, have no specific knowledge of Jobs’ condition–have speculated that he may be suffering from liver cancer, and may be in need of a transplant.

Cancer is nothing new to Jobs: he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, although it was not publicly disclosed until a year later. The issue of secrecy around his health has also irked investors, who argue that Apple may be running afoul of disclosure laws.

There was only one problem with the Valleywag reporting, and it comes from this line from their post:

At a party in Silicon Valley last night, a Stanford staffer who had just come from the hospital told friends, including our source, about the “extra special care” being afforded their famous patient.

That’s right: this post was based on a third-person account of what somebody said at a party.

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, who’s also sick (but with the flu) gets a little miffed about this latest round of reports on Jobs’ health and has his own rumor–that Jobs was at his Apple office yesterday:

That kind of stuff is fine when it’s a funding rumor and the flimsiness of it is disclosed. But we’re talking about someone’s very personal life here – someone who has repeatedly requested privacy.

While I do side with those saying that Apple should be more forthcoming with Jobs’ condition, shoddy reporting is shoddy reporting. I have a single golden rule for “scoop” journalism. Anything I get must come from a direct source with exact knowledge of what they are telling me. No friend of a friend stuff.

Remember Whisper Down The Line? Remember how often things get messed up on the way? Exactly.

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Law Proposed to Make Camera Phone Sounds Mandatory

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 27, 2009 at 10:22 am

I really couldn’t figure out how to title this one. Here’s the deal. New York Republican Rep. Peter King seems to think that forcing manufacturers to make the camera *click* sound mandatory will somehow protect children from predators. Called the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act, King is making the claim that Congress has found “that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone.” Without said sound, these predators can apparently do their work in silence. Yes, it sounds weird, but get this — laws already exist in Japan for the same reason.

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Zune is Fine, Microsoft Insists

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 26, 2009 at 10:51 pm

Microsoft was quick to tamp down any rumor-mongering in the blogosphere about its 54% drop in Zune revenues, cautioning that the industry as a whole was down, and that its sales were in line with its expectations. In comments to Seattle P-I’s Joseph Tartakoff, Entertainment and Devices chief Robbie Bach repeatedly assured that the sales of the device were “fine.” Zune marketing chief Adam Sohn furthered Bach’s comments by adding that Zune’s limited distribution (US and Canada only) gave it little room for error — iPod is sold worldwide, thus the weakness here at home was offset by some strength abroad, and a lineup change also cannabalized sales.

What we’re still missing here Microsoft is hard numbers, so we can see exactly what your definition of “fine” really is.

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Happy 25th, Apple Macintosh

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 23, 2009 at 8:44 am

Saturday, January 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the computer that arguably changed the PC forever: the Apple Macintosh. That winter day in 1984, a much younger (and healthier) Steve Jobs ignited the PC revolution with a computer that was easy to use, featured the first consumer computer GUI, and a mouse.

Macintosh’s introduction was heralded by what many consider one of the best commercials of all time, a spot which aired during Super Bowl XVIII two days before its release.

The first Mac was not light on the pocketbook: it set the consumer back $2,495 (in today’s dollars, that would be around $5,000). The rest of its stats by todays standards would be laughable: a 8MHz Motorola processor, 128KB of DRAM, a 9-inch black and white CRT screen, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and no internal hard-disk storage.

In fact, to run programs, you first had to load the OS onto RAM, then eject and run whatever disk containing the program you desired. MacPaint and MacWrite came bundled with the product: Microsoft Word was also available.

One thing killed the first Macintosh, and that was its lack of memory and inability to be upgraded. This problem would eventually all but orphan the original Mac, as Apple moved on to a 512KB memory model and the Plus, which could run more advanced programs.

Essentially one year after its launch, the Macintosh 128K was already obsolete.

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Copps to Serve As Acting FCC Chief

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 22, 2009 at 4:26 pm

President Obama has selected current Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps as acting head of the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of Kevin Martin’s resignation, the Administration announced late Thursday. The Commissioner has served with the FCC since 2001.

The selection of Copps is somewhat interesting, and his philosophy is quite different from that of Martin. He opposes media consolidation and often has come down on the opposite site of his predecessor when it comes to deregulation, so as long as Copps is the head of the FCC, expect things to be run a bit differently.

You may remember my earlier reporting indicating Julius Genachowski would head the FCC: apparently that is still rumor as it has not been announced yet, nor are any confirmation hearings scheduled.

Obama still needs to fill two more spots: there are two vacancies, one Democratic and one Republican. Typically, the majority in the agency is held by the party holding power in the White House.

