Author Archive | Ed Oswald

Analysts: Microsoft Not Tardy for the Tablet Party

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 27, 2011 at 1:08 pm

Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 with "Slate PCs"

Microsoft may still have time to make its mark in the tablet market, some analysts are saying. Although Apple still has the lion’s share of the business at the moment, it’s still so new that there’s plenty of room for growth.

Citigroup research analysts said in a recent note that it expected the next version of Windows to ship between January of next year and March 2013. It noted that Microsoft could ship the tablet version first, enabling it to garner significant share in 2013 and beyond.

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White iPhone Kit Purveyor Settles With Apple?

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 26, 2011 at 8:46 pm

Apple appears to have reached a settlement with a young entrepreneur who capitalized on the Cupertino company’s failure to release the white iPhone by selling conversion kits. How’d 17-year-old Fei Lam do it? By dealing with Foxconn himself, getting the parts on his own.

This obviously rankled Apple quite a bit, and the company had a private investigation firm send him a letter accusing him of being in receipt of stolen goods. Lam did not back down, and hired a lawyer.

It took until yesterday for Apple to file a lawsuit against Lam and his family, but it concurrently took the step of filing a request for dismissal as well. This could mean that the two sides have come to an agreement. It should be noted that the dismissal was filed “without prejudice,” legalese for meaning that an acceptance of the request would give Apple the option to refile if it decided to do so.

Given that the white iPhone 4 is now a reality, I doubt Lam has any reason to start his business anew. Then again, if Apple can’t make a future device in a highly coveted color, all he needs to do his give his buddies at Foxconn a call…

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Amazon Takes Apple On Again With Mac Download Store

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 26, 2011 at 4:45 pm

It’s almost like Amazon is doing everything it possibly can to be the biggest thorn in Apple’s backside possible. On Thursday the e-retailer introduced a Mac Download Store. Amazon says that it will start with about 250 game and application downloads.

While that may not be anywhere near as big as the “real” Mac App Store, the retailer is aiming to attract consumers through another draw: having software that Apple doesn’t. For example, Microsoft’s Office for Mac is available through Amazon, whereas it has yet to appear in the App Store.

“Mac Download store features an install-less download process where the customer gets just the product without any unwanted extras,” the company said in promoting the new offering. It also noted that all purchases would remain available for unlimited downloads for personal use — an important function for anybody considering moving away from software stored on optical discs.

I do find it interesting that Amazon didn’t call this an app store or an “appstore” — probably the lawyers told execs that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get roiled in another trademark battle again. Either way, it shows you that the retailer is serious about selling digital content of many sorts, in many venues.

If you’re looking to try the store, Amazon is giving $5 off any purchase through June 1. Use the code “SAVE5MAC” at checkout.

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If Ballmer’s Days Are Numbered, Bill Gates Isn’t the Answer

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 26, 2011 at 3:27 pm

It can’t be that much fun to be Steve Ballmer right now. He’s the head of a company whose stock price has been stagnant: trading at essentially the same level for much of the last eight years, safe for a few upward (and downward) blips. He’s presided over one of the company’s most high-profile failures–the Zune–and is playing playing catchup in a market you essentially helped create.

One of the most prominent successes of his tenure — the Xbox 360 — is credited to somebody else, who was rumored to have left the company over his questionable business decisions.

He’s often derided for his bombastic personality, and has technology pundits calling his tenure “The Reign of Error.” Now its come to a whole other level — investors and analysts asking for his pink slip.

Is the increasing chorus against Ballmer fair, or do others share in Microsoft’s failure? Or is this symptomatic of a larger shift among the company’s key customers, where Microsoft as a whole has fallen out of favor? You could make a case for any any of these scenarios.

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Zuck Says Letting Tweens on Facebook Not a Priority

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 25, 2011 at 7:04 pm

Don’t worry about hidin’ yo kids, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t after them. Several news outlets made a lot of hay out of the Facebook CEO’s comments at an education conference last week, seemingly suggesting that the company was ready to remove its requirement that users be over the age of 13.

