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Nokia has filed a compaint against Apple for infringing on its GSM, UMTS, and WiFi “standards,” which is as absolutely vague as it sounds. While Nokia states that forty vendors have licensed its patents in these areas there is no mention of the specific instances of infringement and, given that GSM, UMTS, and WiFi are the defacto standards for GSM-based phones across the board it’s hard to tell what Nokia’s real problem is here.

Nokia, for example, has a few thousand patents dealing with UMTS alone while this one, #7,599,665, seems to deal specfically with radio hand-off between GSM/EDGE, UMTS, and WiFi.

Sportswear giant Nike has a nifty application in the App Store that allows you to create custom sneakers and order them straight away, with just a couple of taps. The app is in fact a mobile extension of NIKEiD, a program that allows customer to order personalized Nike shoes straight from the manufacturer. And an excellent extension it is.

The free app (iTunes link) has been available on the App Store since the beginning of this month, but surprisingly there hasn’t been a lot of coverage about it. Even despite this excellent video about it (embedded below).

Were you expecting unicorn tears or something? iFixit keeps working to finish its list of teardown to-dos, this time with Apple’s new Magic Mouse. It probably comes as no surprise, but just under the top surfaces lies a considerable number of capacitive sensors, and other than that, there really isn’t a lot to gaze upon. Then again, if you tend to fancy the ins and outs if gears and gizmos, this should be right up your alley.

Filed under: Peripherals

Magic Mouse post-teardown loses some of its dark arts charm originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit, Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker did her annual data dump slide presentation, this year focusing on the growth prospects of the mobile Web. As usual, there were 3 or 4 slides that really captured the trends she was talking about, particularly the ones around iPhone adoption and how that phone in particular is catapulting mobile Web usage into the mainstream.

You can see her full slide show below (all 68 of them), but let me pull out the three iPhone slides that helps put its growth into perspective. The first one above shows the growth of data traffic on AT&T’s mobile network. It is 50 times higher than it was just three years ago. I added two arrows to show when the first iPhone launched in June, 2007 and the iPhone 3G in July 2008.

AT&T saw massive pops in data usage following those two launches as consumers discovered the unadulterated mobile Web for the first time. And it is not just the iPhone. With the ubiquity of WiFi, the iPod Touch offers pretty much the same experience without AT&T’s monthly fees. Taken together, the adoption of the iPhone and iPod Touch is outstripping the early adoption the desktop Internet, as represented by AOL and Netscape in Meeker’s chart below. It is also outstripping the early growth of NTT Docomo’s imode, which was the most successful example of the first generation of mobile Web adoption in Japan.

The chart overlays the first 20 quarters of user growth for each product. Only eight quarters after launch, the iPhone and iPod Touch has more than twice as many users (57 million) as imode (25 million), five times as many as Netscape (11 million), and eight times as many as AOL (7 million) at a comparable points in their histories.

The iPhone/iTouch combo is also the fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time. Its adoption ramp is even steeper than videogame consoles including the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP. The original iPod and Blackberry aren’t even in the same league.

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The Magic Mouse is a sleek looking “Two Button” laser mouse developed by the folks at Apple. It’s a new design, but how does it compare to the mighty mouse?

As it stands the mouse features one button and no scroll wheel, instead relying on a multi-touch surface across the top of the mouse that gives users “Mac trackpad type functionality” by using gesture controls such as two finger swiping and single finger horizontal and vertical scrolling among other controls.

The Magic Mouse is also wireless and promises four months of battery life on a single charge. All this is then wrapped up in a nice $69 package, which seems like a reasonable price if the mouse lives up to its abilities.

The team at Slipperybrick does ask the right question though “Is it comfortable?” I don’t think it could be any worse than the Mighty Mouse, but that’s just my personal opinion.

Related posts:

1. Magic Mouse: This is what touch computing should be
2. Introducing the Philips SPM9800/10 Bluetooth, USB, Touchpad Mouse
3. Michael Jackson training with Magic Johnson

For weeks – months even – analysts have been telling Apple to make a netbook for the masses, a $299 junker designed for those who surf the web on the couch, their Cheeto-stained hands scrabbling for the TiVo remote while they incessantly refresh Reddit and hope against hope that their Craigslist Missed Connection emails them back. The Air, they said, was too expensive, designed for the frou-frou quiche-eaters of Silicon (V)alley while the MacBook Pros were too overpowered for the likes of Flyover Sally and her sad-eyed brood of younglings. They needed to sell something to the masses, something solid, American, and corn-fed.

