Month: August 2011

Nokia/RIM/Windows Phone 7’s enemy isn’t Apple, it is Android

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Apple is likely to “strike back” by acquiring patents from rivals such as Nokia or Research in Motion as a response to Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility. He also mentioned InterDigital, which has been widely viewed as a potential target for acquisition by Apple and other major players in the smartphone industry.

Google is, and has always been fighting a losing patent war, even with the Motorola purchase. RIM/Nokia/WP7’s enemy isn’t Apple, it is Google and Android. And they will make all the deals they can with Apple to eat Android alive. A puny Motorola isn’t going to deter things.

Google’s announcement just a day or two after Motorola announced that they are going to start suing other Android licensees (after losing out in market share to HTC and Samsung) makes the Google-Motorola deal sound like a sudden decision. Which won’t be surprising given Larry Page’s history as a CEO.

Appleinsider: Apple predicted to ‘strike back’ at Google with its own patent purchase

NUS Matriculation Fair Laptop Sales 2011

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For those wondering where I am, I will be back in the regular August month-long Sapura booth at Yusof Ishak House from this Wednesday onwards. Am currently at the NTU Laptop Sales Fair 2011. Photos to follow in days.


My new pal the Dell guy using his personal MBP 15 on the job

Apple employee “No more 13″ MacBook Pros in the future”

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A little bird chirps, “chatted with someone (let’s call her A-san) from Apple South Asia/Singapore education sales. She mentioned casually that ‘they will do away with the 13-inchers (MacBook Pros) in the future’. ”

We all have heard the rumors about the redesigned 15-inch MacBook Pros, and bigwigs like John Siracusa have repeatedly mentioned on his shows (Hypercritical) that he thinks that the 13-inch MacBook Pro will be removed from the line-up to simplify it, but this is the first time anyone heard something like this coming out from the mouth of a non-retail Apple employee in a relatively high position (locally at least).

The current 13-inch MacBook Pros are actually designed, and marketed as MacBooks when they first debuted in 2008, but the higher than 999USD starting price made Apple rethink its strategy and they eventually relaunched them as MacBook Pros instead. It definitely won’t be weird for them to return to a “11-inch and 13-inch = Airs, and 15-inch and 17-inch = Pros” lineup, one that they have been adopting ever since the Intel switch in 2006, before the Aluminum MacBooks become MacBook Pros in 2009.

iCloud’s Web Apps

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iCloud’s web apps, which are only accessible by developers now, are 100 times better than anything for MobileMe ever was. If they can do something this polished, why the heck was MobileMe that crappy to begin with?