Not that it matters: a recent study indicated that a third of those under 18 were below that minimum age, and often using Facebook without any parental supervision. That’s a problem, since estimates say that about a million children were cyberbullied on Facebook in the past year.

Zuckerberg argued that the press had taken his comments out of context, and rather he meant that bringing children online on Facebook was not a priority for the company. The site may consider doing so in the future, but not now. It may not really matter in the end anyway, given parents are already allowing their kids on the site regardless of its rules.

In the end, it’s the parents’ responsibility to know what their kids are doing online. Facebook’s not meant to be a babysitter.

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Sean Parker Says Music Industry Poised to Rebound

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 25, 2011 at 7:01 pm

It seems almost odd: the very man who has played a large part in the decline of an industry is now the one most bullish on its future prospects. At the e-G8 conference in Paris, Napster co-founder Sean Parker said that a “bottom” was ahead for the music industry due to new services on the horizon.

Indeed, the industry has lost three-quarters of its value, falling from a $45 billion annual business to about $12 billion. Clearly, a new business model is needed.

Parker is an investor in music service Spotify, and said that the back catalogues that are being made available through services like it are helping to drive growth. While traditional digital music stores were good for selling top-40 hits and singles, they so far have not done well in selling most back-catalogue tracks.

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The Mac’s Malware Problem Just Got A Lot Worse

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 25, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Apple may have thought that its statement yesterday would get the Mac Defender mess under control. But the malware is back under a new name–MacGuard–and in a more dangerous form.

ZDNet blogger Ed Bott, who’s known more for his reporting on Microsoft than on anything Apple, has been hot on this story since the get go. He reported Wednesday that as if on cue the Mac Defender creators have released a new version of the malware application that requires no password at all to install.

See, Mac users -including myself–have accurately pointed out that basically all attempted malware for the Mac required the user to enter the administrative password. If you did that, it was your own stupid fault for getting infected. With MacGuard, it’s completely different.

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The Truth About Square

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 23, 2011 at 9:40 pm

There’s lots of talk today on mobile payment processor Square’s outstanding results. 500,000 readers shipped, 1 million transactions so far this month, $3 million in transactions per day.

That’s impressive. There really is a real need out there for the everyday consumer to have a method to accept good old plastic. I can tell you personally that I rarely carry cash anymore: it’s just so much simpler to swipe.

Square’s rates aren’t horrible (although not great either): 2.75% for each swiped card, or 3.5% plus 15 cents for manually entered ones. So its not surprising they’re doing well.

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Is Traditional Search Passé?

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 19, 2011 at 11:18 pm

Microsoft Bing chief Stefan Weitz made a pretty significant pronouncement in an interview with The Huffington Post on Wednesday: search as we know it is dead. That’s quite the statement.

In simplest terms, the old fashioned way of search results being nothing much more than a list of returned links just isn’t cutting it — a business model that’s made Google a ton of money.

Lets be fair, though: Bing isn’t that much better. In both cases the two search engines have focused their efforts on “the social,” hoping that is the answer. Google’s social search solution is +1, which gives greater weight to returned results that people in a user’s social circle may have liked. Microsoft is doing something similar, but in that case their using content culled from a friend’s Facebook stream.

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Android Global Share Quadruples, Passes Symbian

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 19, 2011 at 11:16 pm

The standard meme when it came to smartphones was that while Android and iOS powered the lion’s share of devices sold here in the US, Nokia’s Symbian was the worldwide king. That logic is now outdated according to data from research firm Gartner.

For the first time, Android has surpassed Symbian in terms of units sold in the first quarter of 2010, making up 36 percent of the market. That is a four-fold increase from the same quarter last year, when it only made up nine percent of all devices sold. Much of Android’s gain came at the expense of Symbian, which fell from 44.2 percent a year ago to 27.4 percent.

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