Well, now Sally, the quiche-eaters, and the Cheeto dude – and the rest of us – have the new MacBook. It offers a bit less power and peformance than the Pro line, a little more of the styling of the Air line, and sells right at $999, a magic marketing number that is neither North of $1000 (before taxes) and South of corporate financial suicide.

Anyone who knows me or knows of my writing will know that while I can really appreciate Apple products for the aesthetic value and quality I am not an Apple fan. That said when I heard the first rumors about the next generation Apple mouse being multi-touch my interest was definitely pique.

As it turns out the rumors were true and while the jury is still out as to whether or not this incarnation of their mouse will redeem the company in the eyes of their fans I think actually has a great idea. Granted Microsoft is working on multi-touch for the mouse but from what I can tell they are still some way from bringing one to market. So this leaves Apple with a wide open field to play around in for the time being.

Now I can only go by what I read at the various gadget blogs to get an idea of where Apple is going with the Magic Mouse and personally I think this is a really proper place for multi-touch to be implemented. I have said before that while I can see the advantages of a multi-touch monitor under certain circumstances in the vast majority of desktop or laptop applications it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

A multi-touch mouse on the other hand, if done right, does make a whole lot of sense. The mouse has become an integral part of our computing life but is still requires a lot of movement and clicking in order to use it. By moving to a multi-touch style even minor movements like the swipe of a finger can move you around the screen with very little effort.

This isn’t even taking into account all the other finger, or combination of fingers, movement that would be available to perform a lot of the tasks we currently perform.

Now from what I have read the Magic Mouse’s previous incarnation never hit it big with Apple users with many of them replacing it with other manufacturer’s products. That said, and given Apple success to date with multi-touch, if they have managed to carry that knowledge over to the new mouse we may see a very useful and productive use of multi-touch in our palms.

I’d be willing to bet that Microsoft will be taking a very close look at the Might Mouse once it is available but in the meantime courtesy of the team over at cnet’s Crave blog here’s a graphic of some of the gestures available with the mouse as well as a video.

Related posts:

1. Microsoft One Ups Apple With On Screen Multi-Touch
2. All the fuss about touch computing is just greasy fingerprints and sore arms
3. Introducing the Philips SPM9800/10 Bluetooth, USB, Touchpad Mouse

That thumbs up means exactly what you think, and just like all the other new MacBook (Pro) models, that “non-removable” battery in the new polycarbonate unibody MacBook is more of a guideline than an actual set of rules. iFixit’s currently doing its traditional teardown process — so far, other than the battery and hard drive swapping places, the internal geography looks about like its predecessor. Letting your eyes venture into forbidden territories is just a mouse click away at the read link below.

Filed under: Laptops

MacBook strips off its polycarbonate unibody shell for the expected teardown originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Morgan Stanley Managing Director, Mary Meeker, gave her usual quick presentation with a ton of information. Rather than trying to squeeze it all in (which not even she can in her 15 minute presentation), I will embed the slides below when they are up and hit on her major points.

Overall, she notes that Morgan Stanley sees many good signs that the economy is recovering. She notes that stock markets usually are a leading indicator of recovery, and certainly we’ve been seeing that recovery in the tech sector (see: Apple). That’s good news because the tech industry is now the most highest capitalized market, it’s no longer the financial industry.

Meeker thinks we’re in a new computing cycle with the mobile web. Meeker believes Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch are leading the way here, big time. She thinks the mobile web will be 10 times as big as the more traditional desktop Internet, and that it will grow much faster.

She also notes that the technologies around it are exploding: Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth, etc. And all of this is exploding in a recession, she notes.

Other key points:

• Location-based services are the “secret sauce” of what makes the mobile web interesting.
• The iPhone/iPod touch is the fastest growing piece of hardware the world has ever seen.
• And usage share versus market share of the iPhone is incredible, meaning it will only grow.
• Facebook is becoming the multimedia repository, and it will allow you to do so much.
• Companies absolutely need to be on board with the mobile web. They have some time, but they need to act.

Find the full slides below:

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Sure, you’ve seen the hands-on posts and the PR, but have you really gotten a look at Apple’s new gear? Join us for a quick and spirited walkthrough of the goods. You won’t be disappointed. Or you might be. It really depends on how picky you are.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Peripherals

A video walkthrough of Apple’s newest additions (Unibody MacBook, iMac, Magic Mouse) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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