Yes, we’re a little late to the iPhone 4 party. But when the party has a line-up that extends down the street and around the block, and a pair of burly bouncers at the door who only let people in a handful at a time… well, a lot of folks are late to this party.
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iPhone 4 mesmerizes us
The Wall Street Journal reports that Interval Licensing, a patent licensing firm run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and designed to protect the intellectual property of Allen’s former technology incubator company Interval Research Corporation, has filed suit against Apple and ten other companies over several patents related to e-commerce and Web search technologies.
Mr. Allen, 57, Friday through his firm Interval Licensing LLC filed suit in federal court in Seattle asserting the companies are using technology from his laboratory. Named in the suit, along with Apple and Google, are AOL Inc., eBay Inc., Facebook Inc., Netflix Inc., Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Google’s YouTube subsidiary.
The suit doesn’t name Microsoft, Amazon.com Inc. or other technology firms in Seattle where Mr. Allen is based. The suit doesn’t estimate a damage amount.
According to a press release issued by Interval Licensing, four patents are at stake in the lawsuit:
- United States Patent No. 6,263,507 issued for an invention entitled “Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data.”
- United States Patent No. 6,034,652 issued for an invention entitled “Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device.”
- United States Patent No. 6,788,314 issued for an invention entitled “Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device.”
- United States Patent No. 6,757,682 issued for an invention entitled “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest.”
The press release claims that the technologies are “fundamental” to the operation of leading e-commerce and search companies and the firm is merely looking to protect its own investments in innovation. According to The Wall Street Journal, the lawsuit marks a major shift for Allen in his increasingly aggressive efforts to protect the intellectual property developed at Interval Research during the 1990s.
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Just a few days ago, we noted that early advertisers and developers participating in Apple’s iAd program have generally been pleased with the results so far, with advertisers finding high levels of user engagement and increased brand awareness and developers seeing solid financial returns.
The Wall Street Journal reports, however, that not everything is running so smoothly. In particular, Apple’s “tight control” over the entire process, including creation of the actual ads, has slowed the launch of offerings from a number of the program’s publicized launch partners.
Of the 17 launch partners Apple named for iAd, only Unilever PLC and Nissan Co. had iAd campaigns for much of July. Of the remaining 17, Citigroup Inc., Walt Disney Co. and J.C. Penney Co. – which tied its campaign to the back-to-school-season – have since launched iAd campaigns and other companies are planning iAd efforts.
Part of the reason some marketers are experiencing delays in getting their iAds to market is that Apple has kept tight control on the creative aspects of ad-making, something advertisers aren’t used to, according to several ad executives involved with creating iAds.
According to the report, the ad creation process is taking up to 8-10 weeks, with Apple spending up to two weeks longer than originally expected to build the actual ads, leading to the delays.
People familiar with the matter said Apple underestimated how tough the new business would be and is still learning the best tactics for dealing with ad agencies. At the same time, ad agencies are struggling to keep pace with new ad technologies.
With Apple handling the production of the ad unit, agencies don’t necessarily know what it is capable of or how to use the technology, one ad executive said. The iAd is designed in HTML5 technology, and Apple has yet to distribute a “developer kit” to agencies so they can understand how it works.
In order to fill the void in the iAd program created by the delayed launches of the big-name advertisers, Apple has rolled out an “iAd for Developers” program that allows App Store developers to advertise their applications within other apps and provides users with the ability to download the advertised apps directly from the iAd without leaving the application that is running. Today’s report claims that Apple is charging developers 25 cents every time a user taps on a banner ad for their application, a significant discount from the $2-per-tap rate charged to deep-pocketed advertisers for their more interactive ads.
While the iAd roll-out seems to have had mixed results so far with limited participation but strong results from those who have managed to make their ads available, Apple is no doubt still in the early stages of learning how to become a mobile advertising company. But with Citibank, Disney, and J.C. Penney beginning to roll out their initial ads for the program, we may soon begin to see more variety in ads and additional companies making entries into the program.
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Apple iPhone executive Mark Papermaster’s departure was initially due to controversy over the iPhone 4′s antenna rim, according to reports. But a Wall Street Journal article suggests Papermaster may have proven incompatible with Apple’s corporate culture, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
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Apple iPhone Exec Incompatible With Steve Jobs: Report
Apple iPhone executive Mark Papermaster’s departure was initially due to controversy over the iPhone 4′s antenna rim, according to reports. But a Wall Street Journal article suggests Papermaster may have proven incompatible with Apple’s corporate culture, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
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Apple iPhone Exec Incompatible With Steve Jobs: Report
The Wall Street Journal provides some additional color on the departure of Apple’s iPhone hardware engineering chief Mark Papermaster, citing “broader cultural incompatibility” rather than a direct link to the iPhone 4′s antenna issues as reason for his exit.
Exactly how much the problems with the iPhone 4 played in Mr. Papermaster’s exit is unclear. The iPhone 4, a key device for Apple, has been beset by issues such as antenna reception and delayed production of a white version of the gadget. Several people familiar with Mr. Papermaster’s situation said his departure was driven by a broader cultural incompatibility.
Mr. Papermaster had lost the confidence of Mr. Jobs months ago and hasn’t been part of the decision-making process for some time, these people said. They added that Mr. Papermaster didn’t appear to have the type of creative thinking expected at Apple and wasn’t used to Apple’s corporate culture, where even senior executives are expected to keep on top of the smallest details of their areas of responsibility and often have to handle many tasks directly, as opposed to delegating them.