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Today’s Financial Results Mixed

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 22, 2009 at 2:52 pm

Okay, so I can’t be 100 percent negative about this economy all the time. Besides Microsoft’s poor results and resulting job cuts which Harry covered this morning, other big name tech companies also reported results today.

Google’s results were quite respectable: $4.22 billion in revenue and earnings of $5.10 per share. This beat Wall Street expectations, who were looking for $4.12 billion and $4.96 respectively. How many times these days do you hear about a company beating The Street lately? Not much.

It’s advertising business, essentially the core of Google’s revenues, actually increased ever so slightly which came as a surprise to many. In a weakening ad market, it was expected that the so called “cost per click” would decrease during the quarter.

Employees will be happy: Google is launching a program for “underwater” stock options — where the cost of the option is higher than the current stock price — for new options that will be priced at the share price at close on March 2.

But don’t get too excited. AMD rains on our parade with results that come in below what Wall Street was expecting. The chipmaker was already struggling, so this hits doubly hard.

The company lost $1.424 billion on revenues of $1.162 billion, which means that its losses outpaced revenues. However, lets be far to AMD: this included $996 million in one-time charges, including $684 in impairment charges related to its buy of ATI.

Still, taking all that out, the company lost about 68 cents a share, considerably worse than the Wall Street predictions of 54 cents. AMD doesn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel yet: it warns that Q1 could even be worse.

Nokia joined the bad news bandwagon too, posting sales of 12.67 billion euros, down a staggering 20 percent year-over-year. Worse yet the company sees a 10 percent drop in handset sales in 2009 over the year previous.

That’s Nokia’s bread and butter, so essentially expect a full year of financial bad news out of the Finnish phone manufacturer. CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo seems concerned, saying “in recent weeks, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated rapidly,” and the company is taking steps to insulate itself.

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Seagate Ships Firmware Fix

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 22, 2009 at 11:56 am

Just in from Seagate: “Seagate has isolated a potential firmware issue in limited number of Barracuda 7200.11 hard drives and related SATA drives based on this product platform, manufactured through December 2008 … Seagate is offering a free firmware upgrade to proactively address those with potentially affected products. This new firmware upgrade corrects compatibility issues that occurred with the firmware download provided on our support website on Jan. 16.” Customers affected are being urged to check this support page.

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Pandora Placing Ads in Audio Streams

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 22, 2009 at 9:20 am

With Pandora’s struggle to stay afloat in the news a lot lately, the idea that ads may make their way into its streams did not seem such an impossibility. While it was nice to listen to the company’s offerings free of advertisement, Pandora has come dangerously close several times to shutting down simply because it was running out of money.

Venture capital, especially in this economy, is only going to get you so far.

The ads at least for now are not that intrusive. They are 15-seconds in length, and are used sporadically. Chief exec Tim Westergren says they have actually been around for quite awhile, although in recent days their use has become much more widespread.

The ads only appear in the desktop stream, but ads for the mobile stream are in the works. It may be a good idea: for whatever reason, click-through rates are higher in Pandora’s mobile applications, the company says. They will be targeted based on a user’s profile.

Westergren seems to be trying to deny this has anything to do with its ongoing issues over royalty rates, which I have a hard time believing. If you know you’re going to be paying more for something, you’re going to try to make more more money to recoup your losses. That’s just common sense.

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Blu-ray: Why it Will Stay Blue

Posted by Ed Oswald on January 21, 2009 at 12:05 pm

I just got finished reading two pieces on Blu-ray: one from David Carnoy from last week on why the format will succeed; and the other from Jeremy Toeman, who countered David’s argument that it actually may be closer to failure.

Blu-ray is in a lot of trouble at this moment. It’s kind of a one-two punch: with the sinking economy, people have less money to spend on expensive gadgets. Blu-ray is still one of them, with most players still well above $200 if not $300.

Add to this the fact that streaming media is really beginning to take flight (yesterday’s Inauguaral hiccups notwithstanding), and it isn’t looking good for Sony’s format.

Yeah, Sony may have finally won a format battle, but the protracted fight may have just taken too much time and ended up wounding Blu-ray just enough that it will never be able to replace DVD.

Like Jeremy says, there just is not a whole lot of value proposition to Blu-ray. People with HDTV’s are indeed finding their upscaling DVD player looks wonderful for a third of the price of the Blu-ray player.

The only way Blu-ray is going to stay afloat here is the PS3. And you all know my opinion on that subject.

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