One of these people also said Mr. Papermaster had difficulty maneuvering Apple’s internal politics.
Neither Papermaster nor Apple have yet offered any details on the circumstances behind his departure.
The report notes that it was Jobs who pressed forward with the iPhone 4′s antenna design despite questions about its performance, suggesting that perhaps Papermaster does not bear as much blame as many have thought. In addition, Apple has claimed that the antenna design was in testing for two years prior to the launch of the iPhone 4, meaning that it had been designed and subjected to significant testing even before Papermaster officially joined the company in April 2009.
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CNBC reports that News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-led media conglomerate behind such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and The New York Post, is considering launching a new news unit dedicated to content for tablet devices such as the iPad.
Sources close to the company tell me that the company is considering creating a new purely digital news play that would be designed for the app world and would be available through subscription on devices like the iPad.
This new digital news venture would incorporate text, photo and video, tailored for the iTunes app format …. neither a newspaper nor a news website — it would not be based on any of News Corp’s existing papers.
According to the report, News Corp could announce the new initiative within a month should it decided to officially move forward with it.
While News Corp has already established a precedent for subscription-based iPad content through its Web-administered offerings for The Wall Street Journal, other content providers seeking to deploy subscription-based content, such as Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated magazine, have been butting heads with Apple, possibly over either revenue sharing or subscriber information sharing.
Fortune is another one of Time Inc.’s brands that has not been able to reach a deal with Apple for subscription pricing, as the magazine’s iPad application rolled out today using a model similar to that employed by other content providers. The free download comes with a demo issue, but future issues will have to be purchased individually through the application at $4.99 per issue.
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the Japanese government is continuing to pursue its long-standing concern over reports of first-generation iPod nanos overheating, following up on a warning to consumers issued by the government nearly two years ago.
The ministry is requesting Apple Japan to explain the cause of overheating, whether similar incidents have been reported domestically and abroad and what prevention and cautionary measures have been taken to counter such incidents, according to Seiji Shimagami, a ministry official who works in consumer product safety.
The order came following an incident in Tokyo that took place on July 13, when sparks flew from a user’s device while it was recharging, according to Masahiro Yamazaki, the head of the consumer product safety unit at METI.
According to the report, the Japanese government agency responsible for overseeing trade issues has documented 27 instances of first-generation iPod nanos overheating while recharging, classifying those incidents as “fire-related”. Six of those incidents have occurred since the 2008 warning was issued.
“iPods are incredibly well designed and safety is the highest priority for Apple. We are taking METI’s letter in regard to the first generation iPod nano very seriously and are working closely with them to answer their concerns,” Apple said in a statement.
Similar concerns over the first-generation iPod nano have been expressed in South Korea, where some July 2009 reports claimed that Apple had issued a recall of the device, a fact that Apple denied, although it does continue to acknowledge the possibility of overheating in a support document and encourages concerned customers to contact the company.
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The most common criticism is that the phone is slow after an upgrade. There are also many complaints that the phone drains the battery quickly and becomes excessively hot. Concern about general problems such as slowness and battery life on gadgets isn’t unusual, but using iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G seems to make the problems so bad that the phone is nearly unusable for some people.
In venting their frustration, some users have even gone so far as to create parody videos demonstrating the iPhone 3G’s inability to run iOS 4 smoothly.
Meanwhile, some reports have indicated that iOS 4.1, currently in beta testing by developers, will address these issues to some degree.
Apple has made clear since the initial introduction of iOS 4 in April that the new operating system is not fully compatible with all generations of the iPhone and iPod touch due to hardware limitations, with only limited compatibility for the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch suggesting that those models are being pushed to their limits with some of iOS 4′s features. Users, however, understandably expected that Apple’s steps to disable certain resource-intensive features on those devices should have left the remaining features operating relatively smoothly. That does not, however, appear to be the case for some users.
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Mac Pro reservations at Fifth Avenue Apple Store
One MacRumors reader has pointed out to us that Apple’s somewhat-hidden Reserve and Pick Up program is currently showing the company’s Mac Pro models as “Unavailable” for reservation at his local retail store in Canada, possibly hinting at an imminent update. According to the tipster, the Mac Pro was seeing full availability for reservations at his store as recently as yesterday.
A quick check of the reservation systems for a handful of Apple retail stores around the United States shows a similar story, with some stores showing complete unavailability of Mac Pro reservations while others continue to offer either the base Quad-Core model or the 8-core model but not both.
Mac Pro reservations at SoHo Apple Store
Apple’s Mac Pro line is overdue for an update according to our Buyer’s Guide tracking. A report earlier this year had claimed that a Mac Pro refresh was due “by June”, but Apple failed to meet that rumored target. More recent claims of chip shortages for Intel’s latest 6-core chips suggested that Apple might not be able push out a Mac Pro update until later this summer.
As for other changes possible in a Mac Pro, evidence of support for several high-end graphics cards from ATI and NVIDIA have appeared in Mac OS X, and one report has pointed to the adoption of USB 3.0 and faster FireWire in the new machines. That report also suggested an “end of summer” timeframe for a release.
Mac Pro reservations at West 14th Street Apple Store
Not all of Apple’s sales channels are seeing constrained supplies of the Mac Pro, however, as the company’s online stores continue to show shipping estimates of “within 24 hours” for both stock models.
Just yesterday, a report indicated that Apple’s iMac stocks are also running low, with third-party distribution channels seeing constrained shipments ahead of a supposed update to that line as well